Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",company,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +-0.05,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",company,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +-0.6,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",competitor,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +-0.52,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,competitor,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +-0.61,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",both,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +-0.61,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",both,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +-0.61,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",both,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +-0.61,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",both,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +-0.13,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",competitor,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +-0.35,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",competitor,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +-0.25,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",competitor,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +-0.25,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",competitor,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +-0.13,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",competitor,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +-0.35,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",competitor,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +-0.05,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",company,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +-0.05,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",company,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +-0.13,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",competitor,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +-0.35,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",competitor,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +-0.35,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",competitor,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +-0.13,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",competitor,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +-0.6,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",competitor,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +-0.6,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",competitor,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +-0.6,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",competitor,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +-0.25,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",competitor,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +-0.25,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",competitor,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +-0.52,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,competitor,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +-0.52,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,competitor,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +-0.52,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,competitor,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +-0.61,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",both,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +-0.13,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",competitor,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +-0.25,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",competitor,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +-0.35,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",competitor,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +-0.05,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",company,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +-0.6,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",competitor,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +-0.6,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",competitor,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +-0.61,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",both,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +-0.52,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,competitor,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +-0.52,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,competitor,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +-0.05,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",company,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +-0.35,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",competitor,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +-0.13,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",competitor,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +-0.25,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",competitor,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +-0.61,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",both,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +-0.13,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",competitor,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +-0.35,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",competitor,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +-0.25,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",competitor,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +-0.6,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",competitor,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +-0.61,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",both,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +-0.52,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,competitor,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +-0.35,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",competitor,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +-0.13,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",competitor,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +-0.25,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",competitor,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +-0.05,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",company,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +-0.6,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",competitor,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +-0.52,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,competitor,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +-0.61,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",both,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +-0.05,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",company,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +-0.13,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",competitor,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +-0.6,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",competitor,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +-0.52,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,competitor,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +-0.35,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",competitor,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +-0.05,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",company,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +-0.25,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",competitor,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +-0.05,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",company,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +-0.61,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",both,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +-0.13,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",competitor,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +-0.35,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",competitor,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0.21,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",2017-04-22,Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,company,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +-0.25,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",competitor,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0.21,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",2017-04-22,Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,company,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +-0.6,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",competitor,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +-0.52,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,competitor,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0.36,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court",2017-04-19,"A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",competitor,05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +0.36,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court",2017-04-19,"A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",competitor,05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +0.21,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",2017-04-22,Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,company,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +-0.05,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",company,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +-0.6,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",competitor,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +-0.61,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",both,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +-0.13,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",competitor,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0.36,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court",2017-04-19,"A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",competitor,05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +-0.52,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,competitor,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +-0.35,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",competitor,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0.21,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",2017-04-22,Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,company,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +-0.25,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",competitor,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0.36,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court",2017-04-19,"A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",competitor,05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +-0.05,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",company,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +-0.6,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",competitor,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +-0.52,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,competitor,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +-0.61,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",both,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +-0.35,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",competitor,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +-0.25,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",competitor,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +-0.13,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",competitor,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0.21,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",2017-04-22,Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,company,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +0.36,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court",2017-04-19,"A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",competitor,05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +-0.61,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",both,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +-0.13,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",competitor,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +-0.25,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",competitor,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +-0.35,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",competitor,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +-0.05,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",company,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +-0.6,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",competitor,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +-0.52,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,competitor,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +-0.6,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",competitor,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +-0.52,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,competitor,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0.21,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",2017-04-22,Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,company,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +-0.05,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",company,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +0.36,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court",2017-04-19,"A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",competitor,05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +-0.05,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",company,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +-0.61,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",both,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +-0.25,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",competitor,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +-0.35,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",competitor,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +-0.13,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",competitor,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +-0.91,"
By 2025, the healthcare industry will face numerous challenges including an ageing population, government policy that will need to keep pace with this population, and making healthcare services and infrastructure more accessible to the masses. The technology-driven world that we find ourselves in has provided us with a great opportunity to incorporate technological tools into the delivery of healthcare. Specifically, Big Data, mobile and the Internet of Things (IoT) can support and facilitate the flow of information for effective care coordination and greater patient and citizen empowerment, according to the Healthcare in 2025 report by videoconferencing, telepresence and communications firm Polycom Inc.
Big Data has immense potential in healthcare, especially when it comes to the consolidation of data to allow for more efficient and effective decision-making. Data collection and utilization through cloud systems will allow better sample sizes for prescription models, access to patient information no matter the location where they seek treatment and better allocation of limited resources.
By 2020, IoT—which is “a scenario in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction”—will likely have 25 billion connected “things”, which includes more than 250 million connected vehicles, according to research firm Gartner.
An Accenture report stated that IoT could add $14.2 trillion to the world economy over the next 15 years. Many believe healthcare will be a prime beneficiary—wearable technology is often cited as one of the tools to support prevention and wellness in IoT, according to the Polycom report.
Mobile 3G and 4G connectivity has truly revolutionized personal connectivity. When mobile integrates with healthcare delivery, the problem of accessibility reduces significantly. Virtual consultations or having surgeons in urban areas assist those in rural areas with surgeries virtually would become more feasible options; touchsurgery.com is one such example, according to the report.
The potential is evident. However, the success of mobile will also depend on how governments shape healthcare policy and distribute funding, revamping the current incentive framework in many of the regions and core markets, and hiring technological experts as employees in healthcare organizations, the report notes.
As collaboration between multiple parties for the future healthcare business model is a critical requirement, having a scalable network and a robust unified communications environment is necessary. The ability to integrate voice, video, content, specific healthcare applications and medical devices to support better and more efficient collaboration among clinicians, healthcare educators, administrators, patients and families will result in better patient outcomes and reduced costs, as long as it’s simple to use and a familiar, consistent experience. The right technology environment should support multiple applications for economies of scale like care team collaboration and administration, medical education as well as telemedicine.",2017-03-30,Technology-driven world that we find ourselves in has provided us with a great opportunity to incorporate technological tools into the delivery of healthcare,competitor,04:19,Can tech solve the healthcare challenges of 2025? +0.21,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",2017-04-22,Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,company,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +-0.69,"Mumbai: Cement maker ACC Ltd on Friday reported an 8.9% fall in net profit for the quarter ended 31 March, hurt in part by higher costs. Consolidated net profit for the quarter fell to Rs211.06 crore from Rs231.70 crore a year earlier. Consolidated sales in the quarter rose 9.1% to Rs3,556.70 crore from Rs3,259.95 crore a year earlier. The company follows a January-December financial year.The results, however, beat analyst estimates, helped by higher sales. Four analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected ACC to report consolidated net profit of Rs166.4 crore on sales of Rs3152.5 crore. Revenue in its largest cement business rose 9.3% to Rs3,401.27 crore, helped in part by a price hike, while those in its ready-mix concrete business rose about 10% to Rs285 crore. During the quarter, the company launched two cement products ACC Suraksha and ACC HPC (high performance cement). The company said its total expenses during the March-ended quarter rose 11.8% to Rs3,404.41 crore. Increased government spending on infrastructure development, housing, roads, railways, and irrigation is likely to boost cement demand in the rest of 2017, ACC said in a statement.Separately, ACC said it has appointed Surendra Mehta as company secretary and head of compliance with immediate effect. ACC’s shares closed down 1.03% to Rs1,496.75 a share on the BSE on Friday.",2017-04-21,"ACC’s net profit for the quarter fell to Rs211.06 crore from Rs231.70 crore a year earlier while its sales in the quarter rose 9.1% to Rs3,556.70 crore from Rs3,259.95 crore a year earlier",competitor,21:57,ACC profit falls 8.9% but sales beat estimates +0.36,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court",2017-04-19,"A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",competitor,05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +1.0,"Mumbai: British chancellor of the exchequer Philip Hammond on Wednesday said the United Kingdom and India can become strong partner nations in the financial technology (fintech) industry as UK is keen to make its market truly global after its exit from European Union, while on the other hand, investments into India’s fintech sector have been rising over the past year.Hammond is on a three-day tour called FinTech Trade Mission to India to engage in dialogue with the Indian finance ministry, financial regulators and other industry bodies in order to strengthen UK’s e-conomic and trading relations with the country.“The vote for the UK to leave the EU was clear. It reflected a desire for Britain to make its own decisions and to determine its own destiny. But it wasn’t a vote for isolation…British companies have invested more in India since 2000 than the United States or any other European nation has done. And investment from UK companies accounts for 1 in 20 Indian jobs in the organised private sector. Indian companies, meanwhile, invest more in Britain than in the rest of the EU put together,” Hammond said while speaking at a conference in Mumbai.ALSO READ: India, UK to jointly invest £240 million in green energy sectorHammond said Indian companies such as the Tata Group are among the biggest employers in the UK, transforming British businesses with their focused management and long-term investments.“In the last year we’ve seen the creation of a whole new market, with the world’s first masala bonds issued in London – raising over $1.5 billion. To date, almost 80% of all masala bonds have been issued in London. And we will see even more, very soon from the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency and the National Highways Authority of India…the UK and India can collaborate to our mutual advantage – in FinTech,” said Hammond.There are at least 15 India-headquartered banks which are engaged in international banking businesses in the UK. On the other hand, there are several British financial services firms that are present in India’s insurance, asset management, fintech and banking industries.Hammond hinted that strengthening ties with UK may fulfil India’s appetite for investments, particularly in infrastructure.ALSO READ: India, Britain talk up post-Brexit trade prospects“India has 220 million active smartphone users–over three times the entire UK population. What’s more, India’s demonetisation programme means its financial services sector is undergoing a significant transformation…New fintech payment firms, small finance lenders, and insurance players are entering the market. These firms will be crucial in helping the RBI achieve its target of 90% of the population having access to banking services by 2034,” said Hammond.",2017-04-06,Philip Hammond says UK and India can become strong partners in the financial technology industry as it is keen to make its market truly global after its exit from EU,company,01:04,UK exchequer chancellor Hammond urges strong ties with India in fintech +-0.61,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",both,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0.68,"Washington: Unfazed by the possible changes to the H1B visa regime, chief executive officer (CEO) of India’s IT major TCS, Rajesh Gopinathan has said the current discourse on the issue in the US is driven by emotions rather than economy and the best way to tackle it is through greater engagement. Gopinathan favoured a policy of engagement with various stake holders on the issue of H1B visas in the US. He noted that the discourse is currently driven by emotions rather than economy. “The best way to tackle that is greater engagement. Because the way, sometimes, companies like us get characterised is very different from the reality of what we bring to the table,” Gopinathan, who is in his mid-40s, said. “Some of these engagements actually help get that message out also. People will understand us better for who we are, and I think engagement, communication and collaboration is the best way to deal with the political lack of understanding which comes. Democracy ought to deal with the emotional response that you see and you have to get over it and engage positively,” Gopinathan said. He said the US has been a “very welcoming market” for the IT major and has provided it with a fair, open and competitive environment. “All said and done, the US has been a very welcoming market for us. So you keep aside the immediate issues, it’s been a market that has been fair, it has been an open, competitive environment,” Gopinathan told PTI, exuding confidence that TCS would be able to successfully compete in any environment. Gopinathan said TCS has competed and has won against the best in the country. “We have competed and we have won against the global best in this country, on equal footing. So, it has been a market that has helped us grow in confidence as we have gone,” he said but repeatedly refrained from having any complaint from the present system or the possibility of a new executive order that would adversely have an impact on his company’s performance due to any action by the Trump Administration on H1B visas. US President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order that would tighten the process of issuing the H1B visas and seek a review of the system for creating an “entirely new structure” for awarding these visas. Gopinathan was appointed as the new CEO of TCS this January after his predecessor N. Chandrasekaran was elevated to the post of chairman of Tata Sons. Responding to questions on a potential executive order or legislations being talked about by lawmakers, Gopinathan asserted that there is no law currently in the US that is discriminatory. “There are many that are being discussed, which if they were to get passed, in their extreme form would be discriminatory. So we should actually give credence to the system here, that is, as I said, it is fair. It has been fair in the past, there is no reason for us to assume that it will not be fair in the future. So, let’s deal with what’s on the ground and let’s go step by step,” he said. “More importantly, we have very active STEM education engagement in the US. We work with colleges, high school students, we reach out, we have touched close to 20,000 plus students already, and significantly we are accelerate that into what we call Ignite My Future Campaign. We just target to touch one million students all in the next five years,” he said. Noting that the technology market is actually under supplied, he said the sheer demand of technical skills far outstrips the supply. “What we’ve been successful in India is to actually increase the world supply, often generating graduates way beyond what the governing systems actually provided. So we capitalised the emergence of a private sector education complex that served to provide us the talent required for our growth,” he said. PTI",2017-04-18,"The current discourse on the H1B visa issue in the US is driven by emotions rather than economy and the best way to tackle it is through greater engagement, says Gopinathan",company,18:08,TCS unperturbed by possible changes to H1B visa regime: CEO Rajesh Gopinathan +0.48,"Mumbai: Future Retail Ltd, India’s biggest department store chain that gained from the government’s surprise demonetisation move, still has room to extend the rally that’s more than doubled its market value this year.The shares of the food-to-fashion retailer are set to rally 22% in the next 12 months, according to the average analyst price target compiled by Bloomberg. The stock has surged 128% since 1 January, beating returns from rivals such as billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla-controlled Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd and Tata group’s Trent Ltd.A shortage of cash hit purchases of soaps to cars after Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November junked high-value currency bills, driving shoppers to large-format stores like Future Retail that accept credit cards. Sales may jump 25% this year as the company adds to its chain of 1,000-plus stores, India’s biggest, group chief executive officer Kishore Biyani said in an interview.“Demonetisation was one big tailwind in recent months and the single goods-and-services tax will be the next big push,” said Himanshu Nayyar, Mumbai-based analyst at Systematix Shares & Stocks Ltd, referring to the sales tax regime that will help retailers buy materials seamlessly from across states after it is rolled out from 1 July. His one-year price target of Rs345 is 18% higher than Monday’s close.Investors are warming up to India’s brick-and-mortar retailers at a time when their online rivals face an intense discount war and eroding valuations. Shares of billionaire Radhakishan Damani-owned Avenue Supermarts Ltd, which sells staples at knockdown rates, have more than doubled from their IPO price in March. The stock hasn’t been added to a popular index yet because of its short trading history. Trent, which sells branded clothes, has advanced 32% since 1 January. Aditya Birla Fashion has climbed 26%.Credit card spends at Future Retail’s Big Bazaar and Easy Day stores, which stock food and household items, saw non-cash billings surge 86% in the November-March period, the company said. The surprise currency recall was announced on the night of 8 November.Turnaround“Demonetization has in fact helped us clock more revenue,” Biyani said by phone. “We’re also looking to add 2 million square feet this financial year” that began April 1, he said.Future Retail swung to a profit in the nine months ended December, reporting a net income of Rs245 crore versus a loss of Rs89.8 crore in the year earlier period. Revenue jumped almost fourfold to Rs12,600 crore, according to its website. The turnaround isn’t just because of Modi’s currency policy change.In recent years, the company has exited non-core businesses and hived off its supply chain infrastructure to a group firm as part of efforts to lower debt. At the same time, it bought smaller chains, including a dairy products retailer Heritage Foods (India) Ltd, to expand in the convenience stores segment. This area is expected grow 43% annually in the next five years, according to Mumbai-based Antique Stock Broking Ltd.Earnings outlookFuture Retail’s after-tax profit could swell to Rs895 crore by March 2020, compared with an estimated 3.3 billion in 2017, driven by a 31% yearly growth in revenue from convenience stores in the period and a decline in inventory levels, Antique’s analyst Abhijeet Kundu wrote in a March report. An expected return on equity of 20% for 2018 is higher than the global mean of 15.8%, he said. Antique has a price target of Rs387.“What’s left in Future Retail is very scalable, asset-light and has been delivering growth in the past three quarters,” Systematix’s Nayyar said. “Heritage, Nilgiris, Easyday are high potential convenience formats. These could be the big story contributing to the company’s bottomline in the future.” Bloomberg",2017-04-18,"Future Retail shares are set to rally 22% in the next 12 months. The stock has surged 128% since 1 January, beating returns from rivals ",company,14:43,Future Retail gains as Kishore Biyani rides demonetisation +-0.31,"Bhubaneswar: India on Saturday made a formal launch of Bharat Stage-IV (BS-IV) grade fuel across the country to keep carbon emission in check and set a target of ushering in BS-VI fuel by April 2020. The launch came days after the Supreme Court banned sale and registration of BS-III vehicles from 1 April. Union petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan formally launched the BS-IV grade transportation fuel in Bhubaneswar on the occasion of Utkal Diwas, the state foundation day.Pradhan symbolically commenced sale of the eco-friendly and low-emission fuel from 12 different locations across the country through live video links. The cities were Varanasi, Vijayawada, Durgapur, Gorakhpur, Imphal, Bhopal, Ranchi, Madurai, Nagpur, Patna, Guwahati and Shillong. “Today, we begin a new era of clean transportation fuel that will benefit 1.25 billion citizens of our country by substantially reducing pollution levels everywhere,” Pradhan said while complimenting oil marketing companies for working in unison to set up refining infrastructure and logistics in a record time for BS-IV grade fuel. The oil marketing companies (OMCs) are incurring an expenditure of Rs90,000 crore for phase-wise upgradation of the fuel quality. “Migration to BS-IV fuels shows India’s resolve to cut down emissions. The next step is to usher in BS-VI fuels by April 1, 2020, to be at par with global standards,” the oil minister said. Though India is not a major polluting country, “we shall stand by the Prime Minister’s commitment at COP-21 in Paris that India will substantially reduce carbon emissions and greenhouse gas emissions in coming years”.",2017-04-01,The launch of BS-IV fuel comes days after the Supreme Court banned sale and registration of BS-III vehicles from 1 April,competitor,21:50,India formally launches BS-IV fuel to make environmental statement +0.76,"
Mumbai: Tata Steel Ltd on Tuesday posted its first profit in five quarters as a strong performance by its Indian business, a rebound in demand and higher pricing helped counter weak sales in Europe.The steel maker reported a consolidated net profit of Rs231.90 crore in the quarter to 31 December, compared with a net loss of Rs2,747.72 crore a year ago. Revenue rose 14% to Rs29,391.60 crore from Rs25,766.89 crore a year earlier.Fifteen analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected Tata Steel to report a consolidated net profit of Rs130 crore; two analysts had expected revenue of Rs29,436 crore.Global steel mills have seen profits jump after prices of the alloy advanced because of government stimulus in China, the world’s biggest consumer. At the same time, a ramp-up in capacity in India saw volumes increase, boosting sales of local mills.At Tata Steel, India business revenue rose 39% to Rs14,106.04 crore in the quarter to December. Revenue at Tata Steel Europe fell 6.3% to Rs12,537.08 crore.Over the past two years, Tata Steel has cut jobs and shuttered some of its plants in Europe, blaming competition from cheap Chinese imports, a strong pound and high costs.Total costs in the quarter rose 3.9% to Rs27,232.08 crore. Finance costs alone rose 40.5% to Rs1,387.40 crore.The company said that its steel deliveries in the December quarter stood at 6.11 million tonnes. As of 31 December, Tata Steel’s net debt stood at Rs76,680 crore.In India, Tata Steel said its deliveries rose 27% year-on-year, at a time when the domestic markets contracted by 2%. Its automotive sales grew by 20% year-on-year, sales in the industrial products, projects and exports vertical rose 47% while those in branded products grew 13%, Tata Steel said in a statement.ALSO READ | Tata Steel to seek board nod to raise Kalinganagar plant capacity to 8 million tonnes“While the broader market was affected by lower rural sales and adverse consumer sentiments, we were able to increase overall volumes by 14% sequentially and register strong growth across all our target customer segments. Further, our focus on cost improvement initiatives and our integrated operations helped us to contain the impact of rising raw material prices,” said T.V. Narendran, managing director, Tata Steel India and South East Asia.The third-quarter performance was primarily driven by healthy domestic price realizations, which increased by about Rs3,500 per tonne on a quarter-on-quarter basis, ICICIdirect.com Research said in a note to clients.“Tata Steel’s sales volume from the Indian operations came in at 3 million tonnes (mt), higher than our estimate of 2.7 mt, while the sales volume from the European operations came in at 2.4 mt, higher than our estimate of 2.3 mt,” said the note.In December, subsidiary Tata Steel UK reached an agreement with trade unions to replace its defined benefit pension scheme British Steel Pension Scheme (BSPS) with a defined contribution plan.ALSO READ | Tata Steel aims 20% revenue from service, solutions business“The strategic initiatives in the UK on the pensions continue to be an important priority for the company and we welcome the Union’s recommendation to its members to support the ballot process that is currently on to close the BSPS to future accruals,” said Koushik Chatterjee, group executive director (finance and corporate).In a separate BSE filing on Tuesday, Tata Steel said it had elected N. Chandrasekaran as chairman of its board and appointed Peter Blauwhoff as an additional independent director effective immediately. Chandrasekaran, who was appointed as a member of the steel maker’s board on 13 January, is chief executive and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and is the chairman designate of Tata Sons Ltd, the group holding company, where he will replace the ousted Cyrus Mistry.",2017-02-08,"Tata Steel’s net profit was Rs230 crore in the December quarter from a loss of Rs2,750 crore in the corresponding period of last year",company,02:03,Tata Steel registers first profit in 5 quarters +-0.35,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",competitor,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +-0.13,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",competitor,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +-0.25,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",competitor,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +-0.6,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",competitor,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +-0.52,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,competitor,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0.56,"New York: American International Group Inc. chief executive officer (CEO) Peter Hancock is stepping down after posting four losses in six quarters, results that hurt investors including activists Carl Icahn and John Paulson.Hancock, 58, will remain CEO until a successor is named, the New York-based insurer said on Thursday in a statement. The company’s board said it will conduct a comprehensive search for a new leader, after meeting on Wednesday as part of an annual review into the firm’s performance.“Without wholehearted shareholder support for my continued leadership, a protracted period of uncertainty could undermine the progress we have made and damage the interests of our policyholders, employees, regulators, debtholders and shareholders,” Hancock said in the statement.ALSO READ: GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s pay falls 35% to $21.3 million amid weak oil marketAIG shares rose 1.7% to $64.50 at 8:41 am in early trading in New York. The stock declined 2.9% this year through Wednesday, while the S&P 500 Index rallied 5.6%. Icahn applauded the board’s decision in a Twitter post on Thursday.‘Significant positive’The move is a “significant positive,” Meyer Shields, an analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said in a note to clients. “Of course, there aren’t too many candidates with the skills needed to turn around this troubled global company, but several successful turn-arounds” have occurred in the industry.Hancock’s successor will be the seventh CEO of AIG since 2005. The company’s complexity bedeviled one leader after another as they struggled to manage a global insurer that was built through decades of acquisitions by former leader Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, and then shrunk through dozens of asset sales after a near collapse during the financial crisis. Doug Steenland, the insurer’s chairman, thanked Hancock for his work in helping repay a bailout that swelled to $182.3 billion.Hancock “tackled the company’s most complex issues, including the repayment of AIG’s obligations to the US Treasury in full and with a profit, and is leaving AIG as a strong, focused and profitable insurance company,” Steenland said in the statement.ALSO READ: Viacom said in talks with former Fox executive to lead ParamountIcahn announced his stake in AIG in October 2015, faulting Hancock for failing to meet return targets and pushing the insurer to split into smaller companies, saying it was too big to manage. He and Paulson won board representation in February of 2016. Paulson’s hedge fund has since been selling some of its stock.Management turnoverIcahn lauded Hancock when the CEO reached a deal in August to sell a mortgage guarantor to Arch Capital Group Ltd for $3.4 billion. Hancock has been exiting assets around the world to shrink the insurer, striking reinsurance deals to limit volatility and reducing headcount, partially to reduce costs. The CEO reshaped AIG management, replacing executives including longtime chief financial officer David Herzog and Seraina Maag, who oversaw regional operations.Still, ratings firm A.M. Best has been reviewing AIG’s financial strength score after the latest losses prompted Hancock to pay about $10 billion to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. to assume risks on insurance contracts that were initiated by his company. The CEO has said that a downgrade could jeopardize relationships with some customers.“This was the board reacting to the poor news from the fourth-quarter results,” Paul Newsome, an analyst at Sandler O’Neill & Partners, said by phone. “The broader question is how is the management team totally going to change?” he said. “I suspect that the strategy will change, we just don’t know how yet.”AIG has endured more than a decade of management turmoil. Greenberg stepped down as CEO in 2005 amid regulatory probes and was replaced by Martin Sullivan, who was ousted in 2008 after he underestimated the risk of a housing market collapse. Robert Willumstad held the post for just months until the insurer’s bailout, ceding the job to Robert Liddy who lasted less than a year in what he called “the most stimulating job in America.”The late Robert Benmosche ran AIG for more than five years, starting in 2009. He brought on Hancock, a former J.P. Morgan & Co. executive, in 2010 and assigned him the next year to run property-casualty insurance, the company’s biggest business. They repaid the government rescue in 2012. Bloomberg",2017-03-09,Peter Hancock’s successor will be the seventh CEO of AIG since 2005 as the company’s complexity bedeviled one leader after another as they struggled to manage the global insurer ,competitor,22:10,AIG CEO Peter Hancock to quit as swelling losses hurt investors +0.51,"
Geneva: Carlos Ghosn, 62, is the global auto industry’s most charismatic and, some would say, best performing chief executive officer (CEO). He is also the chairman and CEO of French auto maker Renault SA, chairman of Japan’s Nissan Motor Co. Ltd, and chairman of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. He has turned around the fortunes of the first, rescued the second from near oblivion, and now wants to do the same with the third.
ALSO READ | India is a big market for any carmaker: Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn
On 23 February, Nissan announced Ghosn would step down as CEO, and focus on managing the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi alliance. On the sidelines of the Geneva Motor Show, Ghosn spoke to Autocar India on the alliance, his plans for Mitsubishi in India, and how he took inspiration from Tata Motors Ltd’s Nano. Edited excerpts:
You have kind of relinquished your position as CEO in Nissan and are going to be focusing on the alliance specific to Mitsubishi. In India, Mitsubishi’s problem was no scale, no investment and no appropriate product. Suddenly these problems matter no more because of the alliance. Will it be logical to assume that with the alliance there’s a big market out there for Mitsubishi to tap? Without any doubt because, in India, the most important step and our key for success—not sufficient but necessary—is the product. If you don’t have the product, you better not try your chance in India. It takes a lot of time to find a product. I think, with the A-platform (the second of the so-called common module family, or CMF, jointly developed by Renault and Nissan, a sort of modular manufacturing system for cars), particularly with the Kwid and all the products that are going to follow that, we think we have found our entry level (car) in the Indian market. But this platform is an alliance platform. Today, you are having a Renault product, tomorrow you are going to have a Nissan product. This platform will be open to Mitsubishi.
So Mitsubishi could use it and you could go all the way up and bring the Lancer back for example? Yes, but Mitsubishi has so many opportunities to grow that the management of Mitsubishi is going to have to prioritize what they are going to do first, second and third. So I cannot tell you in what time frame this will happen, but without any doubt, this is a very big market for (the) future for any carmaker and for Mitsubishi in particular.
So what you are confirming is that it’s not a question of if but a question of when Mitsubishi will come to India with all guns blazing? We are not limited to the short term; it is going to obviously mean mid- or long-term. Everybody expects India to be in the top 3-4 markets in the future. So you can expect that what happened in China, where all the carmakers are present, is also going to happen in India, with (the) exception that the Indian market is very tough for the foreign carmaker because of the specificity of the product and market.
Do you think you have an edge with Kwid? It is doing well and has already got a lot of things like design and the touch-screen and a lot of things.Yes, we do; and we are improving and we are listening to what the customers are saying in India. Not only to improve our offer for the Kwid in India but also to improve our offer for the Kwid outside India because you know a version of the Kwid is going to be launched in Brazil as a second step of the A platform. So, for the Indian market, this is very important because it is very competitive, and if you are going to make it in India, you are going to make it in many emerging markets, and that’s why for us, testing and being successful in India and having a very strong acceptance of the product, a very competitive product in India, is a guarantee that these are going to do well in other markets.
Are you making money in India? Is this the tipping point?We are starting to make money now after selling 100,000 Kwids. We struggled at the beginning because it was the new plant and a new car, so when you have so much innovation accommodated, you struggle with profitability. When you are going to a new emerging market with a new product, you have to be patient for your returns.
In future, is the CMF-B (for cars slightly larger than those on the CMF-A platform) also expected?Obviously, the volume you expect from a car based on that platform is not going to be very big, so it can be an additional product but you can’t have a strategy on this platform.
So is there a lesson learnt by Nissan on the performance of its V platform (cars such as the Sunny and Micra that did not do well in India)? That you fundamentally cannot bring a European platform into India because the cost is too high and the customers may not pay for it? You can bring copy and paste platform and product but that has to be a niche product. Don’t expect big volume coming out of it. If you want big volume in India and contribute to the core market, you will have to really tailor it, even the platform.
On Renault’s strategy, you are selling around 10,000 vehicles every month and are the No.1 European carmaker in India. You’ve even rattled Suzuki. So, that is saying something. What is the aim? Were you expecting this level of success?I think this is all due to the attractiveness of the product. I think we have some improvement that we can make in terms of competitiveness of our plant because the plants are filled, then we have much better industrial performance, but we are not there. We will have a lot of improvement that we can make into this plant. Yes, after we have seen that the CMF-A and the CMF-A+ platforms are really adequately addressing the needs of the Indian market, we should be much more ambitions, in terms of contribution.
You previously mentioned Tata Motors’ Nano is really an inspiration for the Kwid. What are your thoughts on that and Ratan Tata’s vision for the Nano. When Ratan came with the Nano, I congratulated him and he said I was the only one who congratulated him because a lot of people said it’s a bad idea. No, it’s a good idea. We came with the Kwid at the end of the day and the Kwid was inspired by the Nano.",2017-03-09,"Renault-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn on his plans for the Mitsubishi acquisition, that brand’s future in India and how he took inspiration from Tata Nano",company,04:32,"Renault making money in India now after selling 100,000 Kwids: Carlos Ghosn" +-0.59,"The Indian market looks expensive at current levels, according to Sanjeev Prasad , senior executive director and co-head of Kotak Institutional Equities. In a telephone interview, Prasad said the best of India’s macroeconomic scenario was behind us, but earnings could see a significant improvement going ahead, due to a very low base for sectors like banking and commodities. Edited excerpts: How do you view the Indian market at this point of time, with benchmark indices at two-year highs? Do you think there is froth building up, or is there value in the market?It is not a cheap market. If we get 5-6% returns from here for the rest of 2017 for the frontline indices, we should be happy. The mid-cap and small-cap space, however, is very expensive. We may find one or two names here and there, but largely, they are pricey.Most parts of the market are quite fully valued. In some cases such as consumer staple and discretionary sectors, they are even discounting fiscal year 2019 earnings. There is value only in parts of the market.There is value in a few sectors such as corporate banks and IT service companies, assuming potential positive developments in those sectors. For example, the corporate-focused banking sector could see a re-rating if there is some resolution on the NPL (non-performing loans) problem. Similarly, IT stocks are inexpensive given the market’s concerns regarding immigration and taxation issues in the US. If these issues play out with limited impact for the IT companies, the sector could see a re-rating. What is your take on the pharmaceutical sector at this point of time?There is some value selectively in stocks such as Cipla Ltd, Aurobindo Pharma Ltd... Aurobindo is cheap at 13 times FY19 P/E (price-to-earnings ratio). Cipla is also at 16.5 times FY19 earnings. Even Lupin is not looking too bad at 17.5 times FY19 earnings. The issue with this sector at large is that there is a fair amount of uncertainty on the pricing environment in the US. The uncertain pricing environment stems not so much from regulatory-led pricing challenges as market-led pricing challenges.In many of the generic products or segments where these companies operate, they have started to see a lot more competition. Clearly, profitability which had been very high on these molecules has and will start coming down. At the same time, because of the US FDA-related issues, these companies have not been able to introduce new molecules in their ANDA (abbreviated new drug application) pipelines in the US market. The current portfolio has started to see price erosion, and introduction of new products has got delayed at the same time. When do we see a significant recovery in corporate earnings?The funny thing about India’s earnings is that when we look at the top 50-100 large cap names, a disproportionately high share comes from global sectors such as IT and pharma, global commodity sectors and regulated sectors such as power utilities. So, irrespective of level of activity in the domestic economy, the earnings numbers can move in a different fashion. That has exactly what has happened over the last two-three years. Since early 2015, we have seen a very big improvement in India’s macroeconomic parameters—Inflation came down significantly and current account deficit has also declined sharply. However, earnings growth between FY14 and FY16 has been flat, if you look at Nifty-50 companies. One of the reasons for this was the collapse of global commodity prices – oil and metals, which hurt the earnings of upstream oil companies and metal producers. Also, we saw a slowdown in earnings for IT companies, and we also had company-specific USFDA issues affecting the profits of the pharma companies.Lastly, while banking should have done better with the economy improving, we had the problems of bad loans in the banking sector, which relates to the rapid expansion in wholesale credit in the last economic cycle. That is the dichotomy of India’s economy and earnings.Going forward, I do not see much of improvement in India’s macroeconomic parameters from where we are. Inflation has bottomed out, and will go higher from here to about 4-5%. If you look at interest rates, they have bottomed out too. Current account deficit may gradually widen, but may still be manageable. However, we could potentially see a big jump in earnings numbers and the reason for that is the very low base for sectors such as the banking and commodities. We expect credit costs for the banks to decline from 2HFY18, which will result in higher profits of the corporate banks. Also, the improvement in global commodity prices and implementation of anti-dumping duties on steel will lead to a sharp increase in the profits of the upstream oil & gas companies and the metals sector in FY18.What is your take on GDP numbers that came out last week? The issue is that the proxies that are used to make these estimates are largely from the formal sectors. It is not very clear how much of the impact on the informal sectors is captured in this data. So, it is possible that once more data points come out, we will a have more informed view on the third-quarter GDP data and we may even see some downward revision to the current numbers. However, it appears that the impact of demonetisation is not as high as was originally feared by the market.In recent times, we have seen the Tata–Mistry spat and some issues also spiking up at Infosys Ltd between founders and the management. What impact do you think such instances can have on the reputation of Indian companies?I would not want to comment on specific companies, but I think as a general fact, there may be challenges when there is a generational change in a way. Most of the Indian companies have founder-promoters or very long-serving professional managers who play a huge role in building the company and more importantly, the culture of the firm. The firm gets largely identified with the founder-promoter or with the professional manager, and these individuals typically have a very dominant influence on their companies. Some of the companies have put in a proper succession plan while some others have been somewhat lagging on this aspect. I would think a proper succession plan under which the successor is identified early enough and works with the incumbent for a longish period will address the issue of any discontinuity and discord. Finally, the boards of companies have to play a far bigger role in ensuring a smooth transition of power.How viable is it to run the telecom business in India?I think the telecom business model has changed dramatically in that companies will have to offer much higher data capacity to the customers, which can meet all the telecom requirements of the customer. Companies will have to work out the ARPUs (average revenue per user) that can financially support a much higher capacity usage by customers. The traditional model of pricing every service individually to the customer is dead. What Reliance Jio is trying to do is to up the game in terms of offering a lot of capacity to customers at a competitive ARPU, which makes sense to it based on its business plan and strategy. There is a paradigm shift that is happening in the telecom sector in that it will entail much higher investment by the companies in data capacity.",2017-03-08,"Irrespective of the level of activity in the domestic economy, the earnings numbers can move in a different fashion, says Kotak Institutional Equities’s Sanjeev Prasad",competitor,07:57,"Indian market expensive currently, value in corporate banks, IT: Sanjeev Prasad" +-0.75,"Mumbai: State-run Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) has posted a 47% jump in net profit for the third quarter of this fiscal on higher market sales and crude throughput. Net profit came in at Rs2,271.9 crore against Rs1,545.5 crore registered in the third quarter of last fiscal. A Bloomberg poll of 19 analysts had pegged the net profit at Rs2,212.7 crore. BPCL recorded sales of Rs64,095.65 crore, an increase of 20%, against Rs53,237 crore reported in the third quarter of last fiscal. A Bloomberg poll of 16 analysts estimated the sales figures to come in at Rs54,110.2 crore. ALSO READ: Oil companies’ merger can be challenging yet beneficial: FitchDuring the quarter, crude throughput in its refineries was higher at 6.78 MT against 5.87 MMT in the corresponding quarter previous fiscal. The company reported increase in market sales mainly in segments of liquefied petroleum gas (12.42%), petrol (8.9%), re-gasified liquefied natural gas (52.43%) and aviation fuel (22.76%).The average gross refining margin (GRM) during the quarter stood at $5.90 per barrel against $7.67 per barrel for the October-December 2015. Gross refining margin is what a refining company makes from turning every barrel of crude oil into fuel.ALSO READ: BPCL’s market value crosses Rs1 trillion-markBPCL’s stock ended at Rs725.25 on BSE, up 0.85% from the previous close while India’s benchmark Sensex rose 0.14% to 28,329.70 points.BPCL on 25 January, saw its market value cross Rs1 trillion-mark. It is the second oil marketing company after Indian Oil Corp. Ltd and 26th overall to cross the milestone.",2017-02-09,"BPCL recorded sales of Rs64,095.65 crore in the third quarter, an increase of 20%, against Rs53,237 crore last fiscal",competitor,21:44,"BPCL Q3 profit jumps 47% to Rs2,271.9 crore" +-0.25,"
Infosys Ltd’s promoters continue to be unhappy with some decisions made by the board of India’s second largest software services company. A majority of the promoters did not vote for a resolution seeking a salary increase for chief operating officer U.B. Pravin Rao. According to filings by Infosys with stock exchanges, only 24% of promoter votes were cast in favour of the resolution seeking a 35% rise in Rao’s compensation to Rs12.5 crore. The remaining abstained. This mirrored the promoters voting 12 months ago on a resolution seeking a two-year extension and a revised compensation of $11 million for chief executive Vishal Sikka. The latest show of promoter disenchantment, according to people familiar with the development, suggests that the truce reached between the founders and the company’s board after an open confrontation in February may only have resulted in an uneasy and temporary calm.The resolution was one of three Infosys sought to pass through electronic voting or postal ballots by 31 March. The remaining two resolutions—an amendment to its articles of association allowing Infosys to consider a share buyback, and the appointment of D.N. Prahlad as independent director—received overwhelming approval from promoters and other shareholders. Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy clarified that the decision of some of the founders not to vote in favour of the proposed salary increase for Rao was because of their belief in compassionate capitalism. “This abstention has nothing to do with Pravin,” Murthy said in an emailed response to a questionnaire from Mint. “I have lots of affection for Pravin. Let me state you the facts. I believe in striving towards reducing differences in compensation and equity in a corporation. I have always felt that every senior management person of an Indian corporation has to show self-restraint in his or her compensation and perquisites. This is necessary if we have to make compassionate capitalism acceptable to a majority of Indians who are poor. Without compassionate capitalism, this country cannot create jobs and solve the problem of poverty. Further, giving nearly 60% to 70% increase in compensation for a top level person (even including performance-based variable pay) when the compensation for most of the employees in the company was increased by just 6% to 8% is, in my opinion, not proper.”“Finally, given the current poor governance standards at Infosys, let us also remember that these targets for variable pay may not be adhered to if the board wants to favour a top management person,” said Murthy. Also read | Questioning the Infosys shareholdersStill, the proposal to increase Rao’s salary found majority shareholder support as 75% of institutional investors voted in favour of the proposal, even though 67% of non-institutional investors voted against it. Institutional investors, which include foreign institutional investors and insurance companies, hold 59% of shares in Infosys while non-institutional investors, which include retail shareholders, hold 28.1%. Five of the seven original co-founders, Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, S.D. Shibulal, Kris Gopalakrishnan and K. Dinesh are categorized as promoters of the company, and the founders together hold a 12.75% stake. None of the founders are on the board of Infosys. “No previous resolution in the history of the company has received such a low approval,” said Murthy. In April last year, Nilekani and Sudha Murty, Narayana Murthy’s wife and chairperson of the Infosys Foundation in India, approved Sikka’s reappointment until 2021 and a higher salary, as other founders abstained. A similar voting result this time suggests that both Nilekani and Sudha Murty voted in favour of Rao, too. Gopalakrishnan declined to offer a comment while emails sent to Nilekani and other founders went unanswered. An Infosys spokesperson declined to comment on how the five promoters voted. “More than 50% of the public and small institutions voting against the increase in COO’s salary is unprecedented and as far as I recall never happened in the history of Infosys,” said Venkatraman Balakrishnan, a former chief financial officer at Infosys. “It is clearly a vote of no-confidence on the practices followed by the current board to excessively compensate senior management without any direct linkage to shareholder wealth creation. The board should listen to the founders, increase transparency, improve corporate governance, restructure the board and lastly, announce a large buyback to protect shareholders’ interests.”",2017-04-03,Most of Infosys’s promoters did not vote for resolution seeking a salary hike for chief operating officer Pravin Rao,competitor,16:53,"Infosys promoters, board at odds over Pravin Rao’s salary hike" +0.49,"Meet the 10 winners of the Mint-MIT Technology Review competition for innovators below the age of 35 from across India in different cutting-edge domains. The winners were selected after a rigorous judging process. The innovators were felicitated on 9 and 10 March at EmTech 2017, the second edition of the emerging technology conference organized in Delhi by Mint and MIT Technology Review.Akash DongreOrganization: Indus OSDesignation: Co-founder and chief product officerInnovation: A multilingual operating system available on over 50 mobile devicesEducation: BTech in mechanical engineering from IIT BombayAkash Dongre—along with co-founders Rakesh Deshmukh and Sudhir Bangarambandi—has always believed that “Indian problems require indigenous solutions”. No wonder their eponymous innovation, touted as the “world’s first regional operating system”, is blazing a trail in the Indian smartphone ecosystem. “In our short journey, beginning in 2015, we have already partnered with five domestic smartphone brands (Micromax, Intex, Karbonn, Celkon and Swipe) and built a user base of more than six million, which is consistently growing at a rate of 500,000 OS activations per month,” says Dongre. Indus OS, which is available in 12 Indian regional languages, boasts innovative features such as Indus Swipe (translation from English to a regional language and vice versa with just a swipe), Indus Keyboard (with built-in word and matra (a unit of metrical quantity in Indian languages) prediction) and Indus Reader (which can convert an English text into audio in eight regional languages). Besides, there’s a marketplace called App Bazaar, where over 50,000 apps are available in local languages.Dongre recalls one of his foreign trips when his lack of understanding of the local language made him feel handicapped: “Everything around me was in a language I did not understand.” Dongre also realized how digitally less connected the Indian heartland is and how alien English is to a lot of Indians. “After spending some more time to understand the Indian digital landscape and brainstorming with my team, we decided to start building an ecosystem for Indian consumers.” The team built Indus OS on three core pillars: simplicity, innovation and localization. “At the heart of our story lies the desire to equip anyone who is using a smartphone with a holistic ecosystem of their choice,” says Dongre.Indus OS, which introduced Indus OS 2.0 in July 2016, will introduce Indus OS 3.0 in 2017. “In 2017, we intend to continue to work with the Government of India and app developers alike to build a smartphone ecosystem of choice for the emerging markets population,” Dongre says.Ankit JhanwarOrganization: Pluss Advanced TechnologiesDesignation: Vice-president, corporate planning and strategyInnovation: A packaging box for vaccine transportation that uses phase change materials and a unique design for precise temperature controlEducation: BTech in polymer science and technology from IIT Roorkee; certificate in entrepreneurship, management and global leadership from London School of Economics and Political ScienceAn optimist by nature, Ankit Jhanwar was not put off by the disinterest displayed by some packaging companies in developing a temperature-controlled shipping solution using phase change materials (PCMs)—a domain in which his company, Pluss Advanced Technologies, had been working since 2005. Such a temperature-controlled solution could prove very useful in cutting down the 30% wastage of vaccines in the existing cold chain system in the country. So what Pluss did was develop a complete shipping solution using its own proprietary PCMs, which could not only provide better temperature control but also address the challenging Indian ambient conditions of 40°C. “A range of products were planned to address the gaps at each leg of the supply chain right from manufacturer to the depot to the distributor to chemist and finally to the patient,” says Jhanwar.The shipping solution that he developed was branded Celsure—which uses the PCM technology to provide precise temperature control. “It is the only shipping solution which provides temperature control for more than 72 hours even at ambient temperature of 40°C,” he says. Thanks to this innovation, all the current pharmaceutical shipments which happen by air can now be done by road using Celsure—something that can lead to huge savings in freight cost, thereby making it possible to lower the prices of medicines.According to Jhanwar, Celsure also addresses the unique challenge of shipping from a hot environment (say, India) to a cold environment (like Europe) or vice versa. What’s more, the solution has brought in simplicity in the packaging, removing human errors. Jhanwar says that it’s available in sizes as small as one vial to as large as 10,000 vials and can provide temperature control for as low as 2 hours to as high as 120 hours. Pluss has a goal of reducing medicine wastage due to ineffective cold chain to as low as 0.1% in the next three-five years. The firm is constantly working on scaling up and commercializing the innovation. Celsure was launched in April 2016 with only one variant; eight more variants have been added within a year. Logistics firms such as Blue Dart and DHL have adopted Celsure as one of their preferred modes of shipping temperature-sensitive pharma products. Successful trials have also been run with various pharmaceutical firms. Besides commercializing it in India, Pluss plans to go global with the launch in Singapore and the Middle East in 2018 and in the US and Europe in 2019. “We are also keen on tie-ups with the government, World Health Organization (WHO), Unicef and other related organizations for last-mile delivery of vaccines. Customized products are being planned to address the last mile challenges,” says Jhanwar. Anusha RammohanOrganization: General Electric Global ResearchDesignation: Lead engineerInnovation: Flow analytics for multi-phase flow metering in oil and gas industryEducation: BE (Hons.) in electronics and instrumentation from BITS-Pilani; MS in electrical engineering from Arizona State University, USAnusha Rammohan believes that the intersection of the digital and physical worlds is the ideal space for disruptive innovations. And that’s exactly what attracted her to the esoteric domain of flow analytics for multi-phase flow metering in the oil and gas industry.As the lead engineer at GE Global Research’s John F Welch Technology Center in Bengaluru, Anusha got the opportunity to combine physical sensors with advanced analytics to develop a solution capable of radically transforming the processes of the entire industry. “As the global energy demand continues to increase, there is an urgent need in the oil and gas industry to be more efficient with resources, people and investments to reduce the cost of producing oil while doing so safely with reduced environmental impact,” says Rammohan. Her innovation addresses this need by combining sensor and device data in the field using intelligent analytics to provide accurate and reliable information in real time about oil production. For instance, she says, timely information about well and field level production of oil, water and gas allows operators to make critical decisions related to optimizing pumps, allocating resources and energy to each well, shutting down or stimulating wells, and preventing leakage and blockage of pipes, etc. By transforming data into actionable insights, her analytics solution enables increased oil recovery, reduced human intervention and improved resource planning.Not merely restricting her innovation to a single industry, the next stop for Anusha is to extend it to applications in industries such as aviation, power and transportation. The applications include performance optimization of assets, health monitoring of safety-critical components and their increased reliability and reduced downtime—all of which can significantly improve productivity and bring down costs. Rammohan has been granted patents related to her work in image mapping, sensor positioning and flow measurement; she has filed for more. She dreams of a world powered by analytics and technologies such as artificial intelligence—one in which “autonomous decision making” would greatly reduce the ambiguity, uncertainty and human subjectivity that are currently proving to be bottlenecks in all industries.
Kshitij Marwah
Organization: Tesseract Imaging
Designation: Founder
Innovation: Virtual reality (VR) camera to create and share high resolution VR/holographic content; holographic augmented reality headset
Education: MTech in computer science from IIT Delhi; MS in media arts and sciences from MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts, US
Kshitij Marwah says virtual reality and augmented reality (VR and AR) are the new mediums for human beings to tell their stories in a much more “experiential and immersive manner”. It marks a natural progression, as he says: “From the spoken word to the written word, from photos to videos—we have always found new ways and tools to tell our stories.”The power of his belief in VR and AR, backed by the rigour of his technical education (never mind that he dropped out of his PhD at MIT Media Lab), led Marwah to his innovations: Quark VR camera and the Holoboard AR viewing headset. Says he, “The Quark VR camera will democratize mixed reality content creation and the Holoboard AR headset will allow for its viewing in a truly immersive and unique manner.”Marwah has a simple way of explaining his innovation. “Imagine the next time when you are watching a cricket match in your house. Rather than sitting in front of your television, with our Quark camera streaming the match live in VR and the Holoboard headset, you can feel as if you are sitting right in the stadium but in the comfort of your couch,” he says.His current company, Tesseract Imaging (in Norse mythology, Tesseract is said to be a cosmic cube of immense power; in geometry, the tesseract is a four-dimensional hypercube), was spun out of MIT Media Lab’s India arm, a unit that Marwah had co-founded to promote and spread inter-disciplinary learning among students in India. He is credited with growing the Lab initiative from a platform of 50 students to 500 students selected from hundreds of thousands of applicants across the country. He headed the India arm of the Lab from 2012 to 2015.Marwah believes that the innovations coming out of Tesseract will revolutionize “the way we capture, consume and see content and media”. On the anvil are plans to begin shipping the Quark VR cameras in mid-2017 and Holoboard AR headsets by the end of the year. “With our technology, we believe we can make sure that our society can capture, share and consume their daily experiences and share stories across generations with an experience that is immersive and powerful.”Nishant KumarOrganization: Embryyo Technologies Pvt. LtdDesignation: Founder and CEOInnovation: Sensor and mobile app-based drug adherence monitoring system for tuberculosisEducation: Dual degree in mechanical engineering from IIT Bombay Nishant Kumar, the founder and chief exec of Embryyo Technologies, a medical technology and research start-up incubated at Pune’s Venture Centre, was troubled by the way tuberculosis (TB) treatment was left midway by a large number of patients in India. There wasn’t an effective way of ensuring patients stayed the course. “This was because the TB medication involves a drug regimen of about 6 months where the patient is required to take a total of about 400 pills,” he says. There are several reasons why treatment is left incomplete, including side effects, forgetfulness, poor counselling and duration of the regimen. The enormity of the problem—as many as 2.5 million people in India were affected by TB in 2015 as per a World Health Organization report—inspired Kumar to do something about it. He visited the local district level hospitals and direct observation treatment (DOT) centres to interact with the clinicians, healthcare workers and patients, which helped him in “collecting more insights” and further strengthened his resolve to address this problem. He says that it demanded an easy-to-use, affordable solution which could fit seamlessly in an already established public health infrastructure in the country. The result was BoxRx, an electronic medical event monitoring system that has currently been piloted for drug adherence monitoring in TB patients. According to Kumar, most people with TB are cured by a strictly followed, six-month drug regimen but any interruption to it can cause drug resistance.That is where the innovation behind BoxRx comes in handy. The solution comprises a specially designed electronic pill box which carries the TB blister pack as prescribed by the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP). A tearable paper with conductive ink tracks printed corresponding to each pill is placed beneath the blister pack before closing the box. Whenever a pill is removed from the blister pack, the conductive track gets broken and this activity is logged and transmitted from an in-built Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) circuit to a central server in the form of an SMS. The server processes the information in the SMS and updates the mobile application of the doctor/health worker assigned to that particular patient.To scale up the innovation, Kumar plans to work very closely with the national and international organizations that are leading the TB control programmes. Also on the cards is large-scale manufacturing and on-field implementation of the innovation so that it reaches the maximum number of patients. Kumar envisions a society that is centred on harmonious and sustainable co-existence. “I believe that good health is the primary signature of prosperity for an individual, a family, a nation and the world at large,” he says.Pankaj AgarwalDesignation: Creative leaderOrganization: Samsung ElectronicsInnovation: A button-type device that connects to toys and a mobile app to enable intuitive interactions for kidsEducation: BTech in electrical engineering from IIT Kanpur; MS from Seoul National University; MBA from Harvard Business SchoolWhenever Pankaj Agarwal saw his son Anant play alone with his toy blocks, a question often nagged him: “Why does he have to play alone? Is there something I can do to make play-at-home social and interactive for him?” He was also inspired to change the status quo when he looked at the many expensive toys gathering dust around his house. Agarwal thought of the millions of middle-class homes that just couldn’t afford all those high-tech toys with pricey tags.So he added a simple and interactive, yet relatively inexpensive, tag of his own: TagPlus. The innovation comprises a button-type smart tag, a smart app (for phones/tablets), and, above all, content created and shared in the cloud by kids as young as 7-year-olds. A key benefit of TagPlus is that it can increase the repeat play value of toys. An important feature of the innovation, says Agarwal, is that there is no set-up required. “No device pairing, no logins, no passwords!” When kids buy toys that have this smart tag, they can start playing on the TagPlus platform immediately after unwrapping it. Kids can “click”, “long press”, “shake” and “bump” their smart tags and the smart app will respond accordingly. A “click” on the smart tag activates the TagPlus app on a nearby digital device to show toy-related content. A “long press” action will bring on a social media interface where kids can easily upload their creations and also see the creations of other kids playing with the same toy. “Think of this as a ‘mini Facebook for kids’,” says Agarwal. A “shake” action on the smart tag will help kids find and connect with children playing with an identical toy who could be anywhere in the world. Also, when kids “bump” two tags from two different toys, the connected app shows multiple ways in which the toys can be combined to create something entirely new. Agarwal and his other TagPlus team members at Samsung believe that this patent-pending technology platform has the potential to make kids’ playing experiences more serendipitous, socially engaging and creative “by seamlessly bridging their virtual and physical play environments”. Agarwal and his colleagues did multiple pilot tests of TagPlus in South Korea and they are also in discussion with many toy makers to adopt the platform. “The response has been very positive,” he says. Agarwal plans to continue his innovative work in the creative domain and believes that “members of our society should be educated and imbibe a culture of creativity”.Prasant MisraDesignation: ScientistOrganization: TCS Research and Innovation, Tata Consultancy Services LtdInnovation: Auditory sensing for micro unmanned aerial vehicles Education: PhD in computer science and engineering from the University of New South Wales, Sydney; postdoctoral fellowship from the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, StockholmPrasant Misra has been focusing his research efforts around building “spatially intelligent systems”. His current work pertains to the auditory sensing technology for micro unmanned aerial vehicles (MUAVs, more popularly known as drones). It’s like “growing the ears” for intelligent things, as he puts it. “It is part of a grand vision to equip this category of flying robots with a sensory gamut that is on par with humans,” he says. This will not only enable such “things” to derive better spatial intelligence, but also drive cognition to a better level of autonomy by combining auditory sensing with vision.There are, however, fundamental challenges in developing such robust auditory capabilities, especially in capturing the spatial dimensions of a sound scene and analysing its acoustic signature. “The signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio is extremely low due to the presence of (near-field) wideband acoustic interference (i.e., self-noise) from the MUAVs’ spinning rotors and motors, which is both strong and non-stationary,” he explains. Theoretically speaking, building an acoustic array with a large number of acoustic elements can overcome such high levels of noise, but the space, payload and energy limitations of an MUAV come in the way of meeting such exhaustive system requirements and computational needs.Misra is now investigating both lightweight acoustic sensing system design, and low-power (but efficient) computation paradigms to overcome this challenge. The initial results, he says, are quite promising.The impact of the work Misra is doing is far-reaching. It will not only force us to rethink the current model of aerial sensing (which is primarily vision dominated), but will also open up newer applications and usage scenarios for the betterment of society. It is now quite common to talk of aerial drones, especially tiny ones with multiple rotors that can hover mid-air, in applications ranging from e-commerce deliveries and inspection of industrial machinery to wildlife monitoring and search-and-rescue operations. Nevertheless, their sensing technology is predominately vision-centric. “While the advantages are clearly obvious in visual inspection and monitoring applications, on the flip side, they become unusable in camera-obstructed or low-light conditions, or in scenarios that offer non-visual clues such as those based on sound. In fact, these conditions are a norm in high-stress environments (dense canopy or fog, structures on fire, underground mines, etc.),” he says.Misra is working towards taking the MUAV technology from its existing level to “cognitive autonomous systems”. He believes that as spatial intelligence and cognitive technology mature, the lines between machines and humans would blur, enabling both to live together in the same society as companions. In the future, cognitive aerial drones will take up roles such as aerial cars and taxis, pick up and escort agents, search and rescue bots, and ears and eyes for the disabled. In short: anything you want them to be.Sandeep Senan Designation: Founder and directorOrganization: Evobi Automations Pvt. Ltd (Bibox Labs)Innovation: A toolkit-based approach to learning so that kids can learn through experiments by making things like a robotic toy or a fire alarmEducation: BE in computer science from Visvesvaraya Technological University, Karnataka; MBA in international business from Edith Cowan University, AustraliaWhen it comes to innovation and creativity, Sandeep Senan is as excited as the young kids he wants to empower with the innovative tools at his disposal. His innovation, Bibox (short for Brain-in-a-box), is like an “electronic brain which can be instructed by a kid using a graphical software, which can run on a tablet or smartphone or PC or even with cards”, he says. Senan is of the view that the realm of innovation must be extended to children rather than remain mostly confined to the adult world. There’s a need for a huge change in the way children are taught and allowed to be creative, he feels.“The task of making adults creative is a humongous task, but if we think about kids, they are naturally curious and thus it’s easy to instill an innovative thinking process in them,” says Senan. So when he discovered that there was a lack of tools and curricula designed for instilling the habit of innovation in kids, he decided to do something about it.“The innovation Bibox was originated out of that need to give kids the tools to change the world and thus the confidence to keep innovating and make it a habit so that when they become adults, they can go out and make large-scale impact because the thinking is ingrained into their minds,” he says.Bibox doesn’t have a definite shape or size but is basically a set of tools—processors, switches, sensors, battery and software, among others—using which children in different age groups can try their hand at innovation. This “brain”, says Senan, can be connected to a variety of accessories, including toys, lights and TV sets, and children can come up with stuff like walking robotic dogs, automatic TV and even connected health products using the Internet of Things.“Because Bibox responds to kids’ logic in the physical world, they can see what the logic means and correct themselves when required—making the learning experience truly experiential,” he says. Besides providing them such toolkits, Senan’s organization also provides them some structured mentoring to enable them to use their creative freedom and confidence to innovate more and more in any field they choose to be in. “We are just getting the process started a little early,” he says. Through Bibox Labs, he has enrolled more than 25,000 students in over 100 schools in India.To take his innovative ways to a much larger base of students, Senan and his team are digitizing the process of mentoring the kids to be innovators. Once this is in place, he says, any student anywhere in the world would be able to go through the same process that Bibox Labs follows in its affiliate schools. They also plan to partner with private firms, non-governmental organizations and various government bodies to scale up the programme.Subham Banerjee Designation: Young scientistOrganization: Centre for Biodesign and Diagnostic, Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, department of biotechnologyInnovation: Transdermal patch against neurotoxin poisoningEducation: Master of pharmacy from West Bengal University of Technology; PhD in pharmacy from Birla Institute of Technology, MesraSoldiers fighting in hostile territories often have to shield themselves against harmful or poisonous gases and chemical substances. One often hears of deadly strikes such as the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system (1995), the nerve gas attack in Syria (2013) or the recent attack in Iraq by Islamic State militants in which they set fire to a sulphur mine, spreading sulphur dioxide plumes.Subham Banerjee’s innovation concerns protecting people against neurotoxic poisoning resulting from such attacks. “The exposure of humans to neurotoxins is a major risk factor in severe mortality in chemical or biological warfare situations, as neurotoxins are one of the most potent toxins,” he says. His innovation, a transdermal patch that can provide protection against neurotoxin poisoning, comprises an inert adhesive matrix system with active pharmaceutical ingredients. The patch can be applied to intact or even burnt or blistered skin. It works by releasing a combination drug (eserine and pralidoxime chloride) through the skin in what is called a “controlled or sustained release” mechanism.According to Banerjee, the new patch has “an excellent safety profile”, can be “self-administered”, and has positive environmental as well as economic impact. “Apart from conventional dosage forms, no novel sustained release prophylactic transdermal patches are currently available in the market,” he says. Which is why this innovation has huge socio-economic benefits and the potential to achieve product dominance in the market.In order to sustain this project and take it to the next level of successful commercialization, however, Banerjee says that some studies have to be carried out. For one, process parameters have to be optimized to scale up the capability of manufacturing these patches in bulk quantities. Also, a preclinical toxicity study in rodents needs to be done, followed by a full-fledged pilot for the bioavailability study in human subjects as per the guidelines of the Drug Controller General of India.Banerjee believes that this innovation has the potential to make an “extra value-addition” to the existing measures for biological warfare protection available with India’s Armed Forces.Vinay Kumar Designation: Co-founder, director and CEOOrganization: PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. LtdInnovation: A single device that can diagnose multiple parameters related to diabetes managementEducation: MTech in microelectronics and VLSI design and MSc in electronic science from Kurukshetra University; PhD from Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science BangaloreAt age 14, when Vinay Kumar was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, his doctor told him he would have to take insulin injections. The look of disappointment on his face prompted the physician to lie that it was only for 10 days that injections were needed. Later on, when Kumar realized that he was stuck with the needle for a lifetime, he became determined to put the hurt and discomfort behind and do something about it. Over the years, diabetes took a bigger and bigger toll on his body, with episodes of hypoglycemia (abnormally low level of sugar in the blood) and even fainting—but all this only strengthened his resolve.In addition to struggling with a debilitating condition like millions in the world do, Kumar constantly thought about how a diabetic can manage his condition better and, at the same time, persisted with his studies. “These two aspects of my life merged when I decided to pursue a PhD at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc Bangalore),” he says. Besides working on novel ways to diagnose diseases and acquiring multiple patents, he also co-founded (along with Navakanta Bhat and Gautam Sharma) PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. Ltd, a start-up incubated at IISc that is focused on medical device research and development.Kumar’s innovation is a hand-held point-of-care device which, as a single unit, can measure eight different parameters related to diabetes management and early detection of its complications. “With a tiny drop of finger-pricked blood samples, patients can test HbA1c (which gives 90 days blood glucose control profile), glycated albumin (which gives 15 days blood glucose control profile) and instant blood glucose as well,” he says. The device can detect very early damage in the kidney by measuring the microalbuminuria, creatinine and ACR (albumin to creatinine ratio) in the urine samples. Apart from these, he adds, it can measure the haemoglobin level for anaemia and chronic kidney disease. “The device can measure serum albumin, an important blood marker for kidney and liver. So the single device can take care of full diabetes glycaemic management and early detection of complications such as diabetic nephropathy,” explains Kumar.The road ahead for PathShodh is well-defined. “The device is ready and regress clinical validation for most of the tests has been completed on real patient samples in collaboration with major pathology labs and hospitals in Bangalore. We also have the manufacturing line setup at IISc to manufacture the disposable test strips for these different tests,” says Kumar. The commercial launch of the device can happen any time now. That would certainly move the needle in a positive direction for PathShodh’s mission of making healthcare diagnostics affordable and available to all.",2017-03-31,Meet the 10 winners of the Mint-MIT Technology Review competition for innovators below the age of 35 from across India in different cutting-edge domains,company,17:26,EmTech 2017: Innovators under 35 +0.17,"
New Delhi: More Indians living in the US want a job back home after Donald Trump became the president of the world’s largest economy. The number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has gone up more than 10-fold between December and March, according to an analysis by consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Pvt. Ltd, shared exclusively with Mint .There were approximately 600 US-based Indians seeking jobs in India in December 2016. By the end of March 2017, the number had gone up to approximately 7,000, Deloitte analysis said.ALSO READ: Donald Trump orders review of H-1B visa norms, in deterrent to Indian IT companiesThis data comes amid a crackdown by the Trump administration on job visas for skilled workers, including software engineers from India. US Citizenship and Immigration Services said employers seeking H-1B work visas—a non-immigrant visa allowing American firms to employ foreign workers—for 2018 declined for the first time in five years.The surge in the number of applicants has been triggered by Trump’s vows to protect jobs for locals. A Bloomberg report on Tuesday said Trump will take aim at information technology outsourcing companies when he orders a review of H-1B visa programmes to favour more skilled and highly paid applicants. The report also cited companies such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. and Mphasis Corp. as examples of outsourcing firms that would likely have fewer visas approved once the changes are adopted. The H-1B work visa programme channels thousands of foreign workers to the US technology industry.“While US companies will find some tech talent in the US, the numbers might be less than what are required to meet their needs. Add to that, the wages they need to pay to US employees will be much higher than what they pay to H-1B visa holders,” said C.K. Guruprasad, a consultant with executive search firm Spencer Stuart.On Tuesday, Australia abolished the 457 visa programme used by over 95,000 temporary foreign workers, the majority of them Indians, to tackle unemployment.Experts see global in-house centres (GICs) as a viable option for companies to not only retain Indian talent but also address the anticipated shortage in the required volume of workers in the US.According to Parag Saigaonkar, Principal at consulting firm Deloitte in India, while the initial thrust of GICs was on moving job roles from a high-cost to low-cost centre to get a competitive edge, companies are now looking at non-linear values that GICs can add to the business—new things that Indian GICs can produce—and supporting the parent organization.“With the seemingly shifting dynamics towards options between outsourcing and local hiring, companies with GICs in India could move Indian talent from the US to India and also hire locals into the GICs and thus sidestep the restrictions of outsourcing to third party companies,” Guruprasad said.According to K.S.Viswanathan, vice-president for industry initiatives at lobby group Nasscom, while the purpose of GICs so far has revolved around cost and skills arbitration advantages and talent consideration, it is now expected to change.“We are seeing a lot of companies looking at building newer competencies around newer technologies like machine learning, AI, automation, UI/UX, product management, DevOps etc,” said Anand Subramaniam, engagement manager and delivery head (GIC Accelerator Platform), Zinnov, a consulting firm.On an average, GICs add 50,000 to 70,000 people in India every year and due to the volume requirements, this number is expected to go up, according to Nasscom. According to the lobby group, there are over 1,000 GICs in India. Of these, around 67% of them are of US origin. Around 65% of the total workforce of 750,000 employed by these GICs are for US origin companies.",2017-04-19,The number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has surged 10-fold since December as Donald Trump moved to tighten US visa policy,both,11:07,"As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come back" +0.23,"New Delhi: Tata Housing on Tuesday announced plans to expand to the African property market and will invest Rs1,000 crore to develop two projects in Kenya and Tanzania. The real estate arm of the Tata group plans to raise $200 million through private equity to fund the overseas operations. It recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Housing Bank and a private real estate firm to develop more than 4.5 million square feet of mixed use townships in Kenya and Tanzania. The two mixed use development projects are expected to be launched by January 2018 in a price range of $75,000 – 1,00,000 per unit, catering to the mid-income segment. “The investment in both projects is expected to be more than Rs1,000 crores across both the phases over the next 3-4 years,” the company said in a statement. “Our early success in Sri Lanka and the Maldives gave us the impetus to further expand our international footprint. Starting with Kenya and Tanzania, we will cater to the mid-income segments and fulfil their demand for superior quality housing,” said Tata Housing MD & CEO Brotin Banerjee. With 60% of the urban population living in informal housing, there is consistent growth in demand for housing across both Kenya and Tanzania. Tata Housing has recently handed over the government housing project to the government of Maldives and launched two high-end projects at Odeon and Nadhee in the capital city, Male.",2017-04-18,Tata Housing plans to raise $200 million through private equity to fund the overseas operations in Kenya and Tanzania,company,21:04,"Tata Housing to invest Rs1,000 crore on projects in Africa" +-0.12,"
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) plans to allow market participants to substitute collateral under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) window to give them more flexibility and improve the liquidity of these instruments.This facility will be available from 17 April, the regulator said on its website. Under the repo window, banks have to place government bonds as collateral to borrow from the central bank. Separately, the regulator said that it will continue using methods such as open market operations, cash management bills, treasury bills and variable rate repo and reverse repo securities to drain excess liquidity from the system. It also laid out several other regulatory proposals for the banking and financial system. For one, the regulator plans to introduce a new and improved prompt corrective action (PCA) framework for banks with weak balance sheets. Typically, when a bank breaches the lower limit of its capital base during any quarter, along with a build-up of large amount of bad loans and fall in return on assets, RBI initiates this action to limit the bank’s lending activities and help it fix its affairs. Banks under PCA would be required to conform to mandatory and discretionary actions that the central bank would decide. RBI said the revised framework would be issued by mid-April 2017. Speaking on the asset quality problems in Indian banking after RBI’s monetary policy announcement, deputy governor S.S. Mundra said the regulator, and banks in general, are cognizant of the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all approach while attempting resolution of stressed loans. Mundra said that the regulator is considering new measures to deal with bad loans while also tweaking existing stress resolution tools if necessary.The Rs7 trillion bad loan problem in the Indian banking sector is led by public sector banks, which are struggling with recovery and resolution of stress on their books.RBI has also decided to increase the entry barrier for asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) by mandating a net owned funds base of Rs100 crore compared with Rs2 crore earlier. Detailed guidelines in this matter would be released later this month, the regulator has said. Separately, the regulator is also planning on allowing banks to invest in Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs). RBI has also decided to not activate the countercyclical capital buffer as of now, which would have forced banks to set aside a certain portion of their capital as a buffer for difficult times.The central bank plans to introduce steps to improve the national electronic funds transfer (NEFT) infrastructure, rationalize the merchant discount rate (MDR) and issue renewed guidelines on the issuance and operation of prepaid payments instruments (PPIs), it said.RBI said that it is initiating a pilot project on financial literacy at the block level to explore innovative and participatory approaches to financial literacy. A pilot project will be commissioned in nine states across 80 blocks by non-government organizations (NGOs) in collaboration with the sponsor banks. The sponsor banks will enter into contracts with the identified NGOs by 30 June. Thereafter, the NGOs will start operating the centre for financial literacy within three months of entering into contracts with banks.",2017-04-07,"RBI also said that it will continue using methods such as open market operations, cash management bills and treasury bills to drain excess liquidity from the system",competitor,01:32,RBI to allow banks to substitute collateral under LAF window +-0.64,"New York: India is home to world’s fourth highest number of billionaires with Reliance Industries chief Mukesh Ambani leading the club of more than 100 super-rich Indians, according to a new list released by Forbes magazine. The Forbes list of the ‘World’s Billionaires’ 2017 consists of 2,043 of the richest people in the world who have a combined net worth of $7.67 trillion, a record 18% increase over the past year. The list has been topped by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for the fourth year in a row. He has been the richest person in the world for 18 out of the past 23 years. Gates has a fortune of $86 billion, up from $75 billion last year, followed by Berkshire Hathaway chief Warren Buffet with a new worth of $75.6 billion. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos added $27.6 billion to his fortune; now worth $72.8 billion, moving into the top three in the world for the first time, up from number five a year ago. US President Donald Trump is ranked 544th on the list with his net worth of $3.5 billion. India is home to 101 billionaires, the first time it has more than 100 super rich individuals. The US continues to have more billionaires than any other nation, with a record 565, up from 540 a year ago. China is catching up with 319, Germany has the third most with 114 and India has the fourth highest number of billionaires. Also Read| Patanjali’s Acharya Balkrishna enters Forbes rich list; Flipkart’s Bansals outThere are nearly 20 people of Indian-origin who have made fortunes in various nations across the world, led by UK-based Hinduja brothers ranked 64th with $15.4 billion net worth, Indian-born tycoon Pallonji Mistry, who controls the 152-year-old Mumbai-headquartered engineering giant Shapoorji Pallonji Group at the 77th spot with $14.3 billion net worth and petrochemicals major Indorama co-founder Sri Prakash Lohia at the 288th spot with $ 5.4 billion net worth. Mistry’s younger son Cyrus is embroiled in a legal battle with the Tata Group after he was suddenly ousted as chairman of Tata Sons, a position he had held since 2012.Ambani, 59, leads the pack of Indian billionaires, coming in at the 33rd position with a net worth of $23.2 billion. Forbes said the “oil and gas tycoon” sparked a price war in India’s hyper-competitive telecom market with the launch of 4G phone service Jio last September. His younger brother Anil is ranked 745th with a net worth of $2.7 billion. The younger Ambani sibling “orchestrated the merger of his Reliance Communication’s telecom business with that of rival Aircel, controlled by Malaysian billionaire Ananda Krishnan. The combine, which awaits regulatory approvals, will be the country’s fourth-largest mobile phone operator,” Forbes said. Next on the list of Indian billionaires is ArcelorMittal Next on the list of Indian billionaires is ArcelorMittal chairman and CEO Lakshmi Mittal on the 56th spot with a net worth of $16.4 billion. Forbes said the Indian steel baron regains his status as the world’s second richest Indian on an uptick in steel prices and demand. “The world’s biggest steelmaker also got a reprieve from import tariffs on steel imposed by the US and Europe and a one-time $832 million saving from a new labour contract signed last year with its US workers,” it added. The list includes only four women billionaires from India, led by Savitri Jindal and her family at the 303rd position with a net worth of $5.2 billion.Also Read| How much the richest 1% earn and spend“After declining last year, the fortune of steel and power clan, whose matriarch Savitri Jindal chairs the OP Jindal Group, rose as steel prices recovered,” Forbes said. Smita Crishna-Godrej from the Godrej clan is ranked 814th followed by Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (973) and Leena Tewari (1030), chair of USV India which specialises in diabetic and cardiovascular drugs. Also making the list is Wipro chairman Azim Premji (72), Adani group founder Gautam Adani (250), Bajaj Group chair Rahul Bajaj (544), investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala (939), Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy (1161), chairman emeritus of Dabur Vivek Chand Burman (1290), Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani (1290), Wockhardt chair Habil Khorakiwala (1567), Mahindra group chief Anand Mahindra (1567), property tycoons Niranjan and Surendra Hiranandani (tied at 1678) and Yes Bank head Rana Kapoor (1795).Founder of mobile wallet Paytm Vijay Shekhar Sharma is ranked 1567 with his net worth of $ 1.3 billion. Forbes said Paytm was “one of the biggest beneficiaries of the government’s decision to demonetise 86% of India’s rupees and move to a cashless economy”, notching up 200 million registered users and five million transactions daily. Making his debut on the list at 814th spot is Acharya Balkrishna, friend of yoga guru Baba Ramdev, who holds 97% stake in the fast-growing consumer goods firm Patanjali Ayurveda. His net worth is $2.5 billion.Forbes said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg moved up to number five for the first time, after his fortune rose $11.4 billion in 12 months. Meanwhile Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico, once the world’s richest man, fell to number six, the first time he’s been out of the top five in a dozen years. There were 195 newcomers.China had the most new ten-figure fortunes with 76. The US was second with 25. The list has 56 billionaires under age 40, down from 66 last year, after some aged out and others dropped below the $1-billion mark. Seventy-eight people fell off the list, including 33 from China, 7 Americans and 9 who are still super wealthy but share their wealth among extended family members and therefore are not eligible for these ranks. PTI",2017-03-21,"As per the Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires, Mukesh Ambani is again the richest Indian. The list consists of 2,043 of the richest people in the world ",competitor,10:49,Forbes list: Mukesh Ambani ahead of other 100 Indian billionaires +0.88,"Mumbai: Tata Power Co Ltd on Friday posted a 38.3% rise in consolidated net profit for the quarter ended 31 December, helped in part by a lower tax rate and expenses, and higher other income.Consolidated net profit rose to Rs599.20 crore in the third quarter from Rs433.25 crore a year earlier, the power producer said in a statement. Net sales fell about 8.7% to Rs6677.89 crore from Rs7312.88 crore a year earlier.Twelve analysts polled by Bloomberg expected a consolidated net profit of Rs375 crore, while 13 analysts expected net sales of Rs7672 crore.Tata Power said revenue in its largest power business rose 1.4% to Rs6,254.85 crore from Rs6,166.09 crore a year earlier. Other business revenue rose 32% to Rs807.51 crore from Rs611.78 crore a year earlier.Total expenses fell marginally to Rs5,812.69 crore from Rs5,841.16 crore a year earlier.Together with its subsidiaries, Tata Power generated 13022 million units of power from all its plants.In a separate filing, Tata Power said it appointed N. Chandrasekaran chairman and additional director effective 11 February.Chandrasekaran is chairman designate of Tata Sons Ltd and currently the chief executive and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services.",2017-02-10,Tata Power’s consolidated net profit of rose to Rs599.20 crore in the third quarter from Rs433.25 crore a year earlier,company,23:42,Tata Power net profit jumps 38.3% in Q3 +-0.25,"
Infosys Ltd’s chief executive officer (CEO) Vishal Sikka is assured of $10 million in annual compensation, irrespective of the company’s performance, because a clause in his employment contract makes him eligible to earn at least 90% of his total $11 million salary.
Infosys doesn’t deny the existence of the clause, although it doesn’t explain how this fits in with the company’s disclosure to BSE on 24 February last year that Sikka’s compensation could fall to $3 million in 2016-17 if Infosys’s growth fails to meet the internal targets set by the board.
Of Sikka’s $11 million compensation, $8 million is variable pay, the component based on Infosys’s performance. Infosys has not disclosed the annual targets upon completion of which Sikka stands to get full variable salary.
Also read: Infosys compensation row: Of executives, programmers and fairness
According to his employment contract, Sikka, if need be, can use a so-called “good reason” clause to terminate his existing employment agreement with Infosys, if his annual compensation of $11 million falls by more than 10%.
Effectively, what this means is that Infosys is beholden to pay him at least $10 million if it wants to retain him as CEO.
To be sure, he can choose not to use the clause—which means he can, if he wants to, accept a $3 million salary—but the existence of this clause does put him on a strong footing.
“Good reason”, in the employment contract, is defined as “Executive’s resignation within 30 days... following the occurrence of one or more of the following, without executive’s express written consent: a material reduction (with 10% reduction deemed to be material) in executive’s aggregate target compensation comprised of base pay, target variable pay and target value of stock compensation (except, where there is a substantially similar reduction applicable to senior executives generally, provided that such reduction does not exceed 10%).”
Also read: Forget compassionate capitalism, just some fairness will do
Infosys filed a copy of this employment agreement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on 18 May last year. By then, shareholders had already given their nod to Sikka’s higher compensation, making at least one proxy advisory firm question whether “Infosys deliberately did not share complete information”.
“In light of the fact that there is asymmetry of information in the information provided in the notice that was sent to Indian shareholders when an approval was sought and in the SEC disclosure, this is bad corporate governance,” said Shriram Subramanian, founder and managing director of proxy firm InGovern Research.
An Infosys spokesperson said the clause was also part of an earlier agreement with Sikka that was filed with the SEC on 20 May 2015.
“Your interpretation of the clause in the CEO’s contract is completely wrong,” the spokesperson said in response to emailed queries from Mint if Sikka’s minimum salary is $10 million on account of the “good reason” clause. The spokesperson refused to elaborate.
“We have publicly addressed questions on the CEO’s contract and we stand by that,” the spokesperson said. The spokesperson maintained that Sikka’s salary was variable. “As stated before, the nominations and remuneration committee (NRC) will evaluate the CEO’s variable compensation at the end of the fiscal year based on the company’s performance. Dr. Sikka’s compensation is linked to the company’s aspirational goal to achieve $20 billion in revenues by March 2021,” the spokesperson added.
A lack of clarity on Sikka’s $11 million salary was one reason for the souring of the relationship between the founder-promoters, led by N.R. Narayana Murthy, and the company’s board, Mint reported on 10 February.
A majority of the promoters also did not vote for a resolution seeking a salary increase for chief operating officer U.B. Pravin Rao. According to filings by Infosys with stock exchanges, only 24% of promoter votes were cast in favour of the resolution seeking a 35% raise in Rao’s compensation to Rs12.5 crore. The remaining abstained.
On Sunday, in response to a questionnaire from Mint, Murthy said that the promoters believe the pay increase was “not proper” as the increase is a lot higher than what was awarded to rank-and-file employees. “Every senior management person of an Indian corporation has to show self-restraint in his or her compensation. This is necessary if we have to make compassionate capitalism acceptable to a majority of Indians who are poor,” said Murthy in an email. Infosys, in its defence on Monday, said that the increase in salary to its senior leaders is in line with global standards, and followed a comprehensive survey of best practices and benchmarked senior management compensation with key Indian and global companies.",2017-04-05,A clause in Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka’s contract lets him terminate his employment if his annual compensation falls by more than 10%,competitor,14:56,Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka guaranteed 90% of $11 million salary +-0.55,"
Early in the morning of Monday, 3 April, serendipity sat me next to N.R. Narayana Murthy on a long transcontinental flight leaving Bengaluru. As the flight attendants handed out newspapers for the passengers to read while on the journey, I couldn’t help but notice that Murthy had made front-page news, this time for questioning the extent of the raise given to an executive at Infosys Ltd, the company that he founded over three decades ago along with a few of his junior colleagues. I turned to him and we began a conversation. I shall not focus here on the specific comments about Infosys, but there were several parts of the conversation that covered Murthy’s philosophy around topics that I have written about in this column before, and which provide insights into the character of the man. Unsurprisingly, we spoke of the social issues being caused by the changes in the way corporations recruit and retain talent. We spoke of organizations such as TopCoder, now part of an Indian IT services firm after the acquisition of its parent by Wipro. TopCoder is a marketplace for computer programmers, who can get compensated for their work through this marketplace without ever having to be an employee of a services firm. It is like a taxi aggregator among programming firms. I have written in this column before about how marketplaces like these can eventually change the construct of the employer-employee contract now prevalent among many firms and have also mused about whether unionization may be around the corner at some Indian IT services firms as the employer-employee relationship construct begins to disintegrate.Murthy explained that there are circumstances where unions can play a pivotal role in ensuring equity. He said the fact that unions look out for employees’ welfare is inescapable, and proffered the example of the US. According to him, when unionization covered 35% of the American workforce, American labour was better looked after. Now that this figure has slipped to around 15%, the poor have become poorer as corporations and their leaders have followed an Ayn-Rand-esque view of “rational self-interest” and social Darwinism. Pushing crumbs off one’s table and trusting that the aspiring classes in society will have enough is a sure recipe in fomenting labour class unrest, as the recent Brexit and US presidential elections have shown. Murthy’s opinion is that such unrest is also lying dormant and is barely beneath the surface in India, and that leaders of India’s capitalist revolution cannot afford to blithely ignore this.Also read | Infosys strongly defends COO pay hike criticized by Narayana MurthyWe also spoke of the fledgling experiments with universal basic income (UBI) that have begun to pop up in various corners of the earth. UBI is essentially a dole paid out to every citizen, whether they are out of work or not, in a nod to the fact that relentless mechanization and automation will take away many people’s livelihoods in the near- to medium-term future. While classical economics tells us that disruptive changes in labour mechanics such as offshoring and automation only cause a temporary loss in jobs before there is a “job shift” when people start to work in other fields of endeavour so that they may earn a living, the short-term pain caused by the original job displacement is undeniable. UBI is a well-meaning attempt to alleviate some of that pain. It comes with the same plethora of problems around unemployment doles, but Murthy’s view was that societies have a responsibility to their underprivileged or displaced populaces and that he would welcome higher taxes on the IT industry that are meant to go directly to those whose jobs IT displaces. He said that the only society that is stable is one that is seen to be moving, however haltingly, towards an atmosphere of equity and fairness among all its members.Leaders in the IT industry need to be seen as fair by the people under their command. Giving raises at the top that are 10 or even 20 times the rate of the raises being given at the bottom runs the risk of creating an impression that those at the top are greedy opportunists most interested in snatching what they can while the going is good. I have been part of a company where the boss raised his own salary by over 250%, leaving others in his second line like me to explain to the rest of the workforce that they had to make do with a 2% increase. The rationale for the anaemic salary increase for everyone but the boss was that the firm had not reached its (internally set) earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, targets. As an aside, I am sure the boss’s new salary contributed to the company repeating this miss in the next year. That year, even though my own compensation increase was also in the low single digits, I felt great discomfiture at having to justify and explain the boss’s salary increase, which the board had seen right to give him since “he could easily get another job in the industry paying just as much”. To paraphrase the Bard of Avon, all the mouthwash in India has not cured me of the ensuing halitosis from those conversations.Recalling a time when the industry finally saw the light and banded together in the common interest to fight high levels of attrition when companies were blithely poaching talent from one another, I asked Murthy whether Nasscom or some such industry body could now be entrusted with this looming question of “fairness”. He was unequivocal that an ombudsman is needed. Maybe it is time we allow ourselves to be policed.Siddharth Pai is a world-renowned technology consultant who has led over $20 billion in complex, first-of-a-kind outsourcing transactions.",2017-04-04,"In IT firms such as Infosys, giving raises at the top many times the rate of the raises at the bottom risks creating an impression that those at the top are greedy opportunists ",both,01:26,"Infosys compensation row: Of executives, programmers and fairness" +-0.23,"US President Donald Trump and members of Congress from both parties have vowed to overhaul the visa programmes used by corporations to bring overseas workers to the US. That’s left companies that rely on such workers and those that source them bracing for change. A first step came at the end of March, when the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) department issued guidelines making it harder for companies to bring foreign technology workers to the US using the H-1B visa programme.What’s the H-1B programme do?It allows companies to recruit 85,000 employees from abroad each year for specialty positions in fields including technology, science, medicine, architecture—even fashion modelling. It took less than a week for applicants to exhaust that allotment in 2016, and technology companies including Facebook Inc., Google Inc., Intel Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. have sought to increase the number available. People from India receive more H-1B vis’s than any other nationality.What changes were made? For H-1B visas given out in the 2017 lottery beginning 3 April, the government now requires additional information for entry-level computer programmers, to prove the jobs are complicated and require advanced knowledge and experience. Computer programmers made up about 12% of all H-1B applications certified by the department of labour in 2015. Also Read: H-1B visas to become harder to get as Donald Trump starts crackdownIn March, the immigration department suspended a program that expedited visa processing for certain skilled workers who paid extra, which some analysts saw as a first step to dismantling the H-1B program altogether.Which other programs are under scrutiny?Apart from the best-known H-1B visa, companies use a variety of visas to bring in workers from abroad, including the B-1 for temporary business visitors and the L-1 for managers, executives and specialized workers of international companies.Why does the US have these programmes?They were designed to allow US companies to hire temporary workers from other countries when they couldn’t find qualified people domestically. These temporary visas were established under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. The programs have morphed over the years, and many of the visas now go to companies that pay foreign workers less than their American counterparts would receive. The total number of visas issued for temporary employment-based admission to the US grew to more than 1 million in 2014 from just over 400,000 in 1994, according to the Congressional Research Service. Those numbers included some unskilled and low-skilled workers, plus accompanying family members.Do the programmes need reform?It’s pretty clear the H-1B program and others have been used in ways that contradict their original intent. There have been allegations of abuse and at least one big settlement: In 2013, a Bangalore-based outsourcing company, Infosys Ltd., agreed to pay a record fine of $34 million to settle US allegations that it sent employees to the US with B-1 visitor visas to sidestep the caps on H-1Bs.What does Trump propose?During his presidential campaign, he said the H-1B program is a “cheap labour program” that takes jobs from Americans. He hasn’t yet detailed his ideas as president, but based on a draft executive order, his administration may push companies to try hiring American workers before turning to foreign ones—a step that isn’t necessary now. He’s also asked that the programmes prioritize giving visas to the most highly paid workers from abroad. Who gets priority now?Currently, H-1B visas are allocated by random lottery, with no priority given to companies that pay workers more. The biggest recipients of the visas are outsourcing companies, including India’s Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Wipro Ltd. and Infosys. They pay workers in the programme an average of about $65,000 a year, while Apple Inc., Google and Microsoft Corp. pay their H-1B employees more than $100,000.Can Trump act on his own?An executive order can begin the reform process, but Trump lacks the broad powers of Congress. For example, he can’t change the number of H-1B visas that are given out each year, but he probably can change the way they’re allocated. So he could order that priority be given to higher-paid workers.What might Congress do?Congress has tried many times in the past decade to change the work visa programmes, with limited effect. Bills offered in the House by two California lawmakers, Republican Darrell Issa and Democrat Zoe Lofgren, aim to do so by raising the wages for some H-1B workers.Also Read: H1B visa: Computer programmer won’t qualify as specialty occupation , says USIn Lofgren’s proposal, companies that are the heaviest users of the programme would have to pay salaries of at least $130,000, up from the current $60,000, or attest that they are not displacing American workers and making a good faith effort to recruit US workers if they pay less than that. The legislative push has spooked India’s tech companies, weighing on their stocks. There’s also a bipartisan proposal in the Senate, long pushed by Republican Chuck Grassley and Democrat Richard Durbin, that would forbid replacing US workers with H-1B hires and prioritize visa applications from people who earned degrees at American colleges.Will Silicon Valley be hurt by the changes?It depends on the details, of course, but the US tech industry may well come out on top. Because so many H-1B visas go to outsourcing firms, American employers like Apple, Google, Microsoft Corp. and Facebook haven’t been able to get as many as they would like. They could be benefit if outsourcers face more restrictions. Bloomberg",2017-04-04,The USCIS has issued guidelines making it harder for companies to bring foreign tech workers to the US using the H-1B visa programme. Here are the implications of the guidelines,competitor,16:15,H1-B visa: What the USCIS guidelines mean for tech workers and companies +-0.79,"New Delhi: Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, is interested in picking a stake in India’s biggest oil refinery being planned to be set up in Maharashtra at a cost of Rs1.8 trillion. State-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) together plan to set up a 60-million tonnes a year oil refinery on west coast to meet the rising fuel needs of the country. “Saudi Aramco and Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (Adnoc) are talking to us for investments in the Indian oil sector,” Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said at the Global Natural Resources Conclave.Later talking to reporters, he said Aramco is interested in picking a stake in the west coast refinery while Adnoc is keen on petrochemical projects. “Aramco is talking of stake in the refinery,” he said. He, however, did not go into how much stake the Saudi national oil company will pick. “Let’s see,” is all he said. IOC holds a 50% stake in the project while BPCL and HPCL have 25% each. The 60-mt a year refinery will be set up in two phases, along with a mega petrochemical complex. The phase-1 capacity will be 40 mt together with an aromatic complex, naphtha cracker unit and a polymer complex. This will cost Rs1.2-1.5 lakh crore and will come up in 5-6 years from the date of land acquisition. The mega complex will require 12,000-15,000 acres and land on the Maharashtra coast has been identified, he said. The second phase, involving a 20 mt refinery, will cost Rs 50,000-60,000 crore. IOC has been looking at the west coast for a refinery as the company found it tough to cater to requirements in West and South with its refineries mostly in the North. HPCL and BPCL too have been looking at a bigger refinery because of constraints they face at their Mumbai units. The mega west coast refinery will produce petrol, diesel, LPG, ATF (aviation turbine fuel) and feedstock for petrochemical plants in plastic, chemical and textile industries in Maharashtra. A top official at one of the state refiners said the project will be funded with 60% debt and 40% equity.The three refiners will chip in Rs72,000 crore in equity. Fifteen mt a year is the biggest refinery any public sector unit has set up at one stage. IOC recently started its 15 mt unit at Paradip in Odisha. Reliance Industries holds the distinction of building the biggest refinery in India till now. It built its first refinery at Jamnagar in Gujarat with a capacity of 27 mt, which was subsequently expanded to 33 mt.It built another unit adjacent to it for exports, with a capacity of 29 mt. The refinery being planned by the state-owned firms will be bigger than that. The phase-1 itself will be bigger than any one single unit. India has a refining capacity of 232.06 mt, which exceeded the demand of 183.5 mt in 2015-16. According to the International Energy Agency (EA), this demand is expected to reach 458 mt by 2040.",2017-04-06,"Saudi Aramco shows interest in buying a stake in west coast refinery project, wherein Indian Oil holds a 50% stake, while BPCL and HPCL have 25% each ",competitor,17:10,"Saudi Aramco keen to take stake in west coast refinery, says oil minister" +-0.33,"
Ten years after Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) entered fuel retailing in South Africa, the wheel has turned full circle.India’s largest private sector company bought a 76% stake in fuel retailer Gulf Africa Petroleum Corp. (Gapco) in August 2007 and hoped to expand its footprint further in the continent. At a time when RIL was struggling with its fuel retailing in India, the move helped RIL deploy its expertise in fuel retailing overseas and find a market for its products outside India.That affair lasted a decade, almost.Last June, RIL announced its intention to sell Gapco to France’s Total SA. On 29 March, the Indian company said it has obtained all approvals to complete the sale of its Gapco stake. “RIL was happy with Gapco’s performance. Though it was not as huge as its India operations, for 10 years, Gapco did provide RIL with a reason to keep operating in the fuel retail segment. RIL had plans to expand in the neighbouring markets in Africa too,” said a person familiar with the decision to sell Gapco, on condition of anonymity.With subsidiaries in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda engaged in petroleum products import, trading and marketing among others, Gapco’s revenue for 2015-16 stood at Rs11,723 crore, according to RIL’s annual report for the year. Currently, Gapco operates 104 fuel retail outlets in the East African region — 65 in Tanzania; 30 in Uganda and nine in Kenya. So, why has RIL dropped a subsidiary that seemed to be doing well? The first person cited above and another close to the company said, after India allowed market pricing of fuel, RIL’s fuel retailing business has recovered and the company wants to put all its energy into expanding in India, the world’s third-largest crude oil consumer. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), India beat Japan as the world’s third-largest crude oil consumer in 2016. India will also become the world’s third-largest-refiner in 2022, surpassing Russia. “RIL has always been bullish on the India market. And its management now wants to focus on India. Gapco happened when India operations were down. Then, RIL had decided to put its management bandwidth to use in Gapco. With all international petroleum retailers eyeing the India market, it makes sense to divest in Africa and focus back home,” said the second person familiar with RIL’s move. RIL did not reply to an email sent on Friday. RIL’s interest in the Indian fuel retailing segment was rekindled in October 2014 when the government freed diesel prices. Petrol was deregulated in June 2010. Like state-owned oil marketing companies, for RIL too, diesel has been the key product, bringing in the maximum volume. Diesel deregulation meant a revival of its fuel outlets. RIL’s Diesel sales accounted for 14.3% of the total diesel sales in the country, while its petrol sales accounted for 7.2% of total petrol sales in the country in 2005-06, RIL’s fuel retailing heydays.Since 2008, when crude oil prices rose to $150 a barrel, diesel retail was the monopoly of Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL), which managed to sell fuel below cost with government support, something not available for RIL. In May 2008, RIL closed its fuel pumps. The company, which at one point explored tying up with oil marketing companies to stay afloat, abandoned the plans after fuel price deregulation. RIL, which had a 12% market share in fuel retailing in 2005, slipped to less than 0.5% in 2014. Since then, it has clawed back to around 3-4%. RIL had spent Rs5,000 crore in setting up 1,470 retail outlets, of which around 1,151 were operational till the third quarter of 2016-17. The company planned to reopen all its fuel retail outlets by the fourth quarter of 2016-17. Last fiscal, RIL also began reporting its fuel retailing figures. Its retail outlets, which are company-owned and company-operated, are now included in its organized retail business.",2017-04-05,"After India allowed market pricing of fuel, RIL’s fuel retailing business has recovered and the company wants to put all its energy into expanding at home",competitor,08:15,What next for Reliance Industries after Gapco sale? +-0.76,"San Francisco: Alphabet Inc.’s Access division, which houses its broadband service Google Fiber, has removed two prominent executives from its ranks, the latest sign of the business pulling back from ambitious, expensive goals.Milo Medin, a vice president at Access, and Dennis Kish, a wireless infrastructure veteran who was president of Google Fiber, are leaving the division but staying at the Alphabet holding company. Gregory McCray, who was appointed head of Access in February, told staff about the management changes at a Thursday meeting. An Access spokesman confirmed the changes, but declined to comment further.Kish joined Google Fiber in 2014 from Qualcomm Inc. and worked closely with fellow transplant Craig Barratt, who previously led the Access group. Barratt suddenly exited in October, when Alphabet also announced it was halting Google Fiber expansions in eight major urban markets and laying off around 10% of its staff.The Access division has continued to shrink. About 600 employees are currently being reassigned to the Google internet business and other Alphabet divisions, according to sources familiar with the plans.A Google veteran since 2010, Medin was a chief advocate for the company’s high-speed Fiber service in Washington. He has also been leading some of Alphabet’s more experimental efforts to tap wireless spectrum for better internet delivery. It’s unclear if that effort will move to another part of Alphabet.Also Read: Donald Trump hails ‘friendship’ with China’s Xi Jinping on 1st day of summitOn Thursday, Medin was named as a member of the Federal Communications Commission’s new Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee.Medin and Kish didn’t respond to emailed requests for comment.Under Barratt, Alphabet pushed to bring Fiber to more than a dozen US cities. It hit some hurdles, including increased competition and legal challenges from telecommunications firms. Google Fiber also grew into one of the costliest efforts for the company, outside of the dominant Google internet business.After halting its expansion, some analysts praised Alphabet for implementing cost-cutting measures. Last month, Google Fiber cancelled some planned installations in Kansas City, its first market. Bloomberg",2017-04-07,"Alphabet ’s Access division has removed two prominent executives from its ranks, the latest sign of the business pulling back from ambitious, expensive goals",competitor,09:48,Alphabet moves 2 top Google Fiber executives off project +-0.47,"New Delhi: IT industry body Nasscom on Tuesday said the US’ latest memo on H1B visas would have “little impact” on Indian IT firms as they have already started applying for visas for higher-level specialised professionals this year. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has recently come out with a policy memorandum saying companies applying for visas must provide “evidence to establish that the particular position is one in a specialty occupation”. The new H1B guideline rescinds a memorandum issued in December, 2000. Seeking to play down the impact on outsourcing companies, Nasscom said the memorandum “reinforces existing practice by adjudicators and clarifies requirements for certain computer professionals”. ALSO READ | H1-B visa: What the USCIS guidelines mean for tech workers and companies“The clarifying guidance should have little impact on Nasscom members as this has been the adjudicatory practice for years and also as several of our member executives have noted recently, they are applying for visas for higher level professionals this year,” Nasscom said in a statement. Nasscom counts IT outsourcing firms like TCS, Infosys, Wipro as well as American firms like Cognizant, Microsoft, and IBM as members. It added that the demand for additional evidence showing that the said job is complex/specialised and requires professional degrees mentioned in the memo has been the de facto requirement for years. India accounts for a significant portion of the H1B visas, which are non-immigrant visas used by American firms to employ foreign workers that require specific expertise. USCIS—a government agency that oversees lawful immigration to the US—has emphasised that the H1B visa programme should help US companies recruit highly-skilled foreign nationals when there is a shortage of qualified workers in the country. ALSO READ | H-1B visas to become harder to get as Donald Trump starts crackdownUSCIS issues about 65,000 H1B visas in general category and another 20,000 for those applicants having higher education (Masters and above) from US universities in the field of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Nasscom said the H1B visa system exists specifically because of the “persistent shortage” of highly-skilled domestic IT talent in the US. The US accounts for over 60% of the export revenues of the Indian IT industry. “Nasscom member companies have and will continue to provide skilled talent and solutions to fill that gap and keep US companies competitive globally,” it added.ALSO READ | H1B visa: Computer programmer won’t qualify as specialty occupation , says USHowever, industry watchers believe that coupled with immigration pushbacks being seen in other geographies like the UK and Singapore, the overall impact would make movement of labour difficult and operation costlier in the short term. During his election campaign, US President Donald Trump had promised stricter immigration laws and protection of local jobs. An US legislation (Lofgren Bill) was introduced that proposed doubling of the minimum wages of H1B visa holders to $130,000. Indian firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro—on their part—have been reducing their dependence on H1B visas, ramping up local hiring to meet requirement.",2017-04-05,Nasscom says the latest H1B visa memorandum from the USCIS reinforces existing practices by adjudicators and clarifies requirements for certain computer professionals,both,19:01,Nasscom says USCIS H1B visa memo to have little impact on Indian IT firms +-0.25,"New Delhi: IT industry body Nasscom on Wednesday appointed Quatrro CMD Raman Roy its chairman for 2017-18. It has also named Rishad Premji, Wipro chief strategy officer and son of technology czar Azim Premji, as the vice chairman. Roy, who served as the vice chairman in the previous fiscal, will take on the new role from 6 April. He takes over the mantle from C P Gurnani, managing director and CEO of Tech Mahindra. “Nasscom is playing a critical role in evangelising the digital opportunity for the sector and I would like to support the industry in facilitating the skilling and reskilling effort of the industry through disruptive models,” Roy said.He added that building India’s innovation edge is another key priority and the industry body plans to scale up start-ups and centre of excellence initiatives to the next level. The announcement comes at a time when the over $140 billion Indian IT industry faces a number of headwinds like growing protectionism from various countries and business shifts towards digital. R Chandrashekhar, president of Nasscom, said: “A new-age leader like Rishad, with his vast exposure, will bring fresh ideas to the table, helping the industry tap new domains and opportunities globally.” Roy, along with Rishad and Chandrashekhar, will lead Nasscom to carry out its diverse array of priorities. The leadership team will also work towards further strengthening various sector councils and focus on enhanced member outreach and involvement.",2017-04-05,"Quatrro CMD Raman Roy will take over as the Nasscom chairman while Rishad Premji, Wipro chief strategy officer and son of Azim Premji, will step in as vice chairman ",both,18:02,"Nasscom appoints Raman Roy as chairman, Rishad Premji vice chairman" +-0.76,"
Mumbai: Brock Pierce, founder and managing partner of Blockchain Capital and chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, is a venture capitalist and entrepreneur. Pierce pioneered the market for digital currency in games and has raised more than $200 million for companies he founded. A faculty at the Singularity University, Pierce is also the founder of IMI Exchange (the world’s leading digital currency marketplace for games), ZAM (one of the world’s largest media properties for gamers) and IGE (the pioneer of digital currency in online games). In an email interview, Pierce—who was a speaker at the two-day SingularityU India Summit ((held on 7-8 April in association with INK, which hosts events like INKtalks, a platform for the exchange of cutting-edge ideas and inspiring stories)—spoke, among other things, on why companies would want to invest in blockchains. Edited excerpts:
Many governments including India remain non-committal and neutral to bitcoin. Is it that governments fear that a cyrptocurrency could destabilize a highly regulated banking system?Bitcoin is still very early in its development so I would expect governments to be non-committal.
We have had instances of the bitcoin ecosystem being compromised—the Mt. Gox episode being a case in point. What are the measures that stakeholders need to put in place to make bitcoin secure?The bitcoin/blockchain protocol has never been compromised. Businesses building applications on top of it run the risk of making mistakes.
More than bitcoin, it is the underlying technology—blockchain—that is showing much more promise. Besides companies, governments too are warming up to the potential of this technology across sectors. What, in your opinion, is the future of blockchain?The blockchain is going to change everything more than the internet has. It’s the second most important technology, second only to artificial intelligence (AI).ALSO READ : Bitcoin’s existential crisis
How do you plan to use blockchain in the venture capital sector?We intend to disrupt and democratize the venture capital industry by doing the following: by creating the first liquid venture fund, allowing access to a broader group of investors, investing in the new economy of start-ups doing ICOs (initial coin offerings) and showing these start-ups how to do it compliantly.
Through Blockchain Capital, you also believe that you are “democratizing” access to an asset class traditionally only available to elite institutional investors…Historically venture capital funds have only allowed elite investors in. Our ICO is going to allow small investors from all over the world to participate.
Bitcoin and blockchain start-ups face competition from big firms like Accenture, IBM and Microsoft in this space. Your thoughts.These large incumbents are generally working with many of our start-ups so we are pleased to have them working in the space.
Do you have plans to invest in Indian bitcoin and blockchain companies too?Blockchain Capital has a global investment mandate so it is very possible that we make an investment in India at some point.",2017-04-11,"Brock Pierce, founder and managing partner of Blockchain Capital and chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, on why companies would want to invest in blockchains",competitor,21:12,Blockchain is second only to artificial intelligence: Brock Pierce +0.38,"
If you trade in bitcoins, or even are a bitcoin enthusiast, it’s unlikely that you would have missed the raging debate around the cryptocurrency. Known as the bitcoin “fork”, the controversy potentially threatens to split the bitcoin currency, whose price is currently around $1,200, into two.For the uninitiated, there are two factions at the heart of the debate, which is primarily about how to scale up the bitcoin to handle more transactions. The two current camps are: Bitcoin Unlimited and Segregated Witness (SegWit). Bitcoin Unlimited aims to remove the block size limit altogether, thereby allowing the miners to reach a consensus on their own. SegWit offers a moderate increase of the block size to up to 4 megabytes (MB), moving some non-critical data out of the blocks.The reason: Bitcoin currently has a 1MB block size limit. This implies that, on average, a network bitcoin can only process 1MB of transaction data every 10 minutes—about seven transactions per second as compared to the thousands of transactions per second that credit card firm Visa can process. The problem first surfaced around 2014-15, and bitcoin users are now increasingly experiencing long wait times as the mempool, or the buffer of yet-unconfirmed transactions, is showing more spikes.ALSO READ : Blockchain is second only to artificial intelligence: Brock PierceBrock Pierce, founder and managing partner at Blockchain Capital and chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, believes that bitcoin has the “high class” problem of experiencing rapid growth. “Users and entrepreneurs building new business models off the blockchain means that there are competing interests on how best to scale the network. Linux, also an open source software project, had similar growing pains. It is possible that Bitcoin will fork at some point. The question is whether or not it’ll be a contentious fork. This process is a good thing in the long term, though potentially disruptive in the short term,” he said.Pointing out that “there have been multiple attempts to alter bitcoin away from the core developers that have created bitcoin as we know it today (Bitcoin Classic etc.)”, Pierce said, “To date, caution regarding a contentious hard fork has prevailed and bitcoin has thrived. If it (the split) were to happen, we may see two currencies, though I suspect one would be the dominant currency/chain.”Earlier attempts at fixing this problem comprised the BIP 100 and BIP 101 proposals—BIP stands for bitcoin improvement proposal. They were introduced in 2015 by Bitcoin Core developers Jeff Garzik and Gavin Andresen, respectively. BIP 100 was about making miners decide the block size limit while BIP 101 was a one-time increase from 1MB to 8MB. Both are known as hard-fork solutions, which means that had they been implemented, older versions of bitcoin software would become incompatible with the new network.According to Cointelegraph.com, the abolition of the block size limit proposed by Bitcoin Unlimited could lead to an “uncontrolled Blockchain bloat”. Currently, the size of the entire blockchain exceeds 100 gigabytes. ALSO READ : Blockchain is going to permeate our lives: Matthieu RiouIf the block size limit is increased, the blockchain could grow to several petabytes, if not more, which “would lead to increased centralization of Bitcoin; only big companies would be able to afford the storage space, computing power and bandwidth necessary to process such huge amounts of data, phasing small-scale node operators out of the network. That runs contrary to the very idea of Bitcoin as the money governed by each of its users”, the article in Cointelegraph.com explains. Similar with SegWit, where the limit will be reached again, and the capacity will have to be increased.At a roundtable held in February 2016 in Hong Kong, representatives of Bitcoin Core, the authors of SegWit, and several major mining companies agreed to move forward with “a safe hard-fork based on the improvements in SegWit”, proposing an increase in the block size limit to 2MB “with the total size no more than 4MB” but the bitcoin community refused to adopt it, and the stalemate continues.Benson Samuel, co-founder and chief technology officer and co-founder of Secure Bitcoin Traders Pvt. Ltd that runs trading platform Coinsecure.in, says while Indian users have been concerned about the fork, “there is far less discussion in the community in India compared to outside. Since a huge number of users in India store their funds on exchanges and Web wallets, they expect to have a more seamless experience as the service operators themselves should be able to take care of some of the steps involved in the fork. The chances are slim for a majority to vote into a hard fork like Bitcoin Unlimited at this moment, however soft forks like Segregated Witness seem a lot more practical to implement on a decentralized distributed network,” he adds.The bitcoin code was first released on 9 January 2009, by a person who assumed the name, Satoshi Nakamoto. Ever since, the digital currency has been adopted for everything from international money transfers to online narco-trafficking. If you have installed a bitcoin wallet on your computer or mobile phone, it will generate your first bitcoin address and you can create more whenever you need one. You can disclose your addresses to your friends so that they can pay you or vice versa. Bitcoin users can buy and sell the currency among themselves. A shared public ledger called the “block chain” contains every transaction ever processed, allowing a user’s computer to verify the validity of each transaction of this virtual currency. The authenticity of each transaction is protected by a digital signature corresponding to the sender’s address, allowing users to have full control over sending bitcoins from their own bitcoin addresses. Hence, the digital money is also known as a “cryptocurrency”. Anyone can process transactions using the computing power of specialized hardware and earn a reward in bitcoins for this service—a process known as mining. Japan may soon become the first country to recognize bitcoins as legal tender. Some countries such as China could go a step further to issue their own version of the digital currency. In India, the Reserve Bank of India has not declared bitcoin illegal but simply cautioned users, holders and traders of virtual currencies, about the potential financial, operational, legal and security-related risks that they are exposing themselves to.On 27 February, bitcoin start-ups Zebpay, Unocoin, Coinsecure and SearchTrade jointly launched the Digital Asset and Blockchain Foundation of India (DABFI) for the “orderly and transparent growth of virtual currency market”. DABFI will lay down self-regulatory regimes for trading of bitcoins and other blockchain-based digital assets.",2017-04-11,Bitcoin Unlimited and Segregated Witness are locked in row over how to scale up bitcoin to handle more transactions which may split the cryptocurrency,competitor,01:38,Bitcoin’s existential crisis +-1.0,"
Mumbai: Dell Technologies, the company that was formed when Dell Inc. acquired EMC Corp. for $67 billion, remains bullish on its “long-term” growth prospects in India, which is the company’s third-largest market.“I think we are on track to hit the $3 billion revenue mark in this country in a couple of years,” Thomas Sweet, executive vice-president and chief financial officer (CFO), Dell Inc., said in an interview last week.Explaining why he is bullish on the Indian market, Sweet reasoned that the country now had “a government that is pro-growth, pro-development, and which is also pro-technology in helping to enable that growth and the government’s mission”. Further, he claimed that the Dell-EMC combine in India is growing faster than the domestic IT market growth. According to Nasscom’s Strategic Review 2017 report, in FY2017, India’s domestic IT-BPM (information technology-business process management) market is likely to grow 8.5% year on year to reach $38 billion (excluding e-commerce).To accelerate the pace of growth globally, Dell rolled out a distribution, or the so-called channel strategy in February. According to Sweet, half of the company’s revenue is routed through its distributors and his company hopes to increase their output with the recent reorganization it initiated to bring together the distribution partners of the erstwhile Dell and EMC companies.What the company did two months back, according to Sweet, was to merge the EMC and Dell sales forces (which existed as separate entities before the merger) into two units. One is an enterprise sales unit that would now focus on the top 3,000 customers, and the second is a commercial sales organization that will focus on an estimated 500,000 clients. Sweet said he is “pretty pleased” with how the combined sales units have shaped up so far.The company also plans to sharpen its focus on its digital transformation push. Dell Technologies breaks up digital transformation into three parts, according to Sweet: IT transformation-how IT can support what the business needs; security transformation-how a company can tackle multiple threats; and workforce transformation-how an organization makes its employees more productive in a mobile environment.In the past couple of years, most large technology solution providers such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE), International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Accenture Plc., Oracle Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others have been competing fiercely for the increasingly lucrative digital transformation pie. According to research firm International Data Corp. (IDC) forecasts, global spending on digital transformation technologies is projected to be more than $1.2 trillion in 2017—an increase of 17.8% over 2016.“There is clearly a greater focus among our customers on digital, but most of them are currently focused on IT transformation,” said Sweet. According to him, companies are looking to modernize their IT infrastructure to support cloud-native applications. In cloud computing, companies can consume IT services and only pay for the applications or infrastructure they use rather than buy the equipment upfront, thus reducing capital expenditure (capex).One change in the way technology adoption occurs in companies, according to Sweet, is the growing involvement of top management, especially when it comes to digital. “We are seeing more C-suite executives, particularly the chief executive officers (CEOs), chief operating officers (COOs) and CFOs, participating in the conversation on digital as, increasingly, they are seeking business solutions and business model evolution,” he said. The focus for CFOs, he said, continues to be on return on investment, even as most of them are also ready to bet on emerging technologies that are still not mature in order to future-proof their organizations.Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst of Greyhound Research, said that while the Dell-EMC combine has done a good job of “integrating the channel network” of both the organizations, managing the reskilling of the partners and introducing customised solutions tailored for specific industry segments may require an intensive focus, especially in the short term. “If they can manage this aspect well, they can have an edge in the digital transformation infrastructure market, where companies such as HPE and Lenovo have been showing renewed aggression of late,” he concluded.",2017-04-20,Dell Inc. CFO Thomas Sweet claims that the Dell-EMC combine in India is growing faster than the domestic IT market growth,both,08:34,Dell on track to hit the $3 billion revenue mark in India: CFO Thomas Sweet +-1.0,"
Mumbai: Religare Enterprises Ltd on Sunday announced the sale of its 80% stake in Religare Health Insurance Co. Ltd (RHI) to a group of investors led by True North.In a statement, Religare Enterprises said it has entered into a definitive agreement with the investors for the sale, which values the insurance firm at Rs1,300 crore. The deal will fetch Religare approximately Rs1,040 crore.Apart from True North (earlier known as India Value Fund Advisors), other investors in the consortium are Aditya Parekh and Sameer Shroff-led private equity firm Faering Capital, and Gaurav Dalmia.The transaction is subject to necessary regulatory approvals. American investment bank J.P. Morgan acted as the exclusive financial adviser to Religare Enterprises.ALSO READ | Shivinder, Malvinder Singh want to sell some assets, but the timing isn’t rightReligare Health Insurance was launched in July 2012. The business reported a gross written premium of Rs503 crore in the year ended 31 March 2016. “We have been closely evaluating the health insurance space and have been impressed by the quality of RHI’s management team and business. We believe that RHI would be an excellent platform for building an enduring health insurance franchise in India,” Vikram Nirula, partner at True North said in the statement.True North has so far successfully launched five separate investment funds with a combined corpus of over $2 billion.The stake sale comes at a time when Religare’s promoters Malvinder and Shivinder Singh have been reported to be keen on divesting stakes in other businesses controlled by them.In January, Mint reported that the brothers were in talks with several global private equity funds such as TPG Capital, Bain Capital and KKR to sell a stake in their hospitals business—Fortis Healthcare Ltd. Discussions with Bain and TPG are currently only for a 26% stake in the company. On 5 January, Mint had reported on the talks between KKR and the Singh brothers for a majority stake in Fortis, alongside a structured equity deal in RHC Holding Pvt. Ltd (RHPL). RHPL is the holding firm for the Religare and Fortis brands.Singh brothers are also exploring debt financing options.In November, Mint reported that RHPL was in talks to refinance $300 million debt. RHPL is a closely held investment company owned by Singh brothers. As of 31 March 2016, RHPL had a total net worth of around Rs6,900 crore and a debt of Rs4,064 crore.The various stakes sale plans are, however, overshadowed by an ongoing legal battle with Japanese drug maker Daiichi Sankyo.The case relates to enforcement of an arbitral award in proceedings initiated by Daiichi Sankyo against the Singh brothers in relation to its 2008 purchase of a majority stake in Ranbaxy, then owned by the brothers. The arbitral award came after the Japanese company alleged that the Singh brothers had concealed crucial information while selling Ranbaxy to it for $4.6 billion in 2008.A Singapore tribunal has ordered the brothers to pay Rs2,562 crore, which they are contesting in the Delhi High Court.In March, the court directed Singh brothers to furnish, within a week, details of all of their unencumbered assets, in order to ensure the use of such assets to satisfy the arbitral award, at a later stage, if required, Mint reported on 7 March.",2017-04-10,"Religare Enterprises Ltd sale of its 80% stake in Religare Health Insurance to True North and other investors values the firm at Rs1,300 crore",competitor,21:33,"Religare sells 80% stake in health insurance arm to True North, others" +-0.24,"
New Delhi: In deals potentially valued at around Rs12,000 crore, state-owned NLC India Ltd has shortlisted for acquisition GMR Group’s 1,370 megawatt (MW) coal power project in Chhattisgarh and Hyderabad-based Ind-Barath Power Infra Ltd’s 700MW plant in Odisha. NLC, earlier known as Neyveli Lignite Corp. Ltd, will shortly hire two consultants—one each from the public and private sectors to carry out the due diligence, said Sarat Acharya, chairman and managing director, NLC India on the sidelines of Global Natural Resources Conclave organized by Network18 and the Confederation of Indian Industry.The public sector unit plans to acquire 3,000MW of stressed power generation capacity, driven by its strategy of using the revenue generated from running such projects to finance capital expenditure. “Others had come as part of the process that we have been running for stressed power projects acquisition. We are also setting up a power generation capacity of 7,000MW, which will take around six years for commissioning. Acquiring such stressed projects will allow us to generate electricity and start cash flows,” Acharya added.Mint reported on 6 January about NLC being in talks with Ind-Barath to acquire its coal-fired power plant in Odisha.On 23 August, NLC India invited expressions of interest from firms owning coal- and lignite-based power plants of capacity of more than 2,00MW for possible acquisition.Across the country, thermal power projects totalling around 25,000MW are up for sale. Over the last few years, power companies have found it difficult to secure fuel supplies and buyers for the power they generate because debt-laden state electricity boards are unwilling to buy expensive power. Most power generators are weighed down by debt, forcing some of them to sell assets.NLC has already signed an agreement to acquire Damodar Valley Corp.’s (DVC) 1,200MW Raghunathpur project in West Bengal through a joint venture company (JVC) proposed to be formed with DVC, with an equity shareholding of 74:26 by NLC and DVC. However, the acquisition plans have been hanging fire due to opposition from the West Bengal government.While the Raghunathpur projects has got other clearances, we are still awaiting clearance from the West Bengal government, which has been stuck for six months, Acharya said.DVC, formed on the lines of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the US, is owned by the Union government and the state governments of West Bengal and Jharkhand. Experts believe consolidation is inevitable because power projects are stressed.“It is exciting to see power producers evaluating distressed assets and bringing forward their plans for capacity addition if the deal is priced right. It aligns to their competitive advantages like understanding of the region, availability of fuel source and capital, operational excellence and long-term sale of power. It also releases financial stress in the sector,” said Sambitosh Mohapatra, partner (energy) at PwC India.While a GMR spokesperson did not respond to queries emailed on Thursday evening, an Ind-Barath spokesperson confirmed the development and in a text message said, “Yes, NLC has shortlisted our Odisha plant and discussions are currently ongoing between the parties.”NLC India which has an installed power generation capacity of 4,301MW, also plans to set up 4,000MW of solar power projects and is in talks with states in order to draw up viable power purchase agreements for selling electricity to them.“We are developing a 630MW solar power plant in Tamil Nadu...We have a capital expenditure plan of Rs1,24,000 crore (Rs1.24 trillion) to meet our 2025 target. We are also looking at developing lithium ion batteries which is under consideration of our research wing,” Acharya said.A host of state-owned firms such as Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd, NTPC Ltd and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd are chalking out clean energy strategies, encouraged by the opportunities offered by India’s solar power ambitions. India plans to generate 175GW of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 100GW is to come from solar power projects with storage being seen as the next frontier in India’s clean energy push.",2017-04-10,"The shortlisted projects are GMR Group’s 1,370MW coal power project in Chhattisgarh and Hyderabad-based Ind-Barath Power’s 700MW plant in Odisha",competitor,04:34,"NLC shortlists GMR, Ind-Barath power projects for acquisition" +-0.83,"Mumbai: Muthoot Finance Ltd on Monday reported a 56% increase in its net profit for the December quarter.Net profit for the third quarter rose to Rs291 crore from Rs187 crore in the year ago period. Total income stood at Rs1,346 crore at the end of December quarter, an 18% increase over the year ago period.“Though disbursements got affected post demonetisation process announced by the government, we could limit its impact since our digital platforms were ready to manage online disbursements and repayments. We are expecting normalcy coming back during the fourth quarter as cash availability has significantly increased,” said M.G.George Muthoot, chairman, Muthoot Finance.ALSO READ: Muthoot HomeFin to raise Rs800 crore next fiscalRetail loan assets under management stood at Rs26,962 crore at the end of third quarter, witnessing an 8% increase over the previous year.",2017-02-13,"Muthoot Finance’s total income stood at Rs1,346 crore at the end of December quarter, an 18% increase over the year ago period",competitor,21:32,Muthoot Finance Q3 profit rises 56% to Rs291 crore +-0.25,"
In his 2013 book Zen Garden: Conversations With Pathmakers, Subroto Bagchi, co-founder of IT firm Mindtree, recalls being tipped off about Shombit Sengupta ahead of their first meeting in 1999. “I was told that if you did not have a budget of a crore as consulting fee, you didn’t go to Shombit. But wait a minute. There was another condition—he had to like you!” he writes about the man who, he says, taught him “more about brands...than anyone else in my entire career”.The trouble, though, is that Sengupta no longer wants to talk about brands. At 63, the founder and creative strategist of Shining Consulting, responsible for the consumer interface makeover of companies such as Unilever, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Rémy Martin, Johnson & Johnson, Wipro and Mahindra & Mahindra, would rather concentrate on his art. It’s the reason why, after 40-odd years in France, he now prefers to spend 60% of his time in India. In Bengaluru, to be precise, where, many years ago, he bought a dilapidated transformer factory in Whitefield and redesigned it into an abode like no other. It’s tempting to see the house, split into two wings, as a metaphor for Sengupta’s own life, divided between France and India, brand design and art.
The two parts of the house are connected by a labyrinthine corridor; the walls have Sengupta’s own exuberant artworks while the floor space resembles a fairground, installed with the most dazzling collection of colourful Indian kitsch: shiny lip balms, glittery balls, skeins of crinkled cotton, stacks of glass bangles. It’s all a bit overwhelming.Like the man himself. Kitted out in a sheep-print shirt, his shock of hair still more pepper than salt, Sengupta demands attention as he talks. His story is so fantastic, it’s hard to look away but it does not do to merely follow his words: He needs total engagement. He responds in kind, listening actively and often stepping outside himself to call you out. As he does when his wife Renee Jhala, managing director of Shining Consulting—they met while he was consulting with Wipro, where she was head of public relations—wafts by: “She is making me talk about the brands,” he mock-complains about me, but acknowledges in the next breath that the success that followed his disruptive approach to design and branding allowed him to reboot his life as a sexagenarian to focus on art.“I went into business (as a brand consultant) to earn money,” Sengupta says without preamble. “And I stuck around for 35 years. Art has always informed my work. But I never delivered something that only looked good; my work made businesses look good.”Aesthetics, one might think, was not supposed to be the strong suit of a boy born in a camp for East Pakistan refugees in Kanchrapara, West Bengal. But early on, Sengupta developed an appreciation of his surroundings. If the Bengali Bengal was defined by poverty, the Victorian Bengal was embodied in the British-built residence of his schoolteacher-mother’s friend. In Chandannagar, a row or a swim across the Hooghly, he encountered a third Bengal, a French Bengal. His father, a committed Communist and anti-British activist, had French sympathies—he was a fan of the Vincent van Gogh biopic Lust For Life, which portrayed the Dutch artist’s flowering in Paris—and subtly communicated to the young boy that an art education, to be worthwhile, had to be French.And so it was that at the age of 19, only half-done with his course at the Government College of Art and Craft in what was still Calcutta, Sengupta bought himself a ticket to Paris for Rs2,700, the sale proceeds of his mother’s gold bangles. “I could barely speak English, let alone French,” says Sengupta, his English still thickly accented by Bengali. “But I had a skill in art and I was determined to develop it.”
Though Sengupta went on to join École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, the national school of fine arts, and then studied design at École Supérieure d’Arts Graphiques Penninghen, formal degrees were not his forte. Perpetually short of funds and compelled to send money home, Sengupta took up any work he could find, from sweeping floors to assisting lithographers. “Intelligence or leadership are not qualities you learn in school. Apprenticeship is very important. I was always drawn to writers, advocates, psychologists, performing artistes—that was the way I nurtured myself, how I learnt to converge different elements when it came to branding and design as well.”A considerable part of Sengupta’s success as a brand guru championing a “consumer connect” must be laid at the door of this carefully cultivated understanding of multiple disciplines. “Art was the only way I could earn. Yves Brayer, a famous artist I met at the lithographer’s, encouraged me to consider design communication. So I studied graphic design, applied art, photography, typography. But once in the field, I found I was completely different from everybody. Because of my multiple interests, areas of expertise and a humanist outlook, I made for a grand solutions provider. I can diagnose an ailing business the way a good doctor diagnoses a patient.
“Also, my language was completely different,” Sengupta says. “So, if a chief executive officer came to me and said his product was ‘premium’, I would ask him, what’s premium about a consumer product? Affordability is a different issue but, by labelling yourself ‘premium’, you’re alienating a huge market.” His maverick approach included hanging out at a kirana, or neighbourhood grocery store, to figure out why large cooking-oil containers weren’t selling, and picking up the Britannia tag line Eat Healthy, Think Better from a Kolkata rickshaw-puller. Business magazines lavished pages on him, a colourful, plain-speaking break from the pinstriped politically correct. At its peak, the Shining client list read like the who’s who of the corporate world: Prominent among them were 3M, Dow Chemicals, Carrefour, Intermarché, Corning/Newell, Henkel, Nivea, L’Oréal, Pernod Ricard, Reckitt Benckiser, Galerie Lafayette-Monoprix, Total Petroleum internationally, and Reliance Retail, Madura Garments, Coffee Day, Jindal Steel & Power in India. Of late, Sengupta has consciously cut down consulting engagements to a few select clients, mostly in Europe. But, out of the corner of his eye, he continues to pick up on trends and behaviours in the market. Pet among his peeves are Indian businesses that aim to be conglomerates rather than single-domain enterprises. “I give them 15-20 years, they won’t last beyond that,” he says. “Before the Tatas launched the Nano, I had said it wouldn’t work—and it didn’t. When businesses believe in one thing, they can nurture people, build expertise. I hope the new generation will follow that path. Take Airtel. (Sunil Bharti Mittal) tried a couple of other things but his focus was one. Infosys, too, has focused on one domain. “As for the young people working on start-ups, I always tell them, don’t go for start-ups—shorthand for make money and go away—go for build-ups. All businesses have always been start-ups. All this new language is totally nonsense!”In the second hour of our conversation, we are sitting at a worktable in his sprawling, double-height studio, with its curving walls and natural light. All around us are works old and new: Some acrylic-on-canvas frames from Sengupta’s 2016 Night Spirit series, depicting the owl in various mythologies; a few of the tiled Désordre installation series—first made in 2008—which viewers are invited to scramble like a jigsaw puzzle; multiple large canvases featuring a woman and a horse that gallerist Vickram Sethi places in a metaphysical/sexual lineage dating back to the legend of Lady Godiva. He last showed at the Institute of Contemporary Indian Art, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai, in November; a couple of exhibitions are lined up in Europe later this year. For all the workload, art has always been a mainstay for Sengupta. “Art was the foundation of my work,” he says simply, when I ask him how he juggled the two (he was also a weekly columnist for The Indian Express between 2009-14, and is the author of the Jalebi trilogy, on managing businesses in India). “I don’t sleep for more than 4-5 hours a day. Only between 1978-84 did art take a back seat, because I was setting up Shining. But even then, my sketchbook never left my side.“Around 1994, I realized it was important for an artist to develop his own school of thought. That’s when I came up with the concept of Gesturism, basing it on a professor’s early appreciation of the kinetic energy in my works. My style changed completely after that. But Renee pointed out that my art was too Cartesian (after René Descartes, whose philosophy was the bedrock of continental rationalism), too European. I needed to re-root myself in India to define my identity, unite my French inspiration and sense of structure with the non-dogmatic, indisciplined way India uses colour. A third factor was my examination of the désordre—disorder in the French sense, related to physical objects—in India.”In a life so packed with activity, art and accolades, turning 60 was a milestone. “Renee pushed me to devote more time to art at that juncture,” says Sengupta. “Fine art is pre-civilizational; design is a post-industrialization phenomenon, aiming to satisfy a human need, stated or unstated. Art, on the other hand, is completely individual; it needs no other justification.” As we wind down our conversation, the canvases around us look on. Each of them bears the flamboyant Sen signature: The artist prefers to use a truncated version of the family name for his work. Interestingly, his son from his first marriage, too, shortened his name Saikat to Shoi. As Shoi Sen, marketing man-turned-lead guitarist for British band De Profundis, he opened for Iron Maiden in Bengaluru in 2009. Reinvention, it seems, is a family trait.",2017-04-07,"The maverick founder of Shining Consulting on connecting with the consumer, why he doesn’t believe in start-ups, and seeking reinvention at 63",competitor,18:03,Shombit Sengupta: The art brand +0.46,"Two sets of findings, related to societal trust levels, in a report released last week at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, should be a cause of grave concern to all of us. Part of a study released by communications group Edelman, the survey of more than 33,000 people in 28 countries including India, recorded the largest-ever drop of trust in business, government, the media, and non-government organisations (NGOs).Corporate chief executive officers (CEOs), whose credibility level dropped in each of the countries surveyed, were aggressively targeted with only 37% of people saying they trusted them.The 12-point drop from the previous year is the all-time low since the survey began in 2001. This isn’t the first time the corporate sector has been reminded of declining people’s trust. Last January, Young & Rubicam BrandAsset Valuator revealed that consumers’ trust in well-known brands continues to fall.ALSO READ | What global CEOs are watching for, according to a PwC surveyStrangely, you would think that CEOs reputation for trust would have taken a hit from the work of the media. But that institution didn’t fare too well either with 43% of the respondents expressing trust in the press, down from 48% the year before. So if people’s falling trust in company executives isn’t driven by the reports in traditional media, where is the angst coming from? Perhaps there’s a third force now that might be responsible for generating the ire and that’s the social media, the new watchdog for corporate wrongdoing.Edelman CEO Richard Edelman, speaking at the WE, linked this to the sky-high compensation levels of top CEOs as well as the fact that employees were disappointed their leaders were not helping them deal with automation and the changing business environment. These changes have led to a rash of lay-offs in recent times with companies as diverse as Oracle Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Microsoft Corp. trimming their work forces.ALSO READ | Of founders and CEOsIn India, close on the heels of the controversy last year when several well-funded start-ups rolled back offers made to fresh graduates from engineering schools, comes the news this year of large scale sackings. Just this week, Girnar Software Pvt. Ltd, which runs a series of auto portals including CarDekho and is funded by such heavyweights as CapitalG (formerly Google Capital), Sequoia Capital, Hillhouse Capital and Ratan Tata, announced that it was axing 136 people.Paradoxically, for all the efforts CEOs and top leaders make to build their image, it is the company’s rank and file that is viewed by the public as more trustworthy.Indeed, twice as many respondents would have employees rather than CEOs communicate financial earnings and operational performance.Why is trust important? Business analysts have frequently proved that there is a direct correlation between growth and trust.ALSO READ | Optimism reigns in India as CEOs, consumers look beyond ChinaAmerican behavioural economist and psychiatrist Richard L. Peterson and sports consultant Frank Murtha noted in 2008 after the financial crisis: “Trust is the oil in the engine of capitalism, without it, the engine seizes up. Confidence is like the gasoline, without it the machine won’t move.”Part of the reason for the increasing trust deficit is of course the overall culture of lower deference towards authority figures and institutions. But that isn’t all of it. In 2016, for instance, Volkswagen AG CEO Martin Winterkorn’s resigned following the emissions scandal, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes lost his job following a sexual harassment charge, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch became a public enemy when she trebled prices of life-saving injection EpiPen, and Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf came under fire for refusing to take personal responsibility when his bank was caught creating two million fake accounts. Closer home, Vijay Mallya took employees, shareholders and bankers for a right royal ride before flying to the UK as creditors closed in on him.The resulting trust deficit has had several disastrous consequences. Corporate loyalty is fast going the way of the dinosaur. As employees feel free to change jobs at will, this has led to mounting costs of hiring and training besides a struggle to build team spirit and group dynamics. Externally, there is a lower threshold level of tolerance for any slippage in corporate performance. One quarter of declining numbers and stakeholders start demanding changes either in terms of management or worse still, strategy.Corporate trust deficit is a two-way street. It indicates that employees, customers, and company watchers have problems believing what its top executives say. But equally it also indicates that the company itself is in some kind of trouble.Sundeep Khanna is a consulting editor at Mint and oversees the newsroom’s corporate coverage. The Corporate Outsider will look at current issues and trends in the corporate sector every week.Click here to read more from The Corporate Outsider.",2017-01-25,The resulting trust deficit has had several disastrous consequences ,company,07:48,The consequences of declining trust in CEOs +-0.25,"
Vedanta Resources Plc.’s founder and group chairman Anil Agarwal plans to leverage his association with Anglo American Plc. to persuade the British miner to set up businesses ranging from fertilizer production to diamond mining in India.Vedanta Resources also plans to spend $10 billion over the next three years across its businesses, of which $8 billion is earmarked for Indian operations, Agarwal said in an interview on the sidelines of the Global Natural Resources Conclave organized by Network18 and the Confederation of Indian Industry.In March, Agarwal announced the planned purchase of about 13% of Anglo American’s stock in an investment by his holding company Volcan Investments Ltd, making him the second-largest shareholder in the $26 billion company that counts diamond producer De Beers among its assets. “We are now looking at this work (the stake acquisition) that we have done as strategically being very important for India. We have focused on the fact that it (De Beers) is the largest global producer of diamonds and we (India) are the largest polisher of diamonds. We want all the diamonds to come to India. Secondly, India has enough diamond reserves. We will persuade them to produce diamonds in India,” said Agarwal.“We are a large shareholder in the company and they are also a friend of ours. So, we will speak with them. They are into fertilizers. They are also the largest coal producers. They also produce copper and magnesium. They are also the largest producers of platinum in the world. So, all of that can be done here,” Agarwal added.His plans come in the backdrop of the National Democratic Alliance government working on a new method of auctioning mining leases to match commodity price cycles and investor appetite.Agarwal’s stake purchase in Anglo American came after the company last year spurned his offer to merge part of his mining business.Agarwal didn’t rule out acquiring a controlling stake in the firm, one of the world’s top five mining groups alongside BHP Billiton Plc., Rio Tinto Plc., Vale SA and Glencore Plc. Its key assets include giant copper mines in Chile, iron ore operations in Brazil and South Africa and De Beers.The company is bullish on its capital expenditure plans.“We will invest $10 billion over the next three years. We will spend close to Rs60,000-70,000 crore, of which oil and gas will account for Rs15,000 crore. This will result in an increase in our capacity overall of 40-50%. Around 80% of these investments will be made in India,” Agarwal said.In 2011, Cairn Energy Plc. sold 58.5% of Cairn India Ltd to Vedanta Resources for $8.67 billion. Vedanta Resources has large debt obligations. According to data from S&P Global Ratings, Vedanta has bank loan maturities of $1 billion due in financial year 2018 and $500 million due in financial year 2019. That’s in addition to bond maturities of about $2 billion in financial year 2019. In January, Vedanta raised $1 billion by selling bonds to refinance its near-term debt obligations.In response to a query about how he plans to fund the capital expenditure, Agarwal said: “We have our internal accruals. We have also registered very good profits this year. We will redeploy this profit...We are very confident that we will invest this money. This will help in job creation and increase employment.”Vedanta’s business interests in India include oil and gas, power, iron ore, zinc, copper and aluminium production.",2017-04-06,"Vedanta also plans to spend $10 billion over the next three years across its businesses, of which $8 billion is earmarked for Indian operations, says Anil Agarwal",competitor,01:42,Anil Agarwal plans to bring Anglo American’s business to India +0.49,"Meet the 10 winners of the Mint-MIT Technology Review competition for innovators below the age of 35 from across India in different cutting-edge domains. The winners were selected after a rigorous judging process. The innovators were felicitated on 9 and 10 March at EmTech 2017, the second edition of the emerging technology conference organized in Delhi by Mint and MIT Technology Review.Akash DongreOrganization: Indus OSDesignation: Co-founder and chief product officerInnovation: A multilingual operating system available on over 50 mobile devicesEducation: BTech in mechanical engineering from IIT BombayAkash Dongre—along with co-founders Rakesh Deshmukh and Sudhir Bangarambandi—has always believed that “Indian problems require indigenous solutions”. No wonder their eponymous innovation, touted as the “world’s first regional operating system”, is blazing a trail in the Indian smartphone ecosystem. “In our short journey, beginning in 2015, we have already partnered with five domestic smartphone brands (Micromax, Intex, Karbonn, Celkon and Swipe) and built a user base of more than six million, which is consistently growing at a rate of 500,000 OS activations per month,” says Dongre. Indus OS, which is available in 12 Indian regional languages, boasts innovative features such as Indus Swipe (translation from English to a regional language and vice versa with just a swipe), Indus Keyboard (with built-in word and matra (a unit of metrical quantity in Indian languages) prediction) and Indus Reader (which can convert an English text into audio in eight regional languages). Besides, there’s a marketplace called App Bazaar, where over 50,000 apps are available in local languages.Dongre recalls one of his foreign trips when his lack of understanding of the local language made him feel handicapped: “Everything around me was in a language I did not understand.” Dongre also realized how digitally less connected the Indian heartland is and how alien English is to a lot of Indians. “After spending some more time to understand the Indian digital landscape and brainstorming with my team, we decided to start building an ecosystem for Indian consumers.” The team built Indus OS on three core pillars: simplicity, innovation and localization. “At the heart of our story lies the desire to equip anyone who is using a smartphone with a holistic ecosystem of their choice,” says Dongre.Indus OS, which introduced Indus OS 2.0 in July 2016, will introduce Indus OS 3.0 in 2017. “In 2017, we intend to continue to work with the Government of India and app developers alike to build a smartphone ecosystem of choice for the emerging markets population,” Dongre says.Ankit JhanwarOrganization: Pluss Advanced TechnologiesDesignation: Vice-president, corporate planning and strategyInnovation: A packaging box for vaccine transportation that uses phase change materials and a unique design for precise temperature controlEducation: BTech in polymer science and technology from IIT Roorkee; certificate in entrepreneurship, management and global leadership from London School of Economics and Political ScienceAn optimist by nature, Ankit Jhanwar was not put off by the disinterest displayed by some packaging companies in developing a temperature-controlled shipping solution using phase change materials (PCMs)—a domain in which his company, Pluss Advanced Technologies, had been working since 2005. Such a temperature-controlled solution could prove very useful in cutting down the 30% wastage of vaccines in the existing cold chain system in the country. So what Pluss did was develop a complete shipping solution using its own proprietary PCMs, which could not only provide better temperature control but also address the challenging Indian ambient conditions of 40°C. “A range of products were planned to address the gaps at each leg of the supply chain right from manufacturer to the depot to the distributor to chemist and finally to the patient,” says Jhanwar.The shipping solution that he developed was branded Celsure—which uses the PCM technology to provide precise temperature control. “It is the only shipping solution which provides temperature control for more than 72 hours even at ambient temperature of 40°C,” he says. Thanks to this innovation, all the current pharmaceutical shipments which happen by air can now be done by road using Celsure—something that can lead to huge savings in freight cost, thereby making it possible to lower the prices of medicines.According to Jhanwar, Celsure also addresses the unique challenge of shipping from a hot environment (say, India) to a cold environment (like Europe) or vice versa. What’s more, the solution has brought in simplicity in the packaging, removing human errors. Jhanwar says that it’s available in sizes as small as one vial to as large as 10,000 vials and can provide temperature control for as low as 2 hours to as high as 120 hours. Pluss has a goal of reducing medicine wastage due to ineffective cold chain to as low as 0.1% in the next three-five years. The firm is constantly working on scaling up and commercializing the innovation. Celsure was launched in April 2016 with only one variant; eight more variants have been added within a year. Logistics firms such as Blue Dart and DHL have adopted Celsure as one of their preferred modes of shipping temperature-sensitive pharma products. Successful trials have also been run with various pharmaceutical firms. Besides commercializing it in India, Pluss plans to go global with the launch in Singapore and the Middle East in 2018 and in the US and Europe in 2019. “We are also keen on tie-ups with the government, World Health Organization (WHO), Unicef and other related organizations for last-mile delivery of vaccines. Customized products are being planned to address the last mile challenges,” says Jhanwar. Anusha RammohanOrganization: General Electric Global ResearchDesignation: Lead engineerInnovation: Flow analytics for multi-phase flow metering in oil and gas industryEducation: BE (Hons.) in electronics and instrumentation from BITS-Pilani; MS in electrical engineering from Arizona State University, USAnusha Rammohan believes that the intersection of the digital and physical worlds is the ideal space for disruptive innovations. And that’s exactly what attracted her to the esoteric domain of flow analytics for multi-phase flow metering in the oil and gas industry.As the lead engineer at GE Global Research’s John F Welch Technology Center in Bengaluru, Anusha got the opportunity to combine physical sensors with advanced analytics to develop a solution capable of radically transforming the processes of the entire industry. “As the global energy demand continues to increase, there is an urgent need in the oil and gas industry to be more efficient with resources, people and investments to reduce the cost of producing oil while doing so safely with reduced environmental impact,” says Rammohan. Her innovation addresses this need by combining sensor and device data in the field using intelligent analytics to provide accurate and reliable information in real time about oil production. For instance, she says, timely information about well and field level production of oil, water and gas allows operators to make critical decisions related to optimizing pumps, allocating resources and energy to each well, shutting down or stimulating wells, and preventing leakage and blockage of pipes, etc. By transforming data into actionable insights, her analytics solution enables increased oil recovery, reduced human intervention and improved resource planning.Not merely restricting her innovation to a single industry, the next stop for Anusha is to extend it to applications in industries such as aviation, power and transportation. The applications include performance optimization of assets, health monitoring of safety-critical components and their increased reliability and reduced downtime—all of which can significantly improve productivity and bring down costs. Rammohan has been granted patents related to her work in image mapping, sensor positioning and flow measurement; she has filed for more. She dreams of a world powered by analytics and technologies such as artificial intelligence—one in which “autonomous decision making” would greatly reduce the ambiguity, uncertainty and human subjectivity that are currently proving to be bottlenecks in all industries.
Kshitij Marwah
Organization: Tesseract Imaging
Designation: Founder
Innovation: Virtual reality (VR) camera to create and share high resolution VR/holographic content; holographic augmented reality headset
Education: MTech in computer science from IIT Delhi; MS in media arts and sciences from MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts, US
Kshitij Marwah says virtual reality and augmented reality (VR and AR) are the new mediums for human beings to tell their stories in a much more “experiential and immersive manner”. It marks a natural progression, as he says: “From the spoken word to the written word, from photos to videos—we have always found new ways and tools to tell our stories.”The power of his belief in VR and AR, backed by the rigour of his technical education (never mind that he dropped out of his PhD at MIT Media Lab), led Marwah to his innovations: Quark VR camera and the Holoboard AR viewing headset. Says he, “The Quark VR camera will democratize mixed reality content creation and the Holoboard AR headset will allow for its viewing in a truly immersive and unique manner.”Marwah has a simple way of explaining his innovation. “Imagine the next time when you are watching a cricket match in your house. Rather than sitting in front of your television, with our Quark camera streaming the match live in VR and the Holoboard headset, you can feel as if you are sitting right in the stadium but in the comfort of your couch,” he says.His current company, Tesseract Imaging (in Norse mythology, Tesseract is said to be a cosmic cube of immense power; in geometry, the tesseract is a four-dimensional hypercube), was spun out of MIT Media Lab’s India arm, a unit that Marwah had co-founded to promote and spread inter-disciplinary learning among students in India. He is credited with growing the Lab initiative from a platform of 50 students to 500 students selected from hundreds of thousands of applicants across the country. He headed the India arm of the Lab from 2012 to 2015.Marwah believes that the innovations coming out of Tesseract will revolutionize “the way we capture, consume and see content and media”. On the anvil are plans to begin shipping the Quark VR cameras in mid-2017 and Holoboard AR headsets by the end of the year. “With our technology, we believe we can make sure that our society can capture, share and consume their daily experiences and share stories across generations with an experience that is immersive and powerful.”Nishant KumarOrganization: Embryyo Technologies Pvt. LtdDesignation: Founder and CEOInnovation: Sensor and mobile app-based drug adherence monitoring system for tuberculosisEducation: Dual degree in mechanical engineering from IIT Bombay Nishant Kumar, the founder and chief exec of Embryyo Technologies, a medical technology and research start-up incubated at Pune’s Venture Centre, was troubled by the way tuberculosis (TB) treatment was left midway by a large number of patients in India. There wasn’t an effective way of ensuring patients stayed the course. “This was because the TB medication involves a drug regimen of about 6 months where the patient is required to take a total of about 400 pills,” he says. There are several reasons why treatment is left incomplete, including side effects, forgetfulness, poor counselling and duration of the regimen. The enormity of the problem—as many as 2.5 million people in India were affected by TB in 2015 as per a World Health Organization report—inspired Kumar to do something about it. He visited the local district level hospitals and direct observation treatment (DOT) centres to interact with the clinicians, healthcare workers and patients, which helped him in “collecting more insights” and further strengthened his resolve to address this problem. He says that it demanded an easy-to-use, affordable solution which could fit seamlessly in an already established public health infrastructure in the country. The result was BoxRx, an electronic medical event monitoring system that has currently been piloted for drug adherence monitoring in TB patients. According to Kumar, most people with TB are cured by a strictly followed, six-month drug regimen but any interruption to it can cause drug resistance.That is where the innovation behind BoxRx comes in handy. The solution comprises a specially designed electronic pill box which carries the TB blister pack as prescribed by the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP). A tearable paper with conductive ink tracks printed corresponding to each pill is placed beneath the blister pack before closing the box. Whenever a pill is removed from the blister pack, the conductive track gets broken and this activity is logged and transmitted from an in-built Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) circuit to a central server in the form of an SMS. The server processes the information in the SMS and updates the mobile application of the doctor/health worker assigned to that particular patient.To scale up the innovation, Kumar plans to work very closely with the national and international organizations that are leading the TB control programmes. Also on the cards is large-scale manufacturing and on-field implementation of the innovation so that it reaches the maximum number of patients. Kumar envisions a society that is centred on harmonious and sustainable co-existence. “I believe that good health is the primary signature of prosperity for an individual, a family, a nation and the world at large,” he says.Pankaj AgarwalDesignation: Creative leaderOrganization: Samsung ElectronicsInnovation: A button-type device that connects to toys and a mobile app to enable intuitive interactions for kidsEducation: BTech in electrical engineering from IIT Kanpur; MS from Seoul National University; MBA from Harvard Business SchoolWhenever Pankaj Agarwal saw his son Anant play alone with his toy blocks, a question often nagged him: “Why does he have to play alone? Is there something I can do to make play-at-home social and interactive for him?” He was also inspired to change the status quo when he looked at the many expensive toys gathering dust around his house. Agarwal thought of the millions of middle-class homes that just couldn’t afford all those high-tech toys with pricey tags.So he added a simple and interactive, yet relatively inexpensive, tag of his own: TagPlus. The innovation comprises a button-type smart tag, a smart app (for phones/tablets), and, above all, content created and shared in the cloud by kids as young as 7-year-olds. A key benefit of TagPlus is that it can increase the repeat play value of toys. An important feature of the innovation, says Agarwal, is that there is no set-up required. “No device pairing, no logins, no passwords!” When kids buy toys that have this smart tag, they can start playing on the TagPlus platform immediately after unwrapping it. Kids can “click”, “long press”, “shake” and “bump” their smart tags and the smart app will respond accordingly. A “click” on the smart tag activates the TagPlus app on a nearby digital device to show toy-related content. A “long press” action will bring on a social media interface where kids can easily upload their creations and also see the creations of other kids playing with the same toy. “Think of this as a ‘mini Facebook for kids’,” says Agarwal. A “shake” action on the smart tag will help kids find and connect with children playing with an identical toy who could be anywhere in the world. Also, when kids “bump” two tags from two different toys, the connected app shows multiple ways in which the toys can be combined to create something entirely new. Agarwal and his other TagPlus team members at Samsung believe that this patent-pending technology platform has the potential to make kids’ playing experiences more serendipitous, socially engaging and creative “by seamlessly bridging their virtual and physical play environments”. Agarwal and his colleagues did multiple pilot tests of TagPlus in South Korea and they are also in discussion with many toy makers to adopt the platform. “The response has been very positive,” he says. Agarwal plans to continue his innovative work in the creative domain and believes that “members of our society should be educated and imbibe a culture of creativity”.Prasant MisraDesignation: ScientistOrganization: TCS Research and Innovation, Tata Consultancy Services LtdInnovation: Auditory sensing for micro unmanned aerial vehicles Education: PhD in computer science and engineering from the University of New South Wales, Sydney; postdoctoral fellowship from the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, StockholmPrasant Misra has been focusing his research efforts around building “spatially intelligent systems”. His current work pertains to the auditory sensing technology for micro unmanned aerial vehicles (MUAVs, more popularly known as drones). It’s like “growing the ears” for intelligent things, as he puts it. “It is part of a grand vision to equip this category of flying robots with a sensory gamut that is on par with humans,” he says. This will not only enable such “things” to derive better spatial intelligence, but also drive cognition to a better level of autonomy by combining auditory sensing with vision.There are, however, fundamental challenges in developing such robust auditory capabilities, especially in capturing the spatial dimensions of a sound scene and analysing its acoustic signature. “The signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio is extremely low due to the presence of (near-field) wideband acoustic interference (i.e., self-noise) from the MUAVs’ spinning rotors and motors, which is both strong and non-stationary,” he explains. Theoretically speaking, building an acoustic array with a large number of acoustic elements can overcome such high levels of noise, but the space, payload and energy limitations of an MUAV come in the way of meeting such exhaustive system requirements and computational needs.Misra is now investigating both lightweight acoustic sensing system design, and low-power (but efficient) computation paradigms to overcome this challenge. The initial results, he says, are quite promising.The impact of the work Misra is doing is far-reaching. It will not only force us to rethink the current model of aerial sensing (which is primarily vision dominated), but will also open up newer applications and usage scenarios for the betterment of society. It is now quite common to talk of aerial drones, especially tiny ones with multiple rotors that can hover mid-air, in applications ranging from e-commerce deliveries and inspection of industrial machinery to wildlife monitoring and search-and-rescue operations. Nevertheless, their sensing technology is predominately vision-centric. “While the advantages are clearly obvious in visual inspection and monitoring applications, on the flip side, they become unusable in camera-obstructed or low-light conditions, or in scenarios that offer non-visual clues such as those based on sound. In fact, these conditions are a norm in high-stress environments (dense canopy or fog, structures on fire, underground mines, etc.),” he says.Misra is working towards taking the MUAV technology from its existing level to “cognitive autonomous systems”. He believes that as spatial intelligence and cognitive technology mature, the lines between machines and humans would blur, enabling both to live together in the same society as companions. In the future, cognitive aerial drones will take up roles such as aerial cars and taxis, pick up and escort agents, search and rescue bots, and ears and eyes for the disabled. In short: anything you want them to be.Sandeep Senan Designation: Founder and directorOrganization: Evobi Automations Pvt. Ltd (Bibox Labs)Innovation: A toolkit-based approach to learning so that kids can learn through experiments by making things like a robotic toy or a fire alarmEducation: BE in computer science from Visvesvaraya Technological University, Karnataka; MBA in international business from Edith Cowan University, AustraliaWhen it comes to innovation and creativity, Sandeep Senan is as excited as the young kids he wants to empower with the innovative tools at his disposal. His innovation, Bibox (short for Brain-in-a-box), is like an “electronic brain which can be instructed by a kid using a graphical software, which can run on a tablet or smartphone or PC or even with cards”, he says. Senan is of the view that the realm of innovation must be extended to children rather than remain mostly confined to the adult world. There’s a need for a huge change in the way children are taught and allowed to be creative, he feels.“The task of making adults creative is a humongous task, but if we think about kids, they are naturally curious and thus it’s easy to instill an innovative thinking process in them,” says Senan. So when he discovered that there was a lack of tools and curricula designed for instilling the habit of innovation in kids, he decided to do something about it.“The innovation Bibox was originated out of that need to give kids the tools to change the world and thus the confidence to keep innovating and make it a habit so that when they become adults, they can go out and make large-scale impact because the thinking is ingrained into their minds,” he says.Bibox doesn’t have a definite shape or size but is basically a set of tools—processors, switches, sensors, battery and software, among others—using which children in different age groups can try their hand at innovation. This “brain”, says Senan, can be connected to a variety of accessories, including toys, lights and TV sets, and children can come up with stuff like walking robotic dogs, automatic TV and even connected health products using the Internet of Things.“Because Bibox responds to kids’ logic in the physical world, they can see what the logic means and correct themselves when required—making the learning experience truly experiential,” he says. Besides providing them such toolkits, Senan’s organization also provides them some structured mentoring to enable them to use their creative freedom and confidence to innovate more and more in any field they choose to be in. “We are just getting the process started a little early,” he says. Through Bibox Labs, he has enrolled more than 25,000 students in over 100 schools in India.To take his innovative ways to a much larger base of students, Senan and his team are digitizing the process of mentoring the kids to be innovators. Once this is in place, he says, any student anywhere in the world would be able to go through the same process that Bibox Labs follows in its affiliate schools. They also plan to partner with private firms, non-governmental organizations and various government bodies to scale up the programme.Subham Banerjee Designation: Young scientistOrganization: Centre for Biodesign and Diagnostic, Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, department of biotechnologyInnovation: Transdermal patch against neurotoxin poisoningEducation: Master of pharmacy from West Bengal University of Technology; PhD in pharmacy from Birla Institute of Technology, MesraSoldiers fighting in hostile territories often have to shield themselves against harmful or poisonous gases and chemical substances. One often hears of deadly strikes such as the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system (1995), the nerve gas attack in Syria (2013) or the recent attack in Iraq by Islamic State militants in which they set fire to a sulphur mine, spreading sulphur dioxide plumes.Subham Banerjee’s innovation concerns protecting people against neurotoxic poisoning resulting from such attacks. “The exposure of humans to neurotoxins is a major risk factor in severe mortality in chemical or biological warfare situations, as neurotoxins are one of the most potent toxins,” he says. His innovation, a transdermal patch that can provide protection against neurotoxin poisoning, comprises an inert adhesive matrix system with active pharmaceutical ingredients. The patch can be applied to intact or even burnt or blistered skin. It works by releasing a combination drug (eserine and pralidoxime chloride) through the skin in what is called a “controlled or sustained release” mechanism.According to Banerjee, the new patch has “an excellent safety profile”, can be “self-administered”, and has positive environmental as well as economic impact. “Apart from conventional dosage forms, no novel sustained release prophylactic transdermal patches are currently available in the market,” he says. Which is why this innovation has huge socio-economic benefits and the potential to achieve product dominance in the market.In order to sustain this project and take it to the next level of successful commercialization, however, Banerjee says that some studies have to be carried out. For one, process parameters have to be optimized to scale up the capability of manufacturing these patches in bulk quantities. Also, a preclinical toxicity study in rodents needs to be done, followed by a full-fledged pilot for the bioavailability study in human subjects as per the guidelines of the Drug Controller General of India.Banerjee believes that this innovation has the potential to make an “extra value-addition” to the existing measures for biological warfare protection available with India’s Armed Forces.Vinay Kumar Designation: Co-founder, director and CEOOrganization: PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. LtdInnovation: A single device that can diagnose multiple parameters related to diabetes managementEducation: MTech in microelectronics and VLSI design and MSc in electronic science from Kurukshetra University; PhD from Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science BangaloreAt age 14, when Vinay Kumar was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, his doctor told him he would have to take insulin injections. The look of disappointment on his face prompted the physician to lie that it was only for 10 days that injections were needed. Later on, when Kumar realized that he was stuck with the needle for a lifetime, he became determined to put the hurt and discomfort behind and do something about it. Over the years, diabetes took a bigger and bigger toll on his body, with episodes of hypoglycemia (abnormally low level of sugar in the blood) and even fainting—but all this only strengthened his resolve.In addition to struggling with a debilitating condition like millions in the world do, Kumar constantly thought about how a diabetic can manage his condition better and, at the same time, persisted with his studies. “These two aspects of my life merged when I decided to pursue a PhD at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc Bangalore),” he says. Besides working on novel ways to diagnose diseases and acquiring multiple patents, he also co-founded (along with Navakanta Bhat and Gautam Sharma) PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. Ltd, a start-up incubated at IISc that is focused on medical device research and development.Kumar’s innovation is a hand-held point-of-care device which, as a single unit, can measure eight different parameters related to diabetes management and early detection of its complications. “With a tiny drop of finger-pricked blood samples, patients can test HbA1c (which gives 90 days blood glucose control profile), glycated albumin (which gives 15 days blood glucose control profile) and instant blood glucose as well,” he says. The device can detect very early damage in the kidney by measuring the microalbuminuria, creatinine and ACR (albumin to creatinine ratio) in the urine samples. Apart from these, he adds, it can measure the haemoglobin level for anaemia and chronic kidney disease. “The device can measure serum albumin, an important blood marker for kidney and liver. So the single device can take care of full diabetes glycaemic management and early detection of complications such as diabetic nephropathy,” explains Kumar.The road ahead for PathShodh is well-defined. “The device is ready and regress clinical validation for most of the tests has been completed on real patient samples in collaboration with major pathology labs and hospitals in Bangalore. We also have the manufacturing line setup at IISc to manufacture the disposable test strips for these different tests,” says Kumar. The commercial launch of the device can happen any time now. That would certainly move the needle in a positive direction for PathShodh’s mission of making healthcare diagnostics affordable and available to all.",2017-03-31,Meet the 10 winners of the Mint-MIT Technology Review competition for innovators below the age of 35 from across India in different cutting-edge domains,company,17:26,EmTech 2017: Innovators under 35 +-0.43,"Charlottesville,US: To transform India’s economy, there is a need to reduce “friction” in businesses and create an “environment” wherein the government has more trust in its entrepreneurs, Infosys founder N. R. Narayana Murthy has said. For the transformation of the Indian economy, he said it is essential for the younger generation to be daring and that India is integrated with the global economy. “We still have a little bit of work in reducing friction to businesses. We need to create an environment where the government has more trust in its entrepreneurs than it is today,” Murthy, 70, told students of the prestigious Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia here. Murthy, the recipient of the 2017 Thomas Jefferson Foundation medal in Global Innovation, was responding to Darden School of Business Dean Scott Beardsley who asked, “what do you think needs to happen next to transform India’s economy. What is next”. Also read: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“We want our youngsters to be a little bit more daring in taking the entrepreneurial route more and more than the extent to which they do today. We have to become much more integrated to the world economy so that we can consider the entire world as our market and can become globally competitive. “And most importantly we can become much more open minded to learn from the wonderful things that are happening in this country and elsewhere. I would say these are required (for transforming India’s economy to the next level),” Murthy said. He, however, refrained from elaborating what the Indian government needs to do to create the environment of trust in its entrepreneurs and said, “I will tell you why, as an Indian citizen, it may not be proper if I were to be critical about India when I am outside India”. Interacting with students, he said, challenges for entrepreneurs are now different than the time when he started Infosys. Those days access to capital was almost non-existent and government was a big irritant. “Today, challenges are different. But in some sense even more complex, because today’s entrepreneurs have to be much more smarter than what we were because there is so much of competition on a global scale. Before you can say this can be done, somebody else may have already done it.” “Therefore, today’s entrepreneurs would have to be much more nimble, global, competitive because market is truly determinant for success today unlike our time when managing government was a big determinant in India,” he said. Murthy said good governance is all about maximising shareholders’ value while ensuring fairness, transparency and accountability to all stake holders. Of all the stakeholders, society is the most important player. “Respect from the society is the most important ingredient for longevity of a corporation,” he said. “To be honoured by the most innovative country in the world and to be awarded a medal in the name of Thomas Jefferson, author of Declaration of Independence is to me a big honour. I will certainly work hard, and hopefully smart in the remaining years of my life, to deserve this kindness, this generosity and this affection on their part,” he told PTI. The fact that the university has seen it fit to pick up somebody from India, and bestow this honour shows how open this country is and how generous they are, Murthy said. “Therefore this is a clear example of how Indian students wherever they are whether in India or here or anywhere else can be sure that as long as they are good citizens of this world, contribute to make the society a better place through peaceful and harmonious methods, they will be recognised, appreciated,” he said. Murthy said that Indian students are making a positive impact in the countries they are studying. “I have not come across a single person of Indian-origin who has conducted himself or herself in a manner that has brought sorrow to the society they are living in, anywhere, wherever in the world. So I think that is the right way. “I am very very proud of our Indian students. They are smart, have very good values and are very peaceful. They contribute to the society in a very significant way wherever they are. I just want them to continue to do this,” the Infosys founder said. The one important principle that Indian students should remember in everything they do is will this make India a more respected place, a more respected nation? Will this action of mine make me a better part of this community? Will this action deserve appreciation and affection from other members in this community? If they remember these then they will do everything possible, Murthy said. PTI",2017-04-13,Infosys founder Narayana Murthy says the younger generation needs to be daring in taking the entrepreneurial route for transformation of the Indian economy,competitor,14:26,Narayana Murthy says need to reduce ‘friction’ in businesses in India +-0.44,"Bengaluru: For Vishal Sikka, 2016-17 stands as a rebuke.After three consecutive downward growth revisions, Infosys’s dollar revenue growth in the year ended 31 March 2017 will be at best 7.6%, 150 basis points (bps) lower than the 9.1% growth in 2015-16, and 620 bps short of its first projected 13.8% growth outlined in April last year. One bps is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Departure of four executive vice-presidents (EVP) in financial year 2017 (in addition to four EVP exits between August 2014 and March 2016) implies that Sikka continues to struggle to build a stable top leadership team. Further, Infosys continues to look away from acquisitions (it’s been 18 months since the company made its last acquisition), which makes one wonder what Houdini trick the management has to achieve its target of becoming a $20 billion firm by March 2021.Also read: Will corporate earnings disappoint once again?Finally, Infosys founder N.R.Narayana Murthy’s outburst, twice in public, against some of the decisions by the board is another painful blow to Sikka. Agreed, Murthy has not questioned Sikka directly. But few of these decisions, including agreeing to a generous severance money to its former CFO (chief financial officer), and giving a hike to the current COO (chief operating officer), were approved by the management, and so it is naive to conclude that all is okay between Sikka and Murthy.Understandably, these developments have unnerved shareholders: in full fiscal year 2017, Infosys shares declined 16.2%, more than the 9% fall by BSE IT index, even as the benchmark Sensex index returned 17% gains. For these reasons, business historians would take note of the fall in Sikka’s popularity: from being hailed as a hero in the first 18 months, Sikka now battles allegations of skulduggery and corporate greed.So what can Sikka—and Infosys—do to possibly break this impasse?First, get back growth and improve its execution. A related second measure is to get some growth from three divisions: Infosys BPO, EdgeVerve, the products and platforms unit (together bring about 13% of revenue), and Infosys Consulting. Infosys needs to improve its ability to sell more solutions from these three services to its clients. Lastly, Sikka needs to arrest senior management departures and build a stable leadership team. All this needs to be done swiftly, and once completed, hopefully, any corporate governance concerns of shareholders (including the founders) should be assuaged. It is important to note here that the displeasure expressed by some of the founders against the board only coincided with the period when Infosys’s growth started slipping (during the first quarter of last year).Significantly, Sikka’s $8 million performance-related pay as part of his $11 million compensation is a thorny issue, and how the board justifies this variable salary to its CEO on Thursday will dictate if there is a third instance of public spat between Murthy and the board. Is all this doable? Unlikely.Simply, because for IT services firms, chasing reclusive growth is more challenging than ever. Moreover, in case of Infosys, nothing short of a miracle can bring back peace between some of the founders and the board and management. With this as a backdrop, Mint puts the spotlight on five things to watch in Infosys’s fourth quarter earnings on Thursday:Revenue forecast: Brokerage firm BNP Paribas sees Infosys recording 1.3% sequential increase in revenue at $2.58 billion for the January-March period. The Infosys management will be mindful that this growth will be 30 basis points less than what the company did in January-March last year. Analysts term the growth in the fourth quarter as “exit rate” and a strong growth helps to start on a good note in the new financial year. Again, management commentary for the April-June period will be crucial.Will Infosys give full-year guidance? For Infosys, providing a growth outlook is one decision which appears to be going down the wire. Analysts believe the management will give a growth outlook. Based on conversations with executives familiar with the development, this paper thinks otherwise and Infosys may discontinue from this practice. The board will eventually take a call when it meets on 12 and 13 April but this decision will decide the road ahead for the Infosys stock. Performance of top customers: During the second and third quarters, Infosys’s largest client and top five and top 10 clients gave less business to the company. Until the June quarter of last year, Sikka did well to get more business from its largest clients. Since Infosys gets a fifth of total revenue from its top 10 clients, the management needs to reverse this decline if Infosys expects to record sustainable growth. A rain-check on Infosys’s new initiatives in the wake of President Trump’s strict visa laws: Over the last 33 months, Sikka has steered Infosys to embrace newer ways to do business, such as by bringing elements of user-centric method of Design Thinking. At the same time, Infosys has increased its focus on building platforms, in an effort to move away from people-led model of doing business. All these measures will be tested as US President Donald Trump works to have a strict policy in place which makes it arduous for outsourcing companies to bring engineers in the US. Hence, commentary on how Infosys is monetising its platforms business and impact of changes in visa will be eyed.Weak areas: Sikka has been unable to get respectable growth from EdgeVerve and Infosys BPO in his near three-year stint at Infosys. Another disappointment has been that the consulting division too ran into trouble in April last year. Infosys has put in a new leadership team at all three units over the last year, and management commentary on how soon it expects growth from these three units should decide the overall growth for the company.",2017-04-13,"Infosys founders spat, Donald Trump’s US visa policy and three consecutive downward growth revisions are likely to weigh in on the Q4 results to be declared today",competitor,05:04,Infosys results today: Five things to watch out for +0.15,"San Francisco: Personal computer shipments notched their first quarterly growth in five years, researcher IDC said, though the gain of less than 1% from a year earlier underscored persistent weakness in demand, especially from consumers.Shipments totalled 60.3 million units in the first three months of the year, compared with 59.9 million in the same period a year earlier, IDC said Tuesday in a statement. It marked the first increase since the first quarter of 2012, IDC said.Gartner Inc., another major tracker of PCs, reported a decline of 2.4% for first-quarter global shipments. Both research companies said the business market for PCs had improved though not enough to offset a decline in consumer customers.Sales of desktop and laptop computers have been in decline as consumer demand shifted to smartphones and tablets for easily checking email or the internet on the go. Now the industry is counting on more interest in its machines from businesses and consumers wanting to replace aging hardware with sleeker and more powerful products that feature upgraded software. IDC and Gartner use their own methods for counting shipments in these reports, which are preliminary. Gartner, for example, includes desktops, notebooks and related devices such as Microsoft Corporation’s Surface, but not Google’s Chromebook. IDC includes Chromebooks, but not the Surface in this report, according to Jay Chou, research manager at IDC.The major brands in the industry all posted market share gains. HP retook the top spot with 22% in the first quarter, up from 19% a year earlier, IDC said. China-based Lenovo Group Ltd. posted a smaller uptick to 20.4% and Dell Technologies had 16%. Apple rose to 7% from 6.7%.Gartner puts Lenovo at number 1 with HP at number 2. Dell grabbed the number 3 spot, while Apple was number 5.Prices are climbing as key memory components get more expensive amid a shortage in the industry, according to Mikako Kitagawa, an analyst at Gartner. This doesn’t bode well for PC makers.“The price hike will suppress PC demand even further in the consumer market, discouraging buyers away from PC purchases unless it is absolutely necessary,” Kitagawa said in the statement. “The price hike started affecting the market in 1Q17.”In the US, Gartner said shipments fell 2.4%, with consumer demand dragging down sales. HP was number 1 in the US market, while Dell was number 2. Apple was number 4. Bloomberg",2017-04-12,"Personal computer shipments totalled 60.3 million units in the first three months of the year, compared with 59.9 million in the same period a year earlier, says IDC report",competitor,16:37,PC shipments rise slightly in struggling market: IDC report +-0.53,"Hyderabad: The tightening of H1B work visa rules in the US would be advantageous to Indian IT firms as they would shift more work offshore and also be in a position to improve their billing rate, says industry veteran T.V. Mohandas Pai. The present business model of Indian IT companies—offshore-onsite work ratio of 70:30 would now go up to 90:10, the former chief financial officer of Infosys said. “So, what will happen is they (Indian IT firms) will offshore more work and increase their competitiveness. They will do only 10% work onsite, and 90% offshore,” Pai told PTI. “It can be done very easily for 70-80% of the business. It will improve their competitiveness and make them better,” he said. “The new H1B regulations are very good for Indian IT, and bad for companies which try to use it for cheap labour. First of all, Indian IT is not cheap because what they bill to clients is $125,000 to $150,000 per year (for an onsite employee),” he said. “The average pay is around $80,000-85,000 per year. They are unnecessarily getting a bad name, because some fly-by-night operators are trying to do body-shopping and spoil the name of the entire (Indian IT) industry,” he said. The new regulations would play to the strength Indian IT companies because they have been reducing the number of H1B visas they collected since 2014, he said. “So, they are already getting prepared. It will increase the billing because it will create artificial scarcity in America, and allow Indian companies to bill more for work because there are not enough Americans to fill the positions that are needed,” said Pai, who is chairman of Manipal Global Education Services and Aarin Capital. “It’s a blessing in disguise, I don’t think they need to be scared or anything,” he said. As for possible downsides on the visa front, Pai said there would be some uncertainties for the next six months “because nobody knows what they (US Labour department) are going to do and how they are going to behave and all that.” “Uncertainty is because the US Labour Department is threatening more inspections. They will find out the number of applications (by Indian IT firms for H1B visas) have come down and they should be happy,” Pai said. On what Indian IT companies should now do following the tightening of H1B visa regulations, he said, “Increase offshoring, increase automation and drive up billing rates. It will be to their advantage.”",2017-04-12,"The tightening of H1B work visa rules in the US will shift more work offshore, says industry veteran Mohandas Pai",competitor,15:27,"Tightening visa norms a blessing in disguise for IT firms, says Mohandas Pai" +1.0,"
New Delhi: Sunil Munjal, who separated from his brothers in 2016 to carve an independent identity, has formed a new group company called Hero Enterprise that has started selling life and health insurance policies and plans to venture into aerospace parts. Hero Enterprise will, however, continue to focus on its existing real estate and steel businesses even as the group holding company consolidates its businesses and exit smaller ones such as Hero BPO.Sunil Munjal already sold motor insurance for Hero MotoCorp Ltd while he was still a part of the Pawan Munjal-led Hero Group. In an interview on Thursday, Sunil Munjal said that his insurance distribution firm, Ensure Plus, is also into non-motor insurance such as assets, buildings and aircraft. It has also started selling life insurance and health insurance policies. For life insurance, the company has a partnership with ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Ltd, while for general insurance, it has tied up with National Insurance and Tata AIG. “We are the largest distributor of insurance in India... probably in the world. We wrote 10 million policies last year. Nobody does even half of it,” Munjal said.“Distribution is where the margin is. For us, to step back and put up an insurance company is nothing... It takes around Rs100 crore to get a licence. We have looked at that a few times but distribution is where the main margin is and relationships are. That’s where market connect is and we are very good at it,” he said. Hero FinCorp Ltd, a two-wheeler financing company run by Sunil Munjal’s nephew Abhimanyu, also plans to get into insurance distribution and that means a larger chunk of Sunil Munjal’s motor insurance business that used to come from Hero MotoCorp will get affected.“They will compete like any other entity. Within our group, we always had this system. We could buy and sell from our companies as well as outside. So, that ensures that everybody maintains quality and you are buying because of merit and not because it is your company,” he added.Sunil Munjal, 56, stepped down as joint managing director of Hero MotoCorp Ltd, India’s largest motorcycle maker, in July 2016. By exiting Hero MotoCorp, he raised around Rs3,500 crore.Sunil Munjal’s businesses were a small part of the $6 billion Hero group founded by Brijmohan Lall Munjal, the family patriarch who died in 2015 at the age of 92. He had five strategic businesses: insurance distribution, Hero Realty Ltd, Hero Management Service Pvt. Ltd, Ludhiana-based Hero Steels Ltd and Hero Mindmine Institute Pvt. Ltd.Munjal has hired P.N. Gupta, a former executive from Tata Group’s TAL Manufacturing Solutions, to enter the aerospace parts manufacturing. A person aware of Munjal’s plans in the defence sector said that he is scouting for manufacturing sites for composites.“Talks are still at an exploratory stage,” the person said on condition of anonymity.Munjal said that new business initiatives are not an area of “public conversation” and declined to comment specifically on his diversification.“I have never said yes or no. I would say it is a difficult area but high potential area because India is the largest known importer, in terms of reported numbers, of defence equipment in the world,” he said. “In today’s time, there is no reason for India to be (an import-dependent country). You have every capability and potential to build that capability (to manufacture) here in India,” he added.With 60% of India’s defence requirements met through imports, local defence production has emerged at the heart of the Narendra Modi government’s ‘Make In India’ programme. Under Hero Realty, Munjal has completed one project in Haridwar and a couple of others are under construction in Ludhiana and Mohali. “We have just closed a transaction in Gurgaon,” Munjal said.“We are targeting middle India—middle income, middle class, lower middle class, small town, mid-sized cities, tier III, tier IV cities, and we are trying to see if we can help improve people’s standard of living itself. So, the model is based in the price range between Rs20-Rs80 lakh and the bulk of it will be between Rs30-65 lakh,” he said.We are hoping to provide attributes, functionality of the apartments that one buys for Rs10-20 crore, he added.Munjal added that he is looking to exit smaller businesses such as Hero BPO.“We won’t keep any small business. We don’t want to be in any of the small businesses,” he added.In a separate development, Hero Enterprises’ chairman Sunil Kant Munjal has invested about Rs 100 crore in impact investment firm Aavishkaar Venture Management Services’ new fund ‘Aavishkaar Bharat Fund’, according to a statement on Thursday.Aavishkaar Venture Management is aiming to raise Rs 2,000 crore for a fund that will invest in businesses that are working with the underserved population in sectors such as agriculture, financial services, healthcare, waste and sanitation, renewable energy and logistics and supply chain.",2017-04-21,Sunil Munjal’s Hero Enterprise has tied up with ICICI Prudential Life for life insurance and National Insurance and Tata AIG for general insurance,company,02:49,"Sunil Munjal’s Hero Enterprise to focus on insurance, aerospace manufacturing" +-0.13,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",competitor,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +-0.35,"Bengaluru: It’s hard to overstate the importance of the technology industry to India. Over the past three decades, the IT sector has helped drive the country’s economic growth, employed millions and made billionaires out of at least seven founders.Now the industry is at risk from US President Donald Trump’s policies. The administration is promising a clampdown on the work visas India’s tech services companies use to service American customers. In the days since the US government took first steps toward H1B visa reform, all of India’s high-profile technology tycoons have seen their net worth eroded.Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd and India’s fifth-richest man, and Shiv Nadar, the sixth-richest person in the country and chairman of HCL Technologies, have seen their shares slide. Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani and three other founders of Infosys Ltd, all among the top 100 of India’s richest billionaires, have taken a hit too. IT stocks have dropped about 3% over that stretch, while the benchmark index has climbed 0.6%.Also read: In Donald Trump’s H-1B visa crackdown, Indian students weigh Canada, Ireland“Whether these changes are a precursor for more radical measures is what is worrying companies,” said DD Mishra, a Pune-based research director at Gartner.Infosys, which reports earnings 13 April, may have the most at stake. The Bengaluru-based company is most vulnerable to US visa reforms because it has the lowest percentage of local hires in the US, Goldman Sachs analysts Sumeet Jain and Saurabh Thadani said in a research note last week. HCL and Wipro also have risks from visa reforms but they hire relatively more Americans, the analysts wrote.Infosys kicks off earnings season for the industry this week, giving investors a chance to get more insight into the challenges and corporate strategies for addressing them. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, the market leader, is scheduled to report results next week.The debate has been over the H1B visa program, which allows companies to bring 85,000 workers into the US from overseas each year. On 31 March, just as companies prepared to file applications for next year’s allotment, the Trump administration rolled out a series of policy measures making it harder for firms to use the program for computer programmers and announced measures to fight what it called “fraud and abuse.” In parallel, the Justice Department warned employers applying for visas not to discriminate against US workers. All of this was in line with promises made during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to overhaul the program he described as bringing cheap overseas labour at the cost of American jobs and salaries.From India, those promises look like threats to the economy. Information technology is the largest employer in the private sector, providing a livelihood to nearly 4 million, and contributes about 9% of gross domestic product. India’s software and services exports total about $110 billion, with nearly two thirds of that revenue coming from the US.Visa uncertainty could wreak havoc with planning and jeopardize profits in the industry. It may also raise risks for customers that depend on such services, from Wall Street banks to retailers and airlines. “Difficulties in getting visas or rising salaries of H-1B employees will have a material impact on companies,” said Rostow Ravanan, chief executive officer of Mindtree Ltd, a Bangalore-based outsourcer that uses hundreds of H-1B visas every year.Several countries around the world are adopting or considering similar policies. That poses a threat to the business model perfected by Indian companies, Ravanan said. “These trends are dangerous because the IT industry and its talent serve the entire world,” he said.Leading outsourcers including Infosys, Tata Consultancy, Wipro and HCL Technologies declined to comment on the visa issue.Companies have been working on contingency plans. If foreign workers cannot go to the US, it will become more expensive to hire local staff. Companies may also try to do more work for American clients from abroad, including India.Nitin Rakesh, chief executive officer of tech services provider Mphasis Ltd is optimistic. He said the industry has gone through four or five reincarnations since the outsourcing business began. A Trump crackdown may lead to more innovation in the model.“Through leveraging all the possible technology, including mobility and cloud, the growth opportunities are immense,” said Rakesh, warning however that some companies will adapt and others may not. “Growth will not be homogeneous.” Bloomberg",2017-04-12,"US President Donald Trump’s H1B visa reform policies have eroded the net worth of India’s high-profile technology tycoons, including Azim Premji ",both,14:28,"H1B visa reform hits tech billionaires, from Azim Premji to Shiv Nadar" +-0.57,"
Mumbai: Edelweiss Global Asset and Wealth Management has raised $350 million for the final close of its second credit-focused fund, Edelweiss Special Opportunities Fund (ESOF) II, said a senior executive of the firm.“After successfully returning capital to investors in the first credit-focused fund, Edelweiss Special Opportunities Fund, Edelweiss has subsequently raised its second version, ESOF II. As of 31 March 2017, the firm has closed the fund at $350 million,” Nitin Jain, chief executive-global asset and wealth management, Edelweiss, said in an interview.The fund achieved a first close of $205 million in June 2015.ESOF II, which invests in privately negotiated collateralized credit transactions, has raised funds from several institutional investors including public pensions and insurance companies. ESOF I had raised $230 million.Edelweiss’s second credit fund comes at a time when a host of other firms in the alternative investment space are in the market to raise credit-focused funds. These include the likes of Reliance AIF Asset Management Co. Ltd, Avendus Capital and private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Lp and Baring Private Equity Asia.Credit products in the alternative investment space are seeing a sharp increase as investors hunt for higher yields in a lower interest rate environment, said Jain.“Increasingly, you are seeing that fixed income yields are becoming low. So, then, there is a hunt for yield. People want a higher yield, but a fixed income nature product. So a lot of interesting, absolute return products are getting traction in the market, which are alternate in nature—they can be credit funds or they can be hedge funds,” said Jain.People want double-digit returns and low volatility, so a lot of products are being created to deliver yields between 10-14% using credit, he added.The hunt for higher yields has also made other products such as public sector bank perpetual bonds or AT1 bonds (additional tier 1 bonds) attractive to investors, said Jain.“Perpetuals have become attractive and the need for higher yield is again driving that trend. Public sector banks are giving you a yield of anywhere between 9% and 10.5%. When you go to fixed deposits, you’re getting only 7-7.5%. While they have a slightly different risk profile, people are getting very comfortable with them,” said Jain.Led by Jain, the Edelweiss asset and wealth management business today manages assets worth Rs1.2 trillion, with over Rs60,000 crore worth of assets on the domestic wealth management side and the rest coming from the institutional asset management business.Edelweiss’s wealth management business caters to individuals across three categories—mass affluent, high net-worth individuals (HNI), and ultra HNI and family offices. The asset management business includes funds which invest in credit strategies across asset classes such as real estate, performing credit and distressed credit (including the Edelweiss asset reconstruction business) as well as public market funds. The firm’s wealth management business, which was set up in 2010, has witnessed a growth of almost 70-80% in the last two years, said Jain.Edelweiss is targeting a corpus of Rs1 trillion for its wealth management business, which it hopes to achieve in the next two years, he said. “For growing the wealth management business, we are tapping new generation entrepreneurs, family offices and employees in progressive organizations in sectors such as IT services and financial services,” said Jain.In order to achieve its planned growth, Edelweiss is also investing heavily in technology.“Technology is playing a very important role now. Clients want to access information, flow of information, practically on a real-time basis. Earlier it was acceptable if you told people the health of their portfolio once a quarter. Now, there are clients who want to track it on a minute by minute basis,” he said.The firm has embarked on a five-year digital transformation drive and has partnered with IT consulting and services firm IBM to help drive the transformation, said Jain.Edelweiss’s digital transformation drive is focused on increasing the productivity of its advisory team, while helping control costs to improve both the revenue and profit of the business. Edelweiss’s wealth management business employs around 1,300 people.",2017-04-14,Edelweiss Special Opportunities Fund II comes at a time when a host of other firms in the alternative investment space are in the market to raise credit-focused funds,competitor,04:47,Edelweiss raises $350 million for credit-focused fund +0.21,"Bengaluru:Rajiv Bansal, former CFO of Infosys, has dragged his former employer to arbitration to claim the remaining Rs12 crore of his severance pay. Infosys had agreed to pay Bansal a severance amount of Rs17.38 crore or 24 months of salary, but the company suspended payments after he got Rs5 crore as co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy and others objected to the severance package as excessive. According to sources, Bansal has invoked his rights to an arbitral tribunal and a meeting is scheduled next month. This has opened another battle front for Infosys, which is already fighting visa clampdown by US President Donald Trump and global headwinds. When contacted, Bansal declined to comment. “The company has already clarified on the severance package for the former CFO Rajiv Bansal through a detailed statement. We do not have anything additional to add at this point,” Infosys said in an e-mailed response. Bansal’s severance payout has been one of the issues that Infosys founders had raised to allege governance lapses at the Bengaluru-based firm. When Bansal left Infosys in 2015, Infosys had agreed to pay him Rs17.38 crore in severance pay, equalling 24 months of pay. In February, Infosys chairman R. Seshasayee had clarified that of the agreed amount, only Rs5 crore have been paid so far and that the remaining was withheld pending clarifications on the terms of the severance contract. He had also admitted that the “judgement” could have differed if circumstances were different or if certain processes had been in place. Murthy had raised concerns about the hefty amount and questioned if the same was “hush money”.",2017-04-20,"Former Infosys CFO Rajiv Bansal asks for arbitration for settlement of his Rs17.38 crore severance pay, which hadn’t gone down well with Infosys founders",competitor,21:36,Infosys ex-CFO Rajiv Bansal seeks arbitration for severance pay: report +-0.57,"Big plans are afoot for India’s sprawling hydrocarbons industry. Finance minister Arun Jaitley says the government aims to create an “integrated public sector oil major” to match the might of the international oil and gas giants. The big question is how that plan will unfold. Details are beginning to emerge.What’s the logic?The government owns majority stakes in eight major listed oil and gas firms. Combining some or all would create a bigger corporation with clout to negotiate better deals, for instance, on crude oil purchases. India imports some 80% of its crude needs. A merged business would also be less vulnerable to the vagaries of oil prices, say, by combining producers (which benefit from higher prices) with refiners (which get a boost from lower prices).Just how big are those eight state-owned companies?Their combined market value is almost $109 billion. If folded into one company, that would rank seventh globally among oil and gas majors. (Exxon Mobil is No. 1 at $345 billion). Such an entity would outstrip India’s private oil giant, Reliance Industries, whose market value is $71 billion. Six smaller unlisted joint-venture oil and gas companies may also come into play.What do we know about the government’s plan?Not much, in terms of detail. In August, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said his ministry was open to discussing a merger to create a larger, stronger national oil company and that the government was figuring out the appropriate model for the combination. Jaitley then spoke in mostly general terms during his 2 February budget speech, about strengthening public-sector enterprises through consolidation, mergers and acquisitions.Where are we now?According to the Economic Times, the oil ministry, which administers the industry and works independently of the finance ministry, held a meeting in March with the state-run oil companies and asked them to produce a road map for integration. So far, that road map appears to entail Oil & Natural Gas Corp. purchasing the government’s stake in either Hindustan Petroleum Corp., worth $4 billion, or Bharat Petroleum Corp., worth $7.7 billion.How would that work?Surprisingly simply. ONGC could just buy shares from the government and keep the refiner as a separate subsidiary, obviating the need for an official merger. ONGC already has a refining subsidiary -- adding HPCL or BPCL would create the nation’s third-largest refiner. India would receive vital funds for reducing the country’s fiscal deficit, but the move would imperil Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s goal of cutting crude imports, since ONGC might need to divert spending from its exploration investments aimed at boosting oil and gas output.Is there a precedent?The government attempted something similar at least once in the oil sector, during the mid-2000s. Those efforts unraveled through opposition from some of the companies and employees. The newly proposed mergers deals would also need to surmount the enormous challenge of absorbing refiners with networks across 29 states, thousands of employees and unique work cultures.What about beyond the energy world?Air India has remained unprofitable since its 2007 merger with Indian Airlines, though it managed to reduce losses this year. The government has struggled to integrate the carriers, failed to achieve the expected synergies and faced labour issues. What does the market think?Shares of all but one of the five largest state oil companies fell in the two months after the February budget, even as India’s benchmark stock index surged.A 2015 study by the Journal of Business Management and Economics concluded that while mergers in India’s energy sector may not create immediate shareholder value, they produce companies that are better placed to compete and adapt. Credit ratings company Fitch reached a similar conclusion.",2017-04-12,The government owns majority stakes in eight listed oil and gas firms. Combining some or all would create a bigger corporation with clout to negotiate better deals on crude oil purchases,competitor,14:40,Why India is creating an oil and gas behemoth +-0.22,"Mumbai/New Delhi: Petrol and diesel prices in some cities will now see daily change in sync with international rates, according to two officials from oil marketing companies.This will be effective 1 May in five cities including Puducherry and Visakhapatnam, Udaipur, Jamshedpur and Chandigarh as part of a pilot project. This will be extended to other parts of the country after an assessment of consumer response.Diesel and petrol prices move in tandem with the price of crude oil in most countries. In January, Mint reported that the fuel retailers plan to introduce dynamic pricing in India this year.“We have been piloting dynamic pricing at a few of our retail outlets for some months now, and the response has been encouraging. This has allowed us to go ahead and introduce it formally,” an executive director from an oil marketing company said on condition of anonymity as he is not allowed to talk to reporters.Currently, state-run fuel retailers—Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL)—revise petrol and diesel prices on the 1st and 15th of every month based on average international price of the fuel in the preceding fortnight and the currency exchange rate.“Due to the fortnightly revision of fuel prices, petroleum dealers were applying breaks (not lifting fuel daily) on uplifting of fuel. If the prices go up on the 1st or 15th of every month, there would be a rush to uplift products, else, the upliftment would be impacted. This would result in losses for OMCs and we wanted that this price predictability should go away. So dynamic pricing will be a good bet,” said a senior official from an oil marketing company on the condition of anonymity.Shares of Indian Oil fell 0.07% to Rs408.90 on BSE, Bharat Petroleum rose 1% to Rs717.60, Hindustan Petroleum rose 1% to Rs542.45 while India’s benchmark Sensex fell 0.49% to 29,643.48 points.Although state-run fuel retailers have the capability to revise petrol and diesel prices on a daily basis, what needs to be monitored is how consumers react to price volatility, industry experts say.“If there is heightened volatility in global markets due to geopolitical developments, it could get reflected in domestic retail prices too. Therefore, companies are doing the right thing in testing the model in pilot projects to see how its impact and consumer response. In the medium- to long-term, daily price revision may be a good idea as is practised elsewhere,” said R.S. Butola, a former chairman of Indian Oil.Indian Oil chairman B. Ashok and Hindustan Petroleum chairman and managing director M.K Surana didn’t immediately respond to phone calls seeking comment.Besides, global fuel prices and currency exchange rate, central and state taxes account for a major part of the fuel prices. It accounts for half of retail petrol price and 46% of retail diesel price. The central government collected Rs64,509 crore from petrol as excise duty in 2016-17 up to end-February, 20% more than what was collected in the whole of FY16. Excise receipts from diesel jumped 36% in the same period to Rs1.37 trillion.",2017-04-13,"Fuel retailers including Indian Oil will change petrol and diesel prices daily in Puducherry, Visakhapatnam, Udaipur, Jamshedpur and Chandigarh",competitor,02:55,"Petrol, diesel prices to change daily from 1 May" +-0.67,"Anil Agarwal has sealed the merger of his mining and energy businesses in India, creating a BHP Billiton Ltd-like resources conglomerate, even as a recent investment in Anglo American Plc. raises questions about how far the billionaire’s ambitions stretch.Vedanta Ltd combined with unit Cairn India Ltd on Tuesday and fixed 27 April as the record date for determining the list of the latter’s shareholders who will be allotted stock in the parent company, according to a joint statement. Vedanta will offer minority shareholders of oil producer Cairn India one equity share and four redeemable-preference shares with a face value of Rs10 each as part of the deal agreement.The merger gives shareholders a company with a diverse portfolio encompassing iron ore, bauxite, aluminium, power, oil and gas that has the ability to ride out commodity cycles. Agarwal, a self-made billionaire, recently surprised the mining industry by becoming the second-biggest shareholder in Anglo American through an unusual deal that led analysts to speculate he might be planning to force a break up of or a merger with the century-old miner.“This merger will increase the appeal of Vedanta Ltd to global investors as it simplifies the structure and increases the size and free float of the company,” Tom Albanese, chief executive officer of Vedanta, said in the statement. The firm will continue to focus on remaining a low-cost and low-debt operator, he said.Agarwal’s fortune has been built on a series of ambitious acquisitions: In 2001, he bought control of then government-owned Bharat Aluminium Co. in one of the first tests of India’s efforts to offload state holdings. He followed with another government entity, Hindustan Zinc Ltd, in a deal that drew the attention of the nation’s top investigating agency. He successfully bid for what was India’s largest iron ore producer Sesa Goa Ltd. in 2007 and for Cairn India in 2010, despite having no oil and gas experience. Last year, Anglo American was said to have rebuffed informal approaches from the billionaire to discuss ideas including a combination with Hindustan Zinc Ltd.The Vedanta-Cairn combine was proposed by Agarwal in 2015, but delayed after Cairn shareholders held out for a better deal, which was offered last year.It will allow India’s most-indebted metals company after Tata Steel Ltd. to access Cairn’s cash pile, which stood at Rs26,000 crore ($4 billion) at the end of December. Vedanta’s debt at the time was Rs65,000 crore, while Cairn is debt-free.“They are under pressure because of the heavy debt and the merger is planned only because of this,” said Kishor Ostwal, managing director of CNI Research Ltd, an equity research provider in Mumbai. The strong commodity cycle has benefited the group and improving raw material prices will give them a further advantage, he added.Vedanta shares have nearly tripled in the past year, leading gains among India’s 100 largest companies. It advanced in March after unit Hindustan Zinc announced a special dividend of about $2.2 billion, of which the parent will get about $1.4 billion. The dividend payout will cover 68% of Vedanta’s debt maturities in the fiscal year ending March 2018 and alleviate near-term refinancing risk, according to Moody’s Investors Service.“The stock looks very interesting and our bias is positive,” Ashish Chaturmohta, head of derivatives and technicals at Sanctum Wealth Management Ltd, said by phone. “The dividend mostly is going to go for debt reduction and so will the cash with Cairn,” he added, saying the stock can move up further.Shares of Vedanta climbed 2.6% to Rs259.25 in Mumbai on Wednesday. The merged company will have a market-capitalization of about $15.6 billion and a higher free float of shares of 49.9%, according to Tuesday’s statement.Vedanta’s 6% 2019 dollar notes rallied 42% in the past year as the company reduced its leverage and strengthened prospects for repayments with dividends. Bloomberg",2017-04-12,"Anil Agarwal has sealed the merger of Vedanta and Cairn India, creating a BHP Billiton-like resources conglomerate ",competitor,14:15,Anil Agarwal creates BHP-style Indian resources major +-1.0,"Mumbai: The head of State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender, said she expects a boost to annual profit of as much as Rs3,000 crore ($465 million) in three years on cost and efficiency gains from the absorption of associate banks.Chair Arundhati Bhattacharya also said in an interview that signs of more factory activity pointed to a turnaround in India’s weak credit cycle this financial year — welcome news for a government keen to revive private investment.State-run SBI this month merged five subsidiary lenders and absorbed them into the parent company. It had fully owned two and had majority stakes in the others, but all had previously operated separately.Workforce integration will start in June, said Bhattacharya who joined SBI 40 years ago and rose through the ranks to become its first female chief in 2013. SBI has said it will shut or move some branches and close overlapping units.“Total bottom line impact (of) around two to three thousand crores (Rs2,000-3,000 ) is what we are thinking of,” she said. “I’ll have a better hang of these numbers by the middle of May.”ALSO READ: Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout falls short of what investors needThat would compare with a net profit of Rs115.9 billion for the year ended March 2016 if results of the five subsidiary banks were included.Profits at state-run lenders have been under pressure, weighed down by a record $150 billion in stressed assets. The pile of bad debt, combined with slower economic growth and deferral of large projects, has prevented lenders from boosting credit growth.As of March 17, banking sector loans had grown just 4.4%, compared with 10.9% in the previous year, the weakest pace since the fiscal year ended March 1954. But Bhattacharya, 61, said she was hoping for good growth from the July-September quarter.“I’ve already had a number of meetings with people saying their capacity utilisation has gone up. Commodity prices have gone up, so to that extent people are coming with working capital requests,” she said.SBI has forecast loans to grow 11% this financial year after an expected 6.5% growth in the year ended March.Bhattacharya also said the central bank would need to offer rates matching or higher than the reverse repo rate of 6.00%, the rate lenders get for deposits at the RBI, should it implement a special facility to drain cash from the banking system.India’s central bank wants to withdraw some of the big cash pile accumulated in the banking system since the government banned circulation of big currency-notes, but lenders are keen to get proper returns in exchange for transferring cash. Reuters",2017-04-13,SBI’s Arundhati Bhattacharya expects a boost to annual profit on cost and efficiency gains from the merger with five associate banks,competitor,17:55,SBI merger to boost profit in 3 years: Arundhati Bhattacharya +-0.77,"
Ahmedabad: The Adani group’s plan to build one of the world’s largest coal mines in Queensland moved closer to realization after Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull met founder-chairman Gautam Adani during his three-day visit to India. Turnbull assured the Indian billionaire that his government would resolve an issue with native title laws, helping take the $16.5 billion project closer to fruition, Australian media reported on Tuesday. The native title issue surrounding the Carmichael Mine project refers to an Australian Federal Court ruling that invalidated deals with traditional land owners in that country. Legislation to fix this issue is before the Senate and Turnbull is understood to have assured the company it will be resolved, Sky News reported on Tuesday.Australia ready to supply uranium to India as soon as possible: Malcolm TurnbullTurnbull is said to have told Adani that he expected the changes overruling the court’s decision to be passed by the country’s Parliament when it reconvenes in May. He also told Adani that the ruling had caused problems with many land deals across Australia, the report added. A quick resolution is crucial for Adani, which has invested $3.3 billion in the coal mine, railway and port project and said previously that it will start construction in the second half of 2017. An Adani spokesperson said that the meeting was “very positive” for the group’s Australian project, but refused to comment on details. “Happy to meet with Australian PM today. Working together for economic and stronger Australia- India ties,” Gautam Adani posted on microblogging site Twitter on Monday evening.Turnbull’s reaffirmation of his government’s commitment to Adani’s coal mine project comes after Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk met Adani last month at Mundra in Gujarat where the conglomerate runs a port. In October, the Palaszczuk government exempted the project from new water laws that could have mired it in further legal challenges. The project, announced in 2010, has run into resistance from environmentalists, resulting in delays of at least three years. Last year, the Queensland state’s department of environment and heritage protection (EHP) issued a final environmental authority (EA) for the project in the Galilee Basin. On 19 August, Adani won a major legal battle when the Australian apex court dismissed appeals lodged by indigenous community member Adrian Burragubba as well as a Brisbane-based environmental group against the project.ALSO READ: What next for Adani Power, Tata Power after Supreme Court order on tariffs?But that has not stopped protests. Last month, just ahead of the Queensland premier’s visit, a group of protestors including former Test cricket captains Ian Chappell and Greg Chappell wrote an open letter to Adani saying that the mines project will threaten the Great Barrier Reef, and asking the group to instead invest in solar energy. Adani, during the meeting which lasted for about 30 minutes, also discussed the prospect of a $900 million government loan to Adani group to fund a rail line for the Carmichael mine project, said a person familiar with the matter who did not wish to be named. “As far as the rail link is concerned, if you’re asking about Adani’s interest in securing funding from the Northern Australian Infrastructure Fund, that’s an independent process—it has to go through that process, through that independent assessment by the board,” said Turnbull, ahead of the meeting, while answering a question related to the rail funding at a press conference in Delhi. Adani expects to complete the first phase of the project by 2020-21, producing 25 million tonnes of coal annually.",2017-04-12,"Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull, who is on a three-day India visit, met Gautam Adani on Tuesday—a boost to Adani Group’s coal mine project in Queensland",competitor,04:59,Malcolm Turnbull’s India visit boosts Adani’s Australia coal mine project +-0.15,"London: Standard Chartered Plc posted annual profit that missed analyst estimates as the bank took losses on a private-equity business it’s shutting down and said efforts to clean up conduct issues affected performance. The shares fell as much as 5.4%.Pretax profit for 2016 was $409 million, compared with a loss of $1.52 billion a year earlier, the London-based company said in a statement Friday. Operating profit excluding one-time items was $1.09 billion, missing the $1.42 billion average estimate of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.Chief executive officer Bill Winters, more than a year and a half into the job, has yet to convince investors he can sustainably reverse the bank’s losses and restore a dividend, after a sharp drop in revenue and surging loan impairments in 2015 drove the Asia-focused lender to its first annual loss since 1989. Winters has also vowed to clean up the culture of the firm, where senior staff flouted ethics rules and considered themselves “above the law.”“We have sharpened our focus on all aspects of conduct,” Winters said in the statement. “The pace and scale of those changes—many of which were done in parallel and required intense periods of adjustment for employees—undoubtedly impacted some elements of the group’s financial performance in the period. But they were the right things to do.”ALSO READ: Baidu needs to speed up the future after that Uber boostStandard Chartered dropped 3.8% to 722.7 pence at 11:50 am in London. The bank’s shares jumped 85% over the past 12 months before today, the best performance among major European lenders. The stock still trades at a steep discount to book value.‘Traumatic’ changeRevenue declined 11% to $13.8 billion, surpassing the average $13.7 billion estimate in the Bloomberg survey. Loan impairments fell to $2.38 billion from $4.01 billion in 2015. In August, the bank said it would probably miss a profitability target set only last year, blaming an uncertain regulatory and economic environment.While bad-debt costs almost halved, the size of the “grade 12” category that houses the loans most at risk of default increased 26% to $1.5 billion last year. A “small number of exposures in the diamond and jewellery sector” drove loan impairments up to $511 million in Europe and the Americas. The bank said in June it was closing its $2 billion diamond-financing business because it doesn’t comply with stricter lending standards.“There are still plenty of challenges, obviously, but they’re going in the right direction,” said Hugh Young, Asia managing director at Aberdeen Asset Management Plc, one of Standard Chartered’s largest shareholders.The bank recognizes it must increase revenue to hit its targets, Winters said on a call with reporters Friday. Last year, the CEO said the annual loss “rips at our souls,” but he said Friday his outlook has improved in 2016, while acknowledging the “hill is still steep.”“My soul is intact, I feel very good about the bank, but it has been a wrenching year and a half,” the CEO said. There’s been “a traumatic amount of change” as he instituted “a very different approach to business. No one harbours any illusions that we are done, we have quite a long way to go.”ALSO READ: Should the fall in Taurus mutual fund worry investors?Standard Chartered said it plans to exit its principal finance business, which includes a private-equity unit known as SCPE, after that division incurred losses of $650 million in 2016. The firm valued its assets in the principal finance business at $1.2 billion at the end of 2016, compared with $2.1 billion a year earlier, according to a company report.Standard Chartered also said it’s “addressing credit issues” and “bolstering its management team and risk discipline” at PT Bank Permata, a lender it part-owns in Indonesia. That nation’s government has changed rules on foreign-owned banks, meaning Standard Chartered must decide whether to merge the two lenders it owns in the country, or sell one of them. A decision probably won’t come until next year, Winters said today.Standard Chartered said its common equity Tier 1 capital ratio, a measure of financial strength, rose to 13.6% from 13% at the end of September. That was higher than the 13.5% average estimate from five analysts.No dividendFinance director Andy Halford said the bank decided not to reinstate a dividend, after scrapping it in November 2015, because its turnaround was still in early stages. The lack of a payout “will be taken as disappointing,” Sanford C. Bernstein analysts said in a note to clients.Despite planning 15,000 job cuts in a strategic review in 2015, full-time employees actually rose on a “scaled-up” basis to 86,693 at 31 December from 84,076 a year earlier, the bank’s annual report shows.Headcount costs are down 7% as the bank moved employees to lower cost locations, a spokesman said. The company has also hired in some strategic areas, including more than 1,000 full-time retail banking employees in India, Singapore and Bangladesh.The bank identified “new uncertainties ahead, including threats to open trade and globalization” in its statement, and Winters said he’d seen Asian companies’ behaviour start to change already.“Clients in our markets are focusing on diversifying trading partners as much as possible to avoid a cliff-edge effect,” if President Donald Trump’s administration implements protectionist policies, Winters said. “If the US for whatever reason makes itself a less desirable trading partner, some other countries will be willing to fill that gap.” Bloomberg",2017-02-24,"Pretax profit for 2016 was $409 million, compared with a loss of $1.52 billion a year earlier, says Standard Chartered in a statement ",competitor,21:17,Standard Chartered misses annual profit estimates +-0.35,"Bengaluru: It’s hard to overstate the importance of the technology industry to India. Over the past three decades, the IT sector has helped drive the country’s economic growth, employed millions and made billionaires out of at least seven founders.Now the industry is at risk from US President Donald Trump’s policies. The administration is promising a clampdown on the work visas India’s tech services companies use to service American customers. In the days since the US government took first steps toward H1B visa reform, all of India’s high-profile technology tycoons have seen their net worth eroded.Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd and India’s fifth-richest man, and Shiv Nadar, the sixth-richest person in the country and chairman of HCL Technologies, have seen their shares slide. Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani and three other founders of Infosys Ltd, all among the top 100 of India’s richest billionaires, have taken a hit too. IT stocks have dropped about 3% over that stretch, while the benchmark index has climbed 0.6%.Also read: In Donald Trump’s H-1B visa crackdown, Indian students weigh Canada, Ireland“Whether these changes are a precursor for more radical measures is what is worrying companies,” said DD Mishra, a Pune-based research director at Gartner.Infosys, which reports earnings 13 April, may have the most at stake. The Bengaluru-based company is most vulnerable to US visa reforms because it has the lowest percentage of local hires in the US, Goldman Sachs analysts Sumeet Jain and Saurabh Thadani said in a research note last week. HCL and Wipro also have risks from visa reforms but they hire relatively more Americans, the analysts wrote.Infosys kicks off earnings season for the industry this week, giving investors a chance to get more insight into the challenges and corporate strategies for addressing them. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, the market leader, is scheduled to report results next week.The debate has been over the H1B visa program, which allows companies to bring 85,000 workers into the US from overseas each year. On 31 March, just as companies prepared to file applications for next year’s allotment, the Trump administration rolled out a series of policy measures making it harder for firms to use the program for computer programmers and announced measures to fight what it called “fraud and abuse.” In parallel, the Justice Department warned employers applying for visas not to discriminate against US workers. All of this was in line with promises made during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to overhaul the program he described as bringing cheap overseas labour at the cost of American jobs and salaries.From India, those promises look like threats to the economy. Information technology is the largest employer in the private sector, providing a livelihood to nearly 4 million, and contributes about 9% of gross domestic product. India’s software and services exports total about $110 billion, with nearly two thirds of that revenue coming from the US.Visa uncertainty could wreak havoc with planning and jeopardize profits in the industry. It may also raise risks for customers that depend on such services, from Wall Street banks to retailers and airlines. “Difficulties in getting visas or rising salaries of H-1B employees will have a material impact on companies,” said Rostow Ravanan, chief executive officer of Mindtree Ltd, a Bangalore-based outsourcer that uses hundreds of H-1B visas every year.Several countries around the world are adopting or considering similar policies. That poses a threat to the business model perfected by Indian companies, Ravanan said. “These trends are dangerous because the IT industry and its talent serve the entire world,” he said.Leading outsourcers including Infosys, Tata Consultancy, Wipro and HCL Technologies declined to comment on the visa issue.Companies have been working on contingency plans. If foreign workers cannot go to the US, it will become more expensive to hire local staff. Companies may also try to do more work for American clients from abroad, including India.Nitin Rakesh, chief executive officer of tech services provider Mphasis Ltd is optimistic. He said the industry has gone through four or five reincarnations since the outsourcing business began. A Trump crackdown may lead to more innovation in the model.“Through leveraging all the possible technology, including mobility and cloud, the growth opportunities are immense,” said Rakesh, warning however that some companies will adapt and others may not. “Growth will not be homogeneous.” Bloomberg",2017-04-12,"US President Donald Trump’s H1B visa reform policies have eroded the net worth of India’s high-profile technology tycoons, including Azim Premji ",both,14:28,"H1B visa reform hits tech billionaires, from Azim Premji to Shiv Nadar" +-0.72,"New York/Seattle: Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said fourth-quarter profit rose 15% as investment gains climbed.Net income climbed to $6.29 billion, or $3,823 a share, from $5.48 billion, or $3,333, a year earlier, the Omaha, Nebraska-based company said Saturday in a statement. Operating earnings, which exclude some investment results, were $2,665 a share, compared with the average $2,717 estimate of three analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.While Buffett is widely known as a gifted stock picker, Berkshire derives most of its income from the businesses he’s bought during his five decades running the firm. Its dozens of subsidiaries include auto insurer Geico, railroad BNSF, a network of auto dealerships, retailers and electric utilities.Also read: Warren Buffett says US market system to continue far into the futureThe 86-year-old billionaire keeps adding to the mix. Last year, he completed deals for battery maker Duracell and Precision Castparts, a supplier to the aerospace industry, helping to boost profit in his company’s manufacturing segment.Buffett tells investors to focus on the earnings from his stable of operating businesses, rather than one-time gains or losses on Berkshire’s securities portfolio. That’s because results can fluctuate widely on investments and derivatives contracts that he entered years ago.In the fourth quarter, Dow Chemical Co. converted Berkshire’s $3 billion preferred stake to more than $4 billion of common stock. The investment dates to the chemical maker’s 2009 takeover of Rohm & Haas, a transaction that Buffett helped finance.Berkshire has been a major beneficiary of the rally in stocks since Donald Trump was elected US president. Class A shares have climbed 15% since 8 November, bringing the company’s market capitalization above $400 billion for the first time. That compares with the 11% increase in the S&P 500 Index. Bloomberg",2017-02-25,"Berkshire Hathaway’s operating earnings, which exclude some investment results, were $2,665 a share",competitor,19:35,Berkshire Hathaway profit advances 15% to $6.29 billion on investments +-0.31,"New Delhi: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, whose pay package was a point of contention for the company’s founders, has drawn $ 6.68 million (about Rs 43 crore) or 61% of the promised compensation for the 2016-17 fiscal. Sikka was eligible for a $11 million pay including basic salary, variable pay, restricted stock units (RSUs) and performance stock options for the year. Incidentally, this is also lower than what Sikka drew in the previous financial year when he took home Rs 48.73 crore. According to Infosys’ financial statements that outline compensation to key executives, Sikka received only $3.68 million of the $8 million variable component that he was promised. One of the highest paid executives in the Indian IT industry, Sikka took home $0.82 million in variable pay, $1.9 million in RSUs and ESOPs worth $0.96 million, totalling $3.68 million. Sikka’s salary was revised from $7.08 million to a handsome $11 million package with effect from April 2016, a move that did not go down well with the founders, including NR Narayana Murthy. The $11 million package was to include a base salary of $1 million and $2 million worth of stock annually as well $3 million in variable pay. Sikka is also eligible for another $5 million worth of performance-based equity and stock options upon achievement of certain performance targets.Also Read: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka guaranteed 90% of $11 million salary“The Board, based on the recommendations of the Nominations Committee, approved on April 13, 2017, $0.82 million as variable pay to CEO for the year ended March 31, 2017,” Infosys said. It further mentions “...RSUs amounting to $1.9 million and ESOPs amounting to $0.96 million representing the performance-based equity and stock options for the financial year 2017”. While the founders had raised concerns over the significant salary hike given to Sikka, the Board, on its part, maintained that the variable component was tied to steep performance goals. However, Infosys has not made those goals public. Infosys had defended Sikka’s pay hike saying all decisions were made “in the overall interest of the company”. Infosys’ performance of 2016-17 has disappointed the street, especially after it lowered its annual revenue guidance thrice last fiscal. The “aspirational goal” of $20 billion revenue by 2020 set by Infosys looks like a tall order given the current performance, said industry watchers. The Bengaluru-based firm, which posted a revenue of $ 10.2 billion in 2016-17, has been focussing on new areas like automation and artificial intelligence to bolster its revenues to meet the said target. For the financial year 2017-18, Infosys expects its revenues to grow by 6.1-8.1% in dollar terms.",2017-04-14,"Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka has drawn about Rs43 crore or 61% of the promised compensation, $11 million, for the 2016-17 fiscal",both,19:10,Infosys’s Vishal Sikka takes home only 61% of eligible pay +0.12,"Pittsburg: A prestigious US university and Tata Consultancy Services have collaborated to set up a state-of-the-art facility which its promoters say would lay the groundwork for the fourth industrial revolution by conducting cutting edge research.The collaboration comes more than a century after Jamshedji Tata came to this city known as the steel-making capital to understand technologies which he would later use to launch India’s own industrial revolution. Top Indian industrialist Ratan Tata, joined by Carnegie Mellon University president Subra Suresh along with Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran broke the ground of the new TCS Hall at the university campus. Supported by an unprecedented $35 million grant from TCS, which is the largest ever industry donation the CMU, the building when complete by next year, would become the hub of CMU and TCS collaborations on promoting next generation technologies that will drive the 4th Industrial revolution, Suresh said. “Today, we are not looking at heavy metal and millions of tons of steel. We are looking at a collaboration of intellectual skills and the development of two countries together that might bring about global understanding between people,” Tata said.Ratan Tata, Chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, described the CMU-TCS partnership a visionary collaboration of skills that will bring understanding between young people of India, the United States and other places in the world. “The wide-ranging multi-national partnership that is creating new research opportunities, new student aid, and a brand-new facility for educational research that we are celebrating today has deep roots. In fact, the historical parallels and connections between the Tata Group of companies and Carnegie Tech and Carnegie Mellon make this new chapter in our partnership even more meaningful,” Suresh said.“In the late 19th century - years before this university was founded - the Tata family patriarch, Jamshedji Tata, came to Pittsburgh—the steel capital of the world—to learn from expert steelmakers how to launch his own steel-making business in India,” he said. Jamshedji Tata famously had four goals in life: setting up an iron and steel company in India, opening a world-class learning institution, building a unique cartel, and constructing a hydroelectric plant, he added. “Years later, a company affiliated with one of Andrew Carnegie’s executives landed a contract to build the Tata plant in India, bringing to life the Jamshedji Tata goal that mirrored Andrew Carnegie’s life’s work: the great steel empire built here in Pittsburgh, and a great university, Carnegie Tech, now known as Carnegie Mellon as we celebrate it today,” he said. Suresh said the latest addition to the rapidly-expanding CMU landscape, this nearly 50 000 gross square-foot TCS Hall will house research and academic spaces where both institutions will collaborate on mutual interests in fields such as cognitive systems and autonomous vehicles and robotics. “TCS Hall will house a variety of activities in education and research, as well as the CMU Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Departments. And it’ll fit seamlessly into Carnegie Mellon’s pioneering work in leading the fourth industrial revolution,” said the CMU president. PTI",2017-04-14,"The TCS-Carnegie Mellon collaboration comes more than a century after Jamshedji Tata came to Pittsburg, known as the steel-making capital to understand technologies",company,12:29,"TCS, Carnegie Mellon University to set up facility for cutting edge research " +-0.47,"
Vedanta group has clearly given up hope that the sale of the government’s stake in Hindustan Zinc Ltd (HZL) will happen in the foreseeable future. Why else would it decide on a hefty dividend that entails a huge tax outgo and enriches the government more than anyone else? Vedanta has a 64.9% stake in HZL, but its share in the magnanimous Rs13,985 crore payout by the latter will only be 53.9%. The government, on the other hand, has a 29.5% stake in HZL, but gets 41.5% share of the spoils. This is thanks to the dividend distribution tax of over 20% that firms have to bear while paying dividends. A number of companies such as Wipro Ltd and Bharti Airtel Ltd have used tender buybacks as a means to return cash to shareholders, given the large amount of tax savings. Vedanta, unfortunately, doesn’t have that luxury. Because of a Supreme Court order that has stayed the sale of the government’s residual stake in HZL, it may not be able to participate in a tender buyback offer. And if the company were to go ahead with a buyback without the government participating, that would result in a drop in the government’s shareholding, which may again flout the apex court’s directives. As such, dividends seem to be the only option left to take cash out of HZL. From Vedanta’s point of view, the ideal outcome would be to buy the government’s stake and then use its control over the company to directly pursue inorganic opportunities such as its interest in Anglo American Plc. Now, apart from gifting the government a disproportionate share of HZL’s cash, it also has to share the company’s cash with its minority shareholders, as well as those of Vedanta Ltd and Vedanta Plc (see chart).Analysts at Credit Suisse Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd say Vedanta could use the funds to service some of its debt and to fund its stake purchase in Anglo American. “Depending on the extent of upstreaming at Vedanta Ltd and Vedanta Plc, the ultimate promoter entity (Volcan Investments Ltd) could receive $220-$500mn of dividend which could come in handy in pursuing its Anglo American ambitions,” wrote the analysts in a note to clients. Upstreaming refers to dividend payments by Vedanta Ltd and Vedanta Plc from their respective dividend income. In other words, Volcan may eventually get only 20-23% of the total payout by HZL. From HZL’s point of view, while the outflow looks huge, it hardly poses much of a problem for it. As of 31 December, the company’s net cash and cash equivalents were Rs25,319 crore. Post the dividend payouts, its cash balance is expected to drop to Rs15,000 crore, point out analysts from Edelweiss Securities Ltd. But that shouldn’t worry investors. Edelweiss pegs free cash flow generation at Rs10,000 crore each for fiscal years 2018 and 2019 on the back of robust zinc price outlook and capacity ramp-up.
HZL shares have risen about 88% in the past year, thanks to the rally in zinc prices. But as Credit Suisse’s analysts point out, valuations are rich. “Even with our bullish Ebitda estimates, the stock is trading at a high 8x EV-Ebitda multiple: valuations have rarely been this rich,” they said in another note on 6 February. EV is short for enterprise value, and Ebitda is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. HZL’s shares have been more or less flat since, while zinc prices have averaged at around $2,800/tonne, about $100/tonne lower than the levels the broker has used for its earnings estimates.",2017-03-24,Vedanta has given up hope of a govt stake sale in Hindustan Zinc. Why else would it decide on a hefty dividend that enriches the govt more than anyone else?,competitor,08:56,Getting hold of Hindustan Zinc’s cash turning an expensive affair for Vedanta +-0.91,"Bengaluru: In a conversation with Mint, Ravi Venkatesan, 54, who in addition to being Infosys co-chairman is also chairman of Bank of Baroda, said that one of his immediate priorities would be to align all stakeholders around the transformational journey that Infosys is in the midst of.
Why did you agree to take on this role as co-chairman?Because the board asked me to. But also because I love Infosys. Just like the Idea of India (Sunil Khilnani’s book), the idea of Infosys is a powerful one; Infosys remains a vital institution of our country. It’s important that it continues to flourish.
Was this decision solely the board’s or was it made after some of the founders suggested it?This was a decision of the board. Why did the board decide to go for a co-chairman? Simple because when an aircraft is going through turbulent weather, it only helps to get a co-pilot.
Questions have been raised by some of the founders against the board and even against the management. So how would you get both the founders and board aligned and make sure this is not a distraction for the management? For the record, I was close to the founders of Infosys before I joined the board. What they accomplished was incredible. I hope to remain close to them long after I cease to be on the board. Equally, I believe in the strategy that (CEO) Vishal Sikka has set out for transforming Infosys. I intend to do my very best to see that he succeeds in this mission. Everything else is a sideshow. I don’t see any contradiction here.
How do you rate Vishal’s leadership in the three years that he has been CEO now?I think Infosys has done somethings incredibly well under Vishal’s leadership. We have a bold and differentiated strategy which customers are excited about; customer satisfaction is at an all-time high. Most employees are energized by the vision and strategy. Vishal and his team have built on the momentum they inherited and closed the gap with competition. Many seeds for the future have been sown and we see the green shoots in many areas—in AI, in automation, with initiatives like design thinking. That said, the transformation is a work in progress. Some things aren’t working as intended and course corrections are being applied. There are pockets of underperformance which represent opportunities. We need to rapidly scale up things that are working. There are capability gaps that need to be fixed. But overall, I am optimistic about our prospects.
How will the co-chair arrangement work? How will you delineate roles to make sure there’s no overlap?Sesh (R. Seshasayee) and I have known each other for 20 years and worked on the Infy board for six years, so we are quite comfortable with each other. We have decided that there are some areas that he will continue to lead such as overall leadership of the board or investor outreach while in other areas like strategy or talent I will work more closely with Vishal and his team. We have decided that we will work as partners rather than compartments.
What are your immediate priorities?My first priority is to help align all stakeholders around the transformation journey that we are on. The second is to work closely with Vishal in helping build a world class leadership team that can execute the transformation strategy.Your elevation has been seen positively and the general view is that relations between the board and the founders will improve now. What’s your take on that and how do you intend to repair relations with the founders?I have the greatest respect for the founders of Infosys and especially for Mr (N.R. Narayana) Murthy who has been a mentor and friend for a long time. I believe that everyone wants the same thing—which is to see Infosys flourish and prosper from the incredible opportunities that are being thrown up by technology shifts. The board and leadership team wants this. Investors want this. Employees want this. The founders want this. However, this is a journey through uncharted waters and so the key is to earn the trust of all stakeholders so we stay together through the ups and downs of this voyage. Trust really is the key. This requires intense, honest and ongoing dialogue. It also requires courage, willingness to experiment, assimilate feedback, learn and change.After a stellar year in 2015-16, the last 12 months have been slow by Infy’s lofty standards. What in your opinion needs to be fixed immediately in order to get back the company to industry-leading growth?This has been a tough year for everyone with growth slowing and severe commoditization. Infy’s performance must be seen not just in absolute terms but in the context of the industry. Vishal has already commented on our performance and what he and the team will do. I personally believe we have to more aggressively move investments and our brightest people from more commoditized areas towards our best growth prospects which are in areas such as digital, cyber security, AI, IOT and so on. Our job as a board is to support management in moving much more quickly on the many opportunities we have.Will you reduce your other board commitments now that you’re taking up this role? Will you remain chairman at BoB?The transformation of BoB is also a work in progress. (P.S.) Jayakumar and his team have worked really hard and we are seeing the green shoots of their labour. I would love to see it through if that’s what the government also wishes.",2017-04-14,"Ravi Venkatesan, who was appointed as Infosys co-chairman Thursday, says the idea of Infosys is a powerful one and it’s important that it continues to flourish",competitor,04:46,"Ravi Venkatesan: In turbulent weather, it only helps to get a co-pilot" +-0.25,"Indian oil firms delivered a subdued performance in the December quarter. Take for instance Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL’s) results. Despite the fact that it crossed the Rs8,000-crore mark in stand-alone net profit for the first time, the performance would have been sweeter if income from sources other than its main business had not played a key role in boosting profit. Notably, while RIL’s gross refining margin (GRM) improved to $10.8 a barrel from $10.1 a barrel in the September quarter, the measure was lower than expected, considering that the benchmark Singapore refining margin had done much better sequentially.GRM is the realization from turning every barrel of crude oil into finished products and is an important measure of profitability for refining firms.RIL’s petrochemicals segment performed well but that couldn’t compensate for the disappointment from the refining business. However, investors have little to complain given that the stock has appreciated as much as 21% till 17 March since RIL announced it will start charging its customers in the telecom business. Further stock appreciation will be dependent on how the telecom venture fares in the days to come.State-run refining and marketing firms—Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) and India Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL)—delivered a decent performance. Reported GRMs improved sequentially. Inventory gains helped. According to analysts from Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd, core earnings, adjusted for inventory gains, came in at Rs12.7/12.1/7.6/ share for BPCL/HPCL/IOCL versus reported earnings per share of Rs15.7/15.7/8.4, respectively. “After adjusting for one-offs, core earnings of IOCL and BPCL came in-line with our estimates but HPCL missed the mark on this metric as marketing margins disappointed,” an Emkay report said last month. However, broadly, reported earnings of all three firms were in-line, according to Emkay. These stocks have done well in the past two years, helped by diesel price deregulation and improvements in earnings. A further upside can come if refining margins improve further.Meanwhile, stocks of upstream oil firms—Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd—have performed well in the past couple of months, thanks to firmer crude prices. However, if oil prices continue to remain range-bound, further appreciation in shares of ONGC and Oil India will be tough. Both firms saw their net price realization improve year-on-year as well as sequentially.",2017-03-24,Oil firms delivered a subdued performance for the December quarter,competitor,08:14,Subdued performance from oil firms in the December quarter +0.03,"Growth of information technology (IT) services firms continues to decelerate on a year-on-year basis. Growth in constant currency terms stood at 8.7% for tier-I IT companies in the December quarter, excluding Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., according to data collated by Nomura Research. Two quarters ago, growth stood at over 10%, and a year before that, growth was in the teens.Of course, that growth rates have been declining in the IT sector is well known and, as a result, IT stocks have underperformed the Nifty 50 index by around 18% in the past year.The moot question is if the December quarter results give signs of a possible turnaround. Investors will be disappointed there. Nomura’s analysts point out that growth in the key US region was the slowest in 12 quarters. Growth in some of the industry verticals that were doing well in previous quarters, such as retail, healthcare and telecom, slowed in the December quarter. And the performance of the largest industry vertical—banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI)—gave no hints of a turnaround. Besides, as US firms await the broad policy direction of the new government, there may be some delays in taking decisions.Of course, there are some silver linings. Companies, for instance, are sounding more optimistic, especially with regards to demand from BFSI. Besides, analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities say the intensity with which some large corporations shifted work to captive units earlier has abated to an extent.But, from the looks of it, things are likely to go further south before any turnaround comes about. The recent appreciation in the rupee is likely to worsen matters for Indian IT companies. Profit margins have already been under pressure, owing to the increased investments in building digital capabilities and thanks to pricing pressure in the traditional application maintenance work. Besides, all of the noise against H1B visas in the US may result in new laws that increase costs of providing on-site services. Kotak’s analysts wrote in a note to clients, “In case the rupee were to sustain at current levels, we do highlight that many traditional levers of the industry are exhausted... Our EPS (earnings per share) estimates for FY2018/19 are based on INR/USD rate of 68 and have 5-9% downside risk at spot prices.”",2017-03-24,The recent appreciation in rupee may worsen matters for Indian IT firms as profit margins are already under pressure owing to increased investments in building digital capabilities ,both,07:56,"IT sector: Donald Trump, rupee worsen matters in December quarter" +-0.95,"Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd named Ravi Venkatesan as co-chairman and decided to payout Rs13,000 crore to shareholders through dividends and/or share buyback, in an attempt to buy peace with its promoters and other shareholders. Starting this year, the company will use 70% of its free cash flows (as against 63% earlier) to award dividends or buy back shares.The company made both announcements while declaring its results for the fourth quarter of 2016-17 and the full year. In the January-March quarter, Infosys reported a 0.7% sequential rise in dollar revenue to $2.57 billion (about Rs17,000 crore), allowing it to end fiscal 2016-17 with a 7.4% growth and $10.21 billion in revenue. Net profit declined 0.8% to $543 million in the March quarter, from $547 million in the October-December period. For the full year, the net profit was $2.14 billion.ALSO READ: Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout falls short of what investors needBut the big news in the company, which has, over the past few months witnessed an unseemly scrap between its promoters and board and management over issues related to corporate governance, an irregular and very generous severance package given to its former chief financial officer, and salaries of the chief executive and chief operating officer, was the elevation of Venkatesan, now an independent director, and the shareholder payout.The appointment of a co-chairman was one of founder N.R. Narayana Murthy’s demands when hostilities between the promoters and the board, led by chairman R. Seshasayee and management were at their peak in early February. At the time, an Infosys spokesperson termed Mint’s query on this “speculative”. It isn’t clear whether Venkatesan, former chairman of Microsoft India and the chairman of Bank of Baroda who has been on the board of Infosys since 2011, is the person Murthy wanted as co-chairman. Murthy didn’t respond to a query. Venkatesan responded with a text message saying: “Big challenges; bigger opportunities.”Analysts have also argued that the promoters could be seeking a share buyback. Two of Infosys’s former CFOs, T.V. Mohandas Pai and V. Balakrishnan have articulated this demand.Analysts see three possible reasons for the announcements made on Thursday.One, the board wants to buy peace so that the management can be insulated from what CEO Vishal Sikka calls as “distractions”, which were partially responsible for a poor 0.7% sequential growth during the January-March period.ALSO READ: Infosys will have to ‘live with’ H1B visa policy: Vishal SikkaTwo, Venkatesan’s elevation suggests that the board is working towards a succession plan, which could possibly even see Seshasayee stepping down in coming months, well before his term ends in June 2018. This too, was a demand raised by the promoters at one time.Three, the sudden elevation of Venkatesan could suggest that the founders have won their 10-month long battle to regain control of the board.Infosys’s board has Sikka and COO U.B. Pravin Rao as executive members and eight independent directors. Other than Seshasayee, Venkatesan and D.N. Prahlad, a former employee and a relative of Murthy who was appointed last year, the other independent directors are Punita Kumar-Sinha, John W. Etchemendy, Jeffrey Sean Lehman, Roopa Kudva and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw.Some analysts and executives in the IT industry who know both Murthy and Venkatesan say the two share a good rapport.“Knowing Ravi, I believe he will certainly be able to bring both parties (together) and (get them to) agree on things (so) that public spats don’t happen and consensus between the founders and the board and management is reached”.One proxy advisory firm said the appointment sends out the wrong message.“The appointment of Ravi Venkatesan as co-chairman may be construed as signs of Infosys’s board listening to feedback. But, in doing so, it has courted another controversy. IiAS believes that Infosys is now fighting the wrong battle: instead of focussing on its performance, it is now spending more time focussing internally and quelling perceptions,” IiAS, a proxy advisory firm, wrote in a note on Thursday.",2017-04-13,"Ravi Venkatesan’s appointment as Infosys co-chairman and Rs13,000 crore payout to shareholders seen as moves to placate founders led by N.R. Narayana Murthy",both,22:41,"Infosys seeks to buy peace with new co-chairman, Rs13,000 crore payout promise" +-1.0,"Seattle: Amazon.com Inc. is embracing artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver goods more quickly, enhance its voice-activated Alexa assistant and create new tools sold to others through its cloud-computing division, chief executive officer Jeff Bezos said in his annual shareholder letter.Changes ushered in by artificial intelligence and machine learning will help the companies that embrace them and put up barriers for those who don’t, the world’s second-richest man wrote in a 1,700-word letter released Wednesday.Bezos repeated familiar themes, such as the need to operate a business like it’s always “Day 1” to keep a start-up mentality and the ability to act quickly on limited information to stay ahead, what he calls “high-velocity decision making.” His emphasis on artificial intelligence and machine learning was the most concrete indication of areas in which the e-commerce giant will continue to invest.ALSO READ: Jeff Bezos is selling $1 billion of Amazon stock a year to fund rocket ventureMachine learning is the science of getting computers to act without being programmed, and is used in autonomous cars, speech-recognition and Internet search engines. The technology has influenced high-profile projects at Amazon such as drone delivery, its popular Echo voice-activated speaker and the new cashier-less Amazon Go convenience store unveiled late last year in Seattle, Bezos wrote.“But much of what we do with machine learning happens beneath the surface,” he wrote. “Machine learning drives our algorithms for demand forecasting, product search ranking, product and deals recommendations, merchandising placements, fraud detection, translations, and much more. Though less visible, much of the impact of machine learning will be of this type—quietly but meaningfully improving core operations.”ALSO READ : Amazon Web Services head Andrew Jassy reaps $35.4 million for 2016Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud-computing division, will offer affordable tools so clients can incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning into their own operations. Such tools have already been used by to detect diseases and increase crop yields, Bezos wrote. Bloomberg",2017-04-13,"Changes ushered in by artificial intelligence will help the companies that embrace them and put up barriers for those who don’t, says Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos",competitor,19:26,Jeff Bezos says artificial intelligence to fuel Amazon’s success +0.0,"Hyderabad: Infosys Ltd’s decision to return Rs13,000 crore to shareholders is “too little”, said former chief financial officer V. Balakrishnan on Thursday, and added that appointing a co-chairman would make the structure much more complex at board level.“I think it’s a good step forward, but the quantum could have been bigger because they have Rs40,000 crore on their balancesheet. Returning Rs13,000 crore is too little,” Balakrishnan told PTI over the phone. “On go-forward basis, returning 70% of free cash flow is almost similar to what they (Infosys) have today—that is 50% of net profit,” Balakrishnan said.Infosys on Thursday said will payout up to Rs13,000 crore in FY18 either in dividends or via a buyback or a mix of both, after it reported an almost flat net profit in the March quarter and sales outlook that fell short of estimates.The Bengaluru-headquartered, NASDAQ-listed company said it would begin to pay 70% of annual free cash flow as dividend compared to a previous policy of sharing up to half its post-tax profit.“... I think the benchmark for IT services companies should be Accenture,” Balakrishnan added. “Accenture returned substantial part of existing cash, and also, if I am right, they returned around 90% of free cash flow to shareholders every year. So, progressively Infosys should move towards this. That is a good benchmark.”On the appointment of Ravi Venkatesan as co-chairman of Infosys, Balakrishnan said there is no substance in that because the company today has a chairman, chief executive, chief operating officer, co-COO, chief financial offer, and a deputy CFO.“And I think it’s too top heavy. And they have not articulated why this change is required now and what value it is going to add. So, I don’t want to read too much into it. I think it’s making the structure much more complex at the board level, and that has got its own repercussions,” he saidBalakrishnan also labelled Infosys results for the March quarter as disappointing. “Whole year (2016-17), they have not met numbers in any of the quarters. And guidance also looks muted. I think the performance is very challenging.”",2017-04-13,"Former CFO V. Balakrishnan calls Infosys results for the March quarter disappointing, wants the IT firm to emulate Accenture on dividend payout to shareholders",competitor,19:12,"Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout to shareholders too little: ex-CFO V. Balakrishnan" +-0.68,"New Delhi: Shares of fuel retailer Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) rose by over 3% on Thursday, helping its market valuation surge past Rs 2trillion, following a decision that state-owned firms will have price revision on daily basis in select cities from next month. Also Read: Petrol, diesel prices to change daily from 1 MayThe scrip went up by 3.30% to end at Rs 422.40 on BSE. During the day, it soared 4.84% to Rs 428.70 —52-week high. On NSE, the shares moved up by 3.21% to close at Rs 422.40. IOC apart, shares of HPCL gained 3.07% and BPCL rose by 1.85% on BSE. Led by surge in the stock price, IOC’s market valuation rose to Rs 2,05,113.43 crore. With this the company became the ninth most-valued firm in terms of market capitalisation (m-cap). TCS remains the country’s most-valued firm followed by RIL, HDFC Bank, ITC, ONGC, SBI, HDFC and Infosys. In terms of volume, 6.19 lakh shares of the company were traded on BSE and over 77 lakh shares changed hands at NSE during the day. Besides, IOC eight companies have a market valuation of more than Rs 2 lakh crore.State-owned fuel retailers IOC, Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL), which own over 95% of nearly 58,000 petrol pumps in the country, will launch a pilot for daily price revision in five select cities from May 1 and gradually extend it to all over the country.",2017-04-13,The Indian Oil shares rose after a decision that state-owned firms will have price revision on daily basis in select cities from next month,competitor,18:32,Indian Oil shares rise over 3% +-1.0,"
Tech Mahindra Ltd has made another acquisition with the aim to cross-sell its services to a new set of clients. It said on Monday it has acquired CJS Solutions Group Llc, a US-based healthcare information technology consulting firm that does business as the HCI Group.The enterprise value of $110 million seems reasonable, given HCI’s trailing 12-month revenue of $114 million. Besides, the US-based firm has grown by as much as 28% annually in the past two years. Of course, operating margin is low at high single-digit levels, but this is typical of US-based tech firms. And it seems unlikely that Tech Mahindra can bring about a meaningful improvement in margins, considering that HCI’s work is mostly done on site.
Analysts at Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd said in a note to clients, “We believe that the nature of work that HCI does in the US provides limited opportunity for offshorability. While some margin benefits might still be realized on the back of cost cutting and other efficiencies, the major benefit due to offshoring will not materialize.”The big idea behind the acquisition then appears to be the ability to cross-sell Tech Mahindra’s services to a new set of clients. The company has almost no exposure to the healthcare provider space, and the acquisition will give access to 30 new clients. Overall, the healthcare and life sciences vertical contributes less than 5% to its revenues. Jefferies’ analysts point out that the acquisition is on the same lines as two previous acquisitions in 2016—Target and Bio Agency—where a specific expertise was acquired with the cross-sell of existing services being the major incremental positive.Alongside the company’s penchant for mergers and acquisitions, the performance of its organic business has also picked up in the past two quarters. In turn, this has got investors excited. Since it announced Q2 results in end-October, Tech Mahindra’s shares have risen by around 20%, far higher than the 7% gain in the Nifty IT index.In the process, its valuations have risen to 15.6 times estimated fiscal year 2017 earnings, only slightly lower than Infosys Ltd’s 16.2 times valuation. While the better-than-expected growth in the past quarters suggests Tech Mahindra is firmly on the recovery path, not everyone is convinced. Analysts at Nomura Research said in a note to clients, “We see the telecom (~47% of revenues) segment to be stable but not in a material rebound scenario, with likely near-term headwinds from LCC (Lightbridge Communications Corp.) restructuring and non-recurrence of milestone payments (which aided growth in Q3)... Overall, we look for 8% EPS CAGR over FY17-19F (after a 3% decline in FY17).” EPS is short for earnings per share and CAGR stands for compound annual growth rate. If earnings growth ends up being in single digits, as Nomura expects, the mid-teens price-earnings multiple looks overdone.",2017-03-08,"The acquisition of CJS Solutions Group, with the aim to cross-sell its services to a new set of clients, reflects well on Tech Mahindra shares",both,08:05,Investors see Tech Mahindra shares gaining momentum +0.17,"
New Delhi: More Indians living in the US want a job back home after Donald Trump became the president of the world’s largest economy. The number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has gone up more than 10-fold between December and March, according to an analysis by consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Pvt. Ltd, shared exclusively with Mint .There were approximately 600 US-based Indians seeking jobs in India in December 2016. By the end of March 2017, the number had gone up to approximately 7,000, Deloitte analysis said.ALSO READ: Donald Trump orders review of H-1B visa norms, in deterrent to Indian IT companiesThis data comes amid a crackdown by the Trump administration on job visas for skilled workers, including software engineers from India. US Citizenship and Immigration Services said employers seeking H-1B work visas—a non-immigrant visa allowing American firms to employ foreign workers—for 2018 declined for the first time in five years.The surge in the number of applicants has been triggered by Trump’s vows to protect jobs for locals. A Bloomberg report on Tuesday said Trump will take aim at information technology outsourcing companies when he orders a review of H-1B visa programmes to favour more skilled and highly paid applicants. The report also cited companies such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. and Mphasis Corp. as examples of outsourcing firms that would likely have fewer visas approved once the changes are adopted. The H-1B work visa programme channels thousands of foreign workers to the US technology industry.“While US companies will find some tech talent in the US, the numbers might be less than what are required to meet their needs. Add to that, the wages they need to pay to US employees will be much higher than what they pay to H-1B visa holders,” said C.K. Guruprasad, a consultant with executive search firm Spencer Stuart.On Tuesday, Australia abolished the 457 visa programme used by over 95,000 temporary foreign workers, the majority of them Indians, to tackle unemployment.Experts see global in-house centres (GICs) as a viable option for companies to not only retain Indian talent but also address the anticipated shortage in the required volume of workers in the US.According to Parag Saigaonkar, Principal at consulting firm Deloitte in India, while the initial thrust of GICs was on moving job roles from a high-cost to low-cost centre to get a competitive edge, companies are now looking at non-linear values that GICs can add to the business—new things that Indian GICs can produce—and supporting the parent organization.“With the seemingly shifting dynamics towards options between outsourcing and local hiring, companies with GICs in India could move Indian talent from the US to India and also hire locals into the GICs and thus sidestep the restrictions of outsourcing to third party companies,” Guruprasad said.According to K.S.Viswanathan, vice-president for industry initiatives at lobby group Nasscom, while the purpose of GICs so far has revolved around cost and skills arbitration advantages and talent consideration, it is now expected to change.“We are seeing a lot of companies looking at building newer competencies around newer technologies like machine learning, AI, automation, UI/UX, product management, DevOps etc,” said Anand Subramaniam, engagement manager and delivery head (GIC Accelerator Platform), Zinnov, a consulting firm.On an average, GICs add 50,000 to 70,000 people in India every year and due to the volume requirements, this number is expected to go up, according to Nasscom. According to the lobby group, there are over 1,000 GICs in India. Of these, around 67% of them are of US origin. Around 65% of the total workforce of 750,000 employed by these GICs are for US origin companies.",2017-04-19,The number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has surged 10-fold since December as Donald Trump moved to tighten US visa policy,both,11:07,"As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come back" +-0.52,"
Often, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and its investors don’t see eye to eye. The company’s March quarter results announcement was no different. Revenue grew 1% sequentially in constant currency terms, lower than analysts’ estimates of around 1.6% growth. Worryingly, revenues in the mainstay North American region fell by 1.8%, and those of the key banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) vertical fell 0.4%.
ALSO READ: TCS misses both revenue and profit estimates in March quarterStill, chief executive officer (CEO) Rajesh Gopinathan said, “We are quite happy with the way we have ended the year.” He added on a call with analysts that the outlook for the BFSI segment remains positive, and that thanks to large deal wins, it may be only a matter of time before the expected growth comes in. TCS has been saying for the past few months that things are looking up in the US and particularly in the BFSI segment. Over 40% of its revenues come from the BFSI segment, while the North American region accounted for 54% of revenues last year.But after the March quarter performance, investors are likely to question the company’s optimism. As the chart alongside shows, year-on-year growth rates have fallen significantly at TCS in the past year. Besides, operating profit margin, too, has fallen below its targeted range of 26-28%. The result of this double whammy was that earnings per share grew by just 8.3% last year.With the rupee having appreciated sharply compared to the average rate in fiscal year 2017 (FY17), margins are expected to be under further pressure in the new fiscal year. What’s more, thanks to the many changes in H-1B visa rules and policies, costs of providing on-site services to clients are also expected to rise. As such, earnings can be under pressure in FY18. Against this backdrop, TCS shares trade at around 16 times one-year forward earnings. And while CEO Gopinathan said that he expects FY18 to be incrementally positive, things could turn out to be particularly dire, depending on new visa rules. “We see near-term impact on decision-making due to immigration-related issues, even as companies are denying this. We expect 1QFY18 to start slowly and do not build growth acceleration in FY18,” analysts at Nomura Research wrote in a note to clients. Some of the possible impact of new visa norms is detailed here: bit.ly/2ngI48H.And unlike TCS’s upbeat post-results commentary, most other technology companies including Accenture Plc. have guided for slower growth in the new fiscal year. Besides, while Infosys Ltd tried to soothe investors’ nerves by outlining a detailed capital allocation policy, TCS said it will stay with its existing payout policy.In sum, there’s nothing much to like in TCS’s March quarter results announcement, except perhaps for the management’s hopeful commentary. But given the fair bit of divergence between the company’s outlook three months ago and its actual performance, investors would do well to tread cautiously.",2017-04-19,"After the March quarter performance, investors are likely to question the optimism being shown by new TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan",competitor,07:25,"TCS results: Upbeat commentary, downbeat performance in March quarter" +-0.72,"New Delhi: Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) missed analysts’ estimates for both revenue and profit in the fourth fiscal quarter, even as India’s largest software services firm’s full-year sales rose 6.2% to $17.58 billion.The company reported revenue of $4.45 billion in the three months ended 31 March, a 1.5% increase from the preceding quarter and 5.8% from the year-ago period. Net profit totalled $992 million, a 0.8% decline on a sequential basis and an increase of 5.8% from the year-ago period.A Bloomberg survey of 30 analysts had estimated TCS to report quarterly revenue of $4.62 billion and net profit of $1.03 billion in the quarter.Also read: TCS unperturbed by possible changes to H1B visa regime“FY17 was a year of broad-based growth amid economic and political turbulence in our key markets,” said Rajesh Gopinathan, who took over as chief executive of TCS in February. “We believe we are better placed for the year-ahead,” said Gopinathan, who spent much time on the numbers, suggesting that the new CEO will take time to probably replicate the success managed by his predecessor N. Chandrasekaran, the current chairman of Tata Sons Ltd. At the heart of TCS’s underperformance is the company’s inability to generate more business from its largest customers, banks, in its largest market, the US. TCS’s banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) segment, which accounts for over 40% of its revenue, grew 4.8% from a year earlier in constant currency terms. North America, which brings 54% of its business, reported a 4.3% rise.TCS does not give quarterly or annual forecasts but a few equity analysts are sceptical about the company’s prospects. The January-March quarter marks the 10th straight quarter (the company has recorded slow growth since July 2014) in which TCS has either underperformed, or at best managed to keep up with estimates. “Looking at this protracted slowdown, I believe TCS has reached a point where unless the company really brings about a change in the way it has done business, it will be tough for the company to ever beat street expectations,” said a Mumbai-based analyst at a domestic brokerage, on the condition of anonymity. “At best it can match street expectations.”TCS’s performance mirrors the poor show put up by Infosys Ltd last week, and this is worrying for three reasons.First, both growth and profitability for Indian IT firms is under pressure. Mumbai-based TCS reported a full-year increase of 8.3% in constant currency terms, similar to the full-year growth reported by Bengaluru-based Infosys (with $10.21 billion in revenue) although Infosys reported a higher 7.4% expansion in dollar revenue.Like Infosys, TCS’s growth in 2016-17 was slower than in 2015-16: TCS’s revenue growth in constant currency terms was 3.6 percentage points slower than the 11.9% increase in 2015-16. TCS added $1.03 billion in incremental revenue in the year ended 31 March 2017, less than $1.09 billion added in new business in 2015-16 when it reported a 7.1% increase and half of the $2.01 billion in new business added in 2014-15. TCS’s operating margin in the January-March quarter and for the full year stood at 25.7%. Operating margin narrowed 80 basis points from 26.5% in 2015-16, again similar to Infosys, which too saw its profitability eroded as commoditized outsourcing contracts see intense pricing pressure.Despite falling short of its operating margin forecast of 26-28% in the last financial year, the company’s management retained this guidance for the current fiscal year, which at least two analysts say will be “impossible to achieve”.“In this kind of environment, where most companies want more skilled people at client-facing sides, when most countries are adopting a protectionist stance, it looks impossible to keep operating in that band,” a Mumbai-based analyst at a foreign brokerage said, requesting anonymity.Second, despite higher growth in digital, which remains a fuzzy word, and the success of new and renew strategy rolled out by CEO Vishal Sikka to revive Infosys, both companies continue to be plagued by anaemic growth. This has made many analysts question if existing traditional contracts are merely getting rebadged as digital. A case in point: TCS claims its digital business grew 29% in the last year and now brings $3 billion in business.Finally, both TCS and Infosys continue to shy away from acquiring technology-focused firms. Infosys has not made a single acquisition in the last 18 months; TCS has looked away from acquiring a company since it partnered with Japan’s Mitsubishi Group in 2014. This is important because most large technology firms, including Accenture Plc, are looking at acquisitions to bring in new technology and skill sets. Nevertheless, the quarter does have some positives. For starters, the TCS management claimed that its insurance business under Diligenta and Japan has turned the corner, with Gopinathan expressing confidence of growth from these two lagging business units.On Tuesday, TCS shares fell 0.53% to Rs2,308.65 on BSE, while the benchmark Sensex declined 0.32% to 29,319.1 points. The results were announced after the end of trading in Mumbai.",2017-04-19,"Q4 revenue of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) rose 5.8% from the year-ago period to $4.45 billion, while Q4 profit increases 5.8% to $992 million",competitor,05:15,TCS misses both revenue and profit estimates in March quarter +-0.44,"Bengaluru: For Vishal Sikka, 2016-17 stands as a rebuke.After three consecutive downward growth revisions, Infosys’s dollar revenue growth in the year ended 31 March 2017 will be at best 7.6%, 150 basis points (bps) lower than the 9.1% growth in 2015-16, and 620 bps short of its first projected 13.8% growth outlined in April last year. One bps is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Departure of four executive vice-presidents (EVP) in financial year 2017 (in addition to four EVP exits between August 2014 and March 2016) implies that Sikka continues to struggle to build a stable top leadership team. Further, Infosys continues to look away from acquisitions (it’s been 18 months since the company made its last acquisition), which makes one wonder what Houdini trick the management has to achieve its target of becoming a $20 billion firm by March 2021.Also read: Will corporate earnings disappoint once again?Finally, Infosys founder N.R.Narayana Murthy’s outburst, twice in public, against some of the decisions by the board is another painful blow to Sikka. Agreed, Murthy has not questioned Sikka directly. But few of these decisions, including agreeing to a generous severance money to its former CFO (chief financial officer), and giving a hike to the current COO (chief operating officer), were approved by the management, and so it is naive to conclude that all is okay between Sikka and Murthy.Understandably, these developments have unnerved shareholders: in full fiscal year 2017, Infosys shares declined 16.2%, more than the 9% fall by BSE IT index, even as the benchmark Sensex index returned 17% gains. For these reasons, business historians would take note of the fall in Sikka’s popularity: from being hailed as a hero in the first 18 months, Sikka now battles allegations of skulduggery and corporate greed.So what can Sikka—and Infosys—do to possibly break this impasse?First, get back growth and improve its execution. A related second measure is to get some growth from three divisions: Infosys BPO, EdgeVerve, the products and platforms unit (together bring about 13% of revenue), and Infosys Consulting. Infosys needs to improve its ability to sell more solutions from these three services to its clients. Lastly, Sikka needs to arrest senior management departures and build a stable leadership team. All this needs to be done swiftly, and once completed, hopefully, any corporate governance concerns of shareholders (including the founders) should be assuaged. It is important to note here that the displeasure expressed by some of the founders against the board only coincided with the period when Infosys’s growth started slipping (during the first quarter of last year).Significantly, Sikka’s $8 million performance-related pay as part of his $11 million compensation is a thorny issue, and how the board justifies this variable salary to its CEO on Thursday will dictate if there is a third instance of public spat between Murthy and the board. Is all this doable? Unlikely.Simply, because for IT services firms, chasing reclusive growth is more challenging than ever. Moreover, in case of Infosys, nothing short of a miracle can bring back peace between some of the founders and the board and management. With this as a backdrop, Mint puts the spotlight on five things to watch in Infosys’s fourth quarter earnings on Thursday:Revenue forecast: Brokerage firm BNP Paribas sees Infosys recording 1.3% sequential increase in revenue at $2.58 billion for the January-March period. The Infosys management will be mindful that this growth will be 30 basis points less than what the company did in January-March last year. Analysts term the growth in the fourth quarter as “exit rate” and a strong growth helps to start on a good note in the new financial year. Again, management commentary for the April-June period will be crucial.Will Infosys give full-year guidance? For Infosys, providing a growth outlook is one decision which appears to be going down the wire. Analysts believe the management will give a growth outlook. Based on conversations with executives familiar with the development, this paper thinks otherwise and Infosys may discontinue from this practice. The board will eventually take a call when it meets on 12 and 13 April but this decision will decide the road ahead for the Infosys stock. Performance of top customers: During the second and third quarters, Infosys’s largest client and top five and top 10 clients gave less business to the company. Until the June quarter of last year, Sikka did well to get more business from its largest clients. Since Infosys gets a fifth of total revenue from its top 10 clients, the management needs to reverse this decline if Infosys expects to record sustainable growth. A rain-check on Infosys’s new initiatives in the wake of President Trump’s strict visa laws: Over the last 33 months, Sikka has steered Infosys to embrace newer ways to do business, such as by bringing elements of user-centric method of Design Thinking. At the same time, Infosys has increased its focus on building platforms, in an effort to move away from people-led model of doing business. All these measures will be tested as US President Donald Trump works to have a strict policy in place which makes it arduous for outsourcing companies to bring engineers in the US. Hence, commentary on how Infosys is monetising its platforms business and impact of changes in visa will be eyed.Weak areas: Sikka has been unable to get respectable growth from EdgeVerve and Infosys BPO in his near three-year stint at Infosys. Another disappointment has been that the consulting division too ran into trouble in April last year. Infosys has put in a new leadership team at all three units over the last year, and management commentary on how soon it expects growth from these three units should decide the overall growth for the company.",2017-04-13,"Infosys founders spat, Donald Trump’s US visa policy and three consecutive downward growth revisions are likely to weigh in on the Q4 results to be declared today",competitor,05:04,Infosys results today: Five things to watch out for +0.07,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd reported subdued earnings for the March quarter and gave a weak forecast for 2017-18, suggesting that India’s second largest software services company has to do more to become a next-generation services-led company and meet its target of $20 billion in revenue by 2020.In the January-March period, Infosys reported a 0.7% sequential rise in dollar revenue to $2.57 billion, allowing it to end fiscal year 2016-17 with a 7.4% year-on-year growth and $10.21 billion in revenue. Embarrassingly for the management, despite three downward revisions in annual growth, Infosys could manage only a 8.3% full-year growth in constant currency terms, missing the guidance of 8.4-8.8% made in January.Net profit declined 0.8% to $543 million in the March quarter, from $547 million in October-December. In rupee terms, revenue declined sequentially by 0.9% to Rs17,120 crore, while net profit declined 2.8% to Rs3,603 crore.ALSO READ: Infosys seeks to buy peace with new co-chairman, Rs13,000 crore payout promiseA Bloomberg survey of 34 analysts had forecast Infosys to report revenue of $2.68 billion, or Rs17,283.7 crore, in the quarter. The analysts estimated the company to report a net profit of $554.4 million, or Rs3,564.1 crore, in the period.Infosys expects its dollar revenue to expand between 6.1% and 8.1% in 2017-18, lower than the growth projected by Nasdaq-listed Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., which follows a January-December fiscal year and expects to grow between 8% and 10%. In constant currency terms, Infosys now expects 6.5-8.5% growth for the full year.Infosys’s lower growth guidance of 6.1-8.1% in 2017-18 means the firm expects less incremental revenue this year. In 2015-16, it reported a 9.1% growth and did $790 million in incremental business. In 2016-17, it managed $707 million in new business. The guidance of 6.1-8.1% means it expects to add between $600 and $800 million in new business.Q4 results: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?Another area of concern is Infosys’s lower profitability estimate of 23-25% for the current fiscal year—it has operated in a 24-26% band over the last few years—which implies that even as the firm sees pricing pressure for commoditized deals, it has been unable to sell more value-added services.Even though chief executive Vishal Sikka has tried to make engineers embrace newer ways of design thinking and tried to steer the firm to focus on building platforms, for now, it is struggling to change the way it has traditionally done business. This is the biggest worry ahead for the management, with the firm appearing to be unable to scale up business from newer offerings even as the core services business appears to be “structurally breaking down”, according to two equity analysts and one industry executive. This fact is disappointing because until the start of last fiscal year, Infosys appeared to be in the early stages of a turnaround.ALSO READ: Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout falls short of what investors need“We believe the top-line weakness and the lower-than-expected FY18 guidance is driven by the application services (Infosys had the highest exposure of 64% of its revenues to application services among peers in fiscal 2016) weakness (amid threat from cloud and SaaS, or Software as a Service) and low penetration in digital services,” Goldman Sachs analysts Sumeet Jain and Saurabh Thadani wrote in a note after Infosys declared earnings.Still, the management put up a brave face. “Yes, we have had challenges but I think we are progressing well despite all the macroeconomic challenges, pricing pressure and the distractions we have had over the last quarter,” Sikka said. The distractions he is referring to are the two public spats between Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy and the board, where the former raised issues of corporate governance and disproportionately high salaries to the CEO and COO.Although Infosys will likely grow faster than both Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and Wipro Ltd in 2016-17, its growth is lower than the 8.7% reported by Cognizant in 2016. TCS declares its earnings on 18 April and Wipro declares its fourth-quarter results on 25 April. Industry body Nasscom also avoided giving a growth outlook for India’s $150 billion outsourcing sector in February, on account of the uncertain macroeconomic outlook.“In order to get the stuttering sales engine firing again, Infosys needs to articulate its strategy in a more nuanced way and drive it through the organization,” said Thomas Reuner, managing director of IT outsourcing research at HfS Research. “Infosys urgently needs to focus on sales execution.”Investors punished the stock, which fell 3.71% to Rs932.90 on BSE at the close on Thursday, dragging the benchmark Sensex down 0.61% to 29,461.45 points.Infosys’s poor performance also hurt Sikka, who earned $6.7 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.7 million of the promised $8 million performance related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract allowing him to end his contract if his total compensation of $11 million fell more than 10%.",2017-04-14,"Infosys March quarter results show a 0.7% sequential rise in dollar revenue to $2.57 billion, allowing it to end FY17 with a 7.4% y-o-y growth and $10.21 billion in revenue",competitor,03:25,Infosys Q4 results disappoint as growth sputters +0.08,"
Mumbai: The quarterly earnings season that begins this week will determine whether Indian stocks that have rallied to record highs last week will be able to sustain the gains. Inflows from foreign and domestic investors have been driving up stocks but they may easily retreat if earnings disappoint. With rising commodity prices and the lingering effects of demonetization, earnings prospects for most companies are anything but rosy, analysts say. Companies, excluding banks and commodities suppliers, are likely to be weighed down by margin pressure as raw material costs have surged from a year earlier, they said.Margins of members of the Nifty index are estimated to narrow by as much as 116 basis points in the three months ended 31 March because of rising input costs, Edelweiss Securities Ltd said in a note released on 7 April. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Infosys Ltd, Bajaj Capital Ltd and Reliance Power Ltd are scheduled to report their fourth quarter earnings on 13 April. Analysts expect quarterly earnings growth to be driven by banks and metals companies. Banks’ profit growth in the March quarter is likely to be boosted mostly as a result of a favourable base effect. They had reported weak earnings in the year-ago period because of higher provisions following the Reserve Bank of India’s asset quality review. For metals companies, higher commodity prices are expected to support earnings growth.“Excluding banks and commodities, profits are likely to contract by 9%, similar to last quarter’s contraction and significantly lower than the 10% plus profit growth seen in FY15, FY16 and H1FY17. The slowdown in profit will be more pronounced in consumption sectors and cement,” Edelweiss said in the 7 April note. The brokerage expects FY17 Nifty earnings per share (EPS) to grow 10%, a marked improvement over the past two years, with Nifty EPS expected at Rs455, Rs555 and Rs660 at the end of FY17, FY18 and FY19, respectively. The brokerage expects Nifty firms to report revenue, operating profit and net profit growth of 15%, 8% and 14%, respectively, in the March quarter. Analysts are worried that the lingering effects of demonetization are still likely to impact companies that are dependent on domestic consumption. Recovery of volume growth is likely to be one of the key concerns in the March quarter earnings, Sanjay Mookim, India equity strategist, Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA-ML), said on Thursday. BofA-ML expects earnings growth to improve from sub-5% in FY17 to 12% in FY18 and 15% in FY19. Indian markets have touched record highs in March and April after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party won the crucial Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. The Sensex and Nifty rose 11% and 12%, respectively in the March quarter and if earnings fail to deliver, the rally may lose steam.The net income of Sensex companies is likely to grow 9% on an annual basis and 15.3% quarter-on-quarter, Kotak Institutional Equities said in a report dated 7 April.Excluding banks, the brokerage expects an 8.8% year-on-year growth in net income. Weak demand environment, rising raw material costs and increase in discounts may result in an annual decline in net income for automobile firms, while downstream energy firms may be hurt because of lower refining margins, muted growth in volume and the recent decline in global crude oil prices. Kotak estimates Sensex FY18 EPS at Rs1,682 and FY19 EPS at Rs1,972. Its Nifty EPS estimates for FY18 and FY19 are Rs520 and Rs608, respectively. Gautam Duggad, head of research at Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd, said the March quarter may see margin contraction of 50 basis points for firms under the brokerage’s coverage, excluding financials. “We are expecting 23% earnings growth for our universe and 22% CAGR over FY17-19. Expectations for our Motilal Oswal universe net profit growth is 28% and largely led by three sectors—PSU banks, metals, oil and gas. Rest of the universe may decline by 5%,” he said. Rakesh Tarway, head of research at Reliance Securities, expects 10% profit growth in the March quarter, reflecting similar trends in the first nine months of the fiscal year. He, however, said commodity prices will have a marginal impact on profitability as firms in many industries like tyres, autos and packaged consumer goods have raised prices. “Also, commodity prices have now started stabilizing, which will further insulate margin erosion,” he added. According to Deutsche Bank, Sensex firms are expected to post a 9.1% profit growth in the fourth quarter. “Excluding banks, Sensex net profit growth is likely to be at 5.4%. Autos are likely to be the biggest drag on Sensex growth, as our analyst has factored in a one-time impact of the BS-III vehicle ban,” it said in a note dated 7 April. In the current fiscal year, CRISIL Ratings expects corporate revenue to grow at around 8% on a year-on-year basis. “Revival in sectors such as construction equipment, EPC (on improving order book); metals (especially non-ferrous) and sugar—on better prices, are expected to aid the improvement,” the rating agency said on 3 April.",2017-04-10,"With rising commodity prices and lingering effects of demonetisation, earnings prospects for most companies for the March quarter are anything but rosy",competitor,20:41,Will corporate earnings disappoint once again? +-1.0,"Mumbai: State Bank of India (SBI) on Tuesday surpassed ONGC to become the country’s most valuable public sector unit (PSU), in terms of market valuation. At the end of trade, the market cap of SBI stood at Rs2,35,307.51 crore. This is about Rs2,961.79 crore more than that of PSU energy major ONGC’s Rs2,32,345.72 crore. ONGC once used to be the country’s most-valued company in terms of market valuation. Among the top-10 most valued companies list, SBI is at fifth position, while ONGC is seventh. Shares of SBI ended the day with a mild gain of 0.17% at Rs290.15, while ONGC fell by 1.12% to Rs181.05 on BSE. In intra-day, shares of SBI rose by 2.33% to Rs 296.40 and ONGC lost 1.36% to Rs180.60. So far this year, shares of SBI surged almost 16% while that of ONGC fell by over 4%. IT major TCS is the most valued Indian company with a market cap of Rs4,54,902.85 crore followed by RIL (Rs4,45,578.92 crore), HDFC Bank (Rs3,70,480.05 crore), ITC (Rs3,38,851.25 crore), SBI, HDFC (Rs2,35,122.56 crore), ONGC, Infosys (Rs2,11,870.18 crore), HUL (Rs1,97,464.44 crore) and Maruti Suzuki (Rs1,85,235.49 crore).",2017-04-18,"SBI becoems India’s most valuable PSU firm after market cap rises to Rs2,35,307.51 crore , about Rs2,961.79 crore more than that of ONGC ",competitor,17:47,"SBI market cap crosses ONGC’s, becomes India’s most valuable PSU firm " +0.06,"
Singapore: One of the world’s best known investment gurus, Jim Rogers of Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interests, admitted in an interview that he may have been too hasty in exiting India in 2015, but says he won’t enter it now when the markets are at record highs. He says he was surprised that the government managed to get the legislation for the goods and services tax (GST) through. “It is a historic move as this has been a very contentious issue among Indian politicians for several years,” he added.Rogers said that in addition to GST, he has also been tracking the Indian market, the best performer among the world’s 10 largest stock markets thus far in 2017. “Yes, I am impressed, and I see that the markets are at an all-time high, currency is going up—they are making new highs without me, and that does not make me happy.”Also read: Jim Rogers: Surprised Modi government got GST throughKeen as he is to enter India, Rogers says he will wait because it doesn’t make sense to enter a market when it is on a high. “I don’t want to jump on to a moving train. When you jump on to a moving train, you’ll get hurt.”Rogers, a hedge fund manager whose investments serve as leads for many other investors, has long been an India bear. In 2014, though, soon after the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance came to power, he changed his tune. He explains that his investments in India were driven by his understanding of Modi’s achievements in Gujarat as chief minister and policy-leanings. “See, first I was interested in India because of his (Modi’s) record and what he said he planned to do,” he said. Then, in 2015, disappointed with the pace of progress in terms of reforms, he exited India. “He (Modi) did nothing much for two years, and I sold,” Rogers added. “Unfortunately, I sold too soon.”If the government continues in the same lines, India can’t be ignored, Rogers said. “If Modi continues doing stuff like GST, then not just me— everybody has to pay a lot more attention to India.”",2017-04-13,Investment guru Jim Rogers says he may have been too hasty in exiting India in 2015,competitor,11:31,"Jim Rogers changes his mind on India again, says he missed the bus" +-0.61,"
Singapore: Commodities trading guru and hedge fund manager Jim Rogers, who had sold his holdings in Indian companies and exited the country in late 2015 on the grounds that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had failed to live up to investors’ expectations, said he was reconsidering entering India.With Indian markets sustaining a record-breaking rally, Rogers admitted that he may have missed the bus on India, “On GST, I am amazed, shocked and stunned,” he said in an interaction, referring to the goods and services tax that will create a unified market in India.ALSO READ: Jim Rogers changes his mind on India again, says he missed the bus“If Modi continues doing stuff like GST, then not just me—everybody has to pay a lot more attention to India. This does not mean that I won’t have another chance to enter—India is currently on my list of something to do,” he added.Edited excerpts from an interview:
In September 2015, when we last spoke, you said you had sold all your holdings in Indian companies and exited India because the NDA government had failed to live up to investors’ expectations. But since then, the Indian markets have rallied and are at record highs, and reforms are on track, including the passage of GST. Foreign direct investment (FDI) into India touched an eight-year high of $46.4 billion in 2016.Wait—India passed the GST and that astonished me. I am surprised that Mr Modi’s government got that through. It is a historic move as this has been a very contentious issue among Indian politicians for several years.You say FDI flows into India are at record highs, and it is certainly not me. I am surprised with the FDI inflows—while Modi has undertaken small reforms, and cleaned up some stuff, I am not aware of any big steps to boost FDI. Yes, I am impressed, and I see that the markets are at an all-time high; currency is going up—they are making new highs without me, and that does not make me happy.This has made me realize that something is happening in India. When GST was passed, I reconsidered investing in India, and I thought, “wait a minute—this is going to work”. I am positively impressed, but I’am not back to investing in India yet—the markets are at an all-time high, but I don’t want to jump on to a moving train. When you jump on to a moving train, you’ll get hurt.I missed the bus in India. If Modi continues doing stuff like GST, then not just me—everybody has to pay a lot more attention to India. This does not mean that I won’t have another chance to enter—India is currently on my list of something to do.
When you look at emerging markets as an investor, where do you see India?India still has a lot of debt, unlike Russia that has a convertible currency and does not have much debt. I am invested in Russia. One reason why Russia does not have a high level of debt is that no one was willing to lend them money—and that is not necessarily a good thing. Indian politicians have been saying for a while now that the country will address this situation of debt, but nothing has been done. Some studies say India’s debt-to-GDP ratio is at 90% now. It is difficult to grow at a rapid pace when you have such high levels of debt, because you are dragging along interest rate payments. But India is still on my list, especially if Mr Modi can continue doing some of the stuff that he said he would do, and especially if the government makes the currency convertible and opens up the markets. I am more impressed by Mr Modi as a politician than as someone who is executing reforms—yes, GST was extraordinary. But your prime minister is a great politician; he is travelling around the world and making friends everywhere. As a politician, Mr Modi is one of the most successful and exceptional of this generation—no question about that. No surprise that he has picked up all states in the recent elections. Seventy years since independence, he is cleaning up the gigantic mess with moves like GST, which no on else has been able to do so far.
Finance minister Arun Jaitley recently said India’s economy is expected to grow at 7.2% in 2017 and 7.7% in 2018. What is your view?Most people don’t trust these numbers, including me. I used to say that what India does is to wait for China to announce its numbers, and then top them. I am skeptical of Chinese numbers and I am skeptical of Indian data. I am skeptical of American numbers, too. I’ve learnt over the years that if you are sitting and watching government numbers, and do your investments based on that, you are not going to make much money. Not too long ago, they caught the Germans faking numbers—the Germans of all people!
When you look at India, what are the risks? Could it be populist steps leading to 2019, the reforms process not continuing, or rising oil prices?I am more worried about the world because that will impact India. Yes, India has elections coming, and normally when that happens, any politician will do anything to win elections. Mr Modi is in a position to do a lot of stuff. I am not too worried about what is happening internally in India as the Modi-led government has momentum and everything going for it. The world situation is more worrying. Mr Trump has now bombed Syria. Many American presidents love war, and Mr Trump had said he was a non-interventionist. Now look at him! He is involved with Syria, and also saying he is going to get involved with North Korea. These can potentially not be good for the world. If the Middle East blows up in the next year or two, it won’t help the markets. It will help Russia and oil. It won’t help India or China. Mr Trump has promised to have trade wars with Mexico and China. He has not done it so far and so, maybe, is just another lying politician. But he said the same of Syria and then he intervened. He has said North Korea better watch out. He met with the Chinese and did not get anything. Power corrupts. Interest rates are going higher no matter what happens. The French and German elections are coming up—they could be disruptive. These worry me more than what Mr Modi is doing inside India.See, first I was interested in India because of his (Modi’s) record and what he said he planned to do. Then I invested. But he did nothing much for two years, and I sold. Unfortunately, I sold too soon. Modi will not do anything foolish before next elections—but the global situation can have an impact on India, irrespective of what Modi does. On the (farm) loan waivers, while I would say it is terrible economics, it is also brilliant politics.
Not just India, the global markets have rallied since Trump took over. So where can one invest in times like these?America is at an all-time high, and be it Japan or Germany—their markets are all doing well. There is a lot of money floating around. I had expected it all to slow down by now, but it has not. The Americans say they are going to be cutting back—but nobody has really done that in that past year or two. The only place I am looking to invest right now is Russian government bonds because the yields are very high—the rouble is down a lot. For whatever reason, Russia, which has been the most hated market in the world, is becoming less hated—more countries and politicians are reconsidering Russia. I’ve learnt in my life that if you buy things that are hated, they will make a lot of money even if takes a couple of years.India is at an all-time high.I own a lot of US dollars, and the reason I own it is because of the turmoil that I see coming, and people look for a safe haven in times like that and the dollar, rightly or wrongly, is considered a safe haven. But it is not—America is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world. What will happen is the US dollar will get overpriced and may even turn into a bubble, depending on where the turmoil is, and I hope that at that time, I am smart enough to sell the US dollar and put my monies elsewhere. Conceivably, it will be gold. Often, when the US dollar is very strong, gold goes down. I own gold, but I’ve not been buying gold in recent years. But if gold goes down sufficiently, I will sell my US dollars and buy gold. I expect the dollar to go substantially higher, and I hope I can sell then.Crude is in the process of making a bottom—it is a complicated bottom—we are going to look back in a few years from now and say that in 2015, 2016 and 2017, crude made its bottoming pattern. I will not sell crude now, especially if Trump is going to throw some more bombs around.
The Fed has said they will raise rates again this year. What’s your view on that?The Fed will continue to raise interest rates—we cannot continue like this—negative interest rates in most parts of the world are destroying a lot of people. Many pension plans, insurance companies and trusts are suffering badly now—you are going to have some pension plans in America go bankrupt, or not earn any money. They have the obligations to meet their promises as people continue to get older. When interest rates go higher, they are going to make bonds go lower—it is going to help the US dollar. Historically, in the US, if the Fed raised interest rates four times, it meant the stock market would go down and go down substantially for a while—it is clear that the Fed will raise interest rates four times, and it does not mean that it has to happen that way. One could counter and say, rates going up from zero to four times is not such a big deal and, therefore, it is different this time. Four of the most dangerous words in the financial markets are: “it’s different this time”. It is very dangerous when you hear people say that.
We are already four months into this calendar year. What do we need to look out for when it comes to the rest of 2017?We are also eight years into an economic recovery in the US, which is also very unusual. Most times in the US, every four years to 7-8 years, we’ve had economic setbacks since the beginning of the republic. Again, it does not always have to happen that way, but it nearly always has. Yes, we are four months into 2017, but I am more worried about the next couple of years. Mr Trump has promised some wonderful things. He has promised lower taxes, which is great for any economy and America is the largest in the world. He has promised to rebuild infrastructure, and that is wonderful, and we need it. He has promised to bring US dollars home—we have $3 trillion sitting outside the US by American companies and he has promised tax incentives to bring that home. He has promised to cut regulations and controls in the US economy—all of that is fantastic. If he does all this, and does not go to war, and also does not engage in a trade war, we can continue to have a good time for the foreseeable future. But I am skeptical because interest rates will be going higher, and because it has been eight years since we’ve had no problems in the US. For the US to continue this run, it can happen, but it has to be on a lot more debt. If all of that leads to a bubble…The other side will be very bad. Don’t worry—you will have a job and Mint will be in business because someone will have to be reporting all of this coming turmoil.",2017-04-13,"Investment guru Jim Rogers says if PM Narendra Modi continues doing stuff like GST, then not just him, everybody has to pay a lot more attention to India",competitor,18:21,Jim Rogers: I am surprised Modi government got GST through +-0.43,"Charlottesville,US: To transform India’s economy, there is a need to reduce “friction” in businesses and create an “environment” wherein the government has more trust in its entrepreneurs, Infosys founder N. R. Narayana Murthy has said. For the transformation of the Indian economy, he said it is essential for the younger generation to be daring and that India is integrated with the global economy. “We still have a little bit of work in reducing friction to businesses. We need to create an environment where the government has more trust in its entrepreneurs than it is today,” Murthy, 70, told students of the prestigious Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia here. Murthy, the recipient of the 2017 Thomas Jefferson Foundation medal in Global Innovation, was responding to Darden School of Business Dean Scott Beardsley who asked, “what do you think needs to happen next to transform India’s economy. What is next”. Also read: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“We want our youngsters to be a little bit more daring in taking the entrepreneurial route more and more than the extent to which they do today. We have to become much more integrated to the world economy so that we can consider the entire world as our market and can become globally competitive. “And most importantly we can become much more open minded to learn from the wonderful things that are happening in this country and elsewhere. I would say these are required (for transforming India’s economy to the next level),” Murthy said. He, however, refrained from elaborating what the Indian government needs to do to create the environment of trust in its entrepreneurs and said, “I will tell you why, as an Indian citizen, it may not be proper if I were to be critical about India when I am outside India”. Interacting with students, he said, challenges for entrepreneurs are now different than the time when he started Infosys. Those days access to capital was almost non-existent and government was a big irritant. “Today, challenges are different. But in some sense even more complex, because today’s entrepreneurs have to be much more smarter than what we were because there is so much of competition on a global scale. Before you can say this can be done, somebody else may have already done it.” “Therefore, today’s entrepreneurs would have to be much more nimble, global, competitive because market is truly determinant for success today unlike our time when managing government was a big determinant in India,” he said. Murthy said good governance is all about maximising shareholders’ value while ensuring fairness, transparency and accountability to all stake holders. Of all the stakeholders, society is the most important player. “Respect from the society is the most important ingredient for longevity of a corporation,” he said. “To be honoured by the most innovative country in the world and to be awarded a medal in the name of Thomas Jefferson, author of Declaration of Independence is to me a big honour. I will certainly work hard, and hopefully smart in the remaining years of my life, to deserve this kindness, this generosity and this affection on their part,” he told PTI. The fact that the university has seen it fit to pick up somebody from India, and bestow this honour shows how open this country is and how generous they are, Murthy said. “Therefore this is a clear example of how Indian students wherever they are whether in India or here or anywhere else can be sure that as long as they are good citizens of this world, contribute to make the society a better place through peaceful and harmonious methods, they will be recognised, appreciated,” he said. Murthy said that Indian students are making a positive impact in the countries they are studying. “I have not come across a single person of Indian-origin who has conducted himself or herself in a manner that has brought sorrow to the society they are living in, anywhere, wherever in the world. So I think that is the right way. “I am very very proud of our Indian students. They are smart, have very good values and are very peaceful. They contribute to the society in a very significant way wherever they are. I just want them to continue to do this,” the Infosys founder said. The one important principle that Indian students should remember in everything they do is will this make India a more respected place, a more respected nation? Will this action of mine make me a better part of this community? Will this action deserve appreciation and affection from other members in this community? If they remember these then they will do everything possible, Murthy said. PTI",2017-04-13,Infosys founder Narayana Murthy says the younger generation needs to be daring in taking the entrepreneurial route for transformation of the Indian economy,competitor,14:26,Narayana Murthy says need to reduce ‘friction’ in businesses in India +-0.25,"Indian oil firms delivered a subdued performance in the December quarter. Take for instance Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL’s) results. Despite the fact that it crossed the Rs8,000-crore mark in stand-alone net profit for the first time, the performance would have been sweeter if income from sources other than its main business had not played a key role in boosting profit. Notably, while RIL’s gross refining margin (GRM) improved to $10.8 a barrel from $10.1 a barrel in the September quarter, the measure was lower than expected, considering that the benchmark Singapore refining margin had done much better sequentially.GRM is the realization from turning every barrel of crude oil into finished products and is an important measure of profitability for refining firms.RIL’s petrochemicals segment performed well but that couldn’t compensate for the disappointment from the refining business. However, investors have little to complain given that the stock has appreciated as much as 21% till 17 March since RIL announced it will start charging its customers in the telecom business. Further stock appreciation will be dependent on how the telecom venture fares in the days to come.State-run refining and marketing firms—Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) and India Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL)—delivered a decent performance. Reported GRMs improved sequentially. Inventory gains helped. According to analysts from Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd, core earnings, adjusted for inventory gains, came in at Rs12.7/12.1/7.6/ share for BPCL/HPCL/IOCL versus reported earnings per share of Rs15.7/15.7/8.4, respectively. “After adjusting for one-offs, core earnings of IOCL and BPCL came in-line with our estimates but HPCL missed the mark on this metric as marketing margins disappointed,” an Emkay report said last month. However, broadly, reported earnings of all three firms were in-line, according to Emkay. These stocks have done well in the past two years, helped by diesel price deregulation and improvements in earnings. A further upside can come if refining margins improve further.Meanwhile, stocks of upstream oil firms—Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd—have performed well in the past couple of months, thanks to firmer crude prices. However, if oil prices continue to remain range-bound, further appreciation in shares of ONGC and Oil India will be tough. Both firms saw their net price realization improve year-on-year as well as sequentially.",2017-03-24,Oil firms delivered a subdued performance for the December quarter,competitor,08:14,Subdued performance from oil firms in the December quarter +0.03,"Growth of information technology (IT) services firms continues to decelerate on a year-on-year basis. Growth in constant currency terms stood at 8.7% for tier-I IT companies in the December quarter, excluding Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., according to data collated by Nomura Research. Two quarters ago, growth stood at over 10%, and a year before that, growth was in the teens.Of course, that growth rates have been declining in the IT sector is well known and, as a result, IT stocks have underperformed the Nifty 50 index by around 18% in the past year.The moot question is if the December quarter results give signs of a possible turnaround. Investors will be disappointed there. Nomura’s analysts point out that growth in the key US region was the slowest in 12 quarters. Growth in some of the industry verticals that were doing well in previous quarters, such as retail, healthcare and telecom, slowed in the December quarter. And the performance of the largest industry vertical—banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI)—gave no hints of a turnaround. Besides, as US firms await the broad policy direction of the new government, there may be some delays in taking decisions.Of course, there are some silver linings. Companies, for instance, are sounding more optimistic, especially with regards to demand from BFSI. Besides, analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities say the intensity with which some large corporations shifted work to captive units earlier has abated to an extent.But, from the looks of it, things are likely to go further south before any turnaround comes about. The recent appreciation in the rupee is likely to worsen matters for Indian IT companies. Profit margins have already been under pressure, owing to the increased investments in building digital capabilities and thanks to pricing pressure in the traditional application maintenance work. Besides, all of the noise against H1B visas in the US may result in new laws that increase costs of providing on-site services. Kotak’s analysts wrote in a note to clients, “In case the rupee were to sustain at current levels, we do highlight that many traditional levers of the industry are exhausted... Our EPS (earnings per share) estimates for FY2018/19 are based on INR/USD rate of 68 and have 5-9% downside risk at spot prices.”",2017-03-24,The recent appreciation in rupee may worsen matters for Indian IT firms as profit margins are already under pressure owing to increased investments in building digital capabilities ,both,07:56,"IT sector: Donald Trump, rupee worsen matters in December quarter" +0.32,"Hyderabad: Veteran industrialist Adi B. Godrej has disapproved the move of Infosys co-founder N. R. Narayana Murthy to publicly express concern over the pay hike of the company’s chief operating officer (COO), as he justified a big gap between salaries at the entry and top levels. “Of course, there will be a big gap because there are very few people capable of taking top-level things but I think that it (executive pay packets) should be left to each company,” the Godrej Group chairman told PTI. “And I don’t think people should publicly comment on such issues. There is no need to publicly comment on such issues,” he said. Godrej was responding to questions on Murthy criticising the pay hike of COO of Infosys, U.B. Pravin Rao. “Each company should decide, its Board should decide. If the Board has decided after proper considerations why should others complain?” the former president of the Confederation of Indian Industry asked.",2017-04-12,"Adi Godrej says people should not publicly comment on issues such as pay hikes, responding questions on Infosys co-founder N. R. Narayana Murthy’s comments ",competitor,18:12,Adi Godrej disapproves of N.R Narayana Murthy’s pay hike comments +-0.26,"
Bengaluru: Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp.’s growth of 8.6% in calendar year 2016, the slowest in the history of the Nasdaq-listed company, hurt its senior management ranks, including chief executive officer Francisco D’Souza, whose compensation last year fell by a sharp 31%. D’Souza took home $8.26 million, against $11.95 million in 2015.Cognizant’s subdued performance last year—along with the company moving the grant of restricted stock units (RSU) to its senior management from the fourth quarter of last year to the first quarter of this calendar year—further hit the earnings of other senior management members, including president Rajeev Mehta and chief financial officer Karen McLoughlin. Mehta and McLoughlin saw their compensation drop by 30.5% and 30% respectively last year, as compared to 2015, according to filings made to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.ALSO READ: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backCognizant’s 8.6% growth in 2016 paled in comparison with the 21% growth it posted in 2015, underlining a broader slowdown witnessed by technology outsourcing companies, which are battling to keep themselves relevant. Newer technologies like cloud computing and data analytics are making the largest Fortune 1000 companies, across industries, cut reliance on traditional solutions offered under application development and maintenance by technology outsourcers.For this reason, chief executives are seeing a fall in their compensation. Vishal Sikka, CEO of Infosys Ltd, saw his compensation for 2016-17 decline 8.1% to $6.8 million from $7.4 million earned in 2015-16, after the firm’s growth slipped to 7.4%, compared to 9.1% in 2015-16.D’Souza, son of an Indian diplomat, has been at the helm of Cognizant for over a decade. Since he took over as CEO in January 2007, Cognizant has grown from a $1.4 billion company to end last year with $13.5 billion in revenue, overtaking both Infosys and Wipro Ltd.Starting in 2010, Cognizant added over $1 billion in new revenue or incremental revenue every year for seven straight years, a feat only matched by Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.",2017-04-22,"Due to the poor show by Cognizant, CEO Francisco D’Souza took home $8.26 million, against $11.95 million in 2015.",competitor,00:51,Cognizant CEO Francisco D’Souza’s pay falls 31% in 2016 as growth slows +0.09,"
Investors were underwhelmed by Accenture Plc’s results for the quarter ended February 2017. While revenue was more or less in line with expectations, new order bookings fell below expectations, and so did the company’s outlook for the consulting business. Accenture’s shares have fallen by around 4% since the results were announced last week. Some analysts have cheered the relatively higher growth in the company’s outsourcing business, suggesting this augurs well for India’s IT services industry. Outsourcing services grew 8% in constant currency terms last quarter, compared to 5% growth in consulting services. This is the first time in two years that Accenture’s outsourcing segment has outgrown its consulting practice. But as analysts at Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd point out, “(The outsourcing segment) is largely market share gain-driven and cannot be read positively from an Indian IT perspective, in our view.” In other words, the pickup in Accenture’s outsourcing business may well be coming at the expense of Indian IT, with which it competes directly. Worse still, the analysts add that the heightening of immigration fears could put the multinational firm in an advantageous position in this segment versus Indian IT, which is far more dependent on H-1B visas. Not very long ago, Indian investors were celebrating the fact that Tata Consultancy Services Ltd’s (TCS’s) market capitalization exceeded the combined value of Accenture and Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. Now, Accenture’s value exceeds that of TCS by around $5.5 billion. Note that Accenture’s new order bookings fell by 4% year-on-year and were below expectations. Growth in the key North American region fell to 4%, compared to double-digit growth a year ago. Company-wide growth has more-or-less halved in the past one year. These aren’t comforting signs for Indian IT, by any stretch of imagination. Some analysts see the relatively higher growth in Accenture’s outsourcing business as a positive for Indian IT, since it points to a shift in the nature of digital spends by customers, which may provide more opportunities for Indian companies. The argument goes that digital has moved beyond the consulting phase and is now scaling up, where Indian IT’s capabilities will be required. It would be prudent for investors to look for more datapoints that attest this. For now, what’s working in the favour of IT stocks is that since valuations are low when compared to the broad market, they have takers when stocks fall below a certain threshold. Although revenue growth has come down substantially, these companies still generate high amounts of cash, and have lately increased payout ratios.",2017-03-31,"The pickup in Accenture’s outsourcing business may well be coming at the expense of Indian IT firms, such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro",competitor,07:42,Is Accenture making things worse for Indian IT? +-0.55,"
All nation-states have armed forces which consist of individuals who are willing to sacrifice their lives for the country. How many corporations in the world, with all their management systems and resources, have managed to create employees with such dedication? This was a question I had raised in my last article. The question that follows is: How does a nation-state build loyalty among its citizens? What can human resources professionals in various organizations learn from this?All strong nations have enemies they have fought multiple wars with. This column had earlier referred to the creation of out-groups to effectively consolidate the members of an in-group. Starting a war does a far more effective job of binding the nation together than the creation of an out-group. The famous historian Ian Morris, in his book War! What Is It good For? : Conflict And The Progress Of Civilization From Primates To Robots, has pointed out that, throughout history, by fighting wars, people have created larger, more organized societies that have gone on to be richer. Creation of conflict is integral to all great human movements too. Communism is not about peaceful coexistence of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie but a conflict between them. Organized religions know that the concepts of God and heaven are strong only when there is an equally strong concept of devil and hell as part of their belief systems. Most organizations have a vision of what they aspire to be. But very few have defined what they don’t want to be, the enemy they are at war with. Steve Jobs, in the “1984” launch commercial, made it clear that his organization was not interested in peaceful coexistence with other existing technology giants. At the outset he declared a war on technology that was not human friendly (read IBM and Microsoft). That belief is reflected even today in the design of Apple products. This also explains why Jobs and the brand he created continue to have a mass following of dedicated, aggressive fans.From the many wars that nation-states fight, heroes emerge. All strong nations have their national heroes—those who fought for its people, laid down their lives for the flag. Even after their death, nations ensure that these heroes are remembered. The history of nations is filled with stories of their valour. These stories help preserve the memories of the past for many generations of its citizens to come. How many organizations have a well thought out strategy to identify and project their heroes? Is there a process to collect their stories? Is there a mechanism to disseminate the inspiring stories, not just through formal training programmes, but also through water-cooler conversations? Why have nations not redesigned their flags or remixed their national anthems?Management experts who profess that “change is the only constant” forget the scientific fact—the human brain loves status quo. As Stephen Fleming of University College London says, whether it’s moving house or changing a TV channel, there is a considerable tendency for the human brain to stick with the current situation and choose not to act anew. When any action is repeated, the corresponding neural connections become stronger and over a point of time the brain gets to perform that action without even consciously thinking. The comfort of not thinking too much is disturbed by new stimuli. Political parties, organized religion and even god-men who manage to build strong loyalty with their followers have understood this brain fact. No political party or organized religion changes their symbols. Some of these symbols are thousands of years old. All godmen make sure that not just their attire, even their hairstyles remain constant over decades. And, organized religions have not allowed anyone to change even a comma in their holy books. But many organizations change their logos and other physical expressions at the drop of a hat. Such rebranding exercises are short cuts used by organizational leaders to show that they are making “visible” changes. Design agencies whose business thrives with every logo change will continue to give plausible arguments to prove that the new font and colours are far superior to the previous ones!Very few professional organizations have exploited the powers of consistency. To do that, organizational leaders should begin with a strong vision that has depth and width. They should know what expressions of that vision are permanent and what facets of that vision could change with the times. From its economic policies to global status to the demographic profile of its citizens, India has changed a lot. But the design of the national flag and the tune of its national anthem has always remained constant. Great nations understand the power of consistency. Nation-states do not try to build strong bonds with their citizens through financial incentives. The bond between all nations and their citizens is emotional. Political leaders know the power of emotional rewards over monetary rewards. And these emotional rewards are amplified through rituals. All nations have several rituals: standing up when the national anthem is sung, hoisting a flag, republic day parades—all add to strengthening the emotional bond between the nation and its citizen.An intuitive understanding of the core concepts of human behaviour has been used by nation leaders to build strong loyalty among its citizens. What prevents organizations from learning from these national leaders?Biju Dominic is the chief executive officer of Final Mile Consulting, a behaviour architecture firm.Comments are welcome at views@livemint.com",2017-03-30,How does a nation-state build loyalty among its citizens? What can human resources professionals in various organizations learn from this?,competitor,08:46,Why national flags don’t change +-0.15,"New Delhi: The country’s third largest software services firm Wipro is learnt to have fired hundreds of employees as part of its annual “performance appraisal”. According to sources, Wipro has shown the door to about 600 employees, while speculation was rife that the number could go as high as 2,000. At the end of December 2016, the Bengaluru-based company had over 1.79 lakh employees. When contacted, Wipro said it undertakes a “rigorous performance appraisal process” on a regular basis to align its workforce with business objectives, strategic priorities of the company, and client requirements. “The performance appraisal may also lead to the separation of some employees from the company and these numbers vary from year to year,” it added. The company, however, did not comment on the number of employees that have been asked to leave. Wipro said its comprehensive performance evaluation process includes mentoring, re-training and upskilling of employees. The company is scheduled to report its fourth quarter and full-year numbers on 25 April.The development comes at a time when Indian IT companies are facing an uncertain environment given the curbs being proposed on worker visa norms by various countries like the US, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.These companies use temporary work visas to send employees to work on client sites. With visa programmes in these countries becoming more rigorous, Indian IT companies are likely to face challenges in movement of labour as well as a spike in operational costs. Indian IT companies get over 60% of their revenues from the North American market, about 20% from Europe and the remaining from other economies. Besides, higher adoption of technologies like automation and artificial intelligence is also reducing the need to have a large number of employees at client site.",2017-04-20,"Wipro is learnt to have sacked 600 employees as part of its annual ‘performance appraisal’, at a time when IT firms are facing curbs on work visas in US and Australia",competitor,22:17,600 Wipro employees sacked after performance appraisal: report +-1.0,"
Mumbai: Dell Technologies, the company that was formed when Dell Inc. acquired EMC Corp. for $67 billion, remains bullish on its “long-term” growth prospects in India, which is the company’s third-largest market.“I think we are on track to hit the $3 billion revenue mark in this country in a couple of years,” Thomas Sweet, executive vice-president and chief financial officer (CFO), Dell Inc., said in an interview last week.Explaining why he is bullish on the Indian market, Sweet reasoned that the country now had “a government that is pro-growth, pro-development, and which is also pro-technology in helping to enable that growth and the government’s mission”. Further, he claimed that the Dell-EMC combine in India is growing faster than the domestic IT market growth. According to Nasscom’s Strategic Review 2017 report, in FY2017, India’s domestic IT-BPM (information technology-business process management) market is likely to grow 8.5% year on year to reach $38 billion (excluding e-commerce).To accelerate the pace of growth globally, Dell rolled out a distribution, or the so-called channel strategy in February. According to Sweet, half of the company’s revenue is routed through its distributors and his company hopes to increase their output with the recent reorganization it initiated to bring together the distribution partners of the erstwhile Dell and EMC companies.What the company did two months back, according to Sweet, was to merge the EMC and Dell sales forces (which existed as separate entities before the merger) into two units. One is an enterprise sales unit that would now focus on the top 3,000 customers, and the second is a commercial sales organization that will focus on an estimated 500,000 clients. Sweet said he is “pretty pleased” with how the combined sales units have shaped up so far.The company also plans to sharpen its focus on its digital transformation push. Dell Technologies breaks up digital transformation into three parts, according to Sweet: IT transformation-how IT can support what the business needs; security transformation-how a company can tackle multiple threats; and workforce transformation-how an organization makes its employees more productive in a mobile environment.In the past couple of years, most large technology solution providers such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE), International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Accenture Plc., Oracle Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others have been competing fiercely for the increasingly lucrative digital transformation pie. According to research firm International Data Corp. (IDC) forecasts, global spending on digital transformation technologies is projected to be more than $1.2 trillion in 2017—an increase of 17.8% over 2016.“There is clearly a greater focus among our customers on digital, but most of them are currently focused on IT transformation,” said Sweet. According to him, companies are looking to modernize their IT infrastructure to support cloud-native applications. In cloud computing, companies can consume IT services and only pay for the applications or infrastructure they use rather than buy the equipment upfront, thus reducing capital expenditure (capex).One change in the way technology adoption occurs in companies, according to Sweet, is the growing involvement of top management, especially when it comes to digital. “We are seeing more C-suite executives, particularly the chief executive officers (CEOs), chief operating officers (COOs) and CFOs, participating in the conversation on digital as, increasingly, they are seeking business solutions and business model evolution,” he said. The focus for CFOs, he said, continues to be on return on investment, even as most of them are also ready to bet on emerging technologies that are still not mature in order to future-proof their organizations.Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst of Greyhound Research, said that while the Dell-EMC combine has done a good job of “integrating the channel network” of both the organizations, managing the reskilling of the partners and introducing customised solutions tailored for specific industry segments may require an intensive focus, especially in the short term. “If they can manage this aspect well, they can have an edge in the digital transformation infrastructure market, where companies such as HPE and Lenovo have been showing renewed aggression of late,” he concluded.",2017-04-20,Dell Inc. CFO Thomas Sweet claims that the Dell-EMC combine in India is growing faster than the domestic IT market growth,both,08:34,Dell on track to hit the $3 billion revenue mark in India: CFO Thomas Sweet +0.21,"Bengaluru:Rajiv Bansal, former CFO of Infosys, has dragged his former employer to arbitration to claim the remaining Rs12 crore of his severance pay. Infosys had agreed to pay Bansal a severance amount of Rs17.38 crore or 24 months of salary, but the company suspended payments after he got Rs5 crore as co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy and others objected to the severance package as excessive. According to sources, Bansal has invoked his rights to an arbitral tribunal and a meeting is scheduled next month. This has opened another battle front for Infosys, which is already fighting visa clampdown by US President Donald Trump and global headwinds. When contacted, Bansal declined to comment. “The company has already clarified on the severance package for the former CFO Rajiv Bansal through a detailed statement. We do not have anything additional to add at this point,” Infosys said in an e-mailed response. Bansal’s severance payout has been one of the issues that Infosys founders had raised to allege governance lapses at the Bengaluru-based firm. When Bansal left Infosys in 2015, Infosys had agreed to pay him Rs17.38 crore in severance pay, equalling 24 months of pay. In February, Infosys chairman R. Seshasayee had clarified that of the agreed amount, only Rs5 crore have been paid so far and that the remaining was withheld pending clarifications on the terms of the severance contract. He had also admitted that the “judgement” could have differed if circumstances were different or if certain processes had been in place. Murthy had raised concerns about the hefty amount and questioned if the same was “hush money”.",2017-04-20,"Former Infosys CFO Rajiv Bansal asks for arbitration for settlement of his Rs17.38 crore severance pay, which hadn’t gone down well with Infosys founders",competitor,21:36,Infosys ex-CFO Rajiv Bansal seeks arbitration for severance pay: report +-0.31,"New Delhi: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, whose pay package was a point of contention for the company’s founders, has drawn $ 6.68 million (about Rs 43 crore) or 61% of the promised compensation for the 2016-17 fiscal. Sikka was eligible for a $11 million pay including basic salary, variable pay, restricted stock units (RSUs) and performance stock options for the year. Incidentally, this is also lower than what Sikka drew in the previous financial year when he took home Rs 48.73 crore. According to Infosys’ financial statements that outline compensation to key executives, Sikka received only $3.68 million of the $8 million variable component that he was promised. One of the highest paid executives in the Indian IT industry, Sikka took home $0.82 million in variable pay, $1.9 million in RSUs and ESOPs worth $0.96 million, totalling $3.68 million. Sikka’s salary was revised from $7.08 million to a handsome $11 million package with effect from April 2016, a move that did not go down well with the founders, including NR Narayana Murthy. The $11 million package was to include a base salary of $1 million and $2 million worth of stock annually as well $3 million in variable pay. Sikka is also eligible for another $5 million worth of performance-based equity and stock options upon achievement of certain performance targets.Also Read: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka guaranteed 90% of $11 million salary“The Board, based on the recommendations of the Nominations Committee, approved on April 13, 2017, $0.82 million as variable pay to CEO for the year ended March 31, 2017,” Infosys said. It further mentions “...RSUs amounting to $1.9 million and ESOPs amounting to $0.96 million representing the performance-based equity and stock options for the financial year 2017”. While the founders had raised concerns over the significant salary hike given to Sikka, the Board, on its part, maintained that the variable component was tied to steep performance goals. However, Infosys has not made those goals public. Infosys had defended Sikka’s pay hike saying all decisions were made “in the overall interest of the company”. Infosys’ performance of 2016-17 has disappointed the street, especially after it lowered its annual revenue guidance thrice last fiscal. The “aspirational goal” of $20 billion revenue by 2020 set by Infosys looks like a tall order given the current performance, said industry watchers. The Bengaluru-based firm, which posted a revenue of $ 10.2 billion in 2016-17, has been focussing on new areas like automation and artificial intelligence to bolster its revenues to meet the said target. For the financial year 2017-18, Infosys expects its revenues to grow by 6.1-8.1% in dollar terms.",2017-04-14,"Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka has drawn about Rs43 crore or 61% of the promised compensation, $11 million, for the 2016-17 fiscal",both,19:10,Infosys’s Vishal Sikka takes home only 61% of eligible pay +-0.72,"New Delhi: Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) missed analysts’ estimates for both revenue and profit in the fourth fiscal quarter, even as India’s largest software services firm’s full-year sales rose 6.2% to $17.58 billion.The company reported revenue of $4.45 billion in the three months ended 31 March, a 1.5% increase from the preceding quarter and 5.8% from the year-ago period. Net profit totalled $992 million, a 0.8% decline on a sequential basis and an increase of 5.8% from the year-ago period.A Bloomberg survey of 30 analysts had estimated TCS to report quarterly revenue of $4.62 billion and net profit of $1.03 billion in the quarter.Also read: TCS unperturbed by possible changes to H1B visa regime“FY17 was a year of broad-based growth amid economic and political turbulence in our key markets,” said Rajesh Gopinathan, who took over as chief executive of TCS in February. “We believe we are better placed for the year-ahead,” said Gopinathan, who spent much time on the numbers, suggesting that the new CEO will take time to probably replicate the success managed by his predecessor N. Chandrasekaran, the current chairman of Tata Sons Ltd. At the heart of TCS’s underperformance is the company’s inability to generate more business from its largest customers, banks, in its largest market, the US. TCS’s banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) segment, which accounts for over 40% of its revenue, grew 4.8% from a year earlier in constant currency terms. North America, which brings 54% of its business, reported a 4.3% rise.TCS does not give quarterly or annual forecasts but a few equity analysts are sceptical about the company’s prospects. The January-March quarter marks the 10th straight quarter (the company has recorded slow growth since July 2014) in which TCS has either underperformed, or at best managed to keep up with estimates. “Looking at this protracted slowdown, I believe TCS has reached a point where unless the company really brings about a change in the way it has done business, it will be tough for the company to ever beat street expectations,” said a Mumbai-based analyst at a domestic brokerage, on the condition of anonymity. “At best it can match street expectations.”TCS’s performance mirrors the poor show put up by Infosys Ltd last week, and this is worrying for three reasons.First, both growth and profitability for Indian IT firms is under pressure. Mumbai-based TCS reported a full-year increase of 8.3% in constant currency terms, similar to the full-year growth reported by Bengaluru-based Infosys (with $10.21 billion in revenue) although Infosys reported a higher 7.4% expansion in dollar revenue.Like Infosys, TCS’s growth in 2016-17 was slower than in 2015-16: TCS’s revenue growth in constant currency terms was 3.6 percentage points slower than the 11.9% increase in 2015-16. TCS added $1.03 billion in incremental revenue in the year ended 31 March 2017, less than $1.09 billion added in new business in 2015-16 when it reported a 7.1% increase and half of the $2.01 billion in new business added in 2014-15. TCS’s operating margin in the January-March quarter and for the full year stood at 25.7%. Operating margin narrowed 80 basis points from 26.5% in 2015-16, again similar to Infosys, which too saw its profitability eroded as commoditized outsourcing contracts see intense pricing pressure.Despite falling short of its operating margin forecast of 26-28% in the last financial year, the company’s management retained this guidance for the current fiscal year, which at least two analysts say will be “impossible to achieve”.“In this kind of environment, where most companies want more skilled people at client-facing sides, when most countries are adopting a protectionist stance, it looks impossible to keep operating in that band,” a Mumbai-based analyst at a foreign brokerage said, requesting anonymity.Second, despite higher growth in digital, which remains a fuzzy word, and the success of new and renew strategy rolled out by CEO Vishal Sikka to revive Infosys, both companies continue to be plagued by anaemic growth. This has made many analysts question if existing traditional contracts are merely getting rebadged as digital. A case in point: TCS claims its digital business grew 29% in the last year and now brings $3 billion in business.Finally, both TCS and Infosys continue to shy away from acquiring technology-focused firms. Infosys has not made a single acquisition in the last 18 months; TCS has looked away from acquiring a company since it partnered with Japan’s Mitsubishi Group in 2014. This is important because most large technology firms, including Accenture Plc, are looking at acquisitions to bring in new technology and skill sets. Nevertheless, the quarter does have some positives. For starters, the TCS management claimed that its insurance business under Diligenta and Japan has turned the corner, with Gopinathan expressing confidence of growth from these two lagging business units.On Tuesday, TCS shares fell 0.53% to Rs2,308.65 on BSE, while the benchmark Sensex declined 0.32% to 29,319.1 points. The results were announced after the end of trading in Mumbai.",2017-04-19,"Q4 revenue of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) rose 5.8% from the year-ago period to $4.45 billion, while Q4 profit increases 5.8% to $992 million",competitor,05:15,TCS misses both revenue and profit estimates in March quarter +-0.52,"
Often, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and its investors don’t see eye to eye. The company’s March quarter results announcement was no different. Revenue grew 1% sequentially in constant currency terms, lower than analysts’ estimates of around 1.6% growth. Worryingly, revenues in the mainstay North American region fell by 1.8%, and those of the key banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) vertical fell 0.4%.
ALSO READ: TCS misses both revenue and profit estimates in March quarterStill, chief executive officer (CEO) Rajesh Gopinathan said, “We are quite happy with the way we have ended the year.” He added on a call with analysts that the outlook for the BFSI segment remains positive, and that thanks to large deal wins, it may be only a matter of time before the expected growth comes in. TCS has been saying for the past few months that things are looking up in the US and particularly in the BFSI segment. Over 40% of its revenues come from the BFSI segment, while the North American region accounted for 54% of revenues last year.But after the March quarter performance, investors are likely to question the company’s optimism. As the chart alongside shows, year-on-year growth rates have fallen significantly at TCS in the past year. Besides, operating profit margin, too, has fallen below its targeted range of 26-28%. The result of this double whammy was that earnings per share grew by just 8.3% last year.With the rupee having appreciated sharply compared to the average rate in fiscal year 2017 (FY17), margins are expected to be under further pressure in the new fiscal year. What’s more, thanks to the many changes in H-1B visa rules and policies, costs of providing on-site services to clients are also expected to rise. As such, earnings can be under pressure in FY18. Against this backdrop, TCS shares trade at around 16 times one-year forward earnings. And while CEO Gopinathan said that he expects FY18 to be incrementally positive, things could turn out to be particularly dire, depending on new visa rules. “We see near-term impact on decision-making due to immigration-related issues, even as companies are denying this. We expect 1QFY18 to start slowly and do not build growth acceleration in FY18,” analysts at Nomura Research wrote in a note to clients. Some of the possible impact of new visa norms is detailed here: bit.ly/2ngI48H.And unlike TCS’s upbeat post-results commentary, most other technology companies including Accenture Plc. have guided for slower growth in the new fiscal year. Besides, while Infosys Ltd tried to soothe investors’ nerves by outlining a detailed capital allocation policy, TCS said it will stay with its existing payout policy.In sum, there’s nothing much to like in TCS’s March quarter results announcement, except perhaps for the management’s hopeful commentary. But given the fair bit of divergence between the company’s outlook three months ago and its actual performance, investors would do well to tread cautiously.",2017-04-19,"After the March quarter performance, investors are likely to question the optimism being shown by new TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan",competitor,07:25,"TCS results: Upbeat commentary, downbeat performance in March quarter" +-0.11,"New Delhi: Industry body Nasscom on Wednesday warned that the US’ move to replace the lottery system for issuing H1B work visas with a merit-based approach could have “unintended consequences” even as it sought to downplay any immediate impact on IT companies this year. Under a new executive order signed by US President Donald Trump, America is reviewing its visa programme for foreign workers, while ensuring a crackdown on visa abuse and frauds. The H1B visa programme is most sought-after by Indian IT firms and professionals to work on customer sites. Every year, the US grants 65,000 H1B visas, while another 20,000 are set aside for those with US advanced degrees. “No new changes are being implemented immediately... Nothing is being proposed that would impact or change the FY18 H1B lottery that is currently underway,” Nasscom said in a statement. ALSO READ: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookThe proposed changes are forward-looking and non- specific, it contended. Any change in visa norms can affect the movement of labour as well as spike operational costs for IT players. Most Indian IT companies get over 60% of their revenues from the North American market. The Indian government, on its part, has said it will take up the issue with the American authorities during the upcoming visit of finance minister Arun Jaitley to the US. Another industry body Assocham also expressed concern over the tightening of the visa norms. “...Indian IT companies are bound to face disruptions by way of higher costs and even some laying off work force back home, as the rising rupee is aggravating the situation further for the technology export firms,” it said. Indian IT firms, however, put a brave face to the impending changes being mooted by the US. “We continue to invest in the local communities in which we operate, including hiring local American top talent, bringing education and training to our clients to shrink the skills gap in the US, and working with policymakers to foster innovation,” Infosys said in a statement. Larger rival TCS, too, has exuded confidence that these issues can be tackled through greater engagement. It has also said it will “tweak” its business model to continue to be in compliance with regulations. With rising protectionism across markets like the US, Singapore and now Australia, companies are beginning to adjust their business models to reduce their dependence on visas, hiring more locals instead. Nasscom also highlighted that there is shortage of highly-skilled domestic talent in the US in IT, healthcare, education, and other fields.",2017-04-19,Nasscom warned that the US’ move to replace the lottery system for issuing H1B work visas with a merit-based approach could have ‘unintended consequences’ ,competitor,18:09,Scrapping H1B visa lottery can have unintended consequences: Nasscom +-0.69,"Taipei: President Donald Trump just made life a little easier for Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai. And a lot harder for Vishal Sikka and Rajesh Gopinathan.“Right now, H1B visas are being awarded in a totally random lottery. And that’s wrong,” Trump told workers in Wisconsin, announcing a reform of the visa category. “Instead, they should be given to the most skilled and highest paid applicants.”Whatever your views on Trump, he is factually correct on that last point. H1Bs are supposed to go to those working in an occupation that requires “theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge.”It’s hard to make a case that the jobs being filled by the Indian IT outsourcing firms that dominate H1B visa issuance—such as Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys Ltd, which Sikka and Gopinathan helm—make use of highly specialized knowledge when they regularly pay less than other firms like Apple Inc. or Google parent Alphabet Inc.On the first point, Trump’s a little off, though, because the awarding of H1Bs isn’t a totally random lottery: A 2015 amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act outlined a pecking order the secretary of labour is meant to follow. The 65,000 annual cap is also exceeded because of exceptions and rollovers that put the annual figure at over 180,000 last year.The flood of H1B applications does make the reviewing and awarding of visas a slow process. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services centre in California is only now processing applications made back in August, for example.That’s bad for companies like Apple and Google, led by Cook and Pichai, which seek far fewer H1Bs. I’ve written before of employees being parked offshore while they await the correct paperwork, and the risks to the US of this situation continuing.In tightening the rules—he can’t unilaterally rewrite them—Trump will help those tech titans that really need the talent, as evidenced by them paying such high salaries for their H1B workers.Yet he won’t be doing much for manufacturers like tool maker Snap-on Inc, where he delivered his broadside. That’s because factories in Asia still offer cost benefits over the US, and Trump’s decision to trade a weaker Chinese currency for assistance on North Korea shows how hard he’s willing to push Beijing in the effort to ease the plight of American workers.By making bold statements about H1Bs, Trump has played to his working-class support base but also diverted attention away from dependence on Chinese manufacturing. And that’s definitely good for Apple. Bloomberg",2017-04-19,"Companies like Apple and Google, led by Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, seek far fewer H1Bs, while Indian IT firms such as TCS and Infosys dominate H1B visa issuance",competitor,13:34,Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps Cook +-0.91,"Bengaluru: In a conversation with Mint, Ravi Venkatesan, 54, who in addition to being Infosys co-chairman is also chairman of Bank of Baroda, said that one of his immediate priorities would be to align all stakeholders around the transformational journey that Infosys is in the midst of.
Why did you agree to take on this role as co-chairman?Because the board asked me to. But also because I love Infosys. Just like the Idea of India (Sunil Khilnani’s book), the idea of Infosys is a powerful one; Infosys remains a vital institution of our country. It’s important that it continues to flourish.
Was this decision solely the board’s or was it made after some of the founders suggested it?This was a decision of the board. Why did the board decide to go for a co-chairman? Simple because when an aircraft is going through turbulent weather, it only helps to get a co-pilot.
Questions have been raised by some of the founders against the board and even against the management. So how would you get both the founders and board aligned and make sure this is not a distraction for the management? For the record, I was close to the founders of Infosys before I joined the board. What they accomplished was incredible. I hope to remain close to them long after I cease to be on the board. Equally, I believe in the strategy that (CEO) Vishal Sikka has set out for transforming Infosys. I intend to do my very best to see that he succeeds in this mission. Everything else is a sideshow. I don’t see any contradiction here.
How do you rate Vishal’s leadership in the three years that he has been CEO now?I think Infosys has done somethings incredibly well under Vishal’s leadership. We have a bold and differentiated strategy which customers are excited about; customer satisfaction is at an all-time high. Most employees are energized by the vision and strategy. Vishal and his team have built on the momentum they inherited and closed the gap with competition. Many seeds for the future have been sown and we see the green shoots in many areas—in AI, in automation, with initiatives like design thinking. That said, the transformation is a work in progress. Some things aren’t working as intended and course corrections are being applied. There are pockets of underperformance which represent opportunities. We need to rapidly scale up things that are working. There are capability gaps that need to be fixed. But overall, I am optimistic about our prospects.
How will the co-chair arrangement work? How will you delineate roles to make sure there’s no overlap?Sesh (R. Seshasayee) and I have known each other for 20 years and worked on the Infy board for six years, so we are quite comfortable with each other. We have decided that there are some areas that he will continue to lead such as overall leadership of the board or investor outreach while in other areas like strategy or talent I will work more closely with Vishal and his team. We have decided that we will work as partners rather than compartments.
What are your immediate priorities?My first priority is to help align all stakeholders around the transformation journey that we are on. The second is to work closely with Vishal in helping build a world class leadership team that can execute the transformation strategy.Your elevation has been seen positively and the general view is that relations between the board and the founders will improve now. What’s your take on that and how do you intend to repair relations with the founders?I have the greatest respect for the founders of Infosys and especially for Mr (N.R. Narayana) Murthy who has been a mentor and friend for a long time. I believe that everyone wants the same thing—which is to see Infosys flourish and prosper from the incredible opportunities that are being thrown up by technology shifts. The board and leadership team wants this. Investors want this. Employees want this. The founders want this. However, this is a journey through uncharted waters and so the key is to earn the trust of all stakeholders so we stay together through the ups and downs of this voyage. Trust really is the key. This requires intense, honest and ongoing dialogue. It also requires courage, willingness to experiment, assimilate feedback, learn and change.After a stellar year in 2015-16, the last 12 months have been slow by Infy’s lofty standards. What in your opinion needs to be fixed immediately in order to get back the company to industry-leading growth?This has been a tough year for everyone with growth slowing and severe commoditization. Infy’s performance must be seen not just in absolute terms but in the context of the industry. Vishal has already commented on our performance and what he and the team will do. I personally believe we have to more aggressively move investments and our brightest people from more commoditized areas towards our best growth prospects which are in areas such as digital, cyber security, AI, IOT and so on. Our job as a board is to support management in moving much more quickly on the many opportunities we have.Will you reduce your other board commitments now that you’re taking up this role? Will you remain chairman at BoB?The transformation of BoB is also a work in progress. (P.S.) Jayakumar and his team have worked really hard and we are seeing the green shoots of their labour. I would love to see it through if that’s what the government also wishes.",2017-04-14,"Ravi Venkatesan, who was appointed as Infosys co-chairman Thursday, says the idea of Infosys is a powerful one and it’s important that it continues to flourish",competitor,04:46,"Ravi Venkatesan: In turbulent weather, it only helps to get a co-pilot" +-0.69,"Mumbai: Cement maker ACC Ltd on Friday reported an 8.9% fall in net profit for the quarter ended 31 March, hurt in part by higher costs. Consolidated net profit for the quarter fell to Rs211.06 crore from Rs231.70 crore a year earlier. Consolidated sales in the quarter rose 9.1% to Rs3,556.70 crore from Rs3,259.95 crore a year earlier. The company follows a January-December financial year.The results, however, beat analyst estimates, helped by higher sales. Four analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected ACC to report consolidated net profit of Rs166.4 crore on sales of Rs3152.5 crore. Revenue in its largest cement business rose 9.3% to Rs3,401.27 crore, helped in part by a price hike, while those in its ready-mix concrete business rose about 10% to Rs285 crore. During the quarter, the company launched two cement products ACC Suraksha and ACC HPC (high performance cement). The company said its total expenses during the March-ended quarter rose 11.8% to Rs3,404.41 crore. Increased government spending on infrastructure development, housing, roads, railways, and irrigation is likely to boost cement demand in the rest of 2017, ACC said in a statement.Separately, ACC said it has appointed Surendra Mehta as company secretary and head of compliance with immediate effect. ACC’s shares closed down 1.03% to Rs1,496.75 a share on the BSE on Friday.",2017-04-21,"ACC’s net profit for the quarter fell to Rs211.06 crore from Rs231.70 crore a year earlier while its sales in the quarter rose 9.1% to Rs3,556.70 crore from Rs3,259.95 crore a year earlier",competitor,21:57,ACC profit falls 8.9% but sales beat estimates +-0.61,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",both,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0.16,"New Delhi: State-run Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) on Tuesday signed an agreement with the Rajasthan government to set up a 9 million tonne joint venture refinery at a cost of Rs43,129 crore, a statement from oil ministry said. HPCL will hold 74% equity in the joint venture, HPCL Rajasthan Refinery Ltd, while the state government will hold the balance. The agreement signed in the presence of oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje entitles the company to a viability gap funding of Rs1,123 crore a year for 15 years from the year of commercial production. The funding will be in the form of an interest-free loan to be refunded in subsequent 15 years.The project includes a petrochemicals complex too. The proposed refinery will be able to process local crude from Vedanta Ltd’s Barmer oil field in the state as well as imported crude. Vedanta, which recently merged its group company Cairn India Ltd with itself, is planning more investments into enhanced oil recovery from its Barmer assets. Anil Agarwal, chairman, Vedanta Group had last December said the group was committed to investing Rs30,000 crore to add 100,000 barrels of oil and oil equivalent over the next three years, primarily from its prolific Rajasthan fields.For the proposed refinery, the state has already allotted 4,800 acres at Pachpadra in Barmer. The statement said quoting Pradhan that construction work will begin in the current financial year and will be completed in four years. Separately, another deal was signed between Rajasthan State Gas Ltd and GAIL Gas Ltd for creating a city gas network in Kota district. India is at present adding its refining capacity in line with growing energy requirement and with an ambition to emerge as a regional refining hub. State-owned refiners which supply autofuel to neighbouring markets like Bangladesh and Nepal are in the process of expanding their presence in these markets.",2017-04-18,The joint venture HPCL Rajasthan Refinery Ltd will be able to process local crude from Vedanta’s Barmer oil field in the state as well as imported crude,competitor,22:42,HPCL signs pact with Rajasthan govt to set up refinery +-0.57,"
The Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) stock has gained 27% since its December quarter results. However, the appreciation is attributable less to its performance and more to anticipation that Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (the company’s telecom business) may perform better than expected.When RIL announces its March quarter results too, investors will be keenly watching out for updates on Jio, apart from the company’s downstream projects and its capex plans. Its March quarter results are expected to be good despite the fact that the benchmark Singapore gross refining margin (GRM) has declined about 5% sequentially to $6.4 a barrel. Analysts expect RIL to report better GRMs during the March quarter.According to analysts at Nomura Research, RIL’s premium to Singapore GRM will likely improve (the December quarter had a shutdown of the fluidized catalytic cracking unit; also Brent-Dubai crude spreads were favourable). “Petchem (petrochemical) earnings will likely increase further both as Reliance benefits from higher volumes (new capacities) and firmed up margins particularly in aromatics chain,” pointed out Nomura’s March quarter preview for the oil and gas sector.GRM is the realization from turning every barrel of crude oil into finished products and is an important measure of profitability for refining firms.Even as RIL’s numbers may bring good tidings, expectations from oil marketing companies (OMCs)—Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) and Indian Oil Corp. Ltd—are not rosy. Analysts from Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd expect weaker earnings for OMCs due to inventory losses in both refining and marketing, and lower core GRMs year-on-year. With oil prices declining towards the end of the March quarter, OMCs are expected to report inventory losses. However, “full year consolidated earnings should surprise positively, particularly for HPCL and BPCL, due to strong performance in subsidiaries in FY17 vs FY16”, said Jefferies in a report to clients on 6 April.On an average, crude oil prices rose year-on-year and that will reflect positively in price realizations of upstream companies such as Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd and Oil India Ltd. Investors will have to keep a tab on output numbers and production outlook in the near future. So far, both these stocks have underperformed compared to their peers in the oil sector. Given the muted outlook on crude oil prices over the medium term, there is little to suggest the trend in their stock performance will change for the better.",2017-04-19,"Even as RIL’s numbers may bring good tidings, expectations from oil marketing companies like BPCL, HPCL and Indian Oil are not rosy",competitor,07:27,Mixed outlook for oil firms in Q4 +-0.13,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",competitor,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +-0.05,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",company,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +-0.35,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",competitor,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +-0.25,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",competitor,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +-0.55,"
Early in the morning of Monday, 3 April, serendipity sat me next to N.R. Narayana Murthy on a long transcontinental flight leaving Bengaluru. As the flight attendants handed out newspapers for the passengers to read while on the journey, I couldn’t help but notice that Murthy had made front-page news, this time for questioning the extent of the raise given to an executive at Infosys Ltd, the company that he founded over three decades ago along with a few of his junior colleagues. I turned to him and we began a conversation. I shall not focus here on the specific comments about Infosys, but there were several parts of the conversation that covered Murthy’s philosophy around topics that I have written about in this column before, and which provide insights into the character of the man. Unsurprisingly, we spoke of the social issues being caused by the changes in the way corporations recruit and retain talent. We spoke of organizations such as TopCoder, now part of an Indian IT services firm after the acquisition of its parent by Wipro. TopCoder is a marketplace for computer programmers, who can get compensated for their work through this marketplace without ever having to be an employee of a services firm. It is like a taxi aggregator among programming firms. I have written in this column before about how marketplaces like these can eventually change the construct of the employer-employee contract now prevalent among many firms and have also mused about whether unionization may be around the corner at some Indian IT services firms as the employer-employee relationship construct begins to disintegrate.Murthy explained that there are circumstances where unions can play a pivotal role in ensuring equity. He said the fact that unions look out for employees’ welfare is inescapable, and proffered the example of the US. According to him, when unionization covered 35% of the American workforce, American labour was better looked after. Now that this figure has slipped to around 15%, the poor have become poorer as corporations and their leaders have followed an Ayn-Rand-esque view of “rational self-interest” and social Darwinism. Pushing crumbs off one’s table and trusting that the aspiring classes in society will have enough is a sure recipe in fomenting labour class unrest, as the recent Brexit and US presidential elections have shown. Murthy’s opinion is that such unrest is also lying dormant and is barely beneath the surface in India, and that leaders of India’s capitalist revolution cannot afford to blithely ignore this.Also read | Infosys strongly defends COO pay hike criticized by Narayana MurthyWe also spoke of the fledgling experiments with universal basic income (UBI) that have begun to pop up in various corners of the earth. UBI is essentially a dole paid out to every citizen, whether they are out of work or not, in a nod to the fact that relentless mechanization and automation will take away many people’s livelihoods in the near- to medium-term future. While classical economics tells us that disruptive changes in labour mechanics such as offshoring and automation only cause a temporary loss in jobs before there is a “job shift” when people start to work in other fields of endeavour so that they may earn a living, the short-term pain caused by the original job displacement is undeniable. UBI is a well-meaning attempt to alleviate some of that pain. It comes with the same plethora of problems around unemployment doles, but Murthy’s view was that societies have a responsibility to their underprivileged or displaced populaces and that he would welcome higher taxes on the IT industry that are meant to go directly to those whose jobs IT displaces. He said that the only society that is stable is one that is seen to be moving, however haltingly, towards an atmosphere of equity and fairness among all its members.Leaders in the IT industry need to be seen as fair by the people under their command. Giving raises at the top that are 10 or even 20 times the rate of the raises being given at the bottom runs the risk of creating an impression that those at the top are greedy opportunists most interested in snatching what they can while the going is good. I have been part of a company where the boss raised his own salary by over 250%, leaving others in his second line like me to explain to the rest of the workforce that they had to make do with a 2% increase. The rationale for the anaemic salary increase for everyone but the boss was that the firm had not reached its (internally set) earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, targets. As an aside, I am sure the boss’s new salary contributed to the company repeating this miss in the next year. That year, even though my own compensation increase was also in the low single digits, I felt great discomfiture at having to justify and explain the boss’s salary increase, which the board had seen right to give him since “he could easily get another job in the industry paying just as much”. To paraphrase the Bard of Avon, all the mouthwash in India has not cured me of the ensuing halitosis from those conversations.Recalling a time when the industry finally saw the light and banded together in the common interest to fight high levels of attrition when companies were blithely poaching talent from one another, I asked Murthy whether Nasscom or some such industry body could now be entrusted with this looming question of “fairness”. He was unequivocal that an ombudsman is needed. Maybe it is time we allow ourselves to be policed.Siddharth Pai is a world-renowned technology consultant who has led over $20 billion in complex, first-of-a-kind outsourcing transactions.",2017-04-04,"In IT firms such as Infosys, giving raises at the top many times the rate of the raises at the bottom risks creating an impression that those at the top are greedy opportunists ",both,01:26,"Infosys compensation row: Of executives, programmers and fairness" +0.21,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",2017-04-22,Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,company,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +-0.6,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",competitor,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +0.36,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court",2017-04-19,"A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",competitor,05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +-0.52,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,competitor,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +-0.36,"Jeff Bezos. Masayoshi Son. Jack Ma. Mukesh Ambani. Some of the world’s richest people also happen to be combatants in the expensive war over the future of technology in India.Bezos’s Amazon.com Inc. and Indian rival Snapdeal, backed by Son, are spending billions of dollars to build e-commerce in India. Alibaba founder Ma has splurged on investments aimed at popularizing digital payments. Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd is on track to spend about $30 billion (gulp!) to shake up India’s stodgy mobile internet service. Google, Tencent, Uber, Xiaomi, Apple and Facebook are also betting on growth in India.It’s easy to see why India and its 1.3 billion people are the No. 1 prize in technology. About one-quarter of Indians used the internet in 2015, according to the most recently available data from the World Bank, but the percentage is expected to explode in coming years. And compared with China—a quick-to-digitize country that was quicksand for non-Chinese tech companies—India has been relatively open to companies from outside the country.The battle for supremacy is great for Indians, who will get better and cheaper technologies tailored to their needs. But gobs of money are being spent now for what is a very, very long game with an uncertain toll on both winners and losers.ALSO READ: Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout falls short of what investors needApple CEO Tim Cook has said India is seven to 10 years behind China in technology market potential, and other executives echo that view. Building the future involves many, often low-tech, struggles like dealing with bad and clogged roads to deliver online orders, poor internet access for customers and dinged reputations from fears that foreign companies like Facebook are trying to monopolize internet use in the country. But a couple of recent actions—one by the government, the other by a billionaire—have been important developments in India’s tech market. They show how individual actions can be unexpected sparks for technology use and the tech business in India. Spending by India’s richest person on a new mobile network: About $30 billion. First, the decision last year by India’s government to ban the vast majority of cash in circulation did more for adoption of digital payments than anything a rich techie could have done. That move helped payments services like Paytm, backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, but it also gives a leg up to on-demand ride companies, e-commerce and other services that depend on a shift toward electronic payments in a country with low credit card penetration. (India’s central bank on Thursday also cleared Amazon India to start its own digital payments service.) The second jolt was the launch last fall by Ambani, India’s richest person, of a national mobile network that offered free cellphone calls and cheap, fast mobile web surfing. Competitors complained, but they quickly cut customers’ bills, too, and gave them more data. Ambani’s Reliance Jio mobile network signed up about 100 million customers. That is nearly as many customers on contracts with Verizon, the largest wireless company in the US by that measure. And Verizon didn’t get those customers in six months, as Reliance Jio did.Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc.,’s Google, has said the biggest barrier to technology development in India is affordable, available and high-quality internet access, which like in China is mostly done on mobile phones. Ambani has helped bring down that internet access barrier. Technology development in India will be unpredictable and halting, but the potential payoff is too alluring to ignore. Expect the billionaire battle in India to continue. Bloomberg",2017-04-13,It’s easy to see why India is the no. 1 prize in technology as about one-quarter of Indians used the Internet in 2015 and the percentage is expected to explode in coming years,competitor,21:09,Billionaires and the government shake up tech in India diff --git a/Stock Prediction/TCS_qs.csv b/Stock Prediction/TCS_qs.csv new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8bb8a23 --- /dev/null +++ b/Stock Prediction/TCS_qs.csv @@ -0,0 +1,25 @@ +Date,#,open_score,close_score,Open,High,Low,Last,Close,Total Trade Quantity,Turnover (Lacs),shift_open,shift_close,PC_open,PC_close +2017-01-25,0,-0.206666666667,0.46,0.0309448660410951,0.031139090587798384,0.03121067445833261,0.03141604719390307,0.03136433346275666,0.03523756361641332,0.03021628799367635,0.030906875591653032,0.030701163641128185,-0.01888230483878662,-0.033794005860269205 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0000000..9928a35 --- /dev/null +++ b/Stock Prediction/Untitled Document @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ + + + +import pandas as pd +import sys +import platform + +if platform.system()=='Windows': + company_id='TCS' +else: + company_id=sys.argv[1] + +filenames=['../../'+company_id+'_score_open.csv','../../'+company_id+'_score_close.csv'] + +#open.csv +df1=pd.read_csv(filenames[0]) +df1.columns=['date','open_score'] +#print(df1.head(2)) + +#close.csv +df2=pd.read_csv(filenames[1]) +df2.columns=['date','close_score'] + +#df1=df1.set_index('date') + +result=pd.concat([df1,df2],axis=1,join='inner') +out=pd.DataFrame(result[[0,1,3]]) +print(out.head(23)) + +out.to_csv('../../'+company_id+'_sentiment.csv',encoding='utf-8',sep=',') + + + + diff --git a/Stock Prediction/company_keyword.xlsx b/Stock Prediction/company_keyword.xlsx new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4e92ddd Binary files /dev/null and b/Stock Prediction/company_keyword.xlsx differ diff --git a/Stock Prediction/file.csv b/Stock Prediction/file.csv new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e96ff89 --- /dev/null +++ b/Stock Prediction/file.csv @@ -0,0 +1,1367 @@ +href,body,intro,date,title +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mT5iMbhlQr572RKNSS2vNI/Lodha-Developers-to-invest-Rs4300-crore-in-construction-to.html,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ","Sun, Apr 23 2017. 03 45 PM IST","Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/4gLaUB1aLYz6sE1GiXT9PL/Why-are-brands-turning-to-live-video-streaming.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mbTZKdkBru2fvzUgdavZbI/Maruti-Suzuki-to-launch-all-new-Dzire-next-month.html,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/sAOesy1LFN3Z66UjHZiK1M/Abbott-withdraws-2-stent-types-from-India-following-NPPAs-m.html,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 38 AM IST",Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/O9ybjew1fPKkKMiyKA47ZN/Overbooking-flights-Civil-aviation-ministry-pushes-for-tran.html,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 12 02 PM IST",Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mT5iMbhlQr572RKNSS2vNI/Lodha-Developers-to-invest-Rs4300-crore-in-construction-to.html,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ","Sun, Apr 23 2017. 03 45 PM IST","Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/O9ybjew1fPKkKMiyKA47ZN/Overbooking-flights-Civil-aviation-ministry-pushes-for-tran.html,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 12 02 PM IST",Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/4gLaUB1aLYz6sE1GiXT9PL/Why-are-brands-turning-to-live-video-streaming.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/GOQYIe1i3FS90FGTnLtQ2H/For-us-time-is-a-very-different-concept-Eric-Vallat.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mbTZKdkBru2fvzUgdavZbI/Maruti-Suzuki-to-launch-all-new-Dzire-next-month.html,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/GOQYIe1i3FS90FGTnLtQ2H/For-us-time-is-a-very-different-concept-Eric-Vallat.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/uoj2t79xZJDpO5LWpHIq2L/KKR-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-diagnostics-firm.html,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 34 PM IST",KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6AAYRp8Ffn3CYRQBpIbYsL/ShopClues-bets-on-fashion-segment-to-drive-growth.html,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6AAYRp8Ffn3CYRQBpIbYsL/ShopClues-bets-on-fashion-segment-to-drive-growth.html,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oDsH7fRPiOwj8SkFZhdfPI/Cyrus-Mistrys-family-firms-challenge-NCLT-order-on-maintain.html,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EseGEAQFgZa0pAjrQ8FPhK/HUL-counters-Amul-with-new-ad-to-defend-frozen-desserts.html,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EseGEAQFgZa0pAjrQ8FPhK/HUL-counters-Amul-with-new-ad-to-defend-frozen-desserts.html,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/sAOesy1LFN3Z66UjHZiK1M/Abbott-withdraws-2-stent-types-from-India-following-NPPAs-m.html,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 38 AM IST",Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/uoj2t79xZJDpO5LWpHIq2L/KKR-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-diagnostics-firm.html,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 34 PM IST",KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0eXiDa4cu92HpPI4bxDenJ/Finance-ministry-in-talks-with-PSBs-to-get-a-fix-on-growth-p.html,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 01 09 PM IST","Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oDsH7fRPiOwj8SkFZhdfPI/Cyrus-Mistrys-family-firms-challenge-NCLT-order-on-maintain.html,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/m9S8uI8tDR1bh3nZ2DLUQI/What-the-IMF-global-financial-stability-report-says-about-In.html,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 51 AM IST",What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q20gy9h6tzZ74RjldRbtqK/HDFC-Bank-headcount-falls-for-2nd-quarter-down-by-6100-in.html,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 28 PM IST","HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hAEUnVMkkYlg93knIdPrFO/The-issue-is-that-digital-needs-to-get-into-banks-DBS-Bank.html,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 20 PM IST",The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ymo3EawZpeIMPFNZe3XexM/One-MPC-member-mulled-a-repo-rate-hike-say-minutes.html,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 54 AM IST","One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0eXiDa4cu92HpPI4bxDenJ/Finance-ministry-in-talks-with-PSBs-to-get-a-fix-on-growth-p.html,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 01 09 PM IST","Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/qkKtoHUvBxOSkk9daQ8A5O/Fintech-friction-takes-root-in-Indias-banking-landscape.html,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 12 52 AM IST",Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q20gy9h6tzZ74RjldRbtqK/HDFC-Bank-headcount-falls-for-2nd-quarter-down-by-6100-in.html,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 28 PM IST","HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/m9S8uI8tDR1bh3nZ2DLUQI/What-the-IMF-global-financial-stability-report-says-about-In.html,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 51 AM IST",What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/kLTmAS9MdEP7isqPsAp7IN/Oil-marketing-firms-working-to-boost-digital-payments-Dharm.html,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 48 PM IST",Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0IM4UPDSJz5GDqnvt4bDcI/Merger-of-oil-PSUs-will-hurt-consumers-harm-Indias-energy.html,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST","Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eiwotgdAxZt98pGOgmJLCO/Mastercard-unveils-biometric-card-to-replace-ATM-pin-with-fi.html,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 48 PM IST",Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mIxk76Xm7lzsbLaOjeIdoK/Oil-companies-to-set-up-more-plants-in-Jammu-and-Kashmir.html,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/w9dYOrpluXo29iyzbUZXEJ/Full-text-of-RBIs-monetary-policy-statement.html,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 23 PM IST",Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/qkKtoHUvBxOSkk9daQ8A5O/Fintech-friction-takes-root-in-Indias-banking-landscape.html,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 12 52 AM IST",Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o5rTmASGpUmWY8QUVL9juI/Northern-India-can-be-a-hub-of-renewable-energy-says-study.html,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 55 PM IST","Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ymo3EawZpeIMPFNZe3XexM/One-MPC-member-mulled-a-repo-rate-hike-say-minutes.html,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 54 AM IST","One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6TCfli3eJLUVH2dFnxuWEN/Tata-Power-inks-pact-for-electricity-distribution-in-Ajmer.html,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 03 50 PM IST",Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YZFuGcfjSrgSn8lWlnKiiM/Homedelivered-petroleum-may-be-reality-soon.html,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eiwotgdAxZt98pGOgmJLCO/Mastercard-unveils-biometric-card-to-replace-ATM-pin-with-fi.html,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 48 PM IST",Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hAEUnVMkkYlg93knIdPrFO/The-issue-is-that-digital-needs-to-get-into-banks-DBS-Bank.html,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 20 PM IST",The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/w9dYOrpluXo29iyzbUZXEJ/Full-text-of-RBIs-monetary-policy-statement.html,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 23 PM IST",Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/iixnKtMIN7WojPH84yPpuO/Modi-govt-plans-to-auction-4-gigawatts-of-wind-energy-in-FY.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 20 AM IST",Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/svrC8u3YCgAn01vEN75p7K/Solar-power-may-become-cheaper-than-coal-in-India.html,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 49 AM IST",Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q5Florefv9lbFwnMQhsXpO/Foreign-investors-giving-MA-deals-in-Indias-renewable-ener.html,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 19 AM IST",Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sqLY7qemti9W9fo6VHvBAL/Waiting-for-green-cards-Indian-H1B-visa-holders-see-hope-in.html,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 19 AM IST","Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/IVvYXfLryBb8gEz7YYIFiP/World-Bank-to-continue-alternative-energy-financing-efforts.html,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 11 PM IST",World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KNtUNVtc3dQGalhizYS7xO/Indian-techies-IT-firms-fret-as-Donald-Trump-orders-US-visa.html,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 43 PM IST","Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Z46Ubc5E6c4lNZj2SGVw9M/How-to-start-an-analytics-journey.html,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 18 PM IST",How to start an analytics journey +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KNtUNVtc3dQGalhizYS7xO/Indian-techies-IT-firms-fret-as-Donald-Trump-orders-US-visa.html,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 43 PM IST","Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sqLY7qemti9W9fo6VHvBAL/Waiting-for-green-cards-Indian-H1B-visa-holders-see-hope-in.html,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 19 AM IST","Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ATONaFop3NvfvEKNXY5Q8L/Elon-Musk-plans-to-link-human-brains-with-computers-in-4-yea.html,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 37 AM IST",Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Z46Ubc5E6c4lNZj2SGVw9M/How-to-start-an-analytics-journey.html,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 18 PM IST",How to start an analytics journey +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/4ItpsVUuXrtimX2wLZXlnL/H1B-visa-curbs-India-threatens-US-with-trade-retaliation.html,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 02 PM IST","H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/4ItpsVUuXrtimX2wLZXlnL/H1B-visa-curbs-India-threatens-US-with-trade-retaliation.html,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 02 PM IST","H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ATONaFop3NvfvEKNXY5Q8L/Elon-Musk-plans-to-link-human-brains-with-computers-in-4-yea.html,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 37 AM IST",Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/4gLaUB1aLYz6sE1GiXT9PL/Why-are-brands-turning-to-live-video-streaming.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mT5iMbhlQr572RKNSS2vNI/Lodha-Developers-to-invest-Rs4300-crore-in-construction-to.html,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ","Sun, Apr 23 2017. 03 45 PM IST","Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/O9ybjew1fPKkKMiyKA47ZN/Overbooking-flights-Civil-aviation-ministry-pushes-for-tran.html,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 12 02 PM IST",Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/GOQYIe1i3FS90FGTnLtQ2H/For-us-time-is-a-very-different-concept-Eric-Vallat.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mbTZKdkBru2fvzUgdavZbI/Maruti-Suzuki-to-launch-all-new-Dzire-next-month.html,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/O9ybjew1fPKkKMiyKA47ZN/Overbooking-flights-Civil-aviation-ministry-pushes-for-tran.html,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 12 02 PM IST",Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/4gLaUB1aLYz6sE1GiXT9PL/Why-are-brands-turning-to-live-video-streaming.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mT5iMbhlQr572RKNSS2vNI/Lodha-Developers-to-invest-Rs4300-crore-in-construction-to.html,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ","Sun, Apr 23 2017. 03 45 PM IST","Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sqLY7qemti9W9fo6VHvBAL/Waiting-for-green-cards-Indian-H1B-visa-holders-see-hope-in.html,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 19 AM IST","Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Z46Ubc5E6c4lNZj2SGVw9M/How-to-start-an-analytics-journey.html,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 18 PM IST",How to start an analytics journey +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KNtUNVtc3dQGalhizYS7xO/Indian-techies-IT-firms-fret-as-Donald-Trump-orders-US-visa.html,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 43 PM IST","Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mbTZKdkBru2fvzUgdavZbI/Maruti-Suzuki-to-launch-all-new-Dzire-next-month.html,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ATONaFop3NvfvEKNXY5Q8L/Elon-Musk-plans-to-link-human-brains-with-computers-in-4-yea.html,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 37 AM IST",Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/4ItpsVUuXrtimX2wLZXlnL/H1B-visa-curbs-India-threatens-US-with-trade-retaliation.html,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 02 PM IST","H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sqLY7qemti9W9fo6VHvBAL/Waiting-for-green-cards-Indian-H1B-visa-holders-see-hope-in.html,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 19 AM IST","Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/GOQYIe1i3FS90FGTnLtQ2H/For-us-time-is-a-very-different-concept-Eric-Vallat.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/4ItpsVUuXrtimX2wLZXlnL/H1B-visa-curbs-India-threatens-US-with-trade-retaliation.html,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 02 PM IST","H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Z46Ubc5E6c4lNZj2SGVw9M/How-to-start-an-analytics-journey.html,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 18 PM IST",How to start an analytics journey +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KNtUNVtc3dQGalhizYS7xO/Indian-techies-IT-firms-fret-as-Donald-Trump-orders-US-visa.html,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 43 PM IST","Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ATONaFop3NvfvEKNXY5Q8L/Elon-Musk-plans-to-link-human-brains-with-computers-in-4-yea.html,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 37 AM IST",Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/I9zOulsXPb2kcVSzTenbdJ/How-Infosyss-20-billion-revenue-target-by-202021-is-hurti.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KUE7JGODJlGgYdmQ2VX5KM/Making-predictions-with-Big-Data.html,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains","Tue, May 02 2017. 10 20 PM IST",Making predictions with Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o1XkNF6icfWF792xrQgnAL/How-important-is-the-Indian-market-for-the-likes-of-Snapchat.html,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 05 AM IST",How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8SLYfe8DQr8qLUNAYsn58L/Nasscom-hopes-to-overcome-US-Australia-visa-curbs.html,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 20 PM IST","Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/OWeeqJSiHwcDFrOH9kJQoN/Govt-IT-data-on-cloud-system-must-be-stored-within-India-Me.html,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 13 PM IST",Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/OWeeqJSiHwcDFrOH9kJQoN/Govt-IT-data-on-cloud-system-must-be-stored-within-India-Me.html,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 13 PM IST",Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o1XkNF6icfWF792xrQgnAL/How-important-is-the-Indian-market-for-the-likes-of-Snapchat.html,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 05 AM IST",How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8SLYfe8DQr8qLUNAYsn58L/Nasscom-hopes-to-overcome-US-Australia-visa-curbs.html,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 20 PM IST","Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/I9zOulsXPb2kcVSzTenbdJ/How-Infosyss-20-billion-revenue-target-by-202021-is-hurti.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/uoj2t79xZJDpO5LWpHIq2L/KKR-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-diagnostics-firm.html,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 34 PM IST",KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KUE7JGODJlGgYdmQ2VX5KM/Making-predictions-with-Big-Data.html,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains","Tue, May 02 2017. 10 20 PM IST",Making predictions with Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EseGEAQFgZa0pAjrQ8FPhK/HUL-counters-Amul-with-new-ad-to-defend-frozen-desserts.html,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oDsH7fRPiOwj8SkFZhdfPI/Cyrus-Mistrys-family-firms-challenge-NCLT-order-on-maintain.html,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6AAYRp8Ffn3CYRQBpIbYsL/ShopClues-bets-on-fashion-segment-to-drive-growth.html,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0eXiDa4cu92HpPI4bxDenJ/Finance-ministry-in-talks-with-PSBs-to-get-a-fix-on-growth-p.html,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 01 09 PM IST","Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/sAOesy1LFN3Z66UjHZiK1M/Abbott-withdraws-2-stent-types-from-India-following-NPPAs-m.html,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 38 AM IST",Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q20gy9h6tzZ74RjldRbtqK/HDFC-Bank-headcount-falls-for-2nd-quarter-down-by-6100-in.html,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 28 PM IST","HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/uoj2t79xZJDpO5LWpHIq2L/KKR-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-diagnostics-firm.html,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 34 PM IST",KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6AAYRp8Ffn3CYRQBpIbYsL/ShopClues-bets-on-fashion-segment-to-drive-growth.html,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/sAOesy1LFN3Z66UjHZiK1M/Abbott-withdraws-2-stent-types-from-India-following-NPPAs-m.html,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 38 AM IST",Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o1XkNF6icfWF792xrQgnAL/How-important-is-the-Indian-market-for-the-likes-of-Snapchat.html,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 05 AM IST",How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/m9S8uI8tDR1bh3nZ2DLUQI/What-the-IMF-global-financial-stability-report-says-about-In.html,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 51 AM IST",What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oDsH7fRPiOwj8SkFZhdfPI/Cyrus-Mistrys-family-firms-challenge-NCLT-order-on-maintain.html,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/I9zOulsXPb2kcVSzTenbdJ/How-Infosyss-20-billion-revenue-target-by-202021-is-hurti.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EseGEAQFgZa0pAjrQ8FPhK/HUL-counters-Amul-with-new-ad-to-defend-frozen-desserts.html,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KUE7JGODJlGgYdmQ2VX5KM/Making-predictions-with-Big-Data.html,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains","Tue, May 02 2017. 10 20 PM IST",Making predictions with Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8SLYfe8DQr8qLUNAYsn58L/Nasscom-hopes-to-overcome-US-Australia-visa-curbs.html,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 20 PM IST","Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o1XkNF6icfWF792xrQgnAL/How-important-is-the-Indian-market-for-the-likes-of-Snapchat.html,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 05 AM IST",How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KUE7JGODJlGgYdmQ2VX5KM/Making-predictions-with-Big-Data.html,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains","Tue, May 02 2017. 10 20 PM IST",Making predictions with Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/I9zOulsXPb2kcVSzTenbdJ/How-Infosyss-20-billion-revenue-target-by-202021-is-hurti.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8SLYfe8DQr8qLUNAYsn58L/Nasscom-hopes-to-overcome-US-Australia-visa-curbs.html,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 20 PM IST","Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mIxk76Xm7lzsbLaOjeIdoK/Oil-companies-to-set-up-more-plants-in-Jammu-and-Kashmir.html,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0IM4UPDSJz5GDqnvt4bDcI/Merger-of-oil-PSUs-will-hurt-consumers-harm-Indias-energy.html,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST","Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/kLTmAS9MdEP7isqPsAp7IN/Oil-marketing-firms-working-to-boost-digital-payments-Dharm.html,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 48 PM IST",Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YZFuGcfjSrgSn8lWlnKiiM/Homedelivered-petroleum-may-be-reality-soon.html,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o5rTmASGpUmWY8QUVL9juI/Northern-India-can-be-a-hub-of-renewable-energy-says-study.html,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 55 PM IST","Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/kLTmAS9MdEP7isqPsAp7IN/Oil-marketing-firms-working-to-boost-digital-payments-Dharm.html,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 48 PM IST",Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0IM4UPDSJz5GDqnvt4bDcI/Merger-of-oil-PSUs-will-hurt-consumers-harm-Indias-energy.html,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST","Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o5rTmASGpUmWY8QUVL9juI/Northern-India-can-be-a-hub-of-renewable-energy-says-study.html,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 55 PM IST","Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mIxk76Xm7lzsbLaOjeIdoK/Oil-companies-to-set-up-more-plants-in-Jammu-and-Kashmir.html,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mIxk76Xm7lzsbLaOjeIdoK/Oil-companies-to-set-up-more-plants-in-Jammu-and-Kashmir.html,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YZFuGcfjSrgSn8lWlnKiiM/Homedelivered-petroleum-may-be-reality-soon.html,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0IM4UPDSJz5GDqnvt4bDcI/Merger-of-oil-PSUs-will-hurt-consumers-harm-Indias-energy.html,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST","Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/kLTmAS9MdEP7isqPsAp7IN/Oil-marketing-firms-working-to-boost-digital-payments-Dharm.html,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 48 PM IST",Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o5rTmASGpUmWY8QUVL9juI/Northern-India-can-be-a-hub-of-renewable-energy-says-study.html,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 55 PM IST","Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YZFuGcfjSrgSn8lWlnKiiM/Homedelivered-petroleum-may-be-reality-soon.html,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0eXiDa4cu92HpPI4bxDenJ/Finance-ministry-in-talks-with-PSBs-to-get-a-fix-on-growth-p.html,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 01 09 PM IST","Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q20gy9h6tzZ74RjldRbtqK/HDFC-Bank-headcount-falls-for-2nd-quarter-down-by-6100-in.html,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 28 PM IST","HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/m9S8uI8tDR1bh3nZ2DLUQI/What-the-IMF-global-financial-stability-report-says-about-In.html,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 51 AM IST",What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ymo3EawZpeIMPFNZe3XexM/One-MPC-member-mulled-a-repo-rate-hike-say-minutes.html,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 54 AM IST","One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/qkKtoHUvBxOSkk9daQ8A5O/Fintech-friction-takes-root-in-Indias-banking-landscape.html,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 12 52 AM IST",Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eiwotgdAxZt98pGOgmJLCO/Mastercard-unveils-biometric-card-to-replace-ATM-pin-with-fi.html,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 48 PM IST",Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hAEUnVMkkYlg93knIdPrFO/The-issue-is-that-digital-needs-to-get-into-banks-DBS-Bank.html,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 20 PM IST",The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/OWeeqJSiHwcDFrOH9kJQoN/Govt-IT-data-on-cloud-system-must-be-stored-within-India-Me.html,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 13 PM IST",Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/w9dYOrpluXo29iyzbUZXEJ/Full-text-of-RBIs-monetary-policy-statement.html,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 23 PM IST",Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/OWeeqJSiHwcDFrOH9kJQoN/Govt-IT-data-on-cloud-system-must-be-stored-within-India-Me.html,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 13 PM IST",Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6TCfli3eJLUVH2dFnxuWEN/Tata-Power-inks-pact-for-electricity-distribution-in-Ajmer.html,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 03 50 PM IST",Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/iixnKtMIN7WojPH84yPpuO/Modi-govt-plans-to-auction-4-gigawatts-of-wind-energy-in-FY.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 20 AM IST",Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q5Florefv9lbFwnMQhsXpO/Foreign-investors-giving-MA-deals-in-Indias-renewable-ener.html,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 19 AM IST",Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/svrC8u3YCgAn01vEN75p7K/Solar-power-may-become-cheaper-than-coal-in-India.html,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 49 AM IST",Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/IVvYXfLryBb8gEz7YYIFiP/World-Bank-to-continue-alternative-energy-financing-efforts.html,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 11 PM IST",World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/svrC8u3YCgAn01vEN75p7K/Solar-power-may-become-cheaper-than-coal-in-India.html,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 49 AM IST",Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6TCfli3eJLUVH2dFnxuWEN/Tata-Power-inks-pact-for-electricity-distribution-in-Ajmer.html,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 03 50 PM IST",Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/iixnKtMIN7WojPH84yPpuO/Modi-govt-plans-to-auction-4-gigawatts-of-wind-energy-in-FY.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 20 AM IST",Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/IVvYXfLryBb8gEz7YYIFiP/World-Bank-to-continue-alternative-energy-financing-efforts.html,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 11 PM IST",World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q5Florefv9lbFwnMQhsXpO/Foreign-investors-giving-MA-deals-in-Indias-renewable-ener.html,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 19 AM IST",Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6TCfli3eJLUVH2dFnxuWEN/Tata-Power-inks-pact-for-electricity-distribution-in-Ajmer.html,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 03 50 PM IST",Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/iixnKtMIN7WojPH84yPpuO/Modi-govt-plans-to-auction-4-gigawatts-of-wind-energy-in-FY.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 20 AM IST",Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/IVvYXfLryBb8gEz7YYIFiP/World-Bank-to-continue-alternative-energy-financing-efforts.html,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 11 PM IST",World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/svrC8u3YCgAn01vEN75p7K/Solar-power-may-become-cheaper-than-coal-in-India.html,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 49 AM IST",Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q5Florefv9lbFwnMQhsXpO/Foreign-investors-giving-MA-deals-in-Indias-renewable-ener.html,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 19 AM IST",Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ymo3EawZpeIMPFNZe3XexM/One-MPC-member-mulled-a-repo-rate-hike-say-minutes.html,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 54 AM IST","One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hAEUnVMkkYlg93knIdPrFO/The-issue-is-that-digital-needs-to-get-into-banks-DBS-Bank.html,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 20 PM IST",The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/qkKtoHUvBxOSkk9daQ8A5O/Fintech-friction-takes-root-in-Indias-banking-landscape.html,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 12 52 AM IST",Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/w9dYOrpluXo29iyzbUZXEJ/Full-text-of-RBIs-monetary-policy-statement.html,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 23 PM IST",Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eiwotgdAxZt98pGOgmJLCO/Mastercard-unveils-biometric-card-to-replace-ATM-pin-with-fi.html,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 48 PM IST",Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0eXiDa4cu92HpPI4bxDenJ/Finance-ministry-in-talks-with-PSBs-to-get-a-fix-on-growth-p.html,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 01 09 PM IST","Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q20gy9h6tzZ74RjldRbtqK/HDFC-Bank-headcount-falls-for-2nd-quarter-down-by-6100-in.html,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 28 PM IST","HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ymo3EawZpeIMPFNZe3XexM/One-MPC-member-mulled-a-repo-rate-hike-say-minutes.html,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 54 AM IST","One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sqLY7qemti9W9fo6VHvBAL/Waiting-for-green-cards-Indian-H1B-visa-holders-see-hope-in.html,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 19 AM IST","Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/m9S8uI8tDR1bh3nZ2DLUQI/What-the-IMF-global-financial-stability-report-says-about-In.html,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 51 AM IST",What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KNtUNVtc3dQGalhizYS7xO/Indian-techies-IT-firms-fret-as-Donald-Trump-orders-US-visa.html,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 43 PM IST","Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Z46Ubc5E6c4lNZj2SGVw9M/How-to-start-an-analytics-journey.html,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 18 PM IST",How to start an analytics journey +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/O9ybjew1fPKkKMiyKA47ZN/Overbooking-flights-Civil-aviation-ministry-pushes-for-tran.html,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 12 02 PM IST",Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ATONaFop3NvfvEKNXY5Q8L/Elon-Musk-plans-to-link-human-brains-with-computers-in-4-yea.html,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 37 AM IST",Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/4gLaUB1aLYz6sE1GiXT9PL/Why-are-brands-turning-to-live-video-streaming.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/4ItpsVUuXrtimX2wLZXlnL/H1B-visa-curbs-India-threatens-US-with-trade-retaliation.html,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 02 PM IST","H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mT5iMbhlQr572RKNSS2vNI/Lodha-Developers-to-invest-Rs4300-crore-in-construction-to.html,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ","Sun, Apr 23 2017. 03 45 PM IST","Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/GOQYIe1i3FS90FGTnLtQ2H/For-us-time-is-a-very-different-concept-Eric-Vallat.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mbTZKdkBru2fvzUgdavZbI/Maruti-Suzuki-to-launch-all-new-Dzire-next-month.html,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6AAYRp8Ffn3CYRQBpIbYsL/ShopClues-bets-on-fashion-segment-to-drive-growth.html,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/qkKtoHUvBxOSkk9daQ8A5O/Fintech-friction-takes-root-in-Indias-banking-landscape.html,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 12 52 AM IST",Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hAEUnVMkkYlg93knIdPrFO/The-issue-is-that-digital-needs-to-get-into-banks-DBS-Bank.html,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 20 PM IST",The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eiwotgdAxZt98pGOgmJLCO/Mastercard-unveils-biometric-card-to-replace-ATM-pin-with-fi.html,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 48 PM IST",Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/w9dYOrpluXo29iyzbUZXEJ/Full-text-of-RBIs-monetary-policy-statement.html,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 23 PM IST",Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o1XkNF6icfWF792xrQgnAL/How-important-is-the-Indian-market-for-the-likes-of-Snapchat.html,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 05 AM IST",How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/I9zOulsXPb2kcVSzTenbdJ/How-Infosyss-20-billion-revenue-target-by-202021-is-hurti.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/OWeeqJSiHwcDFrOH9kJQoN/Govt-IT-data-on-cloud-system-must-be-stored-within-India-Me.html,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 13 PM IST",Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KUE7JGODJlGgYdmQ2VX5KM/Making-predictions-with-Big-Data.html,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains","Tue, May 02 2017. 10 20 PM IST",Making predictions with Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8SLYfe8DQr8qLUNAYsn58L/Nasscom-hopes-to-overcome-US-Australia-visa-curbs.html,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 20 PM IST","Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oDsH7fRPiOwj8SkFZhdfPI/Cyrus-Mistrys-family-firms-challenge-NCLT-order-on-maintain.html,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/uoj2t79xZJDpO5LWpHIq2L/KKR-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-diagnostics-firm.html,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 34 PM IST",KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EseGEAQFgZa0pAjrQ8FPhK/HUL-counters-Amul-with-new-ad-to-defend-frozen-desserts.html,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/sAOesy1LFN3Z66UjHZiK1M/Abbott-withdraws-2-stent-types-from-India-following-NPPAs-m.html,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 38 AM IST",Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0IM4UPDSJz5GDqnvt4bDcI/Merger-of-oil-PSUs-will-hurt-consumers-harm-Indias-energy.html,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST","Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mIxk76Xm7lzsbLaOjeIdoK/Oil-companies-to-set-up-more-plants-in-Jammu-and-Kashmir.html,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/kLTmAS9MdEP7isqPsAp7IN/Oil-marketing-firms-working-to-boost-digital-payments-Dharm.html,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 48 PM IST",Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YZFuGcfjSrgSn8lWlnKiiM/Homedelivered-petroleum-may-be-reality-soon.html,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o5rTmASGpUmWY8QUVL9juI/Northern-India-can-be-a-hub-of-renewable-energy-says-study.html,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 55 PM IST","Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/4gLaUB1aLYz6sE1GiXT9PL/Why-are-brands-turning-to-live-video-streaming.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mT5iMbhlQr572RKNSS2vNI/Lodha-Developers-to-invest-Rs4300-crore-in-construction-to.html,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ","Sun, Apr 23 2017. 03 45 PM IST","Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6TCfli3eJLUVH2dFnxuWEN/Tata-Power-inks-pact-for-electricity-distribution-in-Ajmer.html,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 03 50 PM IST",Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/O9ybjew1fPKkKMiyKA47ZN/Overbooking-flights-Civil-aviation-ministry-pushes-for-tran.html,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 12 02 PM IST",Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/GOQYIe1i3FS90FGTnLtQ2H/For-us-time-is-a-very-different-concept-Eric-Vallat.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o5rTmASGpUmWY8QUVL9juI/Northern-India-can-be-a-hub-of-renewable-energy-says-study.html,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 55 PM IST","Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0IM4UPDSJz5GDqnvt4bDcI/Merger-of-oil-PSUs-will-hurt-consumers-harm-Indias-energy.html,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST","Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mIxk76Xm7lzsbLaOjeIdoK/Oil-companies-to-set-up-more-plants-in-Jammu-and-Kashmir.html,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mbTZKdkBru2fvzUgdavZbI/Maruti-Suzuki-to-launch-all-new-Dzire-next-month.html,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YZFuGcfjSrgSn8lWlnKiiM/Homedelivered-petroleum-may-be-reality-soon.html,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/kLTmAS9MdEP7isqPsAp7IN/Oil-marketing-firms-working-to-boost-digital-payments-Dharm.html,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 48 PM IST",Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0eXiDa4cu92HpPI4bxDenJ/Finance-ministry-in-talks-with-PSBs-to-get-a-fix-on-growth-p.html,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 01 09 PM IST","Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6TCfli3eJLUVH2dFnxuWEN/Tata-Power-inks-pact-for-electricity-distribution-in-Ajmer.html,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 03 50 PM IST",Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q20gy9h6tzZ74RjldRbtqK/HDFC-Bank-headcount-falls-for-2nd-quarter-down-by-6100-in.html,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 28 PM IST","HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/m9S8uI8tDR1bh3nZ2DLUQI/What-the-IMF-global-financial-stability-report-says-about-In.html,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 51 AM IST",What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ymo3EawZpeIMPFNZe3XexM/One-MPC-member-mulled-a-repo-rate-hike-say-minutes.html,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 54 AM IST","One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KNtUNVtc3dQGalhizYS7xO/Indian-techies-IT-firms-fret-as-Donald-Trump-orders-US-visa.html,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 43 PM IST","Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/4ItpsVUuXrtimX2wLZXlnL/H1B-visa-curbs-India-threatens-US-with-trade-retaliation.html,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 02 PM IST","H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sqLY7qemti9W9fo6VHvBAL/Waiting-for-green-cards-Indian-H1B-visa-holders-see-hope-in.html,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 19 AM IST","Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Z46Ubc5E6c4lNZj2SGVw9M/How-to-start-an-analytics-journey.html,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 18 PM IST",How to start an analytics journey +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ATONaFop3NvfvEKNXY5Q8L/Elon-Musk-plans-to-link-human-brains-with-computers-in-4-yea.html,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 37 AM IST",Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/svrC8u3YCgAn01vEN75p7K/Solar-power-may-become-cheaper-than-coal-in-India.html,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 49 AM IST",Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/iixnKtMIN7WojPH84yPpuO/Modi-govt-plans-to-auction-4-gigawatts-of-wind-energy-in-FY.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 20 AM IST",Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q5Florefv9lbFwnMQhsXpO/Foreign-investors-giving-MA-deals-in-Indias-renewable-ener.html,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 19 AM IST",Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o1XkNF6icfWF792xrQgnAL/How-important-is-the-Indian-market-for-the-likes-of-Snapchat.html,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 05 AM IST",How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6AAYRp8Ffn3CYRQBpIbYsL/ShopClues-bets-on-fashion-segment-to-drive-growth.html,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/IVvYXfLryBb8gEz7YYIFiP/World-Bank-to-continue-alternative-energy-financing-efforts.html,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 11 PM IST",World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/uoj2t79xZJDpO5LWpHIq2L/KKR-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-diagnostics-firm.html,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 34 PM IST",KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/sAOesy1LFN3Z66UjHZiK1M/Abbott-withdraws-2-stent-types-from-India-following-NPPAs-m.html,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 38 AM IST",Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/iixnKtMIN7WojPH84yPpuO/Modi-govt-plans-to-auction-4-gigawatts-of-wind-energy-in-FY.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 20 AM IST",Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/svrC8u3YCgAn01vEN75p7K/Solar-power-may-become-cheaper-than-coal-in-India.html,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 49 AM IST",Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/IVvYXfLryBb8gEz7YYIFiP/World-Bank-to-continue-alternative-energy-financing-efforts.html,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 11 PM IST",World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oDsH7fRPiOwj8SkFZhdfPI/Cyrus-Mistrys-family-firms-challenge-NCLT-order-on-maintain.html,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q5Florefv9lbFwnMQhsXpO/Foreign-investors-giving-MA-deals-in-Indias-renewable-ener.html,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 19 AM IST",Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EseGEAQFgZa0pAjrQ8FPhK/HUL-counters-Amul-with-new-ad-to-defend-frozen-desserts.html,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eiwotgdAxZt98pGOgmJLCO/Mastercard-unveils-biometric-card-to-replace-ATM-pin-with-fi.html,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 48 PM IST",Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hAEUnVMkkYlg93knIdPrFO/The-issue-is-that-digital-needs-to-get-into-banks-DBS-Bank.html,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 20 PM IST",The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/qkKtoHUvBxOSkk9daQ8A5O/Fintech-friction-takes-root-in-Indias-banking-landscape.html,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 12 52 AM IST",Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/w9dYOrpluXo29iyzbUZXEJ/Full-text-of-RBIs-monetary-policy-statement.html,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 23 PM IST",Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KUE7JGODJlGgYdmQ2VX5KM/Making-predictions-with-Big-Data.html,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains","Tue, May 02 2017. 10 20 PM IST",Making predictions with Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/I9zOulsXPb2kcVSzTenbdJ/How-Infosyss-20-billion-revenue-target-by-202021-is-hurti.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/OWeeqJSiHwcDFrOH9kJQoN/Govt-IT-data-on-cloud-system-must-be-stored-within-India-Me.html,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 13 PM IST",Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8SLYfe8DQr8qLUNAYsn58L/Nasscom-hopes-to-overcome-US-Australia-visa-curbs.html,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 20 PM IST","Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sqLY7qemti9W9fo6VHvBAL/Waiting-for-green-cards-Indian-H1B-visa-holders-see-hope-in.html,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 19 AM IST","Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KNtUNVtc3dQGalhizYS7xO/Indian-techies-IT-firms-fret-as-Donald-Trump-orders-US-visa.html,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 43 PM IST","Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ATONaFop3NvfvEKNXY5Q8L/Elon-Musk-plans-to-link-human-brains-with-computers-in-4-yea.html,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 37 AM IST",Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Z46Ubc5E6c4lNZj2SGVw9M/How-to-start-an-analytics-journey.html,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 18 PM IST",How to start an analytics journey +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o1XkNF6icfWF792xrQgnAL/How-important-is-the-Indian-market-for-the-likes-of-Snapchat.html,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 05 AM IST",How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/4ItpsVUuXrtimX2wLZXlnL/H1B-visa-curbs-India-threatens-US-with-trade-retaliation.html,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 02 PM IST","H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/I9zOulsXPb2kcVSzTenbdJ/How-Infosyss-20-billion-revenue-target-by-202021-is-hurti.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KUE7JGODJlGgYdmQ2VX5KM/Making-predictions-with-Big-Data.html,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains","Tue, May 02 2017. 10 20 PM IST",Making predictions with Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0IM4UPDSJz5GDqnvt4bDcI/Merger-of-oil-PSUs-will-hurt-consumers-harm-Indias-energy.html,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST","Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/OWeeqJSiHwcDFrOH9kJQoN/Govt-IT-data-on-cloud-system-must-be-stored-within-India-Me.html,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 13 PM IST",Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/kLTmAS9MdEP7isqPsAp7IN/Oil-marketing-firms-working-to-boost-digital-payments-Dharm.html,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 48 PM IST",Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mIxk76Xm7lzsbLaOjeIdoK/Oil-companies-to-set-up-more-plants-in-Jammu-and-Kashmir.html,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8SLYfe8DQr8qLUNAYsn58L/Nasscom-hopes-to-overcome-US-Australia-visa-curbs.html,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 20 PM IST","Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YZFuGcfjSrgSn8lWlnKiiM/Homedelivered-petroleum-may-be-reality-soon.html,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6TCfli3eJLUVH2dFnxuWEN/Tata-Power-inks-pact-for-electricity-distribution-in-Ajmer.html,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 03 50 PM IST",Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o5rTmASGpUmWY8QUVL9juI/Northern-India-can-be-a-hub-of-renewable-energy-says-study.html,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 55 PM IST","Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sqLY7qemti9W9fo6VHvBAL/Waiting-for-green-cards-Indian-H1B-visa-holders-see-hope-in.html,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 19 AM IST","Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KNtUNVtc3dQGalhizYS7xO/Indian-techies-IT-firms-fret-as-Donald-Trump-orders-US-visa.html,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 43 PM IST","Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/4ItpsVUuXrtimX2wLZXlnL/H1B-visa-curbs-India-threatens-US-with-trade-retaliation.html,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 02 PM IST","H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ATONaFop3NvfvEKNXY5Q8L/Elon-Musk-plans-to-link-human-brains-with-computers-in-4-yea.html,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 37 AM IST",Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/iixnKtMIN7WojPH84yPpuO/Modi-govt-plans-to-auction-4-gigawatts-of-wind-energy-in-FY.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 20 AM IST",Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Z46Ubc5E6c4lNZj2SGVw9M/How-to-start-an-analytics-journey.html,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 18 PM IST",How to start an analytics journey +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/svrC8u3YCgAn01vEN75p7K/Solar-power-may-become-cheaper-than-coal-in-India.html,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 49 AM IST",Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o1XkNF6icfWF792xrQgnAL/How-important-is-the-Indian-market-for-the-likes-of-Snapchat.html,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 05 AM IST",How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q5Florefv9lbFwnMQhsXpO/Foreign-investors-giving-MA-deals-in-Indias-renewable-ener.html,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 19 AM IST",Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KUE7JGODJlGgYdmQ2VX5KM/Making-predictions-with-Big-Data.html,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains","Tue, May 02 2017. 10 20 PM IST",Making predictions with Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0eXiDa4cu92HpPI4bxDenJ/Finance-ministry-in-talks-with-PSBs-to-get-a-fix-on-growth-p.html,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 01 09 PM IST","Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/IVvYXfLryBb8gEz7YYIFiP/World-Bank-to-continue-alternative-energy-financing-efforts.html,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 11 PM IST",World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/I9zOulsXPb2kcVSzTenbdJ/How-Infosyss-20-billion-revenue-target-by-202021-is-hurti.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q20gy9h6tzZ74RjldRbtqK/HDFC-Bank-headcount-falls-for-2nd-quarter-down-by-6100-in.html,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 28 PM IST","HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ymo3EawZpeIMPFNZe3XexM/One-MPC-member-mulled-a-repo-rate-hike-say-minutes.html,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 54 AM IST","One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/m9S8uI8tDR1bh3nZ2DLUQI/What-the-IMF-global-financial-stability-report-says-about-In.html,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 51 AM IST",What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8SLYfe8DQr8qLUNAYsn58L/Nasscom-hopes-to-overcome-US-Australia-visa-curbs.html,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 20 PM IST","Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/OWeeqJSiHwcDFrOH9kJQoN/Govt-IT-data-on-cloud-system-must-be-stored-within-India-Me.html,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 13 PM IST",Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mT5iMbhlQr572RKNSS2vNI/Lodha-Developers-to-invest-Rs4300-crore-in-construction-to.html,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ","Sun, Apr 23 2017. 03 45 PM IST","Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mbTZKdkBru2fvzUgdavZbI/Maruti-Suzuki-to-launch-all-new-Dzire-next-month.html,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/4gLaUB1aLYz6sE1GiXT9PL/Why-are-brands-turning-to-live-video-streaming.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/GOQYIe1i3FS90FGTnLtQ2H/For-us-time-is-a-very-different-concept-Eric-Vallat.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/O9ybjew1fPKkKMiyKA47ZN/Overbooking-flights-Civil-aviation-ministry-pushes-for-tran.html,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 12 02 PM IST",Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/qkKtoHUvBxOSkk9daQ8A5O/Fintech-friction-takes-root-in-Indias-banking-landscape.html,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 12 52 AM IST",Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6AAYRp8Ffn3CYRQBpIbYsL/ShopClues-bets-on-fashion-segment-to-drive-growth.html,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hAEUnVMkkYlg93knIdPrFO/The-issue-is-that-digital-needs-to-get-into-banks-DBS-Bank.html,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 20 PM IST",The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/w9dYOrpluXo29iyzbUZXEJ/Full-text-of-RBIs-monetary-policy-statement.html,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 23 PM IST",Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eiwotgdAxZt98pGOgmJLCO/Mastercard-unveils-biometric-card-to-replace-ATM-pin-with-fi.html,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 48 PM IST",Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/uoj2t79xZJDpO5LWpHIq2L/KKR-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-diagnostics-firm.html,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 34 PM IST",KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/sAOesy1LFN3Z66UjHZiK1M/Abbott-withdraws-2-stent-types-from-India-following-NPPAs-m.html,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 38 AM IST",Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oDsH7fRPiOwj8SkFZhdfPI/Cyrus-Mistrys-family-firms-challenge-NCLT-order-on-maintain.html,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mIxk76Xm7lzsbLaOjeIdoK/Oil-companies-to-set-up-more-plants-in-Jammu-and-Kashmir.html,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EseGEAQFgZa0pAjrQ8FPhK/HUL-counters-Amul-with-new-ad-to-defend-frozen-desserts.html,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/kLTmAS9MdEP7isqPsAp7IN/Oil-marketing-firms-working-to-boost-digital-payments-Dharm.html,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 48 PM IST",Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0IM4UPDSJz5GDqnvt4bDcI/Merger-of-oil-PSUs-will-hurt-consumers-harm-Indias-energy.html,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST","Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o5rTmASGpUmWY8QUVL9juI/Northern-India-can-be-a-hub-of-renewable-energy-says-study.html,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 55 PM IST","Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0eXiDa4cu92HpPI4bxDenJ/Finance-ministry-in-talks-with-PSBs-to-get-a-fix-on-growth-p.html,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 01 09 PM IST","Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YZFuGcfjSrgSn8lWlnKiiM/Homedelivered-petroleum-may-be-reality-soon.html,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6TCfli3eJLUVH2dFnxuWEN/Tata-Power-inks-pact-for-electricity-distribution-in-Ajmer.html,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 03 50 PM IST",Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ymo3EawZpeIMPFNZe3XexM/One-MPC-member-mulled-a-repo-rate-hike-say-minutes.html,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 54 AM IST","One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q20gy9h6tzZ74RjldRbtqK/HDFC-Bank-headcount-falls-for-2nd-quarter-down-by-6100-in.html,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 28 PM IST","HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/m9S8uI8tDR1bh3nZ2DLUQI/What-the-IMF-global-financial-stability-report-says-about-In.html,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 51 AM IST",What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/O9ybjew1fPKkKMiyKA47ZN/Overbooking-flights-Civil-aviation-ministry-pushes-for-tran.html,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 12 02 PM IST",Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mT5iMbhlQr572RKNSS2vNI/Lodha-Developers-to-invest-Rs4300-crore-in-construction-to.html,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ","Sun, Apr 23 2017. 03 45 PM IST","Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/4gLaUB1aLYz6sE1GiXT9PL/Why-are-brands-turning-to-live-video-streaming.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mbTZKdkBru2fvzUgdavZbI/Maruti-Suzuki-to-launch-all-new-Dzire-next-month.html,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6AAYRp8Ffn3CYRQBpIbYsL/ShopClues-bets-on-fashion-segment-to-drive-growth.html,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/GOQYIe1i3FS90FGTnLtQ2H/For-us-time-is-a-very-different-concept-Eric-Vallat.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/O9ybjew1fPKkKMiyKA47ZN/Overbooking-flights-Civil-aviation-ministry-pushes-for-tran.html,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 12 02 PM IST",Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/4gLaUB1aLYz6sE1GiXT9PL/Why-are-brands-turning-to-live-video-streaming.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/uoj2t79xZJDpO5LWpHIq2L/KKR-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-diagnostics-firm.html,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 34 PM IST",KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mT5iMbhlQr572RKNSS2vNI/Lodha-Developers-to-invest-Rs4300-crore-in-construction-to.html,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ","Sun, Apr 23 2017. 03 45 PM IST","Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mbTZKdkBru2fvzUgdavZbI/Maruti-Suzuki-to-launch-all-new-Dzire-next-month.html,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/GOQYIe1i3FS90FGTnLtQ2H/For-us-time-is-a-very-different-concept-Eric-Vallat.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/svrC8u3YCgAn01vEN75p7K/Solar-power-may-become-cheaper-than-coal-in-India.html,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 49 AM IST",Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/iixnKtMIN7WojPH84yPpuO/Modi-govt-plans-to-auction-4-gigawatts-of-wind-energy-in-FY.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 20 AM IST",Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/IVvYXfLryBb8gEz7YYIFiP/World-Bank-to-continue-alternative-energy-financing-efforts.html,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 11 PM IST",World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/qkKtoHUvBxOSkk9daQ8A5O/Fintech-friction-takes-root-in-Indias-banking-landscape.html,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 12 52 AM IST",Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q5Florefv9lbFwnMQhsXpO/Foreign-investors-giving-MA-deals-in-Indias-renewable-ener.html,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 19 AM IST",Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/w9dYOrpluXo29iyzbUZXEJ/Full-text-of-RBIs-monetary-policy-statement.html,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 23 PM IST",Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hAEUnVMkkYlg93knIdPrFO/The-issue-is-that-digital-needs-to-get-into-banks-DBS-Bank.html,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 20 PM IST",The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/sAOesy1LFN3Z66UjHZiK1M/Abbott-withdraws-2-stent-types-from-India-following-NPPAs-m.html,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 38 AM IST",Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eiwotgdAxZt98pGOgmJLCO/Mastercard-unveils-biometric-card-to-replace-ATM-pin-with-fi.html,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 48 PM IST",Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EseGEAQFgZa0pAjrQ8FPhK/HUL-counters-Amul-with-new-ad-to-defend-frozen-desserts.html,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ATONaFop3NvfvEKNXY5Q8L/Elon-Musk-plans-to-link-human-brains-with-computers-in-4-yea.html,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 37 AM IST",Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/4ItpsVUuXrtimX2wLZXlnL/H1B-visa-curbs-India-threatens-US-with-trade-retaliation.html,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 02 PM IST","H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KNtUNVtc3dQGalhizYS7xO/Indian-techies-IT-firms-fret-as-Donald-Trump-orders-US-visa.html,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 43 PM IST","Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oDsH7fRPiOwj8SkFZhdfPI/Cyrus-Mistrys-family-firms-challenge-NCLT-order-on-maintain.html,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Z46Ubc5E6c4lNZj2SGVw9M/How-to-start-an-analytics-journey.html,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 18 PM IST",How to start an analytics journey +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sqLY7qemti9W9fo6VHvBAL/Waiting-for-green-cards-Indian-H1B-visa-holders-see-hope-in.html,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 19 AM IST","Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mT5iMbhlQr572RKNSS2vNI/Lodha-Developers-to-invest-Rs4300-crore-in-construction-to.html,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ","Sun, Apr 23 2017. 03 45 PM IST","Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o1XkNF6icfWF792xrQgnAL/How-important-is-the-Indian-market-for-the-likes-of-Snapchat.html,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 05 AM IST",How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/4gLaUB1aLYz6sE1GiXT9PL/Why-are-brands-turning-to-live-video-streaming.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/O9ybjew1fPKkKMiyKA47ZN/Overbooking-flights-Civil-aviation-ministry-pushes-for-tran.html,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 12 02 PM IST",Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/I9zOulsXPb2kcVSzTenbdJ/How-Infosyss-20-billion-revenue-target-by-202021-is-hurti.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mbTZKdkBru2fvzUgdavZbI/Maruti-Suzuki-to-launch-all-new-Dzire-next-month.html,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/GOQYIe1i3FS90FGTnLtQ2H/For-us-time-is-a-very-different-concept-Eric-Vallat.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mIxk76Xm7lzsbLaOjeIdoK/Oil-companies-to-set-up-more-plants-in-Jammu-and-Kashmir.html,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6AAYRp8Ffn3CYRQBpIbYsL/ShopClues-bets-on-fashion-segment-to-drive-growth.html,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/uoj2t79xZJDpO5LWpHIq2L/KKR-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-diagnostics-firm.html,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 34 PM IST",KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/kLTmAS9MdEP7isqPsAp7IN/Oil-marketing-firms-working-to-boost-digital-payments-Dharm.html,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 48 PM IST",Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/iixnKtMIN7WojPH84yPpuO/Modi-govt-plans-to-auction-4-gigawatts-of-wind-energy-in-FY.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 20 AM IST",Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o5rTmASGpUmWY8QUVL9juI/Northern-India-can-be-a-hub-of-renewable-energy-says-study.html,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 55 PM IST","Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6TCfli3eJLUVH2dFnxuWEN/Tata-Power-inks-pact-for-electricity-distribution-in-Ajmer.html,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 03 50 PM IST",Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YZFuGcfjSrgSn8lWlnKiiM/Homedelivered-petroleum-may-be-reality-soon.html,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0IM4UPDSJz5GDqnvt4bDcI/Merger-of-oil-PSUs-will-hurt-consumers-harm-Indias-energy.html,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST","Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/svrC8u3YCgAn01vEN75p7K/Solar-power-may-become-cheaper-than-coal-in-India.html,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 49 AM IST",Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EseGEAQFgZa0pAjrQ8FPhK/HUL-counters-Amul-with-new-ad-to-defend-frozen-desserts.html,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/sAOesy1LFN3Z66UjHZiK1M/Abbott-withdraws-2-stent-types-from-India-following-NPPAs-m.html,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 38 AM IST",Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/uoj2t79xZJDpO5LWpHIq2L/KKR-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-diagnostics-firm.html,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 34 PM IST",KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6AAYRp8Ffn3CYRQBpIbYsL/ShopClues-bets-on-fashion-segment-to-drive-growth.html,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KUE7JGODJlGgYdmQ2VX5KM/Making-predictions-with-Big-Data.html,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains","Tue, May 02 2017. 10 20 PM IST",Making predictions with Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oDsH7fRPiOwj8SkFZhdfPI/Cyrus-Mistrys-family-firms-challenge-NCLT-order-on-maintain.html,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/OWeeqJSiHwcDFrOH9kJQoN/Govt-IT-data-on-cloud-system-must-be-stored-within-India-Me.html,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 13 PM IST",Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/sAOesy1LFN3Z66UjHZiK1M/Abbott-withdraws-2-stent-types-from-India-following-NPPAs-m.html,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 38 AM IST",Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8SLYfe8DQr8qLUNAYsn58L/Nasscom-hopes-to-overcome-US-Australia-visa-curbs.html,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 20 PM IST","Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EseGEAQFgZa0pAjrQ8FPhK/HUL-counters-Amul-with-new-ad-to-defend-frozen-desserts.html,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q5Florefv9lbFwnMQhsXpO/Foreign-investors-giving-MA-deals-in-Indias-renewable-ener.html,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 19 AM IST",Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oDsH7fRPiOwj8SkFZhdfPI/Cyrus-Mistrys-family-firms-challenge-NCLT-order-on-maintain.html,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0eXiDa4cu92HpPI4bxDenJ/Finance-ministry-in-talks-with-PSBs-to-get-a-fix-on-growth-p.html,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 01 09 PM IST","Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/IVvYXfLryBb8gEz7YYIFiP/World-Bank-to-continue-alternative-energy-financing-efforts.html,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 11 PM IST",World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q20gy9h6tzZ74RjldRbtqK/HDFC-Bank-headcount-falls-for-2nd-quarter-down-by-6100-in.html,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 28 PM IST","HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/m9S8uI8tDR1bh3nZ2DLUQI/What-the-IMF-global-financial-stability-report-says-about-In.html,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 51 AM IST",What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sqLY7qemti9W9fo6VHvBAL/Waiting-for-green-cards-Indian-H1B-visa-holders-see-hope-in.html,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 19 AM IST","Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KNtUNVtc3dQGalhizYS7xO/Indian-techies-IT-firms-fret-as-Donald-Trump-orders-US-visa.html,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 43 PM IST","Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/4ItpsVUuXrtimX2wLZXlnL/H1B-visa-curbs-India-threatens-US-with-trade-retaliation.html,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 02 PM IST","H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Z46Ubc5E6c4lNZj2SGVw9M/How-to-start-an-analytics-journey.html,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 18 PM IST",How to start an analytics journey +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ATONaFop3NvfvEKNXY5Q8L/Elon-Musk-plans-to-link-human-brains-with-computers-in-4-yea.html,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 37 AM IST",Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ymo3EawZpeIMPFNZe3XexM/One-MPC-member-mulled-a-repo-rate-hike-say-minutes.html,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 54 AM IST","One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o1XkNF6icfWF792xrQgnAL/How-important-is-the-Indian-market-for-the-likes-of-Snapchat.html,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 05 AM IST",How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/I9zOulsXPb2kcVSzTenbdJ/How-Infosyss-20-billion-revenue-target-by-202021-is-hurti.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/w9dYOrpluXo29iyzbUZXEJ/Full-text-of-RBIs-monetary-policy-statement.html,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 23 PM IST",Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eiwotgdAxZt98pGOgmJLCO/Mastercard-unveils-biometric-card-to-replace-ATM-pin-with-fi.html,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 48 PM IST",Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hAEUnVMkkYlg93knIdPrFO/The-issue-is-that-digital-needs-to-get-into-banks-DBS-Bank.html,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 20 PM IST",The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8SLYfe8DQr8qLUNAYsn58L/Nasscom-hopes-to-overcome-US-Australia-visa-curbs.html,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 20 PM IST","Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/qkKtoHUvBxOSkk9daQ8A5O/Fintech-friction-takes-root-in-Indias-banking-landscape.html,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 12 52 AM IST",Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KUE7JGODJlGgYdmQ2VX5KM/Making-predictions-with-Big-Data.html,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains","Tue, May 02 2017. 10 20 PM IST",Making predictions with Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/6Asu1jOUHUUglzSP6ItmzO/VijayMallya-extradition-case-India-says-internal-process-on.html,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.","The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 10 12 PM IST",Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Qb2vbIdW1Ped1HRMcGRUdL/Ratan-Tata-praises-judicial-professionalism-after-Cyrus-Mist.html,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 09 01 PM IST",Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/glZkxOZyHogf98Ub1kVxpM/Elon-Musk-nears-14-billion-windfall-as-Tesla-hits-mileston.html,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 27 AM IST",Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/OWeeqJSiHwcDFrOH9kJQoN/Govt-IT-data-on-cloud-system-must-be-stored-within-India-Me.html,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 13 PM IST",Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/QDwCnej8Q6F1N40kuXftOI/Edelweiss-plans-3040-distressed-asset-deals-a-year-CEO-Ras.html,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 40 AM IST",Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/4BlsEs8VDqtfjllJDASokM/Recovering-Vijay-Mallya-loans-a-long-way-off-for-banks.html,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 07 30 AM IST",Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Qb2vbIdW1Ped1HRMcGRUdL/Ratan-Tata-praises-judicial-professionalism-after-Cyrus-Mist.html,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 09 01 PM IST",Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ajoMykZ2e3I5lM3SlCvz4L/A-short-history-of-extradition-from-UK-to-India.html,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.","India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 21 AM IST",A short history of extradition from UK to India +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/6Asu1jOUHUUglzSP6ItmzO/VijayMallya-extradition-case-India-says-internal-process-on.html,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.","The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 10 12 PM IST",Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/glZkxOZyHogf98Ub1kVxpM/Elon-Musk-nears-14-billion-windfall-as-Tesla-hits-mileston.html,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 27 AM IST",Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/QDwCnej8Q6F1N40kuXftOI/Edelweiss-plans-3040-distressed-asset-deals-a-year-CEO-Ras.html,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 40 AM IST",Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ajoMykZ2e3I5lM3SlCvz4L/A-short-history-of-extradition-from-UK-to-India.html,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.","India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 21 AM IST",A short history of extradition from UK to India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0IM4UPDSJz5GDqnvt4bDcI/Merger-of-oil-PSUs-will-hurt-consumers-harm-Indias-energy.html,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST","Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/CrcdE6rgGQUwf5i8BMDapK/Vijay-Mallya-extradition-process-to-be-a-long-cumbersome-ex.html,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 18 AM IST","Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mIxk76Xm7lzsbLaOjeIdoK/Oil-companies-to-set-up-more-plants-in-Jammu-and-Kashmir.html,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/4BlsEs8VDqtfjllJDASokM/Recovering-Vijay-Mallya-loans-a-long-way-off-for-banks.html,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 07 30 AM IST",Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/kLTmAS9MdEP7isqPsAp7IN/Oil-marketing-firms-working-to-boost-digital-payments-Dharm.html,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 48 PM IST",Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YZFuGcfjSrgSn8lWlnKiiM/Homedelivered-petroleum-may-be-reality-soon.html,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o5rTmASGpUmWY8QUVL9juI/Northern-India-can-be-a-hub-of-renewable-energy-says-study.html,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 55 PM IST","Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6TCfli3eJLUVH2dFnxuWEN/Tata-Power-inks-pact-for-electricity-distribution-in-Ajmer.html,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 03 50 PM IST",Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0eXiDa4cu92HpPI4bxDenJ/Finance-ministry-in-talks-with-PSBs-to-get-a-fix-on-growth-p.html,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 01 09 PM IST","Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/iixnKtMIN7WojPH84yPpuO/Modi-govt-plans-to-auction-4-gigawatts-of-wind-energy-in-FY.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 20 AM IST",Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q20gy9h6tzZ74RjldRbtqK/HDFC-Bank-headcount-falls-for-2nd-quarter-down-by-6100-in.html,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 28 PM IST","HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/m9S8uI8tDR1bh3nZ2DLUQI/What-the-IMF-global-financial-stability-report-says-about-In.html,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 51 AM IST",What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ymo3EawZpeIMPFNZe3XexM/One-MPC-member-mulled-a-repo-rate-hike-say-minutes.html,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 54 AM IST","One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/CrcdE6rgGQUwf5i8BMDapK/Vijay-Mallya-extradition-process-to-be-a-long-cumbersome-ex.html,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 18 AM IST","Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/smvfjlMWKkl5aX6RZo9MiK/The-cases-against-Vijay-Mallya-and-Kingfisher-Airlines.html,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6q3fK2dlQBrxgFzDdcuIGN/Vijay-Mallya-The-story-so-far.html,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court","A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",Vijay Mallya: The story so far +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/M4SonfozH3m2Rh9EYoZZ0O/Whats-next-in-the-Vijay-Mallya-extradition-process.html,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 11 AM IST",What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/qkKtoHUvBxOSkk9daQ8A5O/Fintech-friction-takes-root-in-Indias-banking-landscape.html,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 12 52 AM IST",Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6q3fK2dlQBrxgFzDdcuIGN/Vijay-Mallya-The-story-so-far.html,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court","A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",Vijay Mallya: The story so far +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/M4SonfozH3m2Rh9EYoZZ0O/Whats-next-in-the-Vijay-Mallya-extradition-process.html,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 11 AM IST",What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mT5iMbhlQr572RKNSS2vNI/Lodha-Developers-to-invest-Rs4300-crore-in-construction-to.html,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ","Sun, Apr 23 2017. 03 45 PM IST","Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/smvfjlMWKkl5aX6RZo9MiK/The-cases-against-Vijay-Mallya-and-Kingfisher-Airlines.html,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/4gLaUB1aLYz6sE1GiXT9PL/Why-are-brands-turning-to-live-video-streaming.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/O9ybjew1fPKkKMiyKA47ZN/Overbooking-flights-Civil-aviation-ministry-pushes-for-tran.html,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 12 02 PM IST",Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/svrC8u3YCgAn01vEN75p7K/Solar-power-may-become-cheaper-than-coal-in-India.html,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 49 AM IST",Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6AAYRp8Ffn3CYRQBpIbYsL/ShopClues-bets-on-fashion-segment-to-drive-growth.html,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mbTZKdkBru2fvzUgdavZbI/Maruti-Suzuki-to-launch-all-new-Dzire-next-month.html,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q5Florefv9lbFwnMQhsXpO/Foreign-investors-giving-MA-deals-in-Indias-renewable-ener.html,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 19 AM IST",Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/GOQYIe1i3FS90FGTnLtQ2H/For-us-time-is-a-very-different-concept-Eric-Vallat.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eiwotgdAxZt98pGOgmJLCO/Mastercard-unveils-biometric-card-to-replace-ATM-pin-with-fi.html,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 48 PM IST",Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/IVvYXfLryBb8gEz7YYIFiP/World-Bank-to-continue-alternative-energy-financing-efforts.html,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 11 PM IST",World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Qb2vbIdW1Ped1HRMcGRUdL/Ratan-Tata-praises-judicial-professionalism-after-Cyrus-Mist.html,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 09 01 PM IST",Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hAEUnVMkkYlg93knIdPrFO/The-issue-is-that-digital-needs-to-get-into-banks-DBS-Bank.html,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 20 PM IST",The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/glZkxOZyHogf98Ub1kVxpM/Elon-Musk-nears-14-billion-windfall-as-Tesla-hits-mileston.html,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 27 AM IST",Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/w9dYOrpluXo29iyzbUZXEJ/Full-text-of-RBIs-monetary-policy-statement.html,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 23 PM IST",Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/6Asu1jOUHUUglzSP6ItmzO/VijayMallya-extradition-case-India-says-internal-process-on.html,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.","The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 10 12 PM IST",Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/4BlsEs8VDqtfjllJDASokM/Recovering-Vijay-Mallya-loans-a-long-way-off-for-banks.html,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 07 30 AM IST",Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/QDwCnej8Q6F1N40kuXftOI/Edelweiss-plans-3040-distressed-asset-deals-a-year-CEO-Ras.html,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 40 AM IST",Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ajoMykZ2e3I5lM3SlCvz4L/A-short-history-of-extradition-from-UK-to-India.html,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.","India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 21 AM IST",A short history of extradition from UK to India +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/uoj2t79xZJDpO5LWpHIq2L/KKR-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-diagnostics-firm.html,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 34 PM IST",KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/sAOesy1LFN3Z66UjHZiK1M/Abbott-withdraws-2-stent-types-from-India-following-NPPAs-m.html,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 38 AM IST",Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0IM4UPDSJz5GDqnvt4bDcI/Merger-of-oil-PSUs-will-hurt-consumers-harm-Indias-energy.html,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST","Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mIxk76Xm7lzsbLaOjeIdoK/Oil-companies-to-set-up-more-plants-in-Jammu-and-Kashmir.html,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oDsH7fRPiOwj8SkFZhdfPI/Cyrus-Mistrys-family-firms-challenge-NCLT-order-on-maintain.html,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EseGEAQFgZa0pAjrQ8FPhK/HUL-counters-Amul-with-new-ad-to-defend-frozen-desserts.html,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6TCfli3eJLUVH2dFnxuWEN/Tata-Power-inks-pact-for-electricity-distribution-in-Ajmer.html,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 03 50 PM IST",Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/kLTmAS9MdEP7isqPsAp7IN/Oil-marketing-firms-working-to-boost-digital-payments-Dharm.html,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 48 PM IST",Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o5rTmASGpUmWY8QUVL9juI/Northern-India-can-be-a-hub-of-renewable-energy-says-study.html,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 55 PM IST","Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0eXiDa4cu92HpPI4bxDenJ/Finance-ministry-in-talks-with-PSBs-to-get-a-fix-on-growth-p.html,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 01 09 PM IST","Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YZFuGcfjSrgSn8lWlnKiiM/Homedelivered-petroleum-may-be-reality-soon.html,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ymo3EawZpeIMPFNZe3XexM/One-MPC-member-mulled-a-repo-rate-hike-say-minutes.html,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 54 AM IST","One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q20gy9h6tzZ74RjldRbtqK/HDFC-Bank-headcount-falls-for-2nd-quarter-down-by-6100-in.html,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 28 PM IST","HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/qkKtoHUvBxOSkk9daQ8A5O/Fintech-friction-takes-root-in-Indias-banking-landscape.html,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 12 52 AM IST",Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/4ItpsVUuXrtimX2wLZXlnL/H1B-visa-curbs-India-threatens-US-with-trade-retaliation.html,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 02 PM IST","H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KNtUNVtc3dQGalhizYS7xO/Indian-techies-IT-firms-fret-as-Donald-Trump-orders-US-visa.html,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 43 PM IST","Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ATONaFop3NvfvEKNXY5Q8L/Elon-Musk-plans-to-link-human-brains-with-computers-in-4-yea.html,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 37 AM IST",Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sqLY7qemti9W9fo6VHvBAL/Waiting-for-green-cards-Indian-H1B-visa-holders-see-hope-in.html,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 19 AM IST","Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Z46Ubc5E6c4lNZj2SGVw9M/How-to-start-an-analytics-journey.html,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 18 PM IST",How to start an analytics journey +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o1XkNF6icfWF792xrQgnAL/How-important-is-the-Indian-market-for-the-likes-of-Snapchat.html,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 05 AM IST",How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/CrcdE6rgGQUwf5i8BMDapK/Vijay-Mallya-extradition-process-to-be-a-long-cumbersome-ex.html,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 18 AM IST","Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/I9zOulsXPb2kcVSzTenbdJ/How-Infosyss-20-billion-revenue-target-by-202021-is-hurti.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/smvfjlMWKkl5aX6RZo9MiK/The-cases-against-Vijay-Mallya-and-Kingfisher-Airlines.html,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6q3fK2dlQBrxgFzDdcuIGN/Vijay-Mallya-The-story-so-far.html,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court","A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",Vijay Mallya: The story so far +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/M4SonfozH3m2Rh9EYoZZ0O/Whats-next-in-the-Vijay-Mallya-extradition-process.html,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 11 AM IST",What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/m9S8uI8tDR1bh3nZ2DLUQI/What-the-IMF-global-financial-stability-report-says-about-In.html,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 51 AM IST",What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/iixnKtMIN7WojPH84yPpuO/Modi-govt-plans-to-auction-4-gigawatts-of-wind-energy-in-FY.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 20 AM IST",Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/svrC8u3YCgAn01vEN75p7K/Solar-power-may-become-cheaper-than-coal-in-India.html,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 49 AM IST",Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q5Florefv9lbFwnMQhsXpO/Foreign-investors-giving-MA-deals-in-Indias-renewable-ener.html,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 19 AM IST",Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/IVvYXfLryBb8gEz7YYIFiP/World-Bank-to-continue-alternative-energy-financing-efforts.html,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 11 PM IST",World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/w9dYOrpluXo29iyzbUZXEJ/Full-text-of-RBIs-monetary-policy-statement.html,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 23 PM IST",Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hAEUnVMkkYlg93knIdPrFO/The-issue-is-that-digital-needs-to-get-into-banks-DBS-Bank.html,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 20 PM IST",The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eiwotgdAxZt98pGOgmJLCO/Mastercard-unveils-biometric-card-to-replace-ATM-pin-with-fi.html,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 48 PM IST",Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KUE7JGODJlGgYdmQ2VX5KM/Making-predictions-with-Big-Data.html,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains","Tue, May 02 2017. 10 20 PM IST",Making predictions with Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Qb2vbIdW1Ped1HRMcGRUdL/Ratan-Tata-praises-judicial-professionalism-after-Cyrus-Mist.html,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 09 01 PM IST",Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/OWeeqJSiHwcDFrOH9kJQoN/Govt-IT-data-on-cloud-system-must-be-stored-within-India-Me.html,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 13 PM IST",Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/glZkxOZyHogf98Ub1kVxpM/Elon-Musk-nears-14-billion-windfall-as-Tesla-hits-mileston.html,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 27 AM IST",Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8SLYfe8DQr8qLUNAYsn58L/Nasscom-hopes-to-overcome-US-Australia-visa-curbs.html,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 20 PM IST","Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ajoMykZ2e3I5lM3SlCvz4L/A-short-history-of-extradition-from-UK-to-India.html,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.","India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 21 AM IST",A short history of extradition from UK to India +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/QDwCnej8Q6F1N40kuXftOI/Edelweiss-plans-3040-distressed-asset-deals-a-year-CEO-Ras.html,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 40 AM IST",Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/4BlsEs8VDqtfjllJDASokM/Recovering-Vijay-Mallya-loans-a-long-way-off-for-banks.html,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 07 30 AM IST",Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/6Asu1jOUHUUglzSP6ItmzO/VijayMallya-extradition-case-India-says-internal-process-on.html,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.","The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 10 12 PM IST",Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/O9ybjew1fPKkKMiyKA47ZN/Overbooking-flights-Civil-aviation-ministry-pushes-for-tran.html,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 12 02 PM IST",Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mT5iMbhlQr572RKNSS2vNI/Lodha-Developers-to-invest-Rs4300-crore-in-construction-to.html,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ","Sun, Apr 23 2017. 03 45 PM IST","Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/4gLaUB1aLYz6sE1GiXT9PL/Why-are-brands-turning-to-live-video-streaming.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/GOQYIe1i3FS90FGTnLtQ2H/For-us-time-is-a-very-different-concept-Eric-Vallat.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mbTZKdkBru2fvzUgdavZbI/Maruti-Suzuki-to-launch-all-new-Dzire-next-month.html,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6AAYRp8Ffn3CYRQBpIbYsL/ShopClues-bets-on-fashion-segment-to-drive-growth.html,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/CrcdE6rgGQUwf5i8BMDapK/Vijay-Mallya-extradition-process-to-be-a-long-cumbersome-ex.html,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 18 AM IST","Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6q3fK2dlQBrxgFzDdcuIGN/Vijay-Mallya-The-story-so-far.html,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court","A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",Vijay Mallya: The story so far +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/smvfjlMWKkl5aX6RZo9MiK/The-cases-against-Vijay-Mallya-and-Kingfisher-Airlines.html,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/M4SonfozH3m2Rh9EYoZZ0O/Whats-next-in-the-Vijay-Mallya-extradition-process.html,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 11 AM IST",What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/sAOesy1LFN3Z66UjHZiK1M/Abbott-withdraws-2-stent-types-from-India-following-NPPAs-m.html,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 38 AM IST",Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/uoj2t79xZJDpO5LWpHIq2L/KKR-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-diagnostics-firm.html,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 34 PM IST",KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0IM4UPDSJz5GDqnvt4bDcI/Merger-of-oil-PSUs-will-hurt-consumers-harm-Indias-energy.html,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST","Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mIxk76Xm7lzsbLaOjeIdoK/Oil-companies-to-set-up-more-plants-in-Jammu-and-Kashmir.html,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oDsH7fRPiOwj8SkFZhdfPI/Cyrus-Mistrys-family-firms-challenge-NCLT-order-on-maintain.html,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EseGEAQFgZa0pAjrQ8FPhK/HUL-counters-Amul-with-new-ad-to-defend-frozen-desserts.html,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/kLTmAS9MdEP7isqPsAp7IN/Oil-marketing-firms-working-to-boost-digital-payments-Dharm.html,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 48 PM IST",Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YZFuGcfjSrgSn8lWlnKiiM/Homedelivered-petroleum-may-be-reality-soon.html,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o5rTmASGpUmWY8QUVL9juI/Northern-India-can-be-a-hub-of-renewable-energy-says-study.html,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 55 PM IST","Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6TCfli3eJLUVH2dFnxuWEN/Tata-Power-inks-pact-for-electricity-distribution-in-Ajmer.html,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 03 50 PM IST",Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/iixnKtMIN7WojPH84yPpuO/Modi-govt-plans-to-auction-4-gigawatts-of-wind-energy-in-FY.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 20 AM IST",Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/svrC8u3YCgAn01vEN75p7K/Solar-power-may-become-cheaper-than-coal-in-India.html,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 49 AM IST",Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/IVvYXfLryBb8gEz7YYIFiP/World-Bank-to-continue-alternative-energy-financing-efforts.html,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 11 PM IST",World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q5Florefv9lbFwnMQhsXpO/Foreign-investors-giving-MA-deals-in-Indias-renewable-ener.html,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 19 AM IST",Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Z46Ubc5E6c4lNZj2SGVw9M/How-to-start-an-analytics-journey.html,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 18 PM IST",How to start an analytics journey +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KNtUNVtc3dQGalhizYS7xO/Indian-techies-IT-firms-fret-as-Donald-Trump-orders-US-visa.html,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 43 PM IST","Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sqLY7qemti9W9fo6VHvBAL/Waiting-for-green-cards-Indian-H1B-visa-holders-see-hope-in.html,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 19 AM IST","Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/4ItpsVUuXrtimX2wLZXlnL/H1B-visa-curbs-India-threatens-US-with-trade-retaliation.html,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 02 PM IST","H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ATONaFop3NvfvEKNXY5Q8L/Elon-Musk-plans-to-link-human-brains-with-computers-in-4-yea.html,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 37 AM IST",Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o1XkNF6icfWF792xrQgnAL/How-important-is-the-Indian-market-for-the-likes-of-Snapchat.html,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 05 AM IST",How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0eXiDa4cu92HpPI4bxDenJ/Finance-ministry-in-talks-with-PSBs-to-get-a-fix-on-growth-p.html,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 01 09 PM IST","Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q20gy9h6tzZ74RjldRbtqK/HDFC-Bank-headcount-falls-for-2nd-quarter-down-by-6100-in.html,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 28 PM IST","HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ymo3EawZpeIMPFNZe3XexM/One-MPC-member-mulled-a-repo-rate-hike-say-minutes.html,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 54 AM IST","One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/m9S8uI8tDR1bh3nZ2DLUQI/What-the-IMF-global-financial-stability-report-says-about-In.html,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 51 AM IST",What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KUE7JGODJlGgYdmQ2VX5KM/Making-predictions-with-Big-Data.html,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains","Tue, May 02 2017. 10 20 PM IST",Making predictions with Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/OWeeqJSiHwcDFrOH9kJQoN/Govt-IT-data-on-cloud-system-must-be-stored-within-India-Me.html,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 13 PM IST",Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/I9zOulsXPb2kcVSzTenbdJ/How-Infosyss-20-billion-revenue-target-by-202021-is-hurti.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8SLYfe8DQr8qLUNAYsn58L/Nasscom-hopes-to-overcome-US-Australia-visa-curbs.html,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 20 PM IST","Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/glZkxOZyHogf98Ub1kVxpM/Elon-Musk-nears-14-billion-windfall-as-Tesla-hits-mileston.html,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 27 AM IST",Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Qb2vbIdW1Ped1HRMcGRUdL/Ratan-Tata-praises-judicial-professionalism-after-Cyrus-Mist.html,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 09 01 PM IST",Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/QDwCnej8Q6F1N40kuXftOI/Edelweiss-plans-3040-distressed-asset-deals-a-year-CEO-Ras.html,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 40 AM IST",Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/6Asu1jOUHUUglzSP6ItmzO/VijayMallya-extradition-case-India-says-internal-process-on.html,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.","The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 10 12 PM IST",Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ajoMykZ2e3I5lM3SlCvz4L/A-short-history-of-extradition-from-UK-to-India.html,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.","India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 21 AM IST",A short history of extradition from UK to India +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/4BlsEs8VDqtfjllJDASokM/Recovering-Vijay-Mallya-loans-a-long-way-off-for-banks.html,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 07 30 AM IST",Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/qkKtoHUvBxOSkk9daQ8A5O/Fintech-friction-takes-root-in-Indias-banking-landscape.html,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 12 52 AM IST",Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hAEUnVMkkYlg93knIdPrFO/The-issue-is-that-digital-needs-to-get-into-banks-DBS-Bank.html,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 20 PM IST",The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/w9dYOrpluXo29iyzbUZXEJ/Full-text-of-RBIs-monetary-policy-statement.html,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 23 PM IST",Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/CrcdE6rgGQUwf5i8BMDapK/Vijay-Mallya-extradition-process-to-be-a-long-cumbersome-ex.html,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 18 AM IST","Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eiwotgdAxZt98pGOgmJLCO/Mastercard-unveils-biometric-card-to-replace-ATM-pin-with-fi.html,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 48 PM IST",Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6q3fK2dlQBrxgFzDdcuIGN/Vijay-Mallya-The-story-so-far.html,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court","A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",Vijay Mallya: The story so far +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sqLY7qemti9W9fo6VHvBAL/Waiting-for-green-cards-Indian-H1B-visa-holders-see-hope-in.html,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 19 AM IST","Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/M4SonfozH3m2Rh9EYoZZ0O/Whats-next-in-the-Vijay-Mallya-extradition-process.html,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 11 AM IST",What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KNtUNVtc3dQGalhizYS7xO/Indian-techies-IT-firms-fret-as-Donald-Trump-orders-US-visa.html,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 43 PM IST","Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/smvfjlMWKkl5aX6RZo9MiK/The-cases-against-Vijay-Mallya-and-Kingfisher-Airlines.html,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/4ItpsVUuXrtimX2wLZXlnL/H1B-visa-curbs-India-threatens-US-with-trade-retaliation.html,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 02 PM IST","H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Z46Ubc5E6c4lNZj2SGVw9M/How-to-start-an-analytics-journey.html,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 18 PM IST",How to start an analytics journey +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ATONaFop3NvfvEKNXY5Q8L/Elon-Musk-plans-to-link-human-brains-with-computers-in-4-yea.html,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 37 AM IST",Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o1XkNF6icfWF792xrQgnAL/How-important-is-the-Indian-market-for-the-likes-of-Snapchat.html,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 05 AM IST",How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/I9zOulsXPb2kcVSzTenbdJ/How-Infosyss-20-billion-revenue-target-by-202021-is-hurti.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/OWeeqJSiHwcDFrOH9kJQoN/Govt-IT-data-on-cloud-system-must-be-stored-within-India-Me.html,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 13 PM IST",Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8SLYfe8DQr8qLUNAYsn58L/Nasscom-hopes-to-overcome-US-Australia-visa-curbs.html,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 20 PM IST","Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KUE7JGODJlGgYdmQ2VX5KM/Making-predictions-with-Big-Data.html,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains","Tue, May 02 2017. 10 20 PM IST",Making predictions with Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mT5iMbhlQr572RKNSS2vNI/Lodha-Developers-to-invest-Rs4300-crore-in-construction-to.html,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ","Sun, Apr 23 2017. 03 45 PM IST","Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/O9ybjew1fPKkKMiyKA47ZN/Overbooking-flights-Civil-aviation-ministry-pushes-for-tran.html,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 12 02 PM IST",Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/4gLaUB1aLYz6sE1GiXT9PL/Why-are-brands-turning-to-live-video-streaming.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/GOQYIe1i3FS90FGTnLtQ2H/For-us-time-is-a-very-different-concept-Eric-Vallat.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mbTZKdkBru2fvzUgdavZbI/Maruti-Suzuki-to-launch-all-new-Dzire-next-month.html,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/sAOesy1LFN3Z66UjHZiK1M/Abbott-withdraws-2-stent-types-from-India-following-NPPAs-m.html,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 38 AM IST",Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6AAYRp8Ffn3CYRQBpIbYsL/ShopClues-bets-on-fashion-segment-to-drive-growth.html,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EseGEAQFgZa0pAjrQ8FPhK/HUL-counters-Amul-with-new-ad-to-defend-frozen-desserts.html,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/uoj2t79xZJDpO5LWpHIq2L/KKR-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-diagnostics-firm.html,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 34 PM IST",KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oDsH7fRPiOwj8SkFZhdfPI/Cyrus-Mistrys-family-firms-challenge-NCLT-order-on-maintain.html,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0IM4UPDSJz5GDqnvt4bDcI/Merger-of-oil-PSUs-will-hurt-consumers-harm-Indias-energy.html,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST","Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mIxk76Xm7lzsbLaOjeIdoK/Oil-companies-to-set-up-more-plants-in-Jammu-and-Kashmir.html,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/kLTmAS9MdEP7isqPsAp7IN/Oil-marketing-firms-working-to-boost-digital-payments-Dharm.html,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 48 PM IST",Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YZFuGcfjSrgSn8lWlnKiiM/Homedelivered-petroleum-may-be-reality-soon.html,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6TCfli3eJLUVH2dFnxuWEN/Tata-Power-inks-pact-for-electricity-distribution-in-Ajmer.html,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 03 50 PM IST",Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o5rTmASGpUmWY8QUVL9juI/Northern-India-can-be-a-hub-of-renewable-energy-says-study.html,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 55 PM IST","Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/iixnKtMIN7WojPH84yPpuO/Modi-govt-plans-to-auction-4-gigawatts-of-wind-energy-in-FY.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 20 AM IST",Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q5Florefv9lbFwnMQhsXpO/Foreign-investors-giving-MA-deals-in-Indias-renewable-ener.html,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 19 AM IST",Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/IVvYXfLryBb8gEz7YYIFiP/World-Bank-to-continue-alternative-energy-financing-efforts.html,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 11 PM IST",World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/svrC8u3YCgAn01vEN75p7K/Solar-power-may-become-cheaper-than-coal-in-India.html,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 49 AM IST",Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0eXiDa4cu92HpPI4bxDenJ/Finance-ministry-in-talks-with-PSBs-to-get-a-fix-on-growth-p.html,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 01 09 PM IST","Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q20gy9h6tzZ74RjldRbtqK/HDFC-Bank-headcount-falls-for-2nd-quarter-down-by-6100-in.html,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 28 PM IST","HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/m9S8uI8tDR1bh3nZ2DLUQI/What-the-IMF-global-financial-stability-report-says-about-In.html,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 51 AM IST",What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ymo3EawZpeIMPFNZe3XexM/One-MPC-member-mulled-a-repo-rate-hike-say-minutes.html,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 54 AM IST","One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/qkKtoHUvBxOSkk9daQ8A5O/Fintech-friction-takes-root-in-Indias-banking-landscape.html,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 12 52 AM IST",Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mT5iMbhlQr572RKNSS2vNI/Lodha-Developers-to-invest-Rs4300-crore-in-construction-to.html,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ","Sun, Apr 23 2017. 03 45 PM IST","Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/O9ybjew1fPKkKMiyKA47ZN/Overbooking-flights-Civil-aviation-ministry-pushes-for-tran.html,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 12 02 PM IST",Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/4gLaUB1aLYz6sE1GiXT9PL/Why-are-brands-turning-to-live-video-streaming.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mbTZKdkBru2fvzUgdavZbI/Maruti-Suzuki-to-launch-all-new-Dzire-next-month.html,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/GOQYIe1i3FS90FGTnLtQ2H/For-us-time-is-a-very-different-concept-Eric-Vallat.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6AAYRp8Ffn3CYRQBpIbYsL/ShopClues-bets-on-fashion-segment-to-drive-growth.html,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/uoj2t79xZJDpO5LWpHIq2L/KKR-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-diagnostics-firm.html,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 34 PM IST",KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hAEUnVMkkYlg93knIdPrFO/The-issue-is-that-digital-needs-to-get-into-banks-DBS-Bank.html,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 20 PM IST",The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/w9dYOrpluXo29iyzbUZXEJ/Full-text-of-RBIs-monetary-policy-statement.html,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 23 PM IST",Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eiwotgdAxZt98pGOgmJLCO/Mastercard-unveils-biometric-card-to-replace-ATM-pin-with-fi.html,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 48 PM IST",Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mIxk76Xm7lzsbLaOjeIdoK/Oil-companies-to-set-up-more-plants-in-Jammu-and-Kashmir.html,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0IM4UPDSJz5GDqnvt4bDcI/Merger-of-oil-PSUs-will-hurt-consumers-harm-Indias-energy.html,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST","Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/kLTmAS9MdEP7isqPsAp7IN/Oil-marketing-firms-working-to-boost-digital-payments-Dharm.html,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 48 PM IST",Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YZFuGcfjSrgSn8lWlnKiiM/Homedelivered-petroleum-may-be-reality-soon.html,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o5rTmASGpUmWY8QUVL9juI/Northern-India-can-be-a-hub-of-renewable-energy-says-study.html,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 55 PM IST","Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6TCfli3eJLUVH2dFnxuWEN/Tata-Power-inks-pact-for-electricity-distribution-in-Ajmer.html,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 03 50 PM IST",Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/iixnKtMIN7WojPH84yPpuO/Modi-govt-plans-to-auction-4-gigawatts-of-wind-energy-in-FY.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 20 AM IST",Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/sAOesy1LFN3Z66UjHZiK1M/Abbott-withdraws-2-stent-types-from-India-following-NPPAs-m.html,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 38 AM IST",Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EseGEAQFgZa0pAjrQ8FPhK/HUL-counters-Amul-with-new-ad-to-defend-frozen-desserts.html,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Qb2vbIdW1Ped1HRMcGRUdL/Ratan-Tata-praises-judicial-professionalism-after-Cyrus-Mist.html,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 09 01 PM IST",Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oDsH7fRPiOwj8SkFZhdfPI/Cyrus-Mistrys-family-firms-challenge-NCLT-order-on-maintain.html,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/glZkxOZyHogf98Ub1kVxpM/Elon-Musk-nears-14-billion-windfall-as-Tesla-hits-mileston.html,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 27 AM IST",Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/6Asu1jOUHUUglzSP6ItmzO/VijayMallya-extradition-case-India-says-internal-process-on.html,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.","The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 10 12 PM IST",Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/QDwCnej8Q6F1N40kuXftOI/Edelweiss-plans-3040-distressed-asset-deals-a-year-CEO-Ras.html,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 40 AM IST",Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/4BlsEs8VDqtfjllJDASokM/Recovering-Vijay-Mallya-loans-a-long-way-off-for-banks.html,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 07 30 AM IST",Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ajoMykZ2e3I5lM3SlCvz4L/A-short-history-of-extradition-from-UK-to-India.html,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.","India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 21 AM IST",A short history of extradition from UK to India +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/CrcdE6rgGQUwf5i8BMDapK/Vijay-Mallya-extradition-process-to-be-a-long-cumbersome-ex.html,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 18 AM IST","Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/svrC8u3YCgAn01vEN75p7K/Solar-power-may-become-cheaper-than-coal-in-India.html,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 49 AM IST",Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/IVvYXfLryBb8gEz7YYIFiP/World-Bank-to-continue-alternative-energy-financing-efforts.html,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 11 PM IST",World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q5Florefv9lbFwnMQhsXpO/Foreign-investors-giving-MA-deals-in-Indias-renewable-ener.html,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 19 AM IST",Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mT5iMbhlQr572RKNSS2vNI/Lodha-Developers-to-invest-Rs4300-crore-in-construction-to.html,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ","Sun, Apr 23 2017. 03 45 PM IST","Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/O9ybjew1fPKkKMiyKA47ZN/Overbooking-flights-Civil-aviation-ministry-pushes-for-tran.html,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 12 02 PM IST",Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/4gLaUB1aLYz6sE1GiXT9PL/Why-are-brands-turning-to-live-video-streaming.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/GOQYIe1i3FS90FGTnLtQ2H/For-us-time-is-a-very-different-concept-Eric-Vallat.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mbTZKdkBru2fvzUgdavZbI/Maruti-Suzuki-to-launch-all-new-Dzire-next-month.html,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/uoj2t79xZJDpO5LWpHIq2L/KKR-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-diagnostics-firm.html,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 34 PM IST",KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6AAYRp8Ffn3CYRQBpIbYsL/ShopClues-bets-on-fashion-segment-to-drive-growth.html,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/sAOesy1LFN3Z66UjHZiK1M/Abbott-withdraws-2-stent-types-from-India-following-NPPAs-m.html,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 38 AM IST",Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q20gy9h6tzZ74RjldRbtqK/HDFC-Bank-headcount-falls-for-2nd-quarter-down-by-6100-in.html,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 28 PM IST","HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/m9S8uI8tDR1bh3nZ2DLUQI/What-the-IMF-global-financial-stability-report-says-about-In.html,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 51 AM IST",What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0eXiDa4cu92HpPI4bxDenJ/Finance-ministry-in-talks-with-PSBs-to-get-a-fix-on-growth-p.html,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 01 09 PM IST","Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ymo3EawZpeIMPFNZe3XexM/One-MPC-member-mulled-a-repo-rate-hike-say-minutes.html,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 54 AM IST","One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/smvfjlMWKkl5aX6RZo9MiK/The-cases-against-Vijay-Mallya-and-Kingfisher-Airlines.html,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/qkKtoHUvBxOSkk9daQ8A5O/Fintech-friction-takes-root-in-Indias-banking-landscape.html,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 12 52 AM IST",Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/M4SonfozH3m2Rh9EYoZZ0O/Whats-next-in-the-Vijay-Mallya-extradition-process.html,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 11 AM IST",What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6q3fK2dlQBrxgFzDdcuIGN/Vijay-Mallya-The-story-so-far.html,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court","A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",Vijay Mallya: The story so far +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hAEUnVMkkYlg93knIdPrFO/The-issue-is-that-digital-needs-to-get-into-banks-DBS-Bank.html,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 20 PM IST",The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oDsH7fRPiOwj8SkFZhdfPI/Cyrus-Mistrys-family-firms-challenge-NCLT-order-on-maintain.html,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EseGEAQFgZa0pAjrQ8FPhK/HUL-counters-Amul-with-new-ad-to-defend-frozen-desserts.html,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eiwotgdAxZt98pGOgmJLCO/Mastercard-unveils-biometric-card-to-replace-ATM-pin-with-fi.html,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 48 PM IST",Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sqLY7qemti9W9fo6VHvBAL/Waiting-for-green-cards-Indian-H1B-visa-holders-see-hope-in.html,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 19 AM IST","Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/w9dYOrpluXo29iyzbUZXEJ/Full-text-of-RBIs-monetary-policy-statement.html,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 23 PM IST",Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o1XkNF6icfWF792xrQgnAL/How-important-is-the-Indian-market-for-the-likes-of-Snapchat.html,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 05 AM IST",How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KNtUNVtc3dQGalhizYS7xO/Indian-techies-IT-firms-fret-as-Donald-Trump-orders-US-visa.html,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 43 PM IST","Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Z46Ubc5E6c4lNZj2SGVw9M/How-to-start-an-analytics-journey.html,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 18 PM IST",How to start an analytics journey +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ATONaFop3NvfvEKNXY5Q8L/Elon-Musk-plans-to-link-human-brains-with-computers-in-4-yea.html,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 37 AM IST",Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/4ItpsVUuXrtimX2wLZXlnL/H1B-visa-curbs-India-threatens-US-with-trade-retaliation.html,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 02 PM IST","H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8SLYfe8DQr8qLUNAYsn58L/Nasscom-hopes-to-overcome-US-Australia-visa-curbs.html,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 20 PM IST","Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/UwqTDayXkB7U3VVYJF8cAM/IBREL-to-carve-out-commercial-office-business-into-separate.html,"
Shares of Indiabulls Real Estate Ltd (IBREL) on Monday jumped 40% on Monday after the property developer revealed plans to carve out its leasing and commercial businesses into a separate entity. The IBREL board that met on Monday morning decided to create a new vertical to house the two businesses.The residential business will continue to remain with IBREL.The new entity—Indiabulls Commercial Assets Ltd (IBCAL)—will hold existing leasing and commercial assets, as well as future projects.IBREL expects the new vertical to earn a rental income of Rs692 crore in 2017-18. The board also decided to explore opportunities for bringing strategic investments into the new entity, the company informed the stock exchanges.It proposes to either get a strategic investor for its rental arm or demerge the rental arm from the development arm.A restructuring committee will study the plan and prepare a draft scheme or proposal for the board’s approval.IBCAL will have a separate management team with a chief executive and a new investor is expected to come on board in the next few months, said a person familiar with the company’s plans, who did not want to be named.According to the company’s projections on the basis of accounts as of 31 March, IBCAL will have a net worth of Rs2,311 crore and a debt of Rs3,950 crore, with a potential revenue generation of Rs1,357 crore in 2020-21.IBCAL will have a portfolio of 8.35 million sq. ft of office buildings in Mumbai, Gurgaon and Chennai.“The net debt of IBCAL (post restructuring) will be reduced over medium- to long-term from the annuity revenues. We believe this model will provide cheaper cost of capital to fund the expansion of business after FY2020-21,” the company said in its filing.IBREL shares closed 39.96% higher at Rs148.15 on BSE on Monday, while the BSE Sensex lost 0.16% to close at 29,413.66 points.In the recent past, there have been some large deals in the commercial office space. Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte. Ltd, private equity firm Blackstone Group Lp and Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management Inc., have been buying out some of the largest office parks and acquiring rental portfolios of developers at a time India’s residential market has seen tepid sales and a price correction. “The eventual plan is to create a separate entity for the commercial and leasing business and target listing the stock at a later date. Indiabulls will also be looking at getting a foreign investor or PE fund to participate in the equity of IBCAL. Most large global investors have preferred to participate in the commercial or leasing market in India...,” said Abhishek Lodhiya, senior equity research analyst-infrastructure, capital goods and real estate, Angel Broking Ltd, in a note.","Indiabulls Commercial Assets will focus on the annuity business through rental income of existing office projects, under-development and new projects","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 03 43 AM IST",Indiabulls to carve out commercial office business into separate firm +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/OWeeqJSiHwcDFrOH9kJQoN/Govt-IT-data-on-cloud-system-must-be-stored-within-India-Me.html,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 13 PM IST",Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KUE7JGODJlGgYdmQ2VX5KM/Making-predictions-with-Big-Data.html,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains","Tue, May 02 2017. 10 20 PM IST",Making predictions with Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/I9zOulsXPb2kcVSzTenbdJ/How-Infosyss-20-billion-revenue-target-by-202021-is-hurti.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ieZs6BgeL0TFi7jLNrimBL/Bombay-HC-to-hear-plea-on-issue-of-govt-stake-in-ITC-on-27-A.html,"Mumbai: The Bombay high court (HC) on Monday said it will hear on 27 April a plea against the government and state-run insurers, including Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), for holding shares in cigarette maker ITC Ltd.The petition, which also names the insurance regulator, has argued that the government, which is tackling health issues arising out of tobacco consumption, should not directly or indirectly hold a stake in ITC and other companies in the tobacco business.The insurance companies, Union of India, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, have been asked to file their responses to the petition before the matter is heard next. The government of India, through five state-run insurance companies and Specified Undertaking of Unit Trust of India, owns a 32% stake in ITC.",Petition argues that the government should not directly or indirectly hold a stake in ITC and other companies in tobacco business,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 03 22 AM IST",Bombay HC to hear plea on issue of govt stake in ITC on 27 April +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6FpejrVtvJSI0rjb5SC0vO/NCLT-dismisses-Cyrus-Mistry-petitions-against-Tata-Sons.html,"Mumbai: The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Monday refused to grant a waiver to Cyrus Mistry family firms from the minimum shareholding requirement for filing a petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons Ltd. NCLT also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression. In an oral order, the two-member bench dismissed the waiver petition and main petition . The final order will be available on Friday. The Mistry family firms will now be moving the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) against NCLT’s decision once they receive a copy of the order, said their lawyers.Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd asked the NCLT to waive the requirement that shareholders hold at least 10% of a firm to file a petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.They were seeking the waiver after NCLT on 7 March ruled that their petition was not maintainable because of this technical requirement. While these firms hold 18.4% of ordinary shares in Tata Sons, when preference shares are counted, their ownership comes down to only about 2.17%.Aryama Sundaram, counsel for the Mistry family firms, argued for the waiver citing concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.The spat between the Mistry firms and the Tatas started on 24 October when Mistry was removed as chairman of Tata Sons. He was later ousted from its board.“Tata Sons interprets the ruling by the NCLT as demonstrating that the petitioners failed to make a convincing or compelling case that warranted a hearing on alleged mismanagement, oppression or other actions,” the holding company of the salt-to-software group said in an emailed statement. “We hope this brings to an end a vexatious campaign against the Company, the Tata Trusts and Mr. Ratan N. Tata.”A spokesperson for Cyrus Mistry declined comment.Some legal experts said they were surprised at NCLT’s decision. “They had a valid reason for a waiver because it’s (Tata Sons) not a private company and the holding company holds several public companies,” said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at law firm Advaya Legal. “Therefore, in my view, the option could have been exercised in favour of the petitioner. The tribunal, by dismissing the petition, has adopted a very hyper-technical approach.”That said, the legal battle has not ended as there are several options for the Mistry investment firms, including approaching the high court or civil sessions court apart from NCLAT. Adverse decisions at these forums can be challenged all the way till the Supreme Court depending on either party’s stomach for the fight. NCLAT can refer the waiver plea back to the tribunal only if it finds fault in the order passed by NCLT. It can also dismiss the appeal filed by the Mistry firms. If it does, the Mistry firms can go to the Supreme Court. If NCLAT finds merit in the appeal of Mistry firms, then NCLT would need to hear the main plea, lawyers said, pointing out that so far NCLT has not heard the main petition. J. N Gupta, managing director and co-founder at proxy advisory firm Stakeholders Empowerment Services, said it was highly unlikely that NCLAT will come up with a different interpretation of the law.“I don’t think NCLAT will have a different view. This being a high-profile case, the NCLT would have applied all its wisdom. Nobody writes an order that stands the risk of being overthrown,” said Gupta. Others agreed. “It will be challenging, since the waiver can be sought in compelling circumstances which are beyond ordinary (things), like on account of public interest. This appears to be a little tricky to prove for the Mistry camp,” said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at IC Legal.",NCLT also refused a waiver plea to Cyrus Mistry family firms for filing a petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 02 35 AM IST",Cyrus Mistry’s main NCLT petition against Tata Sons dismissed +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/pcYwlItCLm7MZE88Pn1feO/BRABO-How-India-got-its-first-Made-in-India-industrial-robo.html,"
Mumbai: Till even six years back, R.S. Thakur, who was then the managing director and chief executive of Tata AutoComp Systems Ltd, harboured one niggling grouse. Despite having 18,000 employees, he was finding it increasingly difficult to get “employees to man certain positions that were slightly on the dangerous side”.To address the issue, he “did bounce the idea of making an industrial robot at a couple of board meetings”. The concept, Thakur explained, was to take away “dull, dangerous and monotonous work like welding, etc., from workers who could then concentrate on higher levels of productivity”. However, nothing firm materialized from those meetings.A couple of years passed by and, in 2013, Thakur retired from Tata AutoComp and became non-executive director and chairman of TAL Manufacturing Solutions Ltd, a subsidiary of Tata Motors Ltd. Yet, the thought of making an industrial robot lingered. “After all, it was a subject close to my heart,” Thakur said.In 2014, Amit Bhingurde joined TAL as its chief operations officer (COO). An industrial engineer who also served as president and CEO of Kuka Robotics India before joining TAL, Bhingurde gave shape to Thakur’s dream of manufacturing ‘BRABO’—the first “Made in India” industrial robot. “It was when Bhingurde joined that the actual development work on Brabo began,” Thakur acknowledged.BRABO—short for “Bravo Robot”—has been priced between Rs5 lakh and Rs7 lakh and can even be bought on equated monthly instalments, or EMIs. BRABO comes in two variants that can handle payloads of 2kg and 10kg, respectively.“As per ILO (International Labour Organization) standards, a human should not lift more than 10kg, hence the (maximum) payload for the robot was fixed at 10kg,” Thakur noted, adding that an industrial robot, which can handle a 10kg payload can replace 1-2 operators per shift with a payback of less than two years for a customer.Manufactured at the TAL’s Pune factory, the design of Brabo has been done in house at TAL, styling at Tata Elxsi, and manufacturing of some parts at Tata AutoComp, while Tata Capital provides the finance.Other than the motors and drives for the robo arm, which are sourced from Italy, “all the other parts of BRABO are manufactured in India”, according to Thakur who acknowledges that this “is a challenge we face right now because we don’t have enough good motor and drive manufacturers in India currently”. TAL currently has a strategic collaboration with RTA-Motion Control Systems of Italy to source the motors and drives.BRABO, insisted Thakur, isn’t just an industrial robot—it is the first Indian “conceptualized, designed and manufactured articulated industrial robot”, and is a “unique product” suited to Indian conditions. Articulated robots are those that are fitted with rotary joints, which allow a full range of precise movements and, thus, increase the capabilities of the robot. An articulated robot can have one or more rotary joints, depending on the design of the robot and its intended function.First showcased at the Make in India week in 2016, Brabo was developed by a team of six engineers “whose average age was 24 years”. Today, TAL has around 800 employees. “More than 20% of our team has students with an engineering background who came for a two-month training but have stayed back because of their passion and commitment. We plan to retain them,” Bhingurde said, adding that over the last three years, the development cost “has been very small for us, which is Rs10 crore as we had a small team of extremely passionate people”.BRABO, according to Thakur, is a result of “focused innovation”, and targeted primarily at micro, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), “while also remaining relevant to large manufacturing industries, who have appreciated the positive difference that these robots have made”. “We have 55 happy customers who have already begun using BRABO and have achieved some really great results,” Thakur said.BRABO, which according to Thakur is “30-40% cheaper than any international industrial robot with similar applications”, can be used for varied applications for tasks like pick and placement of materials, assembly of parts, machine and press tending, as a sealing application, and camera and vision-based jobs.“We have made BRABO so user-friendly that anyone without any previous robotics experience can effectively operate it. A majority of Indian MSMEs are yet to realize the advantages of using industrial robots. Our effort is to change the manufacturing ecosystem, where not only large but micro industries can upgrade their operations by deploying robots which would complement the people workforce. We are also committed to offering the most comprehensive on-site customer service at a very reasonable cost,” Thakur said.In a bid to provide the best “customer experience”, TAL plans to have a wide network of service engineers, supported by systems integrators “in practically every major industrial hub in India, to ensure service call response within a few hours”.Five to six months before the actual launch, TAL identified customers and started putting its robots in industries for testing. “Initially, we got an order for 25 robots and later, an order for 30 robots was made. In total, we have supplied around 55 till date—25 were sold and 30 were given on a six-month trial,” Thakur pointed out.TAL’s current customers include Tata Motors Ltd, Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, Larsen and Toubro Ltd, Diebold, CPG Industries, Hydromatik, SGK Industries and BITS Dubai Campus.It takes two days to train the supervisors and workers for programming, running and using it regularly.“Orders received will depend on how fast we deliver solutions to the customers and we are continuously increasing our engineering strength. We are looking at an order size of 500 robots for this year,” said Thakur, adding that the Pune factory has a production capacity of 3,000 units annually.It currently takes TAL about a month to deliver BRABO on the shop floor: about three weeks to manufacture the robot and 3-7 days to deliver it to the site. TAL says it is trying to cut this time to about 15 days.Training programmes for engineers are under way. TAL is also signing more system integrators who manufacture grippers and other parts of the robot. The next focus will be to have a longer arm for the robot. Currently, it is a five-axis, and TAL soon plans to introduce the robot with a six-axis. The firm is also looking at making robots for specific purposes such as welding, as the workforce available for this specific task is reducing given that welding is “dangerous and tiring”. “We should be able to launch robots for welding application by the end of this year,” Thakur said.TAL, according to Thakur, also plans to make significant investments in research and development (R&D) to regularly launch new products (higher payloads and longer reach) and address applications like welding, “for which we are on the lookout for a new partner”.TAL has also applied for an intellectual property (IP) certification for BRABO, “which will represent a degree of protection provided against the entry of foreign objects, especially water in the machine”.BRABO already has four patents in its name and a recently-acquired CE certification that will enable TAL to export BRABO to Europe and the US. However, according to Thakur, “India is a virgin market. Our aim is to populate it first.”The company has also set up a live demonstration centre for its customers at its Pune facility, where the robots perform multiple applications such as sorting with a vision system, press tending, gluing, sealing, machine tending and pick and place. BRABO’s primary focus is on sectors such as automotive, electronics, logistics, food, packaging and pharma.Thakur, of course, has no plans to make humanoids—robots seen in sci-fi movies that think, walk and behave like humans. “For now, our focus is to manufacture industrial robots.” He did admit, though, that in “one of my weaker moments”, he did give in to the temptation of catering to the request of one of our customers who owns a pub in Bandra, a Mumbai suburb.“The customer wanted a prototype for a robot that can pour liquor too. We submitted a plan for the same and the slogan at the pub will be: ‘Your drink untouched by human hands’.” Thakur, though, now has a problem on his hands: this customer now wants the same robot to play music at times when liquor is not being served.Thakur promises not to succumb to the temptation easily. “We have not worked on that as yet,” he says with a laugh. In the interim, as Thakur grapples with these temptations, he believes that BRABO will usher in a ‘Robolution’, similar to an Industrial Revolution 2.0—one that will potentially change the manufacturing scenario of our country.Industrial robots market to hit $79.58 bn in five years
The use of industrial robots, according to MarketsandMarkets Research Pvt. Ltd, is expected to grow exponentially in the future as they help cost reduction, improved quality, increased production, and improved workplace health and safety. The global industrial robotics market is expected to reach $79.58 billion by 2022, growing at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.92% between 2016 and 2022. The main growth drivers, according to the research firm, are the adoption of automation to ensure quality production and meet market demand, and the rising demand from small- and medium-scale enterprises in developing nations.Articulated robots held the major share of the market in 2015, and this market is expected to grow at the highest CAGR between 2016 and 2022. Owing to the structure and operational capabilities of articulated arm robots, they are widely used by various industrial applications in the automotive and electrical and electronics industry among others.The Asia Pacific market (APAC) is expected to grow at the highest CAGR between 2016 and 2022. The main drivers for this growth are the demand for collaborative industrial robots from small- and medium-scale enterprises in China, Japan, South Korea, and India as well as the growing investments in countries such as India to boost manufacturing under projects such as Make in India, according to the research firm.The major firms in this sector are ABB Ltd (Switzerland), KUKA AG (Germany), FANUC Corp. (Japan), Yaskawa Electric Corp. (Japan), and Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd (Japan), the research firm says.","BRABO, according to TAL Manufacturing Solutions, is the first Indian ‘conceptualized, designed and manufactured articulated industrial robot’","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 03 30 AM IST",BRABO: How India got its first Made in India industrial robot +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/izAR0GRCmw7PZCu8XJA06I/SC-asks-Bombay-HC-to-auction-Sahara-Indias-Aamby-Valley.html,"New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday directed the official liquidator of the Bombay high court to auction Aamby Valley City, Sahara Group’s flagship property in Maharashtra, to recover the money it owes investors.The apex court also directed Sahara India chief Subrata Roy to personally appear before the court at the next hearing in the case on 27 April. “Verify, make an evaluation and proceed with sale,” the court said in a directive to the official liquidator of the Bombay high court.Justices Dipak Misra, Ranjan Gogoi and A.K. Sikri directed the auction of Aamby Valley, located in Pune district, after Sahara failed to deposit Rs5,092.64 crore with the capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India. It owes the money to investors who purchased securities sold by two group companies through schemes that Sebi ruled were illegal.Aamby Valley is Sahara’s flagship project, consisting of luxury resorts, man-made lakes and an airport. It is spread over 4,000 hectares. In January 2012, Sahara valued the property at Rs34,000 crore.“The market valuation of Aamby Valley is over Rs1 lakh crore so auctioning under distress will be an undue benefit for any bidder,” Sahara said in a statement on Monday.“The property...would be saleable only if it is sold in... 50-100 acre parcels instead of trying to sell it to a single buyer,” said a top executive at a property advisory on condition of anonymity. Senior advocate Salman Khurshid, who appeared for Sahara, said the sale of three overseas hotels owned by Sahara Group—two in downtown New York and the plush Grosvenor House in London—will be finalized by 28 May.The court also imposed costs of Rs10 crore on MG Capital Holdings, a US-based real estate company that had moved the apex court seeking to buy Sahara’s stake in the overseas hotels. The US company failed to heed a previous court directive to deposit Rs750 crore as earnest money in Sebi’s dedicated Sahara account.In March 2014, Roy and two associates were placed under judicial custody after Sahara Group failed to comply with the court’s directions to refund investors. In May 2016, Roy and the two were granted parole by the court. This was extended to 17 April in February.Madhurima Nandy in Bengaluru contributed to this story.Sahara has filed a defamation case in a Patna court against Mint’s editor and some reporters over the newspaper’s coverage of the company’s dispute with the Securities and Exchange Board of India. Mint is contesting the case.","Supreme Court orders Aamby Valley auction after Sahara failed to deposit Rs5,092.64 crore with Sebi to secure Subrata Roy’s bail","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 02 35 AM IST","Supreme Court orders Aamby Valley auction, summons Subrata Roy" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/4lkS5tHy7DJ0sw79Xpa2lO/Ericsson-partners-IIT-Delhi-for-5G-technology-in-India.html,"New Delhi: Telecom gear maker Ericsson AB has signed an agreement with Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi to jointly work on a programme for 5G technology development in India.“Ericsson and the IIT Delhi have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly roll out a ‘5G for India’ programme,” Ericsson said in a statement. Under the agreement, Ericsson will set up a Centre of Excellence with a 5G test bed and incubation centre at IIT Delhi and use this facility to drive the development of the country’s 5G ecosystem. The first series of tests under this programme are due to begin in the second half of 2017 and will place India on par with other developed countries in terms of 5G network and application deployment. ALSO READ: Ericsson sees up to $1.7 billion in costs as revamp beginsGlobally, limited deployment and 5G trials are expected to start by mid-2018 while commercial availability is slated for 2020. “The 5G for India programme is a major step towards understanding the power of 5G technology and how it can help aid Digital India initiatives, including the development of smart cities. The programme will focus on delivering research, innovation and industrial pilots that use next-generation 5G networks as an enabler,” Ericsson’s head of region India Paolo Colella said. This programme has been conceptualised to fast-track realisation of Digital India initiatives and aid application development for Indian start-ups and industries, the statement said. In addition to hosting the Center of Excellence, IIT Delhi will conduct research and development to explore how some of the country’s challenges can be addressed with mobile technologies, it added. “IIT Delhi has been committed to developing the latest technologies in close collaboration with industry. We are glad to be hosting the Ericsson Centre of Excellence and Incubation Centre, providing a big leap forward for 5G technologies ecosystem development in the country,” IIT Delhi director Ramgopal Rao said.","Ericsson and IIT Delhi have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to jointly roll out a ‘5G for India’ programme, the company said in a statement","Thu, Mar 30 2017. 07 18 PM IST",Ericsson partners IIT Delhi for 5G technology in India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0bK3D0wITPGkckXvg8gY4H/How-Indias-public-policy-can-take-maximum-advantage-of-AI.html,"
Defined as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programmes” by the late John McCarthy—one of the founding fathers of the discipline—Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has subtly made inroads into the daily lives of Indian citizens in the form of app-based cab aggregators and digital assistants on smartphones. However, public policy in India has not been able to take much advantage of AI applications, suggests a report published jointly by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) and consulting firm PwC. The report titled Artificial Intelligence and Robotics–2017 believes that national initiatives like Make in India, Skill India and Digital India could immensely benefit from AI technologies. Alternatively, early public sector interest in AI could trigger a spurt of activity in the AI field in India.AI, for instance, can be applied to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s initiatives such as the Digital India initiative, Skill India and Make in India; in large-scale public endeavours ranging from crop insurance schemes, tax fraud detection, and detecting subsidy leakage, and to helping hone the country’s defence strategy.AI, the report states, can also be consumed in traditional industries like agriculture. The department of agriculture cooperation and farmers welfare, ministry of agriculture runs the Kisan Call Centres across the country to respond to issues raised by farmers instantly and in their local language. An AI system could help in assisting the call centre by linking available information. It could pick up soil reports from government agencies and link them to the environmental conditions prevalent over the years using data from a remote sensing satellite. The call centre could, then, provide advice on the optimal crop that can be sown in that land pocket. This information could also be used to determine the crop’s susceptibility to pests. Necessary pre-emptive measures can then be taken—for instance, supplying the required pesticides to that land pocket as well as notifying farmers about the risk. With a high level of connectivity, this is a feasible and ready to deploy solution which uses AI as an augmentation to the system.An enabling infrastructureCompared to the West and front runners of AI adoption in Asia, such as China and South Korea, the culture and infrastructure needed to develop a base for the adoption of AI in mainstream applications in India is in need of an impetus, the report acknowledges.To begin with, Indian academics, researchers and entrepreneurs face a more acute challenge than companies in terms of the less-than-ideal infrastructure available for an AI revolution in India. For example, cloud computing infrastructure, which is capable of storing large amounts of data and facilitating the huge amount of computing power essential for AI applications, is largely located on servers abroad. Hence, an AI-supportive cultural environment will require homegrown infrastructure. India will also require ecosystem-fostering innovation. Fostering a culture of innovation and research beyond the organization is common to global technology giants. To encourage the same level of innovation in AI research efforts in India, initiatives to hold events and build user communities in the field of AI will go a long way, the report notes.The main dichotomy that the regulations will have to deal with relates to who will be liable for the activities of AI systems. These systems are designed to be creative and to continue learning from the data analysed. Hence, designers may not be able to understand how the system will work in the future. For instance, while the US is currently in the process of implementing laws concerning driverless vehicles, India still lags behind. Instead of waiting for technology to reach a level where regulatory intervention becomes necessary, India could be a front runner by establishing a legal infrastructure in advance, the report suggests.Issues of scaleDeep Learning, a part of AI, can be employed to tackle issues of scale often prevalent in the execution of government schemes, the PwC-Assocham report notes. It is essentially a process that can be used for pattern recognition, image analysis and natural language processing (NLP) by modelling high-level abstractions in data which can then be compared with various other recognized contents in a conceptual way rather than using just a rule-based method.The report cites the example of the Clean India initiative, directed towards the construction of toilets in rural India. Public servants are tasked with uploading images of these toilet constructions to a central server for sampling and assessment. Image processing AI, the PwC-Assocham report suggests, can be used to flag photographs that do not resemble completely built toilets. Image recognition capabilities can also be used to identify whether the same official appears in multiple images or if photos have been uploaded by officials from a location other than the intended site. Considering the scale of this initiative, which involves creating more functional toilets, being able to check every image rather than a small sample will actually help increase effectiveness.Ethical, legal and social implicationsLast but not the least, to reap the societal benefits of AI systems, we would need to be able to trust them and ensure that they comply with an ethical, moral and social framework analogous to that for humans, notes the PwC-Assocham report. It urges that research efforts must be concentrated on implementing regulations in AI system design that are updated on a continual basis to respond appropriately to different application fields and actual situations. The design philosophy must be such that it ensures security against external attacks, anomalies and cyberattacks, the PwC-Assochamreport insists, adding that policy initiatives should explicitly touch upon building an incubatory environment for AI-based research and training.",AI can be effectively used in a wide range of government initiatives,"Thu, Mar 30 2017. 04 40 AM IST",How India’s public policy can take maximum advantage of AI +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/a2qxtY7UlwUe8mzpUkxyIK/Can-tech-solve-the-healthcare-challenges-of-2025.html,"
By 2025, the healthcare industry will face numerous challenges including an ageing population, government policy that will need to keep pace with this population, and making healthcare services and infrastructure more accessible to the masses. The technology-driven world that we find ourselves in has provided us with a great opportunity to incorporate technological tools into the delivery of healthcare. Specifically, Big Data, mobile and the Internet of Things (IoT) can support and facilitate the flow of information for effective care coordination and greater patient and citizen empowerment, according to the Healthcare in 2025 report by videoconferencing, telepresence and communications firm Polycom Inc.
Big Data has immense potential in healthcare, especially when it comes to the consolidation of data to allow for more efficient and effective decision-making. Data collection and utilization through cloud systems will allow better sample sizes for prescription models, access to patient information no matter the location where they seek treatment and better allocation of limited resources.
By 2020, IoT—which is “a scenario in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction”—will likely have 25 billion connected “things”, which includes more than 250 million connected vehicles, according to research firm Gartner.
An Accenture report stated that IoT could add $14.2 trillion to the world economy over the next 15 years. Many believe healthcare will be a prime beneficiary—wearable technology is often cited as one of the tools to support prevention and wellness in IoT, according to the Polycom report.
Mobile 3G and 4G connectivity has truly revolutionized personal connectivity. When mobile integrates with healthcare delivery, the problem of accessibility reduces significantly. Virtual consultations or having surgeons in urban areas assist those in rural areas with surgeries virtually would become more feasible options; touchsurgery.com is one such example, according to the report.
The potential is evident. However, the success of mobile will also depend on how governments shape healthcare policy and distribute funding, revamping the current incentive framework in many of the regions and core markets, and hiring technological experts as employees in healthcare organizations, the report notes.
As collaboration between multiple parties for the future healthcare business model is a critical requirement, having a scalable network and a robust unified communications environment is necessary. The ability to integrate voice, video, content, specific healthcare applications and medical devices to support better and more efficient collaboration among clinicians, healthcare educators, administrators, patients and families will result in better patient outcomes and reduced costs, as long as it’s simple to use and a familiar, consistent experience. The right technology environment should support multiple applications for economies of scale like care team collaboration and administration, medical education as well as telemedicine.",Technology-driven world that we find ourselves in has provided us with a great opportunity to incorporate technological tools into the delivery of healthcare,"Thu, Mar 30 2017. 04 19 AM IST",Can tech solve the healthcare challenges of 2025? +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/oN4O0rLvibO1xPcwiZsl1O/Smart-cars-changing-lanes.html,"
New Delhi: Chances are, you are already visualizing a self-driving Uber dropping you home after you’ve had one drink too many at a party on a Friday night. With increasing connectivity on the move, integration with your smartphone and smartwatch, sensors and radars for assistance and safety features such as auto-braking and blind spot detection, that dream may soon come true.
“Self-driving vehicles are developing at a rapid pace and such technological advancements can help us reach our destination faster and safer. They will also help us reduce emissions and protect the environment,” said Violeta Bulc, a Slovenian entrepreneur and European Commissioner for Transport, while announcing the European Union’s initiatives around smart and green mobility in 2016.
Chipmaker Intel Corp. is focusing on data, telematics and hardware for smart cars, and is already powering infotainment systems in cars made by Hyundai Motor Co., Kia Motors Corp. and Infiniti Motor Co. Ltd.
“Cars are rapidly becoming some of the world’s most intelligent connected devices, using sensor technology and powerful processors to sense and continuously respond to their surroundings,” said Brian Krzanich, CEO, Intel, ahead of the Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference in July 2016.
Smartphones driving smart car evolution
Smartphones are the very foundation of this change. Research firm Gartner Inc. forecasts that by the year 2020, more than 250 million cars will have Internet access. “Cars are increasingly taking place of a second home and we believe that customers are progressing rapidly,” says Guillaume Sicard, president, Nissan India operations. It is no surprise that tech giants Apple Inc. and Google Inc. are investing heavily in the CarPlay and Android Auto platforms, respectively.
By connecting your smartphone to the car infotainment system and with voice commands, you can make and receive calls, have messages read out to you, and get access to your music library and navigation.
Maruti Suzuki India Ltd was among the first carmakers in India to offer the Apple CarPlay feature, in cars including the Ciaz sedan and the Baleno hatchback. “The major risk associated with Apple CarPlay was the acceptability of the feature by Indian car consumers. However, the initial response has been very encouraging and consumers are valuing this feature a lot,” says C.V. Raman, executive director, engineering, Maruti Suzuki.
But Maruti Suzuki wasn’t really the first mover in India. American carmaker Ford Motor Co. had developed smart in-car systems, along with BlackBerry Ltd and Microsoft Corp. much earlier and the Indian market got its first taste of the Sync platform in 2013 in the EcoSport crossover, which featured voice commands to control phone and music, and emergency assistance which, in the case of an accident, activates the airbags, shuts off the fuel pump and makes a distress call to the helpline number. Sync has since been updated, and now supports third-party apps as well. Indian carmaker Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd allows users of the XUV500, TUV300, TUV100 and Scorpio vehicles to connect to their car using a free app called Blue Sense (Android and iOS), and users can control the air-conditioning and audio functions, and also monitor real-time vehicle information, including tyre pressure, fuel economy and more.
Assisting the driver
Smartness is not just about the smartphone and Internet-driven features for your car. “Globally, we are investing in autonomous drive, electric vehicles, and connected mobility solutions, three forces which are going to change our industry, and our world,” says Nissan India’s Sicard. One of the primary tenets of this smartness is to assist the driver, making the sometimes perilous activity of driving simpler and safer through advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). These include radar-based adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning and autonomous emergency braking.
Car buyers in India are still behind the curve when it comes to the newer technology. Regulations, economics and prevailing infrastructure dictate what car makers can and cannot do in India. Ford Motor, in the US for example, sells the Escape SUV ($23,600 onwards; Rs15.8 lakh approx.) with technology that can alert the driver in case of an unintentional lane drift, if there is another vehicle in your blind spot zone and also auto-manoeuvre you in and out of a tight parking spot. The new Endeavour SUV in India (Rs23.78 lakh onwards) offers only the semi-auto parking assist feature at present. Unfortunately, unique conditions dictate the relevance of some of these features. Says Maruti Suzuki’s Raman, “Bumper-to-bumper traffic is very common in metros, driving habits are a little unusual and there can be abrupt intervention by pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes or even cars and there are infrastructure concerns for detecting unregulated overhanging hoardings, signs on roads and the radar’s own field of vision.”
However, things are slowly changing. “The government’s opening up of radar frequency earlier this year shall see more such features in cars. This is just a start and a step-by-step approach needs to be taken for a long-term benefit,” says Tom von Bonsdorff, managing director, Volvo Auto India. The company’s S90 luxury sedan has semi-autonomous features, which includes Lane Keeping Aid—there is a digital camera in the car which keeps an eye on the lane markers and if the driver does not provide steering input to correct a drift, the steering automatically corrects itself to keep the car within the lane.
The government, on its part, is making basic safety features mandatory in all cars from October 2017. Carmakers will have to provide airbags, vehicle reverse sensors, speed-warning systems and seatbelt reminder systems as standard features from October 2017, according to a draft notification issued on 9 November by the ministry of road transport and highways.
Me time
Self-driving and semi-autonomous cars, just as ADAS features, rely on multiple radars, LIDAR (laser imaging detection and ranging), various sensors, smart algorithms and powerful processors to find their way from point A to point B. The processing speeds are already mind-numbingly fast, with no room for even the slightest error.
The prospect of a self-driven Uber taking you to office every day is a reality that is being constructed rapidly. “It’s still very early. Self-driving Ubers have a safety driver in the front seat because they require human intervention in many conditions, including bad weather. In many cities these will be very hard problems to solve, so there will be some time before we see this technology everywhere,” said an Uber spokesperson.
The company’s self-driving car trials in Pittsburgh, US, involve automaker Volvo. An autonomous vehicle software start-up, nuTonomy, is testing self-driving taxis in Singapore. It started off with six cars, and the fleet is soon expected to double. Moreover, by the year 2020, almost all major car makers, including Audi AG, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, Daimler AG, Ford, General Motors Co., Kia, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd, Renault SA, Tesla Inc. and Toyota Motor Corp., are likely to be selling vehicles that can at least partly drive themselves.
To ensure that autonomous vehicles have a smooth ride, the vehicle-to-vehicle as well as vehicle-to-infrastructure communication with smart road networks, roadside sensors and smart signal systems will prove critical . For example, such infrastructure has allowed Google to do driverless car tests in the US, Volvo in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Volkswagen AG in Braunschweig, Germany. Bonsdorff concludes: “One important factor is to create and develop laws and traffic regulations on self-drive. Till now, India does not have these. Also, car insurance companies need to include driverless cars into their coverage.” India’s policy makers will do well to listen to this.","With increasing connectivity, smartphone integration, sensors and radars for assistance, auto-braking and blind spot detection becoming the norm these days, it seems safe self-driving cars will become a reality soon","Thu, Mar 30 2017. 04 06 AM IST",Smart cars: changing lanes +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ULU2g8ISCXeDmpav6aBBgL/How-to-foster-a-culture-of-innovation.html,"
New Delhi: Innovation may not be the forte of every entrepreneur, but everyone must understand its importance and build an ecosystem around it.
“The purpose should never be that everyone must become an innovator at the end of the day, but everyone must understand the ecosystem around their business and try to build something out of it,” said Gourav Jaswal, founder and director, Prototyze, an incubator that claims to turn ideas into businesses.
Speaking at EmTech India 2017, the Mint-MIT Technology Review conference on emerging technology in New Delhi 9-10 March, Jaswal said Prototyze is working in that direction.
“I thought at some point that it would be a great idea to set up an incubator, which is what Prototyze is all about,” Jaswal said.
“We invest and venture out into several start-ups and build their business models,” he added.
Based in Goa, Prototyze has incubated nine companies belonging to sectors as varied as automobiles and fintech.
Jaswal said that in the long run, entrepreneurs who can manage the risks associated with their business models and learn from their experiences will be ones who will be successful.
According to Jaswal, a genius is someone who can “replicate an existing, successful model with excellence”.","Every entrepreneur must understand the importance of innovation and build an ecosystem around it, says Gourav Jaswal, founder and director, Prototyze","Thu, Mar 30 2017. 03 50 AM IST",How to foster a culture of innovation +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/g5kkkUJ569Rdi72V9gVvyO/Seeing-the-future-Exploring-exponential-technology.html,"
In the world we live in, some technologies are advancing at a breakneck pace, or exponentially. This means that capabilities are doubling or more with every step, often at the same or reduced cost, leading to digitization, democratization and disruption.This has been most evident with Moore’s law in semiconductors (with the transistor density on silicon doubling every 18 months) over two decades, which led to miniaturization and cost efficiencies for electronics. But, it is not limited to this. We have seen similar trends in wireless spectral efficiency and bandwidth doubling every 30 months (Cooper’s law) and an exponential trend in the scale and cost of data storage media like hard drives (Kryder’s law). Swanson’s law talks about a 20% drop in price of solar photovoltaic modules for every doubling of cumulative shipped volume.These examples are all around us. However, the impact and speed of change is probably most visible in what we carry around daily in our pockets and purses—our smartphones. They enable us to routinely do things that even just a few years ago required a completely different approach. Think of how many more pictures you take and how quickly you share them with others.Think of WhatsApp, Facebook, Ola/Uber, Amazon/Flipkart, Paytm or BookMyShow. These technologies not only digitize and democratize services and products, but also (sometimes in a matter of months) disrupt established industries that have stood for decades. Exponential technologies can be deceptive.They don’t seem like they have the power to disrupt—until they do. Artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, machine learning, networks and computing, biotechnology, additive manufacturing, genetic sequencing, nanotechnology and others are all advancing exponentially. In fact, if trends continue at this pace, then by 2025, (as per a McKinsey 2013 study) we will have 150x storage density, 22x solar panels, 27x industrial robots and 95x 3D printers. What does this mean for the world we live in?Consider a few examples:The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of our planet is so vast that in one year it is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from all of the earth’s non-renewable resources of coal, oil and natural gas combined. Will exponential improvements in our ability to capture, store, distribute and utilize solar energy make energy so abundant that it is non-limiting and “free”? What does “free energy” do for the availability of clean water through technologies like desalination? What does unlimited energy and clean water do for the availability of food around the world?How will advances in robotics, AI and machine learning change the way we design, manufacture and service the world’s infrastructure? What will digitization of product development, additive manufacturing and augmented reality do to the age-old established processes of product design, manufacturing, distribution and service? Will factories and shop floors ever look the same again?What happens when self-driving (autonomous) vehicles give back 20-30% productivity to hundreds of millions of people who commute to work every day? Would you own a car if you can buy a ride in any kind of car you want at any time, depending on what you want to do while it’s driving you…work, relax, socialize, travel with family, etc.? What does this, in turn, do to the automobile industry, car financing, insurance and even real estate (where would you choose to live if the duration of your commute mattered less, since you are productive throughout). Interactive virtual and augmented reality can be a game-changer in safety, productivity, and the way people learn and interact. Today we already have “teleportation” technology (suitabletech.com/) that uses sight, sound and movement to “beam” people into other locations using a robotic interface and a high-fidelity sound and visual display. That’s three of the five capabilities we use when we interact with others in person! Last year, I “met” a person who attended a conference remotely using this technology and was moving from one session to the next, asking questions and interacting with others...all while sitting at his desk, hundreds of kilometres away. What does this do to the demand for air travel if it continues to get better over the coming years? What is good enough?“Point of care” technologies have helped significantly reduce the cost and increase the speed of medical diagnostic testing compared with healthcare facilities. Home blood sugar monitors, portable ECG devices, easily accessible genotyping capability are all examples of such technology advancements. Surgical implants and human tissue are already being 3D printed. The confluence of medical technologies and informatics can be a big disruptor: what do AI and deep learning do to medicine when it becomes possible to integrate large amounts of demographic, historical, pathology, imaging, genomic and disease information to develop insights into diagnosis and most effective treatment? What does that mean for the healthcare industry? My intent in sharing these examples—and this is just a sampling of the possibilities— is not to instill fear but rather to inspire curiosity. I hope they excite you about the potential of these exponential technologies, and stress the value of being aware of and watching their trajectories closely. It is important to be proactive and intentionally develop an offensive or defensive position that you believe in. Be an early adopter, disruptor, avid watcher, investor, experimenter, enthusiast, active cynic, disprover—anything but a victim—and most importantly, do it in advance of being forced. The trick is to identify which of these trends are the most relevant to you and do that two to three cycles ahead of when they actually become good enough to unseat the “old way”. At GE, we work on tough stuff—solving problems in energy, healthcare, water and transportation for people and countries around the world. It is both hard and rewarding. It requires years, decades of domain expertise and may sometimes make us feel that we are somewhat protected or insulated from this scale of exponential disruption. Not true. Some time ago, along with a group of colleagues, I had a stimulating discussion on potential ways to identify these disruptors. We are now mapping ecosystems to help us see these disruptions…for example in the energy space we call it “dinosaurs to dining tables”, i.e. the BTU (British thermal unit—traditional unit of heat) flow and revenue/profit flow across the entire spectrum from fossil fuel exploration to consumer consumption. We are embracing and experimenting with several of these technologies in our labs and building use cases to see the possibilities in our domains. These teams are horizontal in their capabilities but with focused missions—balancing domain experts with lateral thinkers. And a couple of our key learnings: the big disruptions happen at the intersection of multiple exponential trends.And leadership matters—breakthroughs come from empowering teams to suspend disbelief, question the sacred cows and not be afraid to unlearn.Does all this sound like science fiction, or are we seeing the future? No matter where you stand, one thing is for sure…we’re in for the ride of our lives. The question is, are we laying the tracks ahead of us or is someone else?Munesh Makhija is chairman and managing director of GE India Technology Center, and CTO, GE South Asia.","The pace at which technology is advancing is resulting in doubling of capabilities, often at the same or reduced cost, paving the way for digitization, democratization and disruption","Thu, Mar 30 2017. 03 52 AM IST",Seeing the future: Exploring exponential technology +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/U97DhLUf5DJb4yjsTrk6uO/Digital-transformation-is-about-creating-business-models-Ja.html,"
New Delhi: For the Mahindra Group, the key to digital transformation lies in the use of technology in moving away from legacy models to create new ones.“We have come a long way from the traditional legacy model of Mahindra or that of any established firm... Our current focus is directed towards expanding businesses into rural areas,” said Jaspreet Bindra, senior vice-president, digital transformation, Mahindra Group. Speaking at EmTech India 2017, the Mint-MIT Technology Review Conference on technology innovations, Bindra said digital transformation is not just about creating an app or a website but about creating business models and customer experiences. He further stressed on effective use of technology wherever it is appropriate to foster innovation. “We have used blockchain— one of the newest technologies—in our financial services sector and it has impacted our businesses positively,” Bindra added.As a $17-billion conglomerate with businesses in various sectors and geographies, he said it is the group’s belief that as each sector evolves due to innovation, the impact is felt on all businesses associated with it.Citing an example, he said there is a lot of innovation happening in the agriculture sector and a lot of data about weather conditions and crop patterns gets generated and captured by technology systems. “Therefore, how we target farmers is also changing in tune with the shifts in technology,” he added.The Mahindra Group is incubating start-ups in areas such as financial technology to facilitate digital transformation.","Speaking at EmTech India 2017, Jaspreet Bindra of Mahindra Group says group’s current focus is directed towards expanding businesses into rural areas ","Thu, Mar 30 2017. 03 48 AM IST",Digital transformation is about creating business models: Jaspreet Bindra +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Qt7JX5mTPCljKDvoc6JsPM/PE-VC-investments-up-13-in-March-quarter-report.html,"
Private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) investments in India increased 13% to $5 billion in the quarter ended 31 March, Bain & Co. said in a report released last week.Investments rose in the first quarter of 2017 from a year earlier despite a 33% drop in the number of transactions during the period. PE investments stood at $4.4 billion in the year-earlier period.A few large deals contributed disproportionately to overall deal value. The top 15 transactions accounted for about 76% of total deal value in the March quarter from just about 50% in the year-earlier period.Some of the major deals in the quarter included Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) and Caisse de Depot Quebec (CDPQ) buying a 1.5% stake in Kotak Mahindra Bank from Uday Kotak for Rs2,254 crore; Bharti Airtel Ltd selling a 10.3% stake in its tower unit for about Rs6,193.9 crore to a consortium of investors that included KKR & Co. and CPPIB; Apax Partners selling about a 48% stake in GlobalLogic Inc. to CPPIB, among others.The consumer technology sector saw a 21% drop in terms of deal value and a 27.4% decline in terms of deal volume in the first quarter of 2017 from a year earlier.There was, however, a significant increase in large deals (more than $50 million) across key sectors including telecom, consumer technology, financial services and logistics. Besides, the average transaction size rose 69% to $32 million from a year earlier, while deals worth less than $10 million comprised 66% of total activity in the quarter.The number of investor exits rose 26% to 48 in the March quarter from a year earlier. However, the total transaction value of exits dropped 4% to $2.6 billion in the quarter.Consumer tech, real estate and BFSI (banking, insurance and financial services) were key sectors that witnessed exits during the period. Strategic sales were the preferred exit mode and the top 10 exits contributed about 80% of total value. “The first quarter of 2017 saw a strong momentum of exits in line with the trend we saw in 2016. Consumer Tech and Internet world is witnessing consolidation.” said Madhur Singhal, partner at Bain & Co.",Rise in PE and VC Investments in March quarter comes despite a 33% drop in the number of transactions from a year earlier,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 12 07 AM IST","PE, VC investments up 13% in March quarter: report" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/eERi4Rdm8DjxxcZfgrx5sM/FIPB-clears-Claris-Lifesciences-bid-to-sell-global-generic.html,"The Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) on Monday cleared a proposal by Ahmedabad-based Claris Lifesciences Ltd to sell its global generic injectables business to US-based Baxter International Inc. for Rs4,020 crore ($625 million), a finance ministry official said on condition of anonymity.Claris said in December last year that it intends to share a significant majority of net cash proceeds from the sale, post expenses and taxes, with shareholders.Claris operated the global generic injectables business through several wholly-owned subsidiaries. It has a total of 40 abbreviated new drug applications filed with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), of which 16 have been approved, the firm said in a statement. The company markets its products in more than 75 countries.The injectables business has also been one of the fastest growing for Claris, expanding in double digits annually over the last several years driven by new product launches and geographic expansion.There have been a couple of other big deals in this space. In 2013, Strides Arcolab Ltd sold its injectables unit, Agila Specialties, to US-based Mylan Inc. for $1.6 billion. In July last year, Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical (Group) Co. Ltd said it will acquire India’s Gland Pharma Ltd, an injectables specialist, for $1.3 billion (Rs8,700 crore).With the addition of Claris’s portfolio, Baxter plans to launch seven to nine new products annually over the next few years and 10-15 per year beyond 2019.","Claris Lifesciences has a total of 40 abbreviated new drug applications filed with the US FDA, of which 16 have been approved","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 12 36 AM IST",FIPB clears Claris Lifesciences’ bid to sell global generic injectables +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oUrRVovHTTUgkLC7XOSzkO/Ola-Uber-drivers-in-Delhi-NCR-may-go-on-strike-tomorrow.html,"New Delhi: Commuters in Delhi-NCR may find it hard to hire taxis on tuesday as the drivers of two app- based cab aggregators Ola and Uber have threatened to go on strike for a day against “low fares”. This is the second such strike called by the drivers. They had gone on strike in February too, which had lasted 13 days, causing inconvenience to commuters in Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Faridabad. The strike might hit private transport services in Delhi and neighbouring cities as some groups of tourist taxi providers, autorickshaw unions, according to the Sarvodaya Drivers’ Association, have extended their support to it. The Association, which claims to represent around 1.25 lakh app-based taxis in the the Delhi-NCR, is demanding that fares be increased from existing Rs6 per km to around 20 per km. It is also demanding the abolition of 25% commission the drivers are charged by companies. Ravi Rathore, vice-president of the Sarvodaya Drivers’ Association, said drivers will take out a protest march against the Delhi government which, he alleged, is not intervening to resolve the issue. “The protest march will be taken out from Majnu-ka-Tila to the CM’s residence in North Delhi’s Civil Lines area. There is anger among drivers that government is not intervening in raising their issues with Ola and Uber,” Rathore said. He said the association has called for the one-day strike in favour of the demands and if companies and government do not pay heed, they will go on an indefinite strike. According to the association, the app-based cab companies made “tall promises” to drivers—like they would earn as much as Rs1.5 lakh every month. “But the situation is different. They are making us run taxis at Rs6 per km while they charge 25% from us,” Rathore also said.Also Read: Delhi high court stops taxi driver unions from disrupting Ola, Uber services Contrary to the association’s claim that most autorickshaw and tourists associations have decided to lend their support to the strike, Delhi Autorickshaw Sangh and Delhi Pradesh Taxi Union (yellow-black taxis) said they will not participate in it. “We will not support the strike in Delhi,” Rajendra Soni, general secretary of both the associations, said. Earlier in the day, the Delhi high court restrained two taxi drivers’ unions—the Sarvodaya Driver Association of Delhi (SDAD) and the Rajdhani Tourist Drivers’ Union—from disrupting services of cabs run by Ola and Uber in the national capital region. Welcoming the court order, Uber in a statement said it hopes it will enable drivers to stay behind the wheel, without fear or harassment. “We are hopeful that the order will be effectively enforced and that action is taken against any person who attempts to block cars, confiscate devices or harass riders and drivers and that the safety of everyone using the Uber App in Delhi is ensured. “We are committed to keeping Delhi moving and ensuring a reliable experience for riders and drivers,” Uber said.","Some groups of tourist taxi providers and autorickshaw unions are backing the strike by the Ola and Uber drivers, says Sarvodaya Drivers’ Association","Mon, Apr 17 2017. 09 08 PM IST","Ola, Uber drivers in Delhi NCR may go on strike tomorrow" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/0cwfNxd4zxSvELREC9gTBO/Lufthansa-says-starting-local-airline-in-India-a-misadventu.html,"Mumbai/New Delhi: Deutsche Lufthansa AG said starting a domestic airline in India, the world’s fastest growing aviation market, will be a “misadventure” because of high jet fuel taxes and the cost of operations.Lufthansa’s comments come weeks after Qatar Airways Ltd said it plans to start an airline in India with as many as 100 planes, as the Gulf carrier looks for a bigger share of a market projected to sell half a billion domestic tickets in a decade. Singapore Airlines Ltd, Etihad Airways PJSC and AirAsia Bhd. have also bought stakes in local carriers buoyed by an emerging middle-class flying for the first time.“You only go make business when you have business plans which give you hope that you can be very successful,” said Wolfgang Will, a senior director for South Asia at Lufthansa, “And I did not hear up to now of any domestic airline in India making a lot of profit.”Lufthansa has a history of running an Indian airline. It was part of a partnership that ran ModiLuft, which was grounded in 1996 after disputes over payments with the German carrier, creditors, oil companies and the Airports Authority of India. The airline’s permit was later used by two entrepreneurs to start SpiceJet Ltd, now India’s second-largest budget carrier.Lured by an expanding market, more airlines are coming up in India. At least 43 businesses have applied to Indian regulators in the past two years to start some form of passenger air transport service in what’s projected to be the world’s third-biggest aviation market by 2020 and the largest by 2030. The increase in local traffic—estimated to reach half a billion in a decade—has outpaced all other markets for 23 straight months.Fuel costsStill, the nation is home to some of the world’s costliest jet fuel, mainly due to provincial taxes of as much as 30% and cut-throat competition that forces airlines to sell tickets below cost. Aviation turbine fuel in India costs 70% more than it does abroad, and has led to the shuttering of as many as 17 airlines in the past two decades, according to a research paper by KPMG and The Associated Chambers of Commerce of India.Indian carriers lost money every single year for a decade before posting a combined profit of $122 million in the year ended March 2016, helped by a crash in oil prices, according to Sydney-based CAPA Centre for Aviation. The industry is set to report losses of as much as $750 million in the two years ending March 2018, according to CAPA estimates. Bloomberg",Lufthansa’s comments come weeks after Qatar Airways Ltd said it plans to start an airline in India with as many as 100 planes,"Mon, Apr 17 2017. 07 24 PM IST",Lufthansa says starting local airline in India a ‘misadventure’ +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/C1nM2iKeQXq1h7yRsAfaIL/Jet-Airways-and-Virgin-Atlantic-expand-codeshare-agreement.html,"Mumbai: Jet Airways Monday said it has expanded its codeshare agreement with Virgin Atlantic between India and the US.Starting 19 April, flyers can combine flights from Jet Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Delta Air Lines in a single booking. Jet Airways passengers travelling between India and the US can connect through London Heathrow on to nine US destinations operated by Virgin Atlantic; Atlanta, Boston, Newark, Washington (IAD), New York, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco and Seattle.Codeshare for the Seattle airport opens for travel effective 1 May 2017.There is an existing agreement between Jet Airways and Virgin Atlantic in place since 2009—enabling Virgin Atlantic passengers to travel on Jet Airways operated services between Mumbai and London Heathrow in addition to its own direct Delhi to London service. In 2015, this codeshare was extended to Jet Airways domestic services allowing Virgin Atlantic guests to travel between London Heathrow and five destinations across India via Delhi or Mumbai.Gaurang Shetty, whole-time director, Jet Airways, said the new codeshares build on the success of Jet’s ongoing cooperation with Delta Air Lines and Virgin Atlantic over London Heathrow and provide its passengers with more connectivity to and within the US. In October, Delta Air Lines and Jet Airways announced a codeshare cooperation between India and US over London Heathrow, where Delta guests flying between North America and India can connect on flights operated by Jet Airways to 20 destinations within India.",Jet Airways passengers travelling between India and the US can connect through London Heathrow on to nine US destinations operated by Virgin Atlantic,"Mon, Apr 17 2017. 07 31 PM IST",Jet Airways and Virgin Atlantic expand codeshare agreement +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/glZkxOZyHogf98Ub1kVxpM/Elon-Musk-nears-14-billion-windfall-as-Tesla-hits-mileston.html,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 27 AM IST",Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/6Asu1jOUHUUglzSP6ItmzO/VijayMallya-extradition-case-India-says-internal-process-on.html,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.","The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 10 12 PM IST",Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Qb2vbIdW1Ped1HRMcGRUdL/Ratan-Tata-praises-judicial-professionalism-after-Cyrus-Mist.html,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 09 01 PM IST",Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/QDwCnej8Q6F1N40kuXftOI/Edelweiss-plans-3040-distressed-asset-deals-a-year-CEO-Ras.html,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 40 AM IST",Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ajoMykZ2e3I5lM3SlCvz4L/A-short-history-of-extradition-from-UK-to-India.html,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.","India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 21 AM IST",A short history of extradition from UK to India +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/4BlsEs8VDqtfjllJDASokM/Recovering-Vijay-Mallya-loans-a-long-way-off-for-banks.html,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 07 30 AM IST",Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/CrcdE6rgGQUwf5i8BMDapK/Vijay-Mallya-extradition-process-to-be-a-long-cumbersome-ex.html,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 18 AM IST","Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/GWbFqrGfq0qB5dREIBIOFN/EmTech-India-2017-Why-India-needs-design-thinking.html,"
Design thinking is an area which calls for a lot of research, said G.V. Sreekumar, head of Industrial Design Centre (IDC), School of Design at IIT Bombay. He defines it as “creative strategies that designers utilize during the process of designing”.
At EmTech India 2017, Sreekumar said, “Designing is a conscious and intuitive effort to impose order with a clear goal. Design thinking is also an approach that can be used to consider issues and find solutions for professional commitments, business and social issues.”
Emphasizing the importance of creativity and aesthetic brilliance in design thinking—which set a designer apart from an engineer—he said, “An industry designer will have to be an expert about the manufacturing processes involved, the raw materials required, the context of the product being manufactured, along with creativity and aesthetic brilliance.”
According to him, design thinking is a method of meeting people’s needs and desires in a technologically feasible and strategically viable way. “The study of the product has to be done in detail, i.e., the context of the product launch and the kind of solution that the company is looking at—articulation of all the desired qualities or parameters of the final product is a very important step in the designing process. The form of the product emerges from the articulation and the knowledge of the product,” he said, explaining the methodology and steps involved in designing a product.
Sreekumar is of the view that the relatively new concept of design thinking is a form of solution-based thinking, with the intent of producing something constructive.","G.V. Sreekumar, head of Industrial Design Centre, School of Design at IIT Bombay, can be used to consider issues and find solutions for professional commitments, business and social issues","Thu, Mar 30 2017. 03 44 AM IST",EmTech India 2017: Why India needs design thinking +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/4R8BEZ4vjO3oe6CPyD6rTP/Augmented-reality-3D-printing-and-a-shot-at-the-moon.html,"
New Delhi: EmTech, an emerging technology conference organized by Mint and MIT Technology Review in Delhi on 9-10 March, saw presentations and demonstrations of some cutting-edge technologies that are set to change the way manufacturing is done in India, how automation in logistics will impact businesses and how people will communicate or travel in future.
One such company that made a presentation at the event is Imaginate Technologies, which operates in the domain of mixed reality—an amalgamation of virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR). Hemanth Satyanarayana, the chief executive of Imaginate, had the audience watch in wonder as he gave a live demonstration of what it is like to interact with a given environment through AR.
The demonstration was set up so that the audience saw on the large screen what Satyanarayana saw on his AR headset: he could interact with the hologram of a virtual machine or any other object he wanted to place, watch videos, and even interact with the “avatar” of his colleague, who too wore a headset and connected with Satyanarayana from the hall next door.
The demonstration provided not only a sneak peek into how people would interact or “virtually teleport” in the future but also how they would conduct businesses.
Financial company MetLife, for instance, is using Imaginate’s technology to offer a virtual customer experience wherein customers can talk to an avatar of a customer service agent, Satyanarayana said.
He pointed out two major limitations to mixed reality. “Two big bottlenecks would be availability of good content (of objects and people to create holograms, which is integral to experiencing AR and VR) and the fact that while Imaginate’s technology is compatible with all kinds of headsets, not many people have an AR/VR headset yet,” he said.
Another technology that has gained momentum in the past decade is three-dimensional (3D) printing. “3D printing has cut across industries--be it healthcare, fashion, packaging for FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) companies, architecture, automotive or aerospace,” said Guruprasad Rao, director and mentor-leadership team, Imaginarium.
He added that 3D printing is a green technology: it is faster, efficient, produces less scrap (waste) and uses less energy than conventional manufacturing.
The Mumbai-based company, which initially started 3D printing of jewellery, has over the years entered healthcare and many other industry segments.
Among others that made presentations at EmTech were GreyOrange, which deploys robots in the warehouses of e-commerce logistics firms as well as those of many FMCG companies for making their supply chains faster, and Boltt, which is building an artificial intelligence-based health assistant to improve lifestyles.
And then there was Team Indus, part of Bengaluru-based aerospace start-up Axiom Research Labs, which is in contention to send a spacecraft to the moon as part of the Google Lunar X Prize. It plans to do so on 28 December this year. “We are trying to build a spacecraft that can soft-land on the moon,” Rahul Narayan, one of the co-founders of Team Indus, told the audience at EmTech. The company is building a nine-foot craft that can carry up to 25kg of weight on a journey of over 400,000km.
“With the aim to land on the Mare Imbrium crater of the moon—a crater as big as Europe—we plan to make two orbits around the Earth and four rounds of the moon,” he said.
In order to engage India at large, the organization plans to launch several campaigns, including competitions for engaging students in rural India and creating awareness about Team Indus through a bus dubbed Moonshot Wheels.","Hemanth Satyanarayana, Imaginate CEO, demonstrated at EmTech organized by Mint and MIT Technology Review what it is like to interact with a given environment via augmented reality ","Thu, Mar 30 2017. 03 46 AM IST","Augmented reality, 3D printing and a shot at the moon" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sNHwHOr7uVtD0ZLEzO3C2K/EmTech-India-Unlocking-value-from-Big-Data.html,"
New Delhi: Companies can derive value from big data by effectively managing customer relationships and safeguarding their trust, said John Rose, senior partner and managing director, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), New York, at EmTech India 2017, a conference on emerging technologies organized by Mint and MIT Technology Review in New Delhi on 9-10 March.
Addressing the event, Rose said, “Half or more customers do not trust the companies or entities they bank or shop with, in the context of their personal data.”
Rose, who is the former global leader of technology, media and telecommunications practice at BCG and became a BCG Fellow in 2014, has been working on helping companies foster trust among their consumers in order to gain access to—and unlock value from—the ever-widening stream of complex, fast-moving Big Data that is generated online.
His presentation at EmTech focused on how customer trust matters in Big Data and how the misuse or perceived misuse of customer data can lead to financial and reputational damage for brands.
“Trust is not a generational issue; it is important for consumers of all ages,” said Rose.
According to a study he cited, the lack of alignment between companies and consumers about data privacy has real consequences. When consumers perceive data misuse—when they are unpleasantly surprised by the collection or new use of personal data—they either reduce their spending drastically or boycott a company’s products and services altogether, the study noted.
“There is around 33% drop in spending during the first year when US consumers perceive a data misuse. Out of the 33% customers, 18% totally stop spending whereas the remaining 15% reduce spending,” he cited from his findings.
Explaining the consumers’ perspective on privacy and data usage, Rose said, “Consumers take a wider and much less legalistic approach to these issues.”
“They want to be informed about how companies gather and safeguard data about them, and they want to understand the different ways in which companies use personal data. Additionally, they want that information delivered in clear language,” she added.","Companies can derive value from big data by effectively managing customer relationships and safeguarding their trust, says John Rose of the BCG","Thu, Mar 30 2017. 03 42 AM IST",EmTech India: Unlocking value from Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/utY4oU6ZBD2v0jSzeeS0LL/ACC-profit-falls-89-but-sales-beat-estimates.html,"Mumbai: Cement maker ACC Ltd on Friday reported an 8.9% fall in net profit for the quarter ended 31 March, hurt in part by higher costs. Consolidated net profit for the quarter fell to Rs211.06 crore from Rs231.70 crore a year earlier. Consolidated sales in the quarter rose 9.1% to Rs3,556.70 crore from Rs3,259.95 crore a year earlier. The company follows a January-December financial year.The results, however, beat analyst estimates, helped by higher sales. Four analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected ACC to report consolidated net profit of Rs166.4 crore on sales of Rs3152.5 crore. Revenue in its largest cement business rose 9.3% to Rs3,401.27 crore, helped in part by a price hike, while those in its ready-mix concrete business rose about 10% to Rs285 crore. During the quarter, the company launched two cement products ACC Suraksha and ACC HPC (high performance cement). The company said its total expenses during the March-ended quarter rose 11.8% to Rs3,404.41 crore. Increased government spending on infrastructure development, housing, roads, railways, and irrigation is likely to boost cement demand in the rest of 2017, ACC said in a statement.Separately, ACC said it has appointed Surendra Mehta as company secretary and head of compliance with immediate effect. ACC’s shares closed down 1.03% to Rs1,496.75 a share on the BSE on Friday.","ACC’s net profit for the quarter fell to Rs211.06 crore from Rs231.70 crore a year earlier while its sales in the quarter rose 9.1% to Rs3,556.70 crore from Rs3,259.95 crore a year earlier","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 57 PM IST",ACC profit falls 8.9% but sales beat estimates +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/MHX8R7YsCi0Mvcr4wz5thO/ICICI-Lombard-net-profit-grows-38-to-Rs-702-crore-last-fisc.html,"New Delhi: ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company on Friday reported an increase of 38.3% in net profit at Rs 701.9 crore for the fiscal ended March 2017. The company’s net profit in the preceding fiscal 2015-16 stood at Rs507.5 crore. The gross domestic premium income of the company rose by 32.6% to Rs 10,725.90 crore, a company statement said. “The robust performance was delivered on the back of increase in policies serviced at 1.77 crore in 2016-17 compared to 1.58 crore policies in 2015-16,” it said. “As we progress through the year, we shall...further expand our insurance solutions proposition as well as enhance our customer service and claim leadership stature backed by innovative technology,” ICICI Lombard, MD and CEO, Bhargav Dasgupta said. ICICI Lombard GIC Ltd is a joint venture between country’s largest private lender ICICI Bank and Canada-based Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited. The general insurance subsidiary of the bank is a non- listed entity though the life insurance joint venture— ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Co—is a listed firm. Shares of ICICI Bank closed 1.34% down at Rs 269.15 apiece on BSE today.",ICICI Lombard’s net profit in the 2015-16 fiscal stood at Rs507.5 crore,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 36 PM IST",ICICI Lombard net profit grows 38% to Rs 702 crore in fiscal 2017 +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OigiVBKZEGQOglsVs9VMLO/Crisil-Q4-profit-stays-flat-at-Rs-73-crore.html,"Mumbai: Rating agency Crisil has reported a muted net profit at Rs 73.34 crore for the March quarter, largely due to adverse forex movement and subdued growth in the mid-corporate and MSME segments. Its March 2016 net profit stood at Rs 73.15 crore. Net was impacted by Rs 11.9 crore due to adverse forex movement against a gain of Rs 3.31 crore in the year-ago period. Its consolidated income grew 12% to Rs 402.23 crore, the company said in a statement. “Growth for the quarter was driven by our research segment on account of opportunities in risk & analytics such as model validation, stress testing and regulatory change management,” the company said, adding the ratings business witnessed modest growth despite a continued weak investment climate and soft credit growth.",Rating agency Crisil has reported a muted net profit in March quarter at Rs 73.34 crore while its March 2016 net profit stood at Rs73.15 crore,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 09 PM IST",Crisil Q4 profit stays flat at Rs 73 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/4fOhYqv6yyHetUgWJboGzK/Hindustan-Zinc-Q4-profit-jumps-42-to-Rs-3057-crore.html,"Bengaluru: India’s biggest zinc miner Hindustan Zinc Ltd posted a 42% jump in fourth-quarter net profit on Thursday, topping street estimates, helped by higher income from zinc production and an increase in metal prices.Net profit rose to Rs3,057 crore for the January-March quarter from Rs2,147 crore a year earlier. The profit growth is the biggest in at least nine quarters. Analysts on average had expected a net profit of Rs2,852 crore, according to Thomson Reuters data.Total income rose 72.4% to Rs7,237 crore. The LME zinc prices have risen about 53 percent from March-end 2016 to March-end 2017.Income from zinc operations rose over two fold to Rs5160 crore, said the company, which is a subsidiary of billionaire Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Ltd. The Indian government has a 29.5% stake in Hindustan Zinc.Hindustan Zinc shares rose as much as 5.5% after the results.","Hindustan Zinc’s fourth quarter net profit rose to Rs3,057 crore from Rs2,147 crore a year earlier","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 54 PM IST","Hindustan Zinc Q4 profit jumps 42% to Rs 3,057 crore " +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/qqNIsJmx7RPVIa4wRG82yM/Mindtree-Q4-profit-plunges-27-misses-estimates.html,"Bengaluru: Information technology company Mindtree Ltd said consolidated net profit fell 27% in the fourth quarter hurt by a foreign exchange loss and fewer client additions. The lower-than-expected profit came in at Rs97.2 crore ($15.04 million) for the three months ended 31 March, marking the fourth consecutive quarterly profit decline.Analysts on average were expecting consolidated profit at Rs105 crore, Thomson Reuters data showed.Mindtree incurred a consolidated foreign exchange loss of Rs28.8 crore in the quarter, against a gain of Rs3.1 crore a year earlier. Clients added in the fourth quarter dropped 46% to 20. Reuters","Mindtree’s lower-than-expected profit came in at Rs97.2 crore for the fourth quarter ended 31 March, marking the fourth consecutive quarterly profit decline","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 52 PM IST","Mindtree Q4 profit plunges 27%, misses estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q20gy9h6tzZ74RjldRbtqK/HDFC-Bank-headcount-falls-for-2nd-quarter-down-by-6100-in.html,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 28 PM IST","HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0eXiDa4cu92HpPI4bxDenJ/Finance-ministry-in-talks-with-PSBs-to-get-a-fix-on-growth-p.html,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 01 09 PM IST","Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/m9S8uI8tDR1bh3nZ2DLUQI/What-the-IMF-global-financial-stability-report-says-about-In.html,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 51 AM IST",What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ymo3EawZpeIMPFNZe3XexM/One-MPC-member-mulled-a-repo-rate-hike-say-minutes.html,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 54 AM IST","One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6q3fK2dlQBrxgFzDdcuIGN/Vijay-Mallya-The-story-so-far.html,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court","A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",Vijay Mallya: The story so far +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/M4SonfozH3m2Rh9EYoZZ0O/Whats-next-in-the-Vijay-Mallya-extradition-process.html,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 11 AM IST",What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/smvfjlMWKkl5aX6RZo9MiK/The-cases-against-Vijay-Mallya-and-Kingfisher-Airlines.html,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/qkKtoHUvBxOSkk9daQ8A5O/Fintech-friction-takes-root-in-Indias-banking-landscape.html,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 12 52 AM IST",Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/BVALlwTePlO5wDNGxZJsNM/RBI-monetary-policy-guide-Cash-tools-in-focus-as-rates-unch.html,"Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is expected to keep policy interest rates unchanged for a third straight meeting, shifting focus to the tools it will use to mop up excess cash in the banking system that threatens to stoke inflation.The RBI will keep the repurchase rate at 6.25% on Thursday, according to all 52 economists in a Bloomberg survey; 42 of 44 see the cash reserve ratio held at 4%. However, two see the CRR raised to 5% and some analysts flag the potential creation of a new deposit window.If governor Urjit Patel raises the proportion of deposits banks need to maintain as cash, it will continue a string of surprises that culminated in February with a shift to a neutral stance, ending a two-year easing cycle. Money market levers offer the RBI more flexibility than policy rates to control borrowing costs in a world where inflation is accelerating though investment stays slow.“Despite the increase in currency in circulation, liquidity at around 3 trillion rupees through the first-half of the financial year will strengthen the case for near term RBI action,” said Madhavi Arora, an economist at Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd in Mumbai.The monetary authority will announce its decision at 2:30pm in Mumbai followed by a press conference 15 minutes later. It will also release growth and inflation forecasts for the financial year started 1 April.Sticky depositsKey to the RBI’s decision will be whether it believes banks will be able to retain deposits that poured in after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s November clampdown on cash. Excess funds are limiting the central bank’s ability to intervene in the foreign-exchange market to rein in the rupee’s rally.The currency is among Asia’s top performers, advancing 4.7% this year as Modi consolidates power following important state election wins. While a stronger rupee stands to lower India’s import bill and contain price pressures, runaway gains could threaten a recent export recovery.Liquidity toolsThe RBI has been using a slew of instruments such as reverse repo auctions and cash management bills to absorb excess funds, but these bear interest costs. The CRR however is interest-free and any increase would be the first since 2010.To lower effective interest rates and encourage productive lending, policy makers may also consider capping the amount of funds banks can park with it under the reverse repo window while creating a new tool called the Standing Deposit Facility. Banks that park cash with the RBI under the SDF will be paid a lower-than-policy-rate without any accompanying collateral, which could prompt them to opt for riskier lending instead.Establishing the SDF would however need parliament to amend the RBI Act, so Patel on Thursday will probably lay out a road map to introduce the facility, said Indranil Sen Gupta, chief economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.“Though the RBI has been strategically intervening in both spot and forward markets, unless it tightens its belt on the sterilization tools, liquidity and FX management could get more complex,” Kotak’s Arora said.V-shaped recoveryLiquidity management is essential because policy rates can take as much as three quarters to transmit through Asia’s third-largest economy. That’s a luxury Patel doesn’t have: private investment is near a decade low and inflation accelerated in February for the first time in seven months. Core inflation—the RBI’s choice measure that strips out volatile food and fuel costs—is seen as uncomfortably high for too long, imperiling the inflation target.Investors will also be awaiting a reiteration of a sharp rebound forecast for domestic demand after the cash-ban dip, and more clarity on how the RBI foresees the impact of a planned 1 July roll out of a national sales tax as well as an expected increase in house rent allowances for state staff. Bloomberg","RBI will keep the repurchase rate at 6.25% on Thursday, according to all 52 economists in a ‘Bloomberg’ survey; 42 of 44 see the cash reserve ratio held at 4%","Thu, Apr 06 2017. 09 29 AM IST",RBI monetary policy guide: Cash tools in focus as rates unchanged +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/2I3YejkaglOGVSx8FO1HFL/NEFT-transfer-to-get-quicker-as-RBI-cuts-clearance-time.html,"Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to slash clearance time for National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) in an attempt to enhance efficiency of the electronic payment system and add to customer convenience.In line with the document on Vision-2018 for Payment and Settlement Systems, the NEFT settlement cycle will be reduced from hourly batches to half hourly batches, the RBI said in the first bi-monthly monetary policy for 2017-18.“Consequently, 11 additional settlement batches will be introduced at 8.30am onwards, taking the total number of half hourly settlement batches during the day to 23,” the newly appointed deputy governor B.P. Kanungo said. This will enhance the efficiency of the NEFT system and add to customer convenience, he said.The starting batch at 8am and closing batch at 7pm shall remain the same and the return discipline will also remain the same, that is B+2 hours (settlement batch time plus two hours) as per the existing practice, it said.Also Read: RBI governor Urjit Patel says farm loan waiver a ‘moral hazard’On promoting financial inclusion and literacy, it said the RBI is initiating a pilot project on financial literacy at the block level to explore innovative and participatory approaches to financial literacy.The pilot project will be commissioned in nine states across 80 blocks by non-government organisations (NGOs) in collaboration with sponsor banks, it said.Six NGOs registered with the Depositor Education and Awareness Fund, viz. CRISIL Foundation, Mumbai; Dhan Foundation; Swadhaar Fin Access, Mumbai; Indian School of Micro Finance for Women (ISMW); Samarpit, Chhattisgarh and the PACE Foundation have been selected to execute the pilot project in collaboration with banks, it said.The pilot project will be executed with the following broad objectives — active saving and good borrowing; financial planning and goal setting and going digital and consumer protection.The Centres for Financial Literacy (CFL) will be set up under a common name and logo, Money-wise Centre for Financial Literacy.“The sponsor banks will enter into contracts with the identified NGOs within three months, that is, by June 30, 2017. Thereafter, the NGOs will start operating the CFLs within three months of entering into contracts with banks,” it said.",The RBI cuts clearance time for NEFT in an attempt to enhance efficiency of the electronic payment system and add to customer convenience,"Thu, Apr 06 2017. 08 32 PM IST",NEFT transfers to be faster as RBI cuts clearance time +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/M5QxtXjV9Mi5i7qbdgeZnM/China-tipped-to-boost-liquidity-again-as-bank-tax-payments-l.html,"Shanghai: China’s central bank is expected to resume cash injections to the financial system this month as tax demands on commercial lenders spur another round of tight liquidity.The need for lenders to park corporate tax payments with the central bank could drain hundreds of billions of yuan in the second half of April, ending a period of relative calm in China’s money markets. The People’s Bank of China has refrained from adding cash to the system for nine days, the longest stretch since it started daily open-market operations at the beginning of last year, citing a relatively high level of liquidity.“The central bank will probably have to resume the reverse-repurchase operations in the middle of this month on a cash shortage,” said Shen Bifan, an analyst in Shenzhen at First Capital’s fixed income department. “Of course it can now tolerate a more volatile funding market, but when it really tightens, it will respond to it to avoid a cash crunch.”Skipping reverse-repo auctions is part of the PBOC’s campaign to reduce leverage in China’s financial system. The pause in adding cash covered the quarter-end period — a time when interbank liquidity usually tightens as lenders hoard funds to meet regulatory checks. That said, China’s seven-day repo rate has fallen 57 basis points over the first two trading days in April, after surging to an almost two-year high on 31 March.Also Read: RBI keeps repo rate unchanged at 6.25%“The liquidity won’t be loose in April, but it’d also be difficult to see persistent tightness as well,” analysts led by Tang Yue at Industrial Securities wrote in a note Thursday.Since 24 March, when the PBOC stopped injecting cash, policy makers have withdrawn a net ¥420 billion ($60.9 billion) from the system, data compiled by Bloomberg show. China’s markets were closed 3-4 April for a holiday.The seven-day repo, a gauge of of interbank funding availability, rose 15 basis points to 2.74% on Thursday, according to weighted average prices. The cost of one-year interest-rate swaps, the fixed payment to receive the seven-day repo rate, climbed one basis point to 3.58%. Bloomberg",China’s central bank is expected to resume cash injections to the financial system this month as tax demands on commercial lenders spur another round of tight liquidity,"Thu, Apr 06 2017. 02 58 PM IST",China tipped to boost liquidity again as bank tax payments loom +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/AnKXuKrvorRcHvVVK2IvCP/Full-text-of-the-resolution-of-RBIs-monetary-policy-stateme.html,"The Reserve Bank of India’s monetary policy committee (MPC) on Thursday voted unanimously to raise the reverse repo rate—the rate at which sucks out excess liquidity from the system—by 25 basis points to 6%. The repo rate, however, has been kept unchanged at 6.25%. Here is the full text of the first Bi-monthly monetary policy statement of the Monetary Policy Committee.First Bi-monthly Monetary Policy Statement, 2017-18Resolution of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC)Reserve Bank of IndiaOn the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:1. Keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment2. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter.Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or underachievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six-year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger. 3. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.4. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.5. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements. Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March. EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.6. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly yearon-year after two consecutive years of sub-one per cent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.7. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).8. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broad-based turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted.The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.9. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and threewheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.10. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 –February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.11. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month.Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.12. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March. Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.13. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.14. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7% of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook15. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0% for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4% readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half. Chart 1 16. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around JulyAugust, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12- 18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by secondorder effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST.The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers. Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation.Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.17. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4% in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced. See Chart 2.18. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains.Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.19. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly,external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.20. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year.Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.21. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.22. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.23. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on 5 and 6 June 2017.Jose J. Kattoor(Chief General Manager)(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the first bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee,"Thu, Apr 06 2017. 09 48 PM IST",Full text of RBI’s monetary policy statement +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/2mYJOZs9skIL0rbEQ41kDM/RBI-monetary-policy-Five-things-to-watch-out-for.html,"Mumbai: By virtue of being the first monetary policy of this financial year, the upcoming announcement of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will be a signal of the way the central bank views various macroeconomic parameters and the pace at which it expects the gross domestic product (GDP) growth to come back. While a majority of the economists surveyed by Mint expect the RBI to hold the repo rate at 6.25% and continue with its neutral stance, they also expect more announcements around excess liquidity. Here are five things that might be on the radar of the monetary policy committee:Growth: Ever since demonetisation took away the buying power of a large number of people, there have been concerns around the impact it could have on growth numbers for financial years 2016-17 and 2017-18. The RBI itself had revised its GDP growth expectations in February, when it said that the expected rate of growth for financial year ending March 2017 would be 6.9%, as opposed to 7.1% earlier, owing to demonetisation. For the new financial year, the RBI has estimated a growth rate of 7.4%, which is only 50 basis points (bps) higher than what it had estimated earlier, despite the central bank expecting a bounceback in growth as the impact of demonetisation wears off. In the last policy, the regulator had adopted a neutral stance due to hardening inflation numbers, which may make rooting for fast-paced growth a little difficult.Inflation: The banking sector regulator’s change in stance in the last monetary policy announcement came as a surprise to many who felt that it was being needlessly hawkish. However, wholesale inflation soared to a 39-month high of 6.55% in February, while retail inflation inched up to 3.65% due to rise in food and fuel prices, signalling that hardening inflation rate was still a legitimate concern for the regulator. It is unlikely that the RBI would change its stance in just two months. However, since this year is expected to be about economic growth and a bounceback in general, it would be interesting to note the central bank’s commentary around how it would balance its monetary policy around this.Excess liquidity: The banking sector regulator is widely expected to announce special measures to take out the additional liquidity in the system to further support its neutral stance on interest rates. The excess liquidity which entered the banking system due to large amount of deposits by the people during the two months of demonetisation has still been lying around in bank accounts as the restrictions on withdrawals were only removed recently. Moreover, as banks struggle with lack of credit growth, they will need to find avenues to deploy the liquidity available with them. Clarity around deposits: The RBI is yet to give a clear picture on the amount of deposits that have returned to the banking system owing to demonetisation in November and December. While it has been three months since the regulator closed the window to deposit the old Rs500 and Rs1,000 currency notes for most people, it has always maintained that collection of data was still work in progress. Once it clarifies the amount of currency notes that has returned into the system and the level of new currency notes pumped in, market watchers would be able to determine the true level of remonetisation in the economy.Bad loans: Over the last few weeks, the government, the RBI and chiefs of large banks have had multiple meetings to discuss ways and means to deal with the stressed loan situation in the Indian banking system. The high level of bad loans in the public sector banking space and low credit growth has resulted in many banks fully focussing their efforts on recovery of bad loans, rather than growing their business. The RBI is expected to make some announcements around a new scheme around dealing with bad loans or introduce some vital changes into the scheme for sustainable structuring of stressed assets (S4A) and strategic debt restructuring (SDR) scheme.",RBI’s monetary policy will be a signal of the way the central bank views macroeconomic parameters and the pace at which it expects GDP growth to come back,"Thu, Apr 06 2017. 12 36 PM IST",RBI monetary policy: Five things to watch out for +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/fqFor88rMGTeTSwuRzj6LJ/UK-exchequer-chancellor-Hammond-urges-strong-ties-with-India.html,"Mumbai: British chancellor of the exchequer Philip Hammond on Wednesday said the United Kingdom and India can become strong partner nations in the financial technology (fintech) industry as UK is keen to make its market truly global after its exit from European Union, while on the other hand, investments into India’s fintech sector have been rising over the past year.Hammond is on a three-day tour called FinTech Trade Mission to India to engage in dialogue with the Indian finance ministry, financial regulators and other industry bodies in order to strengthen UK’s e-conomic and trading relations with the country.“The vote for the UK to leave the EU was clear. It reflected a desire for Britain to make its own decisions and to determine its own destiny. But it wasn’t a vote for isolation…British companies have invested more in India since 2000 than the United States or any other European nation has done. And investment from UK companies accounts for 1 in 20 Indian jobs in the organised private sector. Indian companies, meanwhile, invest more in Britain than in the rest of the EU put together,” Hammond said while speaking at a conference in Mumbai.ALSO READ: India, UK to jointly invest £240 million in green energy sectorHammond said Indian companies such as the Tata Group are among the biggest employers in the UK, transforming British businesses with their focused management and long-term investments.“In the last year we’ve seen the creation of a whole new market, with the world’s first masala bonds issued in London – raising over $1.5 billion. To date, almost 80% of all masala bonds have been issued in London. And we will see even more, very soon from the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency and the National Highways Authority of India…the UK and India can collaborate to our mutual advantage – in FinTech,” said Hammond.There are at least 15 India-headquartered banks which are engaged in international banking businesses in the UK. On the other hand, there are several British financial services firms that are present in India’s insurance, asset management, fintech and banking industries.Hammond hinted that strengthening ties with UK may fulfil India’s appetite for investments, particularly in infrastructure.ALSO READ: India, Britain talk up post-Brexit trade prospects“India has 220 million active smartphone users–over three times the entire UK population. What’s more, India’s demonetisation programme means its financial services sector is undergoing a significant transformation…New fintech payment firms, small finance lenders, and insurance players are entering the market. These firms will be crucial in helping the RBI achieve its target of 90% of the population having access to banking services by 2034,” said Hammond.",Philip Hammond says UK and India can become strong partners in the financial technology industry as it is keen to make its market truly global after its exit from EU,"Thu, Apr 06 2017. 01 04 AM IST",UK exchequer chancellor Hammond urges strong ties with India in fintech +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/z76BaZOutr1CJRAgWcldDM/Tata-Chemicals-Q3-net-profit-rises-32-to-Rs318-crore.html,"Mumbai: Fertilizers and chemicals maker Tata Chemicals Ltd posted Wednesday a 12% decline in consolidated revenue for the third quarter, hurt by shrinking fertilizer sales as the company switches focus to its consumer business.Profit after tax, however, rose 31.6% to Rs318.39 crore in the quarter ended 31 December, from a year earlier. Revenue fell to Rs3,494.80 crore with fertilizer sales dropping 31% to Rs913.8 crore year-on-year. Sales from the inorganic chemicals business fell marginally by 0.05%.Mint had in April reported that Tata Chemicals intended to shift its focus away from fertilisers as it did not want to continue investing in a “regulated and subsidy-ridden business” and wanted to free up working capital.The company is now focusing on its higher-margin “living essentials” consumer business comprising five brands of table salt, Tata Sampann that sells pulses and spices, and Tata Swach non-electric water purifiers. Tata Sampann was launched in October 2015.“The company is seeking to move away from soda ash production to cater more to the demand for salt,” managing director R. Mukundan said at a press conference in Mumbai on Wednesday. Tata Chemicals is the world’s second largest manufacturer of soda ash, which is largely used to manufacture glass. Tata Chemicals has also announced it is selling its urea business to Yara Fertlisers for Rs 2,670 crore. “We are in the process of completing this deal, we have already received approval from the CCI (Competition Commission of India) for the deal,” Mukundan said.Tata Chemicals’ consumer business now comprises around 12-15% of the company’s total revenue, Mukundan said. “We are currently focused on our spices and pulses categories and we have always said we will wait for one of these two to turn profitable before moving to another category,” he added.“We are going steady in the north and west and are looking at the east. South is an extremely different region with (products) like sambar masala and rasam masala among others. So we’re waiting to stabilize in these three regions.”Tata Chemicals pared its consolidated debt by 33% to Rs 5,833 crore in the last three quarters. The company has been paying off debt with cash generated from operations and anticipates it would have zero standalone net debt in the next six to eight quarters. Current standalone debt fell 55% to Rs 1,318 crore in the last three quarters.","Tata Chemicals’ income from operations fell to Rs3,494.8 crore in the third quarter from Rs3,991.25 crore in the corresponding period of previous year","Thu, Feb 09 2017. 01 24 AM IST",Tata Chemicals Q3 net profit rises 32% to Rs318 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/EbvtURh7jAsXp8mMNJFqyK/Ban-on-cash-transaction-above-Rs2-lakh-not-applicable-for-ba.html,"New Delhi: Ban on cash transaction in excess of Rs2 lakh will not be applicable to withdrawals from banks and post office savings accounts, the income tax department said on Wednesday.Through the Finance Act 2017, the government has banned cash transactions of over Rs2 lakh and said a penalty of an equal amount would be levied on the receiver. In a clarification on the newly inserted Section— 269ST—in the I-T Act, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said the restriction shall not apply to withdrawal from banks and post offices.“It has also been decided that the restriction on cash transaction shall not apply to withdrawal of cash from a bank, co-operative bank or a post office savings bank,” the statement said. It said necessary notification in this regard would be issued. In the 2017-18 Budget, finance minister Arun Jaitley had proposed to ban cash transaction of over Rs3 lakh. This limit was lowered to Rs2 lakh as an amendment to the Finance Bill, which was passed by the Lok Sabha last month. The said restriction is also not applicable to any receipt by government, banking company, post office savings bank or co-operative bank, the CBDT said. The move to ban cash transaction above a threshold was aimed at curbing black money by discouraging cash transaction and promoting digital economy. According to the rule, no individual can deal in cash in excess of Rs2 lakh on a single day, in respect of a single transaction or in respect of transactions relating to one event or occasion from an individual. The Finance Act also provides that any capital expenditure in cash exceeding Rs10,000 shall not be eligible for claiming depreciation allowance or investment-linked deduction. Similarly, the limit on revenue expenditure in cash has been reduced from Rs20,000 to Rs10,000. In order to promote digital payments in case of small unorganised businesses, the rate of presumptive taxation has been reduced from 8% to 6% for the amount of turnover realised through cheque/digital mode. Also, it has restricted cash donation up to Rs2,000 for political parties for availing exemption from Income-tax. “Further, it has also mandated that any donation in cash exceeding Rs2,000 to a charitable institution shall not be allowed as a deduction under the Income-tax Act,” the CBDT statement said.",Income tax department said ban on cash transaction in excess of Rs2 lakh will not be applicable to withdrawals from banks and post office savings accounts,"Wed, Apr 05 2017. 11 41 PM IST","Ban on cash transaction above Rs2 lakh not applicable for bank, post office withdrawals" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/rCNhnBpsyXVMg1QgW0nMQI/United-Breweries-asks-Vijay-Mallya-to-step-down-as-nonexecu.html,"Bengaluru: United Breweries Ltd (UBL), the maker of Kingfisher beer, late on Wednesday asked Vijay Mallya to step down as non-executive chairman of the company, effective immediately.The decision was taken at the company’s board meeting on Wednesday.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had last month barred Mallya and six former United Spirits Ltd executives from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud.Mallya and the others have also been barred from holding directorships in any listed company.“I am directed by the board to convey that in order to comply with the Sebi order and in the absence of any stay or vacation of the said order, the board is compelled to request you to step down from the board of United Breweries Ltd with immediate effect,” Govind Iyengar, UB’s secretary and senior vice-president, legal, said in an email to Mallya that was filed with BSE on Wednesday.The board has deliberated this matter and also reviewed the legal opinions in this regard, the company said.The board had also resolved on 6 February not to send notices and agenda relating to board meetings and/or other privileged information to Mallya till such time as he obtains a stay of the Sebi order, and the same was conveyed to him.On Wednesday, UBL also reported a 31.94% fall in net profit to Rs48.49 crore for the December quarter. Revenue rose 1.2% to Rs2230.86 crore.United Breweries said unfavourable market conditions, together with the impact of demonetisation, excise duty increases in several states and raw material price pressures, resulted in a drop in its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) and profit after tax in the quarter.Sales volumes were flat for the nine months ending 31 December 2016 and declined in the western region on a year-to-date basis while growing in almost all other regions.Input costs continued to be under pressure during the period with price increases in barley and sugar, which were in part offset by “improved efficiencies.”",United Breweries’s move comes after a Sebi order barred Vijay Mallya from holding directorship in any listed company,"Thu, Feb 09 2017. 12 05 AM IST",United Breweries asks Vijay Mallya to step down as non-executive chairman +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/He8tPPmOrbnpZob4PvKp3H/Union-Bank-of-India-Q3-profit-rises-32-to-Rs104-crore.html,"Mumbai: Union Bank of India on Wednesday reported a 32% increase in net profit in the December quarter on increase in other income.Net profit for the quarter increased to Rs104 crore compared with Rs78.54 crore a year ago. According to estimates of 14 Bloomberg analysts, the bank was expected to post a net profit of Rs227.40 crore.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 7.01% to Rs2,136.62 crore in the December quarter from Rs1,996.51 crore last year.ALSO READ: NPA norms to keep exerting pressure on banks’ profit, says RBI’s S.S. MundraOther income increased 50% to Rs1,339.67 crore in the third quarter from Rs892.69 crore in the same period last year.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) at Union Bank rose 3.07% to Rs32,402.74 crore at the end of the December quarter from Rs29,862.05 crore in the September quarter. As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were 11.7% at the end of the December quarter compared with 10.73% in the previous quarter and 7.05% a year ago.Provisions and contingencies increased 27.22% to Rs1,581.85 crore in the third quarter from Rs1,243.30 crore a quarter ago. Net NPAs rose to 6.95% in the December quarter compared with 6.39% in the previous quarter and 4.07% in the same quarter last year.ALSO READ: United Bank of India posts net profit of Rs64.10 crore in Q3Shares of Union Bank lost 1.13% to close at Rs166.75 per share on Wednesday on the BSE, while the benchmark index, Sensex lost 0.16% to close at 28289.92 points.","Union Bank of India’s net interest income rose 7.01% to Rs2,136.62 crore in the December quarter from Rs1,996.51 crore last year","Wed, Feb 08 2017. 07 39 PM IST",Union Bank of India Q3 profit rises 32% to Rs104 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/rEKfRgYSNdGqqLaUZosPLO/Reliance-Power-profit-rises-144-to-Rs27570-crore.html,"Mumbai: Reliance Power Ltd on Wednesday said net profit in the December quarter rose 14.4% as its plants performed better, but the earnings failed to meet market expectations.The Anil Ambani-led power producer reported a consolidated net profit of Rs275.70 crore, against Rs241.06 crore a year ago. Net sales rose 14.2% to Rs2,456.31 crore in the quarter from Rs2,150.49 crore a year earlier.Both profit and sales missed analysts’ estimates. Five analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected Reliance Power to report a consolidated net profit of Rs354.8 crore on net sales of Rs2,715.40 crore.ALSO READ: Power companies tap smart meters to change consumer behaviour patternReliance Power’s 3,960 megawatt (MW) Sasan ultra mega power plant (UMPP) in Madhya Pradesh generated 7,718 million units during the quarter, operating at a plant availability factor of 89%, while the Rosa power plant in Uttar Pradesh generated 2,165 million units at 96%.The Butibori power plant in Maharashtra generated 1,032 million units at availability of 97%, the company said in a statement. The rest of generation was contributed by the 40 MW Dhursar Solar PV plant in Rajasthan, a 45 MW wind capacity in Maharashtra, and a 100 MW concentrated solar power project in Rajasthan.Total expenses in the quarter rose about 18.2% to Rs1,891.23 crore from Rs1,600.24 crore a year earlier.ALSO READ: SC grants relief to discoms over payment of dues to Reliance Group’s Sasan PowerReliance Power operates nearly 6,000 MW of power capacity across its projects based on coal, gas, hydro and renewable energy.Reliance Power shares closed up 0.55% at Rs46.05 on the BSE on Wednesday. The results were announced after market hours.Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.","Reliance Power’s net sales rose 14.2% to Rs2,456.31 crore in the December quarter from Rs2,150.49 crore a year earlier","Wed, Feb 08 2017. 08 02 PM IST",Reliance Power profit rises 14.4% to Rs275.70 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/5otSvrxTbibBD7X1KF1RyH/Cipla-Q3-net-profit-jumps-4385-to-Rs37483-crore.html,"New Delhi: Homegrown pharma major Cipla Ltd on Wednesday reported 43.85% jump in consolidated net profit at Rs374.83 crore for the third quarter ended 31 December 2016. The company had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs260.57 crore in the same period last fiscal, Cipla said in a BSE filing.Net sales during the quarter under review stood at Rs3,550.02 crore as against Rs3,069.89 crore in the corresponding period last fiscal, up 15.63%. The company’s profit was boosted by other income of Rs153.49 crore during the quarter as compared to Rs67.53 crore in the third quarter last year. On plans to raise Rs4,000 crore via issue of securities in both domestic and global markets, Cipla said its Board of Directors at their meeting held on Wednesday has decided “to seek approval of the shareholders in future at an appropriate time depending upon the funding requirements and investment opportunities”. It also said that as part of a planned transition, company secretary, key managerial personnel and compliance officer Mital Sanghvi will relinquish his post and is moving into a senior business finance role within the company. Subsequently, Rajendra Chopra will be the new company secretary and key managerial personnel with effect from 9 February 2017, the company said.","Cipla’s net sales during the third quarter under review stood at Rs3,550.02 crore, up 15.63% from the corresponding period last fiscal","Wed, Feb 08 2017. 06 35 PM IST",Cipla Q3 net profit jumps 43.85% to Rs374.83 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/cSfu7o26XfmspGNzuwIAQL/EBay-Q2-profit-forecast-falls-short-of-estimates.html,"Bengaluru: EBay Inc. on Wednesday forecast second-quarter profit that fell short of analysts’ estimates, as it spends heavily on revamping and marketing its e-commerce platform amid stiff competition from much larger rival Amazon.com Inc.Shares of the company fell 2.5% to $33 in trading after the bell. San Jose, California-based eBay has been making changes to its platform to lure more shoppers as well as better compete with Amazon. That has meant a shift away from online auctions towards fixed-price sales and product landing pages, which are easier to navigate than the dozens of listings sellers would generate for a single good.EBay has also increased its marketing spending, running a rare TV campaign ahead of last year’s holiday shopping period.Sales and marketing costs climbed 4.5% to $562 million in the first quarter ended 31 March, while product development expenses jumped 16.3% to $278 million. The company’s profit in the second quarter would be affected by “increased investment to drive improved user experiences and to market our brand,” eBay’s finance chief Scott Schenkel said on a call with analysts.EBay said it expects second-quarter adjusted profit of 43 to 45 cents per share. Analysts on average were expecting a profit of 47 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The company, however, stuck to its earlier forecast for full-year adjusted profit of $1.98 to $2.03 per share, expecting more growth in the second half of 2017.The first quarter “showed some early indication that their efforts are beginning to bear fruit,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Aaron Turner, citing more active buyers coming to the site. “We’re still waiting to see” the outcome, he added.EBay said gross merchandise volume—the total value of all goods sold on its websites—rose 2.4% to $20.95 billion in the first quarter. But the result fell short of analysts’ average estimate of $21.06 billion, according to research firm FactSet StreetAccount.The company’s net income rose to $1.04 billion, or 94 cents per share in the quarter, from $482 million, or 41 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, the company earned 49 cents per share, beating analysts’ average expectation of 48 cents per share.Revenue rose 3.7% to $2.22 billion. Analysts on average had expected $2.21 billion. Reuters","EBay’s Q2 profit forecast fell short of analysts’ estimates, as it spends heavily on revamping and marketing its e-commerce platform amid stiff competition from Amazon","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 19 AM IST",EBay Q2 profit forecast falls short of estimates +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8qfOoukBgwpgeNK7p2YMgN/New-RBI-rules-on-provisioning-bad-loans-seen-taking-a-toll.html,"
Mumbai: New RBI guidelines on standard asset provisioning and disclosure of details regarding non-performing assets (NPAs) may create difficulties for Indian banks, thanks to additional provisioning requirements, analysts estimate. Public sector banks are likely to see a 5-15% impact on their earnings going ahead, while private sector lenders would see their earnings hurt by 1-2% due to the new norms, Credit Suisse said in a report on Wednesday. Prior to this advisory, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) required banks to set aside 0.4% as provision against standard assets. The RBI on Tuesday had advised banks to consider setting aside higher provisions even for good loans in stressed sectors.According to Credit Suisse analysts, the hit on profitability has been calculated on a 50 basis points (bps) increase in provisioning owing to the RBI guidelines. The central bank specifically red-flagged the telecom industry, and asked bank boards to review their exposure to the sector by 30 June and consider making provisions at higher rates “so that necessary resilience is built in the balance sheets should the stress reflect on the quality of exposure to the sector at a future date”. According to data available with the RBI, bank exposure to the telecom sector was Rs82,200 crore at the end of February.In a report that Nomura released on Wednesday, analysts note that the risk on the telecom sector is likely to be limited owing to the expected consolidation, with the merger of Vodafone Group Plc and Idea Cellular Ltd. Weaker companies like GTL Infrastructure Ltd have already been classified as non-performing assets. In the case of Reliance Communications Ltd, most of the debt is from foreign banks which limits the impact on Indian banks, while in case of Aircel, even though the research firm sees risk, it is not big enough to change much for the sector. “This, in our view, would lead to faster recognition of future asset quality issues and will help avoid the cliff effect of large and lumpy provisions,” Kotak Institutional Equities Research said in a report on Wednesday.“This approach is closer to Ind-AS (to be applicable from April 2018 CHK onwards) which requires a dynamic approach to provisioning based on expected credit losses, instead of the current system based on days-past-due,” the Kotak report said.In addition to these norms, the regulator has also asked banks to disclose any major divergence in reporting of NPAs, when compared with what it had asked banks to do under the supervisory processes. In situations like the asset quality review (AQR), the central bank had asked lenders to classify certain accounts as NPAs even though the banks had classified them as standard.These norms have already started having an impact on bank results for the quarter ended 31 March. Private sector lenders IndusInd Bank and Yes Bank both reported increased provisions owing to the RBI directions on NPA disclosure.",Credit Suisse report says PSU banks are likely to see a 5-15% and private banks 1-2% impact on quarterly results due to new RBI rules on bad loans and provisions,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 40 AM IST","New RBI rules on provisioning, bad loans seen taking a toll on banks" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/BNXGbtW1l5h9QbjRkkXSjL/Coffee-Day-Enterprises-Q3-net-profit-jumps-146-to-Rs1234-c.html,"Bengaluru: Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd, which runs the Café Coffee Day (CCD) chain, on Wednesday said net profit in the December quarter jumped 146% to Rs12.34 crore from the same period a year ago. Revenue rose 13% to Rs763.32 crore during the same period.Sales from its coffee and related businesses segment rose 12.54% to Rs415.33 crore. The company’s outlet count rose to 1,654 from 1,586, while its vending machine count rose to 40,013 from 33,742 during the period.Coffee Day, which went public in October 2015, recorded same-store-sales growth of 6.08% in the December quarter and an average sales per day (ASPD) of Rs14,815.“Specifically on demonetization, we did see some impact in our cafe sales in the first and second week post the announcement of demonetization but subsequently our sales recovered with the ASPD approaching the Rs15,000 mark,” V.G. Siddhartha, chairman and managing director, Coffee Day Enterprises said in a filing with the BSE.“Our mobile app downloads stood at 18.46 lakh as at December 2016 vs. 7.78 lakh as at September 2016. We are seeing a significant increase in the number of transactions through non-cash means (digital wallet, credit cards etc) at our cafes. We are working towards making significant improvements in the app to enhance the consumer experience. Our Freshly Made food category, ice cream range and recently launched Magical Brews are being well received by our customers and are being rolled out across our network in a phased manner,” he added.Coffee Day’s shares gained 1.81% to Rs202.95 per share on the BSE, while the Sensex gained 0.08% to 28,356.89 points on Wednesday afternoon.","Sales from Coffee Day Enterprises’s coffee and related businesses segment rose 12.54% to Rs415.33 crore in December quarter, revenue rose 13% to Rs763.32 crore ","Wed, Feb 08 2017. 04 59 PM IST",Coffee Day Enterprises Q3 net profit jumps 146% to Rs12.34 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/3vrDzurulrg5BrAB5SbxjM/NTPC-Q3-net-profit-falls-75-to-Rs2469-crore.html,"New Delhi: State-owned power producer NTPC Ltd on Wednesday reported a 7.5% fall in net profit in the December quarter to Rs2,469 crore from the same period a year ago on account of higher fuel and finance costs and tax liability relating to previous accounting periods.NTPC informed stock exchanges that total income rose 11% to Rs19,396 crore on improved gross power generation and higher capacity utilisation of plants, in spite of adding more generation capacity. The company declared an interim dividend of Rs2.61 per equity share for the current fiscal. NTPC’s profit from ordinary activities before finance costs and exceptional items rose 9.4% to Rs4,016 crores. The company reported a tax liability of Rs613 crore for the quarter, up from Rs121.3 crore for the same period a year ago. Fuel cost went up 14% in the quarter from a year ago, while finance cost rose 7.9%.NTPC produced 61.4 billion units of electricity in the December quarter, a tad higher than what it did a year ago. NTPC Group’s installed generation capacity stood at 48,028 MW as on 31 December 2016, compared to 45,548 MW a year ago.","NTPC’s total income in third quarter rose 11% to Rs19,396 crore on improved gross power generation and higher capacity utilisation of plants","Wed, Feb 08 2017. 05 31 PM IST","NTPC Q3 net profit falls 7.5% to Rs2,469 crore" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sqLY7qemti9W9fo6VHvBAL/Waiting-for-green-cards-Indian-H1B-visa-holders-see-hope-in.html,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 19 AM IST","Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eiwotgdAxZt98pGOgmJLCO/Mastercard-unveils-biometric-card-to-replace-ATM-pin-with-fi.html,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 48 PM IST",Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OiCdEqSEBdIQU9rLsEzrkI/Network18s-net-loss-widens-to-Rs333-crore-in-March-quarter.html,"New Delhi: Network18 Media and Investments Ltd, the media company controlled by Reliance Industries Ltd, on Wednesday said its consolidated loss widened to Rs33.3 crore in the March quarter, from Rs25 crore in the year-ago period. The company, which has interests in television, films and online retailing, generated revenue of Rs3,471.1 crore, up 5% from Rs3,321 crore last year. For the full year to 31 March, the company swung to a loss of Rs233.5 crore from a profit of Rs25.4 crore in the previous year. A decline in advertising spending following demonetization of high-value currency notes, operating losses from new initiatives in regional and digital broadcasting, and losses in the digital commerce businesses contributed to the overall net loss.“The media industry is still facing impact of deferment of advertising spends that kicked in from November-December 2016 on likely slowdown in consumer spending. Further, the revival of advertising spends has been witnessed at a much faster clip for national channels, while regional markets are still recovering with a lag,” Network18 said in a statement. Revenue from TV18 Broadcast Ltd, a unit of Network18 that operates news channels CNN-News18 and CNBC TV18, rose 7% in the year to Rs2,677 crore from Rs2,494.8 crore in the previous year. Net profit declined 90% to Rs19.1 crore. Network18 also runs digital news websites moneycontrol.com, news18.com and firstpost.com as well as the movie and events ticketing website BookMyShow.“The digital space in India continues to become more and more vibrant, as bottlenecks around connectivity and cost reduce substantially. We see the emergence of new formats and services, and rapidly evolving business models and aim to be at the forefront of this change. Our strength in linear media provides us the edge, helping us leapfrog in our aspiration to be a channel-agnostic provider of top-drawer content,” said Adil Zainulbhai, chairman of Network18.","For the full year to 31 March, Network18 swung to a loss of Rs233.5 crore from a profit of Rs25.4 crore in the previous year","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 09 08 PM IST",Network18’s net loss widens to Rs33.3 crore in March quarter +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/w9dYOrpluXo29iyzbUZXEJ/Full-text-of-RBIs-monetary-policy-statement.html,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 23 PM IST",Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hAEUnVMkkYlg93knIdPrFO/The-issue-is-that-digital-needs-to-get-into-banks-DBS-Bank.html,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 20 PM IST",The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ATONaFop3NvfvEKNXY5Q8L/Elon-Musk-plans-to-link-human-brains-with-computers-in-4-yea.html,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 37 AM IST",Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KNtUNVtc3dQGalhizYS7xO/Indian-techies-IT-firms-fret-as-Donald-Trump-orders-US-visa.html,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 43 PM IST","Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/4ItpsVUuXrtimX2wLZXlnL/H1B-visa-curbs-India-threatens-US-with-trade-retaliation.html,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 02 PM IST","H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Z46Ubc5E6c4lNZj2SGVw9M/How-to-start-an-analytics-journey.html,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 18 PM IST",How to start an analytics journey +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o1XkNF6icfWF792xrQgnAL/How-important-is-the-Indian-market-for-the-likes-of-Snapchat.html,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 05 AM IST",How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/GKOA2xer3PawhCAAQjlQCP/TCS-unperturbed-by-possible-changes-to-H1B-visa-regime-CEO.html,"Washington: Unfazed by the possible changes to the H1B visa regime, chief executive officer (CEO) of India’s IT major TCS, Rajesh Gopinathan has said the current discourse on the issue in the US is driven by emotions rather than economy and the best way to tackle it is through greater engagement. Gopinathan favoured a policy of engagement with various stake holders on the issue of H1B visas in the US. He noted that the discourse is currently driven by emotions rather than economy. “The best way to tackle that is greater engagement. Because the way, sometimes, companies like us get characterised is very different from the reality of what we bring to the table,” Gopinathan, who is in his mid-40s, said. “Some of these engagements actually help get that message out also. People will understand us better for who we are, and I think engagement, communication and collaboration is the best way to deal with the political lack of understanding which comes. Democracy ought to deal with the emotional response that you see and you have to get over it and engage positively,” Gopinathan said. He said the US has been a “very welcoming market” for the IT major and has provided it with a fair, open and competitive environment. “All said and done, the US has been a very welcoming market for us. So you keep aside the immediate issues, it’s been a market that has been fair, it has been an open, competitive environment,” Gopinathan told PTI, exuding confidence that TCS would be able to successfully compete in any environment. Gopinathan said TCS has competed and has won against the best in the country. “We have competed and we have won against the global best in this country, on equal footing. So, it has been a market that has helped us grow in confidence as we have gone,” he said but repeatedly refrained from having any complaint from the present system or the possibility of a new executive order that would adversely have an impact on his company’s performance due to any action by the Trump Administration on H1B visas. US President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order that would tighten the process of issuing the H1B visas and seek a review of the system for creating an “entirely new structure” for awarding these visas. Gopinathan was appointed as the new CEO of TCS this January after his predecessor N. Chandrasekaran was elevated to the post of chairman of Tata Sons. Responding to questions on a potential executive order or legislations being talked about by lawmakers, Gopinathan asserted that there is no law currently in the US that is discriminatory. “There are many that are being discussed, which if they were to get passed, in their extreme form would be discriminatory. So we should actually give credence to the system here, that is, as I said, it is fair. It has been fair in the past, there is no reason for us to assume that it will not be fair in the future. So, let’s deal with what’s on the ground and let’s go step by step,” he said. “More importantly, we have very active STEM education engagement in the US. We work with colleges, high school students, we reach out, we have touched close to 20,000 plus students already, and significantly we are accelerate that into what we call Ignite My Future Campaign. We just target to touch one million students all in the next five years,” he said. Noting that the technology market is actually under supplied, he said the sheer demand of technical skills far outstrips the supply. “What we’ve been successful in India is to actually increase the world supply, often generating graduates way beyond what the governing systems actually provided. So we capitalised the emergence of a private sector education complex that served to provide us the talent required for our growth,” he said. PTI","The current discourse on the H1B visa issue in the US is driven by emotions rather than economy and the best way to tackle it is through greater engagement, says Gopinathan","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 06 08 PM IST",TCS unperturbed by possible changes to H1B visa regime: CEO Rajesh Gopinathan +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ciRHdYkTsS5xZmjd0fkV2J/Toshiba-said-to-put-chip-sale-process-on-hold-for-now.html,"New York/San Francisco: Toshiba Corp. temporarily cancelled all meetings and decisions related to the sale of its memory chip business to address concerns raised by an industry partner, people familiar with the matter said.Toshiba is trying to sell the business to raise much-needed cash, and the company has been narrowing down the field of interested buyers. That hit a snag after joint-venture partner Western Digital Corp., based in San Jose, California, said a sale may violate the companies’ contract. Toshiba’s spokeswoman Kaori Hiraki denied the sale process has been put on hold.Western Digital chief executive officer (CEO) Steve Milligan wrote a letter to Toshiba’s board members on 9 April advising them that they should negotiate exclusively with his company before any sale. He also argued that the rumored bidders were unsuitable and the reported prices offered were above the fair and supportable value of the chip business, according to a person familiar with the process, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.Toshiba and Western Digital are joint owners of certain chip business facilities. Shares of Toshiba fell as much as 8.1% in Tokyo on Friday, while Western Digital was little changed at the close in New York.Western Digital’s contentions raise another potential roadblock in the troubled process. The Japanese company needs to shore up finances hurt by losses from its Westinghouse nuclear business and has warned that its very survival is at risk. Analysts cautioned that Western Digital does have legal rights that will bear on the sale process.‘Consent to approve’“We believe that WDC has rights surrounding the JV including the consent to approve/disapprove of any transaction involving the joint venture,” Amit Daryanani, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a research note. “WDC has the legal wherewithal to veto or approve a winning bid.”Toshiba disagrees with Western Digital’s assertion that a sale would violate the agreement between the two companies, Toshiba executives said when contacted by Bloomberg News.Last year Western Digital, one of the largest makers of computer hard drives, made a $15.8 billion bet on technology that’s making its core business obsolete, with its purchase of SanDisk Corp. SanDisk was a manufacturing partner of Toshiba, a role that Western Digital has assumed.That purchase piled debt onto its balance sheet and may restrict its ability to match some of the bids that other companies reportedly made for Toshiba’s chip unit. In January, Western Digital said it had cash and cash equivalents of $5.2 billion. The company said in January it had “liquidity available” totaling $6.2 billion. In December, Western Digital reported net debt of $8.9 billion.Toshiba has narrowed the original group of contenders for the chip business after a first round of bidding. Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. has indicated its willingness to pay as much as 3 trillion yen ($27 billion), Bloomberg has reported.Toshiba’s board is trying to balance the need for a quick sale with concerns that such a deal would mark the end of Japan’s chance of restoring its once-leading role in the $300 billion chip industry and potentially aid China’s push to enter that important market, Bloomberg News has reported.Milligan’s letter, which was earlier reported by the Nikkei Asian Review, cautioned in particular against accepting a bid from Broadcom Ltd, a company that has led the wave of consolidation in the chip industry over the past two years. Bloomberg","Toshiba is trying to sell the business to raise much-needed cash, and the company has been narrowing down the field of interested buyers","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 07 25 PM IST",Toshiba said to put chip sale process on hold for now +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/8qLGdoa8ODkMujUTVjMucL/Dentsu-Aegis-acquires-SVG-Media-in-allcash-deal.html,"New Delhi: Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN), a global digital marketing major headquartered in London, UK, has acquired Indian marketing services group SVG Media Pvt. Ltd in an all-cash deal, the two companies announced Tuesday.While both firms declined to comment on the deal size, two people privy to the development said it was in the range $100-120 million. Smile Group owns majority stake in SVG Media, which counts Xplorer Capital as an institutional backer.SVG Media was founded in 2006 as a business owned by Smile Group, that runs a slew of e-commerce and internet businesses. SVG Media has four business units, namely DGM (focussed on banking, financial service and e-commerce clients), Komli (premium digital marketing through Facebook and Twitter), SeventyNine (mobile-focussed advertising platform) and Tyroo (ad-tech platform similar to InMobi), together reaching over 150 million unique viewers in India. It has offices in Gurgaon, Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru.As part of the deal, Smile Group, promoted by media entrepreneurs Manish Vij and Harish Bahl, has sold DGM, Komli and SeventyNine (under SVG Media) to DAN. Tyroo, which is retained, is transferred to a separate legal entity and will continue to be owned by Smile Group.SVG Media had acquired Komli Media and SeventyNine in August 2015 and December 2014, respectively, and DGM in 2010.As per the deal, DAN will take control of the offices and about 280 specialists housed in the three units. Anurag Gupta, the chief executive officer of DAN, will take over as CEO of SVG Media replacing Bahl and Vij, the outgoing chairman and CEO, respectively. Gupta will report to Ashish Bhasin, chairman and CEO of DAN South Asia.Business vertical heads Chirag Shah and Deven Dharamdasani from SeventyNine, Akshay Mathur from Komli and Ashwani Mehta will join the board at SVG Media.According to Vij, SVG Media, including all its business, generated operating profit of Rs14 crore on revenue of Rs200 crore in the year ending March 2016. Post the acquisition, Smile Group will focus on growing Tyroo and continue to invest in and incubate media start-ups, he added.This marks the second successful exit by Vij and Bahl in the digital media space, after having sold ad firm Quasar Media to WPP Digital in 2007. Separately, Letsbuy, an electronics retail venture e-commerce platform setup by Vij, was sold to Flipkart for $25 million in 2012.“At Smile we are proud to have continuously built successful JV (joint venture) partnerships or exits with large global firms as Airbnb, Yahoo, WPP Digital, Scan Group-Africa etc. SVG’s market leadership and exit to DAN is another feather in the cap for Smile,” Smile Group’s Bahl said.For DAN this comes as their 10th acquisition in India since 2012, according to data shared by the company. Some of these include Fractal Ink Design Studio, Happy Creative, WATConsult, Webchutney and Taproot. Just recently, it closed the acquisition of Grant Group, a 59-year old family run advertising services company in Sir Lanka, Mint reported in March.“India is a significant market with rapid growth potential in its mobile and performance marketing business, and Dentsu Aegis Network India has a strong track record in the search and performance space to deliver this,” DAN’s Bhasin said in a statement.DAN was formed in 2012 through the acquisition of Japanese advertising giant Dentsu by British media buying Aegis Media in 2012.Part of Dentsu Inc., DAN is made up of 10 global network brands: Carat, Dentsu, Dentsu media, iProspect, Isobar, mcgarrybowen, Merkle, MKTG, Posterscope and Vizeum. Headquartered in London, it operates in 145 countries worldwide with more than 38,000 dedicated specialists.","Dentsu Aegis Network, a global digital marketing firm, acquires Indian marketing services group SVG Media in an all-cash deal","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 12 19 PM IST",Dentsu Aegis acquires SVG Media in all-cash deal +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/QcVZjVHKCoM6AHQWv7s1sI/Future-Retail-gains-steam-as-Kishore-Biyani-rides-demonetisa.html,"Mumbai: Future Retail Ltd, India’s biggest department store chain that gained from the government’s surprise demonetisation move, still has room to extend the rally that’s more than doubled its market value this year.The shares of the food-to-fashion retailer are set to rally 22% in the next 12 months, according to the average analyst price target compiled by Bloomberg. The stock has surged 128% since 1 January, beating returns from rivals such as billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla-controlled Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd and Tata group’s Trent Ltd.A shortage of cash hit purchases of soaps to cars after Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November junked high-value currency bills, driving shoppers to large-format stores like Future Retail that accept credit cards. Sales may jump 25% this year as the company adds to its chain of 1,000-plus stores, India’s biggest, group chief executive officer Kishore Biyani said in an interview.“Demonetisation was one big tailwind in recent months and the single goods-and-services tax will be the next big push,” said Himanshu Nayyar, Mumbai-based analyst at Systematix Shares & Stocks Ltd, referring to the sales tax regime that will help retailers buy materials seamlessly from across states after it is rolled out from 1 July. His one-year price target of Rs345 is 18% higher than Monday’s close.Investors are warming up to India’s brick-and-mortar retailers at a time when their online rivals face an intense discount war and eroding valuations. Shares of billionaire Radhakishan Damani-owned Avenue Supermarts Ltd, which sells staples at knockdown rates, have more than doubled from their IPO price in March. The stock hasn’t been added to a popular index yet because of its short trading history. Trent, which sells branded clothes, has advanced 32% since 1 January. Aditya Birla Fashion has climbed 26%.Credit card spends at Future Retail’s Big Bazaar and Easy Day stores, which stock food and household items, saw non-cash billings surge 86% in the November-March period, the company said. The surprise currency recall was announced on the night of 8 November.Turnaround“Demonetization has in fact helped us clock more revenue,” Biyani said by phone. “We’re also looking to add 2 million square feet this financial year” that began April 1, he said.Future Retail swung to a profit in the nine months ended December, reporting a net income of Rs245 crore versus a loss of Rs89.8 crore in the year earlier period. Revenue jumped almost fourfold to Rs12,600 crore, according to its website. The turnaround isn’t just because of Modi’s currency policy change.In recent years, the company has exited non-core businesses and hived off its supply chain infrastructure to a group firm as part of efforts to lower debt. At the same time, it bought smaller chains, including a dairy products retailer Heritage Foods (India) Ltd, to expand in the convenience stores segment. This area is expected grow 43% annually in the next five years, according to Mumbai-based Antique Stock Broking Ltd.Earnings outlookFuture Retail’s after-tax profit could swell to Rs895 crore by March 2020, compared with an estimated 3.3 billion in 2017, driven by a 31% yearly growth in revenue from convenience stores in the period and a decline in inventory levels, Antique’s analyst Abhijeet Kundu wrote in a March report. An expected return on equity of 20% for 2018 is higher than the global mean of 15.8%, he said. Antique has a price target of Rs387.“What’s left in Future Retail is very scalable, asset-light and has been delivering growth in the past three quarters,” Systematix’s Nayyar said. “Heritage, Nilgiris, Easyday are high potential convenience formats. These could be the big story contributing to the company’s bottomline in the future.” Bloomberg","Future Retail shares are set to rally 22% in the next 12 months. The stock has surged 128% since 1 January, beating returns from rivals ","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 02 43 PM IST",Future Retail gains as Kishore Biyani rides demonetisation +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/og1b12vxnCsK6D3nzOQazM/LG-plans-to-make-India-export-hub-amid-Korea-Chian-tensions.html,"New Delhi: South Korean consumer electronics giant LG is looking at making India its export hub, banking on good ties between the two countries at a time when its overseas shipments from China are declining. According to LG Electronics India Managing Director Ki Wan Kim, one of the main reasons for the company to look at making India an export hub is due to tension prevailing between South Korea and China. LG, which has two manufacturing units in India, exports to the Middle East and countries in the eastern coast of African continent. Around 10% of sales of the company’s Indian arm—LG Electronics India (LGEI), are currently from exports. Last year, LGEI had sales of Rs22,000 crore. “On the other hand ties between South Korea and India have improved. All Korean (companies) have started to see India as a strategically important manufacturing base not only for India but for other areas,” Wan said. When asked if LG is scouting for more global markets for exports from India, he replied in the affirmative saying it is looking for countries where there is little or no manufacturing. Earlier, LG used to serve such markets from China but “it is declining gradually”, Wan added. “Already we are exporting from Noida and Pune to Middle East mainly in Saudi and Iran and African countries on (the eastern coast of the continent),” he said. Another major factor for seeing India as a major hub for exports is that the country is becoming more competitive economically and there will be secured and transparent taxation regime with the expected implementation of goods and services tax (GST). “India is becoming more competitive economically. With GST coming up, its secured and transparent taxation regime along with a stable political system would help in project as a bigger manufacturing hub,” Wan added. LG can increase its manufacturing capacity whenever required, he said. He said the company, which is celebrating its 20 years of operations in India this year, has witnessed very high growth rate in the last couple of years. India is among the top five global markets for LG in consumer durables category with the USA, Korea, Brazil and Russia. Reflecting on the company’s two decades of journey in India, Wan said: “It is an achievement in itself. We have seen many brands come and go in India. Not only have we sustained but we have become number one .” On LG’s success in India, he said: “We have been able to serve the needs of different consumers here. India is not one country as far as consumer requirements are concerned.” The demand from consumers from South India is different from those of the North or the East, he said, adding, “therefore we have a strong local R&D team, which helps in identifying the specific needs of consumers so that we can deliver it to them.”",LG Electronics India MD Ki Wan Kim says one of the main reasons for the company to explore making India an export hub is due to tension prevailing between South Korea and China,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 05 36 PM IST","LG plans to make India export hub amid Korea, China tensions" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Iva79joZDaKMTOJ6zCB0sI/Capacite-Infraprojects-files-for-Rs400-crore-IPO.html,"
Mumbai-based construction company Capacit’e Infraprojects Ltd on Monday filed its draft prospectus with the market regulator for an initial public offering (IPO) to raise up to Rs400 crore. The company will use the proceeds for working capital requirements, purchase of capital assets and general corporate purposes.Capacit’e Infraprojects undertakes construction of residential, commercial and institutional buildings, primarily in the Mumbai metropolitan region, the National Capital Region and Bengaluru. The company had an order book of over Rs4,000 crore as of 31 January, comprising 51 ongoing projects. Last month, it received orders worth Rs1,500 crore from leading real estate developers such as the Oberoi, Wadhwa, Rustomjee and Kalpataru groups in Mumbai, Emaar in Gurgaon and Ozone in Bengaluru.The company’s consolidated revenue grew from Rs214 crore in 2013-14 to Rs853 crore in 2015-16 and Rs847 crore for the nine-month period ended 31 December, 2016.Axis Capital Ltd, IIFL Holdings Ltd and Vivro Financial Services Pvt. Ltd are the book running lead managers.According to a quarterly report by EY, India emerged as one of the most active regional markets for IPOs with 26 such offerings in the first three months of 2017. Delhi-based education services provider CL Educate Ltd, Shankara Building Products and Avenue Supermarts Ltd, the owner of D-Mart supermarket chain, were some companies that raised money through IPOs in the first quarter of 2017.","Capacit’e Infraprojects to use IPO proceeds for working capital requirements, purchase of capital assets and general corporate purposes","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 04 32 AM IST",Capacit’e Infraprojects files for Rs400 crore IPO +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/TkRog6FedADLC1OysJgqrK/SBI-unveils-new-branding-after-merger-of-6-entities.html,"New Delhi: State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday unveiled its new brand identity, designed to position the bank as technology savvy, modern and ready to meet financial needs of all.In recent years, SBI has accelerated its efforts towards developing digital products and services, SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said in a statement. “Also along with the merger...we felt the need to position SBI as a contemporary brand, ready to connect with a diverse audience in a world that is rapidly going digital,” she said. While the legendary SBI monogram has been the de-facto symbol of SBI, combining it with the abbreviated SBI word mark is pivotal to the new identity, it said.It makes the brand more concise, modern and approachable, infusing new energy, while retaining its core values, it added.“The monogram has been refined for greater clarity and ease of use. The iconic SBI Blue has been refreshed, and the family of colours expanded for scale of usage and approachability. The overall visual language has been designed to ensure consistency and recall across all touch-points,” it said. Beginning this month, SBI merged six lenders catapulting the country’s largest lender to among the top 50 banks in the world. State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur (SBBJ), State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH), State Bank of Mysore (SBM), State Bank of Patiala (SBP) and State Bank of Travancore (SBT), besides Bharatiya Mahila Bank (BMB), merged with SBI with effect from 1 April.","While the legendary SBI monogram has been the de-facto symbol of SBI, combining it with the abbreviated SBI word mark is pivotal to the new identity","Wed, Apr 05 2017. 10 52 PM IST",SBI unveils new branding after merger of 6 entities +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/IbqZxSMbvhbOg5oAH3VnzJ/RBI-clears-proposal-to-introduce-Rs-200-notes.html,"
The board of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has cleared a proposal to introduce banknotes of Rs 200 denomination, two people aware of the development said. The decision was taken at the RBI board meeting in March, these people said. They didn’t want to be identified as they aren’t authorized to speak to the media.The process of printing the new Rs 200 notes is likely to begin after June, once the government officially approves this new denomination, said one of the two people cited earlier.An RBI spokesperson declined to comment.Also read: Govt asks companies to disclose details about scrapped notesThe move to introduce lower denomination notes comes against the backdrop of the government’s move to rework the currency mix.On 8 November, it announced the withdrawal of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, amounting to around 86% of currency in circulation of Rs 17.9 trillion. Since then, RBI has replaced these with the new Rs 2,000 and redesigned Rs 500 bank notes. As on 24 March, currency in circulation was Rs 13.12 trillion, still around 27% off pre-demonetization levels. The government is encouraging digital payments and may not increase currency in circulation to the pre-demonetization level.On 13 March, RBI lifted all cash withdrawal caps. ATM operators, however, say that there is a paucity of lower denomination banknotes.So far, the central bank has not revealed how many of the old currency notes it has got back from the public. The window for Indians who were out of the country between 8 November and 30 December ended on Friday. The RBI board has 14 members. Apart from governor Urjit Patel and four deputy governors, the board also has economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das and financial services secretary Anjuly Chib Duggal.","RBI is likely to start the process of printing the new Rs 200 notes after June, only after the government officially approves this new denomination, says an official ","Wed, Apr 05 2017. 08 59 PM IST",RBI clears proposal to introduce Rs 200 notes +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/RhQwYI6eqw1aSX5OmOfRVL/Monetary-Policy-Committee-meet-begins-RBI-likely-to-hold-po.html,"New Delhi: The Monetary Policy Committee, headed by RBI governor Urjit Patel, began its 2-day meeting on Wednesday amid experts saying that the central bank is likely to hold the rate on Thursday while unveiling the first bi-monthly review of 2017-18 in view of hardening inflation.Rising interest rate in the US provides sufficient indication that benchmark policy rate of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is not going to go down but may increase in the future depending on domestic and external factors, experts said.They were of the view however that RBI could announce some measures including standing deposit facility (SDF) to absorb additional liquidity in the system following demonetisation, announced on 8 November 2016. According to various informal estimates about Rs14 lakh crore has come back into the banking system. HDFC Bank chief economist Abheek Barua said RBI is likely to keep the repo rate unchanged in its upcoming monetary policy review. “In our view, the main focus of the central bank is likely to be on liquidity absorption in order to signal a neutral policy approach and for gaining additional headroom to intervene in the currency market,” he said.This will be the fourth bi-monthly policy based on the recommendations of the 6-member MPC. The government nominees on the Committee are Chetan Ghate, professor at the Indian Statistical Institute; Pami Dua, director, Delhi School of Economics and Ravindra H Dholakia, professor at IIM-Ahmedabad, while RBI nominees are the governor, deputy governor in-charge of monetary policy Viral A Acharya and executive director.“I think that RBI will hold on to the interest rate in the upcoming policy,” Kotak Mahindra Bank vice chairman Uday Kotak told PTI. Going forward, he said, the tinkering could be plus or minus 0.25% depending on the evolving condition. According to the head of another private sector lender, the central bank may not change rates on 6 April. In the last policy review on 8 February, RBI had kept key interest rate on hold at 6.25%.Patel had said he would wait for more clarity on the inflation trend and impact of demonetisation on growth before making change in the key policy rate.Wholesale inflation soared to a 39-month high of 6.55% in February while retail inflation inched up to 3.65% due to rise in food and fuel prices, leading to speculation that RBI will keep interest rate unchanged again in its April policy.“Although the CPI inflation is likely to significantly undershoot the March 2017 target, we do not expect a repo rate cut in the upcoming policy review in April 2017, with the Monetary Policy Committee firmly focused on the medium term target of 4%,” rating agency Icra’s managing director Naresh Takkar said.Crisil said that sharper-than-expected fall in inflation over the past few months has already started correcting as remonetisation gains currency and food price pressures could build anew if El Nino disrupts the south-west monsoon this year.“To boot, core inflation, which has been sticky, could edge up if domestic demand. Given the predicament, we foresee CPI inflation averaging 5% in fiscal 2018, 0.3% higher than in fiscal 2017,” it said.Monetary policy might have to clearly articulate the glide path to the 4% CPI target in the medium term, it said. Also, while fiscal policy and structural reforms, will be as crucial to quelling incipient inflation, it will take time for the benefits to work through an enduringly lower inflation,” it said.Apart from the challenge of getting inflation down to 4%, which was flagged by the RBI Governor at the last review, one of the biggest factors influencing the analysts seems to be the shift in the policy stance to neutral.“The RBI surprised with a shift to a neutral stance in February. Rates will remain on hold at April’s review,” analysts at Singaporean lender DBS said.In Patel’s first policy review as RBI governor in October, which was also the maiden review of the MPC, the repo rate was reduced by 0.25% to 6.25%. Since then, the repo rate has been retained at 6.25%. However, RBI has cut repo by 1.75% since January 2015.",Monetary Policy Committee begins its 2-day meeting amid experts saying that RBI is likely to hold rate while unveiling the first bi-monthly review of 2017-18 in view of hardening inflation,"Wed, Apr 05 2017. 08 54 PM IST","Monetary Policy Committee meet begins, RBI likely to hold policy rate" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/q61AMBbR0keNHmbipTAecI/Supreme-Courts-liquor-ban-hits-FB-exit-plans-for-PE-invest.html,"
Private equity (PE) investors, who are struggling to sell their investments in India’s food and beverages (F&B) companies, have seen their exit plans thwarted again because of a ban on liquor sales near highways. The Supreme Court’s ban on liquor sales within 500 metres of highways has hit PE investors who have failed to sell their F&B sector investments in the past couple of years. According to Grant Thornton data, PE investments in F&B fell 82% to $29 million (nine deals) in 2016 from $159 million (19 deals) in the previous year.“PE investors need to extend the maximum possible support to companies at this point in time as the alcohol ban is a black swan event completely out of the control of the industry. Interim results will be impacted, but investors will do well to work on strategizing with company managements to ensure minimal disruption,” said Ritesh Chandra, executive director, head-consumer, FIG and business services group at Avendus Capital Pvt. Ltd. Several India-focused PE funds have been looking to exit their four-to-five-year-old investments in F&B, but have been unable to find a buyer for their assets.New Silk Route Partners LLC (NSR), an Asia-focused PE firm, has been planning an exit from Moshe’s Fine Foods Pvt. Ltd. NSR had been in talks with several buyers since November 2015, Mint reported in May last year. NSR acquired a majority stake in Moshe’s in September 2013. Its holding in Moshe is 58% and the remaining stake is held by its founder Moshe Shek, an Indian entrepreneur. The company runs a chain of restaurants and cafes that specialize in Mediterranean cuisine under the brand name Cafe Moshe’s.NSR’s other portfolio companies in the F&B segment in India—Bengaluru-based Vasudev Adiga’s Fast Food Ltd—is also in trouble. Following a dispute with NSR, promoter K.N. Vasudeva Adiga approached the Company Law Board, which appointed an administrator in 2015 to run the food chain.PE firm Everstone Group has also been looking to sell its fine-dining business platform Pan India Foods Solutions Pvt. Ltd, also known as Blue Foods, Mint reported in May last year. Pan India Foods’ loss have doubled to Rs38.8 crore in 2014-15 from Rs19.8 crore in 2011-12, according to Registrar of Companies (RoC) data. Set up in September 2000, Pan India Food Solutions (Blue Foods) runs F&B operations through its brands Spaghetti Kitchen, Copper Chimney, Gelato Italiano, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Bombay Blue, Noodle Bar, Food Courts, Food Talk and Spoon.The performance of PE-backed listed firms has not been different. Shares of Speciality Restaurants which operates Mainland China, Oh! Calcutta, Sigree and Sigree Global Grill, Haka, Machaan and Flame & Grill brands, fell about 40% as on 13 April since its listing at a price of Rs150 in May 2012.SAIF Partners, investors in Speciality Restaurants Ltd, sold a 2% stake this month and another 2% last month. SAIF India IV FII Holdings Ltd held 8.26% in Speciality Restaurants for the quarter ended 31 December 2016. Spokespersons for Everstone and SAIF Partners declined to answer queries for this story.“It is a fact that many QSRs (quick service restaurants) and fine dining restaurants struggle after a few years as their USP or their value proposition to the customer wears off. This is more in the case of fine dining,” said Dhanraj Bhagat, partner, consulting firm Grant Thornton India LLP. So there should be a constant endeavour on the part of the promoters and the PEs to continuously innovate to ensure that customer interest is retained. There are recent government regulations like liquor ban and service charge issues which have acted as a dampener on the restaurant business, Bhagat added.However, there are some investment bankers who are optimistic about the deal flow in F&B sector. “The liquor ban definitely has affected a number of players and large F&B companies would each have one or two outlets affected by this ban. PE funds looking to invest in these companies may adjust valuation to the extent revenues/profits are likely to be affected but they may not choose to disengage from these conversations as the bigger picture would still be intact,” said Siddharth Bafna, partner and head, corporate finance at Lodha & Co., a Mumbai-based boutique investment bank.",Supreme Court’s ban on liquor sales within 500m of highways has hit PE investors who have failed to sell their food and beverages investments in the past couple of years,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 04 32 AM IST",Supreme Court’s liquor ban hits F&B exit plans for PE investors +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KigfBcKaePegnnHltj9L9N/India-formally-launches-BSIV-fuel-to-make-environmental-sta.html,"Bhubaneswar: India on Saturday made a formal launch of Bharat Stage-IV (BS-IV) grade fuel across the country to keep carbon emission in check and set a target of ushering in BS-VI fuel by April 2020. The launch came days after the Supreme Court banned sale and registration of BS-III vehicles from 1 April. Union petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan formally launched the BS-IV grade transportation fuel in Bhubaneswar on the occasion of Utkal Diwas, the state foundation day.Pradhan symbolically commenced sale of the eco-friendly and low-emission fuel from 12 different locations across the country through live video links. The cities were Varanasi, Vijayawada, Durgapur, Gorakhpur, Imphal, Bhopal, Ranchi, Madurai, Nagpur, Patna, Guwahati and Shillong. “Today, we begin a new era of clean transportation fuel that will benefit 1.25 billion citizens of our country by substantially reducing pollution levels everywhere,” Pradhan said while complimenting oil marketing companies for working in unison to set up refining infrastructure and logistics in a record time for BS-IV grade fuel. The oil marketing companies (OMCs) are incurring an expenditure of Rs90,000 crore for phase-wise upgradation of the fuel quality. “Migration to BS-IV fuels shows India’s resolve to cut down emissions. The next step is to usher in BS-VI fuels by April 1, 2020, to be at par with global standards,” the oil minister said. Though India is not a major polluting country, “we shall stand by the Prime Minister’s commitment at COP-21 in Paris that India will substantially reduce carbon emissions and greenhouse gas emissions in coming years”.",The launch of BS-IV fuel comes days after the Supreme Court banned sale and registration of BS-III vehicles from 1 April,"Sat, Apr 01 2017. 09 50 PM IST",India formally launches BS-IV fuel to make environmental statement +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/2uBAk0LO33dPnaw22PNQdK/Shell-plans-to-double-Hazira-LNG-plant-capacity-India-head.html,"Bengaluru: Royal Dutch Shell Plc plans to double the capacity of its liquefied natural gas import facility at Hazira on India’s west coast to 10 million tonnes a year, a top company executive said on Friday.Shell Gas B.V, a unit of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, owns a 74% stake in Hazira LNG Ltd, while Total Gaz Electricite France, a unit of France’s Total SA, holds the rest.“We’ve done all the work, now it’s sort of taking a look at when is the right timing in terms of demand that’s available,” Nitin Prasad, chairman of Shell Companies in India, told Reuters, without giving a timeline for the expansion.A government panel said in a report in April 2015 that Hazira LNG will look to expand the capacity of its LNG terminal in the western state of Gujarat by 50% to 7.5 million tonnes per annum in the fiscal year to March 2017. Shell on Friday opened a new technology centre in Bengaluru, the capital of the southern state Karnataka. The technology hub, Shell’s third in the world, is aimed at expanding the company’s research and development activities in Asia.India aims to raise the share of natural gas in its energy mix to 15% in the next three years from about 6.5% at present, as it attempts to achieve energy security while keeping pollution levels down. India’s gas imports in April 2016-February 2017 rose 16.4% to 22.53 billion cubic metres, according to government data. Reuters",Shell’s India head Nitin Prasad says the firm plans to double the capacity of its liquefied natural gas import facility at Hazira to 10 million tonnes a year,"Sat, Apr 01 2017. 11 15 AM IST",Shell plans to double Hazira LNG plant capacity: India head +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ucEHbXZEcOu8DyrhSgPhxL/SBI-gets-Rs1400-cr-loan-from-European-Investment-Bank-to-fu.html,"New Delhi: The European Investment Bank (EIB) has okayed Rs1,400 crore (€200 million) loan to State Bank of India to fund solar power projects. The long-term loan will support total investment of €650 million in five different large-scale photo-voltaic solar power projects, EIB said in a statement. This will contribute to India’s National Solar mission and reduce dependence on fossil fuel power generation. Four solar power projects at a generation capacity of 530 MWac have already been identified under this funding, it said.“The new cooperation between the State Bank of India and the European Investment Bank will scale up investment in large scale solar power generation across India,” said B Sriram, managing director, State Bank of India. Also Read: Ex-servicemen will require Aadhaar to avail pension benefits: GovtClose cooperation between technical and financial teams from both institutions will ensure that world class projects are supported, he said.“This new project reflects the shared commitment of India and the European Union to tackle climate change and implement the Paris Climate Agreement,” said Andrew McDowell, vice president of the European Investment Bank.The 20 -year long-term EIB loan will support individual projects. Projects in Tamil Nadu and Telangana are among those to be funded under this agreement.This funding will be in addition to financing from Indian banks and project promoters. One of the largest lenders in renewable energy investment, EIB has financed projects of €1.7 billion (about Rs11,900 crore) in India since 1993.Owned by the 28 member states of the European Union, it is the world’s largest international public bank.","The SBI gets Rs1,400 crore long-term loan from European Investment Bank to fund five different solar projects in Tamil Nadu and Telangana","Sat, Apr 01 2017. 10 32 AM IST","SBI gets Rs1,400 cr loan from European Investment Bank to fund solar projects" +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/eGRfKJG6KuNYy2ayVplDlN/Govt-gives-25-mega-power-producers-extra-time-for-tax-breaks.html,"
New Delhi: The Union cabinet on Friday gave a five-year extension to 25 large power projects to ink long-term power purchase deals and avail the promised customs and excise duty benefits on equipment procured under the Mega Power Policy of 2009.An official statement issued after the cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the extension of incentives to ink deals would increase power availability and ensure that consumers did not have to pay more. The statement said projects will get tax breaks on a pro rata basis against the quantum of power purchase deals they sign with utilities.The 25 projects were given provisional mega power project status in 2011 and had five years to sign power sale deals, which they failed to do. Now, they have another five years to do so. Former power secretary Anil Razdan said supporting these projects is necessary in view of the expected power demand increase on account of the Make in India drive, rural electrification and the shift to electricity from fossil fuels for transportation and cooking. The move will provide about Rs10,000 crore of benefits to the 25 projects with about 32,000 megawatts (MW) in capacity and help ease the stress some of them pose to the banking sector. Only 11,000 MW in capacity has been commissioned, with the remaining in various stages of implementation. The total cost of these projects is estimated to be about Rs1.5 trillion.GMR Chhattisgarh Energy Ltd, Monnet Power Corp. Ltd, Lanco Power Ltd, Essar Power Jharkhand Ltd, Jindal India Thermal Power Ltd, Hinduja National Power Corp. Ltd, IL&FS Tamil Nadu Power Co. Ltd and Torrent Energy Ltd are among companies that are eligible for the benefits.Further, in a bid to promote organic farming among farmers and augment their incomes, the cabinet approved unrestricted export of organic farm produce. It also enhanced the ceiling on export of organic pulses from 10,000 tonnes a year currently to 50,000 tonnes.In a move to boost indigenous production of urea, the cabinet cleared an amendment to the New Urea Policy, 2015 which will enable companies to produce beyond the re-assessed capacity. The move is expected to boost local production of the plant nutrient, the statement said.The cabinet also approved a new air services agreement between India and Serbia.In another decision, it approved extension of grant-in-aid support to the network of 12 Agro Economic Research Centres and three agro economic research units for another year (2017-18). Further, to eradicate child labour, the cabinet approved ratification of the Minimum Age Convention, 1973 and Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 of the International Labour Organization (ILO). The cabinet also cleared an understanding between the forum of state electricity regulators and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners on large-scale integration of clean energy into the electricity grid.","Extension of incentives to ink deals would increase power availability and ensure consumers do not have to pay more, says government statement","Sat, Apr 01 2017. 10 32 AM IST",Govt gives 25 mega power producers extra time for tax breaks +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/MJRwwh4kOVvn2ZgEHfYHfP/India-to-cut-Iranian-oil-purchases-in-row-over-gas-field.html,"New Delhi: Indian state refiners will cut oil imports from Iran in 2017/18 by a fifth, as New Delhi takes a more assertive stance over an impasse on a giant gas field that it wants awarded to an Indian consortium, sources familiar with the matter said.India, Iran’s biggest oil buyer after China, was among a handful of countries that continued to deal with the Persian Gulf nation despite Western sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear programme.However, previously close ties have been strained since the lifting of some sanctions last year as Iran adopts a bolder approach in trying to get the best deal for its oil and gas.Unhappy with Tehran, India’s oil ministry has asked state refiners to cut imports of Iranian oil.“We are cutting gradually, and we will cut more if there is no progress in the matter of the award of Farzad B gas field to our company,” one of the Indian sources said.Indian refiners told a National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) representative about their plans to cut oil imports by a fifth to 190,000 barrels per day (bpd) from 240,000 bpd, officials present at the meeting said.Indian Oil Corp and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Corp will reduce imports by 20,000 bpd each to about 80,000 bpd. Bharat Petroleum Corp and Hindustan Petroleum Corp will together cut imports by about 10,000 bpd to roughly 30,000 bpd, they said.In turn, NIOC threatened to cut the discount it offers to Indian buyers on freight from 80 percent to about 60 percent, the officials added.No comment was available from the Indian companies or NIOC.Cutting imports from Iran amid an OPEC-led supply cut aimed at propping up the market exposes India’s refiners to the risk of struggling to find reasonably priced alternatives.“We expect that the market is currently undersupplied and that the draws in inventory are coming,” U.S. investment bank Jefferies said in a note to clients this week, adding it expected crude prices of around $60 a barrel by the fourth quarter.Despite this, Indian oil industrials said they saw no major impact from cutting Iranian imports, mainly due to their specific requirements.“Their main requirement is lighter oil, and light oil will remain in oversupply despite OPEC cuts, as OPEC cuts are mainly medium heavy sour,” said Ehsan ul Haq of KBC Energy Economics.Prices of light crude have fallen recently, thanks largely to soaring output in the United States, which is not involved in the production cuts led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.From April last year to February 2017, India imported 542,400 bpd from Iran, compared to 225,522 bpd a year earlier. Average oil volumes supplied by Iran over this period were the highest on record.INDIA’S GAS PLANAt the heart of the spat is that a group of Indian oil companies headed by Oil and Natural Gas Corp wants to develop Iran’s Farzad B gas field.Iran has yet to hand out a concession that would allow its development.ONGC Videsh has submitted a $3 billion development plan to Iranian authorities to develop the offshore field estimated to hold reserves of 12.5 trillion cubic feet, with a lifetime of 30 years.Under sanctions, Iran was banned from the global financial system, preventing the field’s development.India was one of a few countries still supplying Iran with goods, devising a complex payment mechanism to help Tehran access non-sanctioned items including medicines.As new options have opened up for Tehran since the lifting of sanctions, Iran may now be awaiting better bids for Farzad B.“They (Tehran) are playing hardball ... We don’t see any forward movement on that (Farzad B)... So we have reduced (crude) imports,” the Indian official said.(Editing by Dale Hudson)","Unhappy with Tehran, India’s oil ministry has asked state refiners to cut imports of Iranian oil gradually, before cutting more if there is no progress on award of Farzad B gas field ","Sat, Apr 01 2017. 01 32 AM IST",India to cut Iranian oil purchases in row over gas field +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/NQafQgez3xjwFlDuOe1ExH/Tata-Steel-swings-to-profit-in-third-quarter.html,"
Mumbai: Tata Steel Ltd on Tuesday posted its first profit in five quarters as a strong performance by its Indian business, a rebound in demand and higher pricing helped counter weak sales in Europe.The steel maker reported a consolidated net profit of Rs231.90 crore in the quarter to 31 December, compared with a net loss of Rs2,747.72 crore a year ago. Revenue rose 14% to Rs29,391.60 crore from Rs25,766.89 crore a year earlier.Fifteen analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected Tata Steel to report a consolidated net profit of Rs130 crore; two analysts had expected revenue of Rs29,436 crore.Global steel mills have seen profits jump after prices of the alloy advanced because of government stimulus in China, the world’s biggest consumer. At the same time, a ramp-up in capacity in India saw volumes increase, boosting sales of local mills.At Tata Steel, India business revenue rose 39% to Rs14,106.04 crore in the quarter to December. Revenue at Tata Steel Europe fell 6.3% to Rs12,537.08 crore.Over the past two years, Tata Steel has cut jobs and shuttered some of its plants in Europe, blaming competition from cheap Chinese imports, a strong pound and high costs.Total costs in the quarter rose 3.9% to Rs27,232.08 crore. Finance costs alone rose 40.5% to Rs1,387.40 crore.The company said that its steel deliveries in the December quarter stood at 6.11 million tonnes. As of 31 December, Tata Steel’s net debt stood at Rs76,680 crore.In India, Tata Steel said its deliveries rose 27% year-on-year, at a time when the domestic markets contracted by 2%. Its automotive sales grew by 20% year-on-year, sales in the industrial products, projects and exports vertical rose 47% while those in branded products grew 13%, Tata Steel said in a statement.ALSO READ | Tata Steel to seek board nod to raise Kalinganagar plant capacity to 8 million tonnes“While the broader market was affected by lower rural sales and adverse consumer sentiments, we were able to increase overall volumes by 14% sequentially and register strong growth across all our target customer segments. Further, our focus on cost improvement initiatives and our integrated operations helped us to contain the impact of rising raw material prices,” said T.V. Narendran, managing director, Tata Steel India and South East Asia.The third-quarter performance was primarily driven by healthy domestic price realizations, which increased by about Rs3,500 per tonne on a quarter-on-quarter basis, ICICIdirect.com Research said in a note to clients.“Tata Steel’s sales volume from the Indian operations came in at 3 million tonnes (mt), higher than our estimate of 2.7 mt, while the sales volume from the European operations came in at 2.4 mt, higher than our estimate of 2.3 mt,” said the note.In December, subsidiary Tata Steel UK reached an agreement with trade unions to replace its defined benefit pension scheme British Steel Pension Scheme (BSPS) with a defined contribution plan.ALSO READ | Tata Steel aims 20% revenue from service, solutions business“The strategic initiatives in the UK on the pensions continue to be an important priority for the company and we welcome the Union’s recommendation to its members to support the ballot process that is currently on to close the BSPS to future accruals,” said Koushik Chatterjee, group executive director (finance and corporate).In a separate BSE filing on Tuesday, Tata Steel said it had elected N. Chandrasekaran as chairman of its board and appointed Peter Blauwhoff as an additional independent director effective immediately. Chandrasekaran, who was appointed as a member of the steel maker’s board on 13 January, is chief executive and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and is the chairman designate of Tata Sons Ltd, the group holding company, where he will replace the ousted Cyrus Mistry.","Tata Steel’s net profit was Rs230 crore in the December quarter from a loss of Rs2,750 crore in the corresponding period of last year","Wed, Feb 08 2017. 02 03 AM IST",Tata Steel registers first profit in 5 quarters +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/9AaJWroM1c0tOAwHnXL0lK/United-Bank-of-India-posts-net-profit-of-Rs6410-crore-in-Q3.html,"Mumbai: United Bank of India on Friday said it registered a net profit of Rs64.10 crore in the December quarter against Rs17 crore a year ago, thanks to higher income and a substantial tax credit.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 68.45% to Rs608.09 crore in from Rs360.98 crore last year. Other income more than doubled to Rs814.08 crore from Rs357.21 crore. The bank also reported a tax credit of Rs122.49 crore.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) at United Bank fell 2.59% to Rs10,845.31 crore at the end of the December quarter from Rs11,134.47 crore in the September quarter. As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were 15.98% at the end of the December quarter compared with 16.26% in the previous quarter and 9.57% a year ago.Provisions against bad loans and contingencies tripled to Rs1,380.85 crore in the third quarter from Rs401.03 crore the preceding quarter. Net NPAs rose to 10.62% in the December quarter compared with 11.19% in the previous quarter and 5.91% in the same quarter last year.United Bank closed 14.02% higher at Rs28.05 on the BSE, while the benchmark Sensex lost 0.35% to 28340.28 points.","United Bank of India’s net interest income, or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 68.45% to Rs608.09 crore in from Rs360.98 crore last year","Wed, Feb 08 2017. 01 52 AM IST",United Bank of India posts net profit of Rs64.10 crore in Q3 +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/YTTSBTdFVYj3aRhkhfkRbL/Petrol-price-cut-by-Rs377-per-litre-from-tonight.html,"Petrol prices have been cut by Rs3.77 per litre and diesel prices by Rs 2.91 per litre from midnight tonight. State-owned oil retailers Indian Oil Corp., Bharat Petroleum Corp. and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. cut fuel price sharply, passing on to consumers benefits of the softening global prices and of the strengthening rupee against the dollar. A statement from Indian Oil Corp. said that with effect from 1st April, petrol price has been cut by Rs 3.77 a litre and diesel price by Rs 2.91 a litre, excluding state levies. “The current level of international product prices of petrol and diesel and rupee-dollar exchange rate warrant decrease in selling price of petrol and diesel, the impact of which is being passed on to the consumers with this price revision. The movement of prices in the international oil market and currency exchange rate shall continue to be monitored closely and developing trends of the market will be reflected in future price changes,” the statement said.","State-owned oil retailers have cut petrol and diesel price, passing on to consumers benefits of softening global oil prices and of the strengthening rupee against the dollar ","Sat, Apr 01 2017. 01 24 AM IST","Petrol price cut by Rs3.77 per litre, diesel price by Rs 2.91, as rupee strengthens " +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/dyFAHRzYeLAZ527a3mRskJ/Titan-Q3-profit-rises-1308-on-strong-festive-wedding-seas.html,"Bengaluru: Watches and accessories maker Titan Co. Ltd on Tuesday reported a 13.08% rise in net profit to Rs255.75 crore in the December quarter on strong festive and wedding season sales. Revenue rose 14.38% to Rs3,925.95 crore during the period.Both net profit and revenue beat estimates of Rs244.20 crore and Rs3,675.10 crore, respectively, in a Bloomberg analysts’ survey.Sales of watches, jewellery, eye-wear and other businesses, including precision engineering and accessories, rose from a year ago.Revenue from Titan’s jewellery business, run mainly under the Tanishq brand, grew 15.41% from a year ago to Rs3,255.00 crore. Sales from this segment typically accounts for a major portion of overall revenue. Its watches segment revenue grew 5.05% to Rs508.26 crore.“Despite initial headwinds on account of demonetization, the company clocked a growth of over 14% and a PBT (profit before tax) growth of 21%. The festival season was very good for both our jewellery and watches business. Our effort continues, therefore, to be one of generating demand, through new product introductions and network expansion, while retaining our focus on cost control,” managing director Bhaskar Bhat said.Early last month, Titan had warned in a stock exchange filing that the third quarter that had kicked off on a high note due to the festive season, was dented somewhat by demonetization. Titan also said sales had recovered in the modern and dedicated retail channels and that the only cause for worry was sales of watches through trade or multi-brand retail outlet channels.The company has since repeatedly said it expects demonetization to give its jewellery business a boost as customers migrate from the large informal space, which most consumers traditionally tap for their jewellery purchase, to the organized segment of the market.Titan’s shares closed up 0.52% at Rs393.4 a share on BSE on Tuesday.The company started the process of merging its Gold Plus brand with the larger Tanishq during the quarter and estimates that the merger will be completed in 5-6 months. It launched the Favre-Leuba watch brand in a few stores in India and is planning to launch it in Taiwan. Favre-Leuba watches are currently sold in India, UAE and Japan.“Jewellery has been exceptionally good with 20% top line and 15% same-store growth. After a long time we are seeing 15% same-store growth and it was aided by a lot of work we’ve done in the jewellery business, especially on new consumer launches and consumer schemes. Studded (jewellery) ratio was lower. Coin sales have grown by 40%,” Bhat said on a call with analysts.“Our online brand CaratLane has had a good quarter, after two not-so-good quarters, despite demonetisation. Watch division after a long time has shown retail growth after long. It is the trade (channel) where the effect of demonetization was more severe. The launch of the Sonata ACT watch, a smartwatch basically for women’s safety has been received very well and has brought excitement back into the trade,” Bhat added.Company executives said they have withdrawn helmets under its Fastrack youth accessories brand. Titan had launched Fastrack helmets in 2013.","Titan reported a 13.08% rise in net profit to Rs255.75 crore in the December quarter with revenue rising 14.38% to Rs3,925.95 crore during the period","Wed, Feb 08 2017. 01 24 AM IST","Titan Q3 profit rises 13.08% on strong festive, wedding season sales" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8SLYfe8DQr8qLUNAYsn58L/Nasscom-hopes-to-overcome-US-Australia-visa-curbs.html,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 20 PM IST","Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KUE7JGODJlGgYdmQ2VX5KM/Making-predictions-with-Big-Data.html,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains","Tue, May 02 2017. 10 20 PM IST",Making predictions with Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/I9zOulsXPb2kcVSzTenbdJ/How-Infosyss-20-billion-revenue-target-by-202021-is-hurti.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0IM4UPDSJz5GDqnvt4bDcI/Merger-of-oil-PSUs-will-hurt-consumers-harm-Indias-energy.html,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST","Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YZFuGcfjSrgSn8lWlnKiiM/Homedelivered-petroleum-may-be-reality-soon.html,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/OWeeqJSiHwcDFrOH9kJQoN/Govt-IT-data-on-cloud-system-must-be-stored-within-India-Me.html,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 13 PM IST",Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/kLTmAS9MdEP7isqPsAp7IN/Oil-marketing-firms-working-to-boost-digital-payments-Dharm.html,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 48 PM IST",Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mIxk76Xm7lzsbLaOjeIdoK/Oil-companies-to-set-up-more-plants-in-Jammu-and-Kashmir.html,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6TCfli3eJLUVH2dFnxuWEN/Tata-Power-inks-pact-for-electricity-distribution-in-Ajmer.html,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 03 50 PM IST",Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/iixnKtMIN7WojPH84yPpuO/Modi-govt-plans-to-auction-4-gigawatts-of-wind-energy-in-FY.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 20 AM IST",Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o5rTmASGpUmWY8QUVL9juI/Northern-India-can-be-a-hub-of-renewable-energy-says-study.html,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 55 PM IST","Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/VLS6Yo7Yn3gwklGJd8YQlN/Harry-Banga-The-commodities-captain.html,"
Harry Banga always thought he would retire from a career in trading commodities when he turned 60. Much to his own relief, however, things didn’t go according to plan or he would have been at a loss for things to do. He tells me he has no hobbies.
Banga, now 66, is immersed at work when we meet. His office is where he is happiest. It probably helps that it has a breathtaking view of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, dotted with ships.
The Amritsar-born, Hong Kong-based Harindarpal Banga—“Harry” to everyone who knows him—is the chairman and chief executive officer of The Caravel Group. “It’s a start-up,” Banga chuckles. But one with grey-haired managers, an experienced team, and a billion-dollar balance sheet. “We created something new,” Banga demurs. “That’s what a start-up is.”
A diversified global conglomerate, Caravel was founded in 2013 by Banga and his two sons, Guneet (37) and Angad (33). The Bangas own all of it. He says his sons, who were working elsewhere, forced him to start his own venture, promising they would join him if he did. Though both have leadership roles within Caravel, Guneet, who is the executive director, is currently on a sabbatical, working on philanthropic projects in Thailand. Angad, the group’s chief operating officer, plays an active role in the day-to-day operations and heads the asset manage-ment division.
Harry Banga made a name and fortune for himself over two decades at Noble Group, a commodity trading company based in Hong Kong. As group vice-chairman, he was widely credited with turning the company into one of Asia’s biggest business successes.
He had joined Noble in 1989 to head its new shipping division. It was the perfect match: Noble could trade commodities and transport raw materials from suppliers to buyers. The timing was fortuitous. China’s economy was regaining momentum and the government was spending liberally on domestic infrastructure projects. It had a voracious appetite for raw materials. Banga quickly realized the impact an emerging China would have on the world stage, so that’s where he focused his attention.
“I pretty much lived there, not in five-star hotels but in dirty, filthy, smelly guest houses,” he says, remembering the years he spent travelling to remote corners of China. “And the food was terrible.” It was rough, but he persisted, even picking up Mandarin during those years of travel and establishing key contacts within China.
“For an Indian national to be so respected, to have such ‘guanxi’(relationships) within China, is very rare,” says Sam Chambers, editorial director of Asia Shipping Media, which controls global maritime news portal Splash.
Banga left Noble in 2010. He doesn’t say much about why he stepped down, except that the way Noble was growing (“too fast”) and diversifying (“becoming asset heavy”) didn’t match his sensibilities. He continued with them as vice-chairman emeritus till their 2013 annual general meeting to enable a smooth transition.
His exit was well timed. Noble has been plagued by accounting problems, several high-level departures, and a downturn in the commodity market. The company is nowhere near the darling of the stock market it once was.
Rich with experience and cash from selling his stake in Noble, Banga set up Caravel. It is named after a small, nimble, 15th century sailing ship developed by the Spanish and Portuguese to explore uncharted waters. The business has three verticals: logistics, which includes maritime services such as ship management, commodities trading, and asset management. Asset management was introduced to attract Angad, who has a background in private equity.
In a little over three years, Caravel has put Banga back on the list of Hong Kong’s 50 Richest People, with a fortune of $1.02 billion (around Rs6,800 crore), according to Forbes magazine. Caravel, which posted a revenue of $80 million in its first year of operation, estimates a jump to $1.8 billion last year. Banga looks embarrassed when I talk to him about his wealth. “What means more to me is when they compare Caravel to companies that have been around for 50 or 80 years,” he says, adding, “At this age, if I have more than three drinks, the doctor’s bill is bigger than the drinks bill, so where will you spend the money?”
Later, I understand where the money goes—well, some of it at least. “I don’t fly commercial, I have my own plane,” Banga says in a matter-of-fact tone. “Sometimes I say, why should I go in my own plane? I worry about my carbon footprint. But Angad says, Dad, just enjoy your life.”
As we speak in his office, I can’t help but notice that the view makes a perfect backdrop to Banga’s story. He began his life on the seas. He was not really interested in an engineering or medical degree, the traditional career path for most Indian men with his kind of family background at the time, and a chance meeting with a family friend who worked for the Indian Merchant Navy piqued his interest. Growing up in landlocked Punjab, Banga had never seen the sea. Without telling his father, he applied for a position with the Indian merchant navy. An exam and an interview later, he was accepted as a cadet.
Banga loved his life as a seafarer. “It was the lure of seeing the world. You went to a port and stayed there for months. I loved it. Seeing new places, meeting new people. It was amazing.”
He went on to become a master mariner (a qualification that allows you to become the captain of a ship) and at 28, the youngest captain in the navy.
It was during his time on the sea that the young Sikh cut his hair. It was impractical, with all that travel and being on a ship, he says. Banga’s father didn’t allow him into the house for three years. “Three years,” he emphasizes. Even after they made their peace, Banga had to grow a beard and put on a turban before going to meet his father.
I meet Banga for a second time at a gurdwara in Hong Kong on a chilly Saturday morning. He is there with his family to attend an akhand path (continuous recitation of religious hymns). “I believe in god and god for me is Sikhism,” Banga says. “Being Sikh defines who they are, it’s a big part of their identity,” Angad says of his parents. I learn that Banga has donated $1.2 million to the gurdwara for a new building and is closely involved in the design as well.
I watch Banga mingle easily with others from the local Indian community. He’s a slight man with a towering personality, the recipient of the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman (the highest award given to overseas Indians) conferred by the then president, Pratibha Patil, in 2011.
Over the years, he has also developed a fiercely loyal inner circle of colleagues. The senior management at Caravel came with him from Noble. His secretary has been working with him for 30 years; the head of iron ore, for 25 years; and the head of his China unit, for 20 years. Perhaps his most endearing quality is his friendly disposition. He’s affable. Every morning, he walks the floor of his office at 10.30 and greets people personally. He has done this for 20 years. He has a monthly list of birthdays on his desk and doesn’t miss wishing an employee.
“It’s a we and us culture, never you, never me. At our Monday morning meetings, there’s no finger-pointing. If someone did something that cost the company, it’s we made a loss, never you made a loss,” says Angad. He credits his father’s leadership style—based on developing trust—for creating a family-like atmosphere in the office.
For Banga, nothing in the world is more important than family. I understand that within minutes of meeting him. He talks often of his father, a former civil servant, now 95 and ailing. Banga returns to New Delhi frequently to visit him. His wife of 37 years, Indra, goes through the day’s schedule with him before he comes to office. She has chosen all the art that is displayed in the office. His daughter-in-law Dana (Angad’s wife) works at the Caravel Foundation with Indra.
The family gets together for Sunday-night dinners. It’s not just a tradition, but one that is “sacred”, Angad says. If anyone can’t make it, there had better be a very good reason for it. It doesn’t matter that they have seen each other in office every day, all week.
Sometimes, he’s kind of old fashioned, laughs Angad. “There’s so much pressure on my wife and I to have children. He’s like, all my friends have grandchildren, I am the only one who doesn’t!”
Speaking about the next generation (and a potential third), I ask Banga what he would like his legacy to be. He seems puzzled. I haven’t really thought about it, he responds. I rephrase the question. How would he like to be remembered? Banga pauses. Finally, he says, “I think I would just want someone to say, I miss him having a drink with me.”
In case you are wondering, that would be single malt whisky.","The master mariner, who founded a start-up after two decades at one of Asia’s biggest commodity trading firms, on Chinese hotels, Sunday dinners and god","Sat, Mar 11 2017. 12 00 AM IST",Harry Banga: The commodities captain +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/xrBRQ33jVVj2rosTir4FcK/AIG-CEO-Peter-Hancock-to-quit-as-swelling-losses-hurt-invest.html,"New York: American International Group Inc. chief executive officer (CEO) Peter Hancock is stepping down after posting four losses in six quarters, results that hurt investors including activists Carl Icahn and John Paulson.Hancock, 58, will remain CEO until a successor is named, the New York-based insurer said on Thursday in a statement. The company’s board said it will conduct a comprehensive search for a new leader, after meeting on Wednesday as part of an annual review into the firm’s performance.“Without wholehearted shareholder support for my continued leadership, a protracted period of uncertainty could undermine the progress we have made and damage the interests of our policyholders, employees, regulators, debtholders and shareholders,” Hancock said in the statement.ALSO READ: GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s pay falls 35% to $21.3 million amid weak oil marketAIG shares rose 1.7% to $64.50 at 8:41 am in early trading in New York. The stock declined 2.9% this year through Wednesday, while the S&P 500 Index rallied 5.6%. Icahn applauded the board’s decision in a Twitter post on Thursday.‘Significant positive’The move is a “significant positive,” Meyer Shields, an analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said in a note to clients. “Of course, there aren’t too many candidates with the skills needed to turn around this troubled global company, but several successful turn-arounds” have occurred in the industry.Hancock’s successor will be the seventh CEO of AIG since 2005. The company’s complexity bedeviled one leader after another as they struggled to manage a global insurer that was built through decades of acquisitions by former leader Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, and then shrunk through dozens of asset sales after a near collapse during the financial crisis. Doug Steenland, the insurer’s chairman, thanked Hancock for his work in helping repay a bailout that swelled to $182.3 billion.Hancock “tackled the company’s most complex issues, including the repayment of AIG’s obligations to the US Treasury in full and with a profit, and is leaving AIG as a strong, focused and profitable insurance company,” Steenland said in the statement.ALSO READ: Viacom said in talks with former Fox executive to lead ParamountIcahn announced his stake in AIG in October 2015, faulting Hancock for failing to meet return targets and pushing the insurer to split into smaller companies, saying it was too big to manage. He and Paulson won board representation in February of 2016. Paulson’s hedge fund has since been selling some of its stock.Management turnoverIcahn lauded Hancock when the CEO reached a deal in August to sell a mortgage guarantor to Arch Capital Group Ltd for $3.4 billion. Hancock has been exiting assets around the world to shrink the insurer, striking reinsurance deals to limit volatility and reducing headcount, partially to reduce costs. The CEO reshaped AIG management, replacing executives including longtime chief financial officer David Herzog and Seraina Maag, who oversaw regional operations.Still, ratings firm A.M. Best has been reviewing AIG’s financial strength score after the latest losses prompted Hancock to pay about $10 billion to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. to assume risks on insurance contracts that were initiated by his company. The CEO has said that a downgrade could jeopardize relationships with some customers.“This was the board reacting to the poor news from the fourth-quarter results,” Paul Newsome, an analyst at Sandler O’Neill & Partners, said by phone. “The broader question is how is the management team totally going to change?” he said. “I suspect that the strategy will change, we just don’t know how yet.”AIG has endured more than a decade of management turmoil. Greenberg stepped down as CEO in 2005 amid regulatory probes and was replaced by Martin Sullivan, who was ousted in 2008 after he underestimated the risk of a housing market collapse. Robert Willumstad held the post for just months until the insurer’s bailout, ceding the job to Robert Liddy who lasted less than a year in what he called “the most stimulating job in America.”The late Robert Benmosche ran AIG for more than five years, starting in 2009. He brought on Hancock, a former J.P. Morgan & Co. executive, in 2010 and assigned him the next year to run property-casualty insurance, the company’s biggest business. They repaid the government rescue in 2012. Bloomberg",Peter Hancock’s successor will be the seventh CEO of AIG since 2005 as the company’s complexity bedeviled one leader after another as they struggled to manage the global insurer ,"Thu, Mar 09 2017. 10 10 PM IST",AIG CEO Peter Hancock to quit as swelling losses hurt investors +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/npOfD62hntE1IAkgVJYqAO/Reliance-Capital-CEO-Sam-Ghosh-to-leave-company-after-9year.html,"New Delhi: In a surprise move, Reliance Capital’s long serving CEO Sam Ghosh will leave the company on 31 March, after spending nine years at the financial services arm of Anil Ambani-led business conglomerate. Ghosh had joined the company in April 2008 as group chief executive officer of Reliance Capital, while he was elevated to the board in May 2015. The company, which is present across insurance, mutual fund and a host of other financial services sectors, said in a regulatory filing that Ghosh will be completing his term of office on 31 March 2017, and the appointment of a new CEO will be announced in due course.“During this entire period (of nine years), Ghosh has served Reliance Capital with great passion and commitment, and contributed towards building up a strong portfolio of businesses across asset management, life and general insurance, commercial and housing finance, broking and distribution among others,” the company said. It also said that Reliance Capital is on track to complete its transition towards becoming a CIC (Core Investment Company) by end of 31 March, as per RBI guidelines. All operating businesses will be housed in wholly or majority owned subsidiaries, each led by the respective CEOs of those businesses and their respective full-fledged independent organisations. Ghosh, a Chartered Accountant from England, has been instrumental in several deals and alliances signed by Reliance Capital during his tenure. He played a key role in expansion of core businesses as also in divestment of non-core assets to beef up its resources. Besides, he was said to be deeply involved in mentoring of Anil Ambani’s elder son Anmol, who joined Reliance Capital board last year after two years of training at the company. Welcoming him on the board, Ghosh had said at that time, “Anmol has been a fast learner, active participant in all reviews and displayed sharp business acumen in various decision-making processes,”. Before joining Reliance Capital, he was the Regional CEO of Middle East and India Sub Continent region of Allianz, a German insurance company. He has also served as CEO of Bajaj Allianz’s India operations. Prior to that he was involved in setting up operations for Allianz in South East Asia. He spent ten years in Australia in various capacities with Allianz from CFO to managing subsidiary companies as well as operations in the Pacific Rim. The company did not disclose any particular reason for his departure, while immediately it could not be ascertained where he is headed to. “The Board of Directors of Reliance Capital and all its people thank Ghosh for his service, and wish him the very best in his future endeavours,” the company said. (Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.)","Sam Ghosh had joined the company in April 2008 as group CEO of Reliance Capital, while he was elevated to the board in May 2015","Fri, Mar 10 2017. 08 25 PM IST",Reliance Capital’s CEO Sam Ghosh to leave company after 9-year stint +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/hlmTCK20f2RbuqS5X4tu2N/GE-CEO-Jeffrey-Immelts-pay-falls-35-to-213-million-amid.html,"New York: General Electric Co. chief executive officer (CEO) Jeffrey Immelt’s compensation fell 35% to $21.3 million last year, as an oil and gas slump suppressed demand for industrial equipment and the company’s shares underperformed the market.Immelt, 61, received a $3.8 million salary last year, unchanged from 2015, according to a proxy statement from the Boston-based company Wednesday. His $5.94 million in cash awards, $2.14 million in stock options and $4.67 million in restricted and performance-linked shares were all down from the prior year.The weak oil and gas market, coupled with slow demand for locomotives, weighed on growth efforts last year after a sweeping transformation that tilted the company from finance and strengthened its manufacturing operations. GE returned 4.6% in 2016 including dividends, compared with 12% for the S&P 500 Index. The shares have continued to trail the index this year.ALSO READ | Jeff Immelt is the source of strategy around digital: GE’s William Ruh“Normally, we expect our diversified model to shrug off headwinds in one market and continue to achieve our goals,” Immelt wrote in a letter to shareholders dated 24 February. “In 2016, we simply couldn’t outrun pressure in the resource markets. Consequently, our compensation plans only paid out at 80% of target. This gives us more motivation for 2017.”GE in October struck a deal to combine its oil and gas unit with Baker Hughes Inc., creating the world’s second-largest oilfield service provider and equipment maker. GE, which also makes jet engines and power-generation equipment, recently announced the acquisition of a turbine-blade manufacturer and majority stakes in two 3-D printer companies.ALSO READ | GE boss Jeffrey Immelt sees new era of globalization as protectionism growsImmelt’s cash awards are split between an annual bonus tied to financial and strategic goals, and a three-year plan that’s linked to metrics including operating cash flow, return on total capital compared to peers and money returned to investors through dividends and share repurchases. The $5.94 million combined payout is less than half of the $13 million he received for 2015.The accounting value of the CEO’s pension has fluctuated in recent years due to actuarial changes, resulting in big swings in his reported compensation. Immelt, who’s been at GE since 1982 and became CEO in 2001, had amassed $81.7 million in pension benefits at the end of 2016.Vice-chairman John Rice got a $15.2 million package in 2016 and chief financial officer (CFO) Jeff Bornstein received $9.91 million. Bloomberg","GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s $5.94 million in cash awards, $2.14 million in stock options and $4.67 million in restricted and performance-linked shares were all down from the prior year","Thu, Mar 09 2017. 07 44 PM IST",GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s pay falls 35% to $21.3 million amid weak oil market +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/lXEucX98dtVX75KGV4RvrI/Renault-making-money-in-India-now-after-selling-100000-Kwid.html,"
Geneva: Carlos Ghosn, 62, is the global auto industry’s most charismatic and, some would say, best performing chief executive officer (CEO). He is also the chairman and CEO of French auto maker Renault SA, chairman of Japan’s Nissan Motor Co. Ltd, and chairman of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. He has turned around the fortunes of the first, rescued the second from near oblivion, and now wants to do the same with the third.
ALSO READ | India is a big market for any carmaker: Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn
On 23 February, Nissan announced Ghosn would step down as CEO, and focus on managing the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi alliance. On the sidelines of the Geneva Motor Show, Ghosn spoke to Autocar India on the alliance, his plans for Mitsubishi in India, and how he took inspiration from Tata Motors Ltd’s Nano. Edited excerpts:
You have kind of relinquished your position as CEO in Nissan and are going to be focusing on the alliance specific to Mitsubishi. In India, Mitsubishi’s problem was no scale, no investment and no appropriate product. Suddenly these problems matter no more because of the alliance. Will it be logical to assume that with the alliance there’s a big market out there for Mitsubishi to tap? Without any doubt because, in India, the most important step and our key for success—not sufficient but necessary—is the product. If you don’t have the product, you better not try your chance in India. It takes a lot of time to find a product. I think, with the A-platform (the second of the so-called common module family, or CMF, jointly developed by Renault and Nissan, a sort of modular manufacturing system for cars), particularly with the Kwid and all the products that are going to follow that, we think we have found our entry level (car) in the Indian market. But this platform is an alliance platform. Today, you are having a Renault product, tomorrow you are going to have a Nissan product. This platform will be open to Mitsubishi.
So Mitsubishi could use it and you could go all the way up and bring the Lancer back for example? Yes, but Mitsubishi has so many opportunities to grow that the management of Mitsubishi is going to have to prioritize what they are going to do first, second and third. So I cannot tell you in what time frame this will happen, but without any doubt, this is a very big market for (the) future for any carmaker and for Mitsubishi in particular.
So what you are confirming is that it’s not a question of if but a question of when Mitsubishi will come to India with all guns blazing? We are not limited to the short term; it is going to obviously mean mid- or long-term. Everybody expects India to be in the top 3-4 markets in the future. So you can expect that what happened in China, where all the carmakers are present, is also going to happen in India, with (the) exception that the Indian market is very tough for the foreign carmaker because of the specificity of the product and market.
Do you think you have an edge with Kwid? It is doing well and has already got a lot of things like design and the touch-screen and a lot of things.Yes, we do; and we are improving and we are listening to what the customers are saying in India. Not only to improve our offer for the Kwid in India but also to improve our offer for the Kwid outside India because you know a version of the Kwid is going to be launched in Brazil as a second step of the A platform. So, for the Indian market, this is very important because it is very competitive, and if you are going to make it in India, you are going to make it in many emerging markets, and that’s why for us, testing and being successful in India and having a very strong acceptance of the product, a very competitive product in India, is a guarantee that these are going to do well in other markets.
Are you making money in India? Is this the tipping point?We are starting to make money now after selling 100,000 Kwids. We struggled at the beginning because it was the new plant and a new car, so when you have so much innovation accommodated, you struggle with profitability. When you are going to a new emerging market with a new product, you have to be patient for your returns.
In future, is the CMF-B (for cars slightly larger than those on the CMF-A platform) also expected?Obviously, the volume you expect from a car based on that platform is not going to be very big, so it can be an additional product but you can’t have a strategy on this platform.
So is there a lesson learnt by Nissan on the performance of its V platform (cars such as the Sunny and Micra that did not do well in India)? That you fundamentally cannot bring a European platform into India because the cost is too high and the customers may not pay for it? You can bring copy and paste platform and product but that has to be a niche product. Don’t expect big volume coming out of it. If you want big volume in India and contribute to the core market, you will have to really tailor it, even the platform.
On Renault’s strategy, you are selling around 10,000 vehicles every month and are the No.1 European carmaker in India. You’ve even rattled Suzuki. So, that is saying something. What is the aim? Were you expecting this level of success?I think this is all due to the attractiveness of the product. I think we have some improvement that we can make in terms of competitiveness of our plant because the plants are filled, then we have much better industrial performance, but we are not there. We will have a lot of improvement that we can make into this plant. Yes, after we have seen that the CMF-A and the CMF-A+ platforms are really adequately addressing the needs of the Indian market, we should be much more ambitions, in terms of contribution.
You previously mentioned Tata Motors’ Nano is really an inspiration for the Kwid. What are your thoughts on that and Ratan Tata’s vision for the Nano. When Ratan came with the Nano, I congratulated him and he said I was the only one who congratulated him because a lot of people said it’s a bad idea. No, it’s a good idea. We came with the Kwid at the end of the day and the Kwid was inspired by the Nano.","Renault-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn on his plans for the Mitsubishi acquisition, that brand’s future in India and how he took inspiration from Tata Nano","Thu, Mar 09 2017. 04 32 AM IST","Renault making money in India now after selling 100,000 Kwids: Carlos Ghosn" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/QIj15oFCx5b3hhbncWTFAL/Daiichi-opposes-Religare-Health-Insurance-sale-in-Delhi-High.html,"New Delhi: Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo Ltd on Monday opposed the sale of an 80% stake in Religare Health Insurance Co. Ltd by Singh brothers—Malvinder and Shivender—to a group of investors led by private equity firm True North.Daiichi Sankyo told the Delhi high court that the sale violated a previous order which required them to take court permission to part with unencumbered assets.“We have been taken for a ride. They (Singh brothers) are going against the assurance given by them to the court that they would not alienate unencumbered assets. Their assets should be attached to prevent such a situation,” said Daiichi’s counsel C.A. Sundaram.The Singh brothers have been repeatedly asked by the Delhi high court to disclose the value of the unencumbered shareholding they in have in various entities. The brothers in 2008 sold Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd to Daiichi Sankyo, which has since sold the company to Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.On 20 March, the court permitted Daiichi to inspect documents submitted by the Singhs including copies of several affidavits by the brothers and the reports of the chartered accountants of RHC Holding Pvt. Ltd, a firm in which the Singhs have significant shareholding, and its subsidiary companies. Subsequently, Daiichi sought the appointment of a third-party auditor to assist in the inspection process.The case relates to enforcement of an arbitral award in proceedings initiated by Daiichi Sankyo against the Singh brothers in relation to its 2008 purchase of a majority stake in Ranbaxy.ALSO READ: Shivinder, Malvinder Singh want to sell some assets, but the timing isn’t rightIn 2008, the Singh brothers exited the pharmaceuticals business by selling their controlling stake in Ranbaxy Laboratories o Daiichi Sankyo Ltd for $4.6 billion. The original arbitral award came after the Japanese company alleged that the Singh brothers had concealed crucial information while selling Ranbaxy to it.In response, a Singapore tribunal had ordered the brothers to pay a sum of Rs. 2,562 crore. The Singh brothers are contesting this in the Delhi high court.The case will be heard next on 24 April.",Daiichi Sankyo tells Delhi HC that Religare Health Insurance sale by the Singh brothers violates an earlier court order on selling of unencumbered assets,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 04 29 AM IST",Daiichi Sankyo opposes Singh brothers’ bid to sell Religare Health Insurance +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/VHIqQ9G0MzBUaSf6tfZ6cN/PVRs-Ajay-Bijli-Nowhere-do-movie-tickets-get-as-heavily-ta.html,"
New Delhi: For a man considered to be the poster boy of the multiplex revolution in Indian cinema, Ajay Bijli is decidedly uncomfortable being photographed. He poses slightly self-consciously at his posh Gurugram office with the several chair designs the entertainment company is currently trying out to fit its auditorium and audience requirements. As he celebrates 20 years of running PVR Ltd, India’s largest movie theatre chain that operates 569 screens across 123 locations in 48 cities, his motto remains the same: the customer must never feel short-changed by the theatre operator. In an interview, the chairman and managing director of PVR talks about the multiplex chain’s evolution and why movie theatres in India should survive the advent of digital platforms. Edited excerpts:
How accepting are you of being tagged the pioneer of the multiplex revolution in India?I’m very uncomfortable with it. There were a lot of people trying to build a multiplex at that time and I could tell it was going to happen soon. I was just lucky to be the first one off the block. I found the property and was able to get a joint venture in place (between Bijli’s then single-screen owned Priya Exhibitors Pvt. Ltd and Australian mass media and entertainment company Village Roadshow Ltd). I was also very fortunate because PVR Anupam (the first multiplex theatre in India) was in south Delhi, a catchment that I understood very well and the Delhi government was very supportive in permitting me to convert a single-screen cinema into a four-plex. All the building by-laws were only written for single-screen cinemas but they allowed me to rewrite the cinematograph rules. So I was just fortunate, I never carry that (tag) because thinking about it means you’re looking back and I want to look ahead.
Why did you see multiplexes as an opportunity for India?I was running a single-screen theatre, Priya, and I could sense the volatility—without blockbusters, which you anyway couldn’t have all 52 weeks, the cinema used to run empty. Multiplexes were prevalent internationally and there were 4-5 films getting released every week. I was very keen that we should be able to give people the choice of all the movies that get released one week with good sound, projection and hospitality under one roof. But there were a couple of things bothering me; one, that ticket prices would be incrementally higher than what balcony tickets were at that time—we opened at Rs65-70 compared to Rs40-50. Secondly, two cinemas were still large, 300 seats each but the other two were 150 seats each and I didn’t know how people would take to the small screens. But God is kind, when we opened the doors, there were queues outside. It was quite exciting to see the experiment had worked.
Do you think the death of the single screen took something away from the movie-viewing experience?No. You have a lot of cinemas that offer a big-screen experience, our biggest auditoriums are 350-400 seaters. And now, compared to where people are watching films (hand-held devices), even the 200 seaters are big-screen experiences. I never differentiate between single screens and multiplex cinemas, I just think all cinemas have to be of a certain quality because people in India take their movie-going experience very seriously. You should have good sound and projection system and air-conditioning and then it’s a price-point adjustment that needs to be done because India is such a disparate market.
What have been the major changes in the film industry and exhibition market in 20 years?Content is improving a lot. You have films that can be played in fewer cinemas, say Pink, or Tanu Weds Manu Returns and the Salman, Aamir and Shah Rukh Khan-starrers that release in 4,000 screens. Consumers have changed, as have their tastes. English movies always used to do well but now they do much better and penetrate into smaller towns by getting dubbed. The big change is now there is real estate available to build world-class multiplexes. Tax regulations are a very big disappointment for me—nowhere across the world do cinema tickets get as heavily taxed as in India. Now we’re waiting for GST (goods and services tax); if it comes in at a palatable rate, it’ll be a big change.
There was a lot of talk of PVR being acquired by the Chinese group Wanda.I have no idea where that is coming from. I thought this Warburg Pincus deal would at least put those rumours to rest (In January this year, private equity firm Warburg Pincus bought a 14% stake in PVR for Rs820 crore).
How would you address the whole crisis of declining footfall and the advent of digital platforms in India?Actually, footfalls have not been declining. Theatres still represent 60-65% of revenues and any content maker would want to completely monetize the movie on the big screen. To that extent, cinemas have exclusivity for at least two to three months, depending on how big the movie is. Secondly, I believe people love going out and watching movies, it’s still a great social outing.Plus the budget of some films runs into some $100-150 million. How do you recover if you go straight to digital? There is commitment from studios internationally and even in India to make movies that are larger-than-life and meant to be seen on the big screen. Then there are efforts by the technology providers, so many movies are being made in IMAX and 3D. So if you look at all these things, I think we should survive. Currently, 66% of the revenue comes from theatricals, 22-23% is food and beverage, 10-12% is advertising and marketing.
What are your most important lessons in these 20 years?There are so many, you learn everyday. After diversifying into film production, I realized I’d rather do one thing but do a good job of it. I think integrity is very important, you’re running a listed company, you should be transparent. Every unit that you build should be profitable. Out of the 130 cinemas that we have, only three are Ebitda-negative, most make money (Ebitda is short for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, an indicator of operating profitability). There was a lot of talk in between about screens but I was fortunate I had Renuka Ramnath (earlier with ICICI Ventures) who invested in my company in 2003. She wasn’t looking at screens but at the returns on capital employed. The other lesson is you have to remain restless and keep improving. Twenty years have definitely taught me that all your stakeholders—employees, shareholders, investors, developers, film fraternity—are equally important and there’s no harm in being nice and cordial with people.
Have you responded to the Securities and Exchange Board of India show-cause notice? (In November 2016, the markets regulator had asked PVR to explain a profit-sharing deal struck with private equity investors that was not disclosed to its shareholders, alleging that its promoters had violated listing and disclosure regulations)I have and it’s being handled by my lawyers. I’ve been advised not to say anything and they will give you the correct answer. But my conscience is extremely clear.
Where does film exhibition in India stand at the moment?We’re really under-screened and need more cinemas in main cities as well as tier-two and tier-three towns. But there are other issues too. If taxes and rentals don’t get rationalized, it could be a problem of too many screens. In the US, they make money even at 15-20% occupancy. That’s because the tax is zero and the rental is not more than 10% of your total revenue. Here the rental is going up but you can’t blame the real estate developers because the supply is limited. I don’t think GST should be more than 18%, the real estate cost has to be controllable, developers and cinema exhibitors should be given incentives by the government the way we were given when the tax exemption was announced to build multiplexes.The volatility of content also has to get better, you can’t have too many flops and just one Dangal helping you out, there has to be a little more effort on the script and execution and knowing what the consumer wants. When a massive filmmaker delivers a flop with a big cast, it worries you because you’ve allocated so many screens and shows.","In an interview, PVR CEO Ajay Bijli talks about the multiplex chain’s evolution and why movie theatres in India should survive the advent of digital platforms","Thu, Mar 09 2017. 04 32 AM IST",PVR’s Ajay Bijli: Nowhere do movie tickets get as heavily taxed as in India +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Xptji91wlnJL2TbPJUlLCI/Aditya-Birla-Idea-Payments-Bank-to-open-first-branch-by-firs.html,"Mumbai: Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank, which is set to roll out a fully functional branch by the first half of this year, is relying on scale and brand name to lure customers. The payments bank is a 51:49 joint venture (JV) between Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd (ABNL) and telecom major Idea Cellular, respectively.The bank will start operations with over 1.5 lakh touch points, an in-inbuilt United Payment Interface (UPI) solution and will look at distributing loans of other financial institutions. According to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) norms, payment banks can accept deposits and open current and savings accounts, but are not permitted to lend or issue credit cards.“It is clearly a scale game unlike traditional banking. In traditional banking you can put up one branch and still do well. Here, it is scale since technology platform is the same which has to accommodate many transactions. So more the transactions you accommodate, more benefit you can give to the customers,” said Sudhakar Ramasubramanian, chief executive officer (designate), Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank. Unlike other companies like payments banks of Airtel and Jio, Idea is yet to announce a tie-up with any financial institution. It is currently exploring partnerships with institutions depending on the “intensity of transaction and size of population”. The Aditya Birla payments bank is, however, confident that with a network of 180 million telecom customers, its reach is unparalleled.According to Sudhakar, Idea has both online and offline scale. Out of its total customer base, 60-70 % have feature phones. Not everyone except State Bank of India has this customer base. “India Post has access to people, but does not have as many customers. We are the organisation where we have done the Know Your Customer (KYC) and two million retailers is the network which we have. Also 15% of India is our existing customer base and 200 million of 8 billion is like 3% of the world’s population,” added Sudhakar. Also Read: Aditya Birla Group gets RBI licence to start payments bankAditya Birla Idea Payments bank is one among seven companies to get a final approval from the banking regulator. Airtel Payments Bank Ltd was the first payments bank to start operations in January followed by India Post. FINO PayTech, Jio Payments Bank, PayTM and National Securities Depository Ltd are the other companies who have received the final licence for payments banks.“Aditya Birla will ultimately convert lot of their conglomerate business into e-commerce on retail side. They will leverage the ecosystem that they have across various businesses and do payments through its bank,” said Abizer Diwanji, partner and head-financial services at EY.Having had the first mover advantage, the Airtel Payments Bank has already added more than 1 million customers since its launch in November. The bank offers a rate of interest of 7.25% on its savings account compared to 3-4% offered by conventional banks. However, Sudhakar is not quite sure if this model is sustainable.“It is simple logic. Money can be invested in government securities… Company that has big credit rating which is given lower interest rate and other company that has low credit rating that is giving higher interest rate. What is the trust level? Do you want same level of interest for different levels of bank,” he added.",Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank is a 51:49 joint venture between Aditya Birla Nuvo and telecom major Idea Cellular,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 04 29 AM IST",Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank to open first branch by first half of 2017 +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/q94tbeE4Owo5SEpTqA4ugK/Dont-use-steel-from-India-Italy-in-Keystone-XL-pipeline-S.html,"Washington: An influential group of nine Democratic Senators has urged President Donald Trump to not let a Canadian company use foreign made steel, in particular from India and Italy, in the trans-national multibillion controversial Keystone oil pipeline. “Your memorandum explicitly covers new and expanded pipeline projects so we were confused and disappointed to learn that the Keystone XL pipeline would not be required to use 100% American-made steel,” the nine Democratic Senators wrote in their joint letter to Trump, a copy of which was released to the press on Thursday.“Further, we are deeply concerned that by allowing this Canadian firm to use foreign steel from countries like India and Italy, which have a history of dumping steel products in the US market at unfair, illegal prices, you are establishing a precedent that will have the effect of costing US jobs and undermining the spirit of your Presidential Memorandum,” the Senators wrote.Led by Senators Chris Van Hollen and Tammy Duckworth the Democratic lawmakers urged Trump to protect American jobs by ensuring all new pipelines–if approved–are constructed and maintained with American made products and equipment. Other signatories to the letter are Cory A. Booker, Thomas R. Carper, Al Franken, Christopher S. Murphy, Debbie Stabenow, Joe Donnelly Claire McCaskill, Robert Menendez, and Gary C. Peters.“As champions of expanding Buy American requirements to make sure taxpayer-supported projects contract with American companies to the greatest extent possible, we were initially encouraged by this memorandum,” they said. “We were disappointed, however, when we learned that your administration would exempt the Keystone XL pipeline project from this Buy American policy,” the letter added.On 24 January, Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum to the secretary of commerce directing the secretary to “develop a plan under which all new pipelines, as well as retrofitted, repaired, or expanded pipelines, inside the borders of the US, including portions of pipelines, use materials and equipment produced in the US, to the maximum extent possible and to the extent permitted by law.”However, Trump has exempted Keystone pipeline from this. “We request that you reconsider your decision to allow a foreign company to use foreign steel in the Keystone XL pipeline and urge you to secure a firm commitment to source 100% American-made steel for this project,” the Senators wrote.“Doing so would be a strong statement of support for American manufacturers and the hard working women and men who fuel our national economy,” they said. The $8 billion pipeline that TransCanada wants to build would carry crude oil from Canada through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, where it would connect with an existing Keystone pipeline network that would take the oil to Texas Gulf Coast refineries. Several environmental groups filed lawsuits against the Trump administration on Thursday to challenge its decision to approve construction of controversial Keystone pipeline. The environmental groups contend in their lawsuit filed in Montana that the 2014 report on the project’s impact “downplays or ignores other significant environmental impacts of Keystone XL, including harms to land, air, water, and wildlife.”Former President Barack Obama, rejected the pipeline, saying it would lead to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and do nothing to reduce fuel prices for US motorists. The pipeline that was first proposed in 2008 has drawn strong opposition from environmental groups and some landowners who worry about potential contamination of ground and surface water.",Nine Democratic Senators wrote to Donald Trump asking him to reconsider his decision to allow a foreign firm to use foreign steel in the Keystone pipeline,"Fri, Mar 31 2017. 06 33 PM IST","Don’t use steel from India, Italy in Keystone XL pipeline, Senators tell Donald Trump" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/nVzxnNLEZ81WVXuWSlLKCI/Banks-may-cut-funding-to-Rajasthan-discoms-missing-UDAY-targ.html,"New Delhi: Lenders are planning to cut working capital finance to Rajasthan’s power distribution companies which have failed to meet the financial targets set under the Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY), a discom bailout package.Rajasthan’s state-owned utilities have not revised power tariffs as previously agreed, two bankers aware of the matter said.“The scheme was implemented with the promise that these distribution companies will revise their tariffs on time. However, that is not happening,” said the first of the two bankers quoted above, speaking on condition of anonymity.According to the banker, this has forced bankers to rethink their strategy on funding state government-owned utilities. Under UDAY, banks can fund up to 25% of a state’s //discom’s?// previous year revenues as working capital.“If there are no revisions in tariffs, the ability of the state electricity boards to generate necessary cash flows is limited. Unless this is taken care of, we have decided not to extend any working capital loans,” said the second banker quoted above, also speaking on condition of anonymity.A spokesperson at the central power ministry did not respond to an email sent on Friday. Sanjay Malhotra, power secretary in Rajasthan did not answer several calls made to him.Before the state electricity board (SEB) turnaround plan was implemented in November 2015, Rajasthan was the biggest defaulter with a total debt of over Rs 80,000 crore, of which short term liabilities were about Rs 50,000 crore.With UDAY, 75% of the debt as on 30 September 2015, was to be taken over by states, which could in turn issue long-term bonds to the banks with state guarantee. This took care of the majority of the debt pile at these state utilities; however, future funding was linked to performance.The first 14 states that signed up for UDAY were Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Bihar, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur and Andhra Pradesh.According to power ministry data, a total of 15 states (including Tamil Nadu) have so far issued bonds worth Rs 1.83 trillion under the UDAY scheme, which accounts for 63% of the total debt of all the utilities in these states. Rajasthan alone has issued bonds worth Rs 70,525 crore, the highest among all states.UDAY is not the first bailout plan for power distribution firms. This is the third such bailout for the Indian distribution sector in around 13 years; the first two failed to incentivize the states to act.“Under the government’s scheme of loans being converted to bonds, the SEBs were to make a lot of interest savings. However, for this to be useful, the tariffs have to change accordingly, so that cost can be reduced. In the absence of bank support, the states would have to borrow on their balance sheet, or the discoms will have to reach out to state-owned power finance agencies,” said Sabyasachi Majumdar, senior vice president, ICRA Ltd.","Rajasthan’s state-owned power discoms have not revised power tariffs as previously agreed, which can affect the bank funding they receive uder the UDAY scheme","Fri, Mar 31 2017. 03 14 PM IST",Banks may cut funding to Rajasthan discoms missing UDAY targets +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/s1NDYCkJwowCMRJWGtBb1L/Essar-says-hopes-to-close-sale-to-Rosneftled-consortium-in.html,"New Delhi/Moscow: The acquisition of Indian refiner Essar Oil by a consortium led by Russian oil company Rosneft is expected to be completed in the next few weeks, Essar said in written comments to Reuters on Friday. “The parties are working towards obtaining the requisite approvals to complete the transaction. We are hopeful that the deal will be completed in the upcoming few weeks,” Essar said. All the parties, which include Rosneft and commodities trader Trafigura along with Russian private investment group United Capital Partners, have previously said that the deal was expected to be completed within the first quarter. A Rosneft spokesman confirmed on Friday that the timing of the deal’s completion had moved. UCP declined to comment.","Essar says Rosneft , Trafigura are working towards obtaining the requisite approvals to complete the transaction in next few weeks","Fri, Mar 31 2017. 05 38 PM IST","Rosneft-led deal to buy Essar delayed, seen closing in April" +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/ChwDrezaiKk37bjwyTEOFJ/Natural-gas-price-cut-marginally-to-248-mmBtu.html,"New Delhi: Natural gas price was on Saturday cut marginally to $2.48 per million British thermal unit (mmBtu), the fifth reduction in two years. Rate of natural gas produced from existing fields of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC) and Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has been cut to $2.48 per mmBtu for a six-month period from 1 April, from $2.5 per mmBtu currently. As per the new gas pricing formula approved by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in October 2014, gas prices are to be revised every six months. The reduction in natural gas prices would mean lower raw material cost for compressed natural gas (CNG) and piped natural gas (PNG), and that would translate into reduction in retail prices. It would also mean lower feedstock cost for power generation and manufacturing of fertilizers. Rates were last cut by 18% with effect from 1 October, 2016. That had followed a 20% reduction to $3.06 last April. The price of gas between 1 October, 2015 and 31 March, 2016 was $3.81 per mmBtu and $4.66 in prior six-month period. “The price of domestic natural gas for the period 1 April, 2017 to 31 October, 2017 is $2.48 per mmBtu on gross calorific value (GCV) basis,” said a notification issued by the oil ministry’s petroleum planning & analysis cell (PPAC). The reduction will hit producers like ONGC. Every dollar dip in gas price results in Rs4,000 crore hit in revenue of the public sector undertakings (PSUs) on an annual basis. Government however hiked the cap price based on alternate fuels for undeveloped gas finds in difficult areas like deep sea which are unviable to develop as per the existing pricing formula. The cap for 1 April, 2017 to 31 October, 2017 will be $5.56 per mmBtu, up from $5.3 per mmBtu, PPAC notification said. ONGC is the country’s biggest gas producer, accounting for some 60% of the 90 million standard cubic meters per day current output. All of its gas as well as that of Oil India Ltd and private sector RIL’s KG-D6 block are sold at the formula approved in October 2014. This formula, however, does not cover gas from fields like Panna/Mukta and Tapti in western offshore and Ravva in Bay of Bengal. The government had in October 2014 announced a new pricing formula that calculated local rates by using prevailing price in gas surplus nations like the US, Russia and Canada. As per the mechanism approved in October 2014, the price of domestically produced natural gas is to be revised every six months using weighted average or rates prevalent in gas-surplus economies of US/Mexico, Canada and Russia. Indian gas prices are calculated by taking weighted average price at Henry Hub of the US, National Balancing Point of the UK, rates in Alberta (Canada) and Russia with a lag of one quarter. So, the rate for April to October this year is based on average price at the international hubs during 1 January to 31 December, 2016.","Rate of natural gas produced from existing fields of ONGC and RIL has been cut to $2.48 per mmBtu for a six-month period from 1 April, from $2.5 per mmBtu currently","Fri, Mar 31 2017. 06 08 PM IST",Natural gas price cut marginally to $2.48 mmBtu +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6YO1XBIkOUU8hXknFGzSKL/NDTV-looks-to-sell-assets.html,"New Delhi: New Delhi Television (NDTV) Limited which runs news channels like NDTV India and NDTV 24x7, on Monday said that it is considering potential sale of certain strategic assets by one or more of its subsidiaries.In a filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange, the company said, “...board meeting of the company that is being convened to consider, inter alia, potential sale of certain strategic assets by certain material subsidiary(ies) of the company.” In the process, the trading window for dealing in the securities of the company will remain closed from 17 April 2017 till the conclusion of 48 hours from the date of the board meeting, the company added in the filing.Currently, NDTV operates news channels NDTV India and NDTV 24x7, business news channel NDTV Profit/NDTV Prime, lifestyle channel NDTV Good Times and e-commerce verticals in ethnic wear (IndianRoots.com), automobile (CarAndBike.com), gadgets (Gadgets360.com), health foods (SmartCooky.com) and wedding preparation (BandBaajaa.com) sectors.However, the company did not elaborate on the properties/ assets it is looking to sell. An e-mailed query to K. V. L. Narayan Rao, executive vice-chairperson at NDTV remained unanswered even as he was unavailable on the phone.Media experts, however, said it was difficult to predict the assets that the broadcaster may be looking to sell as they could be either in its e-commerce vertical or some of the TV channels in its broadcasting business.“The last few months have seen unprecedented consolidation in the media and entertainment space. Companies are increasingly exiting businesses they may not have the appetite to scale up. The idea is to focus on core businesses and upscale with efficiency rather than spread thin horizontally,” said Priyanka Chaudhary, regional media and entertainment spokesperson for Grant Thornton and a director at Grant Thornton India LLP.NDTV had reported a consolidated net loss of Rs18 crore in the quarter ended 31 December, up from Rs13 crore in the year-ago period, following a dip in advertising revenue due to demonetization of high value currency notes. NDTV’s television news business generated revenue of Rs108 crore, down from Rs130 crore in the same period last year. As per the data released by television viewership ratings agency Broadcast Audience Research Council (Barc) India last week, NDTV’s flagship English-language news channel NDTV 24x7 ranked third after Times Now and India Today television. The channel had garnered 3.28 lakh impressions","In a filing with the BSE, the NDTV said that the company is considering potential sale of certain strategic assets by certain material subsidiary","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 04 19 AM IST",NDTV looks to sell assets +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/svrC8u3YCgAn01vEN75p7K/Solar-power-may-become-cheaper-than-coal-in-India.html,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 49 AM IST",Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/jC6iWl5oymKm48kPzY3JPN/Can-CJ-Prober-save-GoPro.html,"New York: In January, CJ Prober took on a challenge that has become frustratingly common in techdom: turning around a publicly traded hardware company whose products are no longer hits. Prober is GoPro Inc.’s new chief operating officer (COO), a position that had been vacant for about two years. His promotion followed a rocky 2016, during which the action-camera maker suffered production delays for one product, recalled another and abandoned efforts to turn itself into a media company. Sales tanked, GoPro cut its forecast, and investors bolted. The rout continued this week when the shares slid to a record low after Goldman Sachs became the second firm in two days to recommend selling the stock.Prober, who joined GoPro in 2014 after holding various positions at Electronic Arts, brings solid accomplishments to the new gig, having already rebuilt his employer’s engineering operations and improved clunky editing software. Even so, he’ll struggle to revitalize GoPro.The 15-year-old company is trying to grow beyond a niche market of action junkies keen to capture their exploits on video. Much like Fitbit trackers, many GoPro cameras are used a few times and then relegated to the junk drawer.ALSO READ | Make time travel with time-lapse video appsIn his first interview since becoming COO, Prober pledged to hold the line on costs, make the cameras easier to use and chase international growth. “From a product perspective we had an amazing 2016, but from a financial perspective we had a tough 2016,” he said. “So we’re rebuilding on that. There’s a lot of positive momentum behind the changes we’re making.”Like any consumer hardware company, GoPro must regularly upgrade existing products and create new ones to keep shoppers happy. Even big players like Apple, with a deep engineering bench and billions to spend on research and development, struggle to pull that off consistently. For small companies like GoPro, it’s even harder—especially when low-cost competitors from China quickly copy their best product features and the likes of Apple and Samsung keep improving their smartphone cameras.With sales slowing in 2015, chief executive officer (CEO) Nick Woodman bet on a new drone called Karma and a upgraded version of the popular Hero camera. Trying to rush the new products to market backfired.After the Karma debuted in September, a small number of consumers began complaining that the batteries were failing. Prober says vibrations from the drone’s motors were the culprit. The fix was simple enough. GroPro engineers placed springs inside the battery compartment to stabilize the power cells. But the company was forced to recall the drone, and it took months before the gadget was back in stores. Meanwhile, Chinese drone maker DJI used the time to further consolidate its domination of the market. ALSO READ | How to get the GoPro experienceThe new Hero5 was to be the first update to GoPro’s flagship line of cameras since 2014. It would be the easiest yet to use, feature a touch screen and let users upload content to the cloud. The Hero5 also would be waterproof, and Prober says that’s where the trouble began. Late in the process, GoPro discovered that pulling this off was harder than anticipated. As a result, the company had a shortage of devices until November. That meant GoPro missed sales during the crucial Christmas shopping and had to pull a number of planned marketing initiatives.Prober, who in early in his career worked as a management consultant at McKinsey, partly blames a siloed organization for the unforced errors. He says teams were isolated from one other and focused on a specific agenda rather than working together. Ultimately, he says, the company’s ambitious product pipeline overwhelmed a management team with too many layers and sign-offs.Prober vows to avoid future mishaps with a smaller, flatter organization. Late last year, the company shuttered its entertainment unit and eliminated 15% of its employees, a third of whom were vice-presidents or higher. “A lot of times when you reduce complexity in a business, it helps you make the jobs of teams better,” Prober says. “It’s less stuff to worry about, more clarity.” His mantra for 2017: “Do more with less.”Besides launching a new version of its Hero camera this year, GoPro is expanding its lineup of accessories, including a remote control called the Remo that lets users control the camera with voice commands, and the Karma grip, a handheld camera stabilizer. The aim of the accessories strategy is to make the cameras useful in as many settings as possible and attract new consumers to the GoPro ecosystem.Another big focus is making GoPro cameras easier to use. The gadgets have long been criticized for a clunky user-interface and editing tools. GoPro has tried to make the process of shooting and sharing videos easier, with new mobile and desktop editing products and its new cloud-connected cameras. But to capture users beyond its core base of action enthusiasts, GoPro needs to make that process even simpler.“They’re going to keep on fighting the battle of improving the software,” says Brad Erickson, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities. “I don’t fault GoPro. I think the amount of people in this world willing to sit and edit videos from a purpose-built camera is very low. We all have smartphones that have decently good editing apps.”International expansion is one of the few bright spots for GoPro. Though demand in the US has declined, sales in Asia doubled in the fourth quarter from a year earlier. The company plans to work with local companies to get bigger reach without spending a ton of marketing dollars. Just last month, GoPro partnered with Huawei Technologies Co. to integrate GoPro’s mobile editing app into Huawei’s new P10 smartphones. But GoPro faces stiff competition in places like China, where the market is flooded with cheaper options.Winning back Wall Street will take some doing. When Goldman Sachs analyst Simona Jankowski recommended selling the stock on Monday she warned clients that GoPro’s core market is largely saturated and that the company has failed to attract a more mainstream audience. In a note to clients she wrote: “We expect GoPro to continue to struggle fundamentally.” Bloomberg","With GoPro’s shares near record lows, chief operating officer CJ Prober pledges to do more with less and turn the page on product recalls","Wed, Mar 08 2017. 11 03 PM IST",Can CJ Prober save GoPro? +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/IVvYXfLryBb8gEz7YYIFiP/World-Bank-to-continue-alternative-energy-financing-efforts.html,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 11 PM IST",World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q5Florefv9lbFwnMQhsXpO/Foreign-investors-giving-MA-deals-in-Indias-renewable-ener.html,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 19 AM IST",Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/losMG2kfiimoGpDMNeaTuK/5G-will-enable-organizations-to-move-into-new-markets-Erics.html,"
Mumbai: Magnus Ewerbring is the chief technology officer of Asia-Pacific group function technology at telecom and network equipment and services company Ericsson AB, where he is responsible for driving technology alignment as well as long-term technology strategies in the region. A PhD in electrical engineering from Cornell University, New York, Ewerbring will be speaking at EmTech India 2017, an emerging tech conference organized by Mint and MIT Technology Review. In an email interview, he talks about the status of 4G deployments, the impact of upcoming 5G technology and how telcos can face the challenges of burgeoning data traffic. Edited excerpts:
Have 4G deployments matured in India? Where does India stand when compared to other countries in this context?Only 40% of people in the world have data connection and the proportion in India is around 15%. It’s not as if India is lagging significantly behind in Internet coverage. If you take out the US, Japan, Korea and China, then the average will be less than 40% because China distorts the number. So, there’s a significant part of the world that is still to be covered by LTE (long-term evolution). Although a lot of innovation is happening on 5G, but even more innovation and R&D (research and development) investment goes into 4G as an industry today. What we and our other competitors are investing in is to prepare the LTE network for a smoother 5G migration. Because if you look at the 2G, 3G, 4G networks, they were overlay networks. But 5G will not be an overlay network. 5G will have to work with 4G. If you look at India, they need to make the LTE networks ready for 5G whenever it comes.ALSO READ | Potential for using Li-Fi in India is simply enormous: PureLifi’s Harald HaasPost the spectrum auctions in India last year, we have witnessed an upswing in terms of 4G deployments with enhanced focus on modernization and densification of the networks. According to the Ericsson Mobility Report, the population coverage of 4G LTE networks in India is expected to reach 45% by the end of 2021.
What will be the compelling reasons for consumers to move from 4G to 5G technology when it becomes available around 2020? How easy will it be for operators to recoup their 5G investments?Better network quality and a host of new use cases will be the drivers for 5G among consumers.5G can be used to offer fixed wireless broadband service, since you don’t have ubiquitous access to fibre connection in the country. However, even without 5G in India with 1GB/sec and LAA (license assisted access) where operators can use licensed and unlicensed combined, fixed wireless could be used in areas where there is no fibre. On the 5G devices front, CPE (customer premises equipment) will appear first, followed by tablets and the terminals.ALSO READ | Mobile technology will drive Internet of Things: Qualcomm’s Raj TalluriFor 5G to be possible, 4G has to attain a good level of maturity. Operators around the world—and in India as well—are looking at developing a strong LTE footprint in a bid to provide better coverage to the consumer. 5G will not be an overlay network, it will work in tandem with 4G. So, for operators to be relevant in 5G, they would need to have a very good quality 4G network. We are working for a seamless transition from 4G to 5G.
How will the emerging IoT (Internet of Things) ecosystem benefit from the deployment of 5G technology? To what extent will the success of IoT hinge on 5G?5G is the foundation for realizing the full potential of the networked society. Like the transitions to 2G and 3G, the move to 5G will add a new element—the industrial Internet. And, like the transition to 4G, it will be much higher performance than the previous generation. But it will be much more than that.With 5G, we will see connectivity-as-a-service based on network slicing. 5G will enable organizations to move into new markets and build new revenue streams with radically new business models and use cases, including IoT applications.ALSO READ | Putting your data in the cloud could actually be more secure: Raimund GenesThe new capabilities of 5G will span several dimensions, including tremendous flexibility, lower energy needs, greater capacity, bandwidth, security, reliability and data rates, as well as lower latency and device costs. Hence, IoT will only become mainstream on a 5G footprint, using network slicing.
Ericsson has predicted that there will be 7 billion mobile broadband subscriptions in 2021. How will telcos cope?High video traffic volumes require efficient network management and cost-efficient delivery. Here, video optimization is needed to meet high quality of experience demanded by consumers, especially considering the high traffic demands occurring at peaks. With the rising user expectations and the growing focus on videos, apps and social media, operators would be required to ensure that their networks remain a relevant and vital part of users’ everyday experience. Operators are looking at network optimization solutions to accommodate the growing amount of video. We have a suite of mobile broadband products for optimization and compression, which helps operators get best-in-class spectral efficiency that provides enhanced capacity in the network to handle a sudden surge in data with excellent user experience.
Companies like yours are betting on the development of smart cities in India. Other than providing telecom network equipment and smart meters, what are the other solutions that Ericsson is working on to take advantage of Digital India?We have end-to-end solutions for smart and sustainable cities. Globally, we are working with multiple cities across many countries to help them become not only smart but sustainable. In India, we have been innovating and coming up with solutions which could meet varied demands of various cities/villages in the country.For example, we recently implemented Ericsson Connected aquaponics at Mori Village in Andhra Pradesh. The solution enables substantial savings on production cost through optimized use of raw materials for maximum yield as well as recycling 70% of the water, and additional revenue through organic farming. Besides, we have even deployed Ericsson smart water grid management systems at Mori Village, which offers real- time information on the quality of water, flow of water and levels of water in the water tanks via a cloud-based application which is accessible to everyone in the hierarchy.","Ericsson’s Magnus Ewerbring on status of 4G technology, impact of upcoming 5G technology and how telecom firms can face challenges of data traffic","Wed, Mar 08 2017. 03 15 AM IST",Ericsson’s Magnus Ewerbring: 5G tech will enable firms’ move into new markets +https://www.livemint.com/Money/CnLQtTnllIiynet9bV0C4I/Indian-market-expensive-currently-value-in-corporate-banks.html,"The Indian market looks expensive at current levels, according to Sanjeev Prasad , senior executive director and co-head of Kotak Institutional Equities. In a telephone interview, Prasad said the best of India’s macroeconomic scenario was behind us, but earnings could see a significant improvement going ahead, due to a very low base for sectors like banking and commodities. Edited excerpts: How do you view the Indian market at this point of time, with benchmark indices at two-year highs? Do you think there is froth building up, or is there value in the market?It is not a cheap market. If we get 5-6% returns from here for the rest of 2017 for the frontline indices, we should be happy. The mid-cap and small-cap space, however, is very expensive. We may find one or two names here and there, but largely, they are pricey.Most parts of the market are quite fully valued. In some cases such as consumer staple and discretionary sectors, they are even discounting fiscal year 2019 earnings. There is value only in parts of the market.There is value in a few sectors such as corporate banks and IT service companies, assuming potential positive developments in those sectors. For example, the corporate-focused banking sector could see a re-rating if there is some resolution on the NPL (non-performing loans) problem. Similarly, IT stocks are inexpensive given the market’s concerns regarding immigration and taxation issues in the US. If these issues play out with limited impact for the IT companies, the sector could see a re-rating. What is your take on the pharmaceutical sector at this point of time?There is some value selectively in stocks such as Cipla Ltd, Aurobindo Pharma Ltd... Aurobindo is cheap at 13 times FY19 P/E (price-to-earnings ratio). Cipla is also at 16.5 times FY19 earnings. Even Lupin is not looking too bad at 17.5 times FY19 earnings. The issue with this sector at large is that there is a fair amount of uncertainty on the pricing environment in the US. The uncertain pricing environment stems not so much from regulatory-led pricing challenges as market-led pricing challenges.In many of the generic products or segments where these companies operate, they have started to see a lot more competition. Clearly, profitability which had been very high on these molecules has and will start coming down. At the same time, because of the US FDA-related issues, these companies have not been able to introduce new molecules in their ANDA (abbreviated new drug application) pipelines in the US market. The current portfolio has started to see price erosion, and introduction of new products has got delayed at the same time. When do we see a significant recovery in corporate earnings?The funny thing about India’s earnings is that when we look at the top 50-100 large cap names, a disproportionately high share comes from global sectors such as IT and pharma, global commodity sectors and regulated sectors such as power utilities. So, irrespective of level of activity in the domestic economy, the earnings numbers can move in a different fashion. That has exactly what has happened over the last two-three years. Since early 2015, we have seen a very big improvement in India’s macroeconomic parameters—Inflation came down significantly and current account deficit has also declined sharply. However, earnings growth between FY14 and FY16 has been flat, if you look at Nifty-50 companies. One of the reasons for this was the collapse of global commodity prices – oil and metals, which hurt the earnings of upstream oil companies and metal producers. Also, we saw a slowdown in earnings for IT companies, and we also had company-specific USFDA issues affecting the profits of the pharma companies.Lastly, while banking should have done better with the economy improving, we had the problems of bad loans in the banking sector, which relates to the rapid expansion in wholesale credit in the last economic cycle. That is the dichotomy of India’s economy and earnings.Going forward, I do not see much of improvement in India’s macroeconomic parameters from where we are. Inflation has bottomed out, and will go higher from here to about 4-5%. If you look at interest rates, they have bottomed out too. Current account deficit may gradually widen, but may still be manageable. However, we could potentially see a big jump in earnings numbers and the reason for that is the very low base for sectors such as the banking and commodities. We expect credit costs for the banks to decline from 2HFY18, which will result in higher profits of the corporate banks. Also, the improvement in global commodity prices and implementation of anti-dumping duties on steel will lead to a sharp increase in the profits of the upstream oil & gas companies and the metals sector in FY18.What is your take on GDP numbers that came out last week? The issue is that the proxies that are used to make these estimates are largely from the formal sectors. It is not very clear how much of the impact on the informal sectors is captured in this data. So, it is possible that once more data points come out, we will a have more informed view on the third-quarter GDP data and we may even see some downward revision to the current numbers. However, it appears that the impact of demonetisation is not as high as was originally feared by the market.In recent times, we have seen the Tata–Mistry spat and some issues also spiking up at Infosys Ltd between founders and the management. What impact do you think such instances can have on the reputation of Indian companies?I would not want to comment on specific companies, but I think as a general fact, there may be challenges when there is a generational change in a way. Most of the Indian companies have founder-promoters or very long-serving professional managers who play a huge role in building the company and more importantly, the culture of the firm. The firm gets largely identified with the founder-promoter or with the professional manager, and these individuals typically have a very dominant influence on their companies. Some of the companies have put in a proper succession plan while some others have been somewhat lagging on this aspect. I would think a proper succession plan under which the successor is identified early enough and works with the incumbent for a longish period will address the issue of any discontinuity and discord. Finally, the boards of companies have to play a far bigger role in ensuring a smooth transition of power.How viable is it to run the telecom business in India?I think the telecom business model has changed dramatically in that companies will have to offer much higher data capacity to the customers, which can meet all the telecom requirements of the customer. Companies will have to work out the ARPUs (average revenue per user) that can financially support a much higher capacity usage by customers. The traditional model of pricing every service individually to the customer is dead. What Reliance Jio is trying to do is to up the game in terms of offering a lot of capacity to customers at a competitive ARPU, which makes sense to it based on its business plan and strategy. There is a paradigm shift that is happening in the telecom sector in that it will entail much higher investment by the companies in data capacity.","Irrespective of the level of activity in the domestic economy, the earnings numbers can move in a different fashion, says Kotak Institutional Equities’s Sanjeev Prasad","Wed, Mar 08 2017. 07 57 AM IST","Indian market expensive currently, value in corporate banks, IT: Sanjeev Prasad" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Znzg8X9Mp8e4Viv9A1VXHP/Viacom-said-in-talks-with-former-Fox-executive-to-lead-Param.html,"Los Angeles: Viacom Inc. is in talks with former 20th Century Fox studio chief Jim Gianopulos to run its Paramount Pictures unit and with Oscar-nominated producer Michael De Luca to become his second-in-command, people familiar with the situation said.Gianopulos is being considered to run the film and fledgling TV operations of the studio, which produced Mission: Impossible and Transformers, but no deal has been struck yet with either executive, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the negotiations are private. The talks could still fall apart, the people said.Paramount and Viacom declined to comment. Variety reported earlier that Paramount was homing in on hiring Gianopulos and De Luca.Viacom has been looking for new leaders to repair a studio coming off a disastrous year in which it lost money and finished last among its peers in box office market share. The company ousted Brad Grey last month, not long after he dismissed his top lieutenant, Rob Moore. The new hires are part of Viacom chief executive officer Bob Bakish’s plan to revamp the company’s flagging entertainment businesses.At an investor conference Tuesday, Bakish said that the company was “well along’’ in the hiring process at Paramount. The new management will need to rebuild the studio’s film slate for years to come. Besides long-in-the-works sequels and spinoffs this year and next for Mission: Impossible and Transformers, there is very little scheduled for release for 2019 and beyond, according to Box Office Mojo. The studio’s bombs over the past year included Monster Trucks and Ben-Hur.Bakish plans to devote about half of Paramount’s movie slate to projects based on TV series from cable networks like Nickelodeon and MTV. Stars of some of Viacom’s biggest shows, like comedians Amy Schumer and Jordan Peele, have gone off to make movies for other studios instead, to Bakish’s chagrin.Veteran film executive Gianopulos, 64, was one of the industry’s longest-running studio chiefs when he left 20th Century Fox last September. He’s known for rolling the dice on two films that today still rank as Hollywood’s biggest-ever movies: Titanic and Avatar. He spent 25 years at Fox, including 16 as chairman in charge of all film production, marketing and global distribution of film and TV content. He was replaced by Stacey Snider on 1 September.De Luca has been co-producing the hit Fifty Shades of Grey film franchise at Comcast Corp.’s Universal Pictures. He was previously head of production at Sony Corp.’s Columbia Pictures and at DreamWorks SKG and was chief operating officer at New Line Cinema, where he started his film career. He was nominated three times as a producer of the Oscar for best picture, for Captain Phillips, Moneyball and The Social Network. Bloomberg",Viacom is in talks with former 20th Century Fox studio chief Jim Gianopulos to run its Paramount Pictures unit and with Michael De Luca to become his second-in-command,"Wed, Mar 08 2017. 01 08 PM IST",Viacom said in talks with former Fox executive to lead Paramount +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ry99jjH334z6qPcCssVSLK/Lupins-FY18-health-chart-flags-risks-to-growth.html,"
Drug maker Lupin Ltd’s December quarter results are reason for optimism tinged with caution. Sales growth trends are looking good, especially in the crucial US market, which makes up 45% of formulation sales. Other markets did well and profitability is up too. President Donald Trump wants lower drug prices in the US. Billionaire investor Rakesh Jhunjunwala asked Lupin, on a conference call, how it could get affected. As of now, it’s not a worry was the company’s response. Lengthening drug approval times in the US are a more immediate worry. More competition in some key products is another concern for the drug maker.The real surprise in the company’s numbers was the sharp jump in profitability, with its Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) rising by 43.7% from a year ago. Its Ebitda margin rose by around three percentage points, with a similar gain sequentially.Healthy sales growth of 26.4% over a year ago meant that the drug maker’s operating costs were spread over a higher base. Growth was good across markets, with the US market growing by 57.6% and by 8.9% sequentially. Sales from products such as generic Glumetza, a diabetes drug, and ramp-up in sales of Methergine, a drug to treat postpartum haemorrhage, and sales from smaller products all contributed to growth. Lupin faced some competition in generic Fortamet, a drug to treat diabetes. Other regions did well too (see chart), with India growing despite demonetization and Lupin expects sales to revert to normal levels next quarter onwards.On a sequential basis, however, the company’s gross margin was a tad lower as sales increased by 4.6% but costs rose by 4.7%. Still, a slower increase in employee costs and a decline in margins boosted profitability. Also, research and development costs as a percentage of sales declined while favourable foreign exchange effects in the December quarter also helped.Lupin’s profit rose by 20.5%, as depreciation and interest costs rose sharply but other income increased as well. Net profit declined by 25.7% sequentially, chiefly due to a sharp increase in its tax incidence this quarter. Taxes can be lumpy across quarters. The company said it expects its effective tax rate to be at 28% and profitability to sustain at current levels.The company is expecting that US market growth will continue to benefit from an improving flow of launches, including from the Gavis acquisition. A ramp-up in sales in the controlled substances portfolio is also expected. More competition in generic Glumetza and Fortamet in fiscal year 2018 are risks that will play out. Lupin also has a large pipeline of products, and getting final approvals to launch should also be good for growth. Not getting them likewise will pull down growth. The company remains on the lookout for acquisitions, stating that it has cash to repay debt but wants to hold spare cash for any buyouts.Jhunjunwala, who holds a 1.8% stake in Lupin, asked the management about the risks of drug price controls in the US. The management said this will affect innovator firms and not generic companies. The new government’s emphasis on faster approvals may actually benefit generic companies, it said. But there is a risk. Any erosion in the value of the innovator drug’s market size reduces the potential market for a generic too.Lupin’s shares are down by a fifth from a year ago and trade at 20 times FY18 estimated earnings per share, based on the mean of estimates compiled by Reuters.","The real surprise in Lupin December quarter results was the sharp jump in profitability, with its Ebitda rising by 43.7% from a year ago","Fri, Feb 10 2017. 01 47 PM IST",Lupin’s FY18 health chart flags risks to growth +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/NSDn8dCp5MJZ5wcvs9VAxO/Cairn-India-Q3-profit-soars-nearly-15fold-to-Rs604-crore.html,"New Delhi: Energy explorer Cairn India Ltd on Thursday said profit after tax in the December quarter jumped nearly 15-fold to Rs604 crore on account of better price realisation and lower expenses, up from a restated profit of Rs41 crore a year ago.Crude oil price realisation jumped 31% to $46 a barrel, the company informed stock exchanges. The profit for the last comparable quarter was restated as required under the new accounting standards IndAS, which is based on fair valuation of assets and liabilities.Net revenue jumped 5% in the quarter under review to Rs2,149 crore from a year ago. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda), a measure of profitability, stood at Rs1,067 crore, 51% up from a year ago. During the quarter, Cairn produced 16.7 million barrels of oil equivalent across all its assets. “We have made use of the challenging oil price environment to achieve competitive returns even at Brent $40 a barrel for planned projects. We are in active discussions with world class oil field services companies to partner for the end to end outsourcing of certain projects,” the company stated, quoting acting chief executive officer Sudhir Mathur. The idea is to optimise cost and expedite project execution.Cairn said that its proposed merger with Vedanta Ltd. is expected to be completed in the first quarter of calendar year 2017 and the extension of its production sharing contract for the Barmer oilfield in Rajasthan was subjudice in the Delhi high court. The oil ministry is currently working on a new policy for extending the lease of 28 oil and gas blocks under terms that will let companies to invest more and add more revenue to the exchequer.","Cairn India Ltd’s net revenue jumped 5% in the December quarter under review to Rs2,149 crore from a year ago","Thu, Feb 09 2017. 08 51 PM IST",Cairn India Q3 profit soars nearly 15-fold to Rs604 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Money/bjMftQx76iJhyXLljjCrRO/ABB-Indias-surge-in-orders-may-underpin-high-valuations.html,"
ABB India Ltd has earned favour in the eyes of investors with the capital goods maker churning out a decent operating performance for the December quarter along with robust growth in new orders. The December quarter’s fresh order pool of Rs5,628 crore was a record 173% higher than a year ago. With this, ABB India’s order book at the end of 2016 is at a historic high of Rs11,841 crore. This leaves the company in a comfortable position with more than 12 months’ revenue visibility.Interestingly, the quarter’s revenue growth was just 2.7% year-on-year. What’s important, however, is that most of its business divisions have grown respectably from where they stood a year ago. The discrete automation and electrification products divisions’ revenue grew by about 9-10%, the power grids segment was flat and only that of the process automation division declined.Further, ABB India’s profit margin continued the upward trajectory of the last few quarters into the December quarter. The operating margin of 11.3% was about 50 basis points higher than a year back even as it shot past the Street expectation of 9.9%. Operating profit, therefore, expanded by 7.2% year-on-year, with discrete automation and electrification products being the best contributors of profit to the kitty.The better-than-expected performance also extended to ABB India’s net profit that jumped by 13.4% from the year-ago period.The company’s tightly managed costs and robust order book should see both revenue and profits trend higher from current levels. Of course, ABB India’s shares trade at expensive valuations of 49 times average estimated earnings for calendar year 2017. But then, the times are surely getting better for the company, what with its presence in power transmission, railways and Metros, besides other infra segments—all of which are northbound in the medium term. This gives ABB India an edge compared to some of its peers, who have a higher exposure to the private sector, which may take longer to look up.","The December quarter’s fresh order pool at ABB India of Rs5,628 crore was a record 173% higher than a year ago","Fri, Feb 10 2017. 08 28 AM IST",ABB India’s surge in orders may underpin high valuations +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/NajFG64fy5kwaji2pZ77PJ/BPCL-Q3-profit-jumps-47-to-Rs22719-crore.html,"Mumbai: State-run Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) has posted a 47% jump in net profit for the third quarter of this fiscal on higher market sales and crude throughput. Net profit came in at Rs2,271.9 crore against Rs1,545.5 crore registered in the third quarter of last fiscal. A Bloomberg poll of 19 analysts had pegged the net profit at Rs2,212.7 crore. BPCL recorded sales of Rs64,095.65 crore, an increase of 20%, against Rs53,237 crore reported in the third quarter of last fiscal. A Bloomberg poll of 16 analysts estimated the sales figures to come in at Rs54,110.2 crore. ALSO READ: Oil companies’ merger can be challenging yet beneficial: FitchDuring the quarter, crude throughput in its refineries was higher at 6.78 MT against 5.87 MMT in the corresponding quarter previous fiscal. The company reported increase in market sales mainly in segments of liquefied petroleum gas (12.42%), petrol (8.9%), re-gasified liquefied natural gas (52.43%) and aviation fuel (22.76%).The average gross refining margin (GRM) during the quarter stood at $5.90 per barrel against $7.67 per barrel for the October-December 2015. Gross refining margin is what a refining company makes from turning every barrel of crude oil into fuel.ALSO READ: BPCL’s market value crosses Rs1 trillion-markBPCL’s stock ended at Rs725.25 on BSE, up 0.85% from the previous close while India’s benchmark Sensex rose 0.14% to 28,329.70 points.BPCL on 25 January, saw its market value cross Rs1 trillion-mark. It is the second oil marketing company after Indian Oil Corp. Ltd and 26th overall to cross the milestone.","BPCL recorded sales of Rs64,095.65 crore in the third quarter, an increase of 20%, against Rs53,237 crore last fiscal","Thu, Feb 09 2017. 09 44 PM IST","BPCL Q3 profit jumps 47% to Rs2,271.9 crore" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/h60qLidKMUmwwvdH8fS1CL/ABB-India-Q4-net-profit-up-134-beats-analysts-estimates.html,"Mumbai: Power and automation technology company ABB India Ltd on Thursday reported a higher-than-expected 13.4% rise in net profit for the fourth quarter ended 31 December, helped by better operational performance.ABB India reported a standalone net profit of Rs146.79 crore for the fourth quarter compared with Rs129.40 crore in the year-ago quarter. Net sales rose about 3.3% to Rs2,440.95 crore from Rs2,364 crore a year earlier, missing average analysts’ estimate. The company follows January-December fiscal year. Ten analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected ABB to report standalone net profit of Rs137.40 crore on net sales of Rs2,599.50 crore for the fourth quarter.For the full-year ended 31 December, ABB’s standalone net profit rose 25.5% to Rs37,625 crore and net sales were up 6.2% to Rs8,515.56 crore.The company said its full-year order book rose to Rs12,466 crore while orders received in the December quarter stood at Rs5,628 crore. It has an order backlog of Rs11,821 crore as on 31 December.The company has posted its biggest growth in orders in recent years, ABB India said in a statement. “The investments in power transmission based on cutting edge technology, renewables, increased spend in infrastructure and transportation provided ABB India ample opportunities,” it said.ABB shares closed 1.38% up at Rs1,225.00 on the BSE on Friday while the benchmark Sensex index was up 0.14% to 28,329.70.",ABB India reported a standalone net profit of Rs146.79 crore for the fourth quarter compared with Rs129.40 crore in the year-ago period,"Thu, Feb 09 2017. 03 41 PM IST","ABB India Q4 net profit up 13.4%, beats analysts’ estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/hwLQ9Ztq3wyYUGpFYBJSVJ/Lupin-Q3-profit-rises-21-to-Rs633-crore-beats-estimate.html,"Mumbai: Lupin Ltd reported a 20.7% year-on-year rise in consolidated net profit for the quarter ended December, beating market expectations, as sales in its biggest market, the US, increased significantly.The pharmaceutical major’s consolidated net profit was Rs633.11 crore during the quarter up from Rs524.56 crore a year ago. The company’s sales rose 31.5% to Rs4,404.94 crore from Rs3,350.33 crore in the same period last year.According to a Bloomberg poll of 25 analysts, Lupin’s net profit for the quarter was estimated to be Rs619.7 crore.Sales in North America soared 57.6% to Rs2,175.5 crore. The region accounted for 49% of the company’s total sales. US sales grew 53.4% to $316 million. The company received marketing approval for 11 generic drugs and launched four products in the US during the quarter. India sales were up 11.9% at Rs991.2 crore. Lupin’s sales in Japan, Latin America and Germany also grew on a year-on-year basis.The company’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda), an indicator of its operating performance, was up 44.6% at Rs1,319.4 crore.Even as operating performance was strong, growth in net profit was capped by a sharp jump in tax expense and interest costs. The company’s tax expense increased 60.1% to Rs409.5 crore, while interest cost jumped to Rs45.93 crore from Rs9.89 crore. At 3.04pm, Lupin Ltd was trading at Rs1,499.40 on the BSE, up 0.79% from its previous close, while India’s benchmark Sensex index fell 0.09% to 28,312.53 points.",Lupin’s consolidated net profit was Rs633.11 crore during the third quarter up from Rs524.56 crore a year ago,"Thu, Feb 09 2017. 04 47 PM IST","Lupin Q3 profit rises 20.7% to Rs633.11 crore, beats estimate" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Dh11rkqZ18YoNxqpR2pbFO/Twitter-shares-drop-as-pace-of-growth-slows-to-1.html,"San Francisco: Twitter Inc. reported quarterly revenue that fell short of estimates after the struggling social-media company restructured its advertising sales force and pared staff. The shares tumbled.Fourth-quarter revenue was $717 million, missing the $740 million average analyst estimate, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Sales growth of 1% slowed dramatically in the period from the 48% gain a year earlier. Twitter added 2 million new users, bringing the total number of people who log in monthly to 319 million, the San Francisco-based company said Thursday in a statement. That was in line with analysts’ projections.Twitter has had trouble persuading advertisers to spend more money on its social-media platform as fewer people join. Pressure on the company mounted in the fourth quarter when its search for a potential buyer failed, forcing chief executive officer Jack Dorsey to focus on reaching profitability as an independent business. Twitter cut 9% of its staff, sold its Fabric developer business to Google and shut down its Vine short-video app. It also lost both its chief operating officer and chief technology officer, increasing the load on Dorsey, whose time is divided because of his other job—as CEO of Square Inc.“The fact that they’ve tolerated having a shared CEO is remarkable given the situation they’re in,” said Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group. “Unfortunately, it’s a situation of investor indifference—everyone is used to Twitter’s troubles by now.”ALSO READ | Twitter plans to hide abusive tweets, block repeat offendersTwitter fell as much as 10.2% to $16.81 before the start of trading in New York. The stock closed at $18.72 on Wednesday.Twitter’s profit excluding certain items was $119 million, or 16 cents a share, compared with the 12 cents per share analysts estimated on average. The company’s net loss widened to $167 million, or 23 cents a share. Twitter has said it is aiming for profitability this year.The company has been relying on live video partnerships, as well as video advertising, to jump-start user additions and revenue growth. With video, Twitter aims to appeal to a wider audience, including those people who may have decided its basic service—which lets anyone post 140-character updates to a feed that others can follow—wasn’t appealing. Meanwhile, to retain the users it does have, the company has made a push to address abuse and harassment on its service, which caused several high-profile departures from its social network last year.Video and curbs on abuse may not be enough to boost excitement about Twitter’s product, said James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co—even though the company is mentioned nearly daily in news reports about President Donald Trump.“It’s still in an identity crisis,” he said. “People that use Twitter get it, the world conceptually gets it, but your average potential user doesn’t.” Bloomberg",Twitter shares fell as much as 10.2% to $16.81 before the start of trading in New York. The stock closed at $18.72 on Wednesday,"Thu, Feb 09 2017. 07 43 PM IST",Twitter shares drop as pace of growth slows to 1% +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/5EVVgSHUEYn1C5jhhizSBL/Italys-UniCredit-bank-posts-massive-145-billion-loss.html,"Milan: Italian lender UniCredit fell to a heavy loss of €13.6 billion ($14.5 billion) in the fourth quarter as its new CEO moved to clean up the bank’s bad loan portfolio and fortify the bank’s financial health.Italy’s largest bank by assets, UniCredit said Thursday that it incurred €13.2 billion in one-off expenses, which included a previously announced €8.1-billion write-off on bad loans plus other charges including contributions to an Italian fund to save weaker banks.The loss was in line with analyst forecasts of €13.56 billion, as surveyed by data provider FactSet. The bank said that without the one-offs, the loss would have totaled €352 million, citing lower revenues.UniCredit said full-year losses totaled €11.8 billion, exceeding forecasts of €10.5 billion.","UniCredit said that it incurred €13.2 billion in one-off expenses, which included a previously announced €8.1-billion write-off on bad loans plus other charges","Thu, Feb 09 2017. 08 45 PM IST",Italy’s UniCredit bank posts massive $14.5 billion loss +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/rSjQZaML7insMgfKrmaIaI/Bank-of-India-Q3-net-profit-falls-20-to-Rs102-crore.html,"Mumbai: Bank of India swung to a surprise profit in the December quarter from a loss in the year earlier as asset quality improved.Net profit was Rs101.72 crore in the three months ended 31 December compared to a Rs1,505.58 crore loss in the year-ago period. The bank was expected to post a net loss of Rs11.19 crore, according to estimates of 14 Bloomberg analysts.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 5.7% to Rs2,862.61 crore in the December quarter from Rs2,708.04 crore last year.“Government has decided to infuse Rs1,784 crore as equity capital in our bank out of which Rs1,338 crore was received in September and balance amount Rs446 crore is expected to infuse this quarter… During this quarter we are planning to raise between Rs1,000-1,500 crore additional tier one capital and equal amount would be raised by way of tier two bonds,” said Melwyn Rego, managing director and chief executive of Bank of India.In the September quarter, the bank had sold its 18% stake in Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance to Life Insurance Corp. of India, earning Rs495 crore pre-tax profit.Other income increased 69% to Rs1,769.25 crore in the third quarter from Rs1,047.27 crore in the same period last year.Slippages for the December quarter stood at Rs3,210 crore whereas recovery stood at Rs3,700 crore.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) at Bank of India declined 0.92% to Rs51,781.06 crore at the end of the December quarter from Rs52,261.95 crore in the September quarter. As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were 13.38% at the end of the December quarter compared with 13.45% in the previous quarter and 9.18% a year ago.Provisions and contingencies increased marginally to Rs2,302.57 crore in the third quarter from Rs2,296.22 crore a quarter ago. Net NPAs rose to 7.09% in the December quarter compared with 7.56% in the previous quarter and 5.25% in the same quarter last year.","Bank of India’s net interest income rose 5.7% to Rs2,862.61 crore in the December quarter from Rs2,708.04 crore last year","Thu, Feb 09 2017. 08 32 PM IST",Bank of India posts Rs101.72 crore profit in December quarter +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/1N8p8lnR28DSSxHSTxQtzI/Hero-MotoCorps-Q3-profit-declines-but-exceeds-estimates.html,"
Delhi: Cost-cutting efforts and lower raw material prices helped India’s largest two-wheeler company contain the impact of demonetization on its net profit, which declined 2.67% in the December quarter from a year ago, but beat analyst estimates handsomely.For the third quarter of 2016-17, Hero MotoCorp Ltd’s net profit declined from Rs793.23 crore in the year ago period to Rs772.05 crore. A Bloomberg poll of 28 analysts had projected a profit of Rs711.1 crore.Net sales declined to Rs6,898.64 crore from Rs7,807.77 crore and the company sold 1.4 million scooters and motorcycles in the quarter, down from 1.69 million a year ago. Hero’s chairman and managing director Pawan Munjal struck an optimistic note. “The industry did witness some negative sentiments during the October-December quarter, but with the agility shown by the government in bringing about a slew of measures to aid citizens at large, the market scenario has begun improving,” he said in a statement.Hero shares fell 1.07% to Rs3,223.80 on BSE. The benchmark Sensex declined 0.16% to 28,289.92 points. The earnings were announced after the end of trading on Wednesday. The company said that its ongoing margin rationalization programme and softening of material costs helped it post better numbers amid the circumstances.The results come on the back of a strong September quarter, when Hero posted its highest ever profit for a quarter at Rs1,004.22 crore with good rains in the monsoon season boosting consumer demand in the run up to the festive season.Hero’s numbers were subdued in the December quarter after the Narendra Modi-led government invalidated older high-value currency notes in early November. The move hit sales of scooters and motorcycles, some of which, especially in smaller towns and rural areas, are bought on cash. In December, sales of two-wheelers and three-wheelers saw the sharpest decline in monthly sales in 18 years. Sales of other products, including consumer packaged goods, were also hit. Rating agency Crisil expects the situation to return to normal by the end of the fourth quarter, although it says not all affected businesses will rebound equally. “The outlook for fiscal 2018 will be shaped by how long the cash crunch-led disruption lasts. In our base case, we have taken it as a 2-quarter phenomenon—Q3 and Q4 and normalization after that. In this scenario, growth will start approaching the 8% mark in the next fiscal if the monsoon is normal,” Crisil said in a 7 January report.The government says the impact of currency ban will not spill over to the next financial year.Munjal claimed the government’s move, along with measures unveiled in the Union budget, and the implementation of the goods and services tax from 1 July, would help the cause of long-term growth. “2017 may well turn out to be a turning point for the industry as well as the country’s economy.”",Hero MotoCorp’s net profit in the December quarter declined to Rs772.05 crore from Rs793.23 crore in the year-ago period,"Thu, Feb 09 2017. 04 53 AM IST","Hero MotoCorp’s Q3 profit declines, but exceeds estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/1BfeKZdDKCfAGxBdDssvBO/Air-India-will-not-oppose-Qatar-Airways-bid-to-set-up-airlin.html,"
New Delhi: Air India chairman and managing director Ashwani Lohani, 59, took over the reins of the national carrier in August 2015. Since Lohani took over, Air India has seen improved industrial relations and continued expansion. In an interview, Lohani comments on the airline’s priorities in 2017. Edited excerpts:
What is Air India’s focus area this year?The key objective is expansion and consolidation. About 35 planes would come this year and we have to fly them. Of these, six will be long-haul planes which will go international with one return flight a day. We are participating aggressively in government’s regional connectivity scheme Udan. We have ordered 10 ATRs and we are ordering 10 more this year so our ATR fleet would become 30 by end of 2017. In the next two years, we are looking to add 20-25 planes so I will have a 50-plane airline in the country. Some more international connections are being planned—Washington, Scandinavian countries. Israel is under consideration. We will be increasing frequency to Australia on existing routes. Then we are working to improve our services still further. We will improve our food further, staff should become more aggressive—in marketing, we have become very aggressive. And we want to keep on earning higher operating profits. Air India has almost come on track, we just have to find a solution to the huge debt we have.
You have been very vocal on several issues including massive debt burden piled onto the airline?We have to run the organization openly. If you are working with honesty and commitment and not looking for a single illegal penny, then why should we not speak openly? I will. How do I compete with private carriers when our people are afraid of decision-making because of so many processes, while others can take decisions so quickly? The problems have to be accepted and brought in the public domain. The reasons have to be known—Rs50,000 crore debt and the fact that we are bound by a lot of rules and procedures.
There are things in the works to defuse debt issues?We have to do financial restructuring. It’s a question of life and death. We will also have to inject fresh blood.ALSO READ | Govt’s plan to list Air India is a chimera
But you have also moved a proposal to increase age limit from 58 to 60 in Air India?Yes, because till the time we induct new people—following the long approval and induction process laid down by the government—we need experienced people to work in several areas.
Does the lack of independent directors on the board of the airline for almost a year hamper decision-making as some board members becoming wary of decision-making?That’s something that the ministry is looking into. The decision for additional planes (major decision) was taken while they were there.
Even though there is no move towards Air India privatization, do you have a view on it? My job is to run the airline. Privatization is subject to the government view.
Banks led by State Bank of India seem to have said no to conversion of their debt to equity in Air India?There is nothing like they have said no to it. We are still talking to banks to convert some of the debt into equity; some way has to be found out. Discussions are going on. We want it to closed at the earliest but it’s not something in our hands.
Does it worry you that while you’re the biggest international airline out of India with a 17% share, your domestic market share has been shrinking?One thing I have to remember is that we are an international airline. That is our market. Domestic we went down because our capacity remained fixed, while others’ increased a lot. So our domestic market went down because of inaction on our part. And the second reality is that while private airlines can place a 300-400 plane order, we can’t do it. I will not be able to get it past the system. There would be bribery allegations. So, market share will fall; we won’t be able to stop unless I can also order planes, run it like an owner, which I am not. So, we have to brand Air India more and more as an international airline. And we have to tap the untapped tier-2 and tier-3 cities where there is little competition.
Does IndiGo’s 40% market share in the domestic market impact you, your pricing?It’s not very good for the ordinary passengers for somebody to have such a large market share. It will almost become monopolistic if it crosses 50%.
You have been benevolent in giving staff access—everyone from the top to the bottom can meet and seek help. Has that really helped the airline?The staff are more aggressive, more responsive. We are supporting our staff. It is highly beneficial for the airline. The chairman of the company has to be attached to the ground. Those days are gone when we can run it like a maharaja. Air India chairman cannot be like a maharaja. I have to know what’s happening on the ground, I have to know my staff, I have to know my territory. If you are not involved, you will make wrong decisions, wrong assessments and you will always have an HR (human resources) issue. That’s why we never blame our staff; it’s our systems, our processes, our past that has to be blamed. In any airline, the number one focus has to be HR, the number two focus has to be HR and the number three focus has to be HR, then comes the rest. If staff is happy, we will serve the passenger well, the cleaner we will keep the planes.
You had plans to have an alliance with the Railways?We did try but it did not work out. The plan was to have (the) wait list passengers of the Railways come to us so we could fly them last minute. It would have worked very well.
One hears how in the past some private airlines would often complain to the aviation ministry when Air India dropped fares and then Air India had to back off and keep fares up. How has it been for you when it comes to similar interference?Yes, but in this government, one thing is very clear—there is no interference, there are no dalals (middlemen), there is no expectation to do anything wrong. So, we have absolutely no issue on this regard. We are running Air India—besides the bottleneck of processes that comes with being a government organization— impeccably.
Do you expect to get a big chunk of the Rs500 crore subsidy the government is giving to all those planning to fly regional routes. In RCS (regional connectivity scheme) you can’t really fly big planes and people don’t have small planes . So, we have the first mover advantage. We will be able to connect 40-50 cities within the next 18 months. My thinking is that a lot of places, routes will be viable on their own—like Delhi-Kanpur we have started, it’s doing well. Then let’s say Lucknow-Dehradun we are planning, it will work on its own. In some places, it will not work on its own. So, it will be a blend of both. We have not worked out how much subsidy we will be able to get.
There were plans to bring a strategic investor for Air India’s Nagpur aircraft maintenance facility?There is no demand. That we have given up. We will run it ourselves. You will see a total turnround of Alliance Air in 2017-18. I expect it to be a profitable airline. So, our Alliance Air will become profitable, Air India Air Transport Services Ltd (ground handling subsidiary) is profitable, Air India Express is profitable. Air India Engineering and Air India will take time.
You were initially very unhappy with Air India’s Star Alliance relationship?Star Alliance is necessary. Now that our airline is becoming alright, it will get substantial advantage from Star Alliance. We will maintain the Star relationship.
Qatar wants to set up an airline in India. What’s your stand?We don’t have any position. We are basically running our own airline. It’s for the government to decide, there is no airline’s role there.
But in the past, you have opposed such moves, even written to aviation ministry against giving any bilateral rights to Qatar?The call has to be taken by the ministry. Air India has no locus standi in the matter. We will not oppose it, we will leave it to the government.
In the end, what more can a consumer look forward from the airline this year?Good food, good cabin and WiFi should start soon in domestic flights from around June this year.","In an interview, Air India boss Ashwani Lohani talked about the Udan scheme for regional aviation, competition from IndiGo, privatization and debt issues","Mon, Mar 20 2017. 08 11 AM IST",Air India won’t oppose Qatar Airways bid to set up airline in India: Ashwani Lohani +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/65IM1NYBFFgqWAF2osxIUO/Vijay-Mallyas-20-million-sky-mansion-is-almost-ready-B.html,"
Bengaluru: Almost 400 feet from the ground, businessman Vijay Mallya’s mansion in the sky in Bengaluru is getting ready. The mansion-style penthouse is mounted on a giant cantilever slab on the top of Kingfisher Towers—residences at UB City, which is being built on a 4.5-acre land parcel that once housed his ancestral home.Sprawled over 40,000 sq. ft across two levels (34th and 35th) with a helipad on the top, the penthouse is surrounded by an open deck that offers a 360-degree viewing platform. There’s an infinity pool to boot. The penthouse is part of a skyscraper, but it is as exclusive as a private villa with its two elevators; it shares nothing with the rest of the residences.The $20-million (that’s the rough value of the penthouse) question: will Mallya, a fugitive from justice who left for the UK in March 2016 as lenders and investigating agencies closed in on him, ever get to live in his white house in the sky?The skyscraper, which will be the fanciest address in the city once ready, is being developed as an extension of UB City, the luxury retail and office space built under a joint development agreement between United Breweries Holdings Ltd (UBHL) and Prestige Estates Projects Ltd. UBHL owns 55% and the developer 45%. Prestige Estates, which is also constructing the building, has 42 apartments—8,000 sq. ft each with four bedrooms and five car parks—of which it has sold 34 and kept the remaining eight to sell once the building is fully done. The last sale was for around Rs.25 crore.UBHL, which has the penthouse and 39 of the apartments, sold and issued allotment letters for seven, for a little over Rs150 crore, according to the company’s 2016 annual report. The sales were probably completed in 2012 and 2013. Since 2014, UBHL has been barred from selling the flats.Prestige has sold some of the apartments as shells while some of them have their interiors designed by its interior design firm Morph Design Co. “It was a challenge to construct the mansion on a huge cantilever at that height, but we have ensured we build it exactly the way it was conceived. It’s a complex structure and the finishing work is going on,” said Prestige Estates’ chairman Irfan Razack. “We will finish the project as per contract and hand it over,” Razack said.In January, the debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru ruled in favour of State Bank of India (SBI) and allowed it to start the process of recovering the Rs6,203.35 crore it is owed by Mallya’s companies. Mallya, chairman of UBHL, and his companies Kingfisher Airlines, UBHL and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money which, along with interest, adds up to more than Rs9,000 crore. In its application, Kingfisher Towers is listed under other known assets of UBHL, which means it (the apartments owned by the firm) can be sold by the recovery officer to pay the dues of the bank. In September 2016, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) attached Rs6,630 crore worth of properties belonging to Mallya in the ongoing money laundering probe that included flats in Kingfisher Tower, Bangalore (Rs565 crore), along with the Mandwa Farm House, Alibaug (Rs25 crore), and shares of UBHL and United Spirits Ltd.Indeed, it isn’t inconceivable that the penthouse could soon be up for sale. “Only the external structure of the penthouse is being constructed. The interiors will remain pending since there isn’t any clarity on the matter on who the claimant is,” said a person familiar with the development who didn’t want to be named. When contacted, a UB spokesperson declined to comment. While the developer Prestige is gearing up to finish the project and hand over the homes to the respective buyers by this year-end, uncertainty clouds the fate of UBHL’s share of apartments and, of course, Mallya’s mansion.“Under the money laundering Act, an order of conviction will result in confiscation of property by the government,” said S.S. Naganand, senior counsel appearing for the lenders consortium.“If money laundering is not proven, the debt remains and what will happen to this property is they (banks) will try to recover dues. There will be an attempt to sell off and recover dues and any sale proceedings will be realized and appropriated towards his dues. If after this anything remains, it will be given to him,” Naganand added. Mallya would have liked to keep the penthouse.“The mansion is what Mallya always wanted. His family home on the same plot of land was like a British colonial bungalow and he wanted to replicate that (in the penthouse),” said a prominent architect, who didn’t want to be named.",It isn’t inconceivable that the mansion-style penthouse in Bengaluru could soon be up for sale to recover dues that Vijay Mallya owes to banks,"Mon, Mar 20 2017. 05 11 PM IST",Vijay Mallya’s $20 million ‘sky mansion’ in Bengaluru is almost ready. But will he get to live in it? +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OHTpMcpoCUciI5bgDwbQoL/Snapdeal-to-invest-20-million-in-Freecharge-names-Jason-Ko.html,"New Delhi: Snapdeal, run by Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd, has named Jason Kothari as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Freecharge, the e-commerce marketplace said on Monday. It has also committed to invest $20 million in the payments services arm.Kothari, the former CEO of Housing.com, joined Snapdeal as its chief strategy and business officer in January, following the merger of SoftBank-backed Locon Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which runs Housing.com, with PropTiger (Elara Technologies Pte. Ltd).Kothari will continue in his role at Snapdeal and will take up the additional charge at Freecharge, Snapdeal said. He is also accorded a seat in the board of directors of Freecharge.Kothai’s appointment was anticipated after former Freecharge CEO Govind Rajan resigned last month. Kothari had stepped in to manage the operations at the wallets firm, as part of his larger responsibility to oversee operations at Snapdeal’s portfolio companies.“We remain committed to the success and vision of Freecharge. Jason is a strong, strategic and versatile business leader and entrepreneur who has already been the CEO of two successful companies. We are delighted to announce his leadership role at Freecharge,” Snapdeal CEO Kunal Bahl said in a statement.Kothari, who led Housing.com as CEO from August 2015 to January 2017, was earlier the CEO and vice-chairman of US-based entertainment company Valiant Entertainment. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.“The digital payments space in India is forecasted to be over $1 trillion by 2025. I’m excited to join the talented team at Freecharge at such a high-growth and dynamic time in the industry and expect Freecharge to continue to play a key role in this digital payments revolution,” Kothari said in a statement.Freecharge, which was acquired by Snapdeal at a valuation of around $450 million, is one of leading wallet firms in the country alongside Paytm and Mobikwik. It was founded by Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon in 2010.The announcement comes at a time when parent Snapdeal is pitching to investors for a fresh funding round.Mint reported in January that Snapdeal, which posted Rs3,316 crore in losses on sales of Rs1,457 crore in the fiscal ending March 2016, was in talks with SoftBank Group Corp. to raise funds at a valuation of $3-4 billion, significantly lower than the $6.5 billion peak it touched in its previous round. It had also held talks with strategic and financial investors to part-sell Freecharge, but the deal did not go through over an expectation mismatch in valuations, Mint reported.",Jason Kothari will continue in his role as chief strategy and business officer at Snapdeal and will take up the additional charge at Freecharge,"Mon, Mar 20 2017. 02 41 PM IST","Snapdeal to invest $20 million in Freecharge, names Jason Kothari as CEO" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/LiQReLdThbn7VRZa9AKULK/Arundhati-Bhattacharya-Women-can-have-it-all.html,"Hong Kong: Arundhati Bhattacharya is the first woman to head State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender.In 2016, she was listed as the 25th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.Bhattacharya was one of the key business leaders tasked with the implementation of the demonetisation exercise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Her role was significant as she heads a state-owned financial services company with assets worth $460 billion, and more than 14,000 branches spread across the country.“The job to remonetize India has been an enormous task,” explains Bhattacharya. “Nowhere has an economy taken out 86% of its currency in circulation. And, specifically, not an economy of 1.3 billion people which is as cash-intense as India is. Coupled with the fact that we, in the banking system, did it without any notice and preparatory time. We were just pushed off the deep end and expected to swim. And, I can say with some pride, that we did it, and did it very well.”Speaking at the Asia Society in Hong Kong this month on the opportunities and challenges in India, Bhattacharya noted that there had been a lot of concern that India’s third-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) numbers would take a beating because of demonetisation. But this has not come to pass.“Despite demonetisation, India’s GDP growth is 7%. India is on track,” she says, with some degree of satisfaction.The five state election results in India this week has also doubly endorsed this view of the SBI chairman.“Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned the narrative around on demonetisation very quickly by promoting the move as one way of ending systemic corruption in the country. Where his critics assailed him and questioned the economic logic behind the move, he managed to convince the people that, for the first time, someone was targeting the corrupt and rich sections of the nation,” she explains.Bhattacharya claims that India is on the right track today because it has a stable and trusted political leadership that has effectively put into action its vision for a corruption-free digital economy that a majority of the nation buys into.“Had it not been for the groundswell of support by the people of India, we would not have seen such a huge exercise of demonetisation bounce off without a single riot or a single law and order issue.”The 60-year old Bhattacharya was born in a well-educated Bengali family.She was raised in Bhilai by Prodyut Kumar Mukherjee, who was working with the Bhilai Steel Plant as an engineer, and Kalyani Mukherjee, who was a homeopathic doctor.With a degree in English literature, Bhattacharya was determined to pursue the path of journalism; but as it happens often, life took her on a detour.In 1977, she decided to sit for the SBI probationary officers exam and nailed it. She entered the banking sector and has not looked back since. Bhattacharya has become a role model for women in India today.She credits her husband, Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur professor and engineer Pritimoy Bhattacharya, and her extended family, which stepped in to help raise her daughter, Sukrita, who was born in 1995.Bhattacharya says she was also guided along the way by her mentor and former chairman of SBI, M.S. Verma, who advised her “to never give up” even when the going gets rough. She made this her mantra.Today, Bhattacharya has become the first chairperson, in the 210-year long history of SBI, to get an extension after the retirement age of 60.“I know Miss Indra Nooyi, the head of PepsiCo, has been credited with saying ‘you can’t have it all’. But, I think, that depends on what your definition of ‘all’ is. If you can define it in a way that is practical and pragmatic then it is possible to have it ‘all.’” The SBI chairperson says many women regularly fall off the workforce ladder because they think they will not be able to properly take care of the responsibilities of the family and the workplace.“Women being women, they are very sincere, committed and honest in what they do. If they feel they are short changing some segment of their responsibility, they have a tendency of holding themselves back. What I would like to tell them is that it is not necessarily true that you will short-change one or the other.”She often gives this analogy that when one is driving in a tunnel on a dark night on a highway and can only see up to the point where the headlights go; beyond that, your vision sees sheer darkness.“But, what lies ahead is a matter of your belief,” she explains. “Most of the time, women believe that what lies ahead is a precipice. Whereas, if you continue to drive, and stay on the path, the road will open up in front of you, and you will reach your destination. You don’t need to turn around and abandon the journey.”Bhattacharya’s journey has been defined by hard work, optimism, and steely persistence. It has led her to be at the forefront of India’s economic successes in the past few decades. In her own modest way, she has also helped shape it.Looking at the future, the SBI chairperson believes that one of the critical ways that India’s growth will leapfrog will be when “we get eight to ten really good chief ministers”.In her view, this trend has already taken hold as most chief ministers today realize that if they don’t bring about development in their state, they are not going to last long.“Earlier, the idea was to keep people poor, keep people illiterate, pay them just before the election, and you’ll get the votes,” she explains.“Now they have realized that the people are taking the payment from every party, and then simply electing who they want. And who they want to elect are the candidates and party that delivers maximum growth and good governance.”A lesson that was clearly on display this week in the results of the Indian state elections.Edited excerpts from an interview:
Do you think India is set to become a digital economy in the near future or is this still a distant dream?India is definitely set to leapfrog using digital in a manner that is not used anywhere in the world. Today, for instance, India has the largest biometric database in the world. So, out of 1.3 billion people, 1.1 billion people have what is called an Aadhaar number, a unique identification number, given on the basis of 10 fingerprints and retina scans. So, there’s no way of mistaking one person for the other. The government has now asked this number to be linked to each person’s bank account. Very soon, we will have a system where Indian citizens will be able to operate their bank account using only the unique identification number.They don’t need a card, or a signature, or anything else, just their unique identification number will suffice. This is unprecedented in India and elsewhere.Second, the country has recently also created what is called a UPI, or Unified Payment Interface. It is a payment system that allows money transfer between any two bank accounts by using a smartphone. UPI allows a customer to pay directly from a bank account to different merchants, both online and offline, without the hassle of typing credit card details, IFSC (Indian Financial System Code), or net banking/wallet passwords. These huge digital innovations are a sure indicator that India is well on its way to becoming a 21st-century digital economy.
Has demonetisation worked to achieve the goal of a digital India?Yes, I think one of the biggest benefits of this exercise has been the boost given to the digital economy. The fact that UPI has come in very quickly is indicative of this trend. Necessity is the mother of invention. Because there was a necessity to create such a payment system, it’s already a reality.
In what way has demonetisation helped with accounting for black money and reducing corruption in your view?Because of demonetisation, there is much more focus today on the shell companies that were used to channel black money. And the government has already indicated that they will look at closing down those companies. This is important because these shell companies have been there for the past 100 years! But nobody had really done anything about closing them down and closing that loophole. Money that was in the cupboards is now in the banking system. The government, thus, has a much better handle on where the revenues are, and how they can be included in the tax net.
While foreign investment into India has grown significantly in the past three years, what are the remaining barriers to foreign direct investment (FDI)?One, is, of course, the ease of doing business itself. India has to continue to become much more transparent so that if a foreign investor makes an application, they should have clarity, and be able to predict ahead of time if and when they are going to get approval. Second, the time it takes to get these approvals needs to be reduced. Third, a single window clearance is necessary, and, fourth, a better centre-state coordination. This is already underway. Finally, more predictability on government policies will help in boosting foreign investment so that the investor’s risk is properly balanced.The government is trying to make these models more robust by giving the kind of assurances that were earlier not available.","‘Stay on the chosen path, don’t abandon the journey’ is SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya’s advice to women in the workforce","Sat, Mar 18 2017. 12 43 AM IST",Arundhati Bhattacharya: Women can have it all +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/D8bT0xvqA0MTjH4BeQlMmO/Vijay-Mallya-served-nonbailable-warrant-extradition-order.html,"Mumbai: A magisterial court in Mumbai issued Friday a non-bailable arrest warrant and an extradition order against businessman Vijay Mallya in a service tax default case.The court also issued a non-bailable warrant against Sanjay Agarwal, former chief executive of Mallya-owned, and now grounded, Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.“The Esplanade metropolitan magistrate’s court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya, to be executed through the Ministry of External Affairs, and also an extradition order,” said service tax department counsel Advait Sethna. Mallya owes over Rs100 crore to the department as of now, he added. India has an extradition treaty with the UK (where Mallya is believed to be staying) and therefore the court’s order can be executed by the concerned authorities, the lawyer said. The service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore in 2011-12. The airline collected service tax from passengers but did not deposit it with the department, it said. “Mallya and Kingfisher CEO Sanjay Agarwal admitted the demand, but the company did not pay up the dues,” said Sethna. The department then moved the court for issuance of an non-bailable warrant and an extradition order. In April 2016, a special court for Prevention of Money Laundering Act cases too had issued an arrest warrant against Mallya, while in January this year a CBI court issued an non-bailable warrant against the beleaguered liquor baron in an IDBI loan default case.",The service tax dept’s non-bailable arrest warrant and extradition order pertains to unpaid dues of the grounded Kingfisher Airlines,"Fri, Mar 17 2017. 10 26 PM IST","Vijay Mallya served non-bailable warrant, extradition order in service tax default case" +https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/d57baTcStbebeE7oXinVEN/Amit-Agarwal-Making-Amazon-amazing.html,"
If Amit Agarwal, 42, had decided to pursue his initial ambition of becoming a primary-school teacher and starting his own school, the landscape of India’s booming e-commerce business may have looked a little different.
For it’s possible that Flipkart, the Indian e-commerce juggernaut, would have continued to enjoy a monopoly over India’s $15 billion (around Rs98,000 crore) e-commerce market. The Tiger Global Management-fuelled funding frenzy that gripped India’s nascent start-up ecosystem during 2014 and the better part of 2015 may have lasted longer and Indian “unicorn” start-ups with frothy valuations may have never witnessed a reckoning.
Instead, India’s consumer Internet business witnessed the staggering rise of Amazon, and a chain of events that led to a correction in the valuations of Internet businesses in the country.
Spearheading Amazon’s multi-billion-dollar bet on India was Agarwal, who has been with the company for 18 years, having joined the Internet behemoth after a friend at Stanford prodded him to.
“Teaching was always the career (I had) in mind. I landed up here by accident,” says Agarwal, country manager at Amazon India, who has just got promoted to global senior vice-president.
Agarwal joined Amazon in 1999 in Seattle, at a time when it was only selling books. Since then he has been part of almost every single large bet that the retailer has made—starting from Amazon’s core online marketplace business to Amazon Web Services (AWS, the company’s cloud-computing business), to Amazon’s march into India.
Even by Amazon’s exacting benchmarks, Agarwal’s career trajectory stands out—he is one of the youngest members of Amazon chief executive officer (CEO) Jeff Bezos’ core team of top executives and insiders believe he is being groomed for a bigger role.
I’m meeting Agarwal early evening on a weekday at the five-star Sheraton Grand, which overlooks Amazon’s India headquarters in a towering skyscraper in west Bengaluru. Dressed in a fitted mauve shirt, dark blue jeans and casual Italian leather shoes, he appears media-savvy and articulate.
As we order green tea, Agarwal tells me how he came to join Amazon. “When I was at Stanford (studying computer science), pretty much every adviser that you wanted to work with was working with a start-up.” Google started in a basement; you could see Yahoo and other start-ups on campus. So it seemed logical to join one of these places, he says.
Agarwal hails from Mumbai, where his father worked as a chemical engineer. He cracked the Joint Entrance Exam and had the option of going to the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, which was close to his house. He chose IIT, Kanpur, instead. Stanford and Amazon followed.
It was during his early days at Amazon that Agarwal met his future wife, an architect. They married in 2003, shortly before Agarwal returned to India to head the AWS team. The couple have an 11-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son.
Before joining Amazon, Agarwal had dabbled in a couple of early-stage technology ventures—starting off at Cambridge Technology Partners in Silicon Valley and moving to Informatica (also in the valley) a few months later. But he began to grow restless “sitting in a corner, writing codes”. Amazon had approached him a couple of times, and when it did so again, Agarwal decided it was time to move.
Unusually, he says his love for mountaineering made the decision easier. “It was a phase of my life when I wanted to be in the outdoors and I wanted to hike, so I thought Seattle was a good place. So, I was like, if Amazon is going to pay me to get to Seattle, let me join the company. That’s how I landed up at Amazon,” says Agarwal.
He started working at Amazon as a programmer in a team that would eventually roll out Amazon’s now famous online marketplace.
As fate would have it, his first proper face-to-face meeting with Bezos happened within a year of his joining the company. “I had an idea and I don’t know why, but I sent an email to Jeff, saying I wanted to discuss it with him,” says Agarwal. Bezos replied immediately, saying, “Come down in 15 minutes and tell me what the idea is.”
It was about creating an online rental marketplace. “Now I would think differently about that idea—but the fact that he was so supportive and humble about it was very touching,” says Agarwal.
He worked in the marketplace team for five years before moving on to Amazon’s highest-margin business till date, AWS. In 2004, Agarwal shifted to India to lead what was one of AWS’ first teams, technically starting Amazon’s journey in the country.
The project, shrouded in secrecy, was code-named “Subway”—a reference to the fact that it was a payments system that allowed machines to pay each other, a core part of billing at AWS. Three years later, he moved back to Seattle as technical adviser to Bezos, when Kindle was being launched.
His biggest role till date, however, has been to lead Amazon’s push into India, which is expected to become a $50 billion e-commerce market over the next five years.
When Amazon first launched operations here in June 2013, not many expected it to pose a serious challenge to Flipkart. Even smaller rival Snapdeal was gaining investor traction. To put it simply, many expected Amazon to meet the same fate it had in China, where it came off second-best to Alibaba.
How wrong the critics would prove to be.
In July 2014, a day after Flipkart announced that it had raised $1 billion, Bezos committed to investing $2 billion in the India business.
Amazon grew at a faster pace during the last quarter of 2015 than it had in all of 2014. Sales at Flipkart began stagnating—for at least six months since November 2015, its monthly sales remained flat. In fact, Amazon briefly overtook Flipkart’s monthly sales on a stand-alone basis in mid-2016—Flipkart did about Rs2,100 crore in monthly sales in both July and August, while Amazon’s numbers were just a little over Rs2,100 crore, driven by strategically timed discounts and a sale event.
Under Agarwal, Amazon launched initiatives such as Chai Cart, deploying three-wheeled mobile carts to navigate a city, serve tea, water and lemon juice to small business owners and teach them about selling online; introduced cash on delivery; and began Project Udaan, which aims to teach offline shoppers how to shop online through Internet-equipped physical stores.
“If you had told me that this is where we would be in three-and-a-half years, I think we would have had people laugh at us. It’s unbelievable for anybody out there,” says Agarwal.
Fortunes change quickly in the e-commerce business, however. Amazon has continued to grow strongly over the past year, but Flipkart too has witnessed an upswing in fortunes over the last six months, reclaiming its pole position during the Diwali festive season sale when it pulled in monthly sales of Rs5,000 crore, about 10% higher than Amazon’s numbers in October.
“Each quarter is like a year,” agrees Agarwal.
It’s almost 7pm, and Agarwal is restless. His day starts early—he wakes up by 5.30am to go for a run. “I try to spend whatever time is left with family. My office knows that when it’s 6pm, it’s hard to hold me back,” he says.
I try to prod him into talking about Amazon’s intense, even public, rivalry with Flipkart. After the Diwali sale in October, Flipkart’s then CEO Binny Bansal had said the American retailer had inflated sales by including low-priced items such as hing (asafoetida) and churan (digestive powder). A couple of days later, Agarwal responded, saying Amazon had accomplished in three years what Flipkart hadn’t, though it had launched earlier and acquired companies such as Myntra and Jabong.
“I’m a runner. When you run (a marathon), you don’t check after 10m and see if you’re ahead. If you do, then it’s going to be a very long race for you because you might trip,” says Agarwal. “You can’t get satisfied or depressed with a relative metric.”
I ask him if he ever regrets not becoming a schoolteacher.
“You’re saying this as if I’m about to retire. We’ll get to it (teaching). Let’s make India big and then we’ll get to it,” he quips.",The newly promoted global senior vice-president on the challenges of staying at the top of the game and his dream of becoming a schoolteacher,"Sat, Mar 18 2017. 12 34 AM IST",Amit Agarwal: Making Amazon amazing +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/FBFoqsDt2rZXDCbSRmzCDI/MA-interest-may-grow-as-buyers-get-more-confident-about-Ind.html,"
Mumbai: Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in India rose to a record $69.75 billion across 1,195 transactions in 2016, fuelled by a wave of consolidation across sectors. Consolidation as a driver for M&A activity is expected to continue in the near- to mid-term as available dry powder, both foreign and domestic, steadily accumulates. Barclays Capital was at the forefront of some of the largest deals in India last year.In an interview, Pramod Kumar, Barclays India managing director and co-head of banking, talks about the various factors that are likely to drive M&A deals in the coming quarters. Edited excerpts:
Going ahead, what are the trends you are observing that will drive M&A activity in India?I think what we will see, and what has been evident from the activity in the past year as well, is the continued consolidation and rationalization of businesses. This will lead to some of the existing players selling off parts of their businesses or monetizing them at attractive valuations. We will see that accentuated in a large way by strong private equity interest in these businesses and the willingness and ability (of private equity funds) to own these businesses with large stakes.These are businesses which are fundamentally not bad, but which have been either under-invested in or haven’t got the attention they deserve and can show significant improvement. There are several instances of that if you look back at the past 12-24 months.For example, Crompton Greaves’s consumer business falling out of leverage issues that the group was facing. We have seen several other industrial assets being divested, a lot of cement assets get sold, primarily a result of leverage issues that the owners have faced.More corporates are taking a view around rationalization of their businesses. All that has led to M&A activity.
What is the level of interest you are seeing from strategics, especially foreign strategics?Surprisingly, in all of this, we may not have seen a large amount of foreign strategic action yet, with the exception of a few such as American Towers, Yokohama and Fosun. This is something that will change going forward. I am hoping that you will see more interest from them, and that would be primarily on account of them becoming more and more comfortable about India. It has certainly improved from what you saw say two years ago or going back to the previous government’s last two years. But I think more can happen.
Any particular sectors where strategic interest is higher?There is interest in financial services, there is interest in renewables, interest in some areas of industrials; even in health-care services, we are seeing some conversations.
In private equity, the general feeling is that the interest is more around buyouts. How do you think PE activity will pan out this year?Private equity feels more comfortable, and increasingly so now, of being able to own the business and then control it, change management, bring about improvements, etc., which wasn’t the case a few years ago.In a way, they have also felt that owning a minority stake in an environment where there is no huge earnings growth, their ability to really do much with the business is limited and I would say that in many situations a lack of trust factor is also playing. Some of the experiences of private equity with the existing promoters hasn’t really been great, so they would prefer to have a larger stake and then the ability to bring about improvement where they can.
What impact will some of the geopolitical situations such as Trump coming to power in US and all the noise around changes in policies for sectors like IT and pharma, have on deal making in these sectors?For pharma, the US is still the largest market. Several Indian firms will continue to look to consolidate their positions in the US. So I don’t rule out activity on that front, though it may be a little more cautious around what policy changes the Trump government implements. There will be some bit of caution.As far as M&A is concerned, tech companies were not doing very big acquisitions. Pharma in the US will be more cautious until they get clarity around the policies.
We saw several overseas bond issuances and refinancing activity last year. How is that market looking like in 2017?The markets are quite liquid. Everyone’s counting on two rate hikes this year in the US. So, people are certainly taking advantage of the high amount of liquidity that is there in the market and that the credit spreads have compressed. People do see this as an opportunity where they can refinance their existing debt and term out the maturity.Interestingly, we also have some other companies which are looking to access the bond market to replace their rupee funding—we have seen Renew Power do such a bond and earlier Greenko had done that.The driver there is again strong liquidity in the market, ability to get good pricing, coupled with the fact there is a huge growth opportunity here in the renewables space, and that this frees up their bank lines, allowing them to go and borrow incrementally from the banks to grow their portfolio.",Barclays India managing director Pramod Kumar on the various factors that are likely to drive M&A deals in the coming quarters,"Wed, Mar 15 2017. 03 48 AM IST",M&A interest may grow as buyers get more confident about India: Barclays India MD +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/tX6w3fpX8aE8ktqh9sr34H/Consumers-are-now-confident-with-being-Indian-says-Simran-L.html,"New Delhi: Design and lifestyle brand Good Earth, also one of India’s top décor labels, has completed 21 years in India. Simran Lal, daughter of Anita Lal who founded the brand in 1996, is the chief executive officer at Good Earth and clearly loves what she does. Both the mother and daughter are hands on and deeply involved with the product design at Good Earth. In the last 15 years, the company’s turnover has gone from Rs5 crore in 2001 to over Rs150 crore in 2016, with its clothing brand Sustain being the big money spinner in terms of volumes. Lal, who was a speaker at the LyFe Symposium, a two-day luxury conference in New Delhi, spoke to Mint about changing consumption trends in India, her one-year old clothing sub-brand Nicobar and being a second generation woman entrepreneur. Dressed in her own label, not surprisingly, Lal admitted that she isn’t a big shopper. Luxury for Lal is spending time with her children and talking walks in Delhi’s Humayun’s Tomb. Her company now has 700 employees and at Good Earth, she says, it’s always brand first and revenue later.Edited Excerpts:So far in your journey, what are some of the surprising consumption trends that have emerged from India. What is India really buying from Good Earth?When we launched (21 years ago), we were possibly ahead of time, pioneering in our space, like there was craft but not in the way that we wanted to put it out there. We wanted to celebrate colour, celebrate Indian motifs and heritage. Today, we don’t have to educate the consumer that much, we take that for granted actually. So, that’s the difference, the Indian consumer, in all, is very confident with being Indian. And that’s the big difference, it was really very different 21 years ago. This shift has happened over the last 10 years, organically. I think shifts like these happen when the economy of the country is performing better, there is a sense of hope. I think these are things which are important, it’s not just about our brand. Good Earth helps as a small catalyst in shaping that culture, where the Indian consumer feels a sense of pride and confidence in celebrating Indian clothes, here and internationally.In your session you said that Good Earth stands for passion, tradition and women. What is it like to be a second generation woman entrepreneur in present times?It’s fabulous, I think we are very lucky. I think it’s become much easier to be a woman entrepreneur today. I can speak for myself, I feel like I have had it relatively easy (compared to my mother) but it’s because our organisation is very welcoming of women. And because it’s a design-led organisation, somehow it’s more acceptable when women are leaders compared to say in other fields like technology. Our CFO, head of operations, head of finance are all women. So overall, I do see more women in the work space across fields. They are more successful case studies today than there have been before.Last month, the legal notice sent to Fabindia rekindled the debate on the authenticity of khadi. As an invested stakeholder, what is your take on it?I think for me, it’s about the bigger picture and what’s important is that khadi is being treated with so much respect now. And while it’s important to know, is it real khadi or not? It’s a good debate to have, it’s crucial to understand there is a handloom version, there is a non-handloom version and mixed fabrics like khadi cotton etc. As important as those technicalities and semantics are, I think it’s really important and a bigger thing to ask what has it done? People are proud to start wearing khadi, using khadi products. Earlier, it was for the politicians, today it is pop culture. So, I look at this debate slightly differently.Your company’s revenue grew from Rs5 crore to Rs150 crore in 15 years. Where is the growth coming from and what’s been the money spinner?Our clothes (label)—Sustain—gave us a big boost. We started with clothes in 2010 seven years ago. It’s 100% craft led, it is about sustaining the craftsmen’s tradition. The sales for our brand really picked up because of a couple of reasons. One, there was a need gap in terms of design and detail that we filled, that resonated with people. They loved it, it was comfortable. And it brought us volumes as compared to our home decor segment. For instance, how many dinner sets can one buy? But clothes women can’t get enough of.Tell us about the consumer response to your new sub-brand Nicobar?Me and my husband started Nicobar, under the big Good Earth family and umbrella, but it exists as its own brand now. It has a distinct design language of its own. We wanted to make Nicobar accessible in terms of price points because with Good Earth, we can’t do that, it is a luxury brand and is viewed as aspirational by many Indian consumers. With Nicobar, we have just turned one, and the response so far has been fantastic.","Simran Lal speaks about changing consumption trends in India, her one-year old clothing sub-brand Nicobar and being a second-generation woman entrepreneur ","Tue, Mar 14 2017. 12 08 PM IST","Consumers are now confident with being Indian, says Simran Lal" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/7jKbSRjXqZFHAFbZHB8SgO/Googles-Project-Loon-loses-CEO-after-about-six-months.html,"San Francisco: Tom Moore, a satellite veteran brought in to lead Google’s Project Loon unit, has stepped down after about six months. Alastair Westgarth, head of wireless antenna company Quintel, is taking the spot.The transition is the latest turn in the company’s ambitious attempt to create a communications service with balloons floating in the stratosphere. X, the research division of Google parent Alphabet Inc., recruited Moore in August after the unit’s earlier leader, Mike Cassidy, stepped down. Moore started in mid-September. “Alastair’s vision for Project Loon aligns with X’s philosophy of approaching huge problems, at scale, to improve the lives of millions or billions of people,” a spokeswoman for X said. Moore will stay on at X in an advisory role, she added.At the time, Moore’s hiring was positioned as a key part of turning Loon into a proper business. Giving Google’s experimental projects more independence and paths to revenue was a key rationale behind the creation of Alphabet in 2015. “Tom’s valuable industry experience will help launch us into the commercial stage,” Astro Teller, the head of X, said when Moore joined. ALSO READ: Alphabet leads investment in UK payments startup CurrencycloudUnlike Cassidy, who primarily worked as an internet entrepreneur before running Loon, Moore had specific industry expertise. He created a satellite-based broadband service provider called WildBlue Communications Inc., which was acquired by satellite company ViaSat Inc., where Moore served as senior vice president. Over the past year, a string of executives have departed Alphabet’s divisions outside the main Google internet business. Those who have left include Tony Fadell, who ran Nest, and Craig Barratt, who ran Access, the division that oversaw Google Fiber. Moore declined to comment through an X spokeswoman.X began testing Loon balloons in 2013, working with wireless operators like Vodafone NZ in New Zealand and Telefonica in South America. Loon announced partnerships with three Indonesian carriers in late 2015, but has not updated the status of those deals.Last month, X invited reporters to its headquarters to demonstrate the latest advancement of Loon. Its engineers had deployed machine learning to improve flight patterns for the balloon, limiting the numbers needed to provide internet coverage. Originally, the project was conceived to create a global network, blanketing the globe with the massive balloons. The tweak meant Loon could reach commercial service sooner, executives said.Moore did not attend the session. Teller told reporters that Moore was travelling. Bloomberg","Tom Moore, a satellite veteran recruited in August, is being replaced by Alastair Westgarth","Sat, Mar 11 2017. 11 42 AM IST",Google’s Project Loon loses CEO after about six months +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ssJqbF3PCisRWHmEYD3sBN/Goldman-Sachs-cuts-Lloyd-Blankfeins-pay-27-to-22-million.html,"New York: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. reduced chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein’s annual compensation 27%, awarding him $22 million for 2016 after eliminating a long-term incentive award.Blankfein, 62, received $16 million in performance shares and a $4 million cash bonus, in addition to his $2 million salary, the New York-based firm said Friday in its annual proxy filing. Unlike past years, all of the CEO’s equity-based awards were linked to performance.Goldman Sachs redesigned its compensation structure for 2016 after investors told the company that the long-term incentive part of the package was overly complex. The bank also changed the performance-based awards to reflect the bank’s relative performance.Blankfein received $30 million for 2015, including a $7 million long-term incentive award that pays out over eight years. Gary Cohn, Goldman Sachs’s president before leaving to become President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, received $20 million for 2016, as did chief financial officer Harvey Schwartz.Performance sharesThe bank increased the share of Blankfein’s compensation that’s tied to performance to 80% of his variable pay by linking all of his stock awards to absolute and relative return on equity, compared with eight other global banks. In prior years, a portion of the shares had been tied only to a requirement that he remain in the job.The change also was made for Schwartz, 53. The awards will pay out half in cash and half in stock. In prior years, the performance-based awards were paid out solely in cash.Proxy adviser Glass Lewis & Co. raised concerns about the long-term incentive plan in a report last year, calling it “troubling both in its design and lack of transparent disclosure” and that it could “generate excessive payouts.”Goldman Sachs received about two-thirds support from shareholders for its 2015 executive compensation decisions, the lowest result since the bank introduced annual advisory votes on pay in 2009. In response, the bank sought feedback from investors holding about 40% of its stock. Bloomberg",Goldman Sachs increased the share of Blankfein’s compensation that’s tied to performance to 80% of his variable pay by linking all of his stock awards to return on equity,"Fri, Mar 17 2017. 09 44 PM IST",Goldman Sachs cuts Lloyd Blankfein’s pay 27% to $22 million for 2016 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/EjQuRgUHz0l8GBsYXChR4L/Austin-Russell-The-22-yearold-at-the-wheel-of-the-selfdri.html,"San Francisco/New York: In the sixth grade, Austin Russell turned a Nintendo gaming handset into a cell phone. At 15, he built a holographic keyboard. By 17, he’d filed for a patent. Now at 22, he’s running a start-up at the heart of Silicon Valley’s latest technology mania.As founder and chief executive officer of Luminar Technologies Inc., Russell and his team are building lidar, a hyper-accurate laser sensing technology crucial for self-driving cars. Google parent Alphabet Inc. is suing Uber Technologies Inc. for allegedly stealing lidar designs, while start-ups Velodyne Lidar Inc. and Quanergy Systems Inc. have raised at least $150 million apiece from giants like Ford Motor Co., Baidu Inc., Daimler AG and Samsung Electronics Co.Russell has raised a similar amount, according to people familiar with Luminar’s finances. The company, founded in 2012, had sought a valuation above $1 billion when it was raising money last year, one of the people said. It’s unclear who invested—Luminar is in “stealth” mode, meaning it hasn’t announced itself to the world yet. A spokeswoman declined to comment, as did Russell’s father Michael, a commercial real estate veteran who serves as chief financial officer. A message sent to Austin Russell through his LinkedIn profile was answered by his assistant, who declined to comment.Also read: How Anthony Levandowski went from Google star to foe at UberPeter Thiel awarded Russell a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship when he was 17, letting him quit Stanford University. The billionaire venture capitalist is a regular visitor to a sprawling Portola Valley ranch, 40 miles south of San Francisco, where Luminar tinkers and tests lidar systems while employees and guests crash on the couch, according to someone who has been there. Car companies, including BMW AG and General Motors Co., have also dropped by.When it was occupied by a previous tenant, the five-acre space was featured in a TechCrunch video showing a pool, trampoline, room for more than 20 people to live, and space for the world’s largest organ. The property, with sweeping views of San Francisco Bay, was listed a few years ago for $22,000 a month.That a relatively unknown college dropout of barely drinking age can raise millions of dollars shows the appetite for lidar. “It’s a gold rush and we’re selling pickaxes,” said Velodyne President Mike Jellen, who graduated college years before Russell was born. Several car companies want autonomous vehicles on the road by 2020 or 2021, which means they’re starting to order lots of lidar systems. Velodyne expects to ship 12,000 units this year, 80,000 in 2018 and 1.7 million by 2022.Luminar’s rise also says a lot about Silicon Valley’s past and present. It’s still the place where prodigies can find generous backers for audacious plans. The ideas used to be mobile apps or web software. Now, it’s increasingly technology that interacts with the physical world—cars, robots, drones and software for automation. Russell is part of this new era.In January, in the up-scale Nob Hill section of San Francisco, a gangling Russell attended a party for 1517 Fund, a VC firm partly backed by Thiel. Towering above the crowd, he lingered in the corner near the entrance, speaking in a booming voice, and avoiding eye contact with a reporter. He was mostly immersed in his phone, which he showed occasionally to a small group gathered close to him, while more than 100 up-and-coming entrepreneurs and older mentor types chomped pizza and sipped beer.Some of Luminar’s money has been used to buy a small fleet of Tesla Model S electric cars, which it uses for testing, said one of the people who has visited. It’s also funding research and development to solve challenges that have plagued the nascent lidar market.A top-of-the-range lidar from Velodyne sells for more than $50,000. It offers cheaper lidar, which generates lower-definition 3-D images, for about $8,000, while Quanergy has a product that sells for some $4,000. Autonomous cars often require two or more lidar sensors, so having a capable system can get expensive.Russell is trying to develop a lidar priced significantly less than $1,000, according to people with knowledge of Luminar’s planning. Quanergy aims to have one that sells below $100 in three to four years.Whereas radar uses radio waves to detect objects, lidar uses laser beams, helping it produce more accurate 3-D images. It’s an essential ingredient for autonomous driving because it generates a real-time image of passing and surrounding objects and helps a vehicle accurately locate itself. Satellite navigation systems are only accurate to within about 16 feet—not enough for a driverless future.In a recent demonstration, the images generated by Luminar’s lidar system were higher-definition than those produced by competing equipment made by Velodyne or Quanergy, according to someone who saw the equipment first-hand, but was not allowed to discuss it publicly. Another version generated even sharper images, but the information was processed with a slight delay—because of a lack of computing power to crunch all the data rather than a problem with the core technology, the person said.Luminar may have bigger plans. A trademark filing from 30 June described a “vehicle collision avoidance system” with ultrasound sensors and radar apparatus, not just the optical technology used in lidar. In recent weeks, it posted 19 jobs online, seeking engineers, attorneys, a “Fiber Laser Production Manager” and a vehicle integration specialist.Russell has the ability and drive to make Luminar successful—as long as he focuses his prodigious brain, according to Tony Jordan, his physics teacher at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, about 50 miles south of Los Angeles.“The kid’s mind is so broad that he literally always had 50 ideas going at one time,” Jordan said. “My only thought was if he ever slows down enough to see one idea all the way to completion.”ALSO READ: Uber’s self-driving unit quietly bought firm with tech at heart of Alphabet lawsuitRussell showed early promise, working as a consultant software engineer at age 10, according to a 2014 interview posted on YouTube. A year later, when his parents refused to buy him a mobile phone, he hacked a Nintendo DS portable gaming console into a handset. In 2013, he filed a patent for a “three-dimensional imager and projection device.”His parents’ garage in Newport Beach, California, was the hub for his early inventions, said Jordan. “They had a hard time ever parking their cars in the garage because he had absconded with the Ping-Pong table and made that his lab table,” said Jordan, “That’s where some of his best thinking was done.” (He’s a fan of the sport too, attending the launch of a SPiN Ping-Pong social club in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood last year).A 15-year-old Russell came to a school staff meeting one morning to demonstrate a system that beamed a holographic keyboard onto a table top and typed words. “That blew most people’s minds,” Jordan said. Other early inventions included a laser that could detect whether a mole was cancerous, and a theoretical framework to charge electrical devices by beaming energy down from satellites.In June 2013, the Orange County Register named the then 17-year-old Russell a top graduate, noting his interest in photonics—the use of electromagnetic energy—and his plans to attend Stanford that fall. “You should push yourself to the limit at least, ultimately,” Russell told the newspaper. “That’s what you have to do if you want to make an impact on the world.”In 2014, Russell led Luminar in a digital health care competition sponsored by Qualcomm Inc. In a video about their entry, the young, mop-haired CEO described his lidar system and another technology called a “real-time hyperspectral camera system” that measures the molecular structure of objects well beyond what a human eye can see. Such cameras cost tens of thousands of dollars and were the size of a small fridge at the time. Russell said Luminar had built one as small as “a few pennies.”He exhibited a competitive streak in high school, where he led a robotics team to the national championships, Jordan recalled.Also read: Google and Uber are fighting over lidar technology. What is it?“You’ve never seen someone more upset when they lost, or the robot went down, or the person handling the robot mishandled one of the feats that they had to do to win,” said Jordan. “I really enjoyed watching someone who was usually so cool and so on nine different planes that you were never sure he was with you, he also had this single-minded focus and competitiveness.”Russell will need those qualities because the window to make the most of the lidar business may be closing quickly. Current systems are too expensive for production cars, yet bringing prices below $100 may make it hard to generate significant profit.“It’s going to go the same way as radar has and become commoditized,” said Sebastian Thrun, CEO of online learning specialist Udacity Inc. and the former head of Google’s driverless car project. “Radar used to be $60,000 apiece and now it’s like $80 apiece. There’s no reason lidar can’t cost $80 apiece.”BloombergMark Bergen also contributed to this story. ","Luminar Technologies founder Austin Russell and his team are building lidar, a hyper-accurate laser sensing technology crucial for self-driving cars","Sat, Apr 01 2017. 08 50 PM IST",Austin Russell: The 22 year-old at the wheel of the self-driving car craze +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/PiVOwdvH2BamHnGEERqLhO/Apple-sparks-row-with-pledge-to-drop-Imagination-Tech-graphi.html,"London: Apple has given Imagination Tech notice that it will stop using its graphics technology in iPhones and other products in up to two years’ time, dealing a major blow to the British company.Imagination said Apple, its biggest customer, had not presented any evidence to substantiate its assertion that it will no longer require Imagination’s technology, without violating Imagination’s patents, intellectual property and confidential information.It said on Monday that Apple’s notification had triggered talks on alternative commercial arrangements for the current licence and royalty agreement. Reuters",Apple has given Imagination Tech notice that it will stop using its graphics technology in iPhones and other products in up to two years’ time,"Mon, Apr 03 2017. 12 22 PM IST",Apple sparks row with pledge to drop Imagination Tech graphics +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/k9f5ESXdgaLfAVyfH6azEJ/Infosys-promoters-board-now-disagree-over-COO-Pravin-Raos.html,"
Infosys Ltd’s promoters continue to be unhappy with some decisions made by the board of India’s second largest software services company. A majority of the promoters did not vote for a resolution seeking a salary increase for chief operating officer U.B. Pravin Rao. According to filings by Infosys with stock exchanges, only 24% of promoter votes were cast in favour of the resolution seeking a 35% rise in Rao’s compensation to Rs12.5 crore. The remaining abstained. This mirrored the promoters voting 12 months ago on a resolution seeking a two-year extension and a revised compensation of $11 million for chief executive Vishal Sikka. The latest show of promoter disenchantment, according to people familiar with the development, suggests that the truce reached between the founders and the company’s board after an open confrontation in February may only have resulted in an uneasy and temporary calm.The resolution was one of three Infosys sought to pass through electronic voting or postal ballots by 31 March. The remaining two resolutions—an amendment to its articles of association allowing Infosys to consider a share buyback, and the appointment of D.N. Prahlad as independent director—received overwhelming approval from promoters and other shareholders. Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy clarified that the decision of some of the founders not to vote in favour of the proposed salary increase for Rao was because of their belief in compassionate capitalism. “This abstention has nothing to do with Pravin,” Murthy said in an emailed response to a questionnaire from Mint. “I have lots of affection for Pravin. Let me state you the facts. I believe in striving towards reducing differences in compensation and equity in a corporation. I have always felt that every senior management person of an Indian corporation has to show self-restraint in his or her compensation and perquisites. This is necessary if we have to make compassionate capitalism acceptable to a majority of Indians who are poor. Without compassionate capitalism, this country cannot create jobs and solve the problem of poverty. Further, giving nearly 60% to 70% increase in compensation for a top level person (even including performance-based variable pay) when the compensation for most of the employees in the company was increased by just 6% to 8% is, in my opinion, not proper.”“Finally, given the current poor governance standards at Infosys, let us also remember that these targets for variable pay may not be adhered to if the board wants to favour a top management person,” said Murthy. Also read | Questioning the Infosys shareholdersStill, the proposal to increase Rao’s salary found majority shareholder support as 75% of institutional investors voted in favour of the proposal, even though 67% of non-institutional investors voted against it. Institutional investors, which include foreign institutional investors and insurance companies, hold 59% of shares in Infosys while non-institutional investors, which include retail shareholders, hold 28.1%. Five of the seven original co-founders, Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, S.D. Shibulal, Kris Gopalakrishnan and K. Dinesh are categorized as promoters of the company, and the founders together hold a 12.75% stake. None of the founders are on the board of Infosys. “No previous resolution in the history of the company has received such a low approval,” said Murthy. In April last year, Nilekani and Sudha Murty, Narayana Murthy’s wife and chairperson of the Infosys Foundation in India, approved Sikka’s reappointment until 2021 and a higher salary, as other founders abstained. A similar voting result this time suggests that both Nilekani and Sudha Murty voted in favour of Rao, too. Gopalakrishnan declined to offer a comment while emails sent to Nilekani and other founders went unanswered. An Infosys spokesperson declined to comment on how the five promoters voted. “More than 50% of the public and small institutions voting against the increase in COO’s salary is unprecedented and as far as I recall never happened in the history of Infosys,” said Venkatraman Balakrishnan, a former chief financial officer at Infosys. “It is clearly a vote of no-confidence on the practices followed by the current board to excessively compensate senior management without any direct linkage to shareholder wealth creation. The board should listen to the founders, increase transparency, improve corporate governance, restructure the board and lastly, announce a large buyback to protect shareholders’ interests.”",Most of Infosys’s promoters did not vote for resolution seeking a salary hike for chief operating officer Pravin Rao,"Mon, Apr 03 2017. 04 53 PM IST","Infosys promoters, board at odds over Pravin Rao’s salary hike" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/oPbFJoLhv9bz90h4FvATNN/The-next-wave-of-digital.html,"
Digital-native innovators, armed with radical business models, have relentlessly raised consumers’ expectations. Such companies—including the quintessential Apple, Uber, Netflix, Amazon and Google—deliver a simple, yet intuitive experience, real-time information, and personalized advice for customers.
Traditional incumbents know that to stay competitive, they must “get on the digital train”—speedily developing new tech-based offerings and adopting digital business approaches. Many understand the need to execute competitive strategies faster through rapid experimentation and prototyping, invest in innovation including reworking business models, and remove complex processes and structures so employees can collaborate to put customers first.
Yet, only a few incumbents have met the speed imperative. Instead, they have made digital a storefront add-on to their business, or have done only the bare minimum to connect with customers digitally.
What explains their hesitations?
Many have overly complex IT systems, misaligned talent, siloed functions that discourage collaboration, and management that squelches innovation.
Incumbents’ failure to act has cost them—and the toll will only get heavier, if companies do not address the situation soon. The reason: Tailwinds shaping previous decades are losing momentum. For instance, growth in the number of internet users and the number of smartphones shipped has slowed since 2015, along with GDP and population growth in many countries. Consequently, companies can no longer count on an ever-expanding customer base. Perhaps reflecting these developments, 2016 was the first year that non-technology incumbents dominated the $1 billion-plus acquisition market, as CB Insights noted.
These trends are not universal. In India, for example, the number of internet users is expanding, while most markets face an overall slowdown or contraction (see chart).
Speed+scale+value: Getting the what right
BCG analysis of 1,000-plus businesses undergoing digital transformation shows that to succeed today, companies must master two imperatives in addition to speed:
• Scale: Companies must replicate success from new digital introductions across their business. For instance, an apparel retailer draws on digital capabilities to initiate “ship from store” and “collect from store” service for customers in several stores. Dedicated processes support the service. To get the most from the service, the company must implement it across all its stores.
•Value: Businesses must use digital to create new forms of value for customers and themselves. For customers, value comes from combining information sources. To illustrate, at a train station, an app notifies you that your train will be late—and that a nearby coffee shop has a special offer. Businesses that provide the best value to customers will capture their time, attention and money. Companies can also use data gathered from customers to develop new products and craft effective advertising campaigns.
To meet the scale and value-focus imperatives, companies need to look beyond now-mature technologies such as the almost clichéd SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud computing) and embrace a new wave of technologies.
Consider AI. Thanks to new kinds of data now accessible, AI applications today include natural language processing and speech recognition, pattern recognition and real-world mobility, predictive maintenance, and advanced analytics. Companies are leveraging such applications to transform processes like hiring talent, enhancing customers’ experiences and empowering their sales force.
For instance, a financial services firm uses machine learning software and a private cloud network to review commercial-loan agreements—which used to consume hundreds of thousands of hours of work annually by lawyers and loan officers. Results have included fewer loan-servicing mistakes, most of which had previously stemmed from human error.
AI has been around for a while, but multiple uses of the technology are now surfacing. Today, there is a sharp distinction between robotics and various AI types, including deep learning. The same pattern of exponential advancement characterizing other technologies is now happening with AI.
Augmented reality (AR) also offers potential, as a home furnishings brand discovered. The company had launched a B2C (business-to-consumer) solution featuring high-quality digital photography, to help shoppers choose products online and minimize the need for “tactile”. But B2B (business-to-business) is the core of its business, so the company then introduced a “store salesman” app. It shipped iPads to its retailers to help sales reps select from among 20,000 SKUs (stock keeping units) for their end customers. To further enhance the experience, the company also introduced AR in select exclusive brand outlets, so potential buyers can easily visualize their chosen fabrics in room layouts or furniture coverings. These efforts have already begun improving the company’s growth in India and its export market.
Only by augmenting speed with scalability and value can digital solutions like those described above deliver sustainable competitive advantages—including the ability to respond to ever-changing customer requirements, achieve cost-saving efficiencies, and attract and retain top talent.
But excelling simultaneously at speed, scale and value is tricky. To do so, companies must get the “how” right: creating a digital workforce to support the digital technologies they adopt.
Digital technology+digital work workforce: Getting the ‘how’ right?Given the enhanced pace of technology change, companies need to back the technologies they adopt with an agile, test-and-learn digital workforce. A digital workforce comprises people who can systematically craft solutions to dynamic business challenges, show early minimum viable products to internal and external customers, and use feedback to refine them.This requires employees with relevant technical expertise who also operate comfortably amid uncertainty and change. And they need leaders who can elicit promising ideas from anywhere in the organization while uniting them behind solutions in development. In short, companies must put technical know-how front and centre. In previous decades, technical prowess was the coin of the realm. Then technology costs declined with commercialization, and companies began outsourcing and offshoring technical work. Commoditization resulted. The mantra became, “Technology is easy; success is all about change management.”We disagree. While effective change management matters, success still hinges tightly on technology. Those who understand technology create more valuable digital solutions that deliver a sharper competitive edge. Companies must therefore make technology a key element in their business transformation. That means hiring the best talent, designing the right incentives for them, and giving them the autonomy and challenging work they demand. To further equip technical talent for success, companies can merge their traditional “business requirements” and “IT development” silos into a unified set of activities focused on product development and engineering—and organizing these workers in a new way. The traditional pyramid shape, containing numerous management layers, should give way to a diamond shape, characterized by many senior engineers, fewer juniors and even fewer managers. A product development/engineering group structured in this agile way will churn out releases much faster than one built on the pyramid model. Other business functions (sales, marketing, supply chain, back office) will also show improved speed and adaptability. Result: Traditional incumbents will score as much success as their “new- age” rivals.Mastering the “what” and “how” of succeeding in today’s digital age takes courage and commitment. But companies cannot afford to shy away from this work. Those that embrace it will stand the best chance of pulling ahead of rivals in the future—and staying ahead.Ralf Dreischmeier is a senior partner and global leader of the technology advantage practice at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) London, Marc Schuuring is a partner and managing director at BCG Amsterdam, Rajiv Gupta is a partner and leads the technology advantage practice at BCG New Delhi, and Shrikant Patil is a project leader at BCG Mumbai.",Firms that speedily develop new tech-based offerings and adopt digital business approaches stand the best chance of pulling ahead of rivals in the future—and staying ahead,"Sat, Apr 01 2017. 06 14 PM IST",The next wave of digital +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/GkwCjUHUMC4wsbuX8AhRAO/Apple-Amazon-Google-join-bidding-for-Toshiba-chip-unit-re.html,"Tokyo: Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Google have joined bidding for Toshiba’s NAND flash memory unit, vying with others for the Japanese firm’s prized semiconductor operation, the Yomiuri Shimbun daily reported on Saturday.Toshiba shareholders on Thursday agreed to split off its NAND flash memory business, paving the way for a sale to raise at least $9 billion to cover US nuclear unit charges that threaten the conglomerate’s future.The Yomiuri newspaper said bidding prices from Apple, Amazon or Google, owned by Alphabet Inc, were not known.The Nikkei business daily reported on Friday that US private equity firm Silver Lake Partners and US chipmaker Broadcom Ltd have offered Toshiba about ¥2 trillion ($18 billion) for the unit.About 10 potential bidders are interested in buying a stake in the microchip operation, a source with knowledge of the planned sale told Reuters earlier.Suitors include Western Digital Corp, which operates a chip plant with Toshiba in Japan, Micron Technology Inc , South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc and financial investors.Toshiba officials were not immediately available for comment. Reuters","Apple, Amazon and Google have joined bidding for Toshiba’s NAND flash memory unit, vying with others for the Japanese firm’s prized semiconductor operation","Sat, Apr 01 2017. 11 03 AM IST","Apple, Amazon, Google join bidding for Toshiba chip unit: report" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/WG5UxSDvizpD8beHxzyrRM/Strengthening-rupee-adds-to-IT-pharma-firms-woes.html,"
Mumbai: For information technology (IT) and pharmaceutical companies that earn much of their revenue in dollars, the strengthening rupee threatens to be an additional headache on top of existing ones on visas, outsourcing, pricing and regulatory issues in the US.The rupee on Wednesday touched 64.9137 to the dollar, a level last seen on 23 October 2015. For export-oriented companies, such as those in the information technology and pharmaceutical sector, a stronger rupee means lower earnings in local currency terms.While its near-term impact is sentimentally negative, analysts say they would wait to see if the rupee’s strength is here to stay.The Indian rupee: Flirting with overvaluation“While the frenetic legislative bill filings related to visa reform seems to have cooled off, investors also await cues as to whether this headline risk is impacting client decision making and deal flow—a concern highlighted in certain quarters,” Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd said in a note on Thursday.Continued foreign investments in the local equity and bond markets have buoyed the rupee. So far this year, the BSE IT index and BSE healthcare index have risen 2.18% and 3.77%, respectively, underperforming the benchmark 30-share Sensex, which has gained 11.35% in the same period.Around 48 of the 56 IT companies and 46 of the 67 healthcare companies in the respective sectoral indices have underperformed the benchmark Sensex so far this year. A stronger rupee is luring foreign funds to Indian bondsThe underperformance has sustained for a while. In 2016, while the BSE IT and BSE healthcare indices lost 8% and 12.9% respectively, Sensex gained nearly 2%.“Recent sharp INR strength is also beginning to emerge as an irritant and needs to be monitored especially in the context of traditional margin levers having limited force going forward,” Emkay Global analysts Manik Taneja and Ruchi Burde said in the note on Thursday.The latest round of regulatory troubles of Divi’s Laboratories Ltd and Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd indicate Indian drugmakers also face a long and uphill struggle to meet quality standards set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the US, which is the world’s largest drug market, Mint had reported on 22 March.“Rupee has gained because all EM (emerging market) currencies, with the exception of China have rallied. It is more to do with broader emerging market currencies rally. Whether it is here to stay, it is difficult to say for now,” said Vaibhav Sanghavi, co-chief executive officer of Avendus Capital Public Markets Alternative Strategies Llp, a hedge fund.“However, the development is not exciting for IT and pharma sectors, which are already reeling under pressure,” added Sanghavi.Apart from persisting regulatory hurdles, pharmaceutical companies are also taking a beating due to pricing pressures in the US.The issue gains prominence because of the magnitude of the impact it could have on thee revenue of these companies. For most leading pharmaceutical companies, the US market accounts for at least half of their revenues.","A strengthening rupee against the dollar has emerged as a fresh headache for IT and pharma firms battling H1B visa, outsourcing and regulatory issues in the US","Fri, Mar 31 2017. 05 26 PM IST","Strengthening rupee adds to IT, pharma companies’ woes" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ym99eBZwgQiZfccL31mH0L/Twitter-makes-room-for-more-characters-in-tweets.html,"San Francisco: Twitter on Thursday began rolling out changes to let people pack more into tweets, subtracting from the character count names of those being replied to in posts. The latest software modification at the one-to-many messaging service comes about a year after Twitter set out to relax a 140-character limit set due to mobile phone text messaging constraints in place when Twitter launched in 2006.Twitter first announced plans to relax the limit a year ago, as part of an effort to bring in more members and make the platform easier to use. “Remember how we told you we were working on ways to let you to express more with 140 characters?” Twitter product manager Sasank Reddy said in an online post.“Now, when you reply to someone or a group, those @usernames won’t count toward your tweet’s 140 characters.”Providing more room in tweets is seen as a way to encourage more use and sharing of pictures, videos and links. The move is part of a push by Twitter to increase its user base and engagement, which have sputtered to the chagrin of investors.“Our work isn’t finished,” Reddy said.“We’ll continue to think about how we can improve conversations and make Twitter easier to use.”Twitter faces competition from Facebook and Instagram, and a trend of people opting to share content in video or picture formats instead of text.",The move is part of a push by Twitter to increase its user base and engagement,"Fri, Mar 31 2017. 10 34 AM IST",Twitter makes room for more characters in tweets +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eXcVQdInSuasOvgWbeQ6VP/Ahead-of-H1B-lottery-Silicon-Valleys-darkest-immigration.html,"Bangalore: A feature film about the difficulties facing an Indian temporary work-visa holder waiting for permanent residency will be screened in 25 US cinemas on Friday, with backing from Silicon Valley investors, fuelling an already heated immigration debate.The film, “For Here or To Go?” was written and produced by San Francisco-based Rishi Bhilawadikar, 33, one of the estimated million-plus H1B visa holders in the country. The title is a play on the ubiquitous question at coffee shops and fast-food outlets that often flummoxes new arrivals.The movie is being shown on the eve of the annual lottery for the three-year visas, which are awarded to foreign workers in specialty occupations ranging from software engineers to fashion models. President Donald Trump is trying to tighten the immigration system and his administration’s efforts to monitor H1B visas were revealed in a leaked executive order. Applications flood in on the 1 April opening date for the 65,000 annual quota of H1B visas. Tens of thousands of additional visas are granted for special cases such as advanced degree holders. Employers can sponsor H1B holders to apply for a Green Card that gives the right to permanent residence, but the approvals process is backlogged and caps on country of birth mean that applicants from nations like India and China may wait a decade or more. “A person with my level of skills from Sri Lanka would get a Green Card in six months whereas I could be waiting 15 years,” said Bhilawadikar, who helps improve customer interaction and e-commerce as a user experience designer for Gap Inc.VC fundingFunded by investors including venture capitalist Brad Feld of Foundry Group, the movie tells the story of Vivek Pandit, a Silicon Valley-based software professional, and his friends, who struggle to navigate the US immigration system. As a “temp worker,” Pandit is unable to make long-term life decisions like founding a company, buying a home or starting a family.Also Read: PPF, Kisan Vikas Patra, Sukanya Samriddhi interest rates slashed by 1%“It’s the untold story of hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants who drive a nice-enough car but avoid buying expensive furniture for fear of having to leave it all behind,” said Bhilawadikar. “I set about making this film to humanize my story and the story of a million others like me.”There could be up to 2 million Indian workers in the Green Card backlog, according to David Bier, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute think-tank. Advocates of immigration often cite H1B success stories like Sundar Pichai of Google and Satya Nadella of Microsoft. But the work visas are controversial and critics say companies that use them the most — information technology services companies with the bulk of their operations in India — are hurting American workers by undercutting salaries and taking away jobs.Workers who want to gain permanent residence are treated like indentured labor, said Vivek Wadhwa, Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering. If they change jobs or take a promotion, they lose their turn in line, so they end up doing menial jobs during the most productive years of their lives, he said.“I call this one of Silicon Valley’s darkest secrets,” said Wadhwa, who is also a director of research at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering.The movie was first shown in the US at the Cinequest Film Festival in California in February 2015 and has been screened at festivals in Melbourne, Toronto and Mumbai. It has also had a special screening at Rayburn House, a congressional office building for the US House of Representatives on Capitol Hill, according to Bhilawadikar.Bhilawadikar, who came to the US as a 22-year-old computer engineer to get a master’s degree from Indiana University, has been on a skilled-worker visa for 11 years — those accepted into the Green Card queue can extend their H1B visa while waiting for approval. He says he could be 40 by the time he gets his Green Card. Bloomberg",Rishi Bhilawadikar’s film ‘For Here or To Go?’ depicts about the difficulties facing an Indian H1B visa holder waiting for permanent residency in the US,"Fri, Mar 31 2017. 03 04 PM IST","Ahead of H1B lottery, Silicon Valley’s ‘darkest’ immigration secret hits cinemas" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YzDuLxH9TogZlygx9pkEiL/EmTech-2017-Innovators-under-35.html,"Meet the 10 winners of the Mint-MIT Technology Review competition for innovators below the age of 35 from across India in different cutting-edge domains. The winners were selected after a rigorous judging process. The innovators were felicitated on 9 and 10 March at EmTech 2017, the second edition of the emerging technology conference organized in Delhi by Mint and MIT Technology Review.Akash DongreOrganization: Indus OSDesignation: Co-founder and chief product officerInnovation: A multilingual operating system available on over 50 mobile devicesEducation: BTech in mechanical engineering from IIT BombayAkash Dongre—along with co-founders Rakesh Deshmukh and Sudhir Bangarambandi—has always believed that “Indian problems require indigenous solutions”. No wonder their eponymous innovation, touted as the “world’s first regional operating system”, is blazing a trail in the Indian smartphone ecosystem. “In our short journey, beginning in 2015, we have already partnered with five domestic smartphone brands (Micromax, Intex, Karbonn, Celkon and Swipe) and built a user base of more than six million, which is consistently growing at a rate of 500,000 OS activations per month,” says Dongre. Indus OS, which is available in 12 Indian regional languages, boasts innovative features such as Indus Swipe (translation from English to a regional language and vice versa with just a swipe), Indus Keyboard (with built-in word and matra (a unit of metrical quantity in Indian languages) prediction) and Indus Reader (which can convert an English text into audio in eight regional languages). Besides, there’s a marketplace called App Bazaar, where over 50,000 apps are available in local languages.Dongre recalls one of his foreign trips when his lack of understanding of the local language made him feel handicapped: “Everything around me was in a language I did not understand.” Dongre also realized how digitally less connected the Indian heartland is and how alien English is to a lot of Indians. “After spending some more time to understand the Indian digital landscape and brainstorming with my team, we decided to start building an ecosystem for Indian consumers.” The team built Indus OS on three core pillars: simplicity, innovation and localization. “At the heart of our story lies the desire to equip anyone who is using a smartphone with a holistic ecosystem of their choice,” says Dongre.Indus OS, which introduced Indus OS 2.0 in July 2016, will introduce Indus OS 3.0 in 2017. “In 2017, we intend to continue to work with the Government of India and app developers alike to build a smartphone ecosystem of choice for the emerging markets population,” Dongre says.Ankit JhanwarOrganization: Pluss Advanced TechnologiesDesignation: Vice-president, corporate planning and strategyInnovation: A packaging box for vaccine transportation that uses phase change materials and a unique design for precise temperature controlEducation: BTech in polymer science and technology from IIT Roorkee; certificate in entrepreneurship, management and global leadership from London School of Economics and Political ScienceAn optimist by nature, Ankit Jhanwar was not put off by the disinterest displayed by some packaging companies in developing a temperature-controlled shipping solution using phase change materials (PCMs)—a domain in which his company, Pluss Advanced Technologies, had been working since 2005. Such a temperature-controlled solution could prove very useful in cutting down the 30% wastage of vaccines in the existing cold chain system in the country. So what Pluss did was develop a complete shipping solution using its own proprietary PCMs, which could not only provide better temperature control but also address the challenging Indian ambient conditions of 40°C. “A range of products were planned to address the gaps at each leg of the supply chain right from manufacturer to the depot to the distributor to chemist and finally to the patient,” says Jhanwar.The shipping solution that he developed was branded Celsure—which uses the PCM technology to provide precise temperature control. “It is the only shipping solution which provides temperature control for more than 72 hours even at ambient temperature of 40°C,” he says. Thanks to this innovation, all the current pharmaceutical shipments which happen by air can now be done by road using Celsure—something that can lead to huge savings in freight cost, thereby making it possible to lower the prices of medicines.According to Jhanwar, Celsure also addresses the unique challenge of shipping from a hot environment (say, India) to a cold environment (like Europe) or vice versa. What’s more, the solution has brought in simplicity in the packaging, removing human errors. Jhanwar says that it’s available in sizes as small as one vial to as large as 10,000 vials and can provide temperature control for as low as 2 hours to as high as 120 hours. Pluss has a goal of reducing medicine wastage due to ineffective cold chain to as low as 0.1% in the next three-five years. The firm is constantly working on scaling up and commercializing the innovation. Celsure was launched in April 2016 with only one variant; eight more variants have been added within a year. Logistics firms such as Blue Dart and DHL have adopted Celsure as one of their preferred modes of shipping temperature-sensitive pharma products. Successful trials have also been run with various pharmaceutical firms. Besides commercializing it in India, Pluss plans to go global with the launch in Singapore and the Middle East in 2018 and in the US and Europe in 2019. “We are also keen on tie-ups with the government, World Health Organization (WHO), Unicef and other related organizations for last-mile delivery of vaccines. Customized products are being planned to address the last mile challenges,” says Jhanwar. Anusha RammohanOrganization: General Electric Global ResearchDesignation: Lead engineerInnovation: Flow analytics for multi-phase flow metering in oil and gas industryEducation: BE (Hons.) in electronics and instrumentation from BITS-Pilani; MS in electrical engineering from Arizona State University, USAnusha Rammohan believes that the intersection of the digital and physical worlds is the ideal space for disruptive innovations. And that’s exactly what attracted her to the esoteric domain of flow analytics for multi-phase flow metering in the oil and gas industry.As the lead engineer at GE Global Research’s John F Welch Technology Center in Bengaluru, Anusha got the opportunity to combine physical sensors with advanced analytics to develop a solution capable of radically transforming the processes of the entire industry. “As the global energy demand continues to increase, there is an urgent need in the oil and gas industry to be more efficient with resources, people and investments to reduce the cost of producing oil while doing so safely with reduced environmental impact,” says Rammohan. Her innovation addresses this need by combining sensor and device data in the field using intelligent analytics to provide accurate and reliable information in real time about oil production. For instance, she says, timely information about well and field level production of oil, water and gas allows operators to make critical decisions related to optimizing pumps, allocating resources and energy to each well, shutting down or stimulating wells, and preventing leakage and blockage of pipes, etc. By transforming data into actionable insights, her analytics solution enables increased oil recovery, reduced human intervention and improved resource planning.Not merely restricting her innovation to a single industry, the next stop for Anusha is to extend it to applications in industries such as aviation, power and transportation. The applications include performance optimization of assets, health monitoring of safety-critical components and their increased reliability and reduced downtime—all of which can significantly improve productivity and bring down costs. Rammohan has been granted patents related to her work in image mapping, sensor positioning and flow measurement; she has filed for more. She dreams of a world powered by analytics and technologies such as artificial intelligence—one in which “autonomous decision making” would greatly reduce the ambiguity, uncertainty and human subjectivity that are currently proving to be bottlenecks in all industries.
Kshitij Marwah
Organization: Tesseract Imaging
Designation: Founder
Innovation: Virtual reality (VR) camera to create and share high resolution VR/holographic content; holographic augmented reality headset
Education: MTech in computer science from IIT Delhi; MS in media arts and sciences from MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts, US
Kshitij Marwah says virtual reality and augmented reality (VR and AR) are the new mediums for human beings to tell their stories in a much more “experiential and immersive manner”. It marks a natural progression, as he says: “From the spoken word to the written word, from photos to videos—we have always found new ways and tools to tell our stories.”The power of his belief in VR and AR, backed by the rigour of his technical education (never mind that he dropped out of his PhD at MIT Media Lab), led Marwah to his innovations: Quark VR camera and the Holoboard AR viewing headset. Says he, “The Quark VR camera will democratize mixed reality content creation and the Holoboard AR headset will allow for its viewing in a truly immersive and unique manner.”Marwah has a simple way of explaining his innovation. “Imagine the next time when you are watching a cricket match in your house. Rather than sitting in front of your television, with our Quark camera streaming the match live in VR and the Holoboard headset, you can feel as if you are sitting right in the stadium but in the comfort of your couch,” he says.His current company, Tesseract Imaging (in Norse mythology, Tesseract is said to be a cosmic cube of immense power; in geometry, the tesseract is a four-dimensional hypercube), was spun out of MIT Media Lab’s India arm, a unit that Marwah had co-founded to promote and spread inter-disciplinary learning among students in India. He is credited with growing the Lab initiative from a platform of 50 students to 500 students selected from hundreds of thousands of applicants across the country. He headed the India arm of the Lab from 2012 to 2015.Marwah believes that the innovations coming out of Tesseract will revolutionize “the way we capture, consume and see content and media”. On the anvil are plans to begin shipping the Quark VR cameras in mid-2017 and Holoboard AR headsets by the end of the year. “With our technology, we believe we can make sure that our society can capture, share and consume their daily experiences and share stories across generations with an experience that is immersive and powerful.”Nishant KumarOrganization: Embryyo Technologies Pvt. LtdDesignation: Founder and CEOInnovation: Sensor and mobile app-based drug adherence monitoring system for tuberculosisEducation: Dual degree in mechanical engineering from IIT Bombay Nishant Kumar, the founder and chief exec of Embryyo Technologies, a medical technology and research start-up incubated at Pune’s Venture Centre, was troubled by the way tuberculosis (TB) treatment was left midway by a large number of patients in India. There wasn’t an effective way of ensuring patients stayed the course. “This was because the TB medication involves a drug regimen of about 6 months where the patient is required to take a total of about 400 pills,” he says. There are several reasons why treatment is left incomplete, including side effects, forgetfulness, poor counselling and duration of the regimen. The enormity of the problem—as many as 2.5 million people in India were affected by TB in 2015 as per a World Health Organization report—inspired Kumar to do something about it. He visited the local district level hospitals and direct observation treatment (DOT) centres to interact with the clinicians, healthcare workers and patients, which helped him in “collecting more insights” and further strengthened his resolve to address this problem. He says that it demanded an easy-to-use, affordable solution which could fit seamlessly in an already established public health infrastructure in the country. The result was BoxRx, an electronic medical event monitoring system that has currently been piloted for drug adherence monitoring in TB patients. According to Kumar, most people with TB are cured by a strictly followed, six-month drug regimen but any interruption to it can cause drug resistance.That is where the innovation behind BoxRx comes in handy. The solution comprises a specially designed electronic pill box which carries the TB blister pack as prescribed by the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP). A tearable paper with conductive ink tracks printed corresponding to each pill is placed beneath the blister pack before closing the box. Whenever a pill is removed from the blister pack, the conductive track gets broken and this activity is logged and transmitted from an in-built Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) circuit to a central server in the form of an SMS. The server processes the information in the SMS and updates the mobile application of the doctor/health worker assigned to that particular patient.To scale up the innovation, Kumar plans to work very closely with the national and international organizations that are leading the TB control programmes. Also on the cards is large-scale manufacturing and on-field implementation of the innovation so that it reaches the maximum number of patients. Kumar envisions a society that is centred on harmonious and sustainable co-existence. “I believe that good health is the primary signature of prosperity for an individual, a family, a nation and the world at large,” he says.Pankaj AgarwalDesignation: Creative leaderOrganization: Samsung ElectronicsInnovation: A button-type device that connects to toys and a mobile app to enable intuitive interactions for kidsEducation: BTech in electrical engineering from IIT Kanpur; MS from Seoul National University; MBA from Harvard Business SchoolWhenever Pankaj Agarwal saw his son Anant play alone with his toy blocks, a question often nagged him: “Why does he have to play alone? Is there something I can do to make play-at-home social and interactive for him?” He was also inspired to change the status quo when he looked at the many expensive toys gathering dust around his house. Agarwal thought of the millions of middle-class homes that just couldn’t afford all those high-tech toys with pricey tags.So he added a simple and interactive, yet relatively inexpensive, tag of his own: TagPlus. The innovation comprises a button-type smart tag, a smart app (for phones/tablets), and, above all, content created and shared in the cloud by kids as young as 7-year-olds. A key benefit of TagPlus is that it can increase the repeat play value of toys. An important feature of the innovation, says Agarwal, is that there is no set-up required. “No device pairing, no logins, no passwords!” When kids buy toys that have this smart tag, they can start playing on the TagPlus platform immediately after unwrapping it. Kids can “click”, “long press”, “shake” and “bump” their smart tags and the smart app will respond accordingly. A “click” on the smart tag activates the TagPlus app on a nearby digital device to show toy-related content. A “long press” action will bring on a social media interface where kids can easily upload their creations and also see the creations of other kids playing with the same toy. “Think of this as a ‘mini Facebook for kids’,” says Agarwal. A “shake” action on the smart tag will help kids find and connect with children playing with an identical toy who could be anywhere in the world. Also, when kids “bump” two tags from two different toys, the connected app shows multiple ways in which the toys can be combined to create something entirely new. Agarwal and his other TagPlus team members at Samsung believe that this patent-pending technology platform has the potential to make kids’ playing experiences more serendipitous, socially engaging and creative “by seamlessly bridging their virtual and physical play environments”. Agarwal and his colleagues did multiple pilot tests of TagPlus in South Korea and they are also in discussion with many toy makers to adopt the platform. “The response has been very positive,” he says. Agarwal plans to continue his innovative work in the creative domain and believes that “members of our society should be educated and imbibe a culture of creativity”.Prasant MisraDesignation: ScientistOrganization: TCS Research and Innovation, Tata Consultancy Services LtdInnovation: Auditory sensing for micro unmanned aerial vehicles Education: PhD in computer science and engineering from the University of New South Wales, Sydney; postdoctoral fellowship from the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, StockholmPrasant Misra has been focusing his research efforts around building “spatially intelligent systems”. His current work pertains to the auditory sensing technology for micro unmanned aerial vehicles (MUAVs, more popularly known as drones). It’s like “growing the ears” for intelligent things, as he puts it. “It is part of a grand vision to equip this category of flying robots with a sensory gamut that is on par with humans,” he says. This will not only enable such “things” to derive better spatial intelligence, but also drive cognition to a better level of autonomy by combining auditory sensing with vision.There are, however, fundamental challenges in developing such robust auditory capabilities, especially in capturing the spatial dimensions of a sound scene and analysing its acoustic signature. “The signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio is extremely low due to the presence of (near-field) wideband acoustic interference (i.e., self-noise) from the MUAVs’ spinning rotors and motors, which is both strong and non-stationary,” he explains. Theoretically speaking, building an acoustic array with a large number of acoustic elements can overcome such high levels of noise, but the space, payload and energy limitations of an MUAV come in the way of meeting such exhaustive system requirements and computational needs.Misra is now investigating both lightweight acoustic sensing system design, and low-power (but efficient) computation paradigms to overcome this challenge. The initial results, he says, are quite promising.The impact of the work Misra is doing is far-reaching. It will not only force us to rethink the current model of aerial sensing (which is primarily vision dominated), but will also open up newer applications and usage scenarios for the betterment of society. It is now quite common to talk of aerial drones, especially tiny ones with multiple rotors that can hover mid-air, in applications ranging from e-commerce deliveries and inspection of industrial machinery to wildlife monitoring and search-and-rescue operations. Nevertheless, their sensing technology is predominately vision-centric. “While the advantages are clearly obvious in visual inspection and monitoring applications, on the flip side, they become unusable in camera-obstructed or low-light conditions, or in scenarios that offer non-visual clues such as those based on sound. In fact, these conditions are a norm in high-stress environments (dense canopy or fog, structures on fire, underground mines, etc.),” he says.Misra is working towards taking the MUAV technology from its existing level to “cognitive autonomous systems”. He believes that as spatial intelligence and cognitive technology mature, the lines between machines and humans would blur, enabling both to live together in the same society as companions. In the future, cognitive aerial drones will take up roles such as aerial cars and taxis, pick up and escort agents, search and rescue bots, and ears and eyes for the disabled. In short: anything you want them to be.Sandeep Senan Designation: Founder and directorOrganization: Evobi Automations Pvt. Ltd (Bibox Labs)Innovation: A toolkit-based approach to learning so that kids can learn through experiments by making things like a robotic toy or a fire alarmEducation: BE in computer science from Visvesvaraya Technological University, Karnataka; MBA in international business from Edith Cowan University, AustraliaWhen it comes to innovation and creativity, Sandeep Senan is as excited as the young kids he wants to empower with the innovative tools at his disposal. His innovation, Bibox (short for Brain-in-a-box), is like an “electronic brain which can be instructed by a kid using a graphical software, which can run on a tablet or smartphone or PC or even with cards”, he says. Senan is of the view that the realm of innovation must be extended to children rather than remain mostly confined to the adult world. There’s a need for a huge change in the way children are taught and allowed to be creative, he feels.“The task of making adults creative is a humongous task, but if we think about kids, they are naturally curious and thus it’s easy to instill an innovative thinking process in them,” says Senan. So when he discovered that there was a lack of tools and curricula designed for instilling the habit of innovation in kids, he decided to do something about it.“The innovation Bibox was originated out of that need to give kids the tools to change the world and thus the confidence to keep innovating and make it a habit so that when they become adults, they can go out and make large-scale impact because the thinking is ingrained into their minds,” he says.Bibox doesn’t have a definite shape or size but is basically a set of tools—processors, switches, sensors, battery and software, among others—using which children in different age groups can try their hand at innovation. This “brain”, says Senan, can be connected to a variety of accessories, including toys, lights and TV sets, and children can come up with stuff like walking robotic dogs, automatic TV and even connected health products using the Internet of Things.“Because Bibox responds to kids’ logic in the physical world, they can see what the logic means and correct themselves when required—making the learning experience truly experiential,” he says. Besides providing them such toolkits, Senan’s organization also provides them some structured mentoring to enable them to use their creative freedom and confidence to innovate more and more in any field they choose to be in. “We are just getting the process started a little early,” he says. Through Bibox Labs, he has enrolled more than 25,000 students in over 100 schools in India.To take his innovative ways to a much larger base of students, Senan and his team are digitizing the process of mentoring the kids to be innovators. Once this is in place, he says, any student anywhere in the world would be able to go through the same process that Bibox Labs follows in its affiliate schools. They also plan to partner with private firms, non-governmental organizations and various government bodies to scale up the programme.Subham Banerjee Designation: Young scientistOrganization: Centre for Biodesign and Diagnostic, Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, department of biotechnologyInnovation: Transdermal patch against neurotoxin poisoningEducation: Master of pharmacy from West Bengal University of Technology; PhD in pharmacy from Birla Institute of Technology, MesraSoldiers fighting in hostile territories often have to shield themselves against harmful or poisonous gases and chemical substances. One often hears of deadly strikes such as the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system (1995), the nerve gas attack in Syria (2013) or the recent attack in Iraq by Islamic State militants in which they set fire to a sulphur mine, spreading sulphur dioxide plumes.Subham Banerjee’s innovation concerns protecting people against neurotoxic poisoning resulting from such attacks. “The exposure of humans to neurotoxins is a major risk factor in severe mortality in chemical or biological warfare situations, as neurotoxins are one of the most potent toxins,” he says. His innovation, a transdermal patch that can provide protection against neurotoxin poisoning, comprises an inert adhesive matrix system with active pharmaceutical ingredients. The patch can be applied to intact or even burnt or blistered skin. It works by releasing a combination drug (eserine and pralidoxime chloride) through the skin in what is called a “controlled or sustained release” mechanism.According to Banerjee, the new patch has “an excellent safety profile”, can be “self-administered”, and has positive environmental as well as economic impact. “Apart from conventional dosage forms, no novel sustained release prophylactic transdermal patches are currently available in the market,” he says. Which is why this innovation has huge socio-economic benefits and the potential to achieve product dominance in the market.In order to sustain this project and take it to the next level of successful commercialization, however, Banerjee says that some studies have to be carried out. For one, process parameters have to be optimized to scale up the capability of manufacturing these patches in bulk quantities. Also, a preclinical toxicity study in rodents needs to be done, followed by a full-fledged pilot for the bioavailability study in human subjects as per the guidelines of the Drug Controller General of India.Banerjee believes that this innovation has the potential to make an “extra value-addition” to the existing measures for biological warfare protection available with India’s Armed Forces.Vinay Kumar Designation: Co-founder, director and CEOOrganization: PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. LtdInnovation: A single device that can diagnose multiple parameters related to diabetes managementEducation: MTech in microelectronics and VLSI design and MSc in electronic science from Kurukshetra University; PhD from Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science BangaloreAt age 14, when Vinay Kumar was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, his doctor told him he would have to take insulin injections. The look of disappointment on his face prompted the physician to lie that it was only for 10 days that injections were needed. Later on, when Kumar realized that he was stuck with the needle for a lifetime, he became determined to put the hurt and discomfort behind and do something about it. Over the years, diabetes took a bigger and bigger toll on his body, with episodes of hypoglycemia (abnormally low level of sugar in the blood) and even fainting—but all this only strengthened his resolve.In addition to struggling with a debilitating condition like millions in the world do, Kumar constantly thought about how a diabetic can manage his condition better and, at the same time, persisted with his studies. “These two aspects of my life merged when I decided to pursue a PhD at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc Bangalore),” he says. Besides working on novel ways to diagnose diseases and acquiring multiple patents, he also co-founded (along with Navakanta Bhat and Gautam Sharma) PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. Ltd, a start-up incubated at IISc that is focused on medical device research and development.Kumar’s innovation is a hand-held point-of-care device which, as a single unit, can measure eight different parameters related to diabetes management and early detection of its complications. “With a tiny drop of finger-pricked blood samples, patients can test HbA1c (which gives 90 days blood glucose control profile), glycated albumin (which gives 15 days blood glucose control profile) and instant blood glucose as well,” he says. The device can detect very early damage in the kidney by measuring the microalbuminuria, creatinine and ACR (albumin to creatinine ratio) in the urine samples. Apart from these, he adds, it can measure the haemoglobin level for anaemia and chronic kidney disease. “The device can measure serum albumin, an important blood marker for kidney and liver. So the single device can take care of full diabetes glycaemic management and early detection of complications such as diabetic nephropathy,” explains Kumar.The road ahead for PathShodh is well-defined. “The device is ready and regress clinical validation for most of the tests has been completed on real patient samples in collaboration with major pathology labs and hospitals in Bangalore. We also have the manufacturing line setup at IISc to manufacture the disposable test strips for these different tests,” says Kumar. The commercial launch of the device can happen any time now. That would certainly move the needle in a positive direction for PathShodh’s mission of making healthcare diagnostics affordable and available to all.",Meet the 10 winners of the Mint-MIT Technology Review competition for innovators below the age of 35 from across India in different cutting-edge domains,"Fri, Mar 31 2017. 05 26 PM IST",EmTech 2017: Innovators under 35 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/4kTpwSMqU4dPUBKIWr4TAN/Donald-Trump-orders-review-of-H1B-visa-in-deterrent-to-Ind.html,"Kenosha, Wisconsin: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered federal agencies to look at tightening the H1B visa programme used to bring high-skilled foreign workers to the US, as he tries to carry out his campaign pledges to put “America First”.The move is a deterrent to Indian IT companies which send hundreds of software engineers to the US on H1B visas. Trump signed an executive order on enforcing and reviewing the H1B visa, popular in the IT industry, on a visit to the headquarters of Snap-On Inc. a tool manufacturer in Kenosha, Wisconsin.In the document, known to the White House as the “Buy American and Hire American” order, Trump also seeks changes in government procurement that would boost purchases of American products in federal contracts, with one aim being to help US steelmakers.The moves show Trump once again using his power to issue executive orders to try to fulfil promises he made last year in his election campaign, in this case to reform US immigration policies and encourage purchases of American products. Senior officials gave few details on implementation of the order but Trump aides have expressed concern that most H1B visas are awarded for lower-paid jobs at outsourcing firms, many based in India, which they say takes work away from Americans. They seek a more merit-based way to give the visas to highly skilled workers. “Right now, widespread abuse in our immigration system is allowing American workers of all backgrounds to be replaced by workers brought in from other countries,” Trump said.As he nears the 100-day benchmark of his presidency, Trump still has no major legislative achievements. With his attempts to overhaul healthcare and tax law not bearing fruit so far in a Congress controlled by his fellow Republicans, Trump has leaned heavily on executive orders to seek changes to the US economy.The venue for Trump’s visit on Tuesday is a nod to his voter base in the manufacturing centres of the American heartland. Wisconsin unexpectedly voted for the Republican last year, partly due to his promises to bring back industrial jobs. H1B visas are intended for foreign nationals in occupations that generally require higher education, including science, engineering or computer programming. The government uses a lottery to award 65,000 visas every year and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.Critics say the lottery benefits outsourcing firms that flood the system with mass applications for visas for lower-paid information technology workers. “Right now H1B visas are awarded in a totally random lottery and that’s wrong. Instead, they should be given to the most skilled and highest paid applicants and they should never, ever be used to replace Americans,” Trump said. Reuters",Donald Trump orders a look at tightening regulations on H1 B visa used by Indian IT companies to bring high-skilled foreign workers to the US,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 01 19 PM IST",Donald Trump signs H1B visa order to tighten rules on foreign workers +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/e3F09eFFpGkTONOZICwsIO/United-CEO-Oscar-Munoz-says-no-one-will-be-fired-for-draggin.html,"The chief executive officer (CEO) of United Airlines says no one will be fired over the dragging of a man off a plane—including himself.CEO Oscar Munoz said on Tuesday that he takes full responsibility “for making this right”, and he promised more details later this month after United finishes a review of its policies on overbooked flights.Company executives said it’s too soon to know if the incident is hurting ticket sales.United has been pummeled on social media — #BoycottUnited is a popular hashtag — and late-night television. Through Tuesday afternoon, its shares had fallen 4.3% since Flight 3411, wiping out nearly $1 billion in market value, although several other airline stocks declined in the same period.After the market closed Monday, United reported a $96 million first-quarter profit, down 69% from a year earlier largely because of higher costs for fuel, labor and maintenance. The revenue picture was looking better — evidence was growing that after two years of falling average fares, United will be able to push prices higher this year.On a conference call to discuss those results, Munoz started by apologizing again for the 9 April scene on a United Express plane at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. David Dao, a 69-year-old Kentucky physician, was bloodied and dragged off the plane by Chicago airport officers who had been summoned by United employees when Dao wouldn’t give up his seat. The three officers have all been suspended.Munoz and other executives vowed to treat customers with dignity, and said that what happened to Dao will never happen again.Munoz’s early statements on the incident were widely criticized. He initially supported employees and blamed Dao, calling him “disruptive and belligerent.” On Tuesday, he was asked if the company ever considered firing anyone, including management.“I’m sure there was lots of conjecture about me personally,” said Munoz. He noted that the board of United Continental Holdings Inc. has supported him.“It was a system failure across various areas,” Munoz continued. “There was never a consideration for firing an employee.”Dao’s lawyers have taken steps that foreshadow a lawsuit against the airline and the city of Chicago, which operates O’Hare Airport.United announced two rule changes last week, including saying that it will no longer call police to remove passengers from overbooked planes. It is not clear whether United oversold Flight 3411, but the flight became overbooked when four Republic Airline employees showed up after passengers had boarded and demanded seats so they could commute to their next assignment, a United Express flight the next morning.Some politicians and consumer advocates have called for a ban on overselling flights. Munoz declined to address that or other possible changes until the airline finishes a review by 30 April.Even in normal times, airlines closely—even daily—scrutinize numbers such as advance sales and occupancy levels on planes. Yet United officials said they couldn’t measure whether the dragging has affected their business.“It’s really too early for us to tell anything about bookings and in particular last week because it was the week before Easter, that’s normally a very low booking period,” said United President Scott Kirby. He said that United’s forecast for the April-through-June quarter has not changed.Limited competition at many major airports could blunt any nascent boycott of United. Wall Street analysts have been mostly silent about the Dao incident, perhaps believing that it won’t have a noticeable impact on United profits. They did not ask United management any questions about it on Tuesday’s call.Barclays analyst Brandon Oglenski told Munoz that “accidents happen... hopefully, we can put this behind us.” Back in December, the analyst had called United Continental the “most compelling stock” in the airline sector. The consensus estimate of 17 analysts surveyed by FactSet for United’s full-year earnings has risen by 3 cents a share since the Dao incident.Munoz said he has received “a lot of support” from United’s high-end customers, although “obviously a lot of people have ideas and thoughts about how we can make things better.”",CEO Oscar Munoz promises more details later this month after United finishes a review of its policies on overbooked flights,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 11 53 AM IST",United CEO Oscar Munoz says no one will be fired for dragging incident +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6vNzMVCjDIdhCNVCdf8mGN/Zensar-Technologies-acquires-retail-tech-firm-Keystone-Solut.html,"
Mumbai: IT services firm Zensar Technologies said on Thursday that it has acquired US-based supply chain management firm Keystone Solutions for an undisclosed amount. Zensar will retain Keystone’s brand and team of around 220 people.Keystone Solutions, based in Atlanta, Georgia, in the US, offers solutions to digitally manage orders and warehousing for large retail firms. It “will augment Zensar’s existing retail management portfolio”, Zensar Technologies CEO Sandeep Kishore said in a phone interview. Retail brings in about one-fourth of Zensar’s total business, and with the Keystone acquisition, this will increase to 27%, Kishore said. Zensar reported revenues of Rs700.9 crore in the December quarter, up 4% from a year ago.Keystone’s revenue in 2016 was $12.7 million and its technology will be also used to provide back-end management to Zensar’s manufacturing clients who make up 50% of its business, added Kishore.This is Zensar’s second acquisition in five months. In November, the firm bought UK-based user design firm Foolproof for its front end user experience design. Analysts said that the acquisition will help make Zensar a complete digital retail solutions provider. “Retail business constitutes 25% of revenue for Zensar”, an analyst with a brokerage firm said, requesting anonymity. “Foolproof gave them the UX (user experience) design and digital commerce front end. Now with the Keystone acquisition, they have the technology piece for the back-end management. With this, they are present across the value chain of retail businesses.”Zensar has been on an acquisition and investment spree to reorient its business from a provider of traditional IT services to a firm focused on digital services.“Zensar has been focusing on investments in organic business growth”, the analyst said. “Under Sandeep Kishore, the company has been taking a more strategic view and investments. “Zensar Technologies’ stock rose 2.4% to Rs922.05 on BSE, on a day the Sensex gained 0.39% to 29,647.42 points.",Zensar will retain Keystone’s brand and team of around 220 people,"Fri, Mar 31 2017. 04 41 AM IST",Zensar Technologies acquires retail tech firm Keystone Solutions +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/cyNZvxJc2xJVDToqAuo5sM/Japans-Konoike-Transport-Associated-Container-Terminals-fo.html,"New Delhi: Konoike Transport of Japan has formed a joint venture called Trac1 Logistics with India’s Associated Container Terminals Ltd to run private container trains in India. Konoike is the first Japanese company to enter the private container trains business in India. Associated Container chairman R.R. Joshi said the company is set up with an investment of around Rs100 crore, which will initially run four trains between Faridabad and Gujarat. Trac1 Logistics is the 17th firm licensed by Indian Railways to run private container trains.",Konoike Transport formed a joint venture called Trac1 Logistics with Associated Container Terminals to run private container trains in India,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 12 21 AM IST","Japan’s Konoike Transport, Associated Container Terminals form JV" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/GlS4tHHhSQWb7BsgwtwZZI/Lighthouse-plans-200-million-third-fund.html,"
India-focused Lighthouse Funds is readying to raise its third and largest private equity (PE) fund, a top executive said.“Following the success of our last two funds, we are looking to raise $200 million for our third fund,” said Mukund Krishnaswami, founding partner of Lighthouse.Set up by Krishnaswami and Sean Novak, Lighthouse typically invests in the range of $5-20 million per transaction in consumer-facing firms. The fund inducted Sachin Bhartiya as a partner in 2007.Lighthouse Funds currently has a corpus of approximately $235 million. The PE fund has raised two funds of $100 million and $135 million. It has invested in 17 companies since it raised its first fund in 2009.“From the first fund we have made 11 investments and exited six, and have made one partial exit in a company called XSEED Education. At the time of investment, XSEED, which developed specialized academic programmes for its member schools, had close to 50,000 students enrolled and will end this academic year with approximately 1.6 million students,” Krishnaswami said.In the past year, Lighthouse exited its 2010 investment in agro-chemicals formulation firm Dhanuka Agritech Ltd, and its investment in premium biscuit maker Unibic Foods, in which it sold its stake to Peepul Capital for an undisclosed sum.Early this year, Lighthouse also sold its stake in Kolkata-based diagnostic chain, Suraksha Diagnostics, the details of which weren’t made public.“We exited Suraksha at a range of exit multiples between 2.5x-7x on invested capital… Overall, Lighthouse has returned 1.7x of invested capital, with four assets still to exit,” Krishnaswami said.Lighthouse closed its second fund in 2015 at $135 million, receiving a $42 million investment commitment from the US government’s development finance institution Overseas Private Investment Corporation. From the second fund, Lighthouse has made six investments till date.In March, the PE fund picked up a stake in Delhi-based non-banking financial company Capital Trust Ltd. It invested in Indian ethnic apparel and home accessories brand Fabindia in the previous month.The fund’s other notable investments include leading snack foods firm Bikaji Foods International and personal care brand Kama Ayurveda.To help its portfolio firms scale up, the PE fund has created an operating executive council, comprising a team of industry veterans including Ravi Chaturvedi, a former global president of Procter and Gamble Co. He works directly with the companies in Lighthouse’s portfolio.According to the India private equity 2017 report by Bain India, capital-raising is expected to be top priority for funds in 2017. However, investors surveyed also believe that the fund-raising environment will get more challenging this year. “A majority of funds reported greater participation from LPs (limited partners) in the form of passive co-investment rights in their current portfolio. Funds expect LPs to play a more active role in 2017 and will likely offer more co-investment opportunities,” the report said.India continued to be an attractive destination for investments. Fund allocations to India in 2016 increased by 8% over the previous year. The PE firms in the country were sitting on a dry powder of $9 billion, which was similar to 2015, reaffirming the potential for investments in the Indian market.",Lighthouse Funds currently has a corpus of approximately $235 million,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 18 AM IST","Lighthouse Funds plans $200 million third fund, its largest so far " +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Q7Yo3MUfeBgS3md4J5P30N/Cochin-Shipyard-leads-sale-of-stakes-in-Indian-arms-spree.html,"New Delhi/Singapore: Want to buy a stake in an aircraft-carrier builder? How about a fighter-jet maker?India is about to start an $11 billion sale of government assets, including holdings in the shipyard and factories that supply India’s military, offering investors a share of some of the region’s more profitable manufacturers that are benefiting from soaring defence spending.India is the world’s largest arms importer and Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to change that while at the same time raising money to reduce the fiscal deficit. Among the biggest stakes to be sold are in Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., or HAL, which is trying to build a domestic fighter, and Cochin Shipyard Ltd., currently building India’s first home-made aircraft carrier. The shipbuilder has seen profit almost double in the last five years, while earnings at most big global shipyards have slumped.As India builds its status in the region, “it will find it even more essential that it becomes self-sufficient in designing and manufacturing high-tech weapon systems,” said Deepak Sinha, a consultant with the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation. Non-state investors can help make the arms-makers more efficient and focused, he said.Modi has pledged to spend $250 billion by 2025 on weapons and military equipment for a nation that has territorial disputes with Pakistan and China. India makes about 70% of its defence purchases abroad and has topped the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s list of the largest defence importers for the last seven years.Economic growth in Asia in the past decade is spurring countries like India, China and Indonesia to upgrade their armed forces in the face of geopolitical tensions. That’s pushed Asia-Pacific to the forefront of the growth in defence spending. The region’s military outlay rose 5.4% to around $436 billion in 2015, compared with a 1.7% increase in Europe and a drop across Africa and the Americas, according to SIPRI, although spending, as a percentage of GDP, has been in line with economic growth in these countries.India is also asking private equity funds to invest in profitable state-controlled companies such as helicopter maker Pawan Hans Ltd. and BEML Ltd., which makes military and mining vehicles and rail cars.Modi’s administration has budgeted for a 35% increase in earnings from asset sales in the current year, taking advantage of a stock market that just had its best three months since 2014. Modi has pledged to shrink Asia’s widest budget deficit to 3.2% of GDP in the year starting this month, from an estimated 3.5%.“The timing seems good as the market has started making new highs,” said Deepak Mohoni, founder of market strategy firm Trendwatch India Pvt., who coined the term “Sensex” for the Mumbai stock exchange index. “Funds will pick them up.”India has met or beaten its so-called annual disinvestment target only five times since 1998.India has traditionally relied on Russian weapons, with Sukhoi and MiG fighters forming the backbone of its air strike capability. It has recently moved towards buying defence equipment from the US. HAL has been developing the Tejas home-made fighter jet for more than three decades, but it has yet to produce a version that plays a major role in the air force. The aircraft carrier that Cochin Shipyard is building for the Indian Navy forms a “significant part” of the company’s current order book, according to regulatory filings. The nation’s only existing carrier in service is a former Soviet vessel that was decommissioned by the Russians in 1996 and refitted for India a decade later.Cochin Shipyard filed regulatory papers for an IPO last month. HAL would be ready by July or August, according to Chairman T Suvarna Raju. Finance ministry spokesman D.S. Malik declined to comment.India opened its defence manufacturing to private companies 15 years ago, but a lack of infrastructure for niche military manufacturing and a government preference for imported products mean the sector effectively remains a monopoly of state-run firms. Modi raised the cap on foreign ownership of defence contractors to 49%, from 26%, after he took power in 2014 with special dispensation for full ownership if the deal would bring India advanced military technology.“It’s long been the aim of successive Indian governments to raise a self-sufficient, globally competitive indigenous defence industry,” said Shashank Joshi, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. The increased cap on foreign stakes in private Indian defence firms should help bring the private and state-run Indian firms and foreign technology closer together, he said.The Indian government aims to raise another Rs47,000 crore selling stakes in companies in the year ending March 2019, and Rs40,000 crore the following year. Bloomberg","India is about to start an $11 billion sale of government assets, including holdings in the Cochin Shipyard and factories that supply India’s military","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 10 10 AM IST",Cochin Shipyard leads sale of stakes in Indian arms spree +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/syJFH0ErPmRiHiXUykq4DM/As-US-visa-troubles-deepen-more-Indians-look-to-come-back.html,"
New Delhi: More Indians living in the US want a job back home after Donald Trump became the president of the world’s largest economy. The number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has gone up more than 10-fold between December and March, according to an analysis by consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Pvt. Ltd, shared exclusively with Mint .There were approximately 600 US-based Indians seeking jobs in India in December 2016. By the end of March 2017, the number had gone up to approximately 7,000, Deloitte analysis said.ALSO READ: Donald Trump orders review of H-1B visa norms, in deterrent to Indian IT companiesThis data comes amid a crackdown by the Trump administration on job visas for skilled workers, including software engineers from India. US Citizenship and Immigration Services said employers seeking H-1B work visas—a non-immigrant visa allowing American firms to employ foreign workers—for 2018 declined for the first time in five years.The surge in the number of applicants has been triggered by Trump’s vows to protect jobs for locals. A Bloomberg report on Tuesday said Trump will take aim at information technology outsourcing companies when he orders a review of H-1B visa programmes to favour more skilled and highly paid applicants. The report also cited companies such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. and Mphasis Corp. as examples of outsourcing firms that would likely have fewer visas approved once the changes are adopted. The H-1B work visa programme channels thousands of foreign workers to the US technology industry.“While US companies will find some tech talent in the US, the numbers might be less than what are required to meet their needs. Add to that, the wages they need to pay to US employees will be much higher than what they pay to H-1B visa holders,” said C.K. Guruprasad, a consultant with executive search firm Spencer Stuart.On Tuesday, Australia abolished the 457 visa programme used by over 95,000 temporary foreign workers, the majority of them Indians, to tackle unemployment.Experts see global in-house centres (GICs) as a viable option for companies to not only retain Indian talent but also address the anticipated shortage in the required volume of workers in the US.According to Parag Saigaonkar, Principal at consulting firm Deloitte in India, while the initial thrust of GICs was on moving job roles from a high-cost to low-cost centre to get a competitive edge, companies are now looking at non-linear values that GICs can add to the business—new things that Indian GICs can produce—and supporting the parent organization.“With the seemingly shifting dynamics towards options between outsourcing and local hiring, companies with GICs in India could move Indian talent from the US to India and also hire locals into the GICs and thus sidestep the restrictions of outsourcing to third party companies,” Guruprasad said.According to K.S.Viswanathan, vice-president for industry initiatives at lobby group Nasscom, while the purpose of GICs so far has revolved around cost and skills arbitration advantages and talent consideration, it is now expected to change.“We are seeing a lot of companies looking at building newer competencies around newer technologies like machine learning, AI, automation, UI/UX, product management, DevOps etc,” said Anand Subramaniam, engagement manager and delivery head (GIC Accelerator Platform), Zinnov, a consulting firm.On an average, GICs add 50,000 to 70,000 people in India every year and due to the volume requirements, this number is expected to go up, according to Nasscom. According to the lobby group, there are over 1,000 GICs in India. Of these, around 67% of them are of US origin. Around 65% of the total workforce of 750,000 employed by these GICs are for US origin companies.",The number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has surged 10-fold since December as Donald Trump moved to tighten US visa policy,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 11 07 AM IST","As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come back" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/YL0P7H6nhJTE5xT0ne50UL/Mahindra-consolidates-sales-and-marketing-functions.html,"Mumbai: Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd on Tuesday said it has combined the sales and marketing functions of the automotive division, re-designating Veejay Nakra as the senior vice-president sales and marketing, with effect from 1 May 2017. Nakra will take over from Vivek Nayer, who has now moved to a strategic role at the group level within the organisation. The move is aimed at reducing complexity and simplifying the organisational structure. “The long term strategy for our automotive sector is one of simplicity,” said Rajan Wadhera, president – Automotive Sector at the firm. This is a process under which Mahindra will strive to provide best products and services while keeping the systems and processes simple and lucid. A mechanical engineer and an MBA in marketing, Nakra started his career with Mahindra in 1994. Over the decades, he has held a range of positions in sales and customer care, corporate planning, project development, new product implementation and establishing and heading businesses in new geographies. With marketing added to his portfolio Nakra would also be responsible for planning Mahindra’s future product pipeline, gathering consumer insights and creating and managing the portfolio of both personal and commercial brands.","Mahindra & Mahindra re-designates Veejay Nakra as the senior vice president sales and marketing, with effect from 1 May 2017 ","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 07 37 PM IST",Mahindra consolidates sales and marketing functions +https://www.livemint.com/Money/GGA26U6DdEl4O6cVczBa0I/Funding-of-corporate-dividends-by-external-borrowings-may-fa.html,"Mumbai: Improved profitability is likely to lower the funding of corporate dividends by external borrowings. According to an India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) report released on Tuesday, the debt component of dividend funding is likely to reduce to around Rs5,800 crore each year during fiscal 2017-18 from an average of Rs9,000 crore in 2014-16. The rating agency said that debt-funded dividends (DFDs) as a proportion of the total dividends paid between 2017-18 may reduce to 13% from an average of 22% in 2010-16. “This is under the assumption that debt reduction remains minimal and continues to get refinanced,” the report said. ALSO READ: Geopolitical tension weighs on markets, earnings keyHowever, Ind-Ra added that DFDs in auto, telecom, infrastructure, power and real estate sectors is estimated to increase to 77% by 2018 from 42% during 2010-16. Improved profitability of the metals and mining sector may lead to a significant decline in DFDs to 1.4% by fiscal 2018 from 44% in 2016.","The debt component of corporate dividend funding is likely to fall to around Rs5,800 crore each year during fiscal 2017-18 from an average of Rs9,000 crore in 2014-16, said India Ratings report","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 08 27 PM IST",Funding of corporate dividends by external borrowings may fall in FY17: India Ratings +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Z3BoonqZkdA6n28faYtcZJ/SBI-branch-opened-2000-accounts-to-channelise-black-money.html,"New Delhi: Over 2,000 fresh accounts were opened in a Bareilly branch of State Bank of India (SBI) post- demonetisation till 31 December to allegedly channelise black money in which at least Rs8 crore were deposited in old notes, a CBI probe has found. The CBI has now registered an FIR against unknown bank officials and unknown persons for criminal conspiracy, cheating and corruption. Based on source information, the CBI had carried out a surprise check in the Civil Lines branch of SBI in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly on 2 January. During the operation, the CBI detected that a huge amount of cash was deposited in the bank after 8 November last year, when the notes ban was announced, in newly-opened accounts and the dormant accounts which had been activated. Also Read: Large banksThe CBI had found that 2,441 new accounts were opened by bank officials between 8 November and 31 December. Out of these accounts, 667 were savings accounts, 53 were current, 94 were Jan Dhan accounts, 50 PPF, 1,518 FD, 13 festival accounts, two senior citizen accounts and one government account.The probe found that there were 794 instances at the bank when cash of over Rs1 lakh and more was deposited. In certain cases huge cash deposits were also made but the sources refused to disclose the amount. These accounts were opened by bank officials allegedly in connivance with private persons which enabled deposits of huge cash and currency conversion without keeping proper records.“It is observed that 267 dormant accounts have been activated after declaration of demonetisation by the bank officials in connivance with private persons in order to facilitate the deposit of old currency notes,” the FIR said. It said in order to cover up the alleged misdeeds of the officials, complete teller reports, details of receipt of old currency notes and its exchange with new currency notes was not maintained by them, though it was the responsibility of the concerned branch to maintain the teller reports. The CBI alleged that vault register and other records maintained by cash department of the branch containing details of inward and outward movement of notes was made “casually” and a lot of alterations were made in a number of pages. “By the acts of commission and omission, the bank officials in connivance with private persons have conspired to defeat the purpose of demonetisation and facilitated exchange of black money and deposit of bank accounts without maintaining proper records,” it alleged.","Out of these SBI accounts, 667 were savings accounts, 53 were current, 94 were Jan Dhan accounts, 50 PPF, 1,518 FD, 13 festival accounts, two senior citizen accounts and one government account","Sun, Apr 09 2017. 01 44 PM IST","SBI branch opened 2,000 accounts to channelise black money" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/c5yPRXMzE4W1oZzikiRb1N/Motilal-Oswal-Real-Estate-to-invest-Rs800crore-in-current-f.html,"
Motilal Oswal Real Estate, the real estate-focused investment arm of Motilal Oswal Private Equity Advisors Pvt. Ltd, plans to invest around Rs800 crore this fiscal year and will raise a new fund once it closes the current one, said a top executive. The firm is currently raising capital for India Realty Excellence Fund III (IREF-III), a Rs1,250 crore fund, of which it has raised Rs940 crore so far, and plans to close it in the next three months or so, after some delay caused by demonetization last November. Motilal Oswal has so far deployed Rs450 crore from the money it has raised, far below the Rs600-700 crore it had planned to invest last year. “Fundraising was impacted by demonetization temporarily and took longer than we anticipated but it is back to normal now,” said Sharad Mittal, director and head, real estate investment, Motilal Oswal Real Estate.IREF-III is a residential-focused fund that also selectively invests in commercial office projects, in deals that are typically in the Rs80-100 crore range. It undertakes structured equity and mezzanine investments and focuses on mid-income residential projects with some amount of approval certainty. Mittal said investments slowed during the November-January period because most developers did not want to launch or undertake new projects, and there was no early-stage money to give. Plans are on to launch a fund later this year, once the current fund is fully deployed. The new fund will be larger—around Rs1,500 crore in size—and will do structured equity deals.From the current fund, Motilal Oswal has invested Rs90 crore across three commercial office projects of Phoenix Infratech Pvt. Ltd in Hyderabad, Rs130 crore in Mumbai-based Rajesh Lifespaces’ residential project and around Rs90 crore in ATS Infrastructure Ltd’s residential and office projects in Noida, among others.“It is getting difficult to underwrite deals in Mumbai from the cost structure perspective. We like investing in the price bracket of Rs4,000-6,000 a sq. ft in tier I cities, except Mumbai where we look at around Rs14,000 a sq. ft for decent margins and good demand. Investing in NCR (National Capital Region) is a big challenge, where finding good developer partners is tough,” Mittal said. Going forward, it plans to do more deals in Hyderabad and strike deals with existing partners and add a few new partners. Four years into the slowdown, real estate funds that invest in residential projects have slowed investments as property prices remain stagnant, sales tepid and the same set of projects come up for multiple rounds of refinancing.“Demonetization caused a short-term blip but both fundraising and deployment of capital have been challenging for real estate funds for a while now. While fundraising has slowed down considerably due to uncertainty in the property market here, deployment has also been a challenge due to the lack of good quality deals, weak project cash flows and stretched balance sheets of developers,” said Rajeev Bairathi, executive director and head of capital markets, Knight Frank India.","Motilal Oswal Real Estate is currently raising capital for IREF-III, a Rs1,250 crore fund","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 12 15 AM IST",Motilal Oswal Real Estate to invest Rs800 crore in current fiscal +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/KN3RbGvRRj49El2KNKstFL/Tata-Housing-to-invest-Rs1000-crore-on-projects-in-Africa.html,"New Delhi: Tata Housing on Tuesday announced plans to expand to the African property market and will invest Rs1,000 crore to develop two projects in Kenya and Tanzania. The real estate arm of the Tata group plans to raise $200 million through private equity to fund the overseas operations. It recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Housing Bank and a private real estate firm to develop more than 4.5 million square feet of mixed use townships in Kenya and Tanzania. The two mixed use development projects are expected to be launched by January 2018 in a price range of $75,000 – 1,00,000 per unit, catering to the mid-income segment. “The investment in both projects is expected to be more than Rs1,000 crores across both the phases over the next 3-4 years,” the company said in a statement. “Our early success in Sri Lanka and the Maldives gave us the impetus to further expand our international footprint. Starting with Kenya and Tanzania, we will cater to the mid-income segments and fulfil their demand for superior quality housing,” said Tata Housing MD & CEO Brotin Banerjee. With 60% of the urban population living in informal housing, there is consistent growth in demand for housing across both Kenya and Tanzania. Tata Housing has recently handed over the government housing project to the government of Maldives and launched two high-end projects at Odeon and Nadhee in the capital city, Male.",Tata Housing plans to raise $200 million through private equity to fund the overseas operations in Kenya and Tanzania,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 09 04 PM IST","Tata Housing to invest Rs1,000 crore on projects in Africa" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/GUnHyj5tftH0Tw1J8gPoGK/No-deadline-for-introduction-of-Sharia-banking-in-India-RBI.html,"New Delhi: No deadline has been set for introduction of Sharia or interest-free banking in India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said. Islamic or Sharia banking is a finance system based on the principles of not charging interest, which is prohibited under Islam. The RBI had earlier proposed opening of “Islamic window” in conventional banks for gradual introduction of Sharia-compliant banking. Responding to an RTI application, the RBI said it has not taken any step to introduce Islamic window in banks for gradual introduction of Sharia-compliant interest-free banking in India. “RBI has not set any deadline for introduction of interest-free banking,” the central bank said in response to the RTI query filed by PTI. However, on the instruction of the central government, an inter-departmental group (IDG) set up in RBI has examined the legal, technical and regulatory issues for introducing interest-free banking in India and has submitted its report to the government, it said. The RBI had in February last year sent a copy of the IDG to the finance ministry.“In our considered opinion, given the complexities of Islamic finance and various regulatory and supervisory challenges involved in the matter and also due to the fact that Indian banks have no experience in this field, Islamic banking may be introduced in India in a gradual manner,” the central bank had told the ministry in a letter. In late 2008, a committee on Financial Sector Reforms, headed by former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, had stressed on the need for a closer look at the issue of interest-free banking in the country. “Certain faiths prohibit the use of financial instruments that pay interest. The non-availability of interest-free banking products results in some Indians, including those in the economically disadvantaged strata of society, not being able to access banking products and services due to reasons of faith,” the committee had said. PTI",The RBI said it has not taken any step to introduce Islamic window in banks for gradual introduction of Sharia-compliant interest-free banking in India,"Sun, Apr 09 2017. 10 08 AM IST",No deadline for introduction of Sharia banking in India: RBI +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Rlaki5gBwq6gGAyXUZKlXJ/RBI-proposes-wholesale-longterm-finance-banks-in-new-discu.html,"
Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday released a discussion paper seeking comments on a new category of banks—wholesale and long-term finance banks that will fund large projects. The regulator has been trying to bring in new types of lenders into the banking system in an effort to introduce new ideas and develop niches to ensure that more segments are covered. In 2015, RBI allowed 11 payments banks and 10 small-finance banks.According to the discussion paper, these wholesale and long-term finance banks will focus primarily on lending to the infrastructure sector and small, medium and corporate businesses. They will also securitize assets for banks and financial institutions which do priority-sector lending. RBI’s proposal comes at the time when the banking sector is saddled with stressed assets worth Rs7 trillion, overall credit growth is languishing at around 4.5% and bank credit to industry is shrinking at a rate of 5% year-on-year. “Due to asset quality impacts on banks’ balance sheets, there is an overall declining trend in bank credit, primarily towards services sector, industrial segments, and small and medium enterprises,” the paper said.The paper said loans to the infrastructure sector, at the end of the December quarter in FY15, accounted for 13% of non-performing assets in the banking sector. “The concept of differentiated banking is very welcome. However, to put small and medium enterprises and infrastructure portfolios together, perhaps, is not a bright idea,” said Ashvin Parekh, managing partner, Ashvin Parekh Advisory Services Llp. “The existing and established universal banks may not necessarily take the reform with excitement. They are presently evolving approaches to ensure payment banks do not run away with their fee income or customer base,” he added.Since wholesale and long-term finance banks will not acquire savings deposits, they will focus on corporate bonds, credit derivatives, warehouse receipts and take-out financing, as sources of funds, the paper said. They may also offer services related to equity or debt investments, and foreign exchange trade finance to their clients, similar in nature to investment banks. Term deposits above Rs10 crore might be considered for these banks with restrictions on premature withdrawals, the paper said.Since these banks will have large credit exposure, a minimum equity capital of Rs1,000 crore might be required, according to the discussion paper.For universal banks, the minimum equity capital stands at Rs500 crore while for differentiated banks such as payments banks and small finance banks, it is Rs100 crore.The regulator has asked for comments to be sent in by 19 May.",RBI has released a discussion paper on a proposal to set up ‘differentiated banks’ in the form of wholesale and long-term finance banks to fund large projects,"Fri, Apr 07 2017. 11 07 PM IST","RBI paper seeks views on wholesale, long-term finance banks" +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/LElDNMK5i0icksFnVD2T1J/RBI-defends-monetary-policy-committees-unanimous-voting-rec.html,"Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has strongly defended its monetary policy committee’s (MPC) unanimous voting record by arguing that this was the norm across many countries. One constant criticism that the MPC has had to face was that all members were reading from the same page and there was no dissenting voice. Thursday’s monetary policy review was the fourth under the new framework where rate decisions are decided by a committee; it was also the fourth straight instance of unanimous voting.That, critics said, defeated the reason why India moved to the MPC framework in the first place: to encourage diverse views and debates over the setting of policy rates through a voting structure. Even the minutes of the MPC members are mere statements justifying their position, revealing very little about the debate that could have taken place. While the minutes of the April meeting are awaited, a look at the last MPC meeting held in February shows that two out of six members did not share their view on the change in RBI’s stance from being accommodative to neutral.However, RBI believes that it might be too early for such criticism. In the Monetary Policy Report, the bi-annual in-depth study of inflation and growth by RBI, the central bank said that rate committees in the UK, Sweden, Thailand, Czech Republic and Hungary have seen full consensus decisions between October 2016 and February 2017.However, others such as US Federal Reserve Open market Committee (FOMC) and Bank of England’s MPC have seen many differences while setting policy. But these differences were over the size of the change in policy rate and not the overarching policy stance, said the report.According to the RBI, typically divergences stem from MPC members’ policy preferences—the relative weight on price stability and output stabilization and also their assessment of expected economic conditions, and the evolution of inflation and output gaps.Going by this trend, one could argue that RBI is simply trying to align itself with global central banking standards which follow “material differences in views but marginal differences in votes”.This is not the first time that the RBI has compared its MPC functioning with other similar panels around the world. In October 2016, RBI had done a survey of 15 countries on the number of MPC meetings and the press conferences that usually follow these meetings, explaining the rationale behind the decision.“A survey of country practices suggests a central tendency among major central banks to hold four press conferences a year, although the number of MPC meetings may be higher,” the statement had said.",RBI strongly defends monetary policy committee’s unanimous voting record by arguing that this was the norm across many countries,"Sat, Apr 08 2017. 01 04 AM IST",RBI defends monetary policy committee’s unanimous voting record +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/SaNsXV7aAxyhh7KYO55zgI/Conduct-special-audit-of-PF-trusts-parliamentary-panel-to-l.html,"New Delhi: A parliamentary panel has asked the labour ministry to conduct special inspection or audit of private Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) trusts that have been found to be investing their workers’ retirement savings in own firms through mutual funds. The private trusts, regulated by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organization (EPFO), maintain Provident Fund (PF) accounts and retirement savings and are required to invest these funds as per the investment pattern approved by the government. These trusts are called exempted establishments because they do not deposit EPF contributions of their employees with the EPFO. “Investing in own business is improper and is being done to serve their own interest,” the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour said in its report tabled in Parliament on 7 April . The panel further said, “There is need to have special inspection or audit of all such companies and the EPFO should take early action on the requisite process for restricting investment through this route and take immediate corrective steps and re-divert such investments in other... instruments.” It further observed: “From the list of 317 such firms, on whose board of trustees surcharge was levied (for deviating from the investment pattern), most of the establishments were closed against which the cancellation orders were issued... such futile exercise needs to be tackled with regular physical inspection.” As per the EPF scheme, the violation of not sticking to the investment template is only limited to three instances, and beyond that, the exemption granted to the firm can be cancelled. The panel suggested that the exemption given to these private EPF trusts should be reviewed after a prescribed period so that the EPFO is aware of the exact financial status of the firms, which will help in protecting the interest of employees. Also Read: Govt may hike salary threshold to Rs21,000 for mandatory PF coverageIt also suggested that it should be made mandatory to check the demat account of these trusts to verify the pattern of investments as well as the returns received by these trusts during the compliance audit. The panel noted that as on December 31, 2016, the total corpus of these trusts was around Rs2.57 lakh crore, including the unclaimed EPF amount of Rs5,475 crore. It also called for a suitable amendment in the scheme without delay so that not just the name of the worker for whom unclaimed amount is available gets reflected in the annual account statement of the PF fund, but the funds get transferred to the EPFO after a specified period. It also asked the ministry to explore the possibility of depositing the unclaimed amount so revived in the special reserve fund (SRF).","The private trusts, regulated by the EPFO, maintain Provident Fund accounts and retirement savings and are required to invest these funds as per the investment pattern approved by the government","Sun, Apr 09 2017. 12 29 PM IST",Conduct special audit of PF trusts: parliamentary panel to labour ministry +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KQwnD5F0gTY3gqyxylH5QJ/Ujjwala-scheme-exceeds-target-covers-over-2-crore-household.html,"New Delhi: Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), the welfare scheme brought by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government akin to the previous regime’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, promising energy security to the poor, has covered more than 2 crore households within 11 months of launch. The scheme, which offers liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) connections to women below poverty line without upfront charges, exceeded its target for the 2016-17 fiscal of 1.5 crore connections in eight months since its launch last May and is gathering pace as access to clean energy has been set as a priority in the hydrocarbon sector.The budget for the scheme was revised to Rs2,500 crore for the first year, up from Rs2,000 crore earmarked originally.The scheme aimed at giving rural folks relief from smoke in the kitchen and the ailments it brings, bolstered Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) pro-poor pitch in the recent assembly polls including in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state accounting for about 30% of the Ujjwala beneficiaries.BJP created history by winning 312 of the 403 assembly seats in UP, while the Samajwadi Party (SP) was reduced to just 47 seats. SP leaders concede that the Ujjwala scheme may have had a part to play in BJP’s victory.“Even though the SP government had also launched many welfare schemes like the Samajwadi Pension Yojana, the Ujjwala Yojana resonated well with people as the Central government was quick in distributing cylinders to the beneficiaries and the people had the product in front of them in no time,” said an SP leader from Lucknow, on the condition of anonymity.Besides UP, the other major beneficiaries include Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar. Priority is given to states where LPG penetration is below the national average of 61% of households.An oil ministry statement said that in FY17, three fuel retailers Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd have issued a total 3.25 crore new connections, the highest number of connections given in any year ever, including the connections under the Ujjwala scheme.As a result, LPG coverage in the country has jumped to 72.8% with 19.88 crore active consumers as on 1 April. Universalization of clean cooking fuel is being supported by oil companies by setting up more LPG production and bottling units, transportation facilities and recruiting more dealers across the country.“Our first year target for the scheme launched last May was 1.5 crore, which we managed to achieve by December. It is a phenomenal social transformation programme. By providing access to clean energy, we are also preventing people from using firewood which pollutes the air and leads to ailments. It also frees up time for women, a part of which could be used for productive purposes like starting a cottage industry,” said B. Ashok, chairman, IOC, the largest refiner. Expanding LPG use and the government’s rural lighting programme also help in reducing the requirement of kerosene, a part of the supply of which through state-level public distribution channel is believed to be diverted for adulteration of diesel.",The Ujjwala scheme exceeded its target for the 2016-17 fiscal of 1.5 crore connections in eight months since its launch last May,"Tue, Apr 04 2017. 11 44 PM IST","Ujjwala scheme exceeds target, covers over 2 crore households in first year " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/w1X4YDYo5h35xUIYdhe0VI/Payment-delays-pose-risk-to-wind-and-solar-projects-Mercom.html,"Mumbai: Payment delays by distribution companies (discoms) to wind and solar projects in India is hurting project costs for companies and posing a challenge to the sector’s growth plans, Mercom Capital Group said in a report on Tuesday.Payment delays by discoms to these projects is hurting their liquidity and payment to lenders. Discoms in Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Jharkhand have so far found it difficult to pay renewable energy producers on time due to their own weak financial health, according to the report.Discoms in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have delayed payments to generators of wind and solar power by as much as 8-10 months, putting their cash flows under tremendous pressure and sending negative signals for developers and investors, Mint had reported in October 2016. Tariffs, both in wind and solar, have come down significantly in the past year. Average solar tariffs in India have fallen by about 73% since 2010, almost in line with Chinese spot module prices.In February, solar tariffs fell to a record low of a levelized tariff (the value financially equivalent to different annual tariffs over the period of the power purchase agreement) of Rs3.30 per unit in a reverse auction at the Rewa solar park. Similarly, wind tariffs fell to Rs3.46 a unit in a recent auction held by the Solar Energy Corp. of India.“With these extremely low tariffs, developers are looking at best-case scenarios with margins for error nearly non-existent. Payment delays are adding to project costs as banks charge higher interest rates due to projects being built in high-risk states known for payment issues, stymying investment into the sector,” the report said.Payment issues persist in some states despite progress of the government’s Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY) scheme, where 25 states and one Union territory have joined the program, the report said.Of the Rs488 billion discom debt, about Rs239 billion loan amount was repaid till the third quarter of FY17 under the UDAY scheme and another Rs90 billion was repaid by Tamil Nadu recently—resulting in 65% of discom debt being repaid, Edelweiss Securities analysts Kunal Shah, Nilesh Parikh and Prakhar Agarwal wrote in a 30 March report.","Payment delays by discoms to wind and solar projects is hurting their liquidity and payment to lenders, says Mercom Capital report","Tue, Apr 04 2017. 12 41 PM IST",Payment delays pose risk to wind and solar projects: Mercom Capital report +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/qEA6d51ft2VAJRDkWka9pI/RBI-keeps-repo-rate-unchanged-at-625.html,"
The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) monetary policy committee (MPC) on Thursday decided to raise the reverse repo rate, at which it drains excess liquidity from the banking system, by 25 basis points, reflecting its steadfast pursuit of inflation management.The unanimous decision by the six-member committee to raise the rate to 6% is largely to ensure that banking system liquidity is consistent with the neutral monetary policy stance RBI adopted in February. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.RBI reiterated that it would use the many tools at its disposal, such as cash management bills and market stabilization bonds, to ensure that liquidity is brought close to a neutral (neither surplus nor deficit) level. It also said another tool, the so-called Standing Deposit Facility, under which banks can park their funds with RBI without receiving bonds as a collateral, was being examined by the government. Average surplus liquidity in the banking system was Rs4.4 trillion in March as the invalidation of high-value currency notes in November led to a flood of deposits, prompting economists to express concern that this would fuel inflation in the days ahead.“When it comes to inflation, the MPC is choosing to be conservative,” said Gaurav Kapur, chief economist at IndusInd Bank. “It has reiterated 4% inflation in the medium term as a core objective. Raising the reverse repo rate is a step towards ensuring that the liquidity management is in line with the neutral stance.”While the committee noted that risks to inflation are “evenly balanced” currently, it also listed several threats. The main upside risks come from the uncertainty surrounding the monsoon, the implementation of the house rent allowance component of the seventh pay commission award and one-off effects from the goods and services tax. “The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers,” said the monetary policy statement. Wholesale inflation soared to a 39-month high of 6.55% while retail inflation too inched up to 3.65% in February, signalling that inflation continues to be a concern for the regulator. Many economists expect no further rate cuts this financial year. “The policy has highlighted the upside risks to inflation despite the fact that global risks have subsided. This means the central bank is keeping a close watch on domestic risks. We are therefore looking at a prolonged pause before any action is taken this year,” said Upasna Bhardwaj, senior economist at Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. In a separate report , RBI’s staff economists have projected 4.9% consumer price inflation in the quarter ending March 2018 and 4.6% in the three months ending March 2019, both higher than its medium-term target. Two other facts highlight this risk. One, household inflation expectations continue to rise. The March round of RBI’s survey of urban households showed an increase of 20-50 basis points in inflation expectations over the December round, when they had declined. Two, the central bank has projected gross value added growth of 7.4% for the current financial year and 8.1% for fiscal 2018-19. “The output gap (the gap between potential output and what the economy is actually producing) is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory,” the policy statement said. What does this mean for lending rates? RBI has kept the repo rate, at which it infuses liquidity into the banking system, unchanged, while it has reduced the marginal standing facility rate (at which banks borrow from RBI beyond what is allowed under the repo window) by 25 basis points to 6.5%. “Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates,” the statement said.","RBI’s monetary policy committee raised the reverse repo rate to 6%, largely to ensure that banking system liquidity is consistent with the neutral stance adopted in February","Fri, Apr 07 2017. 02 27 AM IST",RBI targets excess liquidity in continuing focus on inflation +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/pLFlj5ggoHUWLXe1qbXEGK/GMR-Energy-forms-JV-with-investor-TNB-Remaco.html,"Mumbai: GMR Infrastructure Ltd on Monday said its unit GMR Energy Ltd has tied up with Malaysia’s TNB Repair and Maintenance Sdn Bhd (TNB Remaco) to set up an operations and maintenance (O&M) joint venture for the power sector.TNB Remaco, a specialist in power plant repair and maintenance, is a unit of Malaysia’s largest electricity utility Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB). GMR Energy had in May 2016 agreed to sell a 30% stake in its “select portfolio” of assets to Tenaga Nasional Bhd for $300 million (around Rs2,000 crore). The O&M JV between GMR Energy and TNB Remaco will provide operation and maintenance services, performance improvement services, testing and diagnostic services, repair and refurbishment services for power plants in India, GMR Infrastructure said in a statement.The JV plans to set up a refurbishment facility in India in what is TNB Remaco’s first investment outside Malaysia.GMR Energy and TNB Remaco will “identify business opportunities in the high-potential Indian market and provide operation and maintenance services to the power plants,” the statement said.Tenaga Nasional, one of the largest power companies in Southeast Asia, has a presence across the power generation, transmission and distribution segments. It has a total installed power capacity of 10,818 megawatts (MW) and controls 50% of the Malaysian grid’s generation capacity.GMR Energy has power capacity of over 4,600MW across coal, gas and renewable energy-based projects.“This (venture) would provide a renewed impetus to our energy portfolio and strengthen our relationship with our strategic foreign partner Tenaga Nasional Bhd,” G.B.S. Raju, chairman, GMR Energy said in a statement.","The JV between GMR Energy and TNB Remaco will provide operation and maintenance services, testing and diagnostic services among others for power plants in India","Mon, Apr 03 2017. 08 08 PM IST",GMR Energy forms JV with investor TNB Remaco +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/837vKzuQ43pwbY43xPRU9J/Qatar-to-drill-in-biggest-gas-field-after-12year-freeze.html,"Doha: Qatar Petroleum plans to start a new development in the offshore North Field, ending a 12-year ban on new projects that allowed the company to assess how its current rate of extraction affects the giant reservoir it shares with Iran.The patch, in the southern section of the field, will have a capacity of 2 billion cubic feet per day, or 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent, and should start production in five to seven years, chief executive officer Saad Sherida Al Kaabi told reporters Monday at Qatar Petroleum’s headquarters in Doha.Boosting natural gas production at home and searching for similar assets abroad signals Qatar Petroleum’s confidence in the longevity of gas demand, and its ability to remain a low-cost supplier in a market that has slumped amid a glut driven by output from US shale and Australia. “Global demand for gas is expected to rise,” Al Kaabi said. “There are no analysts who can say when demand for gas will wane. For oil, there are people who see peak demand in 2030, others in 2042, but for gas, demand is constantly growing.”Qatar Petroleum’s decision is a sign that it wants to increase its LNG market share, Giles Farrer, research director, global LNG, at Wood Mackenzie Ltd, said in an email. It’s “also a threat to other developers of new capacity worldwide, as Qatar can add new capacity at a lower cost than anybody else.”The North Field, and the connected South Pars in Iran, is the world’s biggest reservoir of non-associated gas. Qatar Petroleum was quicker to exploit it, becoming the world’s top exporter of liquefied natural gas and, thanks to a boost in condensate output, the fourth biggest energy company in terms of oil and gas production. Iran is catching up, extracting gas from its portion mainly for domestic consumption and to re-inject into oil fields to boost crude production.By ending the moratorium and earmarking new volumes for exports, QP is giving itself the fuel necessary to reclaim the top spot among LNG exporters it will relinquish to Australia in 2019, if it wants it. Al Kaabi said the company hasn’t decided if exports will be in the form of LNG, or other products. If it goes for the super-chilled fuel, the new production can be converted to 15.3 million tonnes of LNG a year. Qatar currently produces about 77 million tonnes annually.“We will remain the dominant force for LNG in the world for a very long time, and this basically solidifies that position,” Al Kaabi said. Bloomberg","Qatar Petroleum’s project in North Field will have a capacity of 2 billion cubic feet per day, or 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent, and should start production in five to seven years","Mon, Apr 03 2017. 08 50 PM IST",Qatar to drill in biggest gas field after 12-year freeze +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/juoNFQYSPmD3eXFRsPYtcO/Solar-power-to-light-up-remote-Arunachal-Pradesh-villages.html,"New Delhi: India will power close to 900 remote villages in Arunachal Pradesh bordering China using advanced off-grid renewable energy kits that will bring electricity to about 16,000 households, power minister Piyush Goyal said here. The government will later this week invite price bids from companies for the project which also involves installing more than 4,000 off-grid street lights. The falling cost of renewable energy makes this a better power supply option in far flung areas than laying transmission lines for grid connected power which could be time consuming. Energy efficient bulbs, fans and battery back up for eight hours are part of the package. Small off-grid solar power systems for individual consumers and micro-grids supplying solar power with a few commercial enterprises as anchor customers are gaining currency as the preferred way of lighting remote villages in India. This complements the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojna, a village electrification programme announced by Prime Minister Modi for powering 18,452 villages by 1 May 2018. So far, 13,002 villages have been electrified under this scheme since its launch in 2015. The adoption of off-grid power supply systems is improving as many private project developers get low cost international finance for tapping the rising rural power demand in India. The power minister said that the central government will make sure that state distribution utilities comply with their obligation to meet a part of the power demand with renewable energy. One way could be to disallow defaulting utilities from buying power from exchanges, said the minister.Goyal said the central government will seek to bring more transparency in the electricity sector by creating a national power portal which will have links to all the existing applications giving realtime data in the power sector. Besides, states will be urged to disclose the merit order of their power purchase--the ranking of various power sources available at a particular time and the energy cost--to bring more transparency in how states procure power starting with the lowest cost supply. “We will urge states at the next power ministers’ conference to disclose details of the merit order, the power they purchase and the price, in the proposed portal,” said Goyal.","Government to power close to 900 remote villages in Arunachal Pradesh using advanced off-grid renewable energy kits that will bring electricity to about 16,000 households","Tue, Apr 04 2017. 12 54 AM IST",Solar power to light up remote Arunachal Pradesh villages +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/kXXMLFOhrltYpNeVP8GR2N/Facebook-Microsoft-helping-to-finance-clean-power-microgrid.html,"London: Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp. and venture capitalists at Allotrope Partners set up a facility to finance energy access projects in Indonesia, India and East Africa.The Microgrid Investment Accelerator, or MIA, will seek to mobilize $50 million from 2018 to 2020, according to an emailed statement. It will tap grants and loans from foundations and development banks to attract private capital into projects that help to transmit renewable energy over small electricity networks.“MIA will test the commercial opportunity for microgrids and demonstrate how concessionary finance can unlock progressively larger proportions of private capital as risks are discovered, priced, and mitigated,” chief executive officer Alexia Kelly said.A microgrid is a miniature power system that operates independently of a national grid. The International Energy Agency estimates that more than 1.2 billion people don’t have access to electricity, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia. As renewable energy technologies such as solar panels become cheaper, microgrids have emerged as an option to more people.Helping provide energy access is a method to tie corporate social responsibility together with business development at companies peddling electronic services and devices. Providing power to people off the grid could eventually open up large new markets for computers and social networks.MIA has signed up more than a dozen implementing partners and observers. It will start to request plans for pilot projects from in the third quarter this year and expects to begin disbursing funds in 2018.“The Microgrid Investment Accelerator will not only be a powerful tool in driving much-needed capital into projects, but will also help to bring down costs, build a stronger ecosystem, and catalyze innovation,” said Microsoft’s Kevin Connolly, the director of energy affordable energy access initiatives at the software company. Bloomberg","Facebook, Microsoft and venture capitalists at Allotrope Partners set up the Microgrid Investment Accelerator which will seek to mobilize $50 million from 2018 to 2020","Tue, Apr 04 2017. 09 03 AM IST","Facebook, Microsoft helping to finance clean power microgrids" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/vXRXoMiLdRFD5XTf6oIV6H/Visa-token-service-will-protect-and-devalue-data-TR-Ramac.html,"New Delhi: Replacing the traditional way of making payments through plastic cards with a unique digital identifier for processing mobile and online payments could go a long way in protecting digital transactions, T.R. Ramachandran, group country manager, Visa India, and South Asia, said in an interview. Edited excerpts: What is the Visa Token Service (VTS)?Visa token service is the underlying foundation for most of the new stuff that is going to happen in the payments space. It will be as important as the magnetic stripe was 25 years ago or chip technology was 10 years ago. It effectively converts your 16 digit personal account number (PAN) into a digital token. So when something is being transmitted, the PAN credentials are not transmitted but a digital token that is native to your device.This will protect data but more importantly it will devalue the data. Even if the information falls into the wrong hands, it will be useless as you cannot decrypt it.Will this help in preventing the recent data breaches that the Indian banking system saw?It will go a long way in avoiding that. The beauty is that it can be hacked but what will you get when you hack it? It devalues the entire data.It strengthens and augments the security layer especially when customers’ credentials pass from one form factor to another or when they use more than one device.Most of the devices are going to be connected devices in the world. The fundamental foundation for all these connected devices to have invisible convenient payments will be something like VTS. It is safer than the magnetic stripes.How do you see this technology growing vis a vis cards?In a country like India, both will grow hand in hand.Everyone has a payment credential. The challenge is how to make it ubiquitous---increasing the acceptance points and how do you make sure that it is being used in non-discretionary categories.In India, digital penetration among discretionary categories is pretty high. Whether it is restaurant or hotel bills, shopping or movies, air and train bookings, it is about 50-60% digitized. But when you talk about non-discretionary spending---buying rice and atta (flour), (paying) dentist bills, chemists or transport (except rail), digital spends are still less than 10%.So any form factor that allows this share to increase to 20-30%, they will all coexist for some time. Then the market will settle and then probably it will become completely mobile or something else happens. We don’t know what will happen.Samsung Pay is the first in the country to use this technology, what next?It can be used anywhere related to mobile payments. For example, in the US, each bank has their HCE or Host Card Emulation wallet which is like Samsung Pay but is used by them to store only their card details and make payments, most of this ride on VTS. In the US, Apple Pay also rides on VTS. India’s acceptance infrastructure is still not ready for digital payments, do you agree?Yes, absolutely. I think India needs a lot more digital acceptance points but I would say that we have seen arguably more progress in the last five months than in the last five years put together. The number of terminals in the market was around 1.6 million till 7 November 2016 and from 8 November (the date of demonetisation) to March, there has been around 800,000 new terminals installed and by June there will be a million more.",Visa India boss T.R. Ramachandran says the visa token service is the underlying foundation for most of the new stuff going to happen in the digital payments space,"Thu, Mar 23 2017. 06 27 AM IST",Visa token service will protect and devalue data: T.R. Ramachandran +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/bzSEPSESpZKdzh9QmuLOlO/Idea-behind-Samsung-Pay-was-to-Make-in-India-for-Indians-As.html,"New Delhi: India is the 12th country where Samsung launched its digital payment solution Samsung Pay on Wednesday. The launch is expected to give Samsung the first-mover advantage in the world’s second-largest smartphone market where the South Korean handset maker has been the leader for quite a few years. ALSO READ | What is Samsung Pay?Asim Warsi, senior vice president (mobile business), Samsung India Electronics Pvt. Ltd, spoke about the handset maker’s latest bet, and how the Indian unit worked for about a year to customise Samsung Pay for the Indian market by including transactions through debit cards and mobile wallets for the first time. Edited excerpts:Samsung Pay was first launched in Korea in July 2015. Despite India being one of the key markets for Samsung, why did you not launch it earlier?In the last few months, we noticed a particular change in trend for digital and mobile based payments in the country. We tried to understand the reason for new preference and got trends of other nations as well. We focused mainly on the barriers which were holding back people from going digital. We picked up the key themes centric to the Indian consumers — technical issues, security concerns and the lack of acceptability presence, and then integrated mobile wallets, UPI (Unified Payments Interface) and debit cards to Samsung Pay. The idea was to make in India for Indian consumers.For a service like Samsung Pay, you need to have regulatory approvals. Samsung, as a provider of the technology platform, does not need any approval. The issuers and payment gateways got the required approvals from Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The regulator works with them, not us. Some of the banks and payment gateways have launched Samsung Pay in other countries as well so they were familiar with the regulatory requirements such as the tech standards and the use cases.So, what are the customizations that you have made to Samsung Pay just for Indian market?In the last 10 months, or so, we have stretched much beyond credit cards; we have built the app around debit cards, wallets and UPI. These are not incorporated globally.What about net banking?Presently, it is not there in the first phase of the launch. However, we do have online payment service (or net banking transactions) in Korea and might later consider it for India as well.Mobile wallets require credit cards or debit cards or net banking to load money in it. What is the reason you added wallets to Samsung pay?It’s about what the consumer prefers. If you look at the rapid digital adoption, there is credit/debit cards on one side and there is wallets on the other and in the most recent times UPI; all these are on mediocre rise. In fact while these are anyways doing well, we know some recent policy changes which have only further fuelled in this direction. India is the second-largest mobile wallet transacting economy so it makes a central use case to integrate wallets with our platform.Are payments using quick response (QR) codes possible on Samsung Pay?Closed loop wallets have their own QR and since Paytm is the first wallet to be integrated with the platform so payments using its QR code is possible.Will BharatQR also work?BharatQR is a very recent development and if in future it becomes a popular means of payments we will definitely look at it.Do we see Samsung Pay integrating face recognition and iris recognition features for Indian users in the near future?I would say India is the market for all new technology. As a smart phone and technology manufacturer every time we have got new technology, India has been the fastest in terms of adoption.What about services? Will there be over-the-top services such as utility bill payments that you would include?That may be a possibility. In Korea, Samsung Pay can be used to take out cash from ATMs. So, if Indian consumers demand any particular service, we can look at incorporating that.Samsung Pay will be available on your top-end devices. Why did you leave the mass market smartphones?This is the first step of the full-scale launch. We will keep observing and keep our hands and eyes open to expanding our devices and offerings from Samsung. As of now, only eight devices will be supporting the app. To get Samsung Pay on the mass market smartphones, there may be a need for customization of the firmware.How many users are you targeting in the first year?We have not tied ourselves down to any numeric goal; our entire effort so far has been to get the service right. Our sense is that we have got a whole new payment platform with us and the adoption will be good. The numbers will aid device sales especially for those customers who were at a cusp of not having this device but wanting to use this kind of service will upgrade.So, you hope to get the first mover advantage, and want Apple users to shift who have been waiting for Apple Pay?I would not comment on any other handset company. It is our belief that more consumers use mobile payment applications on any device, the better it is for the economy and the country of course but also better for the consumers to get into digital payments. Once they start getting accustomed to different apps and passwords, only then will they realize that Samsung Pay actually puts all of it into a unified platform with greater ease and security.",Senior VP Asim Warsi on how Samsung Pay was customized for Indian users by including transactions via debit cards and mobile wallets for the first time,"Thu, Mar 23 2017. 05 24 AM IST",Idea behind Samsung Pay was to Make in India for Indians: Asim Warsi +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Ykj7CVxa2F356pjeg2qR8J/Baidu-chief-scientist-Andrew-Ng-to-depart-in-setback-for-art.html,"Beijing: The chief scientist helping drive Baidu Inc.’s push into artificial intelligence (AI) is quitting the Chinese search giant, putting at risk its efforts to put AI at the center of a business revival.Andrew Ng, a Stanford University academic who worked on deep learning at Alphabet Inc. before joining Baidu in 2014, said he’s leaving the business next month. Ng doesn’t plan to join another technology company and will seek to bring AI into sectors such as healthcare and education around the world.The departure comes at a crucial point for the Beijing-based company as it attempts to revive its fortunes by embracing machine intelligence across all of its business units. His decision to leave comes after Qi Lu was hired in January as Baidu’s group president and chief operating officer (COO) with a mandate to reshape the business, whose online-ad business is under threat from rivals including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd. Prior to joining, Lu was an executive at Microsoft Corp. leading efforts to develop artificial intelligence.ALSO READ | Baidu fires head of group-buying arm citing ethics violations“It’s all very amicable,” Ng said, adding that he’d discussed the move with Baidu’s co-founder Robin Li for several months. “I’m very confident the team will thrive. In China Baidu is so far ahead and AI is not easy.”Ng doesn’t expect his departure will derail or slow down Baidu’s AI efforts, pointing out that he’s still chief scientist until the handover at the end of April. Ng oversaw the growth of Baidu’s research team to 1,300 people scattered across research labs in Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Sunnyvale, California, a group that will increase by several hundred more this year, he has said. Of the over 20 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) Baidu has spent on research and development over the past two and a half years, most has been on AI, according to Li.But Ng was a founding father of deep learning—a stream of AI recently popularized by tech giants around the world—and the public face of Baidu’s AI efforts.ALSO READ | China’s Baidu plans a spin-off of robot cars“With him there, investors and analysts got more confidence about Baidu’s AI investments since he was quite well-known in the field and at Google before,” said Marie Sun, an analyst with Morningstar Investment Services. “If there’s no other well-known person from his field replacing his role, I think it could be negative news to the market.”A co-founder of web-learning firm Coursera Inc., Ng said he will reduce the amount of time he spends in China, as his wife is based in the US. Ng said he’s been looking at the health-care sector and is keen to help develop AI, for example, that can act as assistants for doctors or create customized pathways for education.While Baidu hasn’t named a replacement for Ng as chief scientist, other executives are taking on some of his responsibilities. Yuanqing Lin, the head of the company’s Institute of Deep Learning, will run Baidu Research’s labs both in China and the US with machine translation expert Wang Haifeng to become the new head of Baidu’s AI Group. The search provider will continue its AI efforts, employing its user data to build products that take advantage of the technology.Baidu’s revenue growth slowed to 6% last year, after several years of growth ranging from 35% to 55%. The search business, which fueled Baidu’s 70.6 billion yuan in 2016 sales, is under siege from local rivals: Alibaba has taken the lead in digital advertising, according to consultancy EMarketer Inc. Bloomberg",Baidu chief scientist AndrewNg doesn’t plan to join another technology company and will seek to bring artificial intelligence into sectors such as healthcare and education,"Wed, Mar 22 2017. 07 23 PM IST",Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng to depart in setback for artificial intelligence push +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/yvAc9k3lXlSgjgUPYtaoCL/Nonfizzy-drinks-make-up-3545-of-CocaColas-business-Ven.html,"
New Delhi: With rapid urbanization, Coca-Cola India sees a big opportunity for its products in small towns. With a clutch of new product launches, Venkatesh Kini, president of India and South West Asia for the soft drinks maker, spoke about the company’s expansion in the non-carbonated drinks category, goods and services tax (GST) and the problems it faced in Tamil Nadu. Edited excerpts from an interview:
Which summer products have you launched?We just launched Aquarius which is one of my favourite products in the portfolio. I do a lot of running. It’s great for replenishing. It’s actually a brand that originated in Spain and Japan and now sold in other parts of the world. We have also expanded Minute Maid in multiple flavours and introduced the coconut water Zico.
This is the first year when you have launched multiple products in the non-carbonated products segment. Is the consumer turning away from carbonated beverages?To be honest, the pace of launch of beverages has increased. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that the speed at which the government approvals come now is much faster. Earlier it was a very complex system. But the new government has done a great job revamping the FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) and the way it works. It’s a much more progressive dispensation. Earlier it used to take two years to get an approval for a product launch. Now it takes a few months.
But are consumers going for non-carbonated drinks? The reality is globally we have announced our intent to become a total beverage company. It’s also recognising that consumers have multiple needs through the day—from juice to soft drinks to coffee. We have actually got the widest range of beverages worldwide. In India, we first had to build both the front-end capability and the backend manufacturing capabilities. We have put up five new factories in the last five years and multiple new lines in existing factories and most of them to produce juices and still beverages. With the infrastructure ready now, we are able to accelerate the pace of launches. So one is where the consumer is going, second is where our infrastructure capability is and the third is the regulatory environment that’s enabling and supporting that.
Do you expect revenue from non-carbonated drinks to exceed that from carbonated drinks?If that’s where consumer goes, we will be perfectly happy with it. If consumers vote with their wallets for products like Aquarius, then that is what we will sell and expand. And if they vote for juices, then we will sell that. So we are going to follow the consumers as opposed to saying that we want to sell one product or the other. Today we are not making a choice for consumers. There is place for all of these products but personally speaking, there’s nothing to beat a chilled refreshing Coke, Thums Up or Sprite on a hot day but that doesn’t mean there is no role for everything else . If there is a big role for carbonated drinks then there is an equally big role, if not bigger, for a variety of non-carbonated drinks. Today, about 35-40% of our business is from non-carbonated portfolio.
So you are building a non-fizzy drinks portfolio.What percentage of our business do you think comes from brand Coca-Cola today? Less than 10%. We have a diverse portfolio in India. Sprite is our largest brand. It is lime and lemon, no artificial flavours.
But it’s still sugar.We have a Sprite zero also if sugar is a concern. Though I want to point out that the amount of sugar in our beverages is not as high as you may think. A can of 180ml ThumsUp has less than 80 calories. You get more calories than that from most packaged foods. Our all beverages put together make for about 1% of total sugar consumption in India. So sugar from our beverages is not really a major concern in consumer’s mind.
Are you happy with the 15% cap on soft drinks in GST?GST is the best thing that could happen to the country in terms of reforms. As far the beverage industry is concerned, what we are looking forward to from the government is a taxation policy and GST which makes it a level-playing field based on the content of the product. So the higher the sugar content, the higher the tax rate and the lower the sugar content, lower the tax rate. This is what we would hope and expect from the government. So, the cess of 15% on top of 28% will be applied to certain products. And products with lower sugar or zero sugar should be at a lower rate.
Which market are you betting on urban or rural?Rural has always been growing faster for many years. The last two years, in 2014 and 2015, we saw a dip in rural demand because of poor monsoon. Last year, the monsoon was good but demonetization effect outweighed the monsoon effect. We are optimistic that rural demand will pick up now.The big growth that we see is in small towns or the mid-tier markets, which are neither rural nor metro. Those towns are showing tremendous growth potential. As urbanization in India continues to accelerate, the biggest beneficiaries will be tier-II towns. As metros are becoming more expensive to live in and crowded, and as states invest more in their development, there’s a lot of other urban centres that are beginning to pick up in terms of growth. There’s a steady stream of people moving into urban areas and that is consistent with the global trend. World over, urbanization is a trend and even in India, it is a natural trend. Also, the quality of life for new urbanites is improving a lot in the tier-II towns.
What is the progress in Tamil Nadu where foreign soft drinks brands have been boycotted by traders?The concerns in the minds of traders in Tamil Nadu regarding their state and the issues they face are genuine. Unfortunately they associated those concerns with our industry. We engaged with them and tried to understand why they have concerns with our industry. I think it’s not enough just to be a good corporate citizen. You need to get far more involved with the local issues faced by local communities. We have invested significant amount in water projects across the country and even in Tamil Nadu we buy 50,000 tonnes of mangoes from Tamilian farmers. There’s a lot of things that we do. We have not done a good job of communicating that with the stakeholders. And when we engaged and started communicating that look this is what we are and this is the role we play, the dialogue started and it is actually a positive dialogue.I won’t say that the issue is completely resolved but there is a much better appreciation of the role we play in the local economy. Ninety-five per cent of what we produce in India is made in India.
How big is the India market for you?India is the sixth largest market for Coca-Cola globally in volume terms. Ten years ago, it was No. 19. Our aim is to make India one of the biggest markets over the next decade. Our declared vision is for it to be among the top 5 by 2020. We think we’ll beat that and want to be more aggressive going forward. India has the potential to be the growth engine of the global economy and all industries will benefit from that.","Coca-Cola India and South West Asia president Venkatesh Kini on the company’s expansion in non-carbonated drinks, GST and problems in Tamil Nadu","Wed, Mar 22 2017. 01 03 PM IST",Non-fizzy drinks make up 35-45% of Coca-Cola’s business: Venkatesh Kini +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/N6bpJixrqVh2DStH0P5neP/Axis-Bank-dismisses-CEO-resignation-buzz.html,"New Delhi: Private sector lender Axis Bank on Wednesday said its managing director and chief executive officer Shikha Sharma is not resigning. “...The news appearing in section of social media stating the impending resignation of the MD and CEO of the bank, which please note is false, speculative and is being circulated with the mala fide intention of misleading the investors and the general public,” Axis Bank said in a clarification to the BSE. Axis Bank has been under pressure over a sharp fall in third quarter profits along with Income Tax Department raids on some of its branches post-demonetisation. There is also a buzz about the bank’s merger with Kotak Mahindra Bank. Axis Bank had reported 73% decline in net profit to Rs580 crore for the October-December quarter on account of rise in bad loans. Shares of Axis Bank were trading 2.07% higher at Rs498.10 on BSE.",Axis Bank says the matter of CEO resignation is speculative and being circulated with the mala fide intention of misleading the investors and the general public,"Wed, Mar 22 2017. 11 49 AM IST",Axis Bank dismisses CEO resignation buzz +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/mILyrVmbX8zTN2SmipBbOJ/Indian-economy-to-grow-at-74-in-FY18-ADB.html,"India’s economy is set to grow at 7.4% in the current fiscal year 2017-18 against 7.1% in the previous year, on the back of pick-up in consumption demand and higher public investment, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Thursday.In its latest Asian Development Outlook (ADO) 2017 report, ADB said while the recent gross domestic product (GDP) data for 2016-17 did not fully capture the effects of demonetisation, the slowdown did reflect a continued slump in investment. “Dragging on growth were excess production capacity, problems that past overinvestment left on corporate balance sheets, and new bank lending inhibited by too many stressed assets. Moderately higher growth is projected as consumption picks up and government initiatives boost private investment,” it said.“An array of important economic reforms has propelled India’s economic success in recent years. A continued commitment to reform—especially in the banking sector—will help India maintain its status as the world’s fastest growing major economy,” Yasuyuki Sawada, ADB’s chief economist, said.The ADO expects consumption to pick up as more new bank notes are put in circulation after the shock withdrawal of high-value currencies on 8 November and as planned salary and pension hike for state employees are implemented. “The public sector will remain the main driver of investment as banks continue to wind down balance sheets constrained by high levels of stressed assets. Exports are forecast to grow by 6% in the coming year,” it said.Among potential risks for the Indian economy, the assessment notes risks from higher oil prices as Indian imports nearly 80% of it fossil fuel needs. “A rapid increase in the price of oil could undermine the country’s fiscal position, stoke inflation and swell the current account deficit,” it warned.ADB projected inflation to accelerate to 5.2% in 2017-18 and 5.4% in 2018-19 as the global economy recovers and commodity prices rebound.The report estimates of a $1 increase in oil prices raises the import bill by nearly $2 billion. In 2016-17, rising oil prices resulted in a 37.6% increase in India’s import bill. To mitigate India’s vulnerability to oil price swings, the government has proposed reducing dependence on imported oil by 10% over the next five years through more efficient domestic production and increased private investment into the sector, the report noted.","Indian economy is set to grow at 7.4% in 2017-18 on the back of pick-up in consumption demand and higher public investment, says ADB","Fri, Apr 07 2017. 02 01 AM IST",Indian economy to grow at 7.4% in FY18: ADB +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/JRaWNpZGoh4pd3QX8tT9pJ/RBI-to-allow-banks-to-substitute-collateral-under-LAF-window.html,"
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) plans to allow market participants to substitute collateral under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) window to give them more flexibility and improve the liquidity of these instruments.This facility will be available from 17 April, the regulator said on its website. Under the repo window, banks have to place government bonds as collateral to borrow from the central bank. Separately, the regulator said that it will continue using methods such as open market operations, cash management bills, treasury bills and variable rate repo and reverse repo securities to drain excess liquidity from the system. It also laid out several other regulatory proposals for the banking and financial system. For one, the regulator plans to introduce a new and improved prompt corrective action (PCA) framework for banks with weak balance sheets. Typically, when a bank breaches the lower limit of its capital base during any quarter, along with a build-up of large amount of bad loans and fall in return on assets, RBI initiates this action to limit the bank’s lending activities and help it fix its affairs. Banks under PCA would be required to conform to mandatory and discretionary actions that the central bank would decide. RBI said the revised framework would be issued by mid-April 2017. Speaking on the asset quality problems in Indian banking after RBI’s monetary policy announcement, deputy governor S.S. Mundra said the regulator, and banks in general, are cognizant of the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all approach while attempting resolution of stressed loans. Mundra said that the regulator is considering new measures to deal with bad loans while also tweaking existing stress resolution tools if necessary.The Rs7 trillion bad loan problem in the Indian banking sector is led by public sector banks, which are struggling with recovery and resolution of stress on their books.RBI has also decided to increase the entry barrier for asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) by mandating a net owned funds base of Rs100 crore compared with Rs2 crore earlier. Detailed guidelines in this matter would be released later this month, the regulator has said. Separately, the regulator is also planning on allowing banks to invest in Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs). RBI has also decided to not activate the countercyclical capital buffer as of now, which would have forced banks to set aside a certain portion of their capital as a buffer for difficult times.The central bank plans to introduce steps to improve the national electronic funds transfer (NEFT) infrastructure, rationalize the merchant discount rate (MDR) and issue renewed guidelines on the issuance and operation of prepaid payments instruments (PPIs), it said.RBI said that it is initiating a pilot project on financial literacy at the block level to explore innovative and participatory approaches to financial literacy. A pilot project will be commissioned in nine states across 80 blocks by non-government organizations (NGOs) in collaboration with the sponsor banks. The sponsor banks will enter into contracts with the identified NGOs by 30 June. Thereafter, the NGOs will start operating the centre for financial literacy within three months of entering into contracts with banks.","RBI also said that it will continue using methods such as open market operations, cash management bills and treasury bills to drain excess liquidity from the system","Fri, Apr 07 2017. 01 32 AM IST",RBI to allow banks to substitute collateral under LAF window +https://www.livemint.com/Money/Zaik4EyasXJ019O82WLnmM/DMart-listing-bolsters-Radhakishan-Damanis-wealth-reputat.html,"
Mumbai: The listing of Avenues Supermarts Ltd, the parent of retailer D-Mart, lived up to its hype, adding to the Midas-like reputation of its founder Radhakishan Damani. Its shares opened 102% higher than the issue price, before closing the day at Rs640.75 apiece, up 114.3%. At the end of trading, D-Mart became India’s most valuable listed retailer and helped the Damani family barrel past Anil Ambani, Ajay Piramal and Adi Godrej in the country’s billionaire rankings.
The effect of the stellar listing was such that other stocks where Damani has significant holdings (either through investment firms or his brother Gopikishan Damani) also rose on a day when the broader market closed 0.11% down.For instance, shares of VST Industries, where Damani owns 25.95% through his firm Bright Star Investments Pvt. Ltd, jumped as high as 9.9% on Tuesday before closing 3.8% higher. Apart from VST, Damani owns stakes of at least 1% in 16 other firms across sectors such as cements, television and logistics.Avenue Supermarts listing: Lessons for retailers from stellar market debutOn Monday, Forbes had calculated the Damani family’s net worth at $2.3 billion. At Tuesday’s closing prices, the family’s 82% stake in D-Mart alone is worth Rs32,871.75 crore, or $5.03 billion. Its stake in other listed entities is worth another Rs3,000 crore, besides a property portfolio that includes the 156-room Radisson Blu Resort in Alibag, according to Forbes.Investors started betting on VST Industries on expectations that Damani’s magic will work on it, said Prakash Diwan, a director at Altamount Capital Management Pvt Ltd. “However, Damani is just a stakeholder in VST Industries whereas he is a promoter of D-Mart. He is a non-operational investor and not running business of VST Industries. That’s the difference,” warned Diwan.The Damani effect had shown up in the demand for the D-Mart stock when it had opened for subscription. The initial public offer was subscribed 103 times when it opened earlier this month. Damani, considered to be the mentor to billionaire stock market investor Rakesh Jhujhunwala, is known to look at fundamentals and have the patience to see his investments through. “The shares were in high demand as it was a (Radhakishan) Damani stock and a profitable retail, which led to huge oversubscription,” said independent market analyst Ambareesh Baliga. “The company’s model is superb, and the best amongst other retailers, and they stuck to their model through the year.”ALSO READ | Irrational exuberance in D-Mart sharesD-Mart’s success has lessons, not only for rivals in the brick-and-mortar space, but also for e-commerce companies, which are struggling to make profits, said experts.The firm has been focused on what it wants, and its expansion has been measured. In the first nine years of its existence, till 2010, it had just 25 D-Mart stores. Only after perfecting its business model did the company re-expand to around 118 stores—this too, largely in Western India. The company intends to spend the proceeds from the IPO to repay debt of Rs1,080 crore, fund new stores to the tune of Rs366.6 crore, and on general corporate expenses. Its numbers are good because the retailer does the small things repeatedly and consistently, chief executive officer Neville Noronha has said in the past.D-Mart has been choosy about the products it stocks; it doesn’t have the widest product assortment. It eschews discounts, the bane of both brick-and-mortar retailers and e-commerce marketplaces. It does not intend to follow a discount model in the future either, its prospectus said.“D-Mart’s big strength is its product assortment, competitive pricing and a well-managed supply chain which ensures the product is always available on the shelf,” said Rajat Wahi, partner and head of consumer, retail and agri sectors at KPMG in India.The D-Mart listing on Tuesday hit other listed retailers. Shares of rival V-Mart fell 11% while those of Shoppers Stop and Future Retail were down 2-3%.That said, with its 114% rise, the stock is trading at a rich 80 times its estimated earnings for fiscal 2017.“The stock definitely looks expensive right now. But then, it is the story of new India, and the potential for growth is limitless,” said Raamdeo Agrawal, joint managing director of Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd.",The stellar rise in share prices of D-Mart parent Avenue Supermarts also boosts other holdings of Radhakishan Damani such as VST Industries,"Wed, Mar 22 2017. 02 45 AM IST","D-Mart listing bolsters Radhakishan Damani’s wealth, reputation" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/bUbEdmqoRTg8C6KETJOrzJ/DCB-Bank-looks-to-raise-Rs400-crore-via-QIP.html,"
Private sector lender DCB Bank Ltd is looking to raise as much as Rs400 crore through a qualified institutional placement (QIP) in the later half of the current quarter, said two people aware of the development. QIP is a capital-raising tool through which listed companies can sell shares, fully and partly convertible debentures, or any securities other than warrants that are convertible into equity shares to qualified institutional buyers.“DCB Bank has started meeting investment banks for its proposed QIP and they are expected to hire at least a couple of banks to manage the QIP soon. The bank’s management is keen on tapping the market before the end of this quarter,” said one of the two people cited above, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity as the talks are private. The DCB stock has surged since the start of 2017 and this will allow the bank to raise capital at an attractive valuation, the person added.DCB Bank’s stock has risen by 57% to Rs169.75 year to date. The bank reported a 25% profit growth to Rs51 crore in the third quarter of 2016-17. Net interest income grew 31% to Rs209 crore. In its board meeting on 7 March, directors of the private sector lender approved a resolution to raise as much as Rs400 crore through a QIP. The bank is currently in the process of seeking an approval for the same from its shareholders through a postal ballot. Emails sent to DCB Bank on Wednesday were not answered.DCB Bank last raised capital through a QIP in 2014, when it raised almost Rs250 crore. DCB Bank’s plans come at a time when QIP issues have seen a revival after a lacklustre 2016. Seven companies have raised Rs9,108 crore through QIPs so far this year, according to data from primary market tracker Prime Database. The quantum of capital raised through QIPs in the first three months of the year is already almost twice as much as that raised in the whole of last year. In 2016, 16 companies raised Rs4,712 crore, data shows. “The stock market has performed well since the start of the year, rising by more than 10% so far. That movement in the market has resulted in investors again looking at QIP issuances. There is also a lot of liquidity available with domestic investors such as mutual funds,” said the second person cited above, also requesting anonymity. Since the start of the calendar year, the benchmark Sensex has gained 12.5% to 29,927.34 points, as of closing on 6 April. The increased QIP activity in 2017 has been boosted by large issuances such as those of private sector lender Yes Bank Ltd and Hindalco Industries Ltd. Yes Bank raised Rs4,907 crore through its QIP in March. In April, Hindalco raised close to Rs3,300 crore. Other companies that have raised funds through the QIP route this year include auto parts maker Minda Industries Ltd, state-owned lender United Bank of India, Sagar Cements Ltd and Mercator Ltd.",DCB Bank is currently in the process of seeking an approval for the QIP from its shareholders through a postal ballot,"Fri, Apr 07 2017. 02 08 AM IST",DCB Bank looks to raise Rs400 crore via QIP +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/MR7TsTomt2C9Si1NriNsyM/India-adds-record-5400MW-wind-power-in-201617.html,"
New Delhi: India added a record 5,400 megawatts (MW) of wind power in 2016-17, exceeding its 4,000MW target.“This year’s achievement surpassed the previous higher capacity addition of 3,423MW achieved in the previous year,” the ministry of new renewable energy said a statement on Sunday.Of about 50,018MW of installed renewable power across the country, over 55% is wind power. In India, which is the biggest greenhouse gas emitter after the US and China, renewable energy currently accounts for about 16% of the total installed capacity of 315,426MW.During 2016-17, the leading states in the wind power capacity addition were Andhra Pradesh at 2,190MW, followed by Gujarat at 1,275MW and Karnataka at 882MW.In addition, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Telangana and Kerala reported 357MW, 288MW, 262MW, 118MW, 23MW and 8MW wind power capacity addition respectively during the same period.At the Paris Climate Summit in December, India promised to achieve 175GW of renewable energy capacity by 2022. This includes 60GW from wind power, 100GW from solar power, 10GW from biomass and 5GW from small hydro projects. It also promised to achieve 40% of its electricity generation capacity from non-fossil fuel based energy resources by 2030.In the last couple of years, India has not only seen record low tariffs for solar power but wind power too has seen a significant drop in tariffs. In February, solar power tariffs hit a record low of Rs2.97 per kilowatt hour (kWh)and wind power tariff reached Rs3.46 kWh.Even though wind leads India’s renewable power sector, it has huge growth potential. According to government estimates, the onshore wind power potential alone is about 302GW. But there are several problems plaguing the sector.For instance, the government has been concerned about squatters blocking good wind potential sites, inordinate delays in signing of power purchase agreements, timely payments and distribution firms shying away from procuring electricity generated from wind energy projects. In January, the ministry held a meeting with the states to sort out these issues.The ministry has also taken several other policy initiatives, including introducing bidding in the wind energy sector and drafting a wind-solar hybrid policy.It has also come out with a ‘National Offshore Wind Energy Policy’, aiming to harness wind power along India’s 7,600 km coastline. Preliminary estimates show the Gujarat coastline has the potential to generate around 106,000MW of offshore wind energy and Tamil Nadu about 60,000MW.","Of about 50,018MW of installed renewable power across the country, over 55% is wind power","Mon, Apr 03 2017. 10 44 AM IST","India adds record 5,400MW wind power in 2016-17" +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/Mh0JjwmVC7g7wJURbW0BxO/EU-nations-Israel-eye-longest-undersea-gas-pipeline.html,"Tel Aviv: Italy, Israel, Greece and Cyprus pledged on Monday to move ahead with the world’s longest undersea gas pipeline from the eastern Mediterranean to southern Europe, with support from the European Union.If carried out as planned, the long-discussed $6.2 billion (€5.8 billion) pipeline will take gas from Israel and Cyprus’s recently discovered offshore gas reserves to Europe, potentially reducing European dependence on Russian energy at a time of ongoing tensions.In a joint news conference in Israel’s commercial capital Tel Aviv, energy ministers from the four nations and the EU’s Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Canete pledged their commitment to the project.Feasibility studies had been completed, they said, adding that they hope to develop a full plan for development by the end of the year. They said construction of the pipeline would not begin for several years and it would likely go online in 2025.“This is going to be the longest and deepest sub-sea gas pipeline in the world,” said Israeli energy minister Yuval Steinitz.ALSO READ: Philip Hammond, Mark Carney seek a passage to India in the wake of BrexitGas prices have fallen, however, and the pipeline’s financial feasibility is based on expectations they will rise again, Elio Ruggeri, head of IGI Poseidon—one of the companies developing the plan—told AFP.Both Israel and Cyprus have started to extract gas from their offshore fields in recent years, with far larger projects expected to come online in the future. Officials have sought to market that gas to Europe as an alternative to dependence on Russian imports.Canete admitted it would help limit reliance on the Nord Stream pipeline via Russia, which he said “adds nothing to the security of supply”. “Cyprus and Israel are very reliable suppliers,” he said. “We highly value gas supply from the region as a vital source of our gas supply that can make a valuable contribution to our strategy to diversify sources, routes and suppliers.“This is a pipe that unites and will have the full support of all the members of the European Union.”The four ministers agreed to meet every six months over the coming years. Italy’s minister of economic development Carlo Calenda said a reliable and affordable gas supply was a “crucial challenge” for the country, making the pipeline a “top priority”.“We need to foresee the phasing out of coal and carbon in electricity production and therefore gas supply is fundamental for us,” Calenda said. Amit Mor, head of the Israeli consultancy EcoEnergy, said while the ministers’ commitment was positive, that did not guarantee the project would go ahead.“At this stage this is still a pipe dream but it is important to realise that international trade projects sometimes take decades to develop,” he told AFP. “A depth of three kilometres would be unprecedented,” he added, saying high infrastructure costs would mean that producing gas at a price to rival that of Russia would be “very challenging”.",The $6.2 billion undersea gas pipeline will take gas from Israel and Cyprus’s recently discovered offshore gas reserves to Europe,"Mon, Apr 03 2017. 06 39 PM IST","EU nations, Israel eye longest undersea gas pipeline" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Kmb56uckY49LtZvVnmWSOK/Digital-transactions-peaked-at-Rs1495-trillion-in-March-RB.html,"Digital transactions reached a peak in terms of overall value during March, according to provisional data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The volume of digital transactions also rose in March and was the second highest in a month since the government announced demonetization of high value currency notes in November last year, according to the RBI data released late on Wednesday.Transactions worth about Rs149.52 lakh crore (Rs149.5 trillion) were conducted through digital modes such as credit/debit cards, unified payments interface (UPI), unstructured supplementary service data (USSD), prepaid payment instruments (PPIs) and mobile banking in March. ALSO READ: Ban on cash transaction above Rs2 lakh not applicable for bank, post office withdrawalsDigital transactions worth Rs104.05 lakh crore (Rs104.1 trillion) were recorded in December, the month during which the impact of demonetization was the strongest.Data has been collated until 2 April.Usage of PPIs such as mobile wallets and UPI also peaked in March. The volume of PPI transactions in March was 90 million as compared with 87.8 million in December. The volume of UPI transactions recorded in March was 6.2 million as compared with 2 million in December and 4.2 million in January.UPI transaction volumes rose about 214% in March, from December, according to the data.ALSO READ: How to turn your investments and payments digital Transactions through UPI received a major stimulus from the government after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) app on 30 December. The latest payment mechanism based on UPI is UPI@PoS — or, point-of-sale (PoS) machines that are configured to enable payments without swiping cards.Debit and credit card usage at PoS machines rose by 6.29% in March to 225.7 million transactions from 212.3 million in the previous month. Transactions had declined by 14.6% in January from December and 20% in February from January.Mobile banking transactions increased by 7.68% in March to 60.5 million from 56.2 million in the previous month. They had declined by 7.61% in January from December and 13.42 % in February from January.Meanwhile, transactions through USSD fell by 6.03% in March compared with February.Payments using National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) and Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) rose by around 26% and 66.23%, respectively, in March from February.ALSO READ: RBI governor Urjit Patel says farm loan waiver a ‘moral hazard’“Most of the B2B payments are done during March; corporations are trying to make collections which come mostly through NEFT/RTGS. In case of surge in retail payments, especially the UPI, the government’s effort to popularize it has a major role to play,” said Dewang Neralla, chief executive of Atom Technologies Ltd, a payment services provider. A whole new range of apps based on UPI is being launched, Neralla added.“Now, people do not see any reason to hoard cash at home, instead they prefer to deposit it in bank accounts and make payments through digital modes,” he added.According to a recent research report by the State Bank of India (SBI), the cash withdrawals have not picked up even though the limits on withdrawals were removed from 13 March. The report suggested this may be the result of the move towards digital payments.","Digital transactions volume also rose in March and was the second highest in a month since the announcement of demonetization, shows the RBI data","Fri, Apr 07 2017. 12 07 AM IST",Digital transactions peaked at Rs149.5 trillion in March: RBI data +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/k1bX7OdaSPW9NdueuwKeNN/Subsidised-LPG-cylinder-price-hiked-by-Rs55-ATF-cut-by-5.html,"New Delhi: Aviation turbine fuel (ATF) price has been cut by over 5%, reversing a two-month rising trend, while rates of subsidised LPG were hiked by Rs5.57 per cylinder. Also, the rate of non-subsidised cooking gas (LPG) has been cut by Rs14.50 per cylinder in line with international trends. Price of jet fuel or ATF was cut by Rs2,811.38 per kilolitre, or 5.1%, to Rs51,428 per kl with effect from 1 April , oil companies said. The reduction comes on the back of a marginal hike of Rs214 kl effected on 1 March and a 3% increase on 1 February.Simultaneously, price of non-subsidised LPG, bought by those who have either given up their subsidies or exhausted the quota of 12 bottles of 14.2-kg in a year at below market price, was cut to Rs723 per 14.2-kg cylinder from Rs737.50. The reduction comes on back of a steep Rs86 per cylinder hike in rates from 1 March .That was the steepest hike in recent times and came on the back of Rs66.5 per cylinder increase effected from 1 February. Rates had been on the upswing since October, 2016. A non-subsidised LPG cylinder was priced at Rs466.50 in Delhi in September and had risen by Rs271 per bottle or 58% in six instalments. Oil firms, however, raised price of subsidised cooking gas by Rs5.57 to Rs440.5 per 14.2-kg cylinder. This hike came as the state-owned oil firms on previous two occasions—1 February and 1 March —did not effect any significant raise in prices in view of assembly elections in states like Uttar Pradesh. Prior to that, they had raised rates by nearly Rs2 per cylinder for eight months in line with government decision to cut subsidises through calibrated increases every month. Oil firms revise rates of ATF and cooking gas on 1st of every month based on oil price and foreign exchange rate in the preceding month.",Price of subsidised cooking gas raised by Rs5.57 to Rs440.5 per 14.2-kg cylinder,"Sun, Apr 02 2017. 01 19 PM IST","Subsidised LPG cylinder price hiked by Rs5.57, ATF cut by 5%" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/vgM8Bax3zHRywTWIdT62pO/In-energy-starved-Indian-villages-solar-minigrids-light-th.html,"Atrauli: A dusty plastic sheet covers a large diesel generator in a corner of a petrol station in Atrauli, a village in Uttar Pradesh, a modest but telling sign of progress.The gas station used to shut at 7pm every day because the lights would often go off, and there was no way to know when they would come back on, said Sudhakar Singh, the manager. “The main power supply was very irregular, and operating the generator was expensive, so we could not afford to stay open beyond 7pm,” Singh told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, as motorbikes and trucks lined up for petrol and diesel.Last year, the pump got a connection to a solar mini-grid, a local power network not connected to the national grid, which guarantees six hours of electricity every day. The pump has since stayed open all night. “Now, our expenses are lower and we earn more because we can stay open all night. We have not used the generator once since we got the ... connection,” said Singh.Power paradoxAtrauli’s electricity revolution is a symbol of the energy paradox dogging India, one of the world’s fastest growing economies, where power cuts are rampant and per capita electricity consumption is about a third the global average.Fast-dropping costs for solar power, combined with plenty of sun and a huge need for electricity in a country where about 300 million people—a quarter of the population—are still without it means solar energy has huge potential in India.Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pledge to supply power to every citizen by 2019 and a surge in solar production, reaching remote villages remains a challenge, with distribution losses as high as 30% on antiquated lines, low tariffs and limited use.Most of those without electricity live in the 99% of villages the government deems to be electrified because at least 10% of households and public places have electricity. But at least half the electrified households do not get at least six hours of electricity a day.“While the grid has expanded and we generate enough power, distribution companies are not in a position to take that power, and are not interested in going into rural areas,” said Aruna Kumarankandath at the Centre for Science and Environment. “When the supply is so unreliable, people use it sparingly, making it an unattractive proposition to invest in,” said Kumarankandath, a renewable energy researcher.Lights, fans, actionThe situation is particularly dire in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state where only 37% of households are electrified, compared with 67% nationwide.Help has come from private mini-grids like the one in Atrauli operated by OMC Power, a company with 67 grids in the state. Renewable energy is key to India’s electrification plan, and mini-grids with a capacity of 10 to 500 kilowatts (KW) are playing an increasingly important role.“Mini-grids use the potential of untapped renewable energy and manage demand efficiently by generating power at the source of consumption,” said Kumarankandath.A base home package from OMC Power costs Rs110 a month and comes with a switchboard with an LED bulb and a socket for charging a mobile phone. Additional lights, fans and even a television can be added.A 50 KW solar grid with battery storage and a distribution reach of 5km can power small businesses, schools, two telecom towers and over 500 homes, said Sarraju N. Rao, chief technology officer at OMC Power. “There is enough demand in rural areas. If the supply is reliable and good, people are willing to pay more,” he said.Local jobsUttar Pradesh is the only state with a policy for mini-grids. It aims to power nearly 20 million households, about a tenth of its population. The state offers a 30% subsidy for these grids, which may also be powered by wind, biomass or water, and must guarantee at least eight hours of electricity to homes, and six hours for commercial needs.Importantly, the policy offers exit options when the areas have adequate grid supply: either the distribution company can receive energy from the mini-grids at an agreed tariff, or the project may be transferred to the distribution company.India’s ministry for renewable energy released a national draft policy for mini- and micro-grids last June.It aims to deploy at least 10,000 renewable energy projects in the next five years in “unserved and underserved parts of the country”, with an average capacity of 50 KW per project.The ambitious targets come at a time when renewable energy is at a turning point in India, as generating electricity from renewables costs nearly the same as from conventional sources.Coal still provides the lion’s share of energy, but as a signatory to the Paris Agreement on climate change, India is committed to ensuring at least 40% of its electricity will come from non-fossil-fuel sources by 2030.A 10-year blueprint predicts 57% of India’s electricity capacity will come from non-fossil sources by 2027. Solar energy is a particular focus and will contribute 100 gigawatts (GW) of the renewable energy capacity target of 175 GW by 2022.“Renewable energy-based mini-grids will boost small businesses, create local jobs and build economies. This will improve living standards in villages,” said Kumarankandath. “That in turn will ensure women’s empowerment, better health and education. There cannot be a better development agenda for the country,” she said.In Atrauli, OMC’s mini-grid is just off the main road, next to the telecom tower it also helps to power. OMC has 280 customers in Atrauli, 60% of them commercial, Rao said. One of OMC’s first customers in the village was Anita, a widowed mother of two, who didn’t have an electricity connection and used kerosene lamps for lighting in her shack. From one base package of a single light, Anita now has three lights, one each in her room, her son’s room and the kitchen. “Earlier, the children would have to go search for a light to study by. But now they study at home, and I can do housework even at night,” she said. “I would like to add a fan next.” Thomson Reuters Foundation","Renewable energy is key to India’s electrification plan, and mini-grids with a capacity of 10 to 500 KW are playing an increasingly important role","Mon, Apr 03 2017. 09 38 AM IST","In energy starved Indian villages, solar mini-grids light the way" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/Re0jUeXoZmXPxSbWhnUExI/Madhabi-Puri-Buch-appointed-as-Sebi-whole-time-member.html,"Mumbai: The government on Tuesday announced Madhabi Puri Buch as new whole time member of Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). This appointment also marks a departure from the regular practise of hiring Sebi board members, who typically were men coming from the public sector. This is the first time that a women and a person from private sector has been chosen for a key post with the market regulator. Buch, who is currently serving at the New Development Bank in Shanghai has been appointed for a period of three years, the department of personnel and training (DoPT) said in a notification. She has been appointed at a salary of Rs375,000 per month. While, under the corporate governance standards issued in 2015, Sebi had mandated one women to be a part of the board of a listed company, the same did not happen at the board of the regulator. Till now, the highest post occupied by women at the market regulator was the position of executive director. “Sebi or its board does not appoint its own board members, the board members of Sebi are appointed by the government,” former Sebi chairman, U.K. Sinha had said in an industry event in October. “But we have already taken up with the government that we must have at least one woman member on Sebi board although there is no such legal requirement. The Sebi Act does not prescribe it but as a good measure we have asked the government to do it,” he added.So far, members and chairman at Sebi were mainly appointed from public sector, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Administrative Services (IAS). Buch, a management graduate from Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad in a career spanning over 20 years has served at various roles in private banks. She started her career with ICICI Bank and went on to become the managing director and chief executive officer at ICICI Securities Ltd from February 2009 to May 2011. In 2011, she left for Singapore were she joined Greater Pacific Capital LLP. Buch is also founder-director of Agora Advisory Pvt Ltd.","Madhabi Puri Buch has been appointed as new whole time member of Sebi for a period of three years, says the department of personnel and training","Tue, Mar 21 2017. 09 46 PM IST",Madhabi Puri Buch appointed as Sebi whole time member +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/fDBw91jI0y60DbjF8VFOsI/Forbes-list-Mukesh-Ambani-ahead-of-other-100-Indian-billion.html,"New York: India is home to world’s fourth highest number of billionaires with Reliance Industries chief Mukesh Ambani leading the club of more than 100 super-rich Indians, according to a new list released by Forbes magazine. The Forbes list of the ‘World’s Billionaires’ 2017 consists of 2,043 of the richest people in the world who have a combined net worth of $7.67 trillion, a record 18% increase over the past year. The list has been topped by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for the fourth year in a row. He has been the richest person in the world for 18 out of the past 23 years. Gates has a fortune of $86 billion, up from $75 billion last year, followed by Berkshire Hathaway chief Warren Buffet with a new worth of $75.6 billion. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos added $27.6 billion to his fortune; now worth $72.8 billion, moving into the top three in the world for the first time, up from number five a year ago. US President Donald Trump is ranked 544th on the list with his net worth of $3.5 billion. India is home to 101 billionaires, the first time it has more than 100 super rich individuals. The US continues to have more billionaires than any other nation, with a record 565, up from 540 a year ago. China is catching up with 319, Germany has the third most with 114 and India has the fourth highest number of billionaires. Also Read| Patanjali’s Acharya Balkrishna enters Forbes rich list; Flipkart’s Bansals outThere are nearly 20 people of Indian-origin who have made fortunes in various nations across the world, led by UK-based Hinduja brothers ranked 64th with $15.4 billion net worth, Indian-born tycoon Pallonji Mistry, who controls the 152-year-old Mumbai-headquartered engineering giant Shapoorji Pallonji Group at the 77th spot with $14.3 billion net worth and petrochemicals major Indorama co-founder Sri Prakash Lohia at the 288th spot with $ 5.4 billion net worth. Mistry’s younger son Cyrus is embroiled in a legal battle with the Tata Group after he was suddenly ousted as chairman of Tata Sons, a position he had held since 2012.Ambani, 59, leads the pack of Indian billionaires, coming in at the 33rd position with a net worth of $23.2 billion. Forbes said the “oil and gas tycoon” sparked a price war in India’s hyper-competitive telecom market with the launch of 4G phone service Jio last September. His younger brother Anil is ranked 745th with a net worth of $2.7 billion. The younger Ambani sibling “orchestrated the merger of his Reliance Communication’s telecom business with that of rival Aircel, controlled by Malaysian billionaire Ananda Krishnan. The combine, which awaits regulatory approvals, will be the country’s fourth-largest mobile phone operator,” Forbes said. Next on the list of Indian billionaires is ArcelorMittal Next on the list of Indian billionaires is ArcelorMittal chairman and CEO Lakshmi Mittal on the 56th spot with a net worth of $16.4 billion. Forbes said the Indian steel baron regains his status as the world’s second richest Indian on an uptick in steel prices and demand. “The world’s biggest steelmaker also got a reprieve from import tariffs on steel imposed by the US and Europe and a one-time $832 million saving from a new labour contract signed last year with its US workers,” it added. The list includes only four women billionaires from India, led by Savitri Jindal and her family at the 303rd position with a net worth of $5.2 billion.Also Read| How much the richest 1% earn and spend“After declining last year, the fortune of steel and power clan, whose matriarch Savitri Jindal chairs the OP Jindal Group, rose as steel prices recovered,” Forbes said. Smita Crishna-Godrej from the Godrej clan is ranked 814th followed by Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (973) and Leena Tewari (1030), chair of USV India which specialises in diabetic and cardiovascular drugs. Also making the list is Wipro chairman Azim Premji (72), Adani group founder Gautam Adani (250), Bajaj Group chair Rahul Bajaj (544), investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala (939), Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy (1161), chairman emeritus of Dabur Vivek Chand Burman (1290), Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani (1290), Wockhardt chair Habil Khorakiwala (1567), Mahindra group chief Anand Mahindra (1567), property tycoons Niranjan and Surendra Hiranandani (tied at 1678) and Yes Bank head Rana Kapoor (1795).Founder of mobile wallet Paytm Vijay Shekhar Sharma is ranked 1567 with his net worth of $ 1.3 billion. Forbes said Paytm was “one of the biggest beneficiaries of the government’s decision to demonetise 86% of India’s rupees and move to a cashless economy”, notching up 200 million registered users and five million transactions daily. Making his debut on the list at 814th spot is Acharya Balkrishna, friend of yoga guru Baba Ramdev, who holds 97% stake in the fast-growing consumer goods firm Patanjali Ayurveda. His net worth is $2.5 billion.Forbes said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg moved up to number five for the first time, after his fortune rose $11.4 billion in 12 months. Meanwhile Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico, once the world’s richest man, fell to number six, the first time he’s been out of the top five in a dozen years. There were 195 newcomers.China had the most new ten-figure fortunes with 76. The US was second with 25. The list has 56 billionaires under age 40, down from 66 last year, after some aged out and others dropped below the $1-billion mark. Seventy-eight people fell off the list, including 33 from China, 7 Americans and 9 who are still super wealthy but share their wealth among extended family members and therefore are not eligible for these ranks. PTI","As per the Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires, Mukesh Ambani is again the richest Indian. The list consists of 2,043 of the richest people in the world ","Tue, Mar 21 2017. 10 49 AM IST",Forbes list: Mukesh Ambani ahead of other 100 Indian billionaires +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/DsvSSoQBqfyiMMQUqNQeHN/Employees-have-to-invest-in-their-own-digital-proficiency-J.html,"
New Delhi: As firms across the world go digital, job cuts are inevitable. How can employees ensure their job is secure? Jean-Marc Laouchez, global managing director (solutions) of US-based consulting firm Korn Ferry Hay Group Solutions, says employees will have to invest in gaining digital proficiency just as they would in learning a new language. Edited excerpts from an email interview:
Companies across sectors are trying to go digital. Do Indian firms have the know-how?Yes, most traditional organizations around the world are going digital. Some were born digital, others are just starting the journey. India Inc. is on the same continuum as elsewhere, with some Indian companies shaping the digital world while others “react” to digitization and focus on low-hanging fruits, such as e-commerce, automation or cost cuts.
Does digitization necessarily mean extensive job cuts?Korn Ferry research has identified five impacts of digitization with various degrees of risk and value creation: cost reduction, customer/employees experience, product/technology innovation, employees empowerment and networks activation, and new business models. The less digitally mature organizations see digitization as an extension of their current business: how to be more efficient and enhance clients’ and employees’ experience. More digitally mature organizations leverage their assets to develop new technologies, fundamentally rethink their relationships with clients and employees (e.g., active networks), and build disruptive business models. The development of Amazon.com from a low cost online bookstore to an open digital Web, logistics and retail marketplace illustrates these different stages, and how they radically impact the value of the company.
How can companies cut costs by destroying minimum jobs?Recruit or develop leaders with the mindset and skills to digitalize for higher value creation. Beyond the expected understanding of digital economics and business models, these digital leaders should have the influence and courage—risk-taking is a distinctive trait of successful digital leaders—to: •Invest in re-schooling /re-skilling their employees (e.g., assessment of potential, continuous development, emotional support),•Empower their front-line talent to identify and execute new solutions and businesses,•Enter into innovative and fair work and pay incentive arrangements (e.g., structured contingent workforce, individualized pay strategies).
Should companies have a re-skilling budget? What is the best way to estimate the cost?Yes. Even if the company is only looking for labour cost reduction, a number of employees with valuable “legacy” knowledge will have to be trained for the digital era. Korn Ferry is reinventing Hay Group Job Grading—an industry standard work measurement system—to better quantify the intangible (e.g., digital) value of work (e.g., know-how, problem solving, agility, relations, experience) beyond the tangible job accountability. The investment in re-skilling—or lack of—should be assessed against this additional intangible value. As an example, the “value of an employee” who is able to fully harness years of customers’ insight or specialized expertise in a digital context is often a “multiple of the value of a new employee” who has digital training but less relevant business experience. It is important to note that companies will often get into creative arrangements to reskill employees (e.g., provide an education account as a benefit). Increasingly, the employees themselves will have to anticipate and invest in their own digital proficiency, as they would do for learning a new language.
India is among the countries to jump onto the digital bandwagon. What can we learn from the Western countries?I am not sure that India is lagging behind other countries in terms of corporate digitization. I understand that Internet penetration is lower than in many countries. But India Inc., in a number of sectors (e.g., technology firms, BPO), is probably ahead. As per Rebuilt to Last—The Journey to Digital Sustainability—a recent Korn Ferry research white paper with some learning based on the analysis of our proprietary databases and on our observation of best practices, the best digital performers implement disruptive business models or new digital practices by developing five critical capabilities:•Discipline and focus•Agility—Agile leaders and organization is a must•Connectivity—both internal and external•Openness and transparency—probably one of the most difficult capabilities to develop as it challenges traditional command-and-control cultures •Empowerment and alignment
Which sectors will see job cuts due to digitization?On the short term, the sectors with repetitive physical work (e.g., manufacturing with robotization—already a mature trend) and repetitive intellectual work (e.g., services and decisions that can be performed through data and algorithms, with limited need for human experience and judgement). Digitization will also create new industries and jobs, providing attractive opportunities for the “reskilled digital worker”.
Most companies appoint marketing heads for digital initiatives, as you mentioned. Is that the right way to drive digital growth?Companies need leaders that will inspire and drive the digital transformation of their organizations. IT or marketing heads bring a lot of the capabilities required for such transformation. Strategy professionals, CFOs, COOs, HR professionals or front-line sales and delivery talent can also lead and bring new perspectives to create and execute digital businesses or activate digital partnerships and networks.Having the right leader is key, but the enabling ecosystem (like focused structure, digital learning culture, speed to market, analytics, partnerships) is as important, as legacy practices and infrastructure often inhibit digitization.","Even if the company is only looking for labour cost reduction, a number of employees with valuable ‘legacy’ knowledge will have to be trained for the digital era, says Jean-Marc Laouchez","Tue, Mar 21 2017. 03 18 AM IST",Employees have to invest in their own digital proficiency: Jean-Marc Laouchez +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/H56YQXlE1unOzZo0DM04JO/Tata-Power-net-profit-jumps-383-in-Q3.html,"Mumbai: Tata Power Co Ltd on Friday posted a 38.3% rise in consolidated net profit for the quarter ended 31 December, helped in part by a lower tax rate and expenses, and higher other income.Consolidated net profit rose to Rs599.20 crore in the third quarter from Rs433.25 crore a year earlier, the power producer said in a statement. Net sales fell about 8.7% to Rs6677.89 crore from Rs7312.88 crore a year earlier.Twelve analysts polled by Bloomberg expected a consolidated net profit of Rs375 crore, while 13 analysts expected net sales of Rs7672 crore.Tata Power said revenue in its largest power business rose 1.4% to Rs6,254.85 crore from Rs6,166.09 crore a year earlier. Other business revenue rose 32% to Rs807.51 crore from Rs611.78 crore a year earlier.Total expenses fell marginally to Rs5,812.69 crore from Rs5,841.16 crore a year earlier.Together with its subsidiaries, Tata Power generated 13022 million units of power from all its plants.In a separate filing, Tata Power said it appointed N. Chandrasekaran chairman and additional director effective 11 February.Chandrasekaran is chairman designate of Tata Sons Ltd and currently the chief executive and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services.",Tata Power’s consolidated net profit of rose to Rs599.20 crore in the third quarter from Rs433.25 crore a year earlier,"Fri, Feb 10 2017. 11 42 PM IST",Tata Power net profit jumps 38.3% in Q3 +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/tkMDmexfnFhZb00E4VvXQO/Gail-Q3-profit-up-46-at-Rs983-crore.html,"New Delhi: State-owned gas utility Gail India Ltd on Friday reported a 46% rise in its third quarter net profit on back of turnaround in petrochemical business. Net profit of Rs983 crore in the October-December quarter of the current fiscal was higher than Rs676 crore in the same period of 2015-16, Gail said in a statement. The rise in net profit was “buoyed by a turnaround in petrochemicals segment and increase in profitability of liquid hydrocarbons segment”, Gail said. The company also registered growth in physical performance in all segments—petrochemical sales were up by 8%, liquid hydrocarbon by 4% and natural gas marketing and transmission volumes were up by 3% and 2%, respectively. During April-December period of 2016-17, Gail’s net profit was up 133% to Rs3,243 crore.",Gail India reported a 46% rise in its third quarter net profit at Rs983 crore on back of turnaround in petrochemical business,"Fri, Feb 10 2017. 11 42 PM IST",Gail Q3 profit up 46% at Rs983 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/LBjRmtj9l0lFPRjeS7oRdJ/Donald-Trump-slips-220-places-in-Forbes-rich-list-as-Bill-Ga.html,"New York: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates once again topped the Forbes magazine list of the world’s richest billionaires, while US President Donald Trump slipped more than 200 spots, the magazine said on Monday.Gates, whose wealth is estimated at $86 billion, led the list for the fourth straight year.He was followed by Berkshire Hathaway chief Warren Buffett among the top 10 billionaires, a group heavily dominated by Americans, many of whom work in the technology sector. Buffett’s wealth was estimated at $75.6 billion.Others in the top 10 included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at number three, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg at number five and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison at number seven.The global billionaire population jumped 13% from last year to 2,043, the biggest annual increase in the 31 years since the magazine began compiling the list, Forbes said.The US led countries with the most billionaires with 565, a product of the swelling value of the American stock market since Trump’s November 2016 election.China was second with 319 billionaires, and Germany was third with 114.Trump himself slipped 220 spots on the list to number 544 with an estimated $3.5 billion. Forbes attributed Trump’s drop to sluggishness in the Manhattan real estate market which is responsible for a disproportionate amount of his wealth.“Forty percent of Donald Trump’s fortune is tied up in Trump Tower and eight buildings within one mile of it,” Forbes said. “Lately, the neighbourhood has been struggling (relatively speaking).”Among others in the Forbes top 10, Amancio Ortega of Spanish apparel chain Zara was fourth, Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim was sixth, the Koch brothers, Charles and David, were eighth and ninth and former New York City mayor and Bloomberg News founder Michael Bloomberg was 10th.This year it took at least $3.7 billion in wealth to make it onto the list, but only in a tie for 501th place, a group that included Hollywood director Steven Spielberg.",Donald Trump slipped to the 544th rank on the Forbes rich list with an estimated fortune of $3.5 billion as Bill Gates remained the world’s richest man ,"Tue, Mar 21 2017. 03 28 AM IST",Donald Trump slips 220 places in Forbes rich list as Bill Gates tops rankings again +https://www.livemint.com/Money/fhsgTTlNH1TvmQ9apTgBAL/December-quarter-results-indicate-SBI-limping-back-to-normal.html,"
A few quarters ago, a press conference on the financial results of State Bank of India (SBI) paused comically after a chunk of plaster fell on the stage from above. Smirks in the audience indicated they had taken this as a metaphor for the deteriorating bad loan situation. Stretching that metaphor, can we say SBI’s book is on the mend like the auditorium—the venue for that conference—that is under renovation now?On the face of it, the numbers for the third quarter resemble a chess board as for every positive metric, there is a negative one. The largest lender’s slippages remained around Rs10,000 crore, unlike many of its peers, which showed a decrease. But upgrades surged, indicating stress has eased. Note that this improvement is despite the demonetisation blow to the asset side. Of course, the bad loan ratios, both gross and net, rose simply because of the measly 4.2% loan growth.But for ugly bad loan ratios, two heartening numbers are the sequential reduction in stressed assets ratio (which is gross bad loans plus restructured standard assets) to 9.54% and a fall in credit costs to 1.92%. Further, more than 70% of slippages are from the watchlist that SBI put out in March, which means the lender has got its diagnosis right on toxic assets. The list itself is down 31% to Rs17,992 crore, which represents just 2.66% of the total corporate loan book.The management’s outlook for its asset book is anything but sanguine and the stock movement this year suggests even investors have not abandoned caution. SBI shares have risen 12% this year; but so have the benchmark indices. Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairman of the bank, hopes loan disbursals will grow 6.5% in 2016-17. The loan growth for FY18 is pegged at 11% and that, too, on the base effect, given this year’s limited growth.Bhattacharya also pointed out that demonetisation has set the bank back by a quarter in mending its bad loans. Its mid-corporate and small and micro enterprise customers were the worst hit by the currency withdrawal, and bad loan ratios rose sharply. Moreover, as Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd points out, SBI used the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) special dispensation to classify loans worth Rs2,000 crore as standard in the wake of demonetisation.Ignore the one-time relief and SBI’s already formidable stock of bad loans at Rs1.08 trillion would have increased further. The bank highlighted that fresh loans disbursed by it are to corporate entities having a rating above ‘A’ and that a slow but sure pick-up in economic activity would eventually translate into higher credit growth. But for FY17, asset quality will look nasty, and the only saviour for the stock is that it currently trades at 1.27 times the estimated book value of FY18 earnings, which is cheap.","But for ugly bad loan ratios, two heartening numbers at SBI are the sequential reduction in stressed assets ratio to 9.54% and a fall in credit costs to 1.92%","Sat, Feb 11 2017. 02 32 AM IST",December quarter results indicate SBI limping back to normalcy +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/bJV0YrFm2JGVRIGVb1RlYO/Bank-of-Baroda-reports-a-net-profit-of-Rs253-crore-for-Q3.html,"Mumbai: Bank of Baroda (BOB) Ltd on Friday reported a net profit for the December quarter helped by an increase in net interest income and other income.Net profit for the third quarter stood at Rs252.67 crore compared with a loss of Rs3,342.04 crore a year earlier. According to estimates of 20 Bloomberg analysts, BOB was expected to post a net profit of Rs636.50 crore.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 15.85% to Rs3,134.36 crore in the December quarter from Rs2,705.34 crore last year.Other income increased by 60% to Rs1,774.96 crore in the third quarter from Rs1,112.91 crore in the same period last year.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) at BOB decreased marginally to Rs42,642.40 crore at the end of the December quarter from Rs42,949.25 crore in the September quarter. As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were 11.40% at the end of the December quarter compared with 11.35% in the previous quarter and 9.68% a year ago.Provisions and contingencies increased 15.79% to Rs2,079.50 crore in the third quarter from Rs1,795.84 crore from the previous quarter. Net NPAs rose to 5.43% in the December quarter, compared with 5.46% in the previous quarter and 5.67% a year earlier.The results were announced after market close.On Friday, BoB shares closed up 2% at Rs188.05 on the BSE, while India’s benchmark Sensex Index rose 0.02% to closed at 28334.25 points.","Bank of Baroda’s net profit for the third quarter stood at Rs252.67 crore compared with a loss of Rs3,342.04 crore a year earlier","Fri, Feb 10 2017. 10 18 PM IST",Bank of Baroda reports a net profit of Rs253 crore in Q3 +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/FqddCCzIkLI8KUY4LxTJdI/Suzlon-posts-net-profit-of-Rs27434-crore-in-third-quarter.html,"Mumbai: Wind turbine maker Suzlon Energy Ltd on Friday reported a profit for the quarter ended 31 December, compared with a year-earlier loss.Consolidated net profit was Rs274.34 crore compared with a net loss of Rs121.84 crore in the year-ago period.Revenue rose about 57℅ to Rs3,311.38 crore from Rs1,884.64 crore a year earlier.Revenue in its largest wind turbine generator business rose to Rs2,837.59 crore from Rs1,436.07 crore a year earlier. Revenue in the foundry and forging business rose and in the operation and maintenance (O&M) business fell.“Wind energy in India delivered highest installation of over 3,400 MW (megawatt) in FY16 and is expected to grow beyond that in FY17,” the company said in a statement.Suzlon’s consolidated net term debt (excluding foreign currency convertible bonds) stood at Rs6,538 crore while its order book stood at 1,231MW, valued at Rs7,523 crore.Suzlon said during the quarter it reached 10,000 MW of installed capacity, making it the largest renewable energy company in India.“The domestic market is likely to grow in size, mainly due to the State Feed in Tariff (FIT) programs, Inter State Transmission System (ISTS) with non-windy states, and the demand to meet the Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPO). The competitive bidding process held recently will drive volume growth in the industry,” said J.P. Chalasani, group CEO, Suzlon.",Suzlon’s consolidated net profit was Rs274.34 crore compared with a net loss of Rs121.84 crore in the year-ago period,"Fri, Feb 10 2017. 11 13 PM IST",Suzlon posts net profit of Rs274.34 crore in third quarter +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/rHmbMufGU9N6CnQprsAkaN/NDTV-net-loss-widens-due-to-impact-of-demonetisation.html,"New Delhi: Broadcaster New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV) on Friday said consolidated net loss widened to Rs18 crore in the quarter ended 31 December from Rs13 crore in the year-ago period, primarily due to a dip in TV advertising revenue following demonetisation.The company, which operates NDTV 24X7, NDTV Prime, NDTV India and NDTV Good Times channels, reported a drop in revenue to Rs133 crore in the quarter from Rs150 crore a year ago.The company’s television news business generated revenue of Rs108 crore, down from Rs130 crore in the same period last year.The company led by Prannoy Roy said it had initiated steps to rationalize costs and increase productivity with the aim of improving overall efficiency of operations.The company said its flagship website ndtv.com crossed over 90 million monthly unique visitors in the December quarter.",NDTV’s consolidated net loss widened to Rs18 crore in the quarter ended 31 December from Rs13 crore in the year-ago period,"Fri, Feb 10 2017. 11 06 PM IST",NDTV net loss widens due to impact of demonetisation +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/rN3Y7sB5yrS4BmzUMMtPzK/Reliance-Capital-Q3-profit-drops-11-to-Rs209-crore.html,"New Delhi: Reliance Capital on Friday reported a consolidated net profit of Rs209 crore for the third quarter of the current fiscal, a drop of 11% from the year-ago period, as it made provisions to beef up reserves in general insurance business. However, the company’s total income increased to Rs 3,964 crore in the October-December quarter of the current fiscal, from Rs2,353 crore in the year-ago period, Reliance Capital said in a statement. The firm has set aside Rs43 crore for Reliance General Insurance. Excluding this amount, Reliance Capital’s third quarter profit rose 8% to Rs252 crore. As on 31 December 2016, the company’s net worth stood at Rs16,149 crore, a surge of 10% from the same period last fiscal. Reliance Mutual Fund’s profit before tax stood at Rs152 crore in the third quarter of the current fiscal, a growth of 8% from year-ago period. Reliance Commercial Finance reported a 2% growth in profit before tax at Rs80 crore, while the profit before tax of Reliance Home Finance too climbed 3% to Rs35 crore and Reliance General Insurance registered an increase of 20% in its profit to Rs18 crore. The company’s broking and distribution business profit stood at Rs14 crore in the October-December quarter, 2016-17 as against marginal profits in the corresponding previous period. Reliance Capital, a part of the Reliance Group, is one of country’s leading private sector financial services companies. The Group has a presence across financial services, telecom, energy, power, infrastructure and defence. Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.","Reliance Capital reported a consolidated net profit of Rs209 crore for the third quarter of the current fiscal, a drop of 11% from the year-ago period","Fri, Feb 10 2017. 11 41 PM IST",Reliance Capital Q3 profit drops 11% to Rs209 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/lHJVfH6Jong2uJMzTtxvLK/Alkem-Laboratories-Q3-profit-rises-2489-at-Rs233-crore.html,"New Delhi: Pharmaceuticals firm Alkem Laboratories on Friday reported 24.89% increase in consolidated net profit at Rs233.4 crore for the third quarter ended 31 December 2016.The company had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs186.89 crore in the same quarter last fiscal, Alkem Laboratories said in a BSE filing.Total income from operations during the period under review stood at Rs 1,481.92 crore as against Rs1,287.84 crore in the same quarter last fiscal, up 15%. Total expenses during the third quarter were higher at Rs1,240.17 crore as against Rs 1,074.74% in the year ago period.Shares of Alkem Laboratories were trading at Rs1,811 apiece in the afternoon trade, up 0.03% from the previous close on the BSE.","Alkem Laboratories total income from operations during third quarter stood at Rs 1,481.92 crore as against Rs1,287.84 crore in the same quarter last fiscal, up 15%","Fri, Feb 10 2017. 02 53 PM IST",Alkem Laboratories Q3 profit rises 24.89% at Rs233 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/DxNVH6R5Gr3rcp5W5harWI/SAIL-shares-tank-6-after-Q3-earnings.html,"New Delhi: Shares of Steel authority of India Limited (Sail) tumbled 6% on Friday after the company reported a standalone net loss of Rs794.8 crore for the third quarter ended 31 December 2016. The stock tanked 5.99% to end at Rs61.95 on BSE. During the day, it plunged 6.60% to Rs61.55. On NSE, it lost 6% to settle at Rs61.90. Even though the company’s net loss narrowed in the quarter ended December, it failed to lift investors sentiment. On the volume front, 14.36 lakh shares of the company were traded on BSE and over one crore shares changed hands at NSE during the day. India’s largest steelmaker Sail’s standalone net loss narrowed to Rs794.8 crore for the quarter ended 31 December 2016, helped by higher gross sales. The company’s standalone net loss in the corresponding quarter of previous fiscal stood at Rs1,481 crore, Steel Authority of India Ltd (Sail) said in a BSE filing on Thursday. Sail’s gross sales on standalone basis in the October-December quarter was at Rs12,490 crore, registering an increase of 25.8% from year-ago period.",Steel Authority of India’s (Sail) shares fell 6% after it reported a net loss of Rs794.8 crore for the third quarter ended 31 December ,"Fri, Feb 10 2017. 04 54 PM IST",SAIL shares tank 6% after Q3 earnings +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/TICr7IoCTlBGxNnrOY9zjL/ArcelorMittal-profit-jumps-20-as-steel-iron-prices-rally.html,"London: ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steelmaker, reported a 20% increase in annual profit on rising steel and iron ore prices, and forecast higher demand this year.The company decided not to reinstate its dividend and stopped providing earnings guidance.Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) rose to $6.26 billion last year, the Luxembourg-based company said in a statement Friday. The figure beat the $6.14 billion average of 18 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Ebitda in the fourth quarter was $1.66 billion, 51% higher than a year ago.Steelmakers’ earnings have been bolstered by a rally in prices as Chinese stimulus stabilized the economy and policy makers around the world pledged to back growth. European steel prices surged 82% last year, while benchmark rates for iron ore and coking coal, which ArcelorMittal also mines, almost doubled and tripled, respectively.ArcelorMittal has also benefited from increased efforts to protect US and European markets from record Chinese exports that producers have argued are at unfairly low prices. The company estimates that global steel consumption will rise 0.5% to 1.5% this year.The company decided not to reinstate its dividend, preferring instead to pay down debt in an effort to return to an investment-grade credit rating. Net debt decreased by $4.6 billion to $11.1 billion at year-end, the company said.“EBITDA was comfortably in excess of initial expectations and, furthermore, we have delivered on our commitment to prioritize debt reduction, significantly strengthening our balance sheet and ending the year with the lowest level of net debt since the creation of the company,” chief executive officer Lakshmi Mittal said in the statement.The shares settled at 7.518 euros on Thursday and have more than tripled in the past year. Bloomberg",ArcelorMittal decided not to reinstate its dividend and stopped providing earnings guidance,"Fri, Feb 10 2017. 01 58 PM IST","ArcelorMittal profit jumps 20% as steel, iron prices rally" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/DsLxKdYz85b2SQGkPiwNkM/Apple-aims-for-more-control-less-cost-as-it-accelerates-in.html,"San Francisco: Apple Inc’s decision to stop licensing graphics chips from Imagination Technologies Group Plc is the clearest example yet of the iPhone maker’s determination to take greater control of the core technologies in its products—both to guard its hefty margins and to position it for future innovations, especially in so-called augmented reality.The strategy, analysts say, has already reduced Apple’s dependence on critical outside suppliers like ARM Holdings Plc, now owned by SoftBank Group Corp. Apple once relied heavily on ARM to design the main processor for the iPhone, but it now licenses only the basic ARM architecture and designs most of the chip itself.More recently, when Apple bought the headphone company Beats Electronics, part of a $3 billion deal in 2014, it ripped out the existing, off-the-shelf communications chips and replaced them with its own custom-designed W1 Bluetooth chip.“Apple clearly got rid of all the conventional suppliers and replaced about five chips with one,” said Jim Morrison, vice president of TechInsights, a firm that examines the chips inside electronics devices. “Today we do much more in-house development of fundamental technologies than we used to,” Apple chief financial officer Luca Maestri said at a February conference. “Think of the work we do on processors or sensors. We can push the envelope on innovation. We have better control over timing, over cost and over quality.”Most vendors of consumer electronics products rely on outside suppliers for chip design and development, primarily because it is extremely expensive. That has created huge opportunities for companies like ARM, Qualcomm Inc. and Nvidia Corp, which have developed core technologies for processing, communications and graphics that are used by scores of vendors.Now, though, Apple is so big that it can economically create its own designs, or license small pieces of others’ work and build on it. As with ARM and Qualcomm, the actual manufacturing of the chips is still contracted out to a semiconductor foundry, such as those run by Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd.Move fast, save money Bringing more of the design work in-house cuts complexity, people familiar with the processes say. Instead of managing one or more design teams and then a fabricator, Apple has only to manage the fabricator.It may also help the company move faster—and save money—as it focuses on new technologies such as virtual and augmented reality. Apple CEO Tim Cook has indicated that Apple plans to integrate augmented reality into its products, which makes 3-D sensors and graphics chips like Imagination’s especially important.Even before formally cutting off Imagination, Apple had given hints that it was preparing to design its own graphics processors. Specifically, it introduced a piece of its own code called Metal for app developers. App developers use Metal to make their apps talk to the graphics chip on the iPhone.By putting a piece of Apple-designed code between app developers and the phone’s chip, Apple has made it possible to swap out the chip without interrupting how the developers work. That could also make it easier to bridge the gap for developers between the graphics chips on Apple’s phones and its desktop computers, which currently require some separate coding.“By promoting Metal instead of relying on other existing standards, Apple is not only able to control what graphics chip functionality is exposed at its own pace, but also blur the line for developers between coding for desktop and mobile GPUs,” said Pius Uzamere, the founder of a virtual reality startup called Ether.Taking control of the iPhone’s chips can also help Apple keep costs down, which is especially important as it gears up for a feature-laden new iPhone this fall. Timothy Arcuri of Cowen & Co said in a research note that he thinks the curved screens expected on the new phone could add as much as $50 in cost, for example. Shebly Seyrafi, an analyst at FBN Securities, estimates that the average price of an iPhone increased only 1% to $695 last quarter, while costs increased 8% to $420, resulting in an iPhone gross margin of 39.6%. That is down from the 44% average gross margin for iPhones in 2015, according to Seyrafi’s estimates.Apple spends only $75 million a year on licensing fees for Imagination’s chips. But licensing fees to chip designers, taken together, are a significant cost for the iPhone. Apple recently sued Qualcomm for $1 billion over licensing terms for its communications chips—which Apple would have trouble designing in-house because of patent issues. Reuters",Apple’s decision to stop licensing graphics chips from Imagination Technologies is the clearest example yet of its determination to take greater control of core technologies,"Wed, Apr 05 2017. 10 07 AM IST","Apple aims for more control, less cost as it accelerates in chip design" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/zuM3aPLZwSZQP1RQBR8rcL/Former-Google-selfdriving-car-engineer-made-over-120-milli.html,"
San Francisco: A former Google engineer at the centre of a fight over self-driving car technology made more than $120 million, according to a legal filing on Monday, highlighting the intense competition among tech companies and carmakers for talent in the nascent sector.The autonomous vehicle unit, now called Waymo, claimed in an arbitration demand against the former employee, Anthony Levandowski, that he breached his contract by recruiting from its ranks for his rival company, Otto,—while collecting more than $120 million in incentive payments from the search giant.Waymo and Levandowski’s current employer Uber Technologies Inc. are locked in a contentious legal battle over autonomous vehicle technology. The ride-hailing company is trying to persuade a court that Waymo’s February lawsuit should be resolved in private arbitration. Waymo had earlier filed an arbitration action against Levandowski.Google’s self-driving car project had initially structured its compensation to create specific incentives for the robotics engineers working on the futuristic technology. As the project progressed and evolved into a potential business capable of upending transportation, several early team members got huge payments, as Bloomberg News earlier reported.Uber and Waymo representatives declined to comment on Monday, and Levandowski didn’t respond to a request for comment.Google also alleged that, in addition to Otto, Levandowski helped found two other companies developing laser-based sensor technology that ran afoul of his non-compete agreement with the search giant. Odin Wave LLC and Tyto Lidar LLC were merged by February 2014 and Levandowski had been involved in Odin Wave since at least the previous year, when he was also developing competing technology for Google, according to the legal filing.Google at one stage investigated acquiring the merged company, which was run under the Tyto moniker, and Levandowski took part in that process without disclosing any role at the company, Google said. By May 2016, Tyto had been folded into Otto.","Waymo claimed in an arbitration demand against Anthony Levandowski that he breached his contract by recruiting from its ranks for his rival company, Otto","Wed, Apr 05 2017. 01 11 AM IST",Former Google self-driving car engineer made over $120 million +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/LqaRcR3cPS56WsvYnxZBxN/Vishal-Sikka-guaranteed-90-of-11-mn-salary-no-matter-how.html,"
Infosys Ltd’s chief executive officer (CEO) Vishal Sikka is assured of $10 million in annual compensation, irrespective of the company’s performance, because a clause in his employment contract makes him eligible to earn at least 90% of his total $11 million salary.
Infosys doesn’t deny the existence of the clause, although it doesn’t explain how this fits in with the company’s disclosure to BSE on 24 February last year that Sikka’s compensation could fall to $3 million in 2016-17 if Infosys’s growth fails to meet the internal targets set by the board.
Of Sikka’s $11 million compensation, $8 million is variable pay, the component based on Infosys’s performance. Infosys has not disclosed the annual targets upon completion of which Sikka stands to get full variable salary.
Also read: Infosys compensation row: Of executives, programmers and fairness
According to his employment contract, Sikka, if need be, can use a so-called “good reason” clause to terminate his existing employment agreement with Infosys, if his annual compensation of $11 million falls by more than 10%.
Effectively, what this means is that Infosys is beholden to pay him at least $10 million if it wants to retain him as CEO.
To be sure, he can choose not to use the clause—which means he can, if he wants to, accept a $3 million salary—but the existence of this clause does put him on a strong footing.
“Good reason”, in the employment contract, is defined as “Executive’s resignation within 30 days... following the occurrence of one or more of the following, without executive’s express written consent: a material reduction (with 10% reduction deemed to be material) in executive’s aggregate target compensation comprised of base pay, target variable pay and target value of stock compensation (except, where there is a substantially similar reduction applicable to senior executives generally, provided that such reduction does not exceed 10%).”
Also read: Forget compassionate capitalism, just some fairness will do
Infosys filed a copy of this employment agreement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on 18 May last year. By then, shareholders had already given their nod to Sikka’s higher compensation, making at least one proxy advisory firm question whether “Infosys deliberately did not share complete information”.
“In light of the fact that there is asymmetry of information in the information provided in the notice that was sent to Indian shareholders when an approval was sought and in the SEC disclosure, this is bad corporate governance,” said Shriram Subramanian, founder and managing director of proxy firm InGovern Research.
An Infosys spokesperson said the clause was also part of an earlier agreement with Sikka that was filed with the SEC on 20 May 2015.
“Your interpretation of the clause in the CEO’s contract is completely wrong,” the spokesperson said in response to emailed queries from Mint if Sikka’s minimum salary is $10 million on account of the “good reason” clause. The spokesperson refused to elaborate.
“We have publicly addressed questions on the CEO’s contract and we stand by that,” the spokesperson said. The spokesperson maintained that Sikka’s salary was variable. “As stated before, the nominations and remuneration committee (NRC) will evaluate the CEO’s variable compensation at the end of the fiscal year based on the company’s performance. Dr. Sikka’s compensation is linked to the company’s aspirational goal to achieve $20 billion in revenues by March 2021,” the spokesperson added.
A lack of clarity on Sikka’s $11 million salary was one reason for the souring of the relationship between the founder-promoters, led by N.R. Narayana Murthy, and the company’s board, Mint reported on 10 February.
A majority of the promoters also did not vote for a resolution seeking a salary increase for chief operating officer U.B. Pravin Rao. According to filings by Infosys with stock exchanges, only 24% of promoter votes were cast in favour of the resolution seeking a 35% raise in Rao’s compensation to Rs12.5 crore. The remaining abstained.
On Sunday, in response to a questionnaire from Mint, Murthy said that the promoters believe the pay increase was “not proper” as the increase is a lot higher than what was awarded to rank-and-file employees. “Every senior management person of an Indian corporation has to show self-restraint in his or her compensation. This is necessary if we have to make compassionate capitalism acceptable to a majority of Indians who are poor,” said Murthy in an email. Infosys, in its defence on Monday, said that the increase in salary to its senior leaders is in line with global standards, and followed a comprehensive survey of best practices and benchmarked senior management compensation with key Indian and global companies.",A clause in Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka’s contract lets him terminate his employment if his annual compensation falls by more than 10%,"Wed, Apr 05 2017. 02 56 PM IST",Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka guaranteed 90% of $11 million salary +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/R5enxlf3GstfE9hQ4DICuK/Forget-Apple-Xiaomi-CEO-now-wants-to-be-more-like-Costco.html,"Bangalore: Xiaomi Corp. says it’s misunderstood. Once compared with Apple Inc. for its sleek smartphones and charismatic leadership, the Chinese start-up is seeking an image makeover as it tries to recover from a sales-growth slide.And the brand its billionaire co-founder Lei Jun wants to be compared with: Costco Wholesale Corp., the Issaquah, Washington-based warehouse retailer that sells everything from wine and diamond rings to bulging boxes of cereal and fruit at knockdown prices. Xiaomi’s revenue will probably reach $15 billion this year as the Beijing-based maker of products ranging from pens and air purifiers to TVs and smartphones adopts a new business model and fine-tunes operations, Lei, 47, said in a recent interview.“We are not Apple,” Lei, clad in a black polo shirt and blue jeans, said at Xiaomi’s Bengaluru office in India, its biggest overseas market. “We have the same value system as Costco. We want users to enjoy better products at an affordable price.”While Apple commands premium prices and enjoys the highest margins in the brutally competitive $425 billion global smartphone industry, Costco sells merchandise at razor-thin profits while fuelling earnings from its 35 million annual memberships. As Xiaomi embraces a new strategy to fuel growth, Lei’s goal is to pull in more revenue from apps and services, which delivered $1 billion in sales from 10 million-plus monthly active users last year.It’s a far different strategy than the one it used to claim the top spot among China’s smartphone makers and a valuation of $45 billion that made it, briefly, the most valuable startup in the world. Instead of the online flash sales and inexpensively-sourced components that it used to disrupt the mobile industry, Lei wants to bring internet-inspired efficiency to offline commerce. He’s also turning to India to revive Xiaomi’s fortunes as China grows more competitive.‘Make history’Here, 20-something workers in denim jeans and T-shirts huddle in groups or sit behind shiny white desks separated by foot-high red, yellow and green partitions. Exposed-brick support columns and tube lights suspended below bare pipes and air-conditioning ducts make the office feel more like it’s inside a Brooklyn loft than an industrial park.Dozens of circular mobiles swing from the lights, with phrases encouraging staff to “Let’s make history together.” A scattering of motivational cartoons sketched on whiteboards promote Xiaomi’s aims and achievements. Now six years old, Xiaomi’s meteoric rise has been usurped in recent quarters by competitors replicating— and succeeding at—the very model that enabled it to vault ahead of Apple and Samsung Electronics Co. in its home market.The risk for Xiaomi in India is that it will go the same way as China: toppled by rival brands such as Oppo, Huawei and Vivo.Tarun Pathak, associate director at Counterpoint Research, said Xiaomi is taking a risky approach. The company’s rivals have been able to sell the same number of phones in India, even though their products cost as much as three times more. As Xiaomi seeks to expand sales volumes, it will have to sell more of its high-end models. “Their margins are thin and when they go offline, their expenses will shoot up,” he said.Modi meetingDuring his third visit to India—a week-long trip that included a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi—Lei summoned a town hall-style staff meeting to rally a team he praised for making Xiaomi the No. 1 online-selling smartphone company in the country the past two quarters. Their goal now, he said, was to cement that position in the next three to five years.In India, “incomes are low and everyone wants good products,” Lei said in a glass-walled conference room, flanked by several of his top executives. Lei is trying to reignite the buzz in the offline or “new retail” market, he said. “Everyone realizes the online market is very limited.”In China, Xiaomi accounts for only a 10th of total smartphone sales, Lei estimates, leaving bigger opportunities in the traditional bricks-and-mortar approach. Lei aims to have 1,000 so-called MiHome retail stores with sales topping $10 billion annually in next three years, he said. MiHome stores will offer just two dozen Xiaomi products, according to Lei. Pointing to a single line of $1 apiece writing pens, two types of air purifiers, and three kinds of smartphones, he says he envisages selling no more than 100 product types in coming years, versus the hundreds, or even thousands of stock-keeping units maintained by some manufacturers.New beginning?“Our toughest times have passed starting this year, and our main strategy now is to bring the internet way of thinking to offline in China,” Lei said. The plan is to integrate multiple links in offline commerce and avoid the bottlenecks that can occur as products move along the supply chain through manufacturing and repair to logistics and sales.But even the “new retail” strategy risks being copied. Lei spoke publicly about it one morning and the head of an e-retailing behemoth used the same term hours later, he said. Competitors have in the past paid the ultimate price of copying Xiaomi’s approach, Lei said, declining to give names. “One company lost $1 billion last year, maybe even more,” he said. “Game over.”Microsoft rivalLei’s ideas were shaped by past ventures. He previously ran Kingsoft Corp., a software maker that competes with Microsoft Corp.’s enterprise software sales in China, and his e-commerce company Joyo.com was acquired by Amazon.com Inc. and renamed Amazon China. Lei is convinced his retail plan will revive the growth prospects that helped earn Xiaomi its lofty valuation.Sales began to stagnate in 2015 and shipments plummeted in China last year, with the company refusing to release 2016 numbers. In January, former international head Hugo Barra left for Facebook Inc., raising questions about Xiaomi’s ability to navigate its way through what Lei had described as “unforgettable” challenges.In India last week, Lei insisted that revenue never slowed during the past two years, and that “Xiaomi has resumed rapid growth.” Suggestions that the company’s value had sunk to $4 billion “hurt us a lot,” he said, refusing to be drawn into a discussion on its current value.“It was never as bad as it was made out to be,” he said. “Our investors are not worried. I have explained to them clearly. And to our users, we say, ‘It takes 10 to 15 years. We need time. Trust Mr. Lei.’”Enough cashThere is no pressure on cash flow and no need to raise funds, he said, adding: “We have more than enough cash.” Lei declined to comment on whether Xiaomi has any immediate plan for an initial public offering. Right now, he’s focusing on India, including the potential to open physical stores in the nation with the world’s largest youth population.Xiaomi is planning a third factory in India, where Lei says he’s prepared to take more risks, including doubling investments to $1 billion over the next few years.“In the next two years, we want more and more influence in India,” Lei said. How he will do that plays on his mind constantly he says, as he reaches for a black backpack and fishes for one of 10 phones inside.“I keep thinking about how to perfect my products,” Lei says, clutching a phone with a metallic, pale blue finish. “For instance, how come Indians don’t like this ‘Tiffany blue’ colored phone?”That’s just one of many things that perplexes Lei about the India market. But he’s determined to figure it out: “This is what keeps me awake at night.” Bloomberg","Once compared with Apple for its sleek smartphones and charismatic leadership, Xiaomi is seeking an image makeover as it tries to recover from a sales growth slide","Wed, Apr 05 2017. 09 34 AM IST","Forget Apple, Xiaomi CEO now wants to be more like Costco" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/g3UcQB0EO0JsQo5UO6nw4K/Motorola-launches-Moto-G5-in-India-for-Rs11999.html,"New Delhi: Handset maker Motorola on Tuesday launched the fifth generation of its best-selling Moto G series —- Moto G5 — in the Indian market for Rs11,999.The company had launched the higher-end Moto G5 Plus last month in India. The Moto G5 — which will be available on Amazon.in — features a full metal design, faster processor and better camera functionality. The device will compete with handsets from Xiaomi, Micromax as well as those from the stable of its parent Lenovo.“Moto G is our biggest franchise and the fastest selling as well. We had launched the Moto G5 Plus a few weeks back and now we are bringing the Moto G5. India is an important market and we want to offer the best from our portfolio to consumers here,” Motorola Mobility India managing director Sudhin Mathur told reporters in New Delhi. Over 6 million units of the Moto G (first four generations) have been sold in India so far. The Android Nougat-based Moto G5 features a 5-inch display, 1.4Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon octa-core processor, 3GB RAM, internal storage of 16GB (expandable up to 128GB), 13MP rear and 5MP front cameras and 2,800 mAh battery. At the end of 2016, Lenovo and Motorola had 8.9% share of the Indian smartphone market, as per research firm IDC.The Indian smartphone market has seen a significant shift in the last few quarters with homegrown brands being pushed out of the top five positions by Chinese firms like Lenovo, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo.","Android Nougat-based Moto G5 features a 5-inch display, 1.4Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon octa-core processor, 3GB RAM, internal storage of 16GB (expandable up to 128GB)","Tue, Apr 04 2017. 06 58 PM IST","Motorola launches Moto G5 in India for Rs11,999" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/V3gFtsDkcublb69K3RgtpO/Storage-startup-Cohesity-Inc-said-to-attract-valuation-of-o.html,"San Francisco: Cohesity Inc., a startup that specializes in data storage, landed funding that valued the company at more than $500 million, according to a person familiar with the matter, giving it fresh resources to bolster growth.GV—the venture capital arm of Google parent Alphabet Inc.—and Sequoia Capital co-led an investment round of more than $90 million. That’s the third major funding round for Cohesity, bringing the total investments in the company to more than $160 million. The new infusion will help the startup expand internationally while also improving its lineup with more engineers, according to Mohit Aron, chief executive officer and founder.Cohesity is expanding its reach to attract more businesses looking for new ways to handle the growing reams of data being produced every day. While the company doesn’t disclose sales, the startup said it has been roughly doubling the number of customers every quarter. Its products became publicly available in late 2015.Cohesity is targeting the “secondary” part of the storage industry that takes care of data that needs to be available for projects that might include analytics—but not necessarily at the highest speeds. This storage, which also aims to reduce complexity, is offered via gear that looks like flat boxes and includes computing and networking capabilities, often referred to as hyperconverged products. The startup also has agreements to let its technology work with major cloud providers Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. “There’s a lot of market demand,” said Bill Coughran, a partner at Sequoia Capital and a Cohesity board member.GV participated in an earlier funding round and Sequoia co-led Cohesity’s initial funding. New participants included Cisco Systems Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and Foundation Capital. Among the other investors are Accel, Battery Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures.Aron declined to comment on the funding round’s valuation. He founded Cohesity in 2013 and previously was a co-founder of Nutanix Inc., another storage company, which went public last year and now has valuation of about $2.6 billion. He said the funding announced Tuesday will help the startup as it attracts corporate customers, which include Shutterstock and Ultimate Software.“We’re seeing this big uptake,” Aron said. The funding “means that I can kind of press on the gas a little bit.” Bloomberg","This is the third major funding round for Cohesity, bringing the total investments in the company to more than $160 million","Tue, Apr 04 2017. 08 59 PM IST",Storage startup Cohesity Inc. said to attract valuation of over $500 million +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ozanrVoibOjSFCXrGeAaeL/Of-executives-programmers-and-fairness.html,"
Early in the morning of Monday, 3 April, serendipity sat me next to N.R. Narayana Murthy on a long transcontinental flight leaving Bengaluru. As the flight attendants handed out newspapers for the passengers to read while on the journey, I couldn’t help but notice that Murthy had made front-page news, this time for questioning the extent of the raise given to an executive at Infosys Ltd, the company that he founded over three decades ago along with a few of his junior colleagues. I turned to him and we began a conversation. I shall not focus here on the specific comments about Infosys, but there were several parts of the conversation that covered Murthy’s philosophy around topics that I have written about in this column before, and which provide insights into the character of the man. Unsurprisingly, we spoke of the social issues being caused by the changes in the way corporations recruit and retain talent. We spoke of organizations such as TopCoder, now part of an Indian IT services firm after the acquisition of its parent by Wipro. TopCoder is a marketplace for computer programmers, who can get compensated for their work through this marketplace without ever having to be an employee of a services firm. It is like a taxi aggregator among programming firms. I have written in this column before about how marketplaces like these can eventually change the construct of the employer-employee contract now prevalent among many firms and have also mused about whether unionization may be around the corner at some Indian IT services firms as the employer-employee relationship construct begins to disintegrate.Murthy explained that there are circumstances where unions can play a pivotal role in ensuring equity. He said the fact that unions look out for employees’ welfare is inescapable, and proffered the example of the US. According to him, when unionization covered 35% of the American workforce, American labour was better looked after. Now that this figure has slipped to around 15%, the poor have become poorer as corporations and their leaders have followed an Ayn-Rand-esque view of “rational self-interest” and social Darwinism. Pushing crumbs off one’s table and trusting that the aspiring classes in society will have enough is a sure recipe in fomenting labour class unrest, as the recent Brexit and US presidential elections have shown. Murthy’s opinion is that such unrest is also lying dormant and is barely beneath the surface in India, and that leaders of India’s capitalist revolution cannot afford to blithely ignore this.Also read | Infosys strongly defends COO pay hike criticized by Narayana MurthyWe also spoke of the fledgling experiments with universal basic income (UBI) that have begun to pop up in various corners of the earth. UBI is essentially a dole paid out to every citizen, whether they are out of work or not, in a nod to the fact that relentless mechanization and automation will take away many people’s livelihoods in the near- to medium-term future. While classical economics tells us that disruptive changes in labour mechanics such as offshoring and automation only cause a temporary loss in jobs before there is a “job shift” when people start to work in other fields of endeavour so that they may earn a living, the short-term pain caused by the original job displacement is undeniable. UBI is a well-meaning attempt to alleviate some of that pain. It comes with the same plethora of problems around unemployment doles, but Murthy’s view was that societies have a responsibility to their underprivileged or displaced populaces and that he would welcome higher taxes on the IT industry that are meant to go directly to those whose jobs IT displaces. He said that the only society that is stable is one that is seen to be moving, however haltingly, towards an atmosphere of equity and fairness among all its members.Leaders in the IT industry need to be seen as fair by the people under their command. Giving raises at the top that are 10 or even 20 times the rate of the raises being given at the bottom runs the risk of creating an impression that those at the top are greedy opportunists most interested in snatching what they can while the going is good. I have been part of a company where the boss raised his own salary by over 250%, leaving others in his second line like me to explain to the rest of the workforce that they had to make do with a 2% increase. The rationale for the anaemic salary increase for everyone but the boss was that the firm had not reached its (internally set) earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, targets. As an aside, I am sure the boss’s new salary contributed to the company repeating this miss in the next year. That year, even though my own compensation increase was also in the low single digits, I felt great discomfiture at having to justify and explain the boss’s salary increase, which the board had seen right to give him since “he could easily get another job in the industry paying just as much”. To paraphrase the Bard of Avon, all the mouthwash in India has not cured me of the ensuing halitosis from those conversations.Recalling a time when the industry finally saw the light and banded together in the common interest to fight high levels of attrition when companies were blithely poaching talent from one another, I asked Murthy whether Nasscom or some such industry body could now be entrusted with this looming question of “fairness”. He was unequivocal that an ombudsman is needed. Maybe it is time we allow ourselves to be policed.Siddharth Pai is a world-renowned technology consultant who has led over $20 billion in complex, first-of-a-kind outsourcing transactions.","In IT firms such as Infosys, giving raises at the top many times the rate of the raises at the bottom risks creating an impression that those at the top are greedy opportunists ","Tue, Apr 04 2017. 01 26 AM IST","Infosys compensation row: Of executives, programmers and fairness" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/UXPOX5k09Ocew6QXJB9ygK/Imagination-Tech-shares-plunge-as-Apple-abandons-the-firm.html,"London: Shares in Imagination Tech crashed more than 70% on Monday after the British company said its biggest customer, Apple, would stop using its graphics technology in iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches.Imagination said Apple, which accounts for about half its revenue, had notified the British firm it was developing its own graphics chips and would no longer use Imagination’s processing designs in 15 months to two years time.Shares in Imagination, in which Apple holds an 8% stake, plunged to 76 pence, their lowest level since 2009 and about a 10th of their record of 734 pence hit in 2012.“The biggest risk to Imagination’s business model was realised this morning,” analysts at Investec said. “The loss of this revenue stream will have a material impact on the financials of the company.”ALSO READ | Apple sparks row with pledge to drop Imagination Tech graphicsImagination’s shares were trading down 61% at 105 pence by 0915 GMT, giving the company a market value of £298 million ($372 million), or £463 million less than it was worth on Friday. The technology company has licensed its processing designs to Apple from the time of the iPod and receives a small royalty on every graphics chip used in a device.Imagination, however, said it doubted Apple could go it alone without violating Imagination’s patents, intellectual property and confidential information, and analysts said legal battles could lie ahead.“This evidence has been requested by Imagination but Apple has declined to provide it,” said the British company, which was founded in 1985 and listed in 1994.Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Imagination’s shares rose sharply between 2009 and 2012 as sales of smartphones boomed and Apple and Intel bought stakes. The company was valued at more than €2 billion ($2.5 billion) in April 2012.It struggled, however, to reduce its reliance on Apple, and has faced increased competition from the likes of chipmaker Qualcomm and British rival ARM, which developed its own graphics to complement its core processor blueprints.Imagination says it has 50% of the high-end smartphone market, but only 7% of mid-tier devices, where it has been trying to regain market share, including in phones made by Chinese manufacturers.It said that Apple’s notification had triggered talks on alternative commercial arrangements for the current license and royalty agreement.Analysts said there could be room for a compromise, and it could be a bargaining move by Apple to reduce royalties.Apple paid Imagination licence fees and royalties totalling £60.7 million for the year to end-April 2016, half of its total revenue, and is expected to pay about £65 million for this year, Imagination said.Most of its costs are incurred designing new technology years ahead of when it appears in devices, and it said there were minimal direct costs associated with the Apple revenue. Reuters",Imagination Tech’s shares crashed more than 70% after Apple said it would stop using its graphics technology ,"Mon, Apr 03 2017. 07 42 PM IST",Imagination Tech shares plunge as Apple abandons the firm +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/9hdgYVzd5evKbasbwiWocK/H1B-visa-What-the-USCIS-guidelines-mean-for-tech-workers-a.html,"US President Donald Trump and members of Congress from both parties have vowed to overhaul the visa programmes used by corporations to bring overseas workers to the US. That’s left companies that rely on such workers and those that source them bracing for change. A first step came at the end of March, when the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) department issued guidelines making it harder for companies to bring foreign technology workers to the US using the H-1B visa programme.What’s the H-1B programme do?It allows companies to recruit 85,000 employees from abroad each year for specialty positions in fields including technology, science, medicine, architecture—even fashion modelling. It took less than a week for applicants to exhaust that allotment in 2016, and technology companies including Facebook Inc., Google Inc., Intel Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. have sought to increase the number available. People from India receive more H-1B vis’s than any other nationality.What changes were made? For H-1B visas given out in the 2017 lottery beginning 3 April, the government now requires additional information for entry-level computer programmers, to prove the jobs are complicated and require advanced knowledge and experience. Computer programmers made up about 12% of all H-1B applications certified by the department of labour in 2015. Also Read: H-1B visas to become harder to get as Donald Trump starts crackdownIn March, the immigration department suspended a program that expedited visa processing for certain skilled workers who paid extra, which some analysts saw as a first step to dismantling the H-1B program altogether.Which other programs are under scrutiny?Apart from the best-known H-1B visa, companies use a variety of visas to bring in workers from abroad, including the B-1 for temporary business visitors and the L-1 for managers, executives and specialized workers of international companies.Why does the US have these programmes?They were designed to allow US companies to hire temporary workers from other countries when they couldn’t find qualified people domestically. These temporary visas were established under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. The programs have morphed over the years, and many of the visas now go to companies that pay foreign workers less than their American counterparts would receive. The total number of visas issued for temporary employment-based admission to the US grew to more than 1 million in 2014 from just over 400,000 in 1994, according to the Congressional Research Service. Those numbers included some unskilled and low-skilled workers, plus accompanying family members.Do the programmes need reform?It’s pretty clear the H-1B program and others have been used in ways that contradict their original intent. There have been allegations of abuse and at least one big settlement: In 2013, a Bangalore-based outsourcing company, Infosys Ltd., agreed to pay a record fine of $34 million to settle US allegations that it sent employees to the US with B-1 visitor visas to sidestep the caps on H-1Bs.What does Trump propose?During his presidential campaign, he said the H-1B program is a “cheap labour program” that takes jobs from Americans. He hasn’t yet detailed his ideas as president, but based on a draft executive order, his administration may push companies to try hiring American workers before turning to foreign ones—a step that isn’t necessary now. He’s also asked that the programmes prioritize giving visas to the most highly paid workers from abroad. Who gets priority now?Currently, H-1B visas are allocated by random lottery, with no priority given to companies that pay workers more. The biggest recipients of the visas are outsourcing companies, including India’s Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Wipro Ltd. and Infosys. They pay workers in the programme an average of about $65,000 a year, while Apple Inc., Google and Microsoft Corp. pay their H-1B employees more than $100,000.Can Trump act on his own?An executive order can begin the reform process, but Trump lacks the broad powers of Congress. For example, he can’t change the number of H-1B visas that are given out each year, but he probably can change the way they’re allocated. So he could order that priority be given to higher-paid workers.What might Congress do?Congress has tried many times in the past decade to change the work visa programmes, with limited effect. Bills offered in the House by two California lawmakers, Republican Darrell Issa and Democrat Zoe Lofgren, aim to do so by raising the wages for some H-1B workers.Also Read: H1B visa: Computer programmer won’t qualify as specialty occupation , says USIn Lofgren’s proposal, companies that are the heaviest users of the programme would have to pay salaries of at least $130,000, up from the current $60,000, or attest that they are not displacing American workers and making a good faith effort to recruit US workers if they pay less than that. The legislative push has spooked India’s tech companies, weighing on their stocks. There’s also a bipartisan proposal in the Senate, long pushed by Republican Chuck Grassley and Democrat Richard Durbin, that would forbid replacing US workers with H-1B hires and prioritize visa applications from people who earned degrees at American colleges.Will Silicon Valley be hurt by the changes?It depends on the details, of course, but the US tech industry may well come out on top. Because so many H-1B visas go to outsourcing firms, American employers like Apple, Google, Microsoft Corp. and Facebook haven’t been able to get as many as they would like. They could be benefit if outsourcers face more restrictions. Bloomberg",The USCIS has issued guidelines making it harder for companies to bring foreign tech workers to the US using the H-1B visa programme. Here are the implications of the guidelines,"Tue, Apr 04 2017. 04 15 PM IST",H1-B visa: What the USCIS guidelines mean for tech workers and companies +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/BjBC8VRgMxZaVmWf9xFjsO/Mswipe-in-talks-to-raise-up-to-40-million.html,"
Mumbai: Mobile payments services provider Mswipe Technologies Pvt. Ltd has initiated talks to raise as much as $40 million (around Rs250 crore) in a new round of funding, two people aware of the development said.The firm which provides merchants with mobile point of sale (PoS) terminals to enable digital transactions, has appointed investment bank Avendus Capital to help it raise funds, said one of the two people cited above, seeking anonymity as the talks are private.“The firm recently mandated Avendus to run the fundraising process and has initiated conversations with investors for the same. It is looking raise $30-40 million in this new round. Funds will be used majorly to enrol larger number of merchants for its PoS devices,” he said.The fundraising comes at a time when the number of cashless transactions in the country has increased after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the withdrawal of Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes on 8 November. These two currency notes formed the bulk of the currency bills in circulation in the country. Credit and debit card transactions at PoS terminals saw a 106% year-on-year growth in December, according to Reserve Bank of India data.“Demonetisation has been a shot in the arm for payments firms. Mswipe’s business was growing strongly before demonetization, but post November, the numbers have seen a sharp increase, which will make the company more attractive to investors,” said the second person cited above, also requesting anonymity.Emails sent on Friday to Mswipe were not answered. A spokesperson for Avendus Capital declined to comment on the development.The last fund-raising at Mswipe was in July 2015, when it raised Rs160 crore in a Series C round from new investors such as Falcon Edge Capital, Ola Cabs and Meru Capital. Existing investors Matrix Partners India, Axis Bank Ltd and DSG Consumer Partners also participated in the round.Mswipe was founded in 2012 by Manish Patel, a doctor by education, who previously co-founded an alcoholic beverages distribution firm called Milestone Merchandise. Mswipe provides a mobile payment solution with a card reader, which can be attached to any mobile phone’s audio (headset) jack. The firm also provides similar card payment solutions for smartphones.It works closely with smaller banks such as Corporation Bank, RBL Bank Ltd, Shamrao Vithal Co-operative Bank Ltd and large banks such as Axis Bank Ltd.It is also present in West Asia, the US and South-East Asia through partnerships. Its clients include small and medium enterprises.In the payments services market, Mswipe competes with companies such as Ezetap and Paynear.In August 2015, Ezetap raised Rs150 crore from Social+Capital, Helion Advisors and Berggruen Holdings, Horizons Ventures and the Capricorn Investment Group.In December 2015, Paynear raised Rs16 crore from a high net-worth individual investor.The latest round of funding could additionally see existing investor Axis Bank Ltd make an exit from the company. On 15 November, Mint reported that the private sector lender was exploring the sale of its entire stake of approximately 8% in Mswipe. Axis Bank first invested in the company in early 2013.","Mswipe, the maker of mobile PoS devices to enable digital transactions, has appointed investment bank Avendus Capital to help it raise funds","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 09 22 PM IST",Mswipe in talks to raise up to $40 million +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hUyMifTQYlUYTLsLL11APN/Wells-Fargo-claws-back-75-million-from-top-executives-in-sa.html,"New York: An investigation into sales practices at Wells Fargo released on Monday has blamed the bank’s top management for creating an “aggressive sales culture” that led to a scandal involving millions of unauthorized accounts being opened.The bank’s board of directors also clawed back another $75 million in pay from two former executives, CEO John Stumpf and community bank executive Carrie Tolstedt.Wells’ board said both executives dragged their feet for years regarding problems at the second-largest US bank and were ultimately unwilling to accept criticism that the bank’s sales-focused business model was failing.The 110-page report has been in the works since September, when Wells acknowledged that its employees opened up to 2 million checking and credit card accounts without customers’ authorization. Trying to meet unrealistic sales goals, Wells employees even created phony email addresses to sign customers up for online banking services.“(Wells’ management) created pressure on employees to sell unwanted or unneeded products to customers and, in some cases, to open unauthorized accounts,” the board said in its report.Many current and former employees have talked of intense and constant pressure from managers to sell and open accounts, and some said it pushed them into unethical behaviour. The report backs up those employees’ accounts.The bank has already paid $185 million in fines to federal and local authorities and settled a $110 million class-action lawsuit. The scandal also resulted in the abrupt retirement last October of longtime CEO John Stumpf, not long after he underwent blistering questioning from congressional panels. The bank remains under investigation in several states, as well as by the Securities and Exchange Commission, for its practices.The board’s report recommended that Stumpf and Tolstedt have additional compensation clawed back for their negligence and poor management. Tolstedt will lose $47.3 million in stock options, on top of $19 million the board had already clawed back. Stumpf will lose an additional $28 million in compensation, on top of the $41 million the board already clawed back. Along with the millions clawed back from other executives earlier this year, the roughly $180 million in clawbacks are among the largest in corporate history.The board found that, when presented with the growing problems in Wells’ community banking division, senior management was unwilling to hear criticism or consider changes in behaviour. The board particularly faulted Tolstedt, calling her “insular and defensive” and unable to accept scrutiny from inside or outside her organization.The board also found that Tolstedt actively worked to downplay any problems in her division. In a report made in October 2015, nearly three years after a Los Angeles Times investigation uncovered the scandal, Tolstedt “minimized and understated problems at the community bank.”Tolstedt declined to be interviewed for the investigation, the board said, on advice from her lawyers. Stumpf also received his share of criticism. In its report, the board found that Stumpf was also unwilling to change Wells’ business model when problems arose.“His reaction invariably was that a few bad employees were causing issues ... he was too late and too slow to call for inspection or critical challenge to (Wells’) basic business model,” the board said.Stumpf, however, did not seem to express regret for how he handled those initial weeks after the bank was fined, including where he initially levied most of the blame on low-level employees for the sales practices problems instead of management, said Stuart Baskin, lawyer with Shearman & Sterling, the firm that the board hired to investigate the sales scandalThe investigation found that Wells’ corporate structure was also to blame. Under Stumpf, Wells operated in a decentralized fashion, with executives of each of the businesses running their divisions almost like separate companies.While there is nothing wrong with operating a large company like Wells in a decentralized fashion, the board said, the structure backfired in this case by allowing Tolstedt and other executives to hide the problems in their organization from senior management and the board of directors.When the scandal broke, Wells said it had fired roughly 5,300 employees as a result of the sales practices, the vast majority of them rank-and-file employees. But when that figure was announced it was the first time that the board of directors had heard the sales practices problems were of such a large size and scope. According to the report, as recently as May 2015, senior management told the board that only 230 employees had been fired for sales practices violations.Wells has instituted several corporate and business changes since the problems became known nationwide. Wells has changed its sales practices, and called tens of millions of customers to check on whether they truly opened the accounts in question.The company also split the roles of chairman and CEO. Tim Sloan, Wells’ former president and chief operating officer, took over as CEO. Stephen Sanger, who had been the lead director on Wells’ board since 2012, became the company’s independent chairman.Sanger has shown little in the way of mercy to management responsible for Wells’ unethical sales practices. Under his chairmanship, Sanger clawed back tens of millions of dollars in stock awards and compensation due to Stumpf and Tolstedt. In January, the board took the unusual action of publicly firing four executives whom the board said had major roles in the bank’s sales practices at the centre of the scandal. It also cut bonuses to other major executives, including Sloan.However, the board’s report concluded that Sloan had little direct involvement in the questionable sales practices.",An investigation at Wells Fargo has blamed the bank’s top management for creating an ‘aggressive sales culture’ that led to millions of unauthorized accounts being opened,"Mon, Apr 10 2017. 08 50 PM IST",Wells Fargo claws back $75 million from top executives in sales scandal +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/pLJRSMfYrVFBAABciChSeI/Ruiasled-Essar-sells-Aegis-BPO-for-275300-million.html,"New Delhi: Essar Group said on Monday that it had entered into a definitive agreement to sell its business process outsourcing (BPO) unit Aegis Ltd to private equity (PE) firm Capital Square Partners.“This transaction is in line with our strategy of incubating, building and operating world-class businesses, and being open to monetizing them at a premium value when the market conditions are favourable,” Uday Gujadhar, director at AGC Holdings Ltd Mauritius, a holding company of Aegis, said in a statement.Capital Square Partners has deep domain expertise and understanding of South-East Asia to ensure that the company continues to grow, Gujadhar added.Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Net proceeds of the sale will be used to retire Essar Group’s debt, the company said. The transaction is expected to close in the current quarter, subject to receipt of regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions Financial.Aegis has clients in multiple sectors such as telecom, technology, media, banking, financial services and insurance, travel and logistics, retail and e-commerce.The company employs 40,000 people across 47 offices worldwide, offering services including lifecycle management, technology services, back-office services and social media analytics. Its annual revenue is around $400 million.Essar’s advisors in the transaction included Axis Capital as financial advisor, and Platinum Partners and Sidley Austin as legal advisors. Shearman & Sterling and Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas acted as legal advisors for Capital Square Partners.Capital Square Partners has in the past invested in technology services and BPO sectors, including its acquisition of Minacs Ltd in early 2014; Minacs was subsequently acquired by Synnex Corp. in 2016 and merged with Cocentrix.The Aegis sale comes close on the heels of Essar Group selling Essar Oil Ltd in a $13 billion transaction with Rosneft PJSC, Russia’s biggest listed oil producer, and a consortium of Trafigura and United Capital Partners. The deal marked the biggest foreign direct investment in India till date.The transaction was a fallout of debt-related stress in the Essar Group, which at the time of Essar Oil’s sale in October had debt of Rs.1.3 trillion, according to an estimate by Kotak Institutional Equities.",The Aegis sale marks Ruias-led Essar’s complete exit from BPO business,"Mon, Apr 03 2017. 06 39 PM IST",Essar sells Aegis BPO to Capital Square Partners +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/JAQd86AP9aKlxzAvZSuLSI/ECB-boss-Mario-Draghi-judges-2016-as-best-year-since-Europea.html,"Frankfurt am Main: The European Central Bank judged Monday that it had a successful 2016, arguing in its annual report that it had warded off deflation and nurtured economic recovery in the eurozone.“Though the year began shrouded in economic uncertainty, it ended with the economy on its firmest footing since the crisis,” President Mario Draghi wrote in a foreword.In March last year, the ECB had responded to alarmingly low inflation by boosting its massive bond-buying scheme, lowering interest rates and extending cheap loans to banks.The ECB’s moves were designed to pump in cash through the financial system and into the real economy, making it easier for businesses and households to borrow for spending and investment, thus powering growth and ratcheting up inflation towards the ECB’s target of just below 2%.By December, the eurozone economy looked healthy enough for the Frankfurt institution to scale back its bond-buying from the €80 billion ($85 billion) per month set in March to its previous level of €60 billion.“This reflected the success of our actions earlier in the year: growing confidence in the euro area economy and disappearing deflation risks,” Draghi judged.ALSO READ: What we learned about Brexit from EU president Donald TuskBut the central bank sees its task as far from done.The 19-nation eurozone faces political risks at home from elections in France and Germany, while weak global growth and political uncertainty sap overseas demand for the region’s products.Meanwhile, though inflation briefly spiked past its target in February thanks to higher oil prices, it fell back in March and is far from the “self-sustaining” level the ECB strives to reach as growth in prices and wages remains sluggish.For now, Draghi and his colleagues in the bank’s governing council believe that economic recovery is still dependent on their massive support.The report repeats familiar calls on governments to step up reforms, especially loosening labour laws, and to redirect spending to more growth-friendly areas.And it takes aim at the European Commission, arguing that “a more forceful application of the fiscal rules would have been welcome” in cases such as Brussels’ decision not to fine Spain and Portugal for exceeding deficit targets.With Brexit one of the major risks to the eurozone economy in the near future, the ECB reiterated that preserving the integrity of the EU’s single market and the “homogeneity of rules and their enforcement” are “imperative” as London’s and Brussels’ negotiators settle in for two years of wrangling. AFP",The European Central Bank’s (ECB) annual report argues that it warded off deflation and nurtured economic recovery in the eurozone in 2016,"Mon, Apr 10 2017. 08 59 PM IST",ECB boss Mario Draghi judges 2016 as best year since European debt crisis +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/BChUqxwL8xCtB2lomRMDZK/EPF-claims-can-be-settled-through-mobile-phone-soon-Bandaru.html,"New Delhi: Nearly four crore members of retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) will soon be able to settle their claims like employees’ provident fund (EPF) withdrawal through mobile application UMANG. “The EPFO is developing online claims settlement process by receiving application online,” labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha. The minister also said, “The application will be integrated with Unified Mobile App for new-age governance, (UMANG) App, to receive the claims online. However, the timeframe to roll out the same has not been finalised.” The EPFO receives close to 1 crore applications manually for settlement of EPF withdrawals, pension fixation or getting group insurance benefit by the deceased. A senior official said over 110 regional offices of the EPFO out of 123 field formations have already been connected with the central server. The official explained that it is a technical requirement for connecting all regional offices with the central server for rolling out the facility. ALSO READ: EPFO asks banks to treat banking correspondents as staff, extend benefitsEarlier in February this year, EPFO central provident fund commissioner had said, “The process of connecting all field offices with a central server is going on. We may introduce the facility for online submission of all types of applications and claims like EPF withdrawal and pension settlement by May this year.” The EPFO has an ambitious plan to settle the claims within a few hours after filing of the application. For instance, it has plans to settle the EPF withdrawal claim within three hours of the filing. As per the scheme, the EPFO is required to settle all claims within 20 days from filing of the application for settlement of pension or EPF withdrawal. The minister also told the House that the EPFO has engaged the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, as its technical consultant to upgrade its technology and the body is installing latest equipment at its three central data centres in Delhi, Gurugram and Secunderabad. An official spoke of the requirement of seeding Aadhaar and bank accounts with the Universal (PF) Account Number (UAN) for settling EPFO claim online. In a separate reply to the House, the minister said that out of the 3.76 crore contributing members as on March 31, 2016, as many as 1.68 crore have linked their Aadhaar numbers with UAN. The EPFO has already made it mandatory to provide bank account numbers with IFSC codes and Aadhaar of subscribers.",Labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya says EPFO is developing online claims settlement process by receiving applications online which will be integrated with the UMANG App ,"Mon, Apr 10 2017. 04 46 PM IST",EPF claims can be settled through mobile phone soon: Bandaru Dattatreya +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/uUPUAZpwQ5HD07R9MJKldO/Uttar-Pradeshs-farm-loan-waiver-Neither-egalitarian-nor-pr.html,"
Fulfilling his poll promise, chief minister Yogi Adityanath has announced a farm loan waiver scheme in Uttar Pradesh. The scheme will cover small and marginal farmers with debts of up to Rs1 lakh and is expected to cost the state government Rs36,359 crore. How effective can the scheme be in tackling farmers’ woes in India’s largest state?
Including only small and marginal farmers in the loan waiver scheme is an attempt to ensure that only the most vulnerable benefit from this expensive move. However, there are two factors which undermine the progressive intent behind such policies. The poorest farmers often rely on non-institutional sources of credit due to lack of credit-worthiness and related factors. Even if the government wanted to, it cannot provide relief to those who have taken loans from non-institutional sources as anybody could queue up for relief due to the absence of a verifiable paper trail. Also, as is the case with any loan waiver, those who paid back their loans despite facing hardships would end up as losers.
The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to issue Kisan Rahat (farmers’ relief) bonds to pay for this move. Although the details of these arrangements are awaited, it would put significant pressure on the state government’s finances throughout its term, and probably even after that.
ALSO READ | The politics and economics of farm loan waivers
Assuming an interest rate of 6.5-7.5%, the bonds would cost anywhere between Rs2,363.2 crore and Rs2,726.8 crore in annual interest payouts. According to the latest Reserve Bank of India study of state budgets, Uttar Pradesh’s capital expenditure on agriculture and allied activities and rural development (economic services category) in 2015-16 was Rs6,221.2 crore.
The report also shows that the share of agriculture and rural development in development expenditure (capital) in Uttar Pradesh has been less than the national average. An additional squeeze on the state budget due to the farm loan waiver could widen this gap.
As pressure on land increases in India, the only way to keep the rural economy afloat is to promote crop yield growth and diversification away from cultivation activities. For both these goals, public sector investment is of immense importance, as it complements rather than crowds out private investment.
Uttar Pradesh fares badly in terms of share of income from non-cultivation activities and share of investment in total agricultural income, according to the latest farm situation assessment survey of the National Sample Survey Office conducted in 2013.
This is a reflection of a stagnant and bearish farm economy, which is more vulnerable to exogenous shocks such as a crash in prices or monsoon failure. It is unlikely that farm-loan waivers would help Uttar Pradesh’s farmers in meeting these long-term challenges. What Uttar Pradesh, and the rest of the country, needs is smart public investments that help raise farm and rural incomes sustainably.
Data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy shows net irrigated area in Uttar Pradesh has come down from 14.49 million hectares in 2000-01 to 13.43 million hectares in 2010-11. However, the ratio of net irrigated area using tube wells has increased from less than two-thirds to a little less than three-fourths of the total irrigated area. The proliferation of tube wells, if left unchecked, will deplete groundwater resources drastically, and seriously jeopardize sustainability of farming. This is not a problem unique to Uttar Pradesh but, as in most other parts of the country, very little has been done to stem the depletion of groundwater resources.
None of this is to deny the widespread agrarian distress in India, which has become systemic in nature. Farm loan waivers, like the one announced in Uttar Pradesh, would provide limited relief where none was available. However, it is also a fact that farm loan waivers are at best a palliative for India’s crisis-ridden agrarian economy.
A 2014 World Bank study on the farm loan waiver announced in 2008 by the United Progressive Alliance government found that the scheme had no significant effect on productivity and investment in agriculture, and, in fact, worsened loan allocation in districts with greater exposure to the debt waiver.
Unless farmers are given the right incentives to shift to more remunerative and sustainable farming and non-farming options, Indian agriculture will not be able to overcome its current crisis.
In recent years, the livestock sector has emerged as an important source of non-farm income in many parts of the country. Uttar Pradesh has emerged as the biggest exporter of buffalo meat in recent years but that sector is unlikely to grow in an environment of irrational hysteria around cattle protection.
The Uttar Pradesh government’s policy of providing palliatives such as loan waivers on the one hand, and its disruption of the cattle economy on the other, suggests that despite an overwhelming majority in the state assembly, the government is more interested in populism than radical reforms to boost farming and rural livelihoods in the state.",The farm loan waiver announced by CM Yogi Adityanath is at best a palliative that is unlikely to address the challenges faced by Uttar Pradesh’s rural economy,"Mon, Apr 10 2017. 08 41 PM IST",Uttar Pradesh’s farm loan waiver: Neither egalitarian nor productive +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/BiT9QQn2qhJZ7f428aTewJ/RBL-Bank-now-among-Indias-10-most-valuable-banks.html,"Mumbai: RBL Bank Ltd, formerly known as Ratnakar Bank, on Monday entered the list of India’s 10 most valuable banks.With a market capitalisation of Rs22,043.18 crore, the bank has replaced IDFC Bank Ltd in the elite club. IDFC Bank has a market value of Rs20,530 crore, according to Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) data.HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s most profitable bank, is the most valuable bank in India with a market cap of Rs3.68 trillion, followed by state-run State Bank of India (Rs2.34 trillion) and ICICI Bank Ltd (Rs1.62 trillion). Kotak Mahindra Bank is No.4, followed by Axis Bank Ltd, IndusInd Bank Ltd, Yes Bank Ltd, Bank of Baroda and Punjab National Bank.RBL Bank’s stock closed at a fresh record high of Rs587.50 on the BSE, up 5.52% from its previous close.The bank listed on 31 August at a premium of 33% to its issue price. The Rs1,211 crore initial public offering received a demand for over 69 times the shares on offer. Since then, it has surged over 161.1% and so far this year it has gained 75.22%.“Given the robust loan growth trajectory and well maintained asset quality coupled with healthy margins, improving cost-income ratio gives a positive outlook for the bank,” said Praveen I., research analyst with Cholamandalam Securities.The bank reported a net profit of Rs128.69 crore in the December quarter, up 58.8% from Rs81.05 crore a year ago. Gross non-performing assets were 1.06% from 1.08% in the same quarter last year. As of December 2016, total advances were Rs26,773 crore, up 46% from a year ago, while deposits surged 44% to Rs30,005 crore. RBL Bank has 215 branches and 374 ATMs across 16 states and Union territories.Among the analysts covering RBL Bank’s stock, 11 have a “buy” rating and two have a “hold” rating and no one has a “sell” rating, according to Bloomberg data.IDFC Bank Ltd closed at Rs60.40 on the BSE, unchanged from its previous close, while India’s benchmark Sensex index fell 0.44% to closed at 29,575.74 points.","With a market capitalisation of Rs22,043.18 crore, RBL Bank has replaced IDFC Bank to enter the most valuable banks’ list","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 05 31 PM IST",RBL Bank now among India’s 10 most valuable banks +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/czrGP1G64mJ1ogxAyX5NZI/EPFO-asks-banks-to-treat-banking-correspondents-as-staff-ex.html,"
India’s retirement fund manager has asked banks to treat banking correspondents (BCs) as their employees and extend all benefits due to them, three people familiar with the matter said, a move that could hurt lenders.BCs are individuals authorized by banks to act as their representatives in places where they are not physically present. The central analysis and intelligence unit of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation, EPFO, in February wrote to banks and corporate BCs in this respect. “The central government is serious about increasing the social security net for all kinds of workers,” said a senior EPFO official, seeking anonymity. “If construction workers can be brought under provident fund benefit, why can’t BCs of banks?”Typically, banks follow a three-tier structure with banks at the apex level, corporate BCs as intermediary, and individual agents providing service to customers at the third level. In some cases, banks engage with agents directly. This model enables a bank to expand reach and offer banking services at a low cost, as setting up a physical branch may not be viable in all cases. According to latest data with the Banking Correspondent Federation of India (BCFI), there are 70 corporate BCs and 285,000 individual agents working for banks. BCFI is an association representing all banking correspondents.Bringing individual BCs under the ambit of the Employees‟ Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952, will make them eligible for benefits including minimum wage, gratuity, bonus and leave entitlements, besides provident fund. “Currently, BCs get paid a minimum remuneration of Rs5,000 in addition to a commission amount which is dependent on the number of transactions,” said Anand Shrivastav, chairman, Banking Correspondent Federation of India. “With BCs coming under EPFO, a minimum wage will be fixed as per the Minimum Wages Act for skilled workers at Rs12,000. Other additional benefits including PF will be over and above this,” Shrivastav said.The Indian Banks Association (IBA) and BCFI have since written to the Prime Minister’s Office, labour ministry, finance ministry and the Reserve Bank of India, arguing why this move will make the banking correspondents model an unviable business.“EPF & MP Act 1952 is not applicable to BCs as well as corporate BCs as they are independent entrepreneurs with an agreement to operate BC services,” BCFI wrote to the Prime Minister on 31 March.“Bringing BCs under the ambit of EPFO will, inter alia, make them as de jure employees of banks/corporate BCs and raise other problems for the banks/corporate BCs and government as well,” the BCFI letter noted. The content of the IBA letter, according to an IBA official who did not want to be named, was similar.The Reserve Bank of (RBI) India too has written to the labour ministry to exempt BCs appointed by banks from provident fund coverage, said one of the three people cited earlier.In January 2006, RBI permitted banks to engage BCs as intermediaries for providing financial and banking services. Initially, only individuals were allowed to act as BCs, which was later expanded to include for-profit companies to provide door-step delivery of services. Currently, 126,000 of the total 285,000 BCs are engaged only for activities under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) programme. According to recent Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) data, public sector banks engage nearly 79,826 active BCs for opening accounts, cash withdrawal through Rupay cards and Aadhaar authentication, while regional rural banks engage 29,807 BCs. Private sector banks engage only 2987 BCs.Any change in regulation to bring BCs under EPFO will therefore severely affect the profitability of government-owned banks, the person mentioned above argued. Viability of the BC model has also been a challenge due to the high transaction cost for banks and customers. According to the BCFI report, BCs receive only 0.5% of the transaction value for providing services under PMJDY, where as banks receive 1%.",Banking correspondents are individuals authorized by banks to act as their representatives in places where they are not physically present,"Mon, Apr 10 2017. 03 31 PM IST","EPFO asks banks to treat banking correspondents as staff, extend benefits" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/UPJtfFAAf5zAmnEKDuaDqL/Govt-asks-PSBs-to-finalise-next-wage-revision-before-1-Novem.html,"New Delhi: The finance ministry has asked the heads of public sector banks (PSBs) to finalise the modalities for timely implementation of the next pay revision from November. There are 21 public sector banks, post merger of six lenders with State Bank of India (SBI), in the country. They together employ about 8 lakh people. In a communication to CEOs and MDs of the state-owned banks, the ministry advised them to initiate the steps for smooth conclusion of next wage revision of the employee within the time-frame. “However, it is seen that several banks are yet to proceed in the matter,” it said, requesting the PSBs to “look into the matter and conclude the next wage revision prior to the effective date of 1 November 2017”. The wage revision of public sector bank employees takes place every five year. The last revision was effected in November 2012. In the last wage negotiation between PSU banks employee unions and bank management, Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) had settled at 15% hike. Recently, Banks Board Bureau chief Vinod Rai had made a case that the compensation package across the board of public sector banks needs to be improved.“Maybe, we are not able to do much with the fixed part of compensation package but (with) variable part we are hopeful that in the next financial year (2017-18), we will be able to introduce a far more attractive package which do have bonuses, ESOPs and other performance linked incentives as part of the package,” he had said. Rai has also suggested that managing directors of the public sector banks should be appointed for minimum 6 years.","In a communication to CEOs and MDs of the state-owned banks, the finance ministry advised them to initiate the steps for smooth conclusion of next wage revision","Sun, Apr 09 2017. 02 57 PM IST",Govt asks public sector banks to finalise next wage revision before 1 November +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/TbnpfsQASOLraynXmxwVjJ/Barclays-CEO-Jes-Staley-faces-probe-bonus-cut-over-whistleb.html,"London/New York: Barclays PLC chief executive officer Jes Staley will be reprimanded and the bank will cut his pay as regulators begin to investigate how he tried to unmask a whistleblower last year.The UK Financial Conduct Authority is investigating both Staley’s individual conduct relating to the complaint and the bank’s responsibilities and controls in connection with whistleblowing, the bank said in a statement on Monday. Staley has admitted his error and formally apologized to the board, Barclays said.Staley tried to unmask a tipster who alerted the bank to a personal matter involving a senior executive, the bank said, confirming what a person with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg. An investigation by law firm Simmons & Simmons LLP concluded that Staley “honestly, but mistakenly” believed that it was permissible to identify the author of the letter. The case is also under scrutiny by the Department of Financial Services in New York, the person said.“I have apologized to the Barclays board and accepted its conclusion that my personal actions in this matter were errors on my part,” Staley said in the statement. “I will also accept whatever sanction it deems appropriate. I will cooperate fully with the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulatory Authority, which are now both examining this matter.”Stock slipsBarclays shares dropped as much as 1.2% in London trading and were down 0.4% at 214.6 pence as of 8:05 am. The stock has fallen about 4.1%this year, giving the company a market value of £36 billion.Barclays has made excellent progress under Staley and his removal at this stage would hurt the bank’s prospects for further improvement, Shore Capital analyst Gary Greenwood wrote in a note to investors. Given the bank’s history of regulatory misdemeanours, the latest investigation is a “very significant embarrassment” for the board as it tries to rebuild Barclays’s reputation, he said.Staley has revamped his management team and refocused on the bank’s priority markets since he assumed leadership of Barclays in late 2015. He also rebuffed calls to spin off or radically shrink the investment bank, instead opting to speed up business sales and sell down the firm’s African banking stake.Bank turnaroundThe CEO has slashed about 6,000 jobs in the last six months and cut dividends after fourth-quarter profit fell. The Barclays’s chief ascended to the top job after more than three decades at JPMorgan Chase & Co.The attempt to identify the whistleblower came to the attention of the Barclays board early this year after an employee raised concerns. The board notified the FCA and the PRA and other authorities.“The board has concluded that Jes Staley, group chief executive officer, honestly, but mistakenly, believed that it was permissible to identify the author of the letter and has accepted his explanation that he was trying to protect a colleague who had experienced personal difficulties in the past from what he believed to be an unfair attack, and has accepted his apology,” Chairman John McFarlane said in the statement.US law enforcementStaley requested that the bank’s Group Information Security team identify the author and the team asked for and received assistance from US law enforcement agencies, according to the statement. The attempt to identify the author wasn’t successful, the bank said.Barclays has taken a more aggressive posture toward government allegations than some of its rivals. While other lenders settled similar claims, Barclays balked at paying the amount the government sought to resolve allegations that it deceived investors who purchased $31 billion of mortgage-backed securities a decade ago, before the housing bubble popped. The bank is now defending a lawsuit brought by the US justice department in December over the matter.The bank has called those allegations “disconnected from the facts.”If found to have violated whistleblower laws, Barclays could face penalties from regulators.In an unrelated matter, Barclays has been accused of unfairly dismissing an employee who levied a complaint. Richard Boath, who was Barclays’s chairman of financial institutions, said in a UK lawsuit that he was interviewed by the Serious Fraud Office in 2014 as part of its investigation into the bank’s £7 billion fund-raising at the height of the financial crisis. Boath said he was dismissed from the bank in 2016 as a “direct result” of the SFO giving a transcript of the interview to the bank, his lawyer, Jonathan Cohen, said to an employment tribunal last year. Barclays declined to comment at the time. Bloomberg","Barclays could face penalties from regulators, if it is found to have violated whistleblower laws","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 02 34 PM IST","Barclays CEO Jes Staley faces probe, bonus cut over whistleblower " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/LjtD4OOiDs6D95efCXlbFK/RBI-may-go-for-25-bps-rate-cut-in-August-BofAML-report.html,"New Delhi: The monetary policy committee of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is expected to cut policy rates by 25 basis points (bps) in August on weak growth and benign inflation, says a Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofAML) report.“We estimate that old series GDP growth, at 4.5-5%, well below our estimated 7% potential/trend. Not surprisingly, core CPI inflation has slipped to 4.2% from 4.8% in October. It is statistically difficult to work out potential growth in the new GDP series without past data,” BofAML said in a research note.Moreover, all related metrics—industrial production, credit growth, earnings—are running well below their medium—term averages. “We continue to expect the RBI MPC to cut policy rates 25 bps on 3 August on weak growth, benign inflation and the need to recoup forex reserves by attracting FPI equity flows by supporting growth,” it said.At the 6 April policy review meet, the RBI kept repurchase or repo rate—at which it lends to banks—unchanged at 6.25% but increased reverse repo rate to 6% from 5.75%. RBI said given the upside risks to inflation and excess liquidity in the system, the repo rate has been retained at 6.25%. According to the global brokerage firm lending rate cuts are the key indicator for recovery. “As lending rates come off, they will revive demand, close the output gap, exhaust capacity and spur investment,” it said. “We expect bank lending rates to come off by 50-75 bps in the April-September, ‘slack’ industrial season, with RBI governor Urjit Patel stressing the need for lower borrowing costs again,” the report noted. PTI","The RBI’s monetary policy committee is expected to cut policy rates by 25 bps in August on weak growth and benign inflation, says a Bank of America Merrill Lynch report","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 02 08 PM IST",RBI may go for 25 bps rate cut in August: BofAML report +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/kGHa5mKb7oq1u3sQIrlWxO/Tata-Godrej-Adani-show-interest-in-buying-Sahara-propertie.html,"New Delhi: Several companies, including the Tatas, Godrej, Adani and Patanjali, have shown interest in buying embattled Sahara group’s 30 properties estimated to be worth about Rs7,400 crore. The properties, mostly land parcels being auctioned by real estate consultant Knight Frank India, have also generated interest from several real estate developers including Omaxe and Eldeco, as also from high net worth individuals (HNIs) and at least one public sector firm, Indian Oil, people familiar with the process said.Besides, Chennai-based Apollo Hospital has shown interest in acquiring Sahara Hospital in Lucknow. These people, however, said that the sale process and the valuation could get impacted due to a hurry in getting the deals closed within a short time because of an urgency on part of Sahara to get the money and deposit the same with the regulator Securities and exchange Board of India (Sebi) as per Supreme Court directions. All prospective buyers are asking for 2-3 months for due diligence, which is considered to be the normal period in high-value real estate transactions, these people added. When contacted, a Sahara group spokesperson declined to disclose the names of prospective buyers, saying “deals are in process and will materialise soon”. He also said the details have been submitted to the Supreme Court. ALSO READ: Supreme Court orders Aamby Valley auction, summons Subrata RoyGodrej Properties’ executive chairman Pirojsha Godrej said, “We are looking at part of one of the Pune land parcels for which Knight Frank is running the bidding process. It is still at a preliminary stage.” Omaxe’s CMD Rohtas Goel also confirmed that his company was interested in some properties. “As a prudent business organisation, we always keep exploring growth opportunities,” he said. Eldeco’s managing director Pankaj Bajaj said they are interested in some properties but would not be like to share the exact details at this stage. An Apollo Hospitals spokesperson said, “The Apollo has submitted an expression of interest for Sahara Hospital and (we) are conducting our evaluation and due diligence process.” Tata Housing declined to comment, while there were no replies to specific queries made to Adani Group and Patanjali. “The advertisement got an overwhelming response. Over 250 expressions of interest (EOIs) have been received. EOIs have been received for all sites with majority of sites having multiple EOIs,” Knight Frank India said in response to queries from PTI. “Process is an intense process that constitutes due diligence, site inspections, financial bids (pricing to be on as-is-where-is-whatever-it-is basis) and shall culminate on finalisation of successful bidder. Due diligence and site inspections are either completed or underway in most cases. We expect to receive the final bids shortly,” it added. People familair with the matter said there were a large number of individuals as also some educational institutions who have submitted expressions of interest for the properties. The shortlisted entities are now being asked to submit their financial bids. The group is expecting to get the first instalment from the sale of these properties by June 17 and get all the money, estimated at around Rs7,400 crore, in three months. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court also directed the sale of Sahara group’s Aamby Valley township in Lonavala, which the group estimates to be worth over Rs1 lakh crore and fears that a hurried sale will favour only those wanting to “grab Aamby Valley cheaper”. The Sahara spokesperson said the group had committed to deposit the directed amount of Rs10,500 crore by July-August 2017, including Rs7,400 crore from sale of the 30 properties being auctioned and payments from other deals, but the court declined and asked for the Aamby Valley auction which will take much longer. “We committed around Rs 1,500 crore from overseas hotels, expected to reach India within 45 days. Also we informed about Vasai land where we are going to get around Rs 800 crore (and) also around Rs 800 crore from Ghaziabad,” he added. On February 28, the Supreme Court had allowed Sahara to sell certain properties after market regulator Sebi found it difficult to auction them even with the help of specialised agencies. Sahara sought six months’ time for the sale, but the court asked them to complete the sale in six weeks weeks for properties worth about Rs 5,092 crore. Sahara subsequently appointed Knight Frank for carrying out the sale process and advertisements were issued in newspapers twice to invite prospective buyers. Knight Frank was asked to complete the sale by April 13 to meet the Supreme Court deadline, but it was found to be difficult because of the time demanded by the prospective buyers for going through various stages of such high value transactions to ensure optimal value realisation. People familiar with the matter said that Indian Oil, which was interested in one property in Bihar, sought extension of time for submitting bid on the grounds that the project called for approvals and reports from various departments and agencies. Apollo also sought extension of time for carrying out the due diligence, inspections and evaluation of the property. Replying to specific queries, the Sahara group spokesperson said, “We twice advertised in various newspapers all over the country for selling around 30 properties. In response, we have received 163 Expressions from 59 prospective buyers and the deals are in process and will materialise soon.” Asked about the details of the prospective buyers, the spokesperson said, “We have submitted the details to the Court. It will not be possible to comment on each prospective buyer and share details of the buyers and the deals at this level as it might not be conducive when the deals are in process.” In reply to another query on the due diligence process and whether the court direction to close the deal faster and submit money could affect the sale and the valuation, he said the real estate deals undergo multiple processes. “The said deals are under various stages. The buyers have asked for 2-3 months for completing due diligence and other processes, which is the industry-accepted minimum required time for such deals, even if all processes are expedited. “On February 28, 2017, the Court ordered to sell 14 properties and to deposit the total sale proceeds of Rs 5,090 crore by April 17, meaning in 46 days we had to sell and get the money. “On April 17, we also presented to the Court our commitment of getting first instalments out of all sales by June 17, and in three months we said we shall get all the money which is around Rs 7,400 crore,” he said. On the ordered sale of Aamby Valley, the group said, “The court’s insistence to sell Aamby Valley whose value is more than Rs 1 lakh crore will only be a big favour to those one- two corporates who want to grab it cheaper”. The 30 advertised properties are located across India -- including in Delhi, Pune, Indore, Lucknow, Coimbatore, Chandigarh, Bhopal, Guna, Kolkata, Haridwar, Aligarh, Bareilly, Dewas, Faridabad, Guwahati, Gwalior, Jhansi, Kanpur, Kurukshetra, Noida/Greater Noida, Patna and Porbandar. Sahara lawyer Gautam Awasthy separately said the group has deposited around Rs 12,000 crore in last four years, which comes to an average of Rs 250 crore per month deposited in the SEBI-Sahara account. The interest component takes the deposited amount to close to Rs 15,000 crore. This account was created for the money Sahara group was asked to deposit with the regulator for further refund to the bondholders from which the group had raised money, though the conglomerate claims to have already refunded more than 93 per cent money directly to the investors. Awasthy further said, “By any Indian corporate standard, Rs 250 crore every month for 48 months is a huge amount and Sahara could have been appreciated for obedience of the Honourable Court’s order. “The most commendable point is that Sahara could pay Rs 250 crore every month on an average after Sahara having already repaid more than 93 per cent of its liability of OFCD of the two companies -- Sahara India Real Estate Corporation Limited and Sahara Housing Investment Corporation Limited. “Meaning more than Rs 22,000 crore of liability Sahara has already been paid and this Rs 12,000 crore is in addition, that is duplication of payment.” Sahara has filed a defamation case in a Patna court against Mint’s editor and some reporters over the newspaper’s coverage of the company’s dispute with the Securities and Exchange Board of India. Mint is contesting the case.","Several companies including Tatas, Godrej, Adani and Patanjali, have shown interest in buying Sahara group’s 30 properties estimated to be worth Rs7,400 crore","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 09 48 PM IST","Tata, Godrej, Adani show interest in buying Sahara properties: report" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/envnWOWd90FaZ4fPueQ6jJ/Jet-Airways-Indian-pilots-allege-stepmotherly-treatment.html,"Mumbai: The National Aviators Guild (NAG), a union of Jet Airways pilots of Indian nationality, have alleged that some of the expat pilots have been making disparaging, inappropriate and racist comments against the pilots of Indian nationality and the carrier has been giving the local pilots a “step-motherly treatment”. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the NAG demanded swift action by the management. On its part, the Naresh Goyal- promoted airline maintained it has a strict code of conduct for all its employees. “The Jet Airways management is expected to respond swiftly and ought to disallow training and flying of these expat pilots and ought to issue a diktat to said expat pilots to apologise or else leave forthwith,” the statement said.The carrier has around 60 expat commanders, who mainly operate its Boeing 737 and ATR fleet. On 15 April, NAG issued a directive to all its members not to fly with the foreign pilots from 1 May.Stressing on the need for collective action, the guild said the airline’s reputation cannot be “tarnished by racist and hateful comments made by certain misguided foreign nationals.”In an email response, a Jet Airways spokesperson said the carrier is “an equal opportunities employer and endeavours to employ the best human capital irrespective of race, gender, caste, creed or religion.” He further added that all its employees, regardless of nationality, are governed by a strict and common code of conduct. “As part of its open door policy, the airline encourages all employee groups to engage in consultative processes and arrive at amicable solutions,” he said.",Jet Airways Indian pilots union alleged that some of the expat pilots make disparaging and racist comments and the airline has been giving local pilots a ‘step-motherly treatment’,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 12 25 AM IST",Jet Airways Indian pilots allege expat pilots make racist comments +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/cufpa9vhpd8BoL99APuoHK/Nissan-explores-Leaf-electric-car-for-India-pilot-runs-late.html,"
New Delhi: Nissan Motor Co. plans to work with “government bodies” and “private sector firms” to see if there is a market for its electric car Leaf in India, a top executive at the Indian unit of the Japanese auto maker said.“We will start a pilot project involving the Nissan Leaf this year, which will help us in assessing the viability of electric vehicles (EV),” Guillaume Sicard, president, Nissan India operations, added.Sicard claimed that Leaf is the world’s best-selling all-electric vehicle, with over 250,000 units sold so far. In India, the pilot runs are scheduled for later this year with the objective of testing the car’s (and especially its battery’s) performance in Indian roads and weather conditions, said a person familiar with the developments.ALSO READ: Transport ministry sweetens bid conditions for hiring electric carsThis person added that Nissan may seek incentives to promote sales of the car and then look for ways to localise it. The idea is to stimulate demand and then assess whether the car can be assembled, or parts made for it, locally.Local assembly of such vehicles will be a shot in the arm for the Indian government, which has plans to have an all electric fleet by 2030. Transport minister Nitin Gadkari wooed Tesla Inc. to manufacture EVs, but the Palo Alto-based company has been cool to India’s offer of land near a major port to facilitate exports, and other incentives.Sicard of Nissan did not comment on localization. “Through our experience as pioneers in developing EVs in markets around the world, we have learned that government support for infrastructure and supporting demand for EVs is crucial,” he added.ALSO READ: Government eyes leasing of electric vehicles in clean energy pushAccording to a government official familiar with Nissan’s plans, the Japanese company’s biggest concern is the functionality of its battery in Indian conditions.“How will it function in a city like Delhi, where temperature shoots up during summer?” the official asked, speaking on condition of anonymity.Deepesh Rathore, co-founder of London-based Emerging Markets Automotive Advisors, said Nissan should rather look at forming a consortium, and then approach the government to create the infrastructure for electric cars.ALSO READ: Mahindra, SsangYong working on an electric SUV, launch likely in 3 years“Incentives can come in at a later stage. Today, people don’t even consider buying an electric car because we don’t see a charging station anywhere,” Rathore added. Spokesmen for the department of heavy industries, and the ministry of new and renewable energy did not respond to emails.","Nissan India boss Guillaume Sicard says will start a pilot project for Nissan Leaf in 2017, which will help assessing the viability of electric cars in the country","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 06 44 PM IST","Nissan explores Leaf electric car for India, pilot runs later this year" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OvHNtERKq8IW4OtS1Uf9IL/2017-Honda-CBR-1000RR-Fireblade-launched-in-India-at-Rs176.html,"New Delhi: Honda Motor Co. Ltd on Tuesday launched the 25th anniversary edition of the Honda Fireblade superbike in India with prices starting at Rs17.61 lakh, ex-showroom Delhi.The 2017 Honda CBR 1000RR, popularly known as the Honda Fireblade, will be imported as completely built unit (CBU) in India and will be available at Honda’s exclusive Wing World outlets located in Mumbai and Delhi.Bookings for the superbike also commenced Wednesday.The Honda Fireblade will be available in two variants—CBR 1000RR Fireblade and CBR 1000RR Fireblade SP, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI) said in a statement.The Fireblade, will be “the most powerful, faster and lighter CBR 1000RR from Honda’s stable and we are very excited to add another chapter to the success story with its introduction in India,” HMSI senior vice-president (sales and marketing) Yadvinder Singh Guleria said.","The 2017 Honda CBR 1000RR, or the Honda Fireblade, will be imported as CBU units Wing World outlets located in Mumbai and Delhi","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 10 32 PM IST",2017 Honda CBR 1000RR Fireblade launched in India at Rs17.61 lakh +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/85YmvAnmYgCATFpoY4Y8MO/Emirates-trims-US-flights-after-Trump-administration-curbs.html,"Dubai: Emirates will cut flights to five of US cities as demand deteriorated after US restrictions on travel and on-board electronics affecting Middle East carriers and passengers.The world’s biggest international airline will reduce capacity to Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale in the coming weeks, the Dubai-based company said in a statement. Emirates will re-deploy the capacity to serve demand on other routes across its global network.“The recent actions taken by the US government relating to the issuance of entry visas, heightened security vetting and restrictions on electronic devices in aircraft cabins, have had a direct impact on consumer interest and demand for air travel into the US,” the company said in the statement. “Over the past three months, we have seen a significant deterioration in the booking profiles on all our US routes, across all travel segments.”The move could be seen as a victory for moves by President Donald Trump’s administration to tighten travel policies. Emirates and other state-owned Gulf carriers have been a frequent target of US rivals who accuse them of competing unfairly by taking government subsidies. Emirates’ Dubai hub was one of the 10 airports impacted by a ban on electronics in carry-on luggage on US flights. Services to Seattle, Boston and Los Angeles will drop to daily from twice daily, while Fort Lauderdale and Orlando will get five flights a week, compared with daily services now. The changes will be phased in starting on 1 May.Emirates, which serves 12 US cities as part of its network of more than 150 destinations worldwide, will “closely monitor” the situation with the “view to reinstate and grow” its US operations as soon as viable, it said. Bloomberg","Emirates will reduce capacity to Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale in the coming weeks","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 10 57 PM IST",Emirates trims US flights after Trump administration curbs +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/cR8LrGoA5UKhfoGeHu7WUO/Power-Grid-eyes-electric-vehicle-play.html,"
Enthused by the market potential for electric vehicles (EV) in India, state-owned Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd (PGCIL), the power transmission utility responsible for establishing green energy transmission corridors, is considering setting up charging stations for EVs.The public sector unit is also exploring commercially viable energy storage solutions such as batteries that would help with grid stability—the balance between production and consumption.“We are working on developing an EV business. The idea is to store the surplus electricity generated by solar in these batteries. We are exploring setting up charging infrastructure which will help the national grid,” said a senior Power Grid executive, requesting anonymity.“The next big play is EV and storage. Our role is to be of a catalyst. We are exploring entering the EV charging business,” the executive added.Power Grid’s proposed electric vehicle programme would help with grid balancing, besides complementing the government’s push for solar power, which is generated during the day and can be stored in EV batteries.Power Grid is the third state-owned utility eyeing the EV business after NTPC Ltd and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (Bhel). NTPC has been working to help create demand for the electricity generated by its plants, Mint reported in March. (bit.ly/2mrPfsO) Bhel, India’s largest power generation equipment maker, wants to manufacture electric vehicles such as buses, cars, two-wheelers and boats. (bit.ly/2kPf03a)“We are looking at three different battery technologies—advanced lead acid, lithium ion and flow ion and how they behave in the Indian conditions along with being economical. We are technology agnostic. It can be another business area,” added the Power Grid executive quoted above.India plans to generate 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 100GW is to come from solar power projects. With storage being the next frontier for India’s clean energy push from sources such as solar, the batteries in EVs offer a solution.A PGCIL spokesperson confirmed the development and said, “We are exploring the possibilities.”With 134,750 circuit kilometres and 217 substations, Power Grid caters to national grid’s inter-regional electricity transmission capacity of 75,000MW. Power Grid also owns and operates around 36,500km of telecom network. The PSU has gross fixed assets of Rs1,65,757 crore and posted a net profit of Rs5,604 crore for the first nine months of the current financial year.Piyush Goyal, India’s power, coal, mines and new and renewable energy minister, said on Monday that battery storage efforts are being helped through the government’s EV policy.Experts believe EVs are a good business opportunity. “Electric vehicles, or clean transportation, is the need of the hour in the polluted Indian cities,” said Reji Kumar Pillai, president and chief executive officer of India Smart Grid Forum, a public-private partnership of the power ministry.Pillai said large fleets of EVs connected to the electric grid can be aggregated as virtual power plants for managing supply-demand imbalances on the grid. “Another very interesting option is the secondary use of retired batteries from electric vehicles for building GW scale energy storage to support the grid with increasing share of renewable,” Pillai said.Any shift to electric vehicles will help reduce pollution and fuel imports. India’s energy import bill is expected to double from around $150 billion to $300 billion by 2030. The government has been trying to push sales of electric vehicles and has set an ambitious target of selling six million by 2020.","Power Grid, responsible for establishing green energy transmission corridors, is considering setting up charging stations for electic vehicles","Thu, Apr 06 2017. 01 51 AM IST",Power Grid eyes electric vehicle play +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/najoL9MoieoInHyX5JJoPN/Railways-could-draw-25-of-electric-power-through-renewables.html,"New Delhi: Indian Railways could draw up to 25% of its power needs from renewables and would need an investment of $3.6 billion to meet the 5GW target of solar energy by 2025, according to a study released on Wednesday.The Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) study, funded by UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), identifies key policy and regulatory challenges that developers face while supporting the Railways’ renewable energy push.A potential 5GW target provides a unique opportunity for solar developers, with an estimated 1.1GW coming from rooftop and 3.9GW from utility scale projects. The Indian Railways is a guaranteed consumer and has a growing electricity demand, which should mitigate any perceived counter-party risks for project developers or investors.“We want Indian Railways to become a green engine of growth. Decarbonisation is extremely important for Railways. We have set up a target of electrifying the entire network of Indian Railways in next 10 years with at least 90% of track electrification in next five years,” said railway minister Suresh Prabhu. “We are looking to add 1,000MW of solar and 200MW of wind energy out of which 36MW has already been commissioned,” he said.Based on railway operations and land availability, 12 states have been identified across India, wherein rooftop and utility scale projects could be taken up to meet the 5GW target for solar.The study ranks these 12 states in terms of the ease of doing business for developers, and finds that Madhya Pradesh ranks the highest for utility-scale projects, while Karnataka ranks highest in the case of rooftop projects. Minister of state (IC) for power, coal, new and renewable energy, and mines Piyush Goyal said, “Railways have come out with a commendable plan called Mission 41K where they are looking at a saving of Rs41,000 crore through the electrification of railway lines.”“The decision to domestically source equipment is another positive move from Railways and will largely benefit the domestic industry,” said Goyal.The Indian Railways announced its 1GW solar target in 2015 and had achieved about 37MW of wind and 16MW of solar across railway operations until March 2017. The Railways has also tendered close to 255MW of rooftop solar projects, of which 80MW had already been awarded. In addition, the Railways is in the process of tendering about 250MW of land-based solar projects, of which 50MW have been awarded.Arunabha Ghosh, CEO, CEEW, said, “Indian Railways’ ambitious renewable energy push will not only lower energy bills for the Railways but will also advance India’s climate goals and serve as a role model for low-carbon public transportation across the world.”“The Railway Board needs to pursue stronger collaboration with state governments and electricity regulators to establish a robust ecosystem for ensuring developer and investor confidence in its renewable project,” he added.","Railways could draw up to 25% of its power needs from renewables and would need an investment of $3.6 billion to meet the 5GW target of solar energy by 2025, a CEEW study says","Thu, Apr 06 2017. 12 37 AM IST",Railways could draw 25% of electric power through renewables: study +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/BZiVgZQQn6YyOy2TdSSZKP/Saudi-Aramco-keen-to-take-stake-in-west-coast-refinery-says.html,"New Delhi: Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, is interested in picking a stake in India’s biggest oil refinery being planned to be set up in Maharashtra at a cost of Rs1.8 trillion. State-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) together plan to set up a 60-million tonnes a year oil refinery on west coast to meet the rising fuel needs of the country. “Saudi Aramco and Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (Adnoc) are talking to us for investments in the Indian oil sector,” Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said at the Global Natural Resources Conclave.Later talking to reporters, he said Aramco is interested in picking a stake in the west coast refinery while Adnoc is keen on petrochemical projects. “Aramco is talking of stake in the refinery,” he said. He, however, did not go into how much stake the Saudi national oil company will pick. “Let’s see,” is all he said. IOC holds a 50% stake in the project while BPCL and HPCL have 25% each. The 60-mt a year refinery will be set up in two phases, along with a mega petrochemical complex. The phase-1 capacity will be 40 mt together with an aromatic complex, naphtha cracker unit and a polymer complex. This will cost Rs1.2-1.5 lakh crore and will come up in 5-6 years from the date of land acquisition. The mega complex will require 12,000-15,000 acres and land on the Maharashtra coast has been identified, he said. The second phase, involving a 20 mt refinery, will cost Rs 50,000-60,000 crore. IOC has been looking at the west coast for a refinery as the company found it tough to cater to requirements in West and South with its refineries mostly in the North. HPCL and BPCL too have been looking at a bigger refinery because of constraints they face at their Mumbai units. The mega west coast refinery will produce petrol, diesel, LPG, ATF (aviation turbine fuel) and feedstock for petrochemical plants in plastic, chemical and textile industries in Maharashtra. A top official at one of the state refiners said the project will be funded with 60% debt and 40% equity.The three refiners will chip in Rs72,000 crore in equity. Fifteen mt a year is the biggest refinery any public sector unit has set up at one stage. IOC recently started its 15 mt unit at Paradip in Odisha. Reliance Industries holds the distinction of building the biggest refinery in India till now. It built its first refinery at Jamnagar in Gujarat with a capacity of 27 mt, which was subsequently expanded to 33 mt.It built another unit adjacent to it for exports, with a capacity of 29 mt. The refinery being planned by the state-owned firms will be bigger than that. The phase-1 itself will be bigger than any one single unit. India has a refining capacity of 232.06 mt, which exceeded the demand of 183.5 mt in 2015-16. According to the International Energy Agency (EA), this demand is expected to reach 458 mt by 2040.","Saudi Aramco shows interest in buying a stake in west coast refinery project, wherein Indian Oil holds a 50% stake, while BPCL and HPCL have 25% each ","Thu, Apr 06 2017. 05 10 PM IST","Saudi Aramco keen to take stake in west coast refinery, says oil minister" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/4EDLtGZHh36Xl9M8Cdu8IM/Samsung-unveils-Galaxy-S8-priced-up-to-Rs64900.html,"New Delhi: Electronics giant Samsung on Wednesday unveiled its latest flagship smartphone, Galaxy S8, that will be available in India for Rs57,900 onwards. The handset will be available in two versions - Galaxy S 8 and Galaxy S8 Plus (Rs64,900). The devices will be available at select retail outlets and online exclusively on Samsung Shop and Flipkart from 5 May. Pre-booking for the phones begins on Wednesday. These two premium devices will compete head-on with Apple’s iPhone as well as products from the stables of Sony, LG and Asus. “These two devices are among the most awaited smartphones and are already receiving great response worldwide. These push the boundaries of traditional smartphones with their design, technology and services,” Samsung India senior vice-president, mobile business, Asim Warsi said. Coupled with Samsung DeX, users can transform their smartphone into a full desktop-like experience, he added. Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus buyers will also get a double data offer from Reliance Jio. On a monthly recharge of Rs309, users will get 448 GB of 4G data over 8 months. The response to Galaxy S8 will be crucial for Samsung following reports last year of its big-ticket flagship, Galaxy Note 7, catching fire. The entire episode cost Samsung billions of dollars in losses. ALSO READ : Xiaomi prepares comeback with Mi6 marquee phone to rival Samsung, AppleSamsung is the world’s largest smartphone maker with 21.2% market share in 2016. In India too, it led the market with 24.8% share at the end of the December 2016 quarter, as per research firm IDC. The company has said the pre-orders for Galaxy S8 have exceeded those of its predecessor—S7; a sign that consumers remain unfazed by what has been described as one of the world’s worst product safety failures. As per reports, one million pre-orders have been booked in South Korea alone, where the device goes on sale from 21 April. It will also go on sale in the US and Canada on the same day. Analysts are of the view that Galaxy S8 could play a major role in the comeback of Samsung in the premium high-end smartphone market. In India, Samsung has 10 handsets in its portfolio, priced above Rs25,000. This includes the two new devices, Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, Galaxy C9 Pro, Galaxy C7 Pro, Galaxy A series (A5 and A7) 2017, Galaxy A9 Pro and Galaxy Note 5. The S8 will have a 5.8-inch display with no physical phone button, rather an invisible home button, while the S8 Plus will have a 6.2-inch screen. The S8 features a 1.9GHz octa-core Samsung Exynos 8895 processor paired with 4GB of RAM. It will be available with 64GB storage on board along with 256GB expandable memory. It also features a 12MP rear and 8MP front camera, 3,000 mAh battery. The S8+ has a 3,500 mAh battery. Samsung has done away with the physical home button and replaced it with a touch sensitive button underneath the screen. Both the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus will come with an AI-based voice assistant, Bixby, that is similar to Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri. These devices also have integrated Iris scanner, fingerprint scanner, Samsung Knox and Samsung Pay. Samsung Pay - a payment platform -now works with Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI Cards, Citibank and Standard Chartered Bank in India.",Samsun Galaxy S8 will be available at select retail outlets and online exclusively on Samsung Shop and Flipkart from 5 May,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 06 34 PM IST","Samsung unveils Galaxy S8 priced up to Rs64,900" +https://www.livemint.com/Home-Page/ZLNpUv38gJq9iWt3WUFxKP/ReNew-Power-doubles-capacity-to-2-GW-in-a-year.html,"New Delhi: ReNew Power Ventures Pvt. Ltd on Wednesday said it has doubled its power generation capacity in a single year to cross 2,000 Megawatt (MW).In 2016-17, the renewable energy firm made investments of about Rs6,700 crore (approximately US $1 billion) to add 430 MW of solar and 626 MW of wind capacity.“In April 2016, we were the first company in India to achieve 1 GW of commissioned renewable energy capacity. The doubling of our capacity to 2 GW within a year by March 2017 is a result of great teamwork coupled with our commitment to contributing approximately 10% to the government of India’s renewables target,” chairman and CEO Sumant Sinha said in a statement. ALSO READ: India’s solar power sector is getting commoditized: First Solar“This milestone acquires special significance due to several reasons–our growth is organic, the capacity has doubled on a significant base of 1 GW, and we are committed to delivering high quality projects to add value for all our stakeholders,” Sinha added.ReNew Power is among one of India’s largest renewable energy companies. Over the last six years, the company has increased its capacity from 200 MW in 2011-2012 to 2,000 MW on 31 March 2017.The Indian government has set a target of 175 GW of renewable power by 2022 which includes 100 GW of solar power and 60 GW of wind power.","ReNew Power made investments of about Rs6,700 crore in 2016-17 to add 430 MW of solar and 626 MW of wind capacity","Wed, Apr 05 2017. 11 06 PM IST",ReNew Power doubles capacity to 2 GW in a year +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Fxf8DnqliKiZ6kHSWjBNNL/Coal-India-actively-looking-to-invest-in-coal-assets-in-Aust.html,"New Delhi: Coal India Ltd is actively looking to acquire coking coal assets in Australia, a senior company official told Reuters, as the country looks to beef up its foreign coal assets.The state-controlled company, which in January also listed the United States, Columbia, Canada and Indonesia as target destinations for investment, is currently zeroing in on Australia and South Africa, the Coal India official said.The world’s top coal miner is looking at investing in coking coal assets in Australia “a little more actively,” the official said.India’s coal minister Piyush Goyal said in February the company planned to acquire coking coal assets abroad as India lacked technology to economically develop local reserves, and that a rise in coking coal prices was encouraging for foreign acquisitions.Coal India has also asked Mozambique if it can explore for coal in a new area, after surrendering two mining licenses in the African country, the official said. The coal miner was one of 59 companies excluded by Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, from its portfolio in March, as the company derived most of its income from thermal coal.When asked about the impact on the company, the official said the company was not short of investments and that institutional and foreign investors were looking at investing in Coal India. Reuters",Coal India is actively looking to acquire coking coal assets in Australia as the country looks to beef up its foreign coal assets,"Wed, Apr 05 2017. 09 34 PM IST",Coal India actively looking to invest in coal assets in Australia +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/q4I15yp8O8LxmBo5J2xRyM/Shell-India-to-expand-natural-gas-marketing-business.html,"Mumbai: Royal Dutch Shell, is planning to expand its gas marketing business in India, said Shaleen Sharma, the company’s head of upstream development in India. Sharma, who spoke on the sidelines of an energy conference in Mumbai, said the downstream segment is the most attractive one currently in the gas market and the company plans to supply natural gas directly to buyers including power plants, fertilizer and petrochemical units and city gas distributors.“Indian LNG market is in good shape. That is the future. There are some new initiatives going on to see how we can access new downstream markets,” said Sharma, adding that Shell has set up a team in Singapore to boost the India gas market. Shell operates Hazira LNG Ltd, a five million tonnes per annum liquefied natural gas (LNG) import facility at Hazira, Gujarat. The company plans to double the capacity to 10 million tonnes a year, Reuters had reported on 31 March. ALSO READ: Shell plans to double Hazira LNG plant capacity: India headShell Gas B.V., a Royal Dutch Shell Plc unit, owns a 74% stake in the terminal while Total Gaz Electricite France, a unit of Total SA, holds the balance.Sharma also said that the company has dissolved the joint venture for an LNG terminal that it was planning with its consortium partners at Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh. “That was a joint venture with a number of companies including Gail. But we very recently expressed that we cannot carry on with that. This is due to lack of a secure market. We need some surety on the off-take. The joint venture agreement is no longer there,” added Sharma. The A.P Gas Distribution Corporation Limited (APGDC), Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) and Shell and Engie Global LNG had in September 2015 signed two joint venture agreements for the establishment of an LNG Floating Storage and Re-gasification Unit (FSRU) at Kakinada deepwater port.","Shell India plans to supply natural gas directly to buyers including power plants, fertilizer and petrochemical units and city gas distributors","Wed, Apr 05 2017. 10 46 PM IST",Shell India to expand natural gas marketing business +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/akI1GG2D3UyKyo7ZXv9WeL/Xiaomi-prepares-comeback-with-latest-marquee-phone-to-rival.html,"Beijing: Xiaomi Corp. is trying to get back in the game. The Chinese electronics maker unveiled a new flagship smartphone, days after Samsung’s Galaxy S8 hit stores, hoping to regain lost ground even as Apple prepares to introduce its most anticipated device in years.Xiaomi took the wraps off the Mi6 at a college gymnasium on the outskirts of Beijing on Wednesday. The phone sports flourishes now familiar to users of premium devices including the S8—curved glass, virtually non-existent bezels, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor and 6 gigabytes of memory. It also features dual cameras on the back. In a nod to Apple Inc.’s latest iPhone, Xiaomi also dropped the headphone jack. The Mi6 goes on sale 28 April, starting at 2,499 yuan ($363).The company has moved away from its roots as an online purveyor of cheap devices, since local rivals—from Oppo to Huawei Technologies Co.—began to dominate the Chinese market with higher-end gadgets. Co-founder Lei Jun is going after his rivals not just with increasingly tricked-out phones, but also by adopting the nationwide store networks that super-charged the Oppo and Vivo brands. The company remains on track to open 1,000 stores within three years across China, and expects to chalk up 70 billion yuan of sales through that physical network in five years.ALSO READ: Review: Xiaomi Redmi 4A is a budget smartphone that comes close to being the best“Xiaomi has faced some growth pressure over the past years because of our online-only model,” Lei told his launch audience. “I’m excited to say we’ve made a breakthrough.”The billionaire co-founder is overhauling his company’s approach to regain its perch atop the world’s largest smartphone arena—it was ranked No. 5 in China in 2016 according to researcher IDC (International Data Corporation). Since becoming the country’s largest start-up in 2014 with a valuation of $45 billion, the company began to slide the next year when it missed shipments targets. While taking a pounding at home, Xiaomi began to expand globally. Lei said the brand is now No. 2 in India, behind only Samsung Electronics Co. It’s also begun to deepen research into areas as diverse as artificial intelligence and online finance. It applied for 7,071 patents last year, and total patents will ‘soon’ exceed 10,000,” Lei said.For now, the company still gets much of its revenue from its home market. In January, former international head Hugo Barra left and then joined Facebook Inc., raising questions about Xiaomi’s ability to navigate its way through what Lei had described as “unforgettable” challenges. Bloomberg","Xiaomis’ new flagship model Mi6 goes on sale 28 April, starting at $363","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 46 PM IST","Xiaomi prepares comeback with Mi6 marquee phone to rival Samsung, Apple" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/8wEZlcRtIqxnJsqWGjgNZL/Nalco-share-sale-gets-under-way-stock-slips-6.html,"New Delhi: The PSU disinvestment for the current fiscal year took off on Thursday, with 5% stake sale in National Aluminium Company Limited (Nalco), which could fetch about Rs640 crore to the exchequer. Of its total holding of 74.58% in Nalco, the government is selling 5% or over 9.66 crore shares at a floor price of Rs67. The floor price is at a discount of 8.78% over the previous closing of Rs73.45. The two-day offer for sale (OFS) began on the bourses on Wednesday with over 7.73 crore shares being sold to institutional investors. Over 1.93 crore have been reserved for retail investors who will also be offered additional discount over the issue price.Retail investors are defined as individual ones who place bids for sales of total value of not more than Rs 2 lakh in aggregate. The Nalco shares fell 7.76% to close at Rs67.75 on the BSE. The share sale on Wednesday will continue till close of the market.In the secondary market, the Nalco scrip was trading at Rs67.95, down 7.49%, on the BSE at 3,10pm. Nalco is the first disinvestment of the current fiscal, which began on 1 April For this fiscal, the government has set a target of Rs46,500 crore through minority stake sale and Rs15,000 crore from strategic disinvestment. In 2016-17, the government had raised over Rs 46,247 crore from disinvestment.","Of the total holding of 74.58% in Nalco, the government is selling 5% or over 9.66 crore shares at a floor price of Rs67","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 03 45 PM IST",Nalco shares fall over 7% amid OFS +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/SFrwca9NucxFMzynPxGOfJ/R-Sridhar-to-join-IndoStar-Capital-as-CEO-executive-vicec.html,"Mumbai: Everstone-backed IndoStar Capital Finance Ltd on Wednesday said R. Sridhar will join them as executive vice-chairman and chief executive officer, taking over from Vimal Bhandari who has led the firm since 2011, according to a company statement.Bhandari will remain on IndoStar’s board and stay as a shareholder. Sridhar, who has been associated with the Sriram Group since 1985, will be investing a significant amount of his own capital in IndoStar.Sridhar will oversee IndoStar’s growth across its lending businesses, including corporate lending, small and medium enterprise (SME) lending, a 100%-owned housing finance subsidiary, IndoStar Home Finance Pvt. Ltd, and other asset financing businesses.“I am excited to lead IndoStar Capital at this phase of its journey. The strong sponsorship of Everstone and other shareholders, combined with a well-capitalised balance sheet and a highly profitable business provide an excellent base for the next level of growth,” said Sridhar.At the end of March, the company had a net worth of Rs1,542 crore.",IndoStar Capital says R. Sridhar will taking over from Vimal Bhandari who has led the firm since 2011,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 01 57 PM IST","R. Sridhar to join IndoStar Capital as CEO, executive vice-chairman" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mLH1RhmAhpjkSu6XzL2YGI/Jain-Irrigation-buys-two-US-firms-for-48-million.html,"Mumbai: Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd (JISL) on Wednesday said it has agreed to acquire 80% stake in two entities in the US with an investment of $48 million. JISL will acquire the two micro-irrigation companies through its multi-generation wholly-owned subsidiary in US, it said in a BSE filing. The two micro-irrigation dealers, Agri-Valley Irrigation Inc. (AVI) and Irrigation Design and Construction Inc. (IDC), have entered into an agreement with JISL to merge ownership of their businesses into a newly-formed distribution company, JISL said. This new organisation will provide a platform to help growers implement irrigation technology. AVI and IDC have been long-tenured stable companies with operations in the US. “We have invested $48 million for this acquisition. The transaction gives us the capability to provide focused, end-to-end project solutions, consistent with our global solutions and capabilities. With the newly-formed company, we’ll be able to deliver agriculture technology and irrigation solutions from our recent investments,” Jain Irrigation Systems CEO Anil Jain said. No government or regulatory approvals are required to complete the transaction, the BSE filing said. The transaction is expected to be completed in the next few weeks.","Jain Irrigation will acquire two micro-irrigation companies through its wholly-owned subsidiary in US, it said in a BSE filing","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 04 34 PM IST",Jain Irrigation buys two US firms for $48 million +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/z8xsxtfZ7gpY1kjqsh6gLO/India-turns-to-local-coal-for-planned-4000-MW-power-project.html,"New Delhi: India will use domestic coal for its proposed 4,000 megawatt power project in Tamil Nadu, instead of importing it, coal minister Piyush Goyal said on Wednesday, as the south Asian nation seeks to cut its overseas purchases.He said the state power minister has agreed for use of domestic coal for the project. Reuters","India to use domestic coal for its proposed 4,000 MW power project in Tamil Nadu, instead of importing it, says coal minister Piyush Goyal ","Wed, Apr 05 2017. 12 54 PM IST","India turns to local coal for planned 4,000 MW power project in Tamil Nadu " +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/lmY1qF6rnP8wqpmdXACV8N/What-next-for-Reliance-Industries-after-Gapco-sale.html,"
Ten years after Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) entered fuel retailing in South Africa, the wheel has turned full circle.India’s largest private sector company bought a 76% stake in fuel retailer Gulf Africa Petroleum Corp. (Gapco) in August 2007 and hoped to expand its footprint further in the continent. At a time when RIL was struggling with its fuel retailing in India, the move helped RIL deploy its expertise in fuel retailing overseas and find a market for its products outside India.That affair lasted a decade, almost.Last June, RIL announced its intention to sell Gapco to France’s Total SA. On 29 March, the Indian company said it has obtained all approvals to complete the sale of its Gapco stake. “RIL was happy with Gapco’s performance. Though it was not as huge as its India operations, for 10 years, Gapco did provide RIL with a reason to keep operating in the fuel retail segment. RIL had plans to expand in the neighbouring markets in Africa too,” said a person familiar with the decision to sell Gapco, on condition of anonymity.With subsidiaries in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda engaged in petroleum products import, trading and marketing among others, Gapco’s revenue for 2015-16 stood at Rs11,723 crore, according to RIL’s annual report for the year. Currently, Gapco operates 104 fuel retail outlets in the East African region — 65 in Tanzania; 30 in Uganda and nine in Kenya. So, why has RIL dropped a subsidiary that seemed to be doing well? The first person cited above and another close to the company said, after India allowed market pricing of fuel, RIL’s fuel retailing business has recovered and the company wants to put all its energy into expanding in India, the world’s third-largest crude oil consumer. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), India beat Japan as the world’s third-largest crude oil consumer in 2016. India will also become the world’s third-largest-refiner in 2022, surpassing Russia. “RIL has always been bullish on the India market. And its management now wants to focus on India. Gapco happened when India operations were down. Then, RIL had decided to put its management bandwidth to use in Gapco. With all international petroleum retailers eyeing the India market, it makes sense to divest in Africa and focus back home,” said the second person familiar with RIL’s move. RIL did not reply to an email sent on Friday. RIL’s interest in the Indian fuel retailing segment was rekindled in October 2014 when the government freed diesel prices. Petrol was deregulated in June 2010. Like state-owned oil marketing companies, for RIL too, diesel has been the key product, bringing in the maximum volume. Diesel deregulation meant a revival of its fuel outlets. RIL’s Diesel sales accounted for 14.3% of the total diesel sales in the country, while its petrol sales accounted for 7.2% of total petrol sales in the country in 2005-06, RIL’s fuel retailing heydays.Since 2008, when crude oil prices rose to $150 a barrel, diesel retail was the monopoly of Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL), which managed to sell fuel below cost with government support, something not available for RIL. In May 2008, RIL closed its fuel pumps. The company, which at one point explored tying up with oil marketing companies to stay afloat, abandoned the plans after fuel price deregulation. RIL, which had a 12% market share in fuel retailing in 2005, slipped to less than 0.5% in 2014. Since then, it has clawed back to around 3-4%. RIL had spent Rs5,000 crore in setting up 1,470 retail outlets, of which around 1,151 were operational till the third quarter of 2016-17. The company planned to reopen all its fuel retail outlets by the fourth quarter of 2016-17. Last fiscal, RIL also began reporting its fuel retailing figures. Its retail outlets, which are company-owned and company-operated, are now included in its organized retail business.","After India allowed market pricing of fuel, RIL’s fuel retailing business has recovered and the company wants to put all its energy into expanding at home","Wed, Apr 05 2017. 08 15 AM IST",What next for Reliance Industries after Gapco sale? +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/lhPghrV3e6cT7XattMwwvN/Discoms-starting-to-show-improvement-under-UDAY-analysts.html,"Mumbai: India’s ailing power distribution companies (discoms) have narrowed their losses and improved their operations because of Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY), a government bailout package, analysts said.Improvement in operations of certain discoms is already visible via reduction in AT&C (aggregate technical and commercial) losses, power purchase cost, narrowing gap between cost and revenue and interest cost savings, Edelweiss Securities analysts Kunal Shah, Nilesh Parikh and Prakhar Agarwal said in a 30 March report.Out of the Rs48,800 crore discom debt, about Rs23,900 crore was repaid till the third quarter of FY17 under UDAY and another Rs9,000 crore was repaid by Tamil Nadu recently, resulting in 65% of discom debt being repaid, the analysts wrote in the report. In the 18 months since its inception, the scheme has been “undeniably successful” in achieving its objective of restoring financial health of discoms by transferring almost 75% of their debt to the state governments and reducing their interest cost burden on the remaining 25% debt, consultant Bridge To India said in a note on Monday.“Discom financials were in a spectacular mess back in 2015 with aggregate debt of Rs4.3 trillion and annual losses of Rs60,000 crore at the end of March 2015. Out of the total debt of Rs3.8 trillion attributable to the 26 UDAY states and union territories, 61% has been already transferred to state governments and/or refinanced in the form of state government guaranteed bonds,” Bridge to India said in the note. “Another 10% is expected to be similarly restructured shortly. These measures alone are expected to reduce annual aggregate interest cost burden by Rs16,000 crore ($2.4 billion) (down 65%).”With improved cash flows, the power sector may witness revival in demand by the discoms, but incremental benefits could accrue over the next two-three years, Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd said in a 3 April note.“The determined efforts by few states to improve its operational and collection efficiency in order to bring down losses and improve its financial health are showing results with majority of the states (barring Rajasthan) have managed to bring down AT&C losses over FY16,” the Emkay note said.Karnataka, Haryana and Rajasthan have shown remarkable improvement in their operations as they have managed to magnify the benefit of interest cost reduction by sharp operational improvement, ICICI Securities analysts Prakash Gaurav Goel and Apoorva Bahadur wrote in a 28 March report.So far, 25 states and one Union territory have joined UDAY, with West Bengal and Odisha yet to join. State discoms had collectively borrowed more than Rs4 trillion till the end of March 2015. The government in 2015 launched UDAY for operational and financial turnaround of power discoms.","UDAY scheme has helped transfer almost 75% of discoms’ debt to state governments and reduce interest cost burden on the remaining 25% debt, says an analyst","Wed, Apr 05 2017. 08 16 AM IST",Discoms starting to show improvement under UDAY: analysts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/oL88G2x4hXmCGQFvmw7zyI/ONGC-submits-revised-plan-for-Farzad-B-gas-project-in-Iran.html,"Mumbai: The overseas arm of India’s biggest oil and gas explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC) intends to spend more than $3 billion on Iran’s Farzad-B natural gas block.ONGC Videsh Ltd last month submitted a revised plan to the Iranian government for the block, which the company will be able to develop within five years, managing director N.K. Verma told reporters in Mumbai on Tuesday. The Indian oil company is now waiting for feedback from Tehran, Verma said.India has been weighing investments in Iran worth up to $20 billion. In addition to oil and gas exploration, the South Asian nation has considered petrochemical plants, gas-processing facilities and port expansions, including the industrial hub of Chabahar, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said last year during a visit to Tehran.Iran is seeking foreign investment to revive its oil, gas and petrochemical industries since international sanctions on its economy were removed last year. Output from Farzad-B could range from 1 billion to 1.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, Verma said.Parent company Oil & Natural Gas Corp., which is up 34% in the past year, rose 0.4% to settle at Rs185.80 on Monday. Markets were closed on Tuesday for a public holiday. Bloomberg",ONGC Videsh expects to produce between 1 billion and 1.6 billion cubic feet per day of gas in five years from the start of development of Farzad B gas block ,"Wed, Apr 05 2017. 01 47 AM IST",ONGC Videsh to spend over $3 billion on Iran gas block +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/BP93bIxOefBzxAog7IO9hL/Facebook-launches-resource-to-help-spot-misleading-news.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/NbkRjK9QnU4HN4Z9OtP7TO/Google-brings-fake-news-factchecking-to-search-results.html,"San Francisco: First fact-checking came to Facebook Inc. Now it’s coming to Google. The world’s largest search engine is rolling out a new feature that places “Fact Check” tags on snippets of articles in its News results. The Alphabet Inc. unit had already run limited tests. On Friday, it extended the capability to every listing in its News pages and massive search catalog. This is the latest sign Google is responding to mounting pressure to police content it hosts online after criticism the company, and other internet firms, help spread misinformation.Google isn’t entirely giving up its usual hands-off approach: The company is letting others do the fact-checking. The approach is meant to legitimize or question claims online, Google said in a blog post. Checked search results list the name of the person or group making the assertion and the determination of the fact-checker. Although Google is working with established fact-checking organizations, like PolitiFact and Snopes, it’s also opening up the system to publishers including The Washington Post and The New York Times. In theory, media organizations could use the new feature to fact-check each other. Or publishers could give different verdicts on the veracity of the same article. “These fact checks are not Google’s and are presented so people can make more informed judgments,” Google said. “Even though differing conclusions may be presented, we think it’s still helpful for people to understand the degree of consensus around a particular claim and have clear information on which sources agree.”While any publisher can apply to add fact-check labels to content, Google search algorithms will determine whether they appear in results, a spokeswoman said.The company plans to reserve the label for search results about addressable public claims of fact, rather than opinion. Publishers can write the labels that appear next to results. Examples include “True,” “Mostly False,” or “Pants on Fire!” (a favourite of PolitiFact). Outcry over the influence of misinformation, or “fake news,” began after the US Presidential election. Facebook, a leading driver of online traffic to publishers in the US, took the brunt of criticism. On Thursday, the company introduced new features in its flagship social network designed to show users how to detect false news. (Listen to Bloomberg’s Decrypted podcast on how fake news blew up into a political crisis for Facebook.)But Google has not been immune to scrutiny. Critics have pointed to several instances of inaccurate and misleading articles surfacing in search results. Such examples are particularly stark when Google delivers what it finds in the form of tiny snippets, a priority for the company in recent years.“From our perspective, there should just be no situation where fake news gets distributed, so we are all for doing better here,” Google chief executive officer Sundar Pichai told BBC News shortly after the US election.Google is not paying publications or fact-checking organizations. A spokeswoman for Google said articles that used the new fact-check label would not be ranked differently in search results. Bloomberg",Google is rolling out a new feature that places ‘Fact Check’ tags on snippets of articles in its News results,"Fri, Apr 07 2017. 02 00 PM IST",Google brings fake news fact-checking to search results +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/R9aimUXItwdFrxgtuft61M/Alphabet-moves-2-top-Google-Fiber-executives-off-project.html,"San Francisco: Alphabet Inc.’s Access division, which houses its broadband service Google Fiber, has removed two prominent executives from its ranks, the latest sign of the business pulling back from ambitious, expensive goals.Milo Medin, a vice president at Access, and Dennis Kish, a wireless infrastructure veteran who was president of Google Fiber, are leaving the division but staying at the Alphabet holding company. Gregory McCray, who was appointed head of Access in February, told staff about the management changes at a Thursday meeting. An Access spokesman confirmed the changes, but declined to comment further.Kish joined Google Fiber in 2014 from Qualcomm Inc. and worked closely with fellow transplant Craig Barratt, who previously led the Access group. Barratt suddenly exited in October, when Alphabet also announced it was halting Google Fiber expansions in eight major urban markets and laying off around 10% of its staff.The Access division has continued to shrink. About 600 employees are currently being reassigned to the Google internet business and other Alphabet divisions, according to sources familiar with the plans.A Google veteran since 2010, Medin was a chief advocate for the company’s high-speed Fiber service in Washington. He has also been leading some of Alphabet’s more experimental efforts to tap wireless spectrum for better internet delivery. It’s unclear if that effort will move to another part of Alphabet.Also Read: Donald Trump hails ‘friendship’ with China’s Xi Jinping on 1st day of summitOn Thursday, Medin was named as a member of the Federal Communications Commission’s new Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee.Medin and Kish didn’t respond to emailed requests for comment.Under Barratt, Alphabet pushed to bring Fiber to more than a dozen US cities. It hit some hurdles, including increased competition and legal challenges from telecommunications firms. Google Fiber also grew into one of the costliest efforts for the company, outside of the dominant Google internet business.After halting its expansion, some analysts praised Alphabet for implementing cost-cutting measures. Last month, Google Fiber cancelled some planned installations in Kansas City, its first market. Bloomberg","Alphabet ’s Access division has removed two prominent executives from its ranks, the latest sign of the business pulling back from ambitious, expensive goals","Fri, Apr 07 2017. 09 48 AM IST",Alphabet moves 2 top Google Fiber executives off project +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/pJeKjx1kPAOHijGTBrMdyO/Donald-Trump-sued-by-Twitter-over-bid-to-unmask-altagency.html,"San Francisco: President Donald Trump wants to know who’s behind the rogue federal employee Twitter accounts slamming his administration’s policies. Twitter Inc.’s suing to keep him from finding out.Twitter alleges that the Trump administration’s subpoena for information to identify the users behind accounts critical of the president would violate their constitutional rights to free-speech. The social media giant contends users are entitled to their anonymity unless they’ve violated a law that would warrant unmasking and the government has failed to make such a case.The Trump administration’s sensitivity to criticism on the so-called ALT Twitter feeds that mimic those of federal agencies began with the president’s 20 January inauguration. When the official Twitter account of the National Park Service re-tweeted an image comparing that day’s crowd size to the larger one at president Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, Trump personally called the acting park service director to complain, according to a Washington Post report cited in the complaint.An official park service apology on Twitter for the unflattering comparison spawned the activation of the “rogue” alternative accounts.Trump, who frequently uses Twitter to lambaste public officials and private citizens alike, embraced the site as a tool for political warfare during his campaign. As president, Trump continues to deploy tweets, sometimes in the early morning hours, to attack political foes, judges and media outlets.Twitter said in its lawsuit on Thursday that handles such as @ALT_USCIS, @alt_labor and @BadlandsNPS are among a “new and innovative class” of users who provide views that are “often vigorously opposed” to the actions of the administration. The government issued an administrative summons to Twitter on 14 March demanding that the company turn over records to identify the user or users behind @ALT_USCIS, according to the complaint.Jenny Burke, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, declined to comment on the lawsuit against that agency and US Customs and Border Protection. Some Trump supporters have complained that a so-called deep state of Obama holdovers is embedded throughout the federal bureaucracy and is trying to undercut the president.Travel banSome of the alternative accounts are the work of people claiming to be current or former federal employees seeking to challenge the views of the government. @ALT_USCIS has been critical of the new administration’s immigration policies, including the president’s travel bans and executive order to build a wall along the US border with Mexico.Two days before Twitter received the summons, @ALT_USCIS tweeted about the department’s “waste, inefficiency and poor management” as it attempted to create an automated system to process immigration applications, according to the complaint. A US Customs and Border Protection agent faxed a summons to Twitter demanding disclosure of the account holder under a US customs statute for the examination of books and witnesses.Twitter is required to produce all records related to the account to comply with an ongoing investigation to “ascertain the correctness of entries,” according to a copy of the summons included in the lawsuit. In the summons, the government threatened legal action if Twitter didn’t comply by 13 March, which was the day before the company got the subpoena.Suing ObamaTwitter has historically been willing to go to court to protect user data—a position that has sometimes led to its service being temporarily blocked in other countries. The company releases a global transparency report for its users, where it details how many data requests came from each government and whether they were fulfilled. It sued the Obama administration after being blocked from disclosing exactly how many times the US government made surveillance requests.The company has disclosed the identities of criminal suspects. In March, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested a man accused of sending a link on Twitter that included a flashing light intended to trigger an epileptic seizure, which it did, according the New York Times. In that case according to the Times, Twitter disclosed information that led to the arrest of man in Salisbury, Maryland.In Thursday’s lawsuit, Twitter contends the government failed to demonstrate that the rogue users have committed a crime that would prompt the release of their personal information. The statute cited by government to demand the data, Twitter claims, covers only a narrow class of records related to importing merchandise. @ALT_USCIS doesn’t import merchandise into the US, according to the complaint.‘Chilling effect’“Permitting CBP to pierce the pseudonym of the @ALT_USCIS account would have a grave chilling effect on the speech of that account in particular and on the many alternative agency accounts that have been created to voice their dissent to government policies,” according to the filing.Attorneys for Twitter claim the US Supreme Court has long recognized that “anonymity is often essential to fostering” political speech, especially when the speaker could “face retaliation or retribution” for his or her comments. Bloomberg",Twitter alleges that the Trump administration’s subpoena for information to identify users behind accounts critical of the president will violate their constitutional rights to free speech,"Fri, Apr 07 2017. 08 34 AM IST",Donald Trump sued by Twitter over bid to unmask @alt-agency handle +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8JkjSAVDJvU8YsNW11JiiJ/Indias-Internet-industry-to-double-by-2020-report.html,"Digital adoption in India has been growing rapidlyRecent disruptions in the telecom space have given a strong impetus to digital adoption in India, accelerating the rate by at least a few years. While the total number of mobile Internet users is expected to grow to almost 650 million by 2020, users with high-speed Internet access is expected to be around 550 million. This can prove to be a huge boost for the Internet economy. Data consumption is set to expand to around 7-10 GB per month per user by 2020 from the current 700 MB per month per user.Three key forces are coming together to unlock the latent digital demand By 2020, 4G-enabled devices are expected to grow six-fold to 550 million devices, constituting about 70% of devices in use. At the same time, reliable high-speed data is becoming both ubiquitous as well as affordable (data rates have reduced to less than one-third in just 4-5 months). The proliferation of digital content is also driving consumption. Mobile Internet users are expected to nearly double from 391 million today to 650 million by 2020 while data consumption per user is estimated to grow 10-14 times to reach 7-10 GB/month.India’s Internet economy expected to double to become $250 billion by 2020The Internet economy in India is becoming a major contributor to GDP, and is expected to grow to about 7.5% of the country’s GDP by 2020 from 5% now. E-commerce and financial services are projected to lead the growth. For instance, share of digital payment transactions could increase to 30-40% of all transactions by 2020 from 13% in 2015.TiE and BCG will launch The $250B Digital Volcano report on India’s Internet economy in 2020, at TiE’s India Internet Day 2017 on 7 April in New Delhi.","India’s Internet industry is expected to double by 2020 from today’s $125 billion, growing to 7.5% of GDP","Fri, Apr 07 2017. 10 48 AM IST",India’s Internet industry to double by 2020: report +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/rYPvJgOAeOgzuYryS582II/Australian-regulator-sues-Apple-alleging-iPhone-bricking.html,"Sydney: Australia’s consumer watchdog has sued Apple Inc. alleging it used a software update to disable iPhones which had cracked screens fixed by third parties.The US technology giant “bricked”—or disabled with a software update—hundreds of smartphones and tablet devices, and then refused to unlock them on the grounds that customers had the devices serviced by non-Apple repairers, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said in a court filing.“Consumer guarantee rights under the Australian Consumer Law exist independently of any manufacturer’s warranty and are not extinguished simply because a consumer has goods repaired by a third party,” ACCC chairman Rod Sims said in a statement.An Apple spokeswoman did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.The regulator said that between September 2014 and February 2016, Apple customers who downloaded software updates then connected their devices to their computers received a message saying the device “could not be restored and the device had stopped functioning”.Customers then asked Apple to fix their devices, only to be told by the company that “no Apple entity ... was required to, or would, provide a remedy” for free, the documents added.Apple engaged in “misleading or deceptive conduct and made false or misleading representations to consumers” about its software updates and customers’ rights to have their products repaired by the company, the commission said.As well as fines, the ACCC said it was seeking injunctions, declarations, compliance programme orders, corrective notices, and costs.The lawsuit was filed late on Wednesday, a week after the consumer watchdog granted Apple a win by denying Australia’s banks the right to introduce a mobile payment system to rival its Apple Wallet. Reuters",Australian regulator says Apple alleging it used a software update to disable iPhones which had cracked screens fixed by third parties,"Thu, Apr 06 2017. 02 10 PM IST",Australian regulator sues Apple alleging iPhone ‘bricking’ +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/r4TXeHgtHsuMOmvI45KmmJ/Leveraging-mobile-phones-to-boost-skilling-initiative.html,"
Mumbai: Girish Chaturvedi, group vice-president of digital marketing firm Netcore Solutions, firmly believes that mobile phones are the best medium to target audiences on a large scale. So when the ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship needed a plan to reach the unemployed and school/college dropouts for its flagship programme, a skills training and certification initiative termed Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), Chaturvedi’s team at Netcore Solutions decided that mobile messaging would be the best channel. Netcore Solutions got involved in this campaign when it was brought in as a technology partner by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), who took this initiative to help the PMKVY. Netcore Solutions was a finalist in the government and citizen engagement category at the mBillionth 2016 awards, organized by the Digital Empowerment Foundation.The PMKVY initiative aims to impart vocational training and certify skilled persons to enhance employability and help grassroots entrepreneurs raise funds via formal channels. Marketing skills training at traditional formats, such as kiosks and fairs, are less effective at reaching bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers, and also cannot be scaled up to reach millions of India’s unemployed youths. Radio and cinema are also not effective at reaching the poor who may lack access to such media. But mobile phones have a wide reach. “We decided to use an SMS campaign to generate interest in PMKVY,” Chaturvedi explains.A month ahead of the PMKVY’s launch on 15 July 2015, Netcore Solutions’s team launched a pilot campaign in Bihar, sending out bulk SMSes in partnership with Airtel. Using keywords such as ‘sarkari’, ‘naukri’, and ‘muft’, they sent the message out that individuals looking for skills training and certification should give a missed call to a designated number. Those who did, received an automated voice call that recorded the caller’s age, gender, location, employment status, and according to the location, directed them to the nearest skills training centre for counselling and enrolment. “Though our campaign initially reached only Airtel customers, the missed call number became very popular and within a week we had Idea and Vodafone customers calling in,” Chaturvedi says.What were the key takeaways from the pilot programme? “For location profiling, we initially used to ask for the caller’s STD code, but were surprised to learn that people were more aware of their pincode than the STD code. So we changed this input variable. We were able to enrol 25,000 people for skills training in less than a month, meaning one out of eight people we targeted ended up enrolling,” he says.The campaign tied up with all the major telecom companies such as Bharti Airtel Ltd, Vodafone India Ltd and Idea Cellular, who offered their services for free. In total, 440 million text messages were sent out, while 16 million missed calls were received. The campaign received responses from 7.5 million people, of which 2.73 million profiles were compiled. What explains the wide gap between the responses received and actual enrolment? Chaturvedi is not sure, but he thinks it may have to do with poor mobile literacy. “Several times, the callers entered invalid responses, and we were thus unable to record their profiles or could only capture the data partially,” he explains.Netcore Solutions’s campaign was aided by its partnership with the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), while in Bihar they tied up with a skills training company called Centum. Netcore Solutions has also recommended setting up online portal for PMKVY, not unlike online marketplaces for job searching. “We created an online platform for NSDC (National Skill Development Corporation), so that different training companies could access job-seeker data classified according to various districts, constituencies and states. However, the NSDC has not yet implemented our suggestion. Such a platform has the potential to act as a marketplace whereby employers can look for skilled workers. Moreover, such a platform could also be used for real-time monitoring of the tasks being carried out at the 230 training centres across India,” Chaturvedi adds.Chaturvedi points out that the biggest learning was an assessment of the extent of mobile literacy in the country. Actual enrolment fell far short of the missed calls received due to callers entering invalid responses. While Netcore Solutions’s campaign has won it several awards, Chaturvedi clarifies that the company is not involved with the second chapter of PMKVY that is expected to run until 2020. Mint has a strategic partnership with Digital Empowerment Foundation, which hosts the Manthan and mBillionth awards.",Netcore Solutions’s project sends SMSes to spread word about the centre’s skilling initiative and direct applicants to the nearest training centres,"Thu, Apr 06 2017. 01 41 AM IST",Leveraging mobile phones to boost skilling initiative +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/nkGJMnLjSc3BdAMbIT6F2N/Twitter-creates-lite-version-for-datastarved-users.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/XCVpJXIFEtlo7antULlciI/Nasscom-says-USCIS-to-H1B-visa-memo-to-have-little-impact-on.html,"New Delhi: IT industry body Nasscom on Tuesday said the US’ latest memo on H1B visas would have “little impact” on Indian IT firms as they have already started applying for visas for higher-level specialised professionals this year. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has recently come out with a policy memorandum saying companies applying for visas must provide “evidence to establish that the particular position is one in a specialty occupation”. The new H1B guideline rescinds a memorandum issued in December, 2000. Seeking to play down the impact on outsourcing companies, Nasscom said the memorandum “reinforces existing practice by adjudicators and clarifies requirements for certain computer professionals”. ALSO READ | H1-B visa: What the USCIS guidelines mean for tech workers and companies“The clarifying guidance should have little impact on Nasscom members as this has been the adjudicatory practice for years and also as several of our member executives have noted recently, they are applying for visas for higher level professionals this year,” Nasscom said in a statement. Nasscom counts IT outsourcing firms like TCS, Infosys, Wipro as well as American firms like Cognizant, Microsoft, and IBM as members. It added that the demand for additional evidence showing that the said job is complex/specialised and requires professional degrees mentioned in the memo has been the de facto requirement for years. India accounts for a significant portion of the H1B visas, which are non-immigrant visas used by American firms to employ foreign workers that require specific expertise. USCIS—a government agency that oversees lawful immigration to the US—has emphasised that the H1B visa programme should help US companies recruit highly-skilled foreign nationals when there is a shortage of qualified workers in the country. ALSO READ | H-1B visas to become harder to get as Donald Trump starts crackdownUSCIS issues about 65,000 H1B visas in general category and another 20,000 for those applicants having higher education (Masters and above) from US universities in the field of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Nasscom said the H1B visa system exists specifically because of the “persistent shortage” of highly-skilled domestic IT talent in the US. The US accounts for over 60% of the export revenues of the Indian IT industry. “Nasscom member companies have and will continue to provide skilled talent and solutions to fill that gap and keep US companies competitive globally,” it added.ALSO READ | H1B visa: Computer programmer won’t qualify as specialty occupation , says USHowever, industry watchers believe that coupled with immigration pushbacks being seen in other geographies like the UK and Singapore, the overall impact would make movement of labour difficult and operation costlier in the short term. During his election campaign, US President Donald Trump had promised stricter immigration laws and protection of local jobs. An US legislation (Lofgren Bill) was introduced that proposed doubling of the minimum wages of H1B visa holders to $130,000. Indian firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro—on their part—have been reducing their dependence on H1B visas, ramping up local hiring to meet requirement.",Nasscom says the latest H1B visa memorandum from the USCIS reinforces existing practices by adjudicators and clarifies requirements for certain computer professionals,"Wed, Apr 05 2017. 07 01 PM IST",Nasscom says USCIS H1B visa memo to have little impact on Indian IT firms +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Axk8tKxdlaregROBqEs5XM/Honda-2Wheelers-names-Minoru-Kato-as-President-and-CEO.html,"New Delhi: Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India Pvt Ltd (HMSI), the local two-wheeler unit of the Japanese automaker, has appointed Minoru Kato as president and chief executive officer, the company said in a statement on Monday.Kato, who replaces Keita Muramatsu from 1 April, has 29 years of experience working at Honda Motor Co. He has expertise in production control, motorcycle planning, and sales across Europe, Japan, and South-East Asia. He started his career in Honda Japan in 1988 in the production control division of automobile operations at the Saitama plant. Kato has served as CEO of Honda Vietnam Co. Ltd since 1 April, 2014.Muramatsu, who led Honda’s Indian two-wheeler operations for six years, will now become executive vice president at American Honda Motor Co Inc. Under his leadership, India became the number one contributor to Honda’s two-wheeler sales globally for the first time in 2016. Under Muramatsu, HMSI doubled its market share from 13% to 27% and rose from fourth position to becoming the second largest two-wheeler company in India in six years.","Minoru Kato, who replaces Keita Muramatsu as HMSI’s CEO from 1 April, has 29 years of experience working at Honda Motor s","Mon, Mar 27 2017. 07 21 PM IST",Honda Motorcycle names Minoru Kato as India President and CEO +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/AHL4gyqjTPOqBM6tgjfVYJ/HDFC-MD-Aditya-Puri-features-in-worlds-30-best-CEOs.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank managing director Aditya Puri’s name has featured in the list of world’s 30 best CEOs, published by American financial magazine Barron’s. “Puri, 66, has transformed HDFC Bank from a start-up into one of the world’s highest-quality banks, generating eye-popping returns by maintaining lending standards while expanding beyond corporate loans into a full-service retail bank,” Barron’s said. According to the magazine, a 2014 trip to Silicon Valley made Puri a digital evangelist. In hallmark style, the banker swiftly set out to remake India’s second-largest private-sector bank into the digital spot for anything money-related, it said.“That’s proving to be a bigger competitive advantage than even he imagined, as India’s surprise demonetisation in November, which voided 86% of the country’s cash, catapulted demand for digital payments,” Barron’s said.","Aditya Puri has transformed HDFC Bank from a start-up into one of the world’s highest-quality banks, generating eye-popping returns, says ‘Barron’s’","Mon, Mar 27 2017. 10 48 PM IST",HDFC Bank MD Aditya Puri features in Barron’s 30 best CEOs list +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hdWwv3pzCzY3BRZcsDL1zH/Nasscom-appoints-Raman-Roy-as-chairman-Rishad-Premji-vice-c.html,"New Delhi: IT industry body Nasscom on Wednesday appointed Quatrro CMD Raman Roy its chairman for 2017-18. It has also named Rishad Premji, Wipro chief strategy officer and son of technology czar Azim Premji, as the vice chairman. Roy, who served as the vice chairman in the previous fiscal, will take on the new role from 6 April. He takes over the mantle from C P Gurnani, managing director and CEO of Tech Mahindra. “Nasscom is playing a critical role in evangelising the digital opportunity for the sector and I would like to support the industry in facilitating the skilling and reskilling effort of the industry through disruptive models,” Roy said.He added that building India’s innovation edge is another key priority and the industry body plans to scale up start-ups and centre of excellence initiatives to the next level. The announcement comes at a time when the over $140 billion Indian IT industry faces a number of headwinds like growing protectionism from various countries and business shifts towards digital. R Chandrashekhar, president of Nasscom, said: “A new-age leader like Rishad, with his vast exposure, will bring fresh ideas to the table, helping the industry tap new domains and opportunities globally.” Roy, along with Rishad and Chandrashekhar, will lead Nasscom to carry out its diverse array of priorities. The leadership team will also work towards further strengthening various sector councils and focus on enhanced member outreach and involvement.","Quatrro CMD Raman Roy will take over as the Nasscom chairman while Rishad Premji, Wipro chief strategy officer and son of Azim Premji, will step in as vice chairman ","Wed, Apr 05 2017. 06 02 PM IST","Nasscom appoints Raman Roy as chairman, Rishad Premji vice chairman" +https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/IonwF5dAkAVMLfivSvDIkP/Neerja-Birla-Mental-health-is-always-on-the-backburner.html,"
Mpower, a Mumbai-based mental healthcare initiative by Neerja Birla, wife of Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla, has grown bigger in its second year. It now has a diagnostics centre providing physiological and psychiatric services. In November, Birla also launched the MPower Foundation under the aegis of the corporate social responsibility initiative of Idea Cellular Ltd, an Aditya Birla Group company, to reach out to the economically challenged and create awareness.Ahead of their annual awareness-building cycling event, Ride to Mpower (15km and 35km), Birla talks about the challenges and expansion plans. Edited excerpts:
What are the plans for Mpower?The expansion plans include opening three-four more centres (of which two would be in Mumbai) in the coming year, whereas with the foundation we will reach out to schools, colleges and corporates.
The centre is located at Khareghat Colony, Hughes Road, which is one of the most privileged neighbourhoods in Mumbai. Is that by design?Mental health has an impact on a large part of the urban population. Yes, (at our centre) we are reaching out to a certain section of society. It is well known that a lot of high achievers have mental-health concerns. We are trying to create dialogue around this subject to normalize it.
Are schools and colleges open to discussions on mental health?We have reached out to 100-120 schools in Mumbai since the foundation started. Everybody knows that this is a serious topic. Look at the statistics. The incidence of suicides is highest in the age group of 15-29. The sad part is that schools are just not open to talk about it. Only four schools have allowed our team to reach out to parents. Our programme encompasses reaching out to students, teachers and parents—all key stakeholders. For teachers, we look at how to identify a child going through an issue, how to deal with it. For parents, we discuss how to deal with issues at home and how to identify (problems), and for the students, it is about making them aware of the symptoms. We are really struggling as there are very few takers, and this even as we offer the first workshop, which is an introduction to mental healthcare, free. The response has been really appalling.
Why do you think the schools are so unreceptive?Like I said earlier: It is about bringing about a cultural shift in perception. Mental health or mental well-being is always on the back-burner, something that is not important.Ride to Mpower, the second edition of the cyclathon, will be held on Sunday. Registration is open today, 11am-8pm, at the High Street Phoenix mall, Mumbai. For more details, visit Mpowerminds.com.","Neerja Birla, founder of Mpower, talks about the need for a change in the perception of mental health","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 07 36 PM IST",Neerja Birla: Mental health is always on the back-burner +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/lmu6Eh3ygjQ916EDaJqePM/News-in-Numbers-Idea-posted-Rs3856-crore-loss-in-Q3-thank.html,"7What is it? Number of people killed in a gun-battle in Kashmir on Sunday.Why is it important? The violence in the state, rekindled in 2016, continues with four terrorists killed in the fight. With two Indian soldiers dead, J&K security forces’ death toll increased. Avalanches had claimed lives earlier this year, which succeeds a year with the highest death count of 82 among the forces since 2008.Tell me more: A civilian was also killed and three soldiers injured in the incident. In civilian deaths, three road-workers had been killed by militants last month.Rs 385.6 croreWhat is it? The first-ever loss reported by India’s third-largest telecom player, Idea Cellular in the third quarter financial year 2017 (Q3 FY17).Why is it important? While it was expected Idea would report a loss, the amount was more than the forecast. A quarter of free voice and data promotional offers by Reliance Jio has dented financial performance of all the three (including Airtel and Vodafone) major players, with the smallest, Idea, being hit the hardest. Tell me more: Idea says the sector can hope to recover only when Jio starts charging for its pan-India mobile services. Idea’s income fell from a profit of Rs 764.2 crore in Q3 FY16 and Rs 90 crore in Q2 FY17. The operator waited for the official confirmation of a merger with Vodafone India before sharing its financial results this quarter.$200 millionWhat is it? The amount Oil and Natural Gas Corporation’s (ONGC) overseas arm, ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), is said to have overpaid in acquiring Videocon Group’s 10% stake for $2.5 billion, in a large natural gasfield in Africa’s Mozambique in 2013.Why is it important? If proved, this could mean a big lapse in judgement for the public sector company and India’s largest oil and gas explorer by revenue. What was allegedly on the market for $2.3 billion, was acquired for $2.475 billion by it, and since has faced a writedown in asset value as crude energy prices fell. The payment to Videocon is now being investigated by the oil ministry.Tell me more: OVL later bought stake in the same area from another energy player, the US Anadarko Corp, for $2.64 billion in 2014 that the latter calculated was a gain of over 62% of the purchase price. 310 milesWhat is it? The distance travelled by a North Korean intermediate-range ballistic missile before it landed in the Sea of Japan on Sunday.Why is it important? By testing the missile, North Korea has violated United Nation’s restrictions, even as many observers commented that it was to provoke Donald Trump, the newly elected president of United States, a long time ally of Japan. Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe, who is on a visit to US, and was with Trump, called it “absolutely intolerable.”Tell me more: Just a day before the launch, Trump and Abe had urged North Korea not to test ballistic missiles and to drop its nuclear programme. It comes about two weeks ahead of the largest ever joint military exercise between the US and South Korea.43,512What is it? The number of housing units sold in the quarter ended December 2016 in top nine cities in India, according to a report by PropTiger.Why is it important? The sales are down 20% from the previous quarter, one of the expected impacts of demonetisation, which took away 96% of currency in circulation. The monthly average sales during November and December when demonetisation was in full flow, dropped by 40% and 49% respectively, PropTiger said in a report. Tell me more: Gurgaon, Noida and Ahmedabad saw 30-40% decline in sales, while Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai saw 20% drop in sales. howindialives.com is a search engine for public data","In other news, ONGC Videsh Ltd is said to have overpaid $200 million in acquiring Videocon group’s 10% stake for $2.5 billion in a large natural gasfield in Mozambique, Africa, in 2013","Mon, Feb 13 2017. 11 05 AM IST","News in Numbers: Idea posted Rs385.6 crore loss in Q3, thanks to Reliance Jio" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/zBI8NxlJf1lu7Q19iGyRbI/Allahabad-Bank-Q3-net-profit-at-Rs7526-crore.html,"Mumbai: Allahabad Bank on Monday reported a net profit in the December quarter as compared with a loss in the year-ago period, owing to lower provisions against bad loans and higher other income.The state-owned lender reported a net profit of Rs75.26 crore in the third quarter as compared with a loss of Rs486.14 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the difference between interest earned on loans and that spent on deposits, fell 16.44% on a year-on-year basis to Rs1,183.31 crore. Other income, though, rose by 77% from a year-ago period to Rs729.87 crore.The bank made provisions worth Rs795.82 crore against bad loans in the third quarter, down 50% from Rs1,593.57 crore made during the same quarter a year ago. In October-December FY16, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had conducted a asset quality review (AQR), where the regulator asked banks to classify a large number of stressed accounts as non-performing and make higher provisions against them.The bank’s asset quality condition stabilized as gross non-performing assets (NPA) came down slightly on a quarter-on-quarter basis. As on 31 December, Allahabad Bank reported gross NPA worth Rs19,091.89 crore, down marginally from Rs19,094.53 crore in the quarter ended 30 September.As a ratio of gross advances, the bank’s gross NPAs were at 12.51% at the end of the third quarter, as compared with 12.28% in the second quarter. The lender reported a net NPA ratio of 8.65% in the October-December period as compared with 8.59% as on 30 September.At 3:17pm, Allahabad Bank stock was trading at Rs73.05 on the BSE—down 1.15% from its previous close.",Allahabad Bank’s third-quarter profit rises on lower provisions against bad loans and higher other income,"Mon, Feb 13 2017. 03 26 PM IST",Allahabad Bank Q3 net profit at Rs75.26 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/B6qHFQQBfJzvXhiJ6NGzPP/Lexus-has-to-very-unique-to-survive-in-India-President-Yosh.html,"New Delhi: Japanese auto firm Toyota Motor Corp. on Friday announced the launch of its luxury brand Lexus in India with three models—the ES 300h hybrid sedan, the RX Luxury hybrid sports utility vehicle (SUV)and the RX F Sport hybrid SUV—priced between Rs55.27 lakh and Rs1.09 crore (ex-showroom, Delhi). It also showcased the LX450d SUV and fifth-generation Lexus LS sedan but did not reveal their prices. In an interview, Yoshihiro Sawa, president, Lexus International said that he wants the brand to be seen differently from German brands BMW AG, Audi and Mercedes-Benz. Edited excerpts:What took you so long to come to India?Lexus is a young brand compared to European brands like Mercedes, which has an over 100-year history. In order to make Lexus competitive, we decided to be different from them. We started with the Lexus brand in 1998 in the US. In the beginning it was very successful there but not in other nations. So, after we introduced the Lexus brand in Japan, Europe and China, in the first decade, people’s expectations were not so good. Sometimes people said Lexus is a boring brand. It is fantastic but it becomes boring. That was the perception about Lexus. So, three years ago, we decided to change the Lexus brand in order to become more aggressive. Earlier, we were very focused on the US market. Now, it is time to think about other key markets.What you are essentially saying is that you have made the brand appealing to younger customers. Do you think you will find enough such buyers in India?We can’t just start thinking about sales volumes because we have just started with four dealerships. It is very difficult to expect big numbers. So, we will focus on the Lexus brand positioning in India. This is our aim.The age group that you plan to target prefers an Audi or a BMW...We don’t follow our competitors even though they are successful. We decided to be unique. Even though in India, many young people appreciate a BMW or an Audi, we don’t fear that because though the percentage may be small, people do love the Lexus. In the US, we enjoy a big share. In Europe, our share is very small. So, Europe is a kingdom for BMW, Audi and Mercedes. In order to survive in India, we have to be very unique.How would you differentiate yourself?Most important thing is to be completely different from the Germans, which is visible in our design. Because people first look at the appearance and then they see the interiors. So, they judge on that basis.Do you think Lexus has brand recall in India?No, I don’t think so. We have just started.Jeep has also entered India and there is a recall value associated with the brand. You don’t seem to have that.You have to understand that our history goes back 20 years while Jeep is more than that. Also, people see a lot of Jeeps in the movies and on websites. We, on the other hand, started lifestyle activities only 3-4 years ago. So, we have to continue doing such activities to build a history.","The most important thing is to be completely different from the Germans—Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, says President Yoshihiro Sawa on Lexus India launch day","Sat, Mar 25 2017. 01 06 AM IST",Lexus has to be very unique to survive in India: President Yoshihiro Sawa +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/zR1P2wLJgimjEAhOgbDmfI/Mahindra-seeks-to-make-luxury-electric-cars-under-Pininfarin.html,"
New Delhi: Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd won’t mind losing money on its electric vehicles (EVs) business till such time as the EV game picks up, Pawan Goenka, managing director of the firm, said. M&M is pursuing its electric dream on two fronts, he explained, with the first being mass market and the second, luxury under the Pininfarina brand, which will largely be modelled on the lines of Tesla Inc. Edited excerpts from an interview:
You have big plans for electric vehicles...Yes. If you put bits and pieces of what we have been talking about together, we will be playing at two ends. One end, we hope, will become mass market once the floodgates open.
Do you think there will be more subsidies?I don’t think so. Subsidy also becomes a drain on the exchequer. Subsidy has to be such that it makes the offering viable for consumers. Consumers will not buy just because it is an electric vehicle. They will buy because it makes sense to the wallet. Today, we are just short of that. Another Rs40,000-50,000 difference will get us there. If the pressure is on us to bridge that gap by working on reduction of costs and we are not making money otherwise, that pressure is much higher than if you start making money. So, it is okay for us to be under some pressure to reduce the price of electric vehicles but not to the extent that we give up. I am on the side that says let me work on filling the gap.ALSO READ | Mahindra pitches Verito sedan as a successor to the AmbassadorBut what needs to be done first is push volumes. Without volumes, I cannot fill the gap. What the government needs to do is not (think) how do you incentivize the financial part of it, but how do you create a condition for more volumes. In places like Delhi, it is very easy where they can say that in peak time, you cannot ply small commercial vehicles, except if it is electric. I don’t need anything else. Then the volume will come.
And, what are your plans for the higher end?Pininfarina started as a dream but we still have to worry about financial viability. Unlike many other electric car companies which are supported by investors who are looking to make it big in the future, we will have to ensure that it makes prudent business sense. The company that has made electric vehicles respectable is Tesla. Before Tesla, electric cars were seen as something that got you from point A to point B uncomfortably. Tesla made them a matter of pride. So, that’s the difference that they have made, but at a cost. They are not making money. We would like electric vehicles to become a matter of pride not because they are electric but because they are great cars. That’s what Tesla has done. Pininfarina is the brand that we have and with Indian expertise in electric, it becomes a natural way for us.ALSO READ | Mahindra to build a sub-4 metre SUV targeted at the global market
Two-wheelers have not really done well for you. It has not worked out in the manner that we wanted it to. But we have sort of completely changed the direction in the two-wheeler business. There are three businesses that were not making money for us—two-wheelers, trucks and electric vehicles. EVs are a long-term bet and we will continue to remain in the game till there is a game remaining. Frankly, it is one business where if we can make a difference, we don’t mind losing money. In CVs (commercial vehicles), we are over the hump. Next year becomes very important with BS IV coming in. Two-wheelers was the only area where we did not see a possibility of a quick turnaround.
Mahindra announced that it will create a manufacturing base outside India. Is that on?What we said is that we need to be expanding outside India as every global company has significant manufacturing capabilities outside India, and we don’t. In the tractor business, we do, but in automotive we do not and, therefore, we are looking for a second home market, which will become an export base for us... We are in the process of deciding what that would be.ALSO READ | Mahindra to set up another base outside India: MD Pawan Goenka
Are there any specific geographies that you are looking at?We are looking at the Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) region. Basically, there are four clusters of markets for our kind of vehicles—Latin America, African nations, Asean and China. Volume is in Asean. So, that’s what we are looking at.
Are you considering acquisitions?If an opportunity comes up, we will do what makes more business sense. Today, in the auto industry, there is an abundance of capacity. Therefore, it is possible for us to find a brownfield plant where we can invest some money to do what we want to do. So, that would make more financial sense than to taking the greenfield route.How do you plan to synergize your two-wheeler business with PMTC (Peugeot Motorcycles) and BSA?There are a lot of back-end synergies in terms of sourcing from India. More or less, PMTC is a stand-alone business. What is CLPL?It is Classic Legend Pvt. Ltd. That is the name of the company that will make BSA and Jawa bikes. That is the company that we have set up.","MD Pawan Goenka says Mahindra is pursuing its electric cars dream on two fronts—mass market and luxury under Pininfarina, largely modelled on the lines of Tesla","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 08 03 PM IST",Mahindra seeks to make luxury electric cars under Pininfarina brand +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/1bjnD5l2HRkITueKRMxXTJ/Videocon-Industries-Q4-loss-widens-to-Rs5097-crore.html,"New Delhi: Videocon Industries Ltd on Saturday reported a standalone net loss of Rs509.7 crore for the fourth quarter ended December. The company had reported a net loss of Rs84.42 crore in the same period a year ago, Videocon Industries said in a BSE filing. The company’s total income on a standalone basis during the quarter declined to Rs2,097.7 crore as against Rs3,357.5 crore in the year-ago period.The company follows January-December fiscal year.","Videocon Industries fourth quarter total income on a standalone basis declined to Rs2,097.7 crore as against Rs3,357.5 crore","Sat, Feb 11 2017. 11 04 PM IST",Videocon Industries Q4 loss widens to Rs509.7 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/DVBkwloIp5HJ4GS80yOLxH/Super-sports-cars-sales-growth-to-continue-in-2017-Lamborgh.html,"New Delhi: Stating that a stable import policy has helped in the sales of exclusive super sports cars in India, Lamborghini expects the category to clock double digit growth this year. The Italian luxury carmaker, which had earlier this month launched Huracan Spyder convertible with rear-wheel drive in India priced at Rs3.45 crore, has also lined up two more product launches for this year, including the new Avendator. It is gearing up to cash in on the emergence of a new breed of customers—first generation entrepreneurs; those from tier II and III cities and women buyers. “I expect that in 2017, the segment should continue with the double digit growth that it had last year,” Lamborghini India head Sharad Agarwal said. He said since 2011 the exclusive super sports car segment, which includes those with import price of Rs2.25 crore upwards such as Mercedes AMG GTS, Audi R8 and Ferrari was declining. In 2015, the segment saw a marginal growth which was followed “up by a good double digits growth” last year, with industry estimate putting the total number of cars sold to around 70 units. Explaining reasons behind the growth, Agarwal said: “A lot of it has to do with the stability in policies because between 2011 and 2015 there were lot of changes in the import duties and structures, which were always creating disruptions in the market.” “Now things are stabilised. Once things get stabilised, the market starts growing. It is more about consistency and stability.” Commenting about the company’s sales last year, he said: “We had a healthy double digit growth in 2016. The segment in India is still evolving and what is important for us is the trend.” There were more first generation entrepreneurs buying Lamborghini cars. Also, more people from tier II and III cities also bought these cars, Agarwal said. “We also had the first woman buyer of a Lamborghini in India in 2016 and post that we sold more to women in this country,” he added. On how the emergence of new set of buyers has helped, Agarwal said: “In previous years if sales were coming from these segments, say around 12-15%, it is now moving to 20-25%. This segment is growing much faster, primarily the growth is coming from these segments.” These are trends which define how the segment will grow in future, he added. With the overall economy and sentiment upbeat in India, Agarwal said the conversion cycles of potential customers are becoming shorter. “Earlier customers were taking pretty long time to decide on the final purchase. The cycles are getting shorter by about 25% if I have to compare with previous years,” he said.",The Italian luxury carmaker Lamborghini is gearing up to cash in on the emergence of a new breed of customers,"Sun, Feb 12 2017. 01 20 PM IST",Super sports cars sales growth to continue in 2017: Lamborghini +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/BcNUZ5YPoBDp5uxu473nzI/Madhukar-Kamath-announces-retirement-from-DDB-Mudra-Group.html,"New Delhi: Madhukar Kamath, group chief executive and managing director, DDB Mudra Group, has announced his retirement from the advertising agency. He also announced a new leadership team that includes Vineet Gupta (currently chief digital officer, DDB Mudra Group) who will take over as the group chief executive and Aditya Kanthy (chief strategy officer) who will be appointed as managing director. Effective 1 July, Gupta and Kanthy will formally take over their new roles while Kamath will continue to work closely with them as executive chairman of the group till December.“My life has been at Mudra and I have committed to finish all the assignments ensuring successful transition. I have always been a firm believer in empowering young talent and seeing them deliver beyond expectations. Vineet and Aditya have exemplified this in their respective careers so far. As a team, they bring together the best of business, technology, strategy and an appreciation of creativity,” said Kamath who has spent the last 25 years at the DDB Mudra Group.He said there are no immediate plans for any entrepreneurial venture. “My immediate plan is to learn and experience and travel all the 29 Indian states.” Speaking on his new role, Gupta said, “My aim is to utilize the current strengths of the Group and position it well enough to leverage the future. We will be utilizing our strengths of huge talent pool and diverse business to align our businesses so that people in the agency can do future-ready works for clients. The idea is to build an organization that is relevant in a digital world.” Gupta was a part of the founding team at 22feet Tribal, a digital marketing firm acquired by the DDB Mudra Group. Post the acquisition, he continued to lead 22feet Tribal as its managing director. He has also worked with Café Coffee Day, Microsoft and Star TV earlier. Aditya Kanthy, meanwhile, has spent 14 years at DDB Mudra Group creating strategies for brands such as Emirates, Future Group, Johnson&Johnson, Nestle, Twitter and Volkswagen, among others. DDB Mudra Group is a part of the Omnicom Group operating out of 15 cities. It offers services in the fields of advertising, media planning and buying, digital and data-driven marketing, technology, OOH, Retail Design among others.",Vineet Gupta will take over as the group chief executive of DDB Mudra Group and Aditya Kanthy will be appointed as the group’s managing director,"Fri, Mar 24 2017. 06 33 PM IST",Madhukar Kamath announces retirement from DDB Mudra Group +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/TxBVfVziQHS5oWQHpDXk9H/Pace-of-decline-in-banks-asset-quality-slows-in-December-qu.html,"
Mumbai: The pace of deterioration in asset quality of Indian banks slowed in the December quarter after four straight quarters of sharp increases in bad loans, although analysts say banks’ asset quality may worsen before it gets better.Thirty-nine of the 41 listed banks have reported earnings for the December quarter, posting a 59% rise in aggregate gross non-performing assets (NPAs) to Rs6.81 trillion from a year earlier, according to data compiled by Mint. The latest quarterly numbers are still 4.12% higher than those reported in the preceding September quarter.While the slowing pace of asset quality deterioration may have come as a respite for Indian banks, their troubles are far from over. The Reserve Bank of India’s March deadline for banks is about a month away, and any unrecognized bad loans are likely to crimp banks’ lending ability further. With high provisions to cover bad loans and limited capital, weaker banks have slowed or stopped making new loans.“It will not be surprising if reported NPAs go further up in the coming quarter,” said Karthik Srinivasan, senior vice-president at rating agency Icra. “Resolution is taking time because of large NPAs which are causing the bulk of the problems.” While the scale of the bad-loan problem is much bigger for state-run banks, gross NPAs at public sector banks grew at a slower pace in the December quarter than those lenders that are outside government control. Public sector banks’ gross NPAs rose 2.76% to Rs5.95 trillion in the December quarter from the preceding three months. In comparison, bad loans at private sector lenders gained 14.5% to Rs85,904.94 crore at the end of December.“Growth in incremental slippages has come down substantially but overall asset quality has not changed between September and December quarters. Currently, the major problem is in large accounts; in the first or second quarter of the coming financial year, we may see resolution on that,” said an analyst from Reliance Securities.“Whenever resolution comes, slippages will be very high in that quarter as banks need to take a deep haircut. Results for the banks in the coming fourth quarter will be much lower than the last quarters. The major change for banks in the last two quarters was treasury profits,” the analyst said, requesting anonymity.The central bank’s asset quality review in September 2015 forced banks to report previously unrecognized stressed assets as bad loans. The deadline for the clean-up has been set at March this year. Twenty-eight of the 39 banks that have reported earnings have also seen gross NPAs rise from the preceding September quarter, according to the data compiled by Mint.Indian Overseas Bank’s asset quality was the worst among Indian banks in the December quarter. It reported a gross NPA ratio of 22.42%, compared with 21.77% in the September quarter. Other public sector banks that saw a jump in gross NPAs include UCO Bank, where gross NPAs rose to 17.18% in the December quarter from 16.51% at the end of the September quarter. At United Bank of India, the gross NPA ratio improved to 15.98% from 16.26%.Among private sector banks, Jammu and Kashmir Bank had the highest gross NPA ratio at 11.84% in the third quarter, against 11.33% a quarter ago. “Gross NPA numbers will go up in the coming quarter partly driven by the last bit of clean-up exercise due to the FY17 deadline approaching. There is room for rate cuts if a large part of deposits are retained. If large lenders reduce rates, others will follow,” said Saswata Guha, director, Fitch Ratings.After demonetization, many banks saw a surge in their deposit base, followed by a drop in the marginal cost of lending rate (MCLR). State Bank of India cut its MCLR by 90 basis points in January, the steepest in several years. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.sahib.s@livemint.com","39 of the 41 listed banks have reported earnings for the December quarter, posting a 59% rise in bad loans or NPAs to Rs6.81 trillion from a year earlier","Mon, Feb 13 2017. 03 49 AM IST",Pace of decline in banks’ asset quality slows in December quarter +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/tqpCgjzO75ndjk45SYnm3I/NSEL-scam-CBI-accuses-Jignesh-Shah-of-cheating-criminal-co.html,"
Mumbai: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has charged 20 entities and some of their officials for cheating state-owned commodities trading firms PEC Ltd and MMTC Ltd in connection with the Rs5,600 crore payments fraud that surfaced in 2013 at the National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL).The entities include NSEL, its parent Financial Technologies India Ltd (FTIL), PD Agro Processors Ltd, Dunar Foods Ltd and Mohan India Ltd. CBI, in a chargesheet filed with a special court in Mumbai in December, accused Jignesh Shah, former chairman of FTIL, of cheating and criminal conspiracy, and breaching the prevention of corruption act. Mint has a copy of this chargesheet. Shah and FTIL, now known as 63 Moons Technologies Ltd, denied these charges. Hearing in this case is scheduled on 3 May. The December chargesheet made CBI the third agency to file a chargesheet in the NSEL case. The Economic Offences Wing of Mumbai police filed a chargesheet in 2014, and the Enforcement Directorate in 2015.According to the 150-page chargesheet, CBI has found a fund trail that led to losses of Rs120 crore for PEC and Rs105 crore for MMTC. CBI had first registered a first information report in the case in February 2014, alleging that a “conspiracy was hatched” by the accused to cheat PEC and siphon off its funds by floating “accommodative and fraudulent paired contracts”. Paired contracts entail investors, through brokers, buying a spot contract and selling a futures one for the same commodity, and pocketing the difference. Paired contracts violate the Forward Contracts Regulation Act (FCRA) as they are financial transactions. NSEL was allowed to deal only in spot delivery contracts to be exempt from FCRA. In the chargesheet, CBI has alleged that FTIL was the major beneficiary of the revenue earned by NSEL and that paired contracts were the major source of income for the commodities bourse.“All the minutes of the board meetings of NSEL were vetted and approved by FTIL before issuance,” said the CBI chargesheet.In an emailed response sent on 10 March through its lawyers, FTIL said that it is yet to receive a copy of the chargesheet.“However, assuming your information is correct, our client strongly denies such charges, which have no legal or factual basis. Our client is confident to come out clean through the judicial process,” said Manik Joshi from Crawford Bayley and Co, the lawyers representing FTIL, in an emailed response.The email added that NSEL was a separate company with its own board of directors. It said NSEL became a “material subsidiary” of 63 Moons only from April 2011. “The duly approved board minutes of any such material subsidiaries for all listed companies for compliance purpose are required to be placed on a ‘post-facto’ - ‘for your information’ basis before the board of the parent company. In any event, none of these board minutes of NSEL raised any red flags,” the email said.FTIL also said that it did not derive any benefits as NSEL never declared any dividends or issued bonus shares.The CBI chargesheet highlighted that FTIL received a sum of Rs90.69 crore from NSEL as software maintenance charges during 2011-13. The specific allegations against Shah pertain to his presence in board meetings where launch of contracts was approved. The CBI also alleged that Shah was also named as a key management personnel (KMP) of NSEL during 2008-12 when the concept of paired contracts was introduced. The chargesheet said that Shah had also made a presentation to the Forward Markets Commission (FMC) and consumer affairs ministry on adequacy of stocks a mere 20 days before the settlement crisis erupted. The mail from FTIL lawyers said that Shah was never a KMP at NSEL and he had just delivered the presentation that was prepared by NSEL executives.“Shah has informed that he has never met or interacted with any officials of PEC or MMTC, therefore the question of connivance does not arise. Shah was non-executive vice-chairman of NSEL. He never received any compensation nor any salary and not even the sitting fees from NSEL,” the mail said.To be sure, CBI also mentions that Shah was briefed by Anjani Sinha, former CEO of NSEL, before the presentation was made. According to CBI, Sinha was responsible for creating paired contracts—a “financing mechanism”. Sinha also devised a system which encouraged parties to engage in financial transactions without underlying stocks.“He was the sole approving authority for all the limits granted to the defaulters PD Agro Processors and Mohan India and others who subsequently siphoned off the huge public money without having sufficient collateral/ commodities,” CBI said in the charge sheet.Sinha did not respond to an email sent to him by Mint.A spokesperson for Mohan India and its group companies Tavishi and Brinda told Mint that the companies never interacted with the government entities directly.“Interactions were limited to NSEL only. We are ready to refund the dues of investors by selling assets which are not attached by enforcement agencies and some assets that are being released by the income tax department,” said the spokesperson. PD Agro and PEC did not respond to emails sent to them.","CBI has charged 20 entities, including Jignesh Shah’s FTIL, for cheating state-owned firms PEC and MMTC in connection with the NSEL payments scam","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 08 16 AM IST","NSEL scam: Jignesh Shah accused of cheating, criminal conspiracy" +https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/EMOmjllb5hPv8Se8T62ZaK/Falguni-Nayar-The-beauty-entrepreneur.html,"
When Falguni Nayar walks into a brightly lit Nykaa store in Mumbai’s Infiniti Mall, where I’m waiting to interview her, I scan her face quickly for make-up. After all, that’s why we are meeting—to talk beauty. Clearly, I am less subtle than I think. “I love make-up but I don’t have time to put it on any more!” she laughs loudly. The 54-year-old founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Nykaa, a Rs280 crore cosmetics and wellness retailer, is simply wearing a nude lipstick and kajal.
Founded in April 2012, Nykaa started as a multi-brand online beauty retailer but has since extended its presence through a mobile app and brick-and-mortar stores. Think of it as India’s Sephora (the French multi-brand cosmetics retailer). At present, Nykaa has four stores, one each in Delhi and Bengaluru and two in Mumbai. To go pan-India, it plans to open one store every month from next year.
Nykaa is a young company but Nayar herself has been a force in the Indian business world for more than two decades. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, she spent the bulk of her career—over 18 years—at Kotak Mahindra Capital Co. When she left in 2012, she was the managing director and head of its institutional equities business. But, Nayar says, “I have always been an entrepreneur first.”
Nayar was born and raised in Mumbai, where her father ran a small bearings company, assisted by her mother. The household chatter revolved around investments, the stock market and trade. “Plus, I’m Gujarati,” she deadpans. Entrepreneurship is in
her blood.
Straight out of business school, Nayar started her career as a management consultant. Her husband Sanjay Nayar, whom she met at business school, took a job in finance. He is now the CEO of global investment firm KKR India. Nayar says taking the professional route was easier since it allowed both of them to have transferable jobs.
But the entrepreneurial bug kept gnawing at her.
A few years ago, when her children (twins Anchit and Adwaita) left to study in US colleges, Nayar found herself with time on her hands. “Once I turned 50, I thought I would become complacent,” she said. It was very hard to quit the job at Kotak, “where everything was going right”, but with the self-imposed deadline of 50 looming, Nayar did just that.
Later, as we settle down for coffee at a Starbucks outlet, Nayar—dressed in a grey sari with gold accents (saris are a weakness) and delicate diamond earrings (another weakness)—relaxes into a corner couch and I start getting a sense of what drives her. “I’m an adventurer,” she says. “I was never a good swimmer but I would always be the first to jump in. The thought, what if I break a leg?, doesn’t occur to me.”
So when all the naysayers (and there were plenty) said India wasn’t ready for an e-tailer selling, of all things, beauty products, Nayar chose not to see the risks. Instinctively, she knew what women wanted. And she knew the number of Indians shopping online was about to explode.
According to management consultancy Technopak, though e-tailing currently accounts for only 1.5% of the overall retail market in India, it is growing at breakneck speed and will make up over 5% of Indian retail by 2021.
“Full marks to her for getting the retail story of India right,” says Ankur Bisen, senior vice-president, retail, consumer products and e-tailing division of Technopak. The principles of retail are simple, he says: Curate your products and know your products. And Nykaa appears to have done both really well.
Nykaa sells more than 35,000 products from 650 brands, both international and Indian, luxury and mass, and is constantly adding new labels to its stock. Last year, it brought global premium brand Estée Lauder on board, making MAC cosmetics available online in India for the first time. “It took a call on the personal care category and went deep into it. It didn’t get distracted. That’s how a retailer succeeds,” says Bisen.
Two years ago, Nayar introduced her own brand—and it has gone on to become a best-seller.
The company’s revenue has grown 350% in the last two years. In 2016, it raised a total of Rs104 crore from investors and the company hopes to break even by the end of this summer. An initial public offering is planned for 2020.
According to the company, it receives 15,000 orders a day, mostly from consumers between the ages of 22 and 35, who have disposable income and an interest in good grooming. Another attraction is the content—online make-up tutorials and product reviews are a great draw. But let’s face it, the main reason for shopping at Nykaa is accessibility.
“There was a time when women would come down to Delhi from Punjab just for a beauty shopping trip. Or they would ask a cousin to bring back a particular lipstick from a trip abroad. Now they can just order it online,” says Vasudha Rai, a former beauty director at Harper’s Bazaar, now a blogger at Vbeauty.co and columnist with The Hindu.
For those who know her, Nayar is a role model. For those who don’t, hers is an inspiring story. She’s a woman with a formidable career path and a closely knit, supportive family. It leads me to the inevitable question: Does she believe in the philosophy that a woman must “lean in” to be successful?
“Yes,” she replies. “I don’t think there is any glass ceiling. Women need to commit,” says Nayar.
Aware of the push and pull of family life many working women face, she
says there’s no race. “If you need to
take a few years off, you can come back. But when you come back, you need to be committed because you reap what you sow.”
Her daughter Adwaita, 26, recalls the early years of elementary school and says it wasn’t always easy to have a working mum. “I missed her! I would call her non-stop and disturb her in meetings,” she says.
As Adwaita grew older, she understood the choices her mother had made. “Today she’s my most important source of inspiration. She never really dwelt on whether one part of her life was being underserved and in the end it definitely all balanced out,” she says. Adwaita, who helped her mother launch Nykaa, is going to resume work there after she graduates from Harvard Business School this summer.
“Enough” and “done” aren’t words in Nayar’s business vocabulary, says Pratima Bhatia, a brand consultant who has worked with Nykaa, adding, “She never stops, even when she has exceeded expectations.” Once Nykaa had established itself as a multi-brand beauty retailer, Nayar decided to tweak the business model by introducing her own brand, Nykaa, in 2015. First up was a line of nail enamels. The range has since expanded to include kajals, lipsticks, body mists and lotions, among other items.
“It was a response to gaps in the market,” she explains. The beauty salon she frequented did not stock the popular OPI nail-polish range she liked. “They would have four colours of one brand, some from another. The whole experience was terrible,” she says. Research showed that part of the problem was with Indian import regulations, which made registering new colours a lengthy and tedious process. Nayar realized a domestic manufacturer didn’t need to go through that process, so if she made nail enamels, she could get them to the market quickly.
The strategy worked. Nykaa’s own nail colours sell 8-10 times more than the next best-selling nail brand on its website. According to Rai, it’s because of a “combination of good rates and cool colours”.
As we stand in front of a kaleidoscopic display of 120 nail colours at a Nykaa store, I’m drawn to a neon-green one. It’s called Key-Lime Slush. A coral-colour one is named Cherry Pop. I ask Nayar if she chooses the names. Yes, she says, it’s fun.
She shows me the top-selling nail enamel. It’s a charcoal-grey one called Squid Ink Mousse, which retails for Rs199.
And no, she doesn’t have Squid Ink Mousse at home. She prefers floral shades.
All of a sudden, Nayar pauses. She’s found a bottle of ink-blue nail varnish. The Nykaa branding in black is indistinguishable against the dark background. I can see it bothers her. She immediately asks a sales associate to notify someone in her office to fix it. “Retail is all about the detail,” she says, and when you are Nayar, every detail is a big deal.
Before we part, I ask her one last question: Why did she name the company Nykaa? “Because nayika means you are the actress of your life,” she says, smiling. I have no doubt Nayar is relishing her current role.","The banker-turned-businesswoman and Nykaa CEO on nail enamels, taking risks, and how she built a Rs280 crore cosmetics and wellness company","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 06 23 PM IST",Falguni Nayar: The beauty entrepreneur +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/MoSWtrmKxREjlW2A5S6bqI/No-woman-director-at-65-PSUs-govt-asks-RoCs-to-act-against.html,"New Delhi: With 65 public sector undertakings (PSUs) failing to appoint at least one woman director, the government has asked Registrars of Companies (ROC) to take up the matter with the ministries concerned and initiate penal action against 1,355 private listed firms in default.A Securities Exchange Board of India (Sebi) directive and the Companies Act, 2013, mandate all listed firms to have at least one woman director on their boards from April 1, 2015. These rules are aimed at ensuring gender diversity in boardrooms. A total of 1,355 private listed companies are without a woman director while 292 unlisted firms have not appointed any woman on their boards, minister of state for corporate affairs Arjun Ram Meghwal said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha. The minister said the Registrars of Companies (RoC) have been directed to take up the matter with the ministries concerned in the case of PSUs. They have been asked to initiate appropriate penal action in case of other firms. According to Meghwal, 4,558 listed companies, 1,009 unlisted ones and 134 PSUs have representation of women at the board level.","Government has asked Registrars of Companies to initiate penal action against 1,355 private listed firms for failing to appoint women directors","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 04 32 PM IST","No woman director at 65 PSUs, govt asks RoC to act against companies" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/A5VeFyMXpp1TuKW9Npr6HJ/Blockchain-is-going-to-permeate-our-lives-Matthieu-Riou.html,"
Matthieu Riou is founder and chief technology officer of BlockCypher Inc., a company that enables blockchain applications to be built easily and reliably. Riou is also a member and former vice-president at Apache Software Foundation, and has founded and mentored several open source projects. In an email interview, Riou—who was a speaker at the two-day SingularityU India Summit (held on 7-8 April in association with INK, which hosts events like INKtalks, a platform for the exchange of cutting-edge ideas and inspiring stories)—shared his thoughts on cryptocurrencies and blockchains. Edited excerpts:
You describe BlockCypher as a cloud-optimized blockchain platform powering cryptocurrency applications reliably and at scale. How does it work?Regardless of the protocol (e.g. Ethereum, bitcoin, etc.), all blockchains use what is called a reference client which is used to interact within the peer-to-peer network. Such a blockchain client is designed for individual or desktop use. None of the clients are designed for enterprise use. Developers quickly find how hard it is to start running their own blockchain infrastructure. And it becomes even harder when they try to move into production. ALSO READ : Blockchain is second only to artificial intelligence: Brock PierceTo enable scalable, enterprise-ready applications, BlockCypher broke down all the individual parts of the blockchain client architecture and rebuilt an infrastructure that is modular. BlockCypher is completely blockchain agnostic. As a result, developers find it much easier to build applications across multiple blockchains. Hundreds of developers have used BlockCypher, resulting in thousands of transaction per hour and over two million API (application programming interface) calls per day. To support this continued volume, BlockCypher continuously refines and improves its APIs, adding new services for Ethereum and analytics.
Do you believe that this will solve issues regarding the scalability and security of cryptocurriencies like bitcoin?Cryptocurrencies are actually very secure but the price to pay for it is scalability. As they evolve in an open environment, where anyone can run the software on their laptop, they have to apply very conservative limits on the amount of data and bandwidth required. These limits are not representative of what the technology can do, but more of the surrounding environment.ALSO READ : Bitcoin’s existential crisisBlockCypher can’t change these limits as they’re embedded in the protocol. However we still help in multiple ways. As a “supernode” on the network, we pool resources together and allow many companies to benefit from our very high-performance infrastructure. We power private or permissioned blockchains that do not have to abide by the limits of open chains, and can therefore scale to much higher capacities.
More than bitcoin, it is the underlying technology—blockchain—that is showing much more promise. Besides firms, governments too are warming up to the potential of this technology across sectors. What, in your opinion, is the future of blockchain?I can’t predict the future of the blockchain as a technology, the same way that 50 years ago no one thought that so many people would have a phone in their pocket that could connect them to the rest of the world through a wide variety of apps. But what I can say is that the blockchain is going to permeate our lives in a very similar way.
Give us an example of how blockchain is promising to change the payments’ world.One of our customers, BitPesa, is located in sub-Saharan Africa. About 75% of the population does not have a bank account. Many use mobile apps in lieu of traditional bank accounts. For Africans, transferring cash through a bank or a money transfer operator like Western Union or MoneyGram can be costly. While there is much opportunity in Africa, it can be difficult for companies outside of Africa to work with people and businesses across the continent. BitPesa sought to reduce the costs and wait times for Africans to receive payments by using the blockchain. By quickly, safely and cheaply making a market between African and global currencies, BitPesa provides an alternative to inefficient banking channels. Thanks to the time and cost savings of using the blockchain and our services, BitPesa has gone from prototype to live product in six markets—in only two years.
Blockchain technology is now being powered by artificial intelligence too. What other trends do you see?Smart contracts, or the possibility to capture contracts of law in software code on a blockchain, may have very far-reaching consequences. They can automate how we deal with our legal system, reduce bureaucracy and corruption, and even improve democracy and voting. I think there’s also a real opportunity in bringing the price of banking down dramatically, allowing everyone to benefit.","Matthieu Riou, founder and chief technology officer of BlockCypher Inc., shared his thoughts on cryptocurrencies and blockchains","Tue, Apr 11 2017. 09 13 PM IST",Blockchain is going to permeate our lives: Matthieu Riou +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/d9dWDWCKMhkXMDMazvbEXI/Indians-top-credit-card-holders-who-pay-in-excess-of-minimum.html,"New Delhi: Banks are more likely to look at credit card holders in a favourable light after a report said India has the highest percentage of consumers who make payments in excess of the minimum amount due on their credit card bills each month.India has around 92% of credit card holders that often pay more than their minimum due on their revolving debts each month as compared to 89% in the US, 88% in Canada and Hong Kong, 52% in Colombia and 44% in South Africa, TransUnion CIBIL, a credit information agency said in its research report.“Leveraging trended data and the insights derived from it could also significantly help Indian credit institutions better identify borrower risk trends across portfolios and ultimately create greater access to credit for consumers. This can only happen when financial institutions utilize trended data in real time,” said Harshala Chandorkar, chief operating officer of TransUnion CIBIL.TransUnion CIBIL said the findings are based on a survey across eight metro cities in India. The research findings indicate a higher usage of credit cards in Delhi, Ahmedabad, Pune and Mumbai as compared to Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad. Delhi has the optimal utilization of credit cards across all possible usage points, said the report.The agency surveyed 1,100 consumers in India, 92% of whom indicated that they more often make payments in excess than their minimum due on their credit card bills each month. Yet a significant number (33%) are uncertain about the importance or benefits of paying more than the minimum amount due on their credit card bills.In Colombia, 56% are uncertain about the benefits of paying more than the minimum amount due on their credit card bills as compared to 41% in Hong Kong, 39% in Canada, 25% in the US and 21% in South Africa.","In India around 92% of credit card holders often pay more than their minimum due on their revolving debt each month, TransUnion CIBIL survey shows","Tue, Apr 11 2017. 09 15 PM IST",Indians top credit card holders who pay in excess of minimum due amount: CIBIL +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/i4m3bOZwlKbOUmMEWmQywK/Blockchain-is-second-only-to-Artificial-Intelligence-Brock.html,"
Mumbai: Brock Pierce, founder and managing partner of Blockchain Capital and chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, is a venture capitalist and entrepreneur. Pierce pioneered the market for digital currency in games and has raised more than $200 million for companies he founded. A faculty at the Singularity University, Pierce is also the founder of IMI Exchange (the world’s leading digital currency marketplace for games), ZAM (one of the world’s largest media properties for gamers) and IGE (the pioneer of digital currency in online games). In an email interview, Pierce—who was a speaker at the two-day SingularityU India Summit ((held on 7-8 April in association with INK, which hosts events like INKtalks, a platform for the exchange of cutting-edge ideas and inspiring stories)—spoke, among other things, on why companies would want to invest in blockchains. Edited excerpts:
Many governments including India remain non-committal and neutral to bitcoin. Is it that governments fear that a cyrptocurrency could destabilize a highly regulated banking system?Bitcoin is still very early in its development so I would expect governments to be non-committal.
We have had instances of the bitcoin ecosystem being compromised—the Mt. Gox episode being a case in point. What are the measures that stakeholders need to put in place to make bitcoin secure?The bitcoin/blockchain protocol has never been compromised. Businesses building applications on top of it run the risk of making mistakes.
More than bitcoin, it is the underlying technology—blockchain—that is showing much more promise. Besides companies, governments too are warming up to the potential of this technology across sectors. What, in your opinion, is the future of blockchain?The blockchain is going to change everything more than the internet has. It’s the second most important technology, second only to artificial intelligence (AI).ALSO READ : Bitcoin’s existential crisis
How do you plan to use blockchain in the venture capital sector?We intend to disrupt and democratize the venture capital industry by doing the following: by creating the first liquid venture fund, allowing access to a broader group of investors, investing in the new economy of start-ups doing ICOs (initial coin offerings) and showing these start-ups how to do it compliantly.
Through Blockchain Capital, you also believe that you are “democratizing” access to an asset class traditionally only available to elite institutional investors…Historically venture capital funds have only allowed elite investors in. Our ICO is going to allow small investors from all over the world to participate.
Bitcoin and blockchain start-ups face competition from big firms like Accenture, IBM and Microsoft in this space. Your thoughts.These large incumbents are generally working with many of our start-ups so we are pleased to have them working in the space.
Do you have plans to invest in Indian bitcoin and blockchain companies too?Blockchain Capital has a global investment mandate so it is very possible that we make an investment in India at some point.","Brock Pierce, founder and managing partner of Blockchain Capital and chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, on why companies would want to invest in blockchains","Tue, Apr 11 2017. 09 12 PM IST",Blockchain is second only to artificial intelligence: Brock Pierce +https://www.livemint.com/Money/pEpN3GZCX10SAj2vi1h26L/Radhakishan-Damani-quiet-as-ever-after-stellar-DMart-listin.html,"
Mumbai: If Radhakishan Damani passed by you in the corridor, perhaps you wouldn’t notice. And if you buttonholed him, he would probably listen to you rather than talk. The grocery billionaire in white wears his wealth and wisdom lightly.Damani’s Avenue Supermarts Ltd, which runs D-Mart, India’s most profitable retail chain, doubled its investors’ wealth on Tuesday, when its stock debuted on the stock exchanges at a nearly 115% premium to its issue price. His family’s stake in the firm is now valued at over $5 billion, but the media-shy magnate who started a ball bearings business before becoming an ace stock and property picker and founding D-Mart, remains as low-profile as ever.D-Mart listing bolsters Radhakishan Damani’s wealth, reputationDamani, 61, attended a bachelor’s degree programme in commerce at the University of Mumbai (then Bombay University) but did not continue after his first year examination. So, the next time someone lectures on the value of a college degree, ask them to google Damani.On Monday, a day before Avenue went public, Forbes had pegged Damani’s net worth at $2.3 billion. At Wednesday’s closing prices, the family’s 82.43% stake in D-Mart alone is worth Rs32,903.12 crore, or nearly $5.03 billion.Damani holds stakes in a range of companies such as tobacco firm VST Industries Ltd, logistics provider Blue Dart Express Ltd and cement maker India Cements Ltd. He also holds an impressive portfolio of real estate, including the Radisson Blu Resort in Alibag close to Mumbai. All these investments add up to more than Rs3,000 crore or nearly half a billion US dollars.“He did not come from a very well-educated family, and himself was not that educated as well, but he could still build the empire,” said a person close to Damani.ALSO READ | Irrational exuberance in D-Mart shares“People shouldn’t give up. You have a great idea. Education is not necessary to make it big,” this person added on condition of anonymity.After dabbling in the family business of ball bearings, he entered stock trading and registered as a stock broker in 1992. In 1999, in his 40s, Damani diversified into retail, according to the final offer documents of the Avenue Supermarts share sale.Damani has three daughters, and one of them, Manjri Chandak, is a director at Avenue Supermarts. His brother Gopikishan Damani and his wife are also promoters of Avenue Supermarts.“He spoke less and listened more. One thing very striking about him was he was never flashy. He was extremely down-to-earth,” said Kisan R. Choksey, chairman of Kisan Ratilal Choksey Shares and Securities Pvt. Ltd, who has known Damani since the early 1990s when brokers haggled in a trading ring on the floor of Bombay Stock Exchange, now known as BSE Ltd.Damani was an investor as well as a trader, according to people who have known him for long. “There were many of us, including Mr Damani and Rakesh Jhunjhunwala,” said Choksey.People vouch by his quiet nature.“He is extremely low profile and very quiet. Chances are that if he passes by, you might not notice him except for his specific white-and-white attire,” said Alok Churiwala, managing director of Churiwala Securities.“The earliest memory I have of the gentleman is when I had just joined the trade in 1988-89, while there used to be very hectic activity and cacophony. Here was this gentleman who was totally unfazed, very calm and very collected; that set him apart,” recalls Churiwala.According to Churiwala, the ability to see beyond numbers is what distinguishes him as one of India’s biggest stock pickers.Deena Mehta, managing director at Asit C. Mehta Investment Intermediates, also recalls him as the “man in the trading ring with a poker face, and one could not make out any of his trades from his expressions.”“He was an extremely good listener,” said Mehta.“He also went out of the way to help out people. I remember one time when Videocon shares were continuously hitting lower circuits. He helped a lot of brokers by taking positions, and helping brokers square off their positions,” recalls Mehta.“He has two nicknames “white-and-white” and “silent operator”. This sums him up in a fairly good manner,” said Arun Kejriwal, director of Kejriwal Research and Financial Services Pvt. Ltd. “He is very approachable but refrains from giving tips. He will prefer silence over giving wrong advice,” added Kejriwal.“He is a large-hearted guy who has given his friends and associates—which are a considerable number—D-Mart shares at par a couple of years ago,” added Kejriwal.For now, Avenue Supermarts’ market capitalization stands at Rs39,916.44 crore, more than the aggregate of all of its key listed rivals including Future Retail Ltd, Shoppers’ Stop Ltd and Trent Ltd, which total to Rs36,631.79 crore. But the man who made it possible, as always, stays in the back room.","Radhakishan Damani, who started a ball bearings business before becoming an ace investor and founding D-Mart, remains as low-profile as ever","Thu, Mar 23 2017. 12 24 PM IST",Radhakishan Damani quiet as ever after stellar D-Mart listing +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/FpH1V5GDmNBlDp35kphPaM/India-mulls-private-banks-for-15-trillion-infrastructure-g.html,"India is considering turning to the private sector to help plug a chronic shortage of capital for infrastructure projects.The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is proposing Asia’s third-largest economy offer licences to private companies to set up infrastructure banks. That could help finance $1.5 trillion in roads, ports, power and other projects over the next 10 years and bridge a gap that ratings agency Standard & Poor’s says is shaving off almost 5% of the country’s gross domestic product.“Specialized banks could cater to the wholesale and long-term financing needs of the growing economy and possibly fill the gap in long-term financing,” the RBI said in a discussion paper released from Mumbai on 7 April.With commercial banks saddled with huge non-performing loans and credit growth languishing at decade lows, lenders have been reticent to invest in projects that involve a long waiting period before returns kick in. That bodes ill for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government which is trying to spark investment, including clearing a backlog of billions of dollars of stalled projects.Governments around the world are searching for ways to finance public projects. State-backed lending, led by the China Development Bank, drove infrastructure construction in China last year along with funds raised by local governments through bond sales. Canada is hoping to attract pension funds and global money managers to a new infrastructure bank it plans to set up this year with C$35 billion ($26 billion) in funding, and US President Donald Trump has promised $1 trillion in spending.India appears to be considering a different approach. According to the RBI’s paper, the banks would source their funds from wholesale and long-term deposits, bond issuance, borrowing and asset securitization, rather than retail deposits. The paper doesn’t mention whether the central bank or government would back the new banks.India has used government-owned financial institutions to fund long-term projects in the past. The Industrial Finance Corp. of India was set up in 1948, a year after the country won independence from the British, while the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India—parent company of ICICI Bank Ltd, and Industrial Development Bank of India—parent of IDBI Bank Ltd—were set up in 1955 and 1964 respectively. Over a period of time, they transformed themselves into banks, often leaving a void for infrastructure financing.‘Vertical depth’In recent years, the RBI has been letting businesses enter niche banking areas, with companies like Bharti Airtel Ltd allowed to set up electronic payment banks and others let into micro financing.Credit Suisse Group AG analysts expect companies like SREI Infrastructure Finance Ltd, Power Finance Corp., Rural Electrification Corp., to apply for infrastructure-bank licenses. “In the near term, this may be a drag for new banks, but they should benefit in the medium term as they scale-up current deposits and fee streams,” Credit Suisse said in a note.While large industrial houses wouldn’t be allowed to take more than a 10% stake in these banks, individuals with a decade of experience in banking and finance can tie up with business groups to apply for a license. The infrastructure banks would be exempted from opening branches in rural and semi-urban areas and wouldn’t be forced to lend to the agriculture sector.“The idea is to increase vertical depth and specialized institutional capabilities to take informed decisions as and when a particular sector is getting technically complex,” New Delhi-based Vinayak Chatterjee, chairman and co-founder of infrastructure advisory firm Feedback Infrastructure Services Pvt. Ltd, said. Bloomberg","Specialized banks could cater to the wholesale and long-term financing needs of the growing economy , the RBI said in a discussion paper ","Tue, Apr 11 2017. 05 01 PM IST",RBI mulls bank licences to private firms to fund $1.5 trillion infrastructure gap +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/BniNlmxiPX2qRaGOed9gcP/Mahindra-Q3-profit-rises-32-to-Rs1112-crore.html,"
Mumbai:
Auto maker Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) Ltd on Friday announced a 33.29% increase in its profit after tax for the quarter ended December, riding on a 20.3% rise in farm equipment sales, including the high-margin tractors business. M&M saw profits rise to Rs1,112.27 crore, from Rs834.47 crore the year before. The company’s third quarter revenues increased 1.47% to Rs11,777.98 crore. This, despite a 7% decline in revenue from the automotive segment—its largest line of business—to Rs7,453.08 crore. This includes utility and commercial vehicle sales. “Demonetization affected rural and semi-urban spending but we still saw only a single-digit drop in revenue,” V.S. Parthasarathy, chief financial officer, M&M, said at a press conference. The automaker saw an 8.3% decline in vehicles sold in the domestic market year-on-year to 112,852 units and an 11.7% decline in utility vehicles sold, at 51,772 vehicles. The drop in farm produce prices affected rural incomes, which in turn hurt M&M’s sales, Parthasarthy said.According to the company’s numbers, staples like onions, potatoes and tomatoes saw a 20-60% drop in prices during the quarter, severely restricting rural households’ purchasing power along with the cash crunch that demonetization brought in. “Overall, the results were weaker than our estimates”, Nitesh Sharma of Philip Capital India said. “We saw that 7-8% decline in the automotive segment. We believe that net-net, the positive gains from the farm equipment division will be negated by the loss of market share in the automotive segment. We continue to believe that this has largely been due to a weaker product pipeline, especially in the SUV (sports utility vehicle) segment, as compared to competition.”However, the company’s sales of farm equipment, of which tractors is the largest business, grew 21% in volume (consolidated results), helping keep margins up. “We saw a phenomenal 60% growth in volume in October and actually saw negative growth in the November-December period,” Parthasarathy said. “This has given us a 44% market share, which is the highest ever.”“Although tractor sales grew in this quarter, the pace of growth has declined substantially,” Sharma said. The company sold 72,363 tractors, up 20.8% year-on-year.M&M also registered a Rs363.78 crore exceptional net profit from the sale of “investment in subsidiary companies and a joint venture”, as per the company’s statement.","Mahindra saw a 7% decline in the company’s revenue from the automotive segment—its largest line of business—to Rs7,453.08 crore","Sat, Feb 11 2017. 01 05 PM IST","Mahindra Q3 profit rises 33% to Rs1,112 crore" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/T0aW4WJWaF3kM0s8cRBHtI/Idea-Cellular-Q3-net-loss-at-Rs384-crore-a-first-in-over-a.html,"New Delhi: Mumbai-based telecom service provider Idea Cellular Ltd on Saturday said it has registered first quarterly loss due to increased rivalry in the sector that impacted its revenues.Idea reported a net loss of Rs384 crore during the quarter ended 31 December as against a net profit of Rs660 crore in the year-ago period. Revenues declined 3.7% to Rs8,661 crore. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) declined 24.4% to Rs2,165.5 crore.“The unprecedented disruption in the Indian mobile industry, primarily due to free voice, mobile data promotions, and the lure by the new entrant in the sector has adversely impacted performance,” an Idea spokesperson said, adding that revenue KPIs and financial parameters for all mobile operators have sharply declined, and for the first time in its history the flourishing Indian wireless sector is trending towards an annual revenue decline of 3 to 5% in FY2017 (vs FY16). “The sector can expect to recover revenues only once the new operator starts charging for its pan India mobile services. Please review Idea’s performance in the light of these happenings,” the spokesperson said.To be sure, Idea and Vodafone India are in merger talks. The proposed merger will create the nation’s largest telecom firm with combined revenue of Rs78,000 crore and a 43% share of the market hitherto dominated by Bharti Airtel Ltd, which reported annual revenue of Rs50,008 crore from local telecom operations in the last financial year.Also read: Kumar Mangalam Birla may head telco created by Vodafone-Idea mergerThe consolidation has been triggered by the entry of Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, in which parent Reliance Industries Ltd has invested a staggering $25 billion.Since the launch of its services in September, Jio has offered free voice and data and signed up more than 72 million users, forcing rivals, including Vodafone India and Idea, to slash tariffs in response.",Idea Cellular posts its first quarterly loss due to increased rivalry in the telecom sector after Reliance Jio’s entry,"Sat, Feb 11 2017. 07 59 PM IST",Idea Cellular posts Q3 loss of Rs384 crore as Reliance Jio disrupts sector +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/3LRh6Jfg25B3hCBI0RZwPP/Parsvnath-Developers-Q3-loss-at-Rs15-crore.html,"New Delhi: Realty firm Parsvnath Developers Ltd on Saturday reported a net loss of Rs15.06 crore during the third quarter of this fiscal on lower sales. Its net loss stood at Rs3.93 crore in the year-ago period, the company said in a regulatory filing. Income from operations fell to Rs55.15 crore during the December quarter from Rs67.83 crore in the year-ago period.“Focusing on the strategy of execution of the projects, the company offered approximately 200 units in the quarter,” the company’s chairman Pradeep Jain said. The government’s initiative of granting infrastructure status to the affordable housing segment in the Union Budget 2017-18 would be helpful in lowering the cost of funds for the developers.“This will certainly boost developers to come up with more affordable housing projects and make Housing for All a reality,” he added. Jain said the infra status along with other policy reforms like real estate regulatory law and demonetisation would bring transparency in the system and reinstate the trust of the end users in credible real estate developers.",Parsvnath Developers’ third quarter income from operations fell to Rs55.15 crore during from Rs67.83 crore in the year-ago period,"Sat, Feb 11 2017. 06 52 PM IST",Parsvnath Developers Q3 loss at Rs15 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/BZTzCSJBUPe6H0XUnAGIDK/Coal-India-Q3-profit-falls-22-to-Rs2884-crore.html,"New Delhi: The world’s largest coal miner Coal India Ltd (CIL) on Saturday reported a 22% decline in consolidated net profit at Rs2,884.4 crore for the third quarter ended December.Net profit came in at Rs3,718 crore in the same quarter of the previous fiscal, Coal India said in a regulatory filing. However, the company’s total income rose to Rs21,531.2 crore in the quarter from Rs20,928.4 crore in the year-ago period. Net sales during the quarter rose to Rs19,704 crore compared to Rs18,971.5 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal. At the same time, total expenses also increased to Rs17,260 crore as compared Rs15,407.5 crore. On a standalone basis, the company has posted a loss of Rs39 crore as compared to a profit of Rs672.6 crore in the year-ago period. Total income declined to Rs257.1 crore in the quarter from Rs880 crore.","Coal India’s third quarter total income rises to Rs21,531.2 crore from Rs20,928.4 crore in the year-ago period","Sat, Feb 11 2017. 08 40 PM IST","Coal India Q3 profit falls 22% to Rs2,884 crore" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/j8nolaOeMIoqdjDsuVLIqI/ITC-aims-to-capture-1820-of-Indias-juice-market-through-B.html,"
Mumbai: Diversified conglomerate ITC Ltd is looking to capture 18-20% of India’s juice market through its brand B Natural by focusing on regional flavours and offering premium versions of juices available in the market, a senior company official said.“The challenge for us is looking at local Indian fruits and making it more accessible to the rest of the country,” said Hemant Malik, head of the ITC Foods Division. The company, which acquired B Natural in 2014 from South Indian firm Balan Natural Food, is looking to launch at least two variants by October this year, including Bel (Wood Apple) and Falsa (Grewia asiatica berry), Malik said.B Natural has branded itself as a 100% fruit juice brand that can be part of a healthy diet and also offers regional flavours in addition to common juices such as orange and mixed fruit. The marketing plank is similar to what other rapidly growing niche brands such as Raw Pressery and Paper Boat have been offering to their largely urban consumers.ITC has been positioning B Natural at a premium to the largest competitors in India’s Rs2,500 crore juice market, PepsiCo (Tropicana) and Dabur (Real).“Most (1 litre tetra pack) juices are (priced) at Rs140-145. The juice market has nectars priced at Rs99, and they have stayed at that price now for the last couple of years,” Malik said. Nectars are fruit-based juices that contain other ingredients such as sugars.“For the longest time, there was a mindset of ‘should we cross the Rs99 mark?’,” he said. “If you have a distinctive proposition, then it can be done.”While B Natural’s 1 litre tetra packs start from Rs84-99, its pomegranate juice debuted at Rs 199 a litre. B Natural is also available in 200ml tetra packs starting at Rs20. ITC says it has kept its juices priced such to target both the mass and premium segments.“We believe growth in the juice market will come from the number of consumers growing and as people who are already consuming will consume more,” Malik said.An analyst said that although the juice market in India is ripe for more competition, ITC may have to focus more on mass categories.“ITC is present in FMCG segment at a niche level with all their premium products,” the analyst from an equities brokerage firm said, requesting anonymity. “In every category they are in premium segments. They need to start targeting the lower mid-segment.”Dabur’s Real currently controls over 50% of India’s juice market share, while PepsiCo’s Tropicana has 28%, according to data from AC Nielsen from January 2017.Now, Malik says ITC is looking to ramp up B Natural’s production while it also expands its distribution network.“Today our manufacturing is in Bangalore, and we are soon going to run short (of capacity),” Malik said. “Our next factory is already under construction in Kapurthala in Punjab. It will be ready in April 2018, in time for the new summer season.”ITC has added around 60,000 retailers in its distribution network for B Natural.“Penetration of juice is much lower in the south and we don’t understand why,” Malik said. “Fresh fruit consumption is a lot higher in south India than here in (north) India. I would say a lot more growth (in distribution) is in the south region right now.”",ITC Foods Division boss Hemant Malik says will focus on regional flavours and push premium products through B Natural to gain in the juice market,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 47 AM IST",ITC aims to capture 18-20% of India’s juice market through B Natural +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/lsLjOZXe0s6XmVTrvBJDKM/News-in-numbers-Over-25-mn-PoS-machines-at-shops-now-says.html,"$1.4 billionWhat is it? The amount e-commerce firm Flipkart raised from eBay, Microsoft and Tencent.Why is it important? It’s the biggest amount raised in a single funding round by an Indian start-up. It came at a pre-money valuation of $10.2 billion, signalling the confidence investors have showed in the company that saw a series of markdowns in the last couple of years. The funding—and acquisition of eBay India, that was a part of the deal—will strengthen Flipkart as it fights its aggressive and better endowed competitor Amazon.Tell me more: There have also been talks that Snapdeal, the third largest e-commerce firm in the country, will be merged with Flipkart, along with additional funding from SoftBank. 21%What is it? The share of the Europe, Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA) region in global IPOs (initial public offerings) in the first three months of 2017.Why is it important? India with 26 IPOs accounted for nearly 34% of the region’s activity that ranked it second to Asia-Pacific in IPO numbers. EMEIA ranked third with 15% share in global proceeds, behind Asia-Pacific and the Americas. Tell me more: The EMEIA region had 77 IPOs, raising $5.2 billion in all in January-March 2017.2.5 millionWhat is it? The number of point-of-sale (PoS) machines at merchant establishments/shops. Why is it important? PoS machine availability in India trails that of BRIC nations such as Brazil and China where per capita PoS availability for swiping plastic money is higher. Demonetisation had brought the scarcity into focus as people had to do less cash transactions. The numbers inched from 1.5 million swipe machines in October 2016 to 1.7 million in December, 2.2 million in February 2017, to over 2.5 million now. SBI has led with installation of 124,000 machines.Tell me more:The count, shared by a National Payments Corp. of India official, is a little less than Niti Aayog’s estimate of 2.8 million PoS machines in February. 17 daysWhat is it? The time the UK-to-China freight train would take to reach its destination in Zhejiang, travelling along the ancient ‘Silk Road’ route. Why is it important? The time taken by the train between the two countries, spanning a route along seven other countries, is still half the duration at sea. It is also cheaper than sending goods by air. While the train brought household items, clothes and consumer fashion goods from China, it is transporting soft drinks, baby products and pharmaceuticals on its maiden return journey.Tell me more: Chinese premier Xi Jinping’s 2013 “One Belt, One Road” policy to revive land routes for trading with the West has made London the 15th European city with a direct rail connection. $50.9 billionWhat is it? Tesla’s market cap at the end of trading on MondayWhy is it important? It is now the most valued car company in the US, beating General Motors, the 108-year-old giant, by $64 million. Tesla’s position is seen more as a reflection of investors’ faith in Elon Musk’s vision for the future of electric cars, than the present financials of the companies. GM earned $9 billion in 2016 and Tesla lost $674 million. GM sold nearly 10 million vehicles, and Tesla sold 80,000 globally.Tell me more: Toyota, with its $172 billion market cap, is the biggest carmaker by market value at present. Volkswagen, with a sale of 10.31 million vehicles in 2016, is the largest carmaker by sales volume, closely followed by Toyota. howindialives.com is a search engine for public data.","In other news, e-commerce firm Flipkart raises $1.4 billion funding from eBay, Microsoft and Tencent","Tue, Apr 11 2017. 03 37 PM IST","News in numbers: Over 2.5 mn PoS machines at shops now, says NPCI" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/Da0JGTBNXJq0W79krYjkII/Net-inflows-into-mutual-funds-in-FY17-highest-in-at-least-11.html,"
Mumbai: As bank deposit rates fell and stock markets rose, mutual funds in 2016-17 received the highest net inflows in at least 11 years, led by income and liquid schemes.Net inflows in the fiscal year ended March rose 155.66% from a year before to Rs3.43 trillion, the highest since at least 2005-06 when the equity market was gaining traction, data from the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) showed. Data prior to 2005-06 was not available.India’s benchmark index Sensex rose 16.88% during the financial year, and was the third best-performer among its Asian peers. The index has delivered a compounded annual return of 13.48% from 2005-06 to 2016-17.ALSO READ | Smart strategies to invest in debt and equity mutual funds“A rise in systematic investment plans (SIPs) is the most important factor contributing to the rise in inflows into mutual funds. Investors are also more aware and disciplined in investing from a long-term perspective,” said Gopal Agrawal, chief investment officer (equities) at Tata Asset Management.Mutual fund SIPs allow investors to regularly invest small amounts that go into equities instead of making lump sum investments at various points of time. Such investments are mostly made on a monthly or quarterly basis, although it is possible to make them even every week.Income and liquid schemes received maximum net inflows during the period, AMFI data showed. Net inflows in income schemes rose more than seven-fold to Rs1.2 trillion, while that in liquid funds grew more than four times to Rs95,826 crore.“Income and liquid schemes have surged and such rise is triggered due to low interest rates from bank deposits,” said Raghvendra Nath, managing director of Ladderup Wealth Management Pvt. Ltd. He pointed out that in the last three to four years, average returns from corporate debt is in the range of 9-9.5%.ALSO READ | Choosing mutual funds is getting complicatedNath added that currently, bank fixed deposits return 3.5-4%, which is below inflation rates.Vidya Bala, head of mutual fund research at Fundsindia.com, agreed.“For the liquid schemes, it is largely the institutional flows. It is mainly meant for parking institutional money,” said Bala.“People have flocked to income funds after the drop in fixed deposit (FD) rates. A number of investors have switched to debt funds from FDs, and that trend will continue for a while,” said Bala, adding that many of these were first-time mutual fund investors who prefer this option to traditional bank FDs.“The more conservative investors would prefer income funds to equity-oriented funds,” added Bala.ALSO READ | A long-term view on mutual fundsNet inflows into equity schemes in 2016-17 dropped 4.94% to Rs70,367 crore from a year before. However, interest in equity funds is growing, say asset managers, pointing to the near-92% rise in inflows since 2005-06.“Investors are aware that the Indian economy is on a strong footing. Relative attractiveness of equities as an asset class has increased as other alternatives cease to be as attractive as before,” said Agrawal of Tata Asset Management, pointing to the decline in the rates of bank deposits.“The long-term outlook on the economy and the markets looks positive,” added Agrawal.Nath of Ladderup said the outlook for equity inflows was positive and he expects a deluge of inflows into the asset class over time.","Net inflows in FY17 rose 155.66% from a year before to Rs3.43 trillion, the highest since at least 2005-06 when the equity market was gaining traction, AMFI data showed","Tue, Apr 11 2017. 02 57 AM IST",Net inflows into mutual funds in FY17 highest in at least 11 years +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ad3mtorzEzQYQ1Txcy6TRL/Bitcoins-existential-crisis.html,"
If you trade in bitcoins, or even are a bitcoin enthusiast, it’s unlikely that you would have missed the raging debate around the cryptocurrency. Known as the bitcoin “fork”, the controversy potentially threatens to split the bitcoin currency, whose price is currently around $1,200, into two.For the uninitiated, there are two factions at the heart of the debate, which is primarily about how to scale up the bitcoin to handle more transactions. The two current camps are: Bitcoin Unlimited and Segregated Witness (SegWit). Bitcoin Unlimited aims to remove the block size limit altogether, thereby allowing the miners to reach a consensus on their own. SegWit offers a moderate increase of the block size to up to 4 megabytes (MB), moving some non-critical data out of the blocks.The reason: Bitcoin currently has a 1MB block size limit. This implies that, on average, a network bitcoin can only process 1MB of transaction data every 10 minutes—about seven transactions per second as compared to the thousands of transactions per second that credit card firm Visa can process. The problem first surfaced around 2014-15, and bitcoin users are now increasingly experiencing long wait times as the mempool, or the buffer of yet-unconfirmed transactions, is showing more spikes.ALSO READ : Blockchain is second only to artificial intelligence: Brock PierceBrock Pierce, founder and managing partner at Blockchain Capital and chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, believes that bitcoin has the “high class” problem of experiencing rapid growth. “Users and entrepreneurs building new business models off the blockchain means that there are competing interests on how best to scale the network. Linux, also an open source software project, had similar growing pains. It is possible that Bitcoin will fork at some point. The question is whether or not it’ll be a contentious fork. This process is a good thing in the long term, though potentially disruptive in the short term,” he said.Pointing out that “there have been multiple attempts to alter bitcoin away from the core developers that have created bitcoin as we know it today (Bitcoin Classic etc.)”, Pierce said, “To date, caution regarding a contentious hard fork has prevailed and bitcoin has thrived. If it (the split) were to happen, we may see two currencies, though I suspect one would be the dominant currency/chain.”Earlier attempts at fixing this problem comprised the BIP 100 and BIP 101 proposals—BIP stands for bitcoin improvement proposal. They were introduced in 2015 by Bitcoin Core developers Jeff Garzik and Gavin Andresen, respectively. BIP 100 was about making miners decide the block size limit while BIP 101 was a one-time increase from 1MB to 8MB. Both are known as hard-fork solutions, which means that had they been implemented, older versions of bitcoin software would become incompatible with the new network.According to Cointelegraph.com, the abolition of the block size limit proposed by Bitcoin Unlimited could lead to an “uncontrolled Blockchain bloat”. Currently, the size of the entire blockchain exceeds 100 gigabytes. ALSO READ : Blockchain is going to permeate our lives: Matthieu RiouIf the block size limit is increased, the blockchain could grow to several petabytes, if not more, which “would lead to increased centralization of Bitcoin; only big companies would be able to afford the storage space, computing power and bandwidth necessary to process such huge amounts of data, phasing small-scale node operators out of the network. That runs contrary to the very idea of Bitcoin as the money governed by each of its users”, the article in Cointelegraph.com explains. Similar with SegWit, where the limit will be reached again, and the capacity will have to be increased.At a roundtable held in February 2016 in Hong Kong, representatives of Bitcoin Core, the authors of SegWit, and several major mining companies agreed to move forward with “a safe hard-fork based on the improvements in SegWit”, proposing an increase in the block size limit to 2MB “with the total size no more than 4MB” but the bitcoin community refused to adopt it, and the stalemate continues.Benson Samuel, co-founder and chief technology officer and co-founder of Secure Bitcoin Traders Pvt. Ltd that runs trading platform Coinsecure.in, says while Indian users have been concerned about the fork, “there is far less discussion in the community in India compared to outside. Since a huge number of users in India store their funds on exchanges and Web wallets, they expect to have a more seamless experience as the service operators themselves should be able to take care of some of the steps involved in the fork. The chances are slim for a majority to vote into a hard fork like Bitcoin Unlimited at this moment, however soft forks like Segregated Witness seem a lot more practical to implement on a decentralized distributed network,” he adds.The bitcoin code was first released on 9 January 2009, by a person who assumed the name, Satoshi Nakamoto. Ever since, the digital currency has been adopted for everything from international money transfers to online narco-trafficking. If you have installed a bitcoin wallet on your computer or mobile phone, it will generate your first bitcoin address and you can create more whenever you need one. You can disclose your addresses to your friends so that they can pay you or vice versa. Bitcoin users can buy and sell the currency among themselves. A shared public ledger called the “block chain” contains every transaction ever processed, allowing a user’s computer to verify the validity of each transaction of this virtual currency. The authenticity of each transaction is protected by a digital signature corresponding to the sender’s address, allowing users to have full control over sending bitcoins from their own bitcoin addresses. Hence, the digital money is also known as a “cryptocurrency”. Anyone can process transactions using the computing power of specialized hardware and earn a reward in bitcoins for this service—a process known as mining. Japan may soon become the first country to recognize bitcoins as legal tender. Some countries such as China could go a step further to issue their own version of the digital currency. In India, the Reserve Bank of India has not declared bitcoin illegal but simply cautioned users, holders and traders of virtual currencies, about the potential financial, operational, legal and security-related risks that they are exposing themselves to.On 27 February, bitcoin start-ups Zebpay, Unocoin, Coinsecure and SearchTrade jointly launched the Digital Asset and Blockchain Foundation of India (DABFI) for the “orderly and transparent growth of virtual currency market”. DABFI will lay down self-regulatory regimes for trading of bitcoins and other blockchain-based digital assets.",Bitcoin Unlimited and Segregated Witness are locked in row over how to scale up bitcoin to handle more transactions which may split the cryptocurrency,"Tue, Apr 11 2017. 01 38 AM IST",Bitcoin’s existential crisis +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/s2HdC72GXU9nD7ydk4JZGN/Rural-Electrification-eyes-Rs10000-crore-renewables-lending.html,"New Delhi: Rural Electrification Corp. (REC), a state-owned backer of India’s power sector, plans to lend billions of rupees to clean-energy projects and equipment makers this fiscal year as part of an expanded push into renewables that will also see it issue green bonds overseas.The non-banking financial company is aiming to triple its clean-energy lending and is expecting to set aside nearly Rs10,000 crore ($1.5 billion) for renewable energy in the financial year ending 31 March, chairman P.V. Ramesh said in an interview.“We’re not only financing projects but also evacuation infrastructure and have been talking with manufacturers of equipment like wind turbines, solar panels and storage batteries,” Ramesh said in an interview in New Delhi where the lender, which has a loan book of Rs2 trillion, is based.REC’s renewables strategy underscores a push by companies associated with conventional power to shift resources toward clean energy. The move, which supports Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s climate goals, also comes as some coal-fired electricity generators struggle to service debts.The lender could issue clean-energy bonds outside India by the end of June, Ramesh said.Lending shift“We are also looking at mobilizing resources from raising green bonds in Europe and social impact bonds in Scandinavia,” he said.Tesla Inc., the maker of electric vehicles, is another company that REC would be interested in backing should it decide to establish a presence in India, Ramesh added. Tesla founder Elon Musk tweeted in February that the company may enter the Indian market this summer.With demand from equipment manufacturers largely unknown at the moment, lending to the sector would be separate from what REC wants to set aside for renewable projects, Ramesh said.The shift in lending at REC takes place against a backdrop of an expansion in clean energy led by Modi and his promise to install 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable capacity by 2022.Between April 2016 to February, India added 8 GW of new renewable energy, reaching total installed capacity of 51 GW, according to government data. Meanwhile, thermal capacity grew by 8 GW in the same period, 36% lower than the previous year.Saddled with power plants running under their maximum capacity, India’s thermal-energy producers like NTPC Ltd and RattanIndia Power Ltd have been considering setting up solar-power projects on land initially intended for coal-fired facilities.REC, which has traditionally financed large-sized power and related infrastructure projects, is customizing products to suit the needs of clean-energy projects, which are often small compared with conventional plants and much quicker to set up, Ramesh said.“We’re customizing products for each project so it’s tailor-made for each of them because not everyone wants a standard product,” Ramesh said, adding that his company needs to be agile in the new market because the days of lending a billion dollars to a single big project are nearing an end.REC has been appointed by India’s government as the central agency responsible for implementing two nationwide power reform projects aimed at increasing electricity coverage in rural areas through the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana and the financial turnaround of state-owned power retailers through the Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojna (UDAY). Bloomberg","Rural Electrification Corp. (REC) is aiming to triple its clean-energy lending and is expecting to set aside nearly Rs10,000 for renewable energy in this fiscal","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 34 AM IST","Rural Electrification eyes Rs10,000 crore renewables lending push" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/g1PdSAqglsxl7NlCHv6QtO/AAI-working-on-plan-to-allow-housing-projects-on-airport-lan.html,"
New Delhi: Legal changes to enable housing development in airport land are in the works, the chairman of India’s state-run airport development authority said. Currently, airport housing in India is permitted only for airport employees.The Airports Authority of India (AAI), which operates 125 airports, has a land bank of 55,800 acres, which has so far been used only for aviation and passenger-related activities.That will change soon.“We want to make it market-driven,” AAI chairman Guruprasad Mohapatra said in an interview.The Union aviation ministry will soon move a cabinet note to amend the law governing AAI to permit use of airport land for housing and other areas which are currently not allowed, Mohapatra added. “Housing is an attractive thing to develop in and around airports. Currently, you can’t develop housing as part of the land restriction,” he said.As cities have grown, Mohapatra said, they have reached the fringes of airports, which were once far from the city centres. “Urban housing is now a requirement. Housing close to the airport receives the most premium—you see advertisements saying 20km from the airport and so on.”Mohapatra said prime housing may not be required in very small towns, but in places where land is very expensive, there could be very strong demand.Once the legal changes are through, airports could also use the available land to build malls and convention centres, among others.Like mass housing, airports are currently not allowed to build convention halls, Mohaptra said. ""That probably is a requirement in many cities now. India is hosting many conventions now,” he said, adding AAI would survey each city and based on the demand, decide what would fetch the best price for its land, which will be leased out accordingly.The change will also benefit airports that have been leased out to private operators like the ones in Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad.AAI has identified city-side development of airports at Lucknow, Raipur, Tirupati, Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Varanasi, Kolkata and Amritsar in a phased manner, junior aviation minister Jayant Sinha told Parliament on 16 March.Finance minister Arun Jaitley announced in the Union budget earlier this year that rules would be amended to “enable effective monetization of land assets” for AAI and the resources raised from the land would be used for upgrading airports.Airports typically earn revenue from aeronautical activities such as navigation charges from airlines and non-aeronautical charges like car parking and hotels. Globally, non-aeronautical revenue makes up 40-45% of the total mix while in India this figure is only 25%.To be sure, living near an airport will come with its own set of challenges. To start with, housing will have to be made sound-proof, said a former AAI board member, asking not to be named.Airport housing will also have height restrictions to avoid interference with flight paths. They will also have to be far from the runway and 45m above a defined level of the airport, which will allow 4-5 floors to be built, former AAI board member said.AAI will also have to consider other questions.“Will it be for the rich or middle classes or the poor? Will AAI provide for all the services and utilities and do maintenance or some other party? Will AAI sell the land also or only the houses? Can they (houses) be freely traded by their owners?,” the former AAI board member asked, adding, “Importantly, AAI must make sure that they have excellent planning inputs so that all the land required for serving future growth of aviation demands is protected, and then and only then, the ‘excess land’ put to non-aviation use.”","Airports Authority of India chairman Guruprasad Mohapatra wants airport land to be market-driven, hence the plan for residential projects","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 34 AM IST",AAI working on plan to allow housing projects on airport land +https://www.livemint.com/Home-Page/8zt0QeSnAcmHk0KChVPycN/Dell-on-track-to-hit-the-3-billion-revenue-mark-in-India-C.html,"
Mumbai: Dell Technologies, the company that was formed when Dell Inc. acquired EMC Corp. for $67 billion, remains bullish on its “long-term” growth prospects in India, which is the company’s third-largest market.“I think we are on track to hit the $3 billion revenue mark in this country in a couple of years,” Thomas Sweet, executive vice-president and chief financial officer (CFO), Dell Inc., said in an interview last week.Explaining why he is bullish on the Indian market, Sweet reasoned that the country now had “a government that is pro-growth, pro-development, and which is also pro-technology in helping to enable that growth and the government’s mission”. Further, he claimed that the Dell-EMC combine in India is growing faster than the domestic IT market growth. According to Nasscom’s Strategic Review 2017 report, in FY2017, India’s domestic IT-BPM (information technology-business process management) market is likely to grow 8.5% year on year to reach $38 billion (excluding e-commerce).To accelerate the pace of growth globally, Dell rolled out a distribution, or the so-called channel strategy in February. According to Sweet, half of the company’s revenue is routed through its distributors and his company hopes to increase their output with the recent reorganization it initiated to bring together the distribution partners of the erstwhile Dell and EMC companies.What the company did two months back, according to Sweet, was to merge the EMC and Dell sales forces (which existed as separate entities before the merger) into two units. One is an enterprise sales unit that would now focus on the top 3,000 customers, and the second is a commercial sales organization that will focus on an estimated 500,000 clients. Sweet said he is “pretty pleased” with how the combined sales units have shaped up so far.The company also plans to sharpen its focus on its digital transformation push. Dell Technologies breaks up digital transformation into three parts, according to Sweet: IT transformation-how IT can support what the business needs; security transformation-how a company can tackle multiple threats; and workforce transformation-how an organization makes its employees more productive in a mobile environment.In the past couple of years, most large technology solution providers such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE), International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Accenture Plc., Oracle Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others have been competing fiercely for the increasingly lucrative digital transformation pie. According to research firm International Data Corp. (IDC) forecasts, global spending on digital transformation technologies is projected to be more than $1.2 trillion in 2017—an increase of 17.8% over 2016.“There is clearly a greater focus among our customers on digital, but most of them are currently focused on IT transformation,” said Sweet. According to him, companies are looking to modernize their IT infrastructure to support cloud-native applications. In cloud computing, companies can consume IT services and only pay for the applications or infrastructure they use rather than buy the equipment upfront, thus reducing capital expenditure (capex).One change in the way technology adoption occurs in companies, according to Sweet, is the growing involvement of top management, especially when it comes to digital. “We are seeing more C-suite executives, particularly the chief executive officers (CEOs), chief operating officers (COOs) and CFOs, participating in the conversation on digital as, increasingly, they are seeking business solutions and business model evolution,” he said. The focus for CFOs, he said, continues to be on return on investment, even as most of them are also ready to bet on emerging technologies that are still not mature in order to future-proof their organizations.Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst of Greyhound Research, said that while the Dell-EMC combine has done a good job of “integrating the channel network” of both the organizations, managing the reskilling of the partners and introducing customised solutions tailored for specific industry segments may require an intensive focus, especially in the short term. “If they can manage this aspect well, they can have an edge in the digital transformation infrastructure market, where companies such as HPE and Lenovo have been showing renewed aggression of late,” he concluded.",Dell Inc. CFO Thomas Sweet claims that the Dell-EMC combine in India is growing faster than the domestic IT market growth,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 34 AM IST",Dell on track to hit the $3 billion revenue mark in India: CFO Thomas Sweet +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/HKXTsfgr1Eq3IoJITNRsPI/Lalit-Modis-son-Ruchir-Modi-pads-up-for-Rajasthan-Cricket-A.html,"
New Delhi: He’s the son of a man who was a rebel in a rather conservative business family, became a charismatic sports entrepreneur and is now a fugitive. Ruchir Modi, 22, is the son of Lalit Modi—who is best known for conceptualizing the Indian Premier League (IPL), the T20 cricket tournament that changed the way the game was viewed and played in India. Lalit Modi moved to London in 2010, shortly after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) launched an investigation.Ruchir Modi was still in school then. In March 2016, soon after he graduated from Regents University, London, Ruchir was appointed director of the estimated $2.8-billion K.K. Modi group’s flagship tobacco business Godfrey Phillips India Ltd (GPI), holding company Modi Enterprises, networking marketing arm Modicare and restaurant business Peyotito in London. Ruchir is currently in India for a couple of reasons. He is in the race for the post of president of the Rajasthan Cricket Association (RCA). The election is on 26 April. This post was held by his father between 2005 and 2009 and again since 2014 to date.Secondly, he wants to expand GPI’s tobacco business in new markets such as Africa and enter new businesses, real estate development and micro-finance. The last is important because Modi says he is keen to build his own empire. Ruchir is currently better known as Lalit Modi’s son, K.K. Modi’s grandson, and for his flashy lifestyle. He drives a Ferrari when in London (cricket is written on its licence plate), and either an Aston Martin or a Mercedes Benz in Mumbai (where he is accompanied by bodyguards). He travels in private jets, has often been spotted in Page 3 parties, and puts it all out on Instagram. He became the president of the Alwar Cricket Association in August 2016. In the run-up to the RCA election later this month, Ruchir met the members and office-bearers of RCA, which has been facing a suspension from the Board of Control for Cricket in India as a punishment for electing Lalit Modi as its president, in Jaipur last month. “They haven’t met or spoken to Lalit Modi, so they needed someone to hear them out and understand their concerns. So, I went to hear them out and present my own vision,” he says.Ruchir is clearly interested in cricket, but some say he is just serving as a front for his father’s re-entry into Rajasthan and Indian cricket. “It is obvious that Lalit Modi wants to get back to cricket through a 22-year old with no prior experience (in this); he will be the guiding force behind his son’s strategy and process,” said a member of RCA on condition of anonymity.Ruchir, naturally, denies being a front. “I feel like I owe something to cricket in Rajasthan, it has suffered for the last four years. I believe cricket needs to be brought back to the state. My family owes that,” he says, adding that he speaks to his father at least 10 times a day over the phone. Not too many people buy that. “It is absolutely ridiculous that a 22-year-old without any prior experience is even being considered for a post like this. This is clearly the worst form of nepotism and should not be encouraged. Lalit Modi may be an excellent administrator but that doesn’t mean he can get away with using a proxy,” says Indranil Das Blah, chief operating officer at sports marketing agency Kwan Entertainment and Marketing Solutions.Still, to give Ruchir his due, he isn’t a novice at business. He has been involved with the K.K. Modi Group for years, and has plans for it. “We need to take the Modi Group to the next level. Everyone in Modi Group has built a brand, they have made a success story of something. I would like to create not just one brand but multiple brands, grow the existing portfolio, and make it one of the largest business houses in India through diversification, digitization, effective management and transparency in organization,” says Ruchir.He plans to start by monetizing the group’s existing real estate assets. “But we will not end there. We will look at mixed developments across multiple sectors in Mumbai and Thane for now. Most of our real estate assets (land) are held by family businesses. We will compete with the likes of Lodha group and Raheja group,” he adds. Through Modi Ventures, the investment arm of the group that he founded in 2015 while studying in Regents University, London, Ruchir also plans to enter micro-finance this year. He declined to provide more details on this business. He has also taken on the responsibility of expanding the group’s international businesses and taking its tobacco and tea products to international markets, including Africa. He will also work with his uncle Samir Modi on expanding the group’s chain of Twenty Four Seven Convenience Stores to at least 200 outlets within a year, from 50 currently. Ruchir wants GPI to be seen as more than just a tobacco company; it will be known for real estate, tobacco, consumer packaged goods, and retail, he adds. He works closely with grandfather and uncle but says his father is his “idol”. “All of my life, I have been very close to my father and learnt more from him than from school,” says Ruchir.“He is his father’s shadow,” adds an old-timer at the group on condition of anonymity. Vidhi Choudhary contributed to the story","Ruchir Modi is in the race for the post of president of Rajasthan Cricket Association (RCA), a post held by his father Lalit Modi since 2014","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 34 AM IST",Lalit Modi’s son Ruchir Modi pads up for Rajasthan Cricket Association elections +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/HcqgeiSswp6xKpPMdVT06K/Cyber-attack-on-Union-Bank-of-India-similar-to-Bangladesh-he.html,"Mumbai: A cyber attack on Union Bank of India last July began after an employee opened an email attachment releasing malware that allowed hackers to steal the state-run bank’s data, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.The attempt closely resembled the cyber theft last year of more than $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank’s account at the New York Federal Reserve, the paper reported.The opening of the email attachment, which looked like it had come from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), initiated the malware that hackers used to steal Union Bank’s access codes for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a system that lenders use for international transactions.The codes were used to send transfer instructions for about $170 million to a Union Bank account at Citigroup Inc. in New York.Union Bank had traced the money trail and blocked the movement of funds.SWIFT late last year said that some banks using its system had been attacked after the Bangladesh heist, the Journal said, but did not specifically name Union Bank of India.Union Bank Chairman Arun Tiwari told the newspaper that SWIFT officials had been working with the bank since the day of the cyber attack. SWIFT declined to comment. Reuters",Hackers initiated malware through an email attachment to steal Union Bank of India’s access codes for SWIFT to transfer funds to a bank account at Citigroup in New York,"Mon, Apr 10 2017. 11 00 PM IST",Cyber attack on Union Bank of India similar to Bangladesh heist: Report +https://www.livemint.com/Money/npdh6El3aRNC8h0GBgTrEP/HDFC-Bank-to-raise-Rs-50000-crore-in-the-next-12-months.html,"New Delhi: Private sector lender HDFC Bank said it will raise Rs50,000 crore within a year by issuing debt instruments. The Bank proposes to raise funds by issuing perpetual debt instruments (part of additional tier I capital), tier II capital bonds and senior long-term infrastructure bonds up to a total amount of Rs50,000 crore, the bank said in a regulatory filing. Perpetual bonds carry no maturity date, so they may be treated as equity, not as debt. The bank did not mention what purpose it will utilise the funds to be raised. It said the money will be raised in the period of next 12 months through private placement mode. The board of directors of the bank would consider the proposal at its board meeting to be held on 21 April. HDFC Bank stock closed 0.36% down at Rs1,433.60 on BSE.","HDFC Bank proposes to raise funds by issuing perpetual debt instruments, tier II capital bonds and senior long-term infrastructure bonds up to a total amount of Rs 50,000 crore","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 10 38 PM IST","HDFC Bank to raise Rs 50,000 crore in the next 12 months" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/zaBK7kCxUJJrFyRDvSdNCN/SBI-Q3-profit-rises-134-to-Rs2610-crore.html,"Mumbai: State Bank of India’s net profit more than doubled in the December quarter from a year earlier, helped by a one-time gain from the sale of a stake in its life insurance venture, but improvement in asset quality fell short of the lender’s own expectations.India’s largest lender said Friday that net profit rose to Rs2,610 crore in the fiscal third quarter, up 134% from Rs1,115.34 crore a year ago. The profit was slightly higher than the estimate of Rs2,509.70 crore in a Bloomberg poll of 18 analysts.The profit increase was largely on account of a one-time gain of Rs1,755 crore from the sale of a 3.9% stake in SBI Life Insurance Co. Ltd.Provisions against bad loans dropped to Rs7,244.55 crore in the quarter from Rs7,644 crore a year ago and Rs7,669.66 crore in the July-September period. SBI also set aside in the quarter Rs1,400 crore against standard assets that are at risk of turning bad.Also Read| What to expect from SBI’s Q3 resultsAsset quality improved a shade with SBI recovering Rs3,994 crore of loans and upgrading Rs2,434 crore more. The improvement fell short of the bank’s own expectations—a fact chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya blamed on the 8 November invalidation of high-value currency notes, which made it tough for cash-dependent borrowers to repay debt. “We were very hopeful of seeing most of the resolutions come in during this quarter. However, demonetization has actually pushed this by another quarter,” Bhattacharya said.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rose marginally by 2.3% to Rs1.08 trillion at the end of the December quarter from Rs1.06 trillion in the September quarter. On a year-on-year basis, gross NPAs jumped 48.61% from Rs7,2791.73 crore. Gross NPAs made up 7.23% of total assets at the end of the December quarter compared to 7.14% in the previous quarter and 5.1% in the year-ago quarter.Loans worth Rs10,185 crore slipped into the NPA category, of which, Rs 10,069 crore were on the bank’s corporate loan book. Of the corporate loan slippages, 73%, or Rs 7,341 crore, were from the bank’s so-called watchlist. SBI pared its watchlist, which consists of loans at risk of turning bad, to Rs17,992 crore as of 31 December, from Rs25,951 crore in the September quarter.According to Bhattacharya, the bank’s numbers will start looking better in the next financial year, once demand for credit revives.SBI’s net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose by 7.7% to Rs1,4751.54 crore in the December quarter from Rs13,697.01 crore a year ago. Non-interest income, which includes fees, commissions and investment gains, rose 58.73% to Rs9,661.92 crore from Rs6,086.97 crore a year ago. The figure includes the one-time stake sale gain.“No major negatives in the SBI result, most developments have been in line with expectations,” said a banking analyst at a domestic securities house, requesting anonymity. “Owing to its position in the banking sector, whenever the asset quality cycle starts reversing and recoveries happen, the bank will benefit the most. As of now, the only concern is around containing fresh slippages, which the bank feels it can do. We maintain a BUY call on the SBI stock.”The government’s demonetization drive led to higher accumulation of low-cost deposits. Total deposits rose 22.1% from a year ago to Rs20.41 trillion while advances were up 4.1% to Rs14.48 trillion.On Friday, SBI shares rose 0.15% to Rs276.25 on BSE, on a day the benchmark Sensex barely budged at 28,334.25 points.","State Bank of India reported a net profit of Rs2,610 crore in the third quarter against Rs1115.34 crore a year ago","Sat, Feb 11 2017. 01 05 PM IST","SBI Q3 profit rises 134% to Rs2,610 crore " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KCbMVx6PLu4sRQIAZsY2xI/Cairn-Energy-gets-fresh-demand-note-of-Rs10247-crore-from-t.html,"New Delhi: Within weeks of Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) upholding levy of retrospective tax, the income tax department has slapped a fresh demand note of Rs10,247 crore on British explorer Cairn Energy Plc. ITAT in its 9 March order held that Cairn Energy was liable to pay tax on the 2006 transfer of India assets to newly created Cairn India, prior to its listing. It, however, held that interest cannot be charged on it as the demand was raised using retrospective tax legislation. The income tax department had raised a tax demand of Rs10,247 crore and another Rs18,800 crore in interest for 10 years. “Following the ruling of the ITAT, an amended tax demand, received on March 31, 2017, noted that late payment interest would now be charged from February 2016, i.e. from 30 days following the date of the original 2016 final assessment order,” Cairn said in a notice to shareholders. Cairn said the decision of the ITAT is “potentially subject to appeal.” The company had on 24 January, 2014 received a draft assessment order for the alleged capital gains it made in 2006. The order restrained the company from selling the residual 9.8% stake it holds in Cairn India. Cairn Energy had in 2011 sold Cairn India to Vedanta. “Then, on February 4, 2016... a final assessment order in respect of the Indian fiscal year ended March 31 2007, (was) issued by the Indian income tax department (IITD) in the amount of Rs10,247 crore plus interest back dated to 2007 totalling Rs18,800 crore,” Cairn said. The final assessment order did not include any penalties which may also be applied to the final assessment (potentially up to 300% of any tax finally agreed). “The final assessment order was appealed to the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, Delhi which ruled on March 9, 2017 that tax in the amount of Rs10,247 crore remained payable but that the company could not be required to pay interest,” it said. This is because the tax demand was raised on the basis of a retrospective amendment done to the Income Tax Act in 2012 and Cairn could not have anticipated that payment of tax would be required. Stating that it strongly contests the final assessment order, Cairn said enforcement of any tax liability deemed due by the tax department will be limited to India assets, which had a value of about $750 million as of 31 December, 2016. These assets comprised principally Cairn’s residual shareholding in Cairn India. Cairn said it had on 11 March, 2015 filed a notice of dispute under The UK-India investment treaty in order to protect its legal position and shareholder interests. “The international arbitration proceedings formally commenced in January 2016 following the agreement between Cairn and the government of India on the appointment of a panel of three international arbitrators under the terms of the Treaty,” it said. “However, supported by detailed legal advice on the strength of the legal protections available to it under international law, Cairn strongly contests the actions of the IITD in these matters. “In addition to the resolution of the tax dispute, Cairn also seeks full recompense for the loss of value resulting from the restriction on its Cairn India shares,” the notice added.","Within weeks of tax tribunal upholding levy of retrospective tax, the income tax department has slapped a fresh demand note of Rs10,247 crore on Cairn Energy","Sun, Apr 09 2017. 06 26 PM IST","Cairn Energy gets fresh demand note of Rs10,247 crore from tax department" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/KI2rJhmjoO8eySNxezKMbI/S-Chand-and-Co-to-launch-IPO-on-26-April.html,"Mumbai: S. Chand and Co. Ltd, a publisher of educational books, on Wednesday announced that it will launch its initial public offering (IPO) on 26 April.The company has fixed a price band of Rs660-670 per share for its initial share sale. The offer will close on 28 April.Everstone Capital-backed S. Chand delivers content, solutions and services across the education lifecycle, serving the K-12, higher education and early learning segments.The firm has appointed investment banks JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd, Axis Capital Ltd and Credit Suisse Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd to manage the share sale.It had filed its draft IPO prospectus with markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on 16 December and received approval in early March.The IPO will see the company raise Rs325 crore in primary capital. Additionally, existing shareholders of the company, including Everstone Capital, will collectively sell around 6 million shares worth Rs403.5 crore, taking the total IPO size to Rs728.5 crore. Everstone holds 32.27% stake in the company.Out of the primary proceeds, the company will spend Rs255 crore to repay debt, said Samir Khurana, group head, strategy and investments at S. Chand.S. Chand is looking to repay loans availed by it and its subsidiary Eurasia Publishing House Pvt. Ltd, which were utilized towards funding the acquisition of Chhaya Prakashani Pvt. Ltd. The company will repay some loans availed by other subsidiaries such as New Saraswati House (India) Pvt. Ltd and Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd.In December 2016, S. Chand acquired 74% stake in Chhaya Prakashani adding four Chhaya brands to its portfolio.As of 31 December, the company offered 55 consumer brands across knowledge products and services including S. Chand, Vikas, Madhubun, Saraswati, Destination Success and Ignitor.Inorganic growth through acquisitions is a strategy that S. Chand has frequently preferred in the past too.In financial year 2012-13, S. Chand acquired Vikas Publishing to bolster its offering in Hindi titles, while in the financial year 2014-15, it acquired New Saraswati House.“We will continue to look to grow through the inorganic growth route in the future too. The company has spent close to Rs460 crore on acquisitions in the past,” said Khurana.Apart from the acquisitions, S. Chand has also invested around Rs33 crore to acquire minority shares in early-stage digital education companies, said Khurana. “We will continue to assess such investments in digital platforms,” he added.According to its red herring prospectus, S. Chand recorded consolidated revenue of Rs540.6 crore in 2015-16, against Rs478.5 crore in the previous year. In 2015-16, it reported a profit of Rs46.6 crore against Rs32.7 crore the previous year.The company’s consolidated revenue has grown at a CAGR of 33% over the past five financial years, from Rs174.6 crore in fiscal 2012 to Rs540.6 crore in fiscal 2016.According to Khurana, the company’s revenues are seasonal and almost 75% of it comes in the fourth quarter due to the large contribution of the K-12 business segment where sales of new books occur in the January-March quarter ahead of the start of the new academic year.So far this year, five firms have raised Rs4,185.91 crore through the IPO route, according to data from primary market tracker Prime Database. In 2016, 26 firms raised Rs26,493.8 crore through IPOs, data shows.","S Chand and Co, a publisher of educational books, has fixed a price band of Rs660-670 per share for its initial public offering (IPO)","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 07 54 AM IST",S. Chand and Co to launch IPO on 26 April +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/c54PPC1PBOOaNGTguUYwzN/ADB-to-lend-175-million-to-Power-Grid-for-transmission-proj.html,"New Delhi: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has agreed to give a 20-year loan of $175 million to Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd to finance a proposed $450 million transmission project for transferring power from new solar power parks to the grid.The loan agreement was signed on Thursday, an official statement from the power ministry said. State-owned Power Grid will make an equity contribution of $135 million for the project.The new transmission lines will help in evacuating 2,500 megawatt (MW) of power from solar parks in Bhadla in Rajasthan and 700 MW from Banaskantha in Gujarat. The proposed transmission facility will also aid in increasing solar power generation by 4.2 gigawatt (GW) and cut carbon emissions by over 7 million tonnes every year, said the statement.The union cabinet had in February decided to double the solar park capacity in the country to 40,000 MW in three years. The plan is to add 50 new ultra-mega solar parks to the 34 under construction in 21 states.In addition to the ADB loan, Power Grid’s high voltage transmission project will include a $50 million co-financing facility from the Clean Technology Fund (CTF), which is a component of the climate investment funds aimed at helping developing countries to adopt low carbon technologies.The project will improve the capacity and efficiency of interstate transmission networks, particularly in transmitting the electricity generated from the new solar parks to the national grid, said the statement.",Power Grid will use the funds from Asian Development Bank (ADB) to finance a proposed power transmission project connecting new solar power parks to the grid,"Fri, Apr 07 2017. 10 37 PM IST",ADB to lend $175 million to Power Grid for transmission project +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ikUrvoEshkw3P1siSv5qTM/Religare-sells-80-stake-in-health-insurance-arm-to-True-Nor.html,"
Mumbai: Religare Enterprises Ltd on Sunday announced the sale of its 80% stake in Religare Health Insurance Co. Ltd (RHI) to a group of investors led by True North.In a statement, Religare Enterprises said it has entered into a definitive agreement with the investors for the sale, which values the insurance firm at Rs1,300 crore. The deal will fetch Religare approximately Rs1,040 crore.Apart from True North (earlier known as India Value Fund Advisors), other investors in the consortium are Aditya Parekh and Sameer Shroff-led private equity firm Faering Capital, and Gaurav Dalmia.The transaction is subject to necessary regulatory approvals. American investment bank J.P. Morgan acted as the exclusive financial adviser to Religare Enterprises.ALSO READ | Shivinder, Malvinder Singh want to sell some assets, but the timing isn’t rightReligare Health Insurance was launched in July 2012. The business reported a gross written premium of Rs503 crore in the year ended 31 March 2016. “We have been closely evaluating the health insurance space and have been impressed by the quality of RHI’s management team and business. We believe that RHI would be an excellent platform for building an enduring health insurance franchise in India,” Vikram Nirula, partner at True North said in the statement.True North has so far successfully launched five separate investment funds with a combined corpus of over $2 billion.The stake sale comes at a time when Religare’s promoters Malvinder and Shivinder Singh have been reported to be keen on divesting stakes in other businesses controlled by them.In January, Mint reported that the brothers were in talks with several global private equity funds such as TPG Capital, Bain Capital and KKR to sell a stake in their hospitals business—Fortis Healthcare Ltd. Discussions with Bain and TPG are currently only for a 26% stake in the company. On 5 January, Mint had reported on the talks between KKR and the Singh brothers for a majority stake in Fortis, alongside a structured equity deal in RHC Holding Pvt. Ltd (RHPL). RHPL is the holding firm for the Religare and Fortis brands.Singh brothers are also exploring debt financing options.In November, Mint reported that RHPL was in talks to refinance $300 million debt. RHPL is a closely held investment company owned by Singh brothers. As of 31 March 2016, RHPL had a total net worth of around Rs6,900 crore and a debt of Rs4,064 crore.The various stakes sale plans are, however, overshadowed by an ongoing legal battle with Japanese drug maker Daiichi Sankyo.The case relates to enforcement of an arbitral award in proceedings initiated by Daiichi Sankyo against the Singh brothers in relation to its 2008 purchase of a majority stake in Ranbaxy, then owned by the brothers. The arbitral award came after the Japanese company alleged that the Singh brothers had concealed crucial information while selling Ranbaxy to it for $4.6 billion in 2008.A Singapore tribunal has ordered the brothers to pay Rs2,562 crore, which they are contesting in the Delhi High Court.In March, the court directed Singh brothers to furnish, within a week, details of all of their unencumbered assets, in order to ensure the use of such assets to satisfy the arbitral award, at a later stage, if required, Mint reported on 7 March.","Religare Enterprises Ltd sale of its 80% stake in Religare Health Insurance to True North and other investors values the firm at Rs1,300 crore","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 09 33 PM IST","Religare sells 80% stake in health insurance arm to True North, others" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6q5LtIUo7V0r6L0FXowWmI/NLC-shortlists-GMR-IndBarath-power-projects-for-acquisitio.html,"
New Delhi: In deals potentially valued at around Rs12,000 crore, state-owned NLC India Ltd has shortlisted for acquisition GMR Group’s 1,370 megawatt (MW) coal power project in Chhattisgarh and Hyderabad-based Ind-Barath Power Infra Ltd’s 700MW plant in Odisha. NLC, earlier known as Neyveli Lignite Corp. Ltd, will shortly hire two consultants—one each from the public and private sectors to carry out the due diligence, said Sarat Acharya, chairman and managing director, NLC India on the sidelines of Global Natural Resources Conclave organized by Network18 and the Confederation of Indian Industry.The public sector unit plans to acquire 3,000MW of stressed power generation capacity, driven by its strategy of using the revenue generated from running such projects to finance capital expenditure. “Others had come as part of the process that we have been running for stressed power projects acquisition. We are also setting up a power generation capacity of 7,000MW, which will take around six years for commissioning. Acquiring such stressed projects will allow us to generate electricity and start cash flows,” Acharya added.Mint reported on 6 January about NLC being in talks with Ind-Barath to acquire its coal-fired power plant in Odisha.On 23 August, NLC India invited expressions of interest from firms owning coal- and lignite-based power plants of capacity of more than 2,00MW for possible acquisition.Across the country, thermal power projects totalling around 25,000MW are up for sale. Over the last few years, power companies have found it difficult to secure fuel supplies and buyers for the power they generate because debt-laden state electricity boards are unwilling to buy expensive power. Most power generators are weighed down by debt, forcing some of them to sell assets.NLC has already signed an agreement to acquire Damodar Valley Corp.’s (DVC) 1,200MW Raghunathpur project in West Bengal through a joint venture company (JVC) proposed to be formed with DVC, with an equity shareholding of 74:26 by NLC and DVC. However, the acquisition plans have been hanging fire due to opposition from the West Bengal government.While the Raghunathpur projects has got other clearances, we are still awaiting clearance from the West Bengal government, which has been stuck for six months, Acharya said.DVC, formed on the lines of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the US, is owned by the Union government and the state governments of West Bengal and Jharkhand. Experts believe consolidation is inevitable because power projects are stressed.“It is exciting to see power producers evaluating distressed assets and bringing forward their plans for capacity addition if the deal is priced right. It aligns to their competitive advantages like understanding of the region, availability of fuel source and capital, operational excellence and long-term sale of power. It also releases financial stress in the sector,” said Sambitosh Mohapatra, partner (energy) at PwC India.While a GMR spokesperson did not respond to queries emailed on Thursday evening, an Ind-Barath spokesperson confirmed the development and in a text message said, “Yes, NLC has shortlisted our Odisha plant and discussions are currently ongoing between the parties.”NLC India which has an installed power generation capacity of 4,301MW, also plans to set up 4,000MW of solar power projects and is in talks with states in order to draw up viable power purchase agreements for selling electricity to them.“We are developing a 630MW solar power plant in Tamil Nadu...We have a capital expenditure plan of Rs1,24,000 crore (Rs1.24 trillion) to meet our 2025 target. We are also looking at developing lithium ion batteries which is under consideration of our research wing,” Acharya said.A host of state-owned firms such as Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd, NTPC Ltd and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd are chalking out clean energy strategies, encouraged by the opportunities offered by India’s solar power ambitions. India plans to generate 175GW of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 100GW is to come from solar power projects with storage being seen as the next frontier in India’s clean energy push.","The shortlisted projects are GMR Group’s 1,370MW coal power project in Chhattisgarh and Hyderabad-based Ind-Barath Power’s 700MW plant in Odisha","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 04 34 AM IST","NLC shortlists GMR, Ind-Barath power projects for acquisition" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/qYaHgU3tH5Vrfujk9SpFII/Yes-Bank-IndusInd-bad-loan-provisions-rise-on-exposure-to-J.html,"
Mumbai: Private sector lenders Yes Bank Ltd and IndusInd Bank Ltd on Wednesday reported a sharp rise in their quarterly bad loan provisioning, eroding profits, after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) advised lenders to follow stricter standard asset provisioning and disclosure rules.The additional provisioning pertains to their exposure to the Jaiprakash Associates Ltd cement assets that are being purchased by UltraTech Cement Ltd, said three people aware of the matter. Other banks which have the same exposure are also likely to report a jump in their provisions in the March quarter. However, these provisions are likely to be written back as the UltraTech-Jaiprakash deal will be completed by the end of this quarter, they said. UltraTech has agreed to buy Jaiprakash Associates’ cement assets for Rs16,189 crore.ALSO READ: Yes Bank first casualty in RBI’s rule to pull out bad loan skeletonsYes Bank reported a doubling of gross non-performing assets (NPAs) to Rs2,018 crore in the March quarter, as it had to set aside an additional Rs228 crore to cover potential loan losses. Yes Bank’s gross NPAs were at 1.52% at the end of the March quarter and net NPAs were at 0.81%.“The increase in NPA and consequent provision is in conformity with the divergences observed by the RBI as per its compliance process” mentioned in the RBI circular on Tuesday, a Yes Bank statement said. According to the RBI circular, banks have to make disclosures if their asset classification and provisioning diverge from the central bank norms.“As of 31 March 2017, the impact of divergences overall is at Rs1,040 crore on which we have made 25% provisioning. This includes one borrower exposure of Rs911 crore towards a Delhi-based cement company. However, this is a performing asset which has been servicing interest regularly. We expect to recover the amount in the near term,” said Rana Kapoor, managing director and chief executive officer, Yes Bank.Despite the higher provisions, Yes Bank’s net profit for the quarter ended 31 March rose 30% to Rs914 crore from a year ago. Net interest income, or the income that a bank earns by giving loans, increased 32% to Rs1,639.70 crore. This comes on the heels of a strong loan book growth of 34.7% and deposit growth of 28% during the quarter.
“Yes Bank has negatively surprised by almost doubling on gross non-performing assets during Q4, which is likely to overshadow its strong operational performance and strong capital position. Thus, the sentiments are likely to turn weak in short term,” said Lalitabh Shrivastawa, associate vice-president, research, for banking, financial services and insurance, at Sharekhan.IndusInd Bank reported a 21% rise in net profit to Rs751 crore during the quarter, even as it saw its provisions double to Rs430 crore on account of RBI’s latest disclosure and provisioning norms. Gross NPAs rose 8.57% to Rs1,054.87 crore at the end of the March quarter from Rs971.62 crore in the preceding quarter. “We have provided Rs122 crore against a M&A (mergers and acquisitions) case in the cement sector on advice from the RBI. The repayment is due in June 2017, which we are sure is going to happen,” said Romesh Sobti, managing director and CEO, IndusInd Bank.Yes Bank shares edged down 0.03% and IndusInd Bank shares fell 0.63% on a day the BSE’s benchmark Sensex inched up 0.06% to 29,336.57 points.According to Sobti, the bank has closed its third three-year plan and is going to start on its fourth such plan, where it plans to double its presence as well as its profits by March 2020. The bank aims to have a microfinance portfolio of Rs10,000 crore and its rural finance business will contribute 10% of the overall earnings in this period.“Our plan has not taken into account any inorganic play during this period. We are, however, open to inorganic growth as well. We are looking at various opportunities including microfinance,” Sobti said.“IndusInd Bank results were largely in line, and would have been termed strong if not for the one-off provision impact of Rs122 crore on a standard asset exposure. The ability to outperform industry growth as well as maintain less than 1% gross NPA is commendable, and with its strong management and performance delivery, the bank should be attractive for long-term investors,” said Shrivastawa.",Yes Bank and IndusInd Bank’s Q4 results showed surge in bad loans and provisions following RBI’s new asset quality rules and exposure to Jaiprakash Associates,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 40 AM IST","Yes Bank, IndusInd bad loan provisions rise on exposure to Jaiprakash Associates"
+https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ucJiARssX6b6ZdAZ0npKOJ/iPhone-supply-chain-bites-back-at-Apple.html,"Apple Inc. is responsible for the health or mortal sickness of the cottage industry of companies that make parts for iPhones or assemble them. It turns out Apple can also be hurt by the interconnected supply chain. On tap starting this fall will be a shift from two new versions of the iPhone to three. The two expected in Apple’s typical September launch window will be updated versions of the iPhone 7 and its larger-screen sibling, the iPhone 7 Plus.The big deal for this year—the 10th anniversary of the iPhone—is a drastically different new phone with a more vibrant type of screen and extra real estate, thanks to slimmer frames around the edges. Wall Street has already grown excited that this reimagined iPhone will set off a rush of people splurging for a cool new iPhone with a big ticket price.Oh, but wait. Literally.The cool new iPhone may not be on sale in September because of hiccups in obtaining enough key components, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday. The most visible is a different type of screen—known as organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display—which allows for a thinner, sharper-looking screens without hogging too much battery life. It gives Apple the technology it needs to make a phone that is essentially all screen.Apple, at least initially, will be depending solely on the leading maker of OLED displays, Samsung Display Co. You know who already has a new smartphone with the same type of screen? That would be Samsung Electronics Ltd.Yes. Samsung is one of Apple’s most important suppliers and one of its most bitter rivals. Much has been written about the peril of suppliers relying on Apple for their livelihood. Well, there’s also a risk to Apple from depending on its suppliers.Samsung may not be doing this deliberately, but the smartphone-making part of Samsung apparently has a sufficient supply of OLED screens. Those parts are already rolling off factory assembly lines as the screens for Samsung’s new S8 line of smartphones which compete with the iPhone. The enemy-and-friend relationship between Apple and Samsung has been evident for years. Apple worked hard to wean itself off Samsung computer chips for its iPhones and iPads. Apple sued Samsung for copying key elements of the iPhone even as Apple continued to buy parts from Samsung.If the OLED iPhone model goes on sale in October or November, it won’t be a disaster for Apple. The company is no stranger to muddling through shortages of important iPhone components, and Apple CEO Tim Cook is a wizard of supply-chain management.But the experience is a salient reminder that in the smartphone industry, no company is an island. Not even Apple.",It turns out Apple can also be hurt by the interconnected supply chain,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 01 56 AM IST",iPhone supply chain bites back at Apple
+https://www.livemint.com/Industry/fOLS706CICkuZBOlh6OBRO/Missiles-hitting-producer-of-004-of-global-oil-rocks-crude.html,"Singapore: While Syria makes only 0.04% of global petroleum supplies—less than Cuba, New Zealand or Pakistan—it calls one of the world’s biggest producing regions its neighbourhood.The nation borders Iraq, the second-biggest member in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, while other producing giants such as Saudi Arabia and Iran lie just beyond. The Turkish port of Ceyhan, from where shipments including those from Kurdistan are exported, is also close. Apart from its proximity to the Middle East nations, the ongoing conflict in Syria involves Russia and the US, two other major crude producers.Global oil prices jumped more than 2% on Friday on news the US launched a cruise missile attack against the nation, two days after Bashar al-Assad’s regime used poison gas to kill scores of civilians. The task of military planners was made riskier by the presence of Russian forces in Syria who support Assad’s regime in its battle against rebel groups, which include Islamic State and al-Qaeda fighters but also some backed by the US.“Given that two big producers—the US and Russia—are involved, potentially on opposite sides, geopolitical risk has certainly increased and this is getting reflected in prices,” said Tushar Tarun Bansal, director at industry consultant Ivy Global Energy. “If, after the initial strikes, there is no further action by the US, prices will slip back to where they were prior to the strike.”Syria produced about 35,000 barrels a day of oil and some other petroleum liquids in 2016, making it the 66th biggest producer, according to the US Energy Information Administration. While output averaged 400,000 barrels a day between 2008 and 2010, the combined disruptions from military conflict and economic sanctions on the nation have led to declines, the Energy Department’s statistical arm said on its website.Brent, the benchmark grade for more than half the world’s crude, gained as much as 2.2% to $56.08 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange on Friday. West Texas Intermediate futures, the US marker, advanced as much as 2.4% to $52.94 on the New York Mercantile Exchange and were at $52.30 at 2:32pm Singapore time.The gains may be short-lived, with factors such as US inventory and production levels as well as whether Opec’s production cuts with its partners will be extended influencing prices more in coming days, according to Ivy Global’s Bansal.“As long as the military action in Syria is well-contained (not spreading into Iraq), and Syria is no longer a significant oil producer, any big spikes in oil prices could prove temporary,” Gordon Kwan, a Hong-Kong based analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc., said in an emailed note Friday.Oil has struggled to extend a rally beyond $51 a barrel in the past week as concerns over record US inventories and rising American production countered optimism Opec’s production cuts will ease a global glut.“Opec is the wildcard, and the market is currently pricing an extension of the cuts,” said Ivy Global’s Bansal. “So, although it looks unlikely at this stage, in case Opec decides to not extend the cuts, we could see some severe price response.” Bloomberg","Apart from its proximity to the Middle East nations, the ongoing conflict in Syria involves Russia and the US, two other major crude producers","Fri, Apr 07 2017. 02 15 PM IST",Missiles hitting producer of 0.04% of global oil rocks crude
+https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Sw4fxspnqlZfBIXbo5p2DN/Heavy-capital-expenditure-by-major-airports-unlikely-to-impa.html,"Mumbai: Airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru which are operating near full capacity and catering to nearly 55% of India’s air traffic will need to spend heavily on expansion through 2021, Crisil Ratings said. However, despite the expansion, their credit quality will remain healthy because of the strength of their business model backed by robust traffic growth and predictable cash flows under a regulated tariff framework, it said in a report. The agency estimates the four airports to invest a cumulative Rs27,000 crore over the next four years till 2021.Air passenger traffic in India grew 20% in fiscal 2017, sharply higher than the 9% average seen since 2011. Bengaluru and Hyderabad airports have clocked even faster growth rates of over 24%. Rising private consumption and healthy economic growth would continue to provide tailwind to traffic growth at airports, the rating agency said.Owing to surging footfalls and high capacity utilization of over 90%, the four airports would need to invest Rs27,000 crore for expansion, said Gurpreet Chhatwal, president, Crisil Ratings. “Yet, their credit quality will not suffer because of low implementation risk – such expansions are brownfield and modular in nature – and conducive tariff regulation,” he said.Tariffs such as passenger user fee levied by airports is calculated in blocks of five years (called ‘control periods’) based on a fixed return on capex and base traffic growth assumption. This not only compensates for the risks taken, but also provides for adjustment in user fee on account of any large variation in traffic, and/or capex plan in a control period. Regulations also have had a balanced approach. For instance, a ‘hybrid-till’ mechanism encourages airport developers to increase their non-aeronautical revenues through retail, advertising, and parking. At the same time, it also benefits passengers because the passenger user fee is subsidized by a portion of non-aeronautical revenue.As traffic increases rapidly, aeronautical revenue streams from passenger user fees and landing and parking charges would also increase in the ongoing control period. “While aeronautical revenues may moderate in the next control period due to adjustment in passenger user fee, increasing footfalls can offset this through higher non-aeronautical revenue; so it’s unlikely to curb the earnings’ momentum of these airports. The contribution from non-aeronautical revenue is expected to increase to 50% over the next four years from 35% now,” said Manish Gupta, director, Crisil Ratings.","Crisil Ratings estimates the four major airports to invest a cumulative Rs27,000 crore over the next four years till 2021","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 12 47 AM IST",Heavy capital expenditure by major airports unlikely to impact credit quality: Crisil
+https://www.livemint.com/Industry/70buqt8SpzkuJEctv5hqfK/ONGC-sees-its-gas-output-hitting-5year-high-in-201718.html,"Mumbai: India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp. expects its natural gas production to reach a 5-year high in the current fiscal year following the start in coming weeks of a long-delayed project in the Arabian Sea, two senior company executives said.State-owned ONGC, which accounts for about two-thirds of India’s total natural gas production, is likely to produce close to 25 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas in fiscal 2018, the executives told Reuters.The forecast compares with 23.5 bcm in the fiscal year to end March 2017, one of the executives said, representing expected growth of about 6%. The two asked not to be named as the figures have not been released by the company.Higher output from India’s top producer would help the country meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s target of reducing hydrocarbon imports by 10% by 2022. India currently imports 70-75% of its energy needs. While gas makes up only 8% of the total energy consumed, almost 40% of it is imported.India prices its gas almost 60% below imported natural gas, so more cheap domestic gas could also bring down the cost of running stranded power plants and ailing steel mills that account for the biggest chunk of India’s soured loans.“The Daman project is back on track ... The gas from the phase I of Daman will be out by April end or first week of May,” ONGC’s director - offshore, T.K. Sengupta, told media on Tuesday.The project should contribute almost 2 to 3 million metric standard cubic metres per day (mmscmd) of gas from May onward, he said.“ONGC is facing a natural decline of output from its fields so the net impact of additional production is not very high. Having said that, I think ONGC is on track to consistently report increases in production in the coming years,” said Dhaval Joshi, analyst with brokerage Emkay Global Financial Services.ONGC is banking on the Daman offshore project to increase its natural gas output, which has been largely stagnant over the past decade. The project hit delays last year after its contractor, Singapore-based Swiber Holdings, ran into financial difficulties.“We had handed over the Phase 1 work for the project to the sub-contractors who are now completing it for us. The project is eight months delayed,” Sengupta said earlier this week.Phase 2 will be completed by May 2018 when it will add another 3 mmscmd to the company’s production. It will eventually be ramped up to 8 mmscmd by 2020, he said. Reuters","ONGC, which accounts for about two-thirds of India’s total natural gas production, is likely to produce close to 25 billion cubic metres of gas in 2017-18","Fri, Apr 07 2017. 12 47 PM IST",ONGC sees its gas output hitting 5-year high in 2017-18
+https://www.livemint.com/Industry/XSpzlgEkQgFRvu15JlavSM/Govt-planning-more-refineries-higher-LNG-use-Dharmendra-Pr.html,"
New Delhi: India will build a new 9 million tonne refinery in Rajasthan, auction more fields with oil and gas discoveries and has started talks with Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Saudi Aramco) for investments in India as part of efforts to improve energy security, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said.Addressing the global natural resources conclave organised by Network18 and industry chamber Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Pradhan assured industry executives that the government will not interfere in the marketing and pricing freedom of companies under the new licensing regime as the priority is to cut down import dependence in hydrocarbons by 10 percentage points by 2022. At present, 70-75% of the oil requirement is met through imports. The idea is to enhance the area under exploration as well as the capacity for refining crude, both domestic and imported.Saudi Aramco is being consulted for participation in a 60 million tonne mega refinery planned in Maharashtra. The proposed $30 billion project is being executed as a joint venture by India’s largest refiner Indian Oil Corp., Bharat Petroleum Corp. and Hindustan Petroleum Corp.For the new 9 million tonne refinery in Rajasthan, Hindustan Petroleum Corp. will partner with the state government under terms which are beneficial for both. Financial assessment of the project is over, explained Pradhan. India, which currently consumes 185 million tonnes of petroleum products on an annual basis, wants to augment supply of auto fuel, liquified petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking and petrochemicals for various downstream industries. State-owned fuel retailers increased the number of LPG connections in the coutnry from 140 million in 2014 to 200 million now. Vedanta Resources chairman Anil Agarwal, who was present on the occasion, said group company Cairn India Ltd, which is producing oil from Rajasthan, was working towards doubling its output. “We are working on augmenting output to 50% of the country’s total production,” Agarwal said, adding the group will bid for oil and gas fields with discoveries when auction is held.Pradhan said that simultaneously, the country’s fuel mix is being expanded with an emphasis on gas. The oil, power and railway ministries are working on importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) for long haul rail transportation, he said.India wants to add more sources of fuel supply as demand is projected to jump significantly. According to the International Energy Agency’s India Energy Outlook 2015, the country is set to contribute more than any other country to the rise in global energy demand over the next 25 years.The report said that India needs more than Rs9 trillion ($140 billion) in energy investment per year to 2040.","India will build a new 9 million tonne refinery in Rajasthan, auction more fields with oil and gas discoveries, says Dharmendra Pradhan","Fri, Apr 07 2017. 02 08 AM IST","Govt planning more refineries, higher LNG use: Dharmendra Pradhan" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/yWPo2ZUyvn4hZPmQhtORoM/Renewables-surpass-other-energy-sources-in-capacity-addition.html,"New Delhi: Capacity addition from renewable energy sources surpassed conventional sources for the first time in financial year 2017 as India added 12.5 gigawatt (GW) of renewable energy capacity compared to 10.2GW from conventional sources of fuel.“India added 12.5GW of renewable energy capacity during financial year 2017, surpassing capacity addition from conventional sources of fuel estimated at 10.2GW, in sync with global trends,” said a report by Elara Capital, which was released on Wednesday. Of the 10.2GW of capacity addition from conventional energy, 74% came from thermal, while the rest came from hydro and nuclear power projects. In financial year 2016, capacity addition from renewable energy was about 6.9GW, and from conventional sources about 23.3GW. ALSO READ : Railways could draw 25% of electric power through renewables: studyThe report is based on data from the Union power ministry and the ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE).The analysis said it signals a clear shift to renewable energy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious renewable energy target for India.Under the Paris Climate Agreement, the Central government has committed to install 175GW of renewable power by 2022 of which 100GW will be from solar power and 60GW from wind power. India had also promised to have about 40% of its power from renewable sources by 2030. India’s total installed capacity of power stations is about 315.4GW, according to government data. Of that, about 50GW is from renewable energy.The analysis highlighted that within renewable energy sources, solar exceeded wind for the first time.“During financial year 2017, solar capacity addition stood at 6.8GW... This is 26% higher than wind addition of 5.4GW,” it said. ALSO READ : Power Grid eyes electric vehicle playHowever, the analysis clarified that “in terms of targets, wind shines” and “solar disappoints”.“Wind addition of 5.4GW is well above industry estimates, 35% above MNRE target (of 4GW). But, solar addition was 43% below target of 12GW (7GW utility, 5GW rooftop). A significant part of the under-achievement was in solar rooftop additions,” the report added. India added a record 5,400 megawatts (MW) of wind power in 2016-17, exceeding its 4,000MW target.The report also stressed that the month of March signalled a clear shift to renewable energy. India added 7GW of renewable capacity in March compared to 4GW from conventional sources.",India added 12.5 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity compared to 10.2 gigawatt from conventional sources of fuel in financial year 2017 ,"Fri, Apr 07 2017. 02 09 AM IST",Renewables surpass other energy sources in capacity addition in FY17 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/K0WPSj0piCnJZNVkw3JWrL/The-truth-behind-Indias-electricity-exporter-status.html,"The ministry of power last week claimed that India had become an electricity exporter for the first time.“As per Central Electricity Authority (CEA), the designated authority of government of India for cross border trade of electricity, first time India has turned around from a net importer of electricity to net exporter of electricity,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that upcoming cross-border transmission lines with Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar will continue to increase sales.India exported around 5798 million units of electricity to Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar, which is 213 million units more than the import of 5,585 million units from Bhutan during the April-February period in fiscal year 2016-17. Exports to Nepal and Bangladesh increased 2.5 and 2.8 times, respectively, in the last three years.Also Read: India becomes net exporter of power for the first timeDoes India’s status as an electricity exporter mean that it has started producing surplus electricity? The reality is a large number of India’s households are still living without electricity. Available government data shows there is a discrepancy in the percentage of villages electrified as against the share of rural households electrified. The former set of figures is often cited to portray India’s electrification challenge as an already accomplished one.What explains the wide gap between the share of electrified households and villages? According to the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana website, a village is deemed electrified if basic infrastructure such as distribution transformer and distribution lines are provided in the inhabited locality as well as the Dalit Basti hamlet (where it exists), and electricity is provided in public places like schools, panchayat office and health centres. Here’s another interesting thing. For a village to be considered electrified, at least 10% of total households have to be electrified. But the actual supply of electricity is not mentioned in the definition of electrification.Such a definition means that village electrification numbers have little bearing on the supply of electricity in reality. Data from 2011 census shows that almost one-third of the households in the country were dependent on kerosene as a source of lighting, with the situation being worse for rural households. This is even as over 84% of villages had been electrified in 2011-12, as per data with the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).International comparison also underlines the fact that Indians consume much less electricity in comparison to their peers. The ratio of domestic and world electricity consumption (per capita) was broadly similar in India and China in 1990. Latest data shows that China has surpassed the global average in terms of power consumption, whereas India is still stuck at its pre-reform relative electricity consumption levels. In 1990, India reported 273 kilowatt hour (kWh) of electric power consumption, as against 511 kWh in China and 2,120 kWh in the world. In 2013, these figures were 765 kWh, 3762 kWh and 3104 kWh, respectively, as per World Bank data.India’s efforts to sell electricity to its eastern neighbours might bring strategic and diplomatic benefits and also open new frontiers for exploring electricity generation opportunities in the region. Such developments, however, should not make us oblivious to the fact that a large majority of Indians are still living in darkness in villages which have been declared electrified on paper.",India’s per capita electricity consumption is one-fifth of the global average,"Thu, Apr 06 2017. 05 55 PM IST",The truth behind India’s electricity exporter status +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/GKkIYqLkjEACzcLtGodAOP/Vedanta-firms-up-clean-energy-plans-for-India.html,"
Vedanta Resources Plc is firming up its clean energy plans for India, encouraged by the opportunities offered by the country’s growing green economy. As part of the strategy, the firm is looking at developing battery storage solutions, Ajay Kumar Dixit, chief executive officer, alumina and power business, Vedanta Ltd said on the sidelines of a conference on natural resources organised by Network 18 and the Confederation of Indian Industry. Vedanta Ltd, formerly known as Sesa Goa Ltd, is an Indian mining unit of London-based Vedanta Resources. Such storage solutions would help with grid balancing, besides complementing the government’s push for solar power, which is generated during the day and can be stored in batteries to be made available at night. India plans to generate 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 100GW is to come from solar projects. Dixit said the approach is to look at products from its mining operations to develop effective battery solutions.“Our innovation group is looking at it,” he said.Vedanta Resources’ business interests in India include oil and gas, power, iron ore, zinc, copper and aluminium production.Also, Vedanta Resources, which owns Cairn India Ltd, plans to set up solar power parks at its mining sites given the large tracts of land available for the purpose. Experts say India is not doing enough on developing storage solutions in the country.“China is spurring a huge domestic supply ecosystem for lithium-ion based batteries through demand creation and incentives,” consulting firm Bridge to India wrote in a 14 March note.“Unless India moves quickly and decisively, it runs a very real risk of missing the bus on domestic manufacturing for a very vital technology of future,” the note added.Other firms looking at developing battery storage solutions include Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd.In an 5 March interview, Vedanta Resources chairman Anil Agarwal said the firm will consider a “strategic investment” in the solar sector.“There has been a shift in the solar business. It used to be Rs6 per unit and now it has come down to below Rs2 per unit. That is definitely an advantage. So, we are studying it very seriously and will take the clean energy plans forward,” Agarwal said.India’s solar power sector in February witnessed a record low-winning bid of Rs2.97 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to build a 750 megawatt (MW) plant at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh. The Rewa bid translates to 5 cents per kWh and ranks India at the sixth position globally in terms of the lowest tariff bid awarded. This was due to payment guarantee, availability and price of land, and transmission modalities. With effective levelized tariff—the value financially equivalent to different annual tariffs over the 25 year period of the power purchase agreement—of around Rs3.30 per unit at Rewa, the solar power has become a competitive energy source vis-à-vis coal-fuelled conventional source of electricity due to the lower cost of raising finances, and solar module prices plunging. This assumes importance given that India receives solar radiation of 5 to 7 kWh per sq. m for 300-330 days in a year.Vedanta Resources also plans to spend $10 billion over the next three years across its businesses, of which $8 billion is earmarked for Indian operations.","As part of its renewable energy strategy, Vedanta Resources is looking at developing battery storage solutions in India","Fri, Apr 07 2017. 02 07 AM IST",Vedanta firms up clean energy plans for India +https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/udhEcuzkXPpVt3qA0uOo4M/Kshama-Fernandes-Finding-credit-for-the-worthy.html,"
Growing up in a coastal village in Goa can indelibly imprint the choices one makes. This is evident immediately; Kshama Fernandes, managing director and chief executive officer of non-banking financial company IFMR Capital, picks the Varqui Crab—layers of crab meat and tandoori shrimp in filo pastry—as an hors d’oeuvre for our lunch. We are at Varq, the Indian restaurant with its eclectic and often surprising preparations of familiar food, at the Taj Mahal Hotel on Delhi’s Mansingh Road. The seafood, she declares, is a “much fancier version” of the fare that was dished out to her during a childhood spent in Cansaulim in South Goa. “I would wake up in the morning, go for a run on the beach, and sometimes chat with the fisherfolk as they pulled in their morning catch—it seemed like a very beautiful world to me back then,” says Fernandes, 48. Her life is now far removed from the pastoral setting of a Goan village. But her work, which involves connecting non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and microfinance institutions (MFIs), also known as originators, to last-mile borrowers, who are excluded from the purview of mainstream finance, takes her back to the realm of those who live on the fringes of formal systems—the disenfranchised. “I’m familiar with the trenches,” she admits, “and the last 10 years or so of my journey at IFMR Capital have been about building a financial institution that is a bridge between mainstream capital markets and the excluded sectors.” IFMR Capital, which works in sectors like micro-finance, housing finance, small business loan finance and commercial vehicle finance, is an articulation of the idealism and business acumen of people like Bindu Ananth and Nachiket Mor, who left ICICI Bank to set up the IFMR Trust in 2007 in Chennai. In 2008, when IFMR Capital was set up as an institution that would link small financial companies that lent to the underserved, to mainstream markets, Fernandes, who was professor and head of finance at the Goa Institute of Management, joined it as the chief risk officer. “Those were the early days. IFMR Capital was built on the belief that at the grass roots there are many borrowers and enterprises worthy of credit. I often say that poor borrowers do not necessarily mean poor credit, but are classified as that, because we don’t know how to evaluate them. And in some sense I feel that if there isn’t much happening in the financial inclusion space, it’s because we haven’t found the ways to do it,” she says. Soup arrives at the table; Fernandes, predictably, has opted for the Lobster Rassa, a hearty shellfish broth. She speaks of Goa yet again, as her fount of perennial optimism in a life of constant movement and flux: “My transition from academia to risk officer and then from risk officer to CEO has been fascinating. Working as an academic and then translating that knowledge into a lot of what we do today came very naturally to me,” she says, adding, “What Goa gave me was the positivity, the innocence and the ability to have a wide-eyed look at life. Cynicism would not have helped.” It is that “wide-eyed” approach to capital markets that Fernandes also brought to her 2016 TEDxLeiden address in the Netherlands, interspersing it with stories of grit and resilience. There is, for instance, Anandi, who lives in a village in Odisha, and was denied a loan by a bank in the city—she had no bank account, no income statement and no credit record because nobody had ever lent to her. She was finally given a loan of Rs50,000 in 2012. She used the money to lease a pond outside her hut and breed fish. She sold the fish and repaid the loan six months later. She availed a second loan, leased two ponds, and transformed from a helpless housewife to an organic aquaculturalist.
Fernandes’ talk also mentioned other borrowers like Paramesan Gowda, a 48-year-old who runs a sandwich stall outside the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). Gowda too had no means to prove his creditworthiness, so before Essel Finance Business Loans, an NBFC, offered him a loan, the credit officer stood next to him for two days in a row and counted the number of sandwiches he delivered each day to all 24 floors of the BSE building. Based on this calculation, a balance sheet and profit and loss statement were created, and a two-year loan worth Rs30 lakh was sanctioned. He repaid the loan in 13 months. “Anandi and Paramesan are examples of what timely finance can do—it can give a person control over his or her life,” says Fernandes, as the main course arrives. We are having the pan-seared sea bass in a mango and coconut curry, with hints of basil and pine nuts. Her conversation veers to the past again. “Back then, there were no tarred roads in Cansaulim. Village roads led to the beach. The big trucks that would arrive to collect the fish and take it to the market couldn’t drive up to the beach. So the fisherfolk would carry baskets of fish to the trucks. As children, we would stand on the path from the beach to the trucks, and the fisherfolk would throw some fish in our direction,” she recalls. The memory makes her smile, but she is quick to swerve to the here and now, to IFMR Capital: “We’ve done Rs40,000 crore of financing since inception. That’s not a small number for the sectors we work with.” The selection of originators, or high-quality local institutions that empathize with the financial needs of people like Anandi and Gowda who find it hard to access traditional capital markets, is key to building a sustainable ecosystem of inclusion. Fernandes elaborates upon the guidelines that IFMR Capital adheres to when picking an originator. “If I were a capital market investor and wanted to invest in these originators, what are the things I would look at,” she asks rhetorically. She explains that good governance, transparency and robust management information systems (MIS) are key to forging an alliance with an originator. “Having high-quality auditors is also important, so one can make sure that the company is following best practices as far as reporting is concerned. A strong second line of command—ensuring that the company has more than one visionary to execute strategies—is also vital. Maintaining very good operating standards and risk management are crucial as well.” She says the financial feasibility of the company isn’t the only evidence of its worthiness. “If the guidelines I have discussed are met, eventually the financials add up,” she says, adding, “When one builds a financial institution, then one is building a lot of credibility—that is if one wants to be a financial institution that’s going to be around for a very long time.”
IFMR Capital’s efforts have enabled it to lend to around 110 originators and serve around 24 million end borrowers, in a market worth Rs14 trillion. It has also invented new structures such as multi-originator securitization (Mosec)—a pioneering product, not just in India but also in international markets, which brings together small originators to form a critical mass to draw an investor. Says Fernandes: “When we launched the multi-originator securitization in around 2009-10, we were dealing with a class of very small to mid-sized originators. But we knew that we could never take them to the capital markets because they were too small. A mutual fund may not be interested in a Rs1 crore deal, and won’t understand what a microfinance originator is, what a small business originator is, what an affordable housing finance originator is. So we did a few things. We put many small originators together to form a large portfolio, say Rs100 crore—something we could take to a capital markets investor.” It comes as no surprise that Fernandes won Accion’s Edward W Claugus Award in October, for her exceptional work in creating a financial ecosystem for the underserved. Accion is a global non-profit that has pioneered financial inclusion.
As the restaurant’s signature dessert—apple kheer—is placed before us (with additional helpings of jalebis wedged in a blob of rabri, and malpua stuffed with shredded carrot), Fernandes remarks that indulging in the sweets will mean “an extra hour at the gym”. She is as committed to fitness as she is to financial inclusion. And she constantly seeks the electrifying adventures of the grand outdoors. Last year, despite a tail-bone fracture that made it impossible for her to sit down, she embarked upon an almost 10-hour jeep ride in the mountains, from Shimla to the base camp at a small village called Janglik, for the trek across Buran Pass. She undertook a vertical descent from an altitude of 15,000ft across an ice wall and rock face, using rope, axe and microspikes. “If I didn’t climb mountains and cross oceans, I wouldn’t be as enthusiastic about my work as I am now,” she says, spooning up her dessert. She proves that prudent risk-taking can spur one towards the unexplored, both indoors as well as outdoors.","The MD and CEO of IFMR Capital on the challenges of financial inclusion, her childhood memories of a Goan village, and her love for adventure","Fri, Mar 31 2017. 04 31 PM IST",Kshama Fernandes: Finding credit for the worthy +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/K8HyoWwGMf9VKzxWTBtf6I/Reckitt-cuts-CEO-Rakesh-Kapoors-pay-by-39-after-safety-sca.html,"London: British consumer goods maker Reckitt Benckiser Group cut chief executive Rakesh Kapoor’s 2016 pay by 39%, as it seeks to shore up investor confidence following a safety scandal in South Korea that hurt its performance.The maker of Durex condoms and Scholl footcare products said Kapoor, Britain’s third highest-paid CEO in 2015, would not receive an annual bonus for 2016, and that the share awards for his long-term incentive plan would be reduced by half.As a result, Kapoor will be paid £14 million ($17 million) for 2016, down from £23 million in 2015.The company also said it would strip out the impact of earnings growth from the impending takeover of Mead Johnson from calculations for Kapoor’s incentive plan for 2017.Reckitt Benckiser has been grappling with the fallout from a scandal related to a product safety issue that caused dozens of deadly lung injuries in South Korea. The South Korean government said in 2015 that 92 people were believed to have died from causes related to humidifier sterilizer products sold by several companies including Reckitt.In January, the former head of Reckitt’s business there was sentenced to seven years in prison. Reuters",Reckitt Benckiser cuts CEO Rakesh Kapoor’s 2016 pay as it seeks to shore up investor confidence following a safety scandal in South Korea that hurt its performance,"Fri, Mar 31 2017. 03 05 PM IST",Reckitt cuts CEO Rakesh Kapoor’s pay by 39% after safety scandal +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/270pl2PMq9Y9lbaPhLWn5M/Proportion-of-women-directors-up-180-but-gender-diversity.html,"Mumbai: Despite government attempts to increase gender diversity in companies, number of women representation in boards is not very encouraging. According to a KPMG survey, proportion of women directors in NSE listed companies jumped 180% between 2013-2016 after the Companies Act, 2013. But there is very little to cheer about this hike, as the jump only translates to a 13.7% representation of women in 2016 from a meagre 4.9% in 2013.The Companies Act, 2013 and guidelines issued by Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) made it mandatory for all listed companies to have at least one woman on their boards—either as an executive or a non-executive director—before April 1, 2015.However, findings of the KPMG survey are not very reassuring. KPMG in India’s Board Leadership Centre and Women Corporate Directors India (WCD) conducted a survey in 2016 to assess the progress and challenges. The survey results showed that many companies are still lacking in gender diversity and there needs to be a change of mindset for it. “In order to achieve greater diversity there needs to be a change of mind sets, voluntary diversity targets, alignment between board composition and strategy, and looking beyond personal networks for director appointments,” it said.Also Read| Half of women on boards like quotas but male colleagues say no: reportThe worrisome factor is that the survey respondents feel the need to comply with the regulation has become a primary driver of gender diversity and it is stronger than the belief that it adds value or creates the brand image of a progressive organisation.Over 50% of the respondents indicate that companies are hiring women directors primarily to comply with the regulatory mandate. As much as 70% of the survey respondents indicate that the mandate has opened up board-level opportunities for women that were previously not considered for this role. On the flip side, 25% of the respondents indicate that it has only opened up opportunities for candidates in the promoter’s network.“Respondents largely agree that women improve board dynamics by creating a positive environment (68%) and are better at providing inputs and feedback in a constructive manner (51%)—traits that help in decision making at the board level. However, men and women respondents differ in their opinions on the other traits/advantages that women bring to the table,” KPMG survey said.As of 31 March 2016, 1,375 BSE-listed companies (of the total of 5,541 companies) and 191 NSE-listed companies (of the total 1,759 companies) were non-compliant with the regulations and fined by the respective stock exchanges.According to the survey, few factors preventing companies from appointing more women are listed as inadequate statutory quotas for fostering gender diversity, lack of adequate number of qualifies women to hold board positions, traditional stereotypes and lack of women friendly policies.However, there are few strong reasons for companies to have higher female representation. Research indicates that companies with gender balanced boards outperform companies with male dominated boards on various financial parameters.Also read| Women directors support quotas for board diversityA significant majority (68 %) of the respondents agree that women create a positive environment within the boardroom improving its culture and dynamics. While nearly half of the male respondents agree that women bring in a comparatively balanced view of risks as there is little agreement between them on other traits that women bring to the table.When it comes to parity in remuneration, the survey said compensation of board members are gender neutral, and both men and women receive the same package. However, a recent study reveals that the average compensation of women executive directors at 163 NSE listed companies is 20% less than their male counterparts. According to the study, this could be because more male executive directors are in revenue-generating roles while female directors are usually in support roles such as communication, corporate social responsibility, etc.“Male directors could also be more tenured than their female counterparts. Gender diversity was not as important for companies, as it is now, a decade ago. When women from this pool become executive directors, there might be some disparities in compensation,” it said.Recently, 65 public sector undertakings (PSUs) were found to be still lagging behind in appointing at least one woman director and it has come to that government has asked Registrars of Companies (RoC) to take up the matter with the ministries concerned and initiate penal action against the private listed firms in default.",KPMG survey results showed that many companies are still lacking in gender diversity and there needs to be a change of mindset for it,"Thu, Mar 30 2017. 04 27 PM IST","Proportion of women directors up 180%, but gender diversity lags in India: Survey" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sNHwHOr7uVtD0ZLEzO3C2K/EmTech-India-Unlocking-value-from-Big-Data.html,"
New Delhi: Companies can derive value from big data by effectively managing customer relationships and safeguarding their trust, said John Rose, senior partner and managing director, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), New York, at EmTech India 2017, a conference on emerging technologies organized by Mint and MIT Technology Review in New Delhi on 9-10 March.
Addressing the event, Rose said, “Half or more customers do not trust the companies or entities they bank or shop with, in the context of their personal data.”
Rose, who is the former global leader of technology, media and telecommunications practice at BCG and became a BCG Fellow in 2014, has been working on helping companies foster trust among their consumers in order to gain access to—and unlock value from—the ever-widening stream of complex, fast-moving Big Data that is generated online.
His presentation at EmTech focused on how customer trust matters in Big Data and how the misuse or perceived misuse of customer data can lead to financial and reputational damage for brands.
“Trust is not a generational issue; it is important for consumers of all ages,” said Rose.
According to a study he cited, the lack of alignment between companies and consumers about data privacy has real consequences. When consumers perceive data misuse—when they are unpleasantly surprised by the collection or new use of personal data—they either reduce their spending drastically or boycott a company’s products and services altogether, the study noted.
“There is around 33% drop in spending during the first year when US consumers perceive a data misuse. Out of the 33% customers, 18% totally stop spending whereas the remaining 15% reduce spending,” he cited from his findings.
Explaining the consumers’ perspective on privacy and data usage, Rose said, “Consumers take a wider and much less legalistic approach to these issues.”
“They want to be informed about how companies gather and safeguard data about them, and they want to understand the different ways in which companies use personal data. Additionally, they want that information delivered in clear language,” she added.","Companies can derive value from big data by effectively managing customer relationships and safeguarding their trust, says John Rose of the BCG","Thu, Mar 30 2017. 03 42 AM IST",EmTech India: Unlocking value from Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/U97DhLUf5DJb4yjsTrk6uO/Digital-transformation-is-about-creating-business-models-Ja.html,"
New Delhi: For the Mahindra Group, the key to digital transformation lies in the use of technology in moving away from legacy models to create new ones.“We have come a long way from the traditional legacy model of Mahindra or that of any established firm... Our current focus is directed towards expanding businesses into rural areas,” said Jaspreet Bindra, senior vice-president, digital transformation, Mahindra Group. Speaking at EmTech India 2017, the Mint-MIT Technology Review Conference on technology innovations, Bindra said digital transformation is not just about creating an app or a website but about creating business models and customer experiences. He further stressed on effective use of technology wherever it is appropriate to foster innovation. “We have used blockchain— one of the newest technologies—in our financial services sector and it has impacted our businesses positively,” Bindra added.As a $17-billion conglomerate with businesses in various sectors and geographies, he said it is the group’s belief that as each sector evolves due to innovation, the impact is felt on all businesses associated with it.Citing an example, he said there is a lot of innovation happening in the agriculture sector and a lot of data about weather conditions and crop patterns gets generated and captured by technology systems. “Therefore, how we target farmers is also changing in tune with the shifts in technology,” he added.The Mahindra Group is incubating start-ups in areas such as financial technology to facilitate digital transformation.","Speaking at EmTech India 2017, Jaspreet Bindra of Mahindra Group says group’s current focus is directed towards expanding businesses into rural areas ","Thu, Mar 30 2017. 03 48 AM IST",Digital transformation is about creating business models: Jaspreet Bindra +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/CSw4WB50mM1IOJyYZW9TRK/Jeff-Bezos-rises-to-become-worlds-second-richest-with-Amazo.html,"London: Jeff Bezos has leapt past Amancio Ortega and Warren Buffett to become the world’s second-richest person.Bezos, 53, added $1.5 billion to his fortune as Amazon.com Inc. rose $18.32 on Wednesday, the day after the e-commerce giant said it plans to buy Dubai-based online retailer Souq.com. Bezos has a net worth of $75.6 billion on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, $700 million more than Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s Buffett and $1.3 billion above Ortega, the founder of Inditex S.A. and Europe’s richest person.Amazon’s founder has added $10.2 billion this year to his wealth and $7 billion since the global equities rally began following the election of Donald Trump as US president on 8 Novemeber. The rise is the third biggest on the Bloomberg index in 2017, after Chinese parcel-delivery billionaire Wang Wei’s $18.4 billion gain and an $11.4 billion rise for Facebook Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg.Buffett, who’s added $1.7 billion in 2017, has shed $4.7 billion since his fortune peaked at $79.6 billion on 1 March. Ortega is up $2.1 billion year-to-date. Bezos remains $10.4 billion behind Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the world’s richest person with $86 billion. Bloomberg","Jeff Bezos has leapt past Amancio Ortega and Warren Buffett to become the world’s second-richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index","Thu, Mar 30 2017. 05 29 PM IST",Jeff Bezos becomes world’s second richest person with Amazon share surge +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/MYJhCYVo1SkTKCTiFhR6fJ/Shivinder-and-Malvinder-Singh-look-to-sell-some-assets-but.html,"Mumbai: Brothers Shivinder Singh and Malvinder Singh are serial entrepreneurs known for pulling off one of the best-timed exits in the annals of Indian business. In 2008, they agreed to sell their family firm and India’s largest drugmaker, Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd, to Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo Co. for $4.6 billion—just months before the US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) banned imports at two of its Indian plants. That same year the US Department of Justice launched a probe, eventually resulting in a guilty plea by Ranbaxy and a $500 million fine for selling adulterated drugs. The Singh brothers were not named in the Ranbaxy probe.Now, the timing for the two brothers seems far less opportune. Rising debt has them looking to sell assets, according to people familiar with the matter. But at the same time, the latest turn in a long running legal brawl with Daiichi Sankyo means they can’t change the status of their holdings without first getting permission from the Delhi high court. Any deal agreements could be complicated by the court case, which resumes in New Delhi this week, the people said.In 2012, Daiichi filed a case with an International Court of Arbitration in Singapore accusing the Singhs of concealing and misrepresenting critical information about the US probes into Ranbaxy. In 2015, after years of regulatory scrutiny, Daiichi Sankyo sold its controlling stake in Ranbaxy to Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd for $4.1 billion. Last year the Singapore tribunal awarded Daiichi about $500 million in damages and interest, Daiichi said in a statement at the time.For their part, the Singhs say they were transparent about Ranbaxy’s regulatory problems at the time of the sale and are appealing the Singapore tribunal’s ruling, according to a spokesman. At the same time, they are also opposing Daiichi’s plea for enforcement of the award in the Delhi High Court.Daiichi Sankyo would not comment on pending or ongoing litigation, William Henning, a spokesman for the firm, said in an email.Net worthGiven the size of the Singapore tribunal’s award, the Singh brothers could face significant financial impact if they lose the legal battle. Their main holding company RHC Holding Pvt. Ltd reported a net worth of about $1 billion in a 2015 audit available on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs website. The tribunal also named their other listed holding firm, Oscar Investments Ltd, which has a market value of $64 million and in which the Singhs had a 71% holding as of March 2016.RHC had a $1.6 billion debt load after short-term borrowing increased 61% in the fiscal year ended March 2016, according to consolidated financial results available on the same regulatory website. The holding company had a loss of about $79 million that year, the results show.India Ratings and Research, a credit ratings firm, assigns RHC its third highest rating, indicating it’s a borrower with a low degree of risk. But that assessment was predicated on management’s plan to “significantly reduce debt” through restructuring and divestments, after a rise in loans to its subsidiary companies lead to an increase in borrowing, according to a report from last September.Fortis lossesA spokesman for RHC said the company, through its subsidiaries, associates and other group companies has sufficient resources and assets to meet any of its obligations if need be.RHC has not had any losses or seen substantial increases in borrowing, the spokesman said. The consolidated balance sheet does not represent the results of all the firms in the Singhs’ group of companies, though it does include results of Fortis Healthcare Ltd, RHC’s largest holding, and so gives a skewed picture of the Singhs’ finances, the spokesman, said in an email. He noted there has been no change to the company’s credit rating, which remains high.The last two years of losses on RHC’s consolidated balance sheet and the increase in short-term borrowing coincides with two years of losses at Fortis Healthcare, India’s second largest private hospital chain. Standalone results—which leave out Fortis Healthcare and a number of other companies included in the consolidated financial statements—show RHC posted a $6.3 million profit in the 2016 fiscal year, and total debt increased 23% to about $649 million.Any restructuring that occurs at the level of the Singh’s two largest operating companies, Fortis Healthcare and Religare Enterprises Ltd, won’t be impacted by the ongoing proceedings in the Delhi High Court because the court order is only directed at the holding companies, the spokesman said.Private equityIn recent months, the Singhs have entered talks with private equity giants KKR & Co., TPG and Bain Capital, along with Kuala Lumpur-based hospital operator IHH Healthcare Bhd, to explore an investment in Fortis Healthcare, people with knowledge of the matter said.The Singh brothers have also been in discussions to sell a stake in pathology-lab chain SRL Ltd, which is being spun off as a separate listed company, the people said. They are seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore, one of the people said. The brothers’ financial services conglomerate, Religare Enterprises, is separately negotiating the sale of a stake in Religare Health Insurance Co., as well as a controlling interest in small-business lender Religare Finvest Ltd, according to the people.Representatives for Religare Enterprises, Bain, KKR and TPG declined to comment. IHH said it’s “always looking at various value accretive opportunities”, in an emailed statement, declining to comment on any specific transactions. The Singhs’ holding company, RHC, is evaluating various options to maximize value and Fortis Healthcare has recently received board approval to fund raise as much as Rs5,000 crore, the spokesman said.RHC is set up as a financial institution designed to lend money to its subsidiary companies. Its strong credit rating is due to controlling stakes in Fortis Healthcare and Religare Enterprises, but the performances and credit profiles of its dozens of other ventures, ranging from charter flights to information technology to biofuels, are weak, according to India Ratings’ September report.The possible losses RHC could face from debt it has taken on to make equity investments in its group companies has risen to 141% of its own equity in the last two financial years, according to the report.“Beyond a certain number it may become difficult for the group to service all this debt,” said Ananda Bhoumik, chief analytical officer at India Ratings and Research. “It’s imperative that they try to reduce their leverage.”Drug salesRHC’s debt means the Singhs don’t have much choice but to drum up cash by selling off pieces of their best firms, according to Sweta Karia, an analyst who covers Fortis Healthcare’s stock at Batlivala & Karani Securities Private Ltd.Last week, the court demanded the brothers turn over an audited account of their assets to satisfy Daiichi there would be enough to cover the arbitration award should they lose. That document was submitted, but was sealed.“There is no way out but for this deal to go through,” Karia said of potential asset sales by the Singhs. Bloomberg","The latest turn in the legal case involving Daiichi Sankyo’s Ranbaxy buy prevents asset sale by the Singh brothers, Shivinder and Malvinder, to cut mounting debt","Wed, Mar 29 2017. 01 13 PM IST","Shivinder, Malvinder Singh want to sell some assets, but the timing isn’t right" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/BfQ6UjhcUZDEdtklJcqGIN/RollsRoyce-profit-beats-estimates-on-cost-cuts-Airbus-boos.html,"London: Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc’s annual earnings fell less than expected as Europe’s biggest aircraft-engine maker deepened cost cuts and a late production surge at Airbus Group SE boosted revenue.Pretax profit fell 49% to £813 million ($1.02 billion) from £1.4 billion a year earlier, London-based Rolls-Royce said in a statement Tuesday. Analysts had forecast a figure of £685 million, the average of 11 estimates compiled by Bloomberg.Chief executive officer Warren East has eliminated hundreds of office jobs and shuffled senior management in a bid to make Rolls-Royce more responsive to changes such as the oil-price slump, which stifled demand for marine turbines. Earnings got a late boost as full-year deliveries of the Airbus A350, for which it is the sole engine supplier, surged to 49 from just 12 in the first half.“We have made operational progress and performed ahead of our expectations for the year as a whole,” East said in the statement. “While we have made good progress in our cost cutting and efficiency programs, more needs to be done to ensure we drive sustainable margin improvements.”Revenue increased 9% to £15 billion, Rolls said, while cash flow reached £100 million after the company had previously suggested that an outflow of minus £100 million to minus £300 million was likely.The CEO warned soon after taking charge at Rolls in 2015 that 2016 earnings would be hit by a 650 million-pound headwind stemming from the slump at its marine division, slowing regional- and corporate-jet demand, a drop in sales of the original Airbus A330 ahead of the introduction of a re-engined model, and reduced maintenance revenue from older wide-body jets.Rolls-Royce last month agreed to pay £671 million in fines to the US, UK and Brazilian fraud agencies to settle bribery charges. The company said at the time that early indications were that 2016 profit and cash had come in higher than forecast. Bloomberg","Pretax profit fell 49% to £813 million from £1.4 billion a year earlier, Rolls-Royce said in a statement ","Tue, Feb 14 2017. 01 45 PM IST","Rolls-Royce profit beats estimates on cost cuts, Airbus boost" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/WFVVgfB4dE8dRTsdKbZqeN/Trump-poses-biggest-risk-to-emerging-market-capital-flows-B.html,"
US President Donald Trump poses the biggest risk to emerging market capital flows, said Barry Eichengreen, the George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. In town to deliver Exim Bank’s commencement day lecture, Eichengreen said the impact of the Fed raising rates on emerging markets such as India has reduced considerably. Edited excerpts from an interview:
In the past few months, we have seen global risk aversion coming down and a lot of money flowing to emerging markets. What is the big risk to these flows?There is the (US President Donald) Trump risk. Trump can do something that can be disruptive to global trade flows and financial flows. On the trade policy front, he has a lot of freedom to work unilaterally. He doesn’t have to get Congress’s assent to invoke the Terms of Trade Adjustment Act, which is what Nixon used in 1971 to slap a 15% import surcharge. The US has special forces on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. (There) he can invoke the Trading with the Enemy Act, 1917.
Does the Trump risk overshadow everything else? I think the Trump risk definitely overshadows everything else. There could be an electoral surprise in Europe. I would regard that as a low-probability event because of the two-round presidential election in France, because of the fact that there is considerable support for two centrist candidates in Germany. We have learnt from Brexit and from Trump that low-probability events sometimes do happen. I worry less than I did about the economic and financial problems in China.Then there are geopolitical shocks. China is a proud country and it will respond (if Trump imposes import taxes). Then what happens to cooperation between US and China on North Korea? If they are fighting a trade war, can they peacefully coordinate, work on the North Korea problem? If they can’t, what happens to North Korea? That is a frightening prospect. Those are things that keep me awake.
Do you think the global recovery people are talking about is really strong? Is this the right time for the US Fed and other central banks to raise rates?I think it is the right time for the Federal Reserve to raise rates with the US economy growing at potential, with full employment and inflation at target, there is no reason to maintain rates at zero. The argument is different in Japan and Europe where growth has picked up but inflation has not. Those central banks will be slower to taper their quantitative easing, they will be slower to raise interest rates than the Fed.
What risks do these pose to emerging markets?In terms of risks to emerging markets, it really depends what emerging markets you are talking about. I think the risks have been reduced by the fact that the Fed has really learnt from its mistakes in 2013. When Ben Bernanke announced (the taper), markets were surprised. They kind of reacted with shock and that made life in emerging markets very hard for three months. This time, Fed has been announcing in advance what the path is. Turkey is very much No.1 on my list (in terms of negative impact). The politics there are quite turbulent as well.
How relevant is the issue of advanced economy-emerging markets coordination, especially for central banks in the background of capital flight risk?Sometimes, that coordination is critically important. In 2008, when the Federal Reserve extended a $40 billion swap line to Mexico, Brazil and South Korea, it famously didn’t extend it to India. That was an example of cooperation of the US central bank and a few of its friends but was not systematic or universal. To my mind, you not only need central bank coordination, you also need extended IMF facilities because relying on the Fed could mean relying on a whole set of personalities and I think emerging markets will feel safer and more secure if they can rely on the managing director of IMF.","The impact of the US Fed raising rates on emerging markets such as India has reduced considerably, says Barry Eichengreen","Wed, Mar 29 2017. 12 23 AM IST",Trump poses biggest risk to emerging market capital flows: Barry Eichengreen +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/PuY0kVqOYUaJo9gPHTsQUM/Aditya-Birla-Nuvo-Q3-standalone-profit-falls-31.html,"Mumbai: Textiles and financial services conglomerate Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd (ABNL) on Tuesday posted a 30.67% decline in standalone profits after tax year-on-year (y-o-y), as its revenues fell across all business segments, barring financial services.The company’s quarterly revenue fell 15.02% to Rs1,216.76 crore while profit after tax declined to Rs65.59 crore against Rs94.61 crore in the year-ago period. “Pass through of reduction in natural gas prices in the agri business, coupled with lower volumes in the textiles and the insulators businesses,” led to lower revenue y-o-y, the company said in a statement.ABNL’s biggest fall in revenue came from its agri-business (fertilizers, agro-chemicals, seeds) which dipped 18% to Rs565.81 crore year-on-year. “Demonetisation led to temporary liquidity shortage in the trade channel as well as downstream players in the textiles and agri value chain,” the company added in the statement. With the cash crunch leading to lower demands, the Ebitda margins of ABNL’s various subsidies in these businesses fell. Indian Rayon sold lower volumes and its Ebitda fell 18%, while Indo-Gulf Fertilizers and Jay Shree textiles saw a 19% and 74% decline in Ebitda, respectively. There was a small bump in the company’s total revenue worth Rs13.60 crore from the financial services business. This segment was reviewed separately for the first time under the new India AS accounting standards, the company said in a statement. This was the only business whose revenue grew this quarter, by 77% y-o-y. ABNL’s standalone debt fell 44% from the March 2016 quarter from the sale of the company’s 23% stake in Birla Sun Life Insurance, and the realization of a Rs115 crore subsidy in January this year. Its current standalone debt stands at Rs2,190 crore.ABNL also announced it has received approval from the stock exchanges and the Competition Commission of India to merge the company with Grasim Industries, an Aditya Birla group company that has interests in manufacturing of viscose staple fibre, sponge iron, and chemicals. Grasim also owns the subsidiary UltraTech Cement, listed on the BSE.The company is now waiting for permission from the National Company Law Tribunal. “The transaction is expected to be completed by the first half of fiscal 2017-18”, the company said in the statement. This merger was first announced in August last year, along with plans to de-merge and list the financial services business into a separate entity.Shares of ABNL were trading 0.78% higher at Rs1,458.30 at 2:39pm versus the BSE’s benchmark Sensex that was 0.05% lower.","Aditya Birla Nuvo’s biggest fall in revenue came from its agri-business—fertilizers, agro-chemicals, seeds—that dipped 18% to Rs565.81 crore year-on-year","Tue, Feb 14 2017. 03 29 PM IST",Aditya Birla Nuvo Q3 standalone profit falls 31% +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Y3tOpll6qug32qyA26x4UO/Performance-improvement-not-cost-cutting-is-the-key-Bain.html,"
New Delhi: At Bain and Co., Raj Pherwani helps clients with sustained cost transformation and advises them on taking the company to the next level of effectiveness. San Francisco-based Pherwani, partner and global head of performance improvement practice at Bain, has expertise in leading transformation projects across sectors and is also the firm’s leader in the digital space. In an interview, he comments on sustained cost transformation, disruptive technologies, consolidation in the telecom industry and the future of conglomerates. Pherwani was on a two-week visit to India to meet top company leaders. Edited excerpts:
How do you help clients achieve their full potential?
What we have developed is a lot of experience over 40-plus years of being a company but the steps are roughly the same. The exact way in which it is conducted depends on the specific situation.
If you are really about getting to full potential, the starting point is always about trying to understand what is the mission, why are you trying to get there, why is your company uniquely suited to achieve that mission and then it’s an examination of the current status. Then one develops a strategic fact base to understand where things are, what’s going on today, the point of departure if you will.
Based on what we learn in the point of departure, we then prescribe the path forward. I’d say the best way to do it is what we call client-led, Bain-supported; so what we bring obviously is experience, tools, the ability to conduct rigorous analytics on the specific areas where things needs to be done, the experience in change management, setting up these programmes, etc. You have a sense of where you need to push and we will work collaboratively with the client to recommend an approach depending on what we have learnt. It could take a few months or years, setting up the initiatives, the initiative owners, what are their objectives, how are they tracked—all of that communicated to the organization and being very, very thoughtful about the change- management process.
Is performance improvement all about cutting costs and headcount? Does it always have to be the case?
I don’t think so. I like to think of it as are you utilizing your assets— both people and others in the best way and the reality for most of our programmes is not a cost-cutting exercise but about performance improvement, which is about improving productivity, improving the way you do things so it’s not purely about costs. In fact, I would say if you are just going to cut headcount, a lot of companies do it reasonably well on their own. They can get benchmarks on different functions by industry and find a way to improve it.
I think the big differentiator is the cost that is between functions, cross functional, the cost that you don’t recognize because you haven’t looked at it, so that’s where the process I described to you the strategic fact base can help you understand what are some of the root causes, why you are above cost in a certain metric. What I believe in is, it’s important to figure out the formula for sustained cost transformation.
Technology is disrupting industries and businesses across geographies. How do companies tackle this challenge both for themselves and their customers?
You have to address it—technology is a disruptor and can be a disruptor for the positive. In the short term, it is going to create some issues. Every process, every activity, evolution dictates that you are going to have to do it better over time; otherwise, you will not survive. That’s a fact. Most companies except for those that were born on the Web, are operating paper-based processes that were invented 50 years ago. Paper has been made electronic but the fundamental process has not been changed. Digital is allowing you to change the way you do things.
There is better collaboration, inputs are efficient, analytics are faster so you can do things that you could not do before; so are you going to ignore that and not adopt it? Sure, but it’s at your peril. The great companies will examine themselves and disrupt themselves rather be disrupted. Somebody’s going to do it to you so it’s better if you do it to yourself. I think everyone can agree with that.
What do you think about the Indian telecom scene with Reliance Jio crossing 100 million customers in 160 days?
We’ve looked at telecoms forever and there are some rules of thumb. It’s hard to sustain a market with six-seven competitors so it’s a natural law that over time, the markets will consolidate. Look at the US, for example when I started working at Bain in 1993, we had several players and today, you have AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, and there are talks of the last two merging.
Natural laws of evolution in business, particularly in telecom, suggest because it is a capital-intensive industry, so regardless of the country, capital expenditure is going to be on the high side.
Most countries have achieved full penetration if not more, and India is probably at that level. So it’s not surprising that you have a very aggressive deep-pocketed competitor like Jio disrupting the marketplace. We had that in the US with T-Mobile and lot of people wrote them off very early but they have done exceedingly well.
I think in the long term, the consumer will win. I think there will be three-four players in a country this size and none of them can take their foot off the pedal on operating as efficiently as possible.
What would be your management advice to Indian CEOs and CXOs?
I’ve had two meetings with CEOS and CXOs in Delhi and Mumbai, and I am impressed by the way Indian companies are operating. So, it is a great starting point, there is great talent in this country.
I would recommend that all companies owe it to their stakeholders including employees to be operating at the highest levels of efficiency. By the way, that means actually investing and getting to those levels of efficiency which means digital, thinking through your processes, constantly reinventing what you are doing, thinking about making your company better to work at and better to work with and if you do that, you will always be in a good position to out-invest your competitors and provide the best value proposition to your customers, therefore command the best prices in your business.
To make that happen, the leaders of these businesses need to have clarity of vision and need to communicate this, and maybe that’s something in India that may not have been done in the past, but I think today the leadership is thinking about it. Just because the CEO says it doesn’t mean that the person at the frontline gets it. As someone said, the corporate strategy and street-level strategy—the connection of that is so important. So what is said in the boardroom is getting translated to someone who is the front-line salesman or at the factory shop floor—this is super important. Last thing, a lot of companies are very, very diversified. I won’t be surprised if in the next five years, you can play every game, I would have loved to be on the Indian cricket team and win Wimbledon at the same time (I did neither), but companies will have to make choices.
I won’t be surprised if large groups separate out and figured out where they want to focus and divest. I have studied conglomerates for a long time and very, very few maybe, 10 across the globe, earn a value more than the sum of their parts. That’s my hypothesis, I may be off base.","Bain and Co. partner Raj Pherwani talks about sustained cost transformation, disruptive tech, consolidation in the telecom industry and future of conglomerates","Tue, Mar 28 2017. 11 45 AM IST","Performance improvement, not cost cutting, is the key: Bain’s Raj Pherwani" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/nhXAG81zxg6xCsK1dz70LL/Hindalco-posts-Q3-net-profit-of-Rs321-crore.html,"New Delhi: Hindalco Industries Ltd, India’s biggest aluminum producer, expects higher growth in the next fiscal year because of the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), and higher consumption of aluminum and copper because of a rise in budgetary allocation to the infrastructure sector.For Hindalco, the government’s focus on infrastructure and electricity sectors is a big positive, managing director Satish Pai said in an interview. Electricity, packaging, building and construction, automobile, defence, and transportation are the sectors the aluminium producer has identified as growth areas for consumption demand, he said.Hindalco Q3 results: Copper counters surge in aluminium profitsHindalco on Monday reported a net profit in the December quarter from a loss in the year-ago period, but missed analysts’ estimates. Standalone net profit in the third quarter stood at Rs320.56 crore compared to a loss of Rs32.75 crore a year earlier. Net sales rose 13.7% to Rs9,914.81 crore from Rs8,715.94 crore a year earlier because of a rise in average realization for both aluminium and copper, weaker rupee and higher aluminium volume, Hindalco said in a statement.Nineteen analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected Hindalco to report a standalone net profit of Rs396.4 crore while 18 analysts had expected sales of Rs9,400.7 crore.Aluminium business revenue rose about 8.6% to Rs4,916.92 crore while copper business revenue rose 19.3% to Rs5,000.42 crore.“Cost of production and the operations remain under control for us, which is the strongest point. Our cash part is looking good which is why we have paid now up to Rs1,000 crore of debt and we will finish paying Rs1,400 crore by March. Input costs have been good - while oil prices and coal prices of e-auction go up, on the other hand LME (London Metal Exchange) is also up. Overall, I think fourth quarter should be another good quarter,” Pai said.Hindalco, which has a target of doubling its downstream aluminium capacity in five years, is facing stiff competition from cheaper Chinese imports.The Aluminium Association of India has been lobbying the government for implementing a safeguard duty and minimum import price (MIP) in aluminium. “Process for MIP has been on... it takes time but we are hopeful that we are at end of the game,” Pai said.Hindalco already supplies aluminium for bus bodies and other auto extrusions and sees opportunity for growth in the high-speed trains and railways bodies. “It is a 100 tonnes a month business and we want to take it to 1,000 tonnes a month,” Pai said.Defence is another growth area the company is targeting, where a number of domestic firms are looking to start manufacturing in India.“This will be a big kicker for us,” Pai said.The company’s Hirakud smelter in Odisha, which is in the process of increasing capacity to 135 Kilo-Tonnes Per Annum has potential to be expanded in future, Pai said.“Our strategy in next five years is to get debt to Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) down; that’s the biggest focus. We want to bring cost under control and expand in downstream,” Pai said.Hindalco shares rose 1.65% to Rs185 on BSE on Monday, while the benchmark Sensex rose 0.06% to 28,351.62 points.",Hindalco’s net profit in Q3 was Rs320.56 crore compared to a loss of Rs32.75 crore a year earlier,"Tue, Feb 14 2017. 02 40 AM IST","Hindalco sees higher growth on GST, govt’s infrastructure spending push" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Bibv5BEz3UiBYao3KuoBpO/GSK-Q3-profit-drops-825-due-to-note-ban.html,"
New Delhi: GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare Ltd, the maker of Horlicks and Boost health foods, on Monday reported 8.25% drop in third-quarter profit as the liquidity crunch following demonetisation hit wholesale trade.Net profit fell to Rs136.41 crore in the quarter ended 31 December from Rs148.68 crore a year earlier. Net sales from operations fell 12.68% to Rs921.64 in the quarter from Rs1,055.57 crore a year earlier.“The overall business environment during the quarter was challenging and uncertain due to demonetisation. This substantially impacted the cash dominated geographies, mainly the east and north, and channels—mainly wholesale and rural, resulting in lower consumption offtake and reduced trade pipelines,” said MD Manoj Kumar in a statement. The British company’s local unit said it had extended credit terms to help trade fight the liquidity crunch due to note ban announced 8 November.GSK Consumer Healthcare, citing market researcher Neilsen, said the marketshare of Horlicks increased marginally by 0.1% to 46.5% in value terms during the quarter from a year earlier. The company, however, is hopeful about the coming quarters. “Our outlook for the upcoming quarters remains positive. We are confident that with improved liquidity position and focus on high science, strong brands, innovation and sharp customer insights will help us to stay ahead in the category,” said Kumar.The company announced its results after market hours. Shares of GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare dropped 0.14% to Rs5,118 on Monday on BSE, while the benchmark Sensex rose 0.06% to 28,351.62 points.",GSK’s net profit fell to Rs136.41 crore in the quarter ended 31 December from Rs148.68 crore a year earlier,"Tue, Feb 14 2017. 01 38 AM IST",GSK Q3 profit drops 8.25% due to note ban +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/NDroOaDRaE8ZoZZhB44t7N/Motherson-Sumi-Q3-net-profit-up-2824-at-Rs54732-crore.html,"New Delhi: Auto component maker Motherson Sumi Systems Ltd (MSSL) on Monday reported a 28.24% increase in consolidated net profit at Rs547.32 crore in the third quarter ended December. The company had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs426.77 crore in the same period of last fiscal. Its total income from operations during the period under review stood at Rs10,796.9 crore as against Rs9,598.35 crore in the year-ago period, up 12.48%. MSSL chairman Vivek Chaand Sehgal said, “The company has shown exemplary growth in all areas and has achieved highest ever revenues and margins in a quarter. This is the reflection of hard work put in by all our teams from around the world.” Shares of MSSL were trading 2.63% down at Rs346.55 apiece on BSE.",Motherson Sumi had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs426.77 crore in the same period of last fiscal,"Mon, Feb 13 2017. 10 43 PM IST",Motherson Sumi Q3 net profit rises 28.24% to Rs547.32 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/f0rwzosGQDrM0NeyfbOp2O/Piramal-Enterprises-Q3-profit-up-32-to-Rs40408-crore.html,"New Delhi: Piramal Enterprises Ltd on Monday reported a 31.66% rise in its consolidated net profit to Rs404.08 crore for the quarter ended 31 December 2016, on account of improved top-line performance. The company had posted a net profit after non-controlling interest and share of profit (loss) of associates and joint ventures of Rs306.91 crore for the corresponding period of the previous fiscal, Piramal Enterprises said in a BSE filing. Consolidated total income from operations also rose to Rs2,341.74 crore for the quarter under consideration as against Rs1,786.01 crore for the same period year ago. Piramal Enterprises chairman Ajay Piramal said, “In line with our strategic roadmap, this quarter witnessed new acquisitions, foray into new business segments and robust performance across existing businesses”. The company remains committed to overall business strategy of efficiently allocating capital towards growing both organically and inorganically..., he added. “Strong profitability was mainly on account of improved top-line performance, partly offset by increase in interest expense, depreciation and higher tax rate,” Piramal Enterprises said. The company’s global pharma business acquired a portfolio of intrathecal spasticity and pain management drugs from Mallinckrodt LLC in Jan 2017. It also acquired a portfolio of five injectable anaesthesia & pain management products from Janssen in October 2016, it added. The financial services business announced its plan to enter the retail housing finance, it added. Financial services business launched flexi lease rental discounting for completed commercial assets, the company said.","The company’s consolidated total income from operations rose to Rs2,341.74 crore for the quarter under consideration as against Rs1,786.01 crore for the same period year ago","Mon, Feb 13 2017. 10 36 PM IST",Piramal Enterprises Q3 profit up 32% to Rs404.08 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/PuYMIrJN5PORfn6nzGPcWN/Muthoot-Finance-Q3-profit-rises-56-to-Rs291-crore.html,"Mumbai: Muthoot Finance Ltd on Monday reported a 56% increase in its net profit for the December quarter.Net profit for the third quarter rose to Rs291 crore from Rs187 crore in the year ago period. Total income stood at Rs1,346 crore at the end of December quarter, an 18% increase over the year ago period.“Though disbursements got affected post demonetisation process announced by the government, we could limit its impact since our digital platforms were ready to manage online disbursements and repayments. We are expecting normalcy coming back during the fourth quarter as cash availability has significantly increased,” said M.G.George Muthoot, chairman, Muthoot Finance.ALSO READ: Muthoot HomeFin to raise Rs800 crore next fiscalRetail loan assets under management stood at Rs26,962 crore at the end of third quarter, witnessing an 8% increase over the previous year.","Muthoot Finance’s total income stood at Rs1,346 crore at the end of December quarter, an 18% increase over the year ago period","Mon, Feb 13 2017. 09 32 PM IST",Muthoot Finance Q3 profit rises 56% to Rs291 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/jIWr6PH9c4hjiq07kwrqmK/Britannia-Q3-profit-rises-46-to-Rs220-crore.html,"Bengaluru: Biscuit maker Britannia Industries Ltd posted a 4.6% increase in third-quarter net profit to Rs220.39 crore from a year earlier, beating analyst estimates. Revenue rose 6.11% to Rs2,355.27 crore during the period, but fell short of the company’s own expectations, Britannia said in a filing with the BSE on Monday.The analysts had expected a net profit of Rs198.10 crore on revenue of Rs2,137.50 crore, according to a Bloomberg survey. “This quarter has been really tough considering the way things panned out on the economic front. The positive growth momentum witnessed in Q2, aided by good monsoon and flow through of 7th pay commission benefits was impacted with implementation of demonetisation in November,” Varun Berry, managing director, said in a statement.Like other consumer firms, the post-demonetisation liquidity crunch had hurt its consumers and channel partners, the company said, adding that it had attempted to tide over the situation by providing credit to some business partners and improving sales efficiency.“With these steps and increase in availability of cash in the economy, our revenues in December 2016 improved on a sequential basis but is still lower than what we would have expected it to be,” Berry said.Growth in the international business continued to be under pressure due to deteriorating geopolitical situation and currency fluctuations in geographies like Middle East and Africa, he added. Britannia, which had to deal with a high raw material inflation rate of more than 10% in the December quarter, said its cost efficiency program had helped mitigate the impact of higher raw material costs to a “certain extent.” It also “rationalized” advertising spends as no amount of stimulus would have helped the company boost growth after demonetisation.“We are actively working on opportunities in the biscuit business, adjacent macro snacking space and are also evaluating partnership opportunities to drive profitable growth for our company,” Berry added.In a separate filing, Britannia said it appointed YSP Thorat, retired chairman of National Bank For Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), and Ajay Shah as additional directors of the company effective 13 February.Britannia Industries Limited’s shares closed up at Rs3,273 on the BSE, up 1.15% from previous close while India’s benchmark Sensex Index was up 0.06% to 28,351.62 points.","Britannia’s revenue for the third quarter rose 6.11% to Rs2,355.27 crore during the period, but fell short of its own expectations","Mon, Feb 13 2017. 06 31 PM IST",Britannia Q3 profit rises 4.6% to Rs220 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/zGtxK3w9p9fIbGH3C8eoYN/GMR-Infra-posts-Rs382-crore-loss-in-Q3.html,"New Delhi: GMR Infrastructure on Monday reported a standalone net loss of Rs381.93 crore for the quarter ended December 2016. The company posted a net profit of Rs40.01 crore in the corresponding quarter of the 2015-16, it said in a BSE filing. Its total income from operations declined to Rs216.25 crore during the quarter as against Rs294.48 crore in the year-ago period. ALSO READ: Britannia Q3 profit rises 4.6% to Rs220 croreIts total expenses rose to Rs103.52 crore during the quarter under review as against Rs36.29 crore in the corresponding quarter a year-ago. In a separate filing, the firm informed that Jayesh Desai has resigned from the position of director of the company with effect from 13 February. “The board at their meeting held on 13 February, 2017 took on record the resignation of Jayesh Desai and recorded its appreciation for the valuable services rendered by him during his tenure as a director of the company,” the statement said. GMR Group is a leading global infrastructure conglomerate with interests in the airport, energy, transportation and urban infrastructure. The shares of the company closed at Rs14.28 apiece on the BSE, down 2.86% from its previous close.",GMR Infra’s total income from operations declined to Rs216.25 crore during the third quarter as against Rs294.48 crore in the year-ago period,"Mon, Feb 13 2017. 09 37 PM IST",GMR Infra posts Rs382 crore loss in Q3 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eiwotgdAxZt98pGOgmJLCO/Mastercard-unveils-biometric-card-to-replace-ATM-pin-with-fi.html,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 48 PM IST",Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ocb3jVMtHU4W0nu1XDInUL/Nalco-stake-sale-fully-subscribed-retail-buyers-outbid.html,"New Delhi: The government on Thursday raised over Rs1,200 crore through the sale of 9.2% stake in National Aluminium Company Ltd (Nalco) as both retail and institutional investors lapped up the shares offered to them. The first PSU disinvestment of the current fiscal, Nalco also saw the government exercising the option to retain excess subscription, called greenshoe option. The government had hit the market on Wednesday with 5% shares on offer, and exercised the greenshoe option after seeing investor demand on day one of the offer for sale. With bids, over 1.84 times the shares on offer, the subscription of institutional investors was valued at Rs954 crore. Retail investors on their part bid for 3.17 times the shares reserved for them valued at Rs250 crore. Together, the bids are valued at over Rs1,200 crore. Of its total holding of 74.58% in Nalco, the government has offloaded 9.2% at a floor price of Rs67. Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) secretary Neeraj Gupta said the government was confident of retail investor demand and hence had exercised the greenshoe option keeping in mind the last four disinvestments. “Today’s response validates our market assessment,” Gupta said. The OFS opened for retail investor subscription on Thursday and was lapped up 3.17 times. Retail are defined as individuals who place bids for sales of total value of not more than Rs2 lakh in aggregate and are offered 5% discount over the issue price. The Nalco stock closed at Rs68.10, up 0.52% over its previous close, on BSE. Nalco is the first disinvestment of the current fiscal, which started on 1 April. The government has set a target of Rs46,500 crore through minority stake sale and Rs15,000 crore from strategic disinvestment in 2017-18. In 2016-17, the government had raised over Rs46,247 crore from disinvestment.","Nalco raises over Rs1,200 crore through 9.2% stake sale; the offer for sale opened for retail investor subscription today and was lapped up 3.17 times","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 00 PM IST","Govt sells 9.2% stake in Nalco, raises Rs 1,200 crore" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6XaivR7apdiaV1K70pHx2H/Bill-OReillys-exit-looks-like-a-nonfactor-for-Fox-News-p.html,"Los Angeles: Don’t worry about Fox. It’ll be okay without Bill O’Reilly.The country’s most-watched cable network is doing so well that the departure of the star of The O’Reilly Factor isn’t likely to be a huge financial blow. That’s even though the show was the biggest draw on Fox News, which has been 21st Century Fox’s most profitable channel, bringing in what one estimate puts at $200 million annually in advertising revenue.“The growth in the network is overwhelming any advertiser issues” that will crop up now that O’Reilly is out and Tucker Carlson is stepping into the prime-time slot, said Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research LLC who has a buy rating on the stock. O’Reilly took his leave Wednesday afternoon, and Fox shares fell 0.9% to $30.39 at the close in New York.Fox doesn’t break out how much any one channel or program contributes to the bottom line. S&P Global Inc.’s Kagan research unit estimates that Fox News was responsible for about one-fourth of the company’s 2016 operating income, which was $6.6 billion.O’Reilly’s exit will probably cost just a couple of percentage points in ad sales, before factoring in the network’s expected growth over the next year, Wieser said. “Investors wouldn’t really notice the impact.”That’s not to say there won’t be any painful ripples. The hard-charging host had been on the air since the 1996 birth of Fox News. O’Reilly was “a ratings machine,” said Vijay Jayant, an analyst at Evercore ISI, in a note to clients.Consistent messagingRecent history shows, though, that Fox News can handle it when individual personalities walk. There was little fallout in 2011 after Glenn Beck quit. His talk-show was replaced with the group-format The Five that has done so well it’s moving into a prime-time slot next week. (Beck weighed in on Twitter Wednesday, saying, “With Bill O’Reilly gone, it’s the Beginning of the End of Fox News as We Know It.”)After Megyn Kelly jumped to NBC in January, Carlson replaced her at 9 pm, and his ratings beat hers.“Fox News’s dominance stems from the consistency of its messaging and the loyalty of its broader audience more than from the success of star anchors,” said Jayant, who has an outperform rating on the stock.ALSO READ: Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai pull ‘O’Reilly’ ads on sexual harassment claimsDozens of advertisers pulled their spots from The O’Reilly Factor after the New York Times reported that Fox and the host had resolved sexual harassment allegations by paying his accusers $13 million. The report came just months after Fox News’ founder Roger Ailes resigned amid similar allegations.How valuable?Fox executive chairman Rupert Murdoch and his sons, chairman Lachlan Murdoch and chief executive officer (CEO) James Murdoch, convened on a call Wednesday morning where they decided O’Reilly’s fate, a person familiar with the situation said. The Murdochs were swayed by details that emerged during an internal investigation into the allegations by law firm Paul Weiss, the person said. O’Reilly issued a statement late Wednesday, saying, “It is tremendously disheartening that we part ways due to completely unfounded claims.”Estimates of how valuable The O’Reilly Factor was vary, with Pivotal saying the show’s annual ad sales were about $200 million and Evercore putting them at half that or less. Fox hasn’t disclosed what it paid the host, though the New York Observer has reported his 2016 compensation package was $18 million.By Jayant’s calculations, annual revenue and earnings growth will probably take a hit of less than half a percentage point as a result of O’Reilly’s leaving. He sees a decline of about 35% in ad revenue without O’Reilly, a similar level to the viewership gap between that show and the average Fox News primetime hour.ALSO READ: Fox News host Bill O’Reilly taking vacation amid sex harassment furoreIt’s unclear whether O’Reilly will be able to find a home with a competitor under the terms of his exit from Fox, but rival news organizations such as One America News Network and Newsmax said they’d be interested in talking with him about a new gig.“He was the heart and soul of Fox News. He had unparalleled and unchallenged talent that he demonstrated over many years. I think he will remain a hot commodity for years to come,” said Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy in an interview. “The problem that Bill O’Reilly is going to have is that there aren’t many conservative media outlets out there that carry as much heft.”Ruddy cautioned that if he talked to O’Reilly about a job, he’d need to review the allegations because they are serious.However difficult it might be for Fox to replace all the revenue O’Reilly generated, the uproar was a distraction for 21st Century Fox as it seeks regulatory clearance for its $14.6 billion acquisition of Sky Plc, the UK-based satellite-TV provider. That deal needs approval from the British regulator Ofcom, which will decide whether the takeover breaches British rules on media plurality and broadcasting standards, and whether Sky would continue to be a “fit and proper” holder of a broadcast license.The US civil rights group Color of Change has asked Ofcom to investigate Fox’s corporate practices before approving the Sky purchase, alleging “rampant racial discrimination and sexual harassment” at the company.“If you believe that the Sky transaction is a strategically good thing, then elements that put the transaction at risk are much more important than Bill O’Reilly,” said Pivotal’s Wieser. Fox has mitigated the damage but “this isn’t settled by any stretch. There are still issues to overcome here on that fit-and-proper test.” Bloomberg","Bill O’Reilly’s exit will probably cost just a couple of percentage points in ad sales, before factoring in Fox News’ expected growth over the next year","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 05 51 PM IST",Bill O’Reilly’s exit looks like a non-factor for Fox News’ profit machine +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ilfQqcOg4N9vyq6cXrU20M/Reliance-Defence-gets-banks-approval-to-exit-CDR-package.html,"New Delhi: Reliance Defence and Engineering Ltd has secured nod from a consortium of lenders to exit its corporate debt restructuring (CDR) package. The consortium of lenders, led by IDBI Bank Ltd, has agreed to the exit plan of Reliance Defence, a subsidiary of Reliance Infrastructure, with a longer maturity period for loans worth about Rs6,800 crore, people aware of the matter said.The lenders have also given their go-ahead to implementation of refinancing scheme of Reliance Defence. Both the proposals were presented to the CDR Empowered Group’s (EG) meeting on 29 March and approved by the requisite majority of CDR lenders. Reliance Infrastructure refused to comment. IDBI has confirmed to the Ministry of Defence the approval granted by the EG to the CDR exit plan and refinancing scheme. According to the people quoted above, the confirmation from IDBI makes Reliance Defence eligible for participating in all future contracts of the Navy. Now, Reliance Defence and Larsen and Toubro Ltd are the only two private sector shipyards that will compete with government-owned shipyards for prestigious contracts for making submarines, landing platform dock (LPD) and corvette. As per the refinancing scheme approved by the Empowered Group, about Rs6,800 crore of Reliance Defence debt will be refinanced with maturity of about 20 years and lower interest rate. Exiting CDR is also expected to provide increased financial manoeuvring to the company. Reliance Infrastructure has increased its shareholding in Reliance Defence to nearly 31%. Reliance Defence’s current order stands at over Rs5,300 crore from the Navy, the Coast Guard and commercial vessels. Reliance Infrastructure had acquired Pipavav Defence and Offshore Engineering Co. Ltd in March 2015, which was later renamed as Reliance Defence and Engineering. Immediately after the acquisition, Reliance Group had announced its plans to exit CDR. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had also given its nod to Reliance Defence to exit the CDR package. The stock of Reliance Defence was trading at Rs66.10 on the BSE, up 3.44% from its previous close.Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.","A consortium of lenders, led by IDBI Bank, has agreed to Reliance Defence’s plan to exit CDR package, with a longer maturity period for loans worth Rs6,800 crore","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 52 PM IST",Reliance Defence gets banks approval to exit CDR package +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/lARJux9WGNnHCh5IKbSCxM/Power-Finance-Corporations-Q3-net-profit-jumps-23-to-Rs19.html,"New Delhi: Power Finance Corporation (PFC) on Monday reported an over 23% surge in standalone net profit to Rs1,949.91 crore for the third quarter ended 31 December. The company had posted a net profit of Rs1,582.32 crore for the corresponding quarter of last fiscal, PFC said in a BSE filing on Monday. According to the statement, total income has increased to Rs7,063.08 crore in the quarter under review, from Rs6,994.10 crore in the same period last fiscal. It also informed the BSE about the non-performing asset provision of Rs51.19 crore for the current quarter and Rs475.50 crore for the nine months ended on 31 December 2016. It also stated that the Gross NPA stood at Rs7,302.67 crore as on 31 December 2016, whereas it was Rs7,520.21 crore on 31 March 2016.","PFC posted a net profit of Rs1,582.32 crore for the corresponding quarter of last fiscal, the company said in a BSE filing on Monday","Mon, Feb 13 2017. 04 12 PM IST","Power Finance Corporation’s Q3 net profit jumps 23% to Rs1,949 crore" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/qixcqO343kVmdbGWG7vHcK/Unilever-Nestle-price-rises-boost-outlook-as-demand-plunges.html,"Zurich/ London: Nestle SA and Unilever reported sales that beat estimates as the European food giants pushed through cost increases to combat slowing purchases by pickier consumers opting for quality over quantity.KitKat maker Nestle said organic revenue rose 2.3% in the first quarter, compared with the 2% median estimate. Unilever’s sales growth of 2.9% exceeded analyst predictions of 1.9% as the Hellmann’s mayonnaise provider issued its first results announcement since rebuffing a takeover approach from Kraft Heinz Co.Improved pricing power at both companies provided an early sign of recovery for the food and beverage market after years of deflationary pressure in Europe, slowing sales in China and economic crises in Brazil and Russia. Higher commodity costs, inflation in Brazil and the fall in the pound since the UK’s vote to leave the European Union are contributing to the upward pressure.“Pricing was better than expected,” Jon Cox, an analyst at Kepler Cheuvreux, said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “Everybody has to increase prices, and generally that’ll be sticky.”Nestle and Unilever are joining apparel makers Burberry Group Plc and Ralph Lauren, which are trying to wean themselves off discounting, especially in the US Alcoholic beverage companies such as Diageo Plc are also trying to ride a trend of “premiumization” as consumers shift to fewer but more expensive purchases.Food companies are under pressure to lift costs in order to boost profit margins as potential predators like Kraft Heinz look for consolidation opportunities. The US company is backed by private equity firm 3G Capital Inc., known for its pursuit of aggressive profit targets.The challenge facing the industry is that some cost increases are provoking consumers to reduce purchases: Nestle said higher pricing weighed on shipments in Europe and also at its baby-food unit.Nestle’s quarterly revenue growth was the slowest this century, according to Andrew Wood, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. A later Easter in 2017 pushed chocolate orders into the second quarter from the first this year.Nestle shares rose as much as 1.1% in Zurich, while Unilever gained as much as 1.6% in Amsterdam.Unilever was more aggressive than Nestle in raising food prices in the quarter, with a 3.4% increase, led by more expensive versions of Magnum and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Nestle, which increased prices 1%, was prompted to raise the cost of Nescafe after robusta coffee futures have gained 38% in the past year. Each company’s increases were above analyst estimates.“We’re starting to see some inflationary pressures in the U.K. from the depreciation of the pound,” Unilever chief financial officer Graeme Pitkethly said in a phone interview, adding that the company’s competitors are also raising prices in the country.UK grocer Tesco Plc last year briefly removed some Unilever items from its online store after a dispute over pricing. Distiller Pernod Ricard SA in March lifted the cost of some spirits and wines in the U.K.Positive aspects of the period for Nestle, the maker of Lean Cuisine meals, included accelerating sales in Europe and Asia, Kepler’s Cox said. In contrast, growth slowed to a near halt in the Americas region, hurt by declines in US confectionery and pet care.Unilever cited gains in its home- and personal-care businesses, while sales were unchanged in the food division.The ice-cream unit was helped by new products such as chocolate-coated Magnum pints in a tub. The refreshment unit, which includes ice cream, increased prices by 5%.The Anglo-Dutch company didn’t provide any immediate update on plans to divest its spreads unit, which includes the Flora brand. After fending off Kraft Heinz in February, Chief Executive Officer Paul Polman said Unilever will deliver on promises to increase shareholder returns via buybacks and lift profitability goals.In a first move toward that, the company raised the quarterly dividend by 12% to 36 euro cents a share. Unilever said it’s on track for 2017 underlying sales growth of 3% to 5% and sees an improvement in underlying operating margin of at least 80 basis points. Bloomberg","Higher commodity costs, inflation in Brazil and the fall in the pound are contributing to the upward pressure for both Unilever and Nestle","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 05 40 PM IST","Unilever, Nestle price rises boost outlook as demand plunges " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/vjghkqhQw2yG1YT5bQsFyO/A-lot-of-new-adopters-of-digital-payments-have-returned-to-c.html,"
Mumbai: As currency in the public hands continues to increase, a lot of new adopters of digital payment systems have returned to cash. Less than half the customers who chose digital payment options during demonetisation continue to use them, said a senior official at the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The total number of new digital payment users in banking went up from around 40 million to 100 million in the first two months after the government invalidated 86% of the country’s currency in circulation on 8 November. Now, three months after the exercise has ended, only 25 million have stuck around, according to Dilip Asbe, chief operating officer at NPCI.“So about 25-30 million new customers came in. Obviously more came in, but 25 million have stayed back. If you would look at regular payment system cycle standpoint, it would have taken a couple of years to reach that stage,” said Asbe, speaking at the launch of a unified payments interface (UPI)-based payments for merchants by digital transactions platform Benow. As on 7 April, currency in circulation stood at Rs13.6 trillion compared to Rs17.97 trillion on 4 November. It had dropped to a low of Rs8.98 trillion as on 6 January following the note ban.Throughout November and December, various digital payments modes such as national electronic funds transfer (NEFT), immediate payment service (IMPS), mobile banking, UPI and mobile wallets all saw a significant jump in the volume and value of transactions made.However, by February, as the cash started returning to the system, this momentum slowed and transactions started dipping. In March, RBI data showed a total of 893.9 million transactions; though this was an improvement from February figures, it was still below the 957.5 million peak reached in December. However, the value of these transactions reached Rs149 trillion—boosted partly by increased real-time gross settlement (RTGS) and NEFT transactions for advance tax payments—well above the previous peak of Rs104 trillion in December. NPCI, on its part, has been pushing new means of digital payment systems. In March, it introduced UPI for merchants as a means to increase the usage of such payments. In a tie up with Reliance Retail and Innoviti, NPCI allowed customers to pay using UPI applications of any bank by scanning a dynamic QR code on point of sale (PoS) terminals. At the time A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, had said that the payments system provider is looking to bring in more merchants on board. Separately, NPCI is in the process of adding more banks for the Bharat QR code, said Asbe. About 20 banks are currently on board with QR code, a new payments technology. Once this number reaches 30-35, more merchants are likely to be on board. “I think there is a separate MDR (merchant discount rate) which is being discussed right now, which I heard is closer to 25 basis points, very similar to debit card (transactions) below Rs2,000,” Asbe said while speaking about Aadhaar-based payments which are likely to be launched shortly. However, Asbe added that the MDR charge was still unclear.","As per Dilip Asbe of National Payments Corporation of India, new digital payment users went up to 100 million during demonetisation but only 25 million have stuck around","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 04 56 AM IST",A lot of new adopters of digital payments have returned to cash: NPCI official +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hFW9Dn8Rytq7d9HlItXumK/Amazon-gets-RBI-nod-to-launch-ewallet.html,"
Bengaluru: Amazon India has received the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) approval to launch its own digital wallet in India, paving the way for the American online retail giant to gain a slice of India’s fast-growing digital payments business. Amazon India, which had applied for what is called a Prepaid Payment Instrument (PPI) licence nearly a year ago, will now look to take on established rivals such as Paytm and Freecharge as it prepares to launch a prepaid wallet service that will be broader in scope than its Pay Balance service and will not be restricted to Amazon-based transactions. In December, Amazon had launched its Pay Balance service in order to boost cashless transactions. While Pay Balance works in a similar manner to other mobile wallet services, it was restricted to transactions on Amazon. Amazon confirmed the development, but did not comment on the broader scope of what its wallet service could look like and whether it would cover areas such as bill payments. “We are pleased to receive our PPI licence from the RBI. Our focus is providing customers a convenient and trusted cashless payments experience. RBI is in the process of finalizing the guidelines for PPIs. We look forward to seeing a continuation of the low-limit wallet dispensation with simplified KYC (know-your-customer norms) and authentication. This will allow us to help customers adopt digital payments at scale and thereby contribute towards making India a less-cash economy,” said Sriram Jagannathan, vice-president of payments at Amazon India. Amazon’s new wallet service will look to address a vital problem in the world of payments — like other wallet services such as Paytm, it will help customers bypass the two-step authentication process for online payments using credit or debit cards and makes the process smoother for online shoppers, thus plugging a key gap in the payments process that reduces the risk of loss of business from online shoppers. In September, mobile payments start-up PhonePe Internet Pvt. Ltd, which is owned Flipkart (Amazon’s biggest rival in India), launched an app based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform, which was a key bet for Flipkart, given how payments are still largely an unsolved problem in both online and offline commerce. Amazon received the PPI licence in late-March. The development comes weeks after the RBI issued guidelines on issuance and operation of PPI licences, indicating potentially stricter norms for mobile wallet players as the central bank looks to ramp up focus on security and customer protection. RBI raised the minimum capital requirement for digital wallet operators by nearly five times and introduced a directive for full compliance with Know-Your-Customer (KYC) norms, among other new guidelines, causing an outcry among top digital payments firms. Following the guidelines, top leaders from the payments industry met RBI officials to discuss some of the clauses, including the KYC mandate, which they argued would act as a deterrent towards expanding the digital payments business. “We hope the government and RBI would continue to encourage multiple ways to shift consumers from cash behaviour by recognising the value of digital wallets, used especially for making small value payments to large merchants like e-commerce, government, IRCTC, utility or insurance companies,” said Amazon’s Jagannathan.","Amazon India has received RBI approval to launch its own digital wallet, paving the way for the online retailer to gain a slice of India’s fast-growing digital payments business","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 04 56 AM IST",Amazon gets RBI nod for e-wallet in India +https://www.livemint.com/Money/aC7x32FuSeF4UIuD2BHyQJ/Nucleus-Software-shares-jump-nearly-5-on-share-buyback-plan.html,"New Delhi: The scrip of IT firm Nucleus Software Exports on Thursday surged nearly 5% after the company said its board will meet on 25 April to consider buyback of equity shares. Shares of the company jumped 4.57% to settle at Rs272.15 on BSE. During the day, they soared 7.47% to Rs 279.70. On NSE, the stock surged 4.33% to close at Rs 272.15. “...a meeting of the Board of Directors of the company will be held on April 25, 2017, to consider the proposal of buyback of fully paid up equity shares of the company, up to such amount of the aggregate of company’s paid up equity share capital and free reserves as the Board may decide,” Nucleus Software said in a regulatory filing. Share buyback typically improves earnings per share and is a mechanism to return surplus cash to shareholders, besides supporting the stock price during sluggish market.",Nucleus Software shares jumped 4.57% to settle at Rs272.15 on BSE after the company said its board will meet on 25 April to consider buyback of shares,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 05 13 PM IST",Nucleus Software shares jump nearly 5% on share buyback plan +https://www.livemint.com/Money/vDQzrVrSuoCOFo2SxbRIvK/PNotes-make-a-comeback-under-GAAR.html,"
Mumbai: Participatory notes (P-Notes), long vilified for the anonymous nature of their investors and suspected as a route for money laundering, are seeing rising interest among short-term foreign investors as the general anti-tax avoidance rule (GAAR) became applicable from 1 April.Foreign portfolio investors, especially those from countries which don’t have any tax treaties, typically route their investments though so-called special purpose vehicles in Mauritius and Singapore to save on taxes. Mauritius and Singapore have tax avoidance treaties with India. This is a favoured route, especially for hedge funds, while trading in futures and options or investing for the short term. Under GAAR, foreign investors would need to prove that such structures are not aimed at evading taxes. GAAR gives the tax department powers to scrutinize transactions structured in such a way as to deliberately avoid paying tax. Failure to show that a transaction was not structured to evade levies means investors will have to cough up 15% tax on equities and 30% on equity derivatives. Investing via P-Notes has a lower tax liability of 7.5-8%.“Many of the SPV (special purpose vehicle) structures coming from Mauritius and Singapore may not be able to pass the GAAR test. Those investors appear to be interested in accessing the Indian market through the P-Note route,” said Suresh Swamy, a partner at consulting firm PwC in India. Investment bankers, who are also P-notes issuers, are coming out with new products such as one which will allow foreign investors to set off losses against taxes. “Hedge funds are drawing comfort from the fact that the tax rules clearly provide that GAAR provisions do not apply to a person who has invested in ODI (off-shore derivative instruments)/ P-Notes. P-Note issuer should also not ordinarily face a challenge in meeting the GAAR threshold,” said Swamy.Data from the Securities and Exchange Board of India showed that as of February, about 6.6% of all foreign investments in India come through the offshore derivative instrument route. This has fallen from a peak of 55.7% in June 2007 as the capital markets regulator increased its scrutiny on these instruments and P-Notes became less lucrative owing to the renegotiated tax treaties with Mauritius and Singapore. “Structures could be scrutinized if they are designed to primarily avoid taxes. Choice of entity can however be driven by several non-tax considerations too,” said Richie Sancheti, head of investment funds practice at Nishith Desai Associates.“P-Notes respond to the need of investors who seek a streamlined basis for accessing several markets while dealing with very limited number of counterparties. In Indian context, if the participation is not intended to be deep but particular portfolio specific, it would be disproportionate to undergo tax and administrative compliances as a foreign portfolio investor,” he added.",Participatory notes (P-Notes) are seeing rising interest among short-term foreign investors as general anti-tax avoidance rule (GAAR) became applicable from 1 April,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 04 56 AM IST",P-Notes make a comeback under GAAR +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/jYTBqgV5ZmrZ7t2VYzAiXL/EPFO-extends-deadline-for-submitting-Aadhaar-to-30-April.html,"New Delhi: Retirement fund body EPFO has extended the deadline for submitting Aadhaar number to 30 April 2017 for its over four crore members. The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) had set 31 March 2017 as the deadline for submitting Aadhaar number earlier.EPFO has also extended the deadline for submitting digital life certificates for its over 50 lakh pensioners till 30 April to link pension accounts with Aadhaar. “We have extended the deadline for submission of Aadhaar by subscribers to 30 April 2017. Besides, pensioners can also submit their life certificates till 30 April,” EPFO’s Central Provident Fund Commissioner V P Joy told PTI.EPFO had extended the deadline several times in the past. It has also done away with the system of accepting life certificate manually through banks. Pensioners are required to provide life certificates digitally either through their mobile phones or at common service centres or bank branches providing such facility.The latest EPFO order provides that if a pensioner is not able to submit the life certificate in digital format, then the same can be submitted in physical form with valid reasons for not submitting it digitally. It also says that a pensioner would cease to receive payments from May if life certificate is not submitted by 30 April 2017.",Retirement fund body EPFO has extended the deadline for submitting Aadhaar number to 30 April 2017 for its over four crore members,"Wed, Apr 12 2017. 05 50 PM IST",EPFO extends deadline for submitting Aadhaar to 30 April +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/550YO1pY6t46XRb0Yhi9mN/IFC-to-lend-100-million-to-Federal-Bank-for-Gujarat-Gift-Ci.html,"Mumbai: International Finance Corporation (IFC) Wednesday said it will lend $100 million to Federal Bank Ltd as long-term finance for its International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) branch in Gujarat’s Gift City. The funding is expected to help the bank’s clients in growing their business and supporting the Gift City initiative.Federal Bank’s IFSC unit which opened in November 2015 offers funded and non-funded facilities to overseas operations of Indian corporates, loans to overseas business ventures of non-resident Indians, trade finance solutions to Indian clients etc. It has crossed $200 million mark in total business. Kerala-based Federal Bank has 1,252 branches and 1,665 ATMs.On Wednesday, Federal Bank shares closed at Rs92.55, up 0.76% from its previous close on BSE, touching a high of Rs93.60 and a low of Rs90.75 a share during the day.The private sector lending arm of the World Bank, IFC has an active direct private equity-style investment practice, apart from lending to companies in India. It also has an active limited partner (LP), portfolio in India where it backs PE and venture capital funds focused on India.Other recent investments by IFC in the country include $20 million debt to RGVN Microfinance, $3 million to pi Ventures and up to $30.1 million to Mumbai-based ETC Agro Processing (India) Pvt Ltd, among others.",International Finance Corp will lend $100 million to Federal Bank as long-term finance for its International Financial Services Centre branch in Gujarat’s Gift City,"Wed, Apr 12 2017. 08 36 PM IST",IFC to lend $100 million to Federal Bank for Gujarat’s Gift City branch +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/3G1nZgP2Dm6oUXUwHRLEWK/No-documentary-proof-required-for-GPF-advance-withdrawal-G.html,"New Delhi: No documentary proof is required for getting advance or withdrawal from General Provident Fund (GPF), the minister of state for personnel Jitendra Singh said on Wednesday in New Delhi.The government has simplified and liberalised the conditions for taking advance from the fund for education, illness and purchase of consumer durables with effect from 7 March 2017.“Conditions and procedures for withdrawal from the fund for the purpose of education, illness, housing, purchase of motor vehicles etc. have also been liberalised. “No documentary proof is required to be submitted now for advance and withdrawal applications. A simple declaration by the subscriber is sufficient,” the minister said in a written reply to Lok Sabha.A time limit for sanction and payment of advance or withdrawal has also been fixed, said Singh. He said there is no proposal under consideration of the government to increase/link the rate of interest on GPF at parity with that of Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF).“The interest rates on EPF are decided on the recommendations of the Central Board of Trustees taking into account the yearly income from the investment made by EPFO. The GPF interest rate is presently fixed at par with that of PPF interest rate,” said Singh.","MoS for personnel Jitendra Singh says the government has simplified the conditions for taking advance from GPF for education, illness and purchase of consumer durables","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 04 43 PM IST","No documentary proof required for GPF advance, withdrawal: Government" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Gmy4icMbiWsDuq8PDx2akO/SpiceJet-to-offer-streaming-inflight-content.html,"New Delhi: SpiceJet Ltd will start offering streaming movies, cricket and other content on all its flights beginning later this year, becoming the first Indian low-fare airline to do so.All 49 SpiceJet planes will be fitted BoardConnect Portable from Lufthansa Systems, which will store and wirelessly stream pre-loaded content to passengers’ Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices. Full service airline like Jet Airways and Air India already offer in-flight streaming content on some of their flights. SpiceJet, which charges passengers for food, baggage and preferred seating, did not say if it will charge for the streaming video service. The service will also be used to sell products on the flight.“SpiceJet expects to be the first LCC (low-cost carrier) in India to provide this unique entertainment and shopping experience to its customers,” Ajay Singh, chairman and managing director, SpiceJet said in the statement.BoardConnect Portable includes a server and access points in a single device called the Mobile Streaming Unit (MSU). About the size of a conventional tablet, it can be mounted or removed without affecting other components in the aircraft, for example in the galley. An integrated modem allows rapid wireless updates of content while the aircraft is on the ground.In the past, airlines used to install in-flight entertainment systems connected with long wiring behind the back of each seat, which were expensive to maintain. SpiceJet controls a 13% market share compared with IndiGo’s nearly 40% market share. IndiGo, India’s largest airline flies 133 aircraft.SpiceJet shares were up 9.94% at Rs103.20 at 3pm at the Bombay Stock Exchange on Thursday, while the benchmark Sensex was trading 0.17% up at 29,385.23 points.","All 49 SpiceJet planes will be fitted BoardConnect Portable from Lufthansa Systems, which will store and wirelessly stream pre-loaded content to passengers’ Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 03 38 PM IST",SpiceJet to offer streaming in-flight content +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/zjn9Czn5mo5r9212sLAxWP/Govt-forms-panel-to-study-virtual-currencies-framework.html,"New Delhi: The government has formed a panel to study the existing framework for virtual currencies such as bitcoin.A finance ministry statement said Dinesh Sharma, special secretary in the economic affairs department will chair the nine-member inter-disciplinary committee. The committee has been tasked to submit its report within three months.Circulation of virtual currencies which are also known as digital/crypto Currencies has been a cause of concern, the statement said. “This has been expressed in various fora from time to time. Reserve Bank of India had also cautioned the users, holders and traders of virtual currencies (VCs), including bitcoins, about the potential financial, operational, legal, customer protection and security related risks that they are exposing themselves to vide its press releases dated 24 December, 2013 and February 1, 2017,” it added.The panel will also have representatives from department of economic affairs, department of financial services, department of revenue, home ministry, IT ministry, Reserve Bank of India, NITI Aayog and State Bank of India.The committee will take stock of the present status of virtual currencies both in India and globally, examine existing global regulatory and legal structures governing them, suggest measures on consumer protection, money laundering , etc; and examine any other relevant matter related to virtual currencies.","Dinesh Sharma, special secretary in the economic affairs department, will chair the nine-member committee to study framework on virtual currencies including bitcoins","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 04 49 PM IST",Govt forms panel to study virtual currencies framework +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/gaCK1CyEPsepeW6S6oqByO/Alibabas-Singapore-unit-enlists-Uber-Netflix-to-lure-custo.html,"Singapore: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has created a loyalty program for online shoppers in Singapore that it may expand to other markets, teaming up with Uber Technologies Inc. and Netflix Inc. to lure customers.It’s the first time Uber and Netflix have jointly created an online rewards program, said Maximilian Bittner, chief executive officer of Lazada Group SA, the Singapore-based e-commerce operator Alibaba acquired for $1 billion in 2016. The trio’s LiveUp programme starts Thursday and links their services, from UberEats and Netflix to online grocer RedMart and Alibaba’s Taobao online marketplace.Consumers pay S$28 ($20) a year to get benefits such as six months of Netflix streaming, discounts on Uber rides and free delivery on Taobao or Lazada purchases. A mobile app will be rolled out in the second half of the year.“Singapore is the market on the cutting edge of validating what we think consumers might want, so we will focus on Singapore first,” said Bittner, who expects to add more partners. He drew a comparison with code-sharing among carriers, which gives consumers a range of benefits like flight redemptions.Alibaba and its US partners are betting on the growth of online retail in Singapore.The city-state’s internet retailing market, which accounted for just 0.9% of total retail there in 2003, went from 2.4% in 2013 to 4.8% in 2016, according to data compiled by Euromonitor.Faced with the prospect of Amazon making a big push into Southeast Asia, Lazada has been seeking ways to defend its slice of the region’s e-commerce market.Bittner and RedMart co-founder Vikram Rupani hatched the loyalty programme over breakfast on Christmas Eve before approaching Netflix and Uber to get involved. “Their decision to do it was very fast because they have the same goal,” Bittner said. Bloomberg","Alibaba customers need to pay only $20 to get benefits such as Netflix streaming, discounts on Uber rides and free delivery on Alibaba’s Taobao or Lazada purchases","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 01 33 PM IST","Alibaba’s Singapore unit enlists Uber, Netflix to lure customers" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/y8CpNlB6dX6eBjMi7R8BqK/Dewan-Housing-Finance-may-sell-majority-stake-in-Aadhar-Hous.html,"
Mumbai: Mortgage lender Dewan Housing Finance Corp. Ltd (DHFL) plans to sell a majority stake in its Aadhar Housing Finance Ltd unit, two people aware of the development said. Aadhar Housing Finance, which provides housing loans for low- and middle-income customers, had a loan book of Rs1,736 crore as of 31 March 2016. DHFL has hired investment bank Rothschild to find a buyer, one of the two persons said on condition of anonymity.International Finance Corp. (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, holds about a 20% stake in Aadhar Housing.“The process has been just launched and it is too early to talk about potential investors. But, there would be serious interest from private equity investors,” the second person said, also on condition of anonymity. It was too early to talk about valuation, but it could be anywhere between 1.5-3 times the loan book, he added.Established in 2011, Aadhar Housing has operations in 13 states including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar, which account for 72% of India’s population, according to the company website. It lends to those with income levels of between Rs60,000 and Rs6 lakh per annum. Home loans are capped at Rs25 lakh. In FY15, Aadhar Housing’s loan book stood at Rs933 crore.Aadhar disbursed Rs1,032 crore in the first nine months of FY17.An email, text messages and several calls made to a DHFL spokesperson did not elicit any response. An email sent to IFC also did not elicit any response. A Rothschild spokesperson declined to comment.Housing credit growth slowed to 16% from a year earlier, taking overall housing credit to Rs13.7 trillion in the year ended 31 March from Rs12.4 trillion in the previous year, according to a March report by rating agency ICRA Ltd.The affordable housing segment is likely to continue to grow at a faster pace than the industry average, supported by the government’s efforts to address supply, demand and affordability issues. Higher allocations by the government, providing infrastructure status to affordable housing projects and extension of the credit-linked subsidy scheme, which, coupled with the current low-to-moderate penetration levels, are likely to help growth in the affordable housing segment, the ICRA report added.With the prospects of the luxury real estate market remaining bleak, more builders are shifting their focus to the affordable housing sector in India, which may create increased revenue for housing finance firms in India. Besides, the government’s push for affordable housing also created a boom in this space. A new credit-linked subsidy scheme for the middle-income group with a budget of Rs1,000 crore has been launched by the Union government. As part of its vision of ‘Housing for All by 2020’, credit-linked subsidy scheme was launched under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana programme targeted at the middle-income group earning as much as Rs18 lakh a year.Against the backdrop of increased demand in affordable housing , a handful of leading home financiers are raising funds. Discussions are on with private equity (PE) investors to raise money to meet expansion plans.In February, Mumbai-based Home First Finance Co. India Pvt. Ltd said private equity firm True North was in advanced talks to acquire a majority stake in Home First Finance for around $100 million. Shubham Housing Development Finance Co. Pvt. Ltd is looking to raise around $100 million from PE funds, as the company looks to increase its loan portfolio and expand its network nationally, Mint reported last year.Aspire Home Finance Corp. Ltd, the mortgage lending unit of Motilal Oswal Group, is also in the market to raise funds.Expanding its presence in a segment that offers loans for low-cost houses, IFC announced its plan to invest in three housing finance firms—Aspire Home Finance, Micro Housing Finance Corp., and Aptus Value Housing Finance India Ltd—through non-convertible debentures.The US-based PE fund Carlyle had purchased New Silk Route-controlled financial services firm Destimoney in February 2015, which also resulted in an indirect acquisition of a 49% stake in PNB Housing Finance Ltd.",Dewan Housing Finance has hired investment bank Rothschild to find a buyer for its 80% stake in Aadhar Housing Finance,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 47 AM IST",Dewan Housing Finance may sell majority stake in Aadhar Housing Finance +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/WbvfHnxvaKU94XhFJ3e6TP/India-said-to-woo-Aramco-for-50-OPaL-sale-as-Kuwait-talks-s.html,"New Delhi/Mumbai: India’s newest petrochemicals maker is seeking to sell half its $4.6 billion facility to Saudi Arabian Oil Co., according to people with knowledge of the matter.Formal talks between ONGC Petro additions Ltd (OPaL). and the world’s biggest oil exporter, known as Saudi Aramco, will start soon, said the people, who asked not to be named as the information isn’t public. OPaL’s earlier talks with a unit of Kuwait Petroleum Corp. about investing in the project stalled last year, the people said.A spokesman for OPaL was unable to comment. Saudi Aramco and Kuwait Petroleum didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.The investment could help Saudi Aramco strengthen its hand in the world’s largest oil consuming region as it prepares for what may be the biggest-ever initial public offering. India’s per capita consumption of polymer products, which is about a third of the global average, is expected to expand as a growing middle class, increasing income levels and higher urbanization drive growth, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said last month while inaugurating OPaL’s plant.“India’s petrochemical business is booming and Aramco will definitely want to be a part of this growth,” said Vaibhav Chowdhry, an analyst at KR Choksey Shares & Securities Pvt. Ltd. The country’s petrochemical market is expected to grow as fast as 12% annually for next several years, he said.Oil & Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC), which owns the biggest stake in OPaL, entered into a preliminary cooperation agreement in January 2014 with Petrochemical Industries Co., a subsidiary of state-owned Kuwait Petroleum. Talks between OPaL and PIC about the Kuwaiti company investing in the Indian project stalled last year, according to the people. OPaL hosted a team from Saudi Aramco at its plant in Gujarat last month, they said.Rising incomeHigher demand for these products prompted billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd and the nation’s biggest refiner Indian Oil Corp. to expand their petrochemicals businesses. Reliance invested about $19 billion to double the capacity of its petrochemicals unit, while Indian Oil will spend $4.6 billion to add new facilities and expand existing units.Saudi Aramco, which is the biggest supplier of crude oil to India, has shown interest in a proposed 60 million tonnes-a-year refinery and petrochemicals project being planned by Indian state refiners on the nation’s west coast, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on 30 March.The Saudi oil major has already invested in integrated refining, chemicals, marketing and distribution companies in the region. Last month, it bought half of a Malaysian oil refinery and petrochemical plant and signed a deal to provide up to 70% of its crude requirements. Separately, the Saudi oil giant signed a $6 billion oil refinery deal with Indonesia’s PT Pertamina.Dahej plantOPaL’s Rs30,000-crore petrochemical project is a dual-feed cracker with a capacity to produce 1.1 million tonnes a year of ethylene and 400,000 tonnes of propylene, according to its website. The plant, located at the Dahej Special Economic Zone, started production last year and aims to capture 13% of India’s polymer sector by next year, according to its website.While investment in OPaL will allow Aramco to access India’s growing market, the Indian company will be able to use the Saudi company’s export channels to push products in the international market, two of the people said. ONGC has said it intends to hold 26%, with state utility GAIL India Ltd owning 15.5%, after half of OPaL is sold. Bloomberg","Formal talks between ONGC Petro additions Ltd (OPaL), and the world’s biggest oil exporter, Saudi Aramco, will start soon","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 56 AM IST",India said to woo Aramco for 50% OPaL sale as Kuwait talks stall +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/P1TM1qMXPvmCYRFgcYCvOL/IDBI-Bank-union-calls-off-strike-wage-issues-being-discusse.html,"New Delhi: Public sector IDBI Bank said a section of employees who were to go on a one-day nationwide strike on Wednesday have called it off. “It is advised that proposed one-day nationwide strike on 12 April 2017 by united forum of IDBI officers and employees in support of their demands has been called off,” IDBI Bank said in a BSE filing. On Tuesday, the bank had informed about a day’s strike on 12 April 2017 to press their demand related with wage issues. The association had also written a letter to finance minister Arun Jaitley, seeking his intervention in the matter. “Yesterday there was a conciliation meeting in Mumbai held by the deputy chief labour commissioner and the management has been advised to finalise the wage revision settlement before May 8,” All India Bank Employees’ Association general secretary C. H. Venkatachalam said in a statement. In view of this, the strike to be observed on Wednesday has been deferred and the union has decided to attend bilateral talks to explore the possibility of settlement, he said. The bank’s stock was trading 0.99% lower at Rs75.30 apiece on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on Wednesday.",IDBI Bank says union planning a nationwide strike on 12 April has decided to attend bilateral talks to explore the possibility of settlement on wage issue ,"Wed, Apr 12 2017. 02 54 PM IST","IDBI Bank union calls off strike, wage issues being discussed " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Bnbd4Du6UYQjL1b0sKe0ZP/Tax-dept-asks-financial-institutions-to-get-accounts-selfc.html,"New Delhi: The income tax department on Tuesday asked financial institutions (FIs) to get self-certification from account holders by 30 April to comply with FATCA provision and avoid blocking of accounts.“The account holders may be informed that, in case self-certifications are not provided till 30 April 2017, the accounts would be blocked, which would mean that the financial institution would prohibit the account holder from effecting any transaction with respect to such accounts,” the CBDT said in a statement.The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) also advised all financial institutions that all efforts should be made by them to obtain self-certification. India had entered into an agreement with the United States for implementation of the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) with effect from 31 August 2015. Under the Income Tax Rules, the financial institutions had to obtain self-certification from account holders by 31 August 2016, in respect of all individual and entity accounts opened from 1 July 2014- 31 August 2015. In view of the difficulties faced by stakeholders, the tax department had on 31 August 2016, indefinitely extended the deadline for complying with self-certification norms. In today’s statement, the CBDT said queries were received from the financial institutions regarding the revised time lines for completion of due diligence. It said if the account is blocked due to lack of self-certification, then the transactions by the account holder in such blocked accounts will be permitted once the self-certification is obtained and due diligence is completed. Under the FATCA provisions, financial institutions are required to obtain self-certification and documentation or else they were required to close the accounts and report the same if found to be a “reportable account” as per the prescribed due diligence procedure for a pre-existing account.FATCA allows automatic exchange of financial information between India and the US.",Income tax department asks financial institutions to get self-certification from account holders by 30 April to comply with FATCA provision and avoid blocking of accounts,"Wed, Apr 12 2017. 03 32 PM IST",CBDT asks financial institutions to get accounts self-certified by 30 April +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/pW3h9qm47qgdGUA6fN3MuJ/RBI-had-carpe-diem-moment-in-last-policy-meet-HSBC.html,"New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) “killed several birds with one stone” in its policy meet on 6 April by not sucking out excess liquidity with its permanent tool like open market operations (OMO) and cash reserve ratio (CRR) hike, an HSBC report says.According to the global financial services major, the RBI’s decision to narrow the policy rate corridor by raising the reverse repo rate and lowering the MSF (marginal standing facility) rate killed several birds with one stone. “The RBI seized the day on April 6 by not sucking out the excess liquidity via a permanent and blunt tool (like OMO sales or CRR hike). Instead, by outlining its inclination for ‘variable reverse repo auctions with a preference for longer term tenors’....,” HSBC said in a research note. “The RBI, in our view, had its ‘carpe diem’ moment... by not sucking out liquidity... Rather, it aims to mould it gently to give desirable behavioural change a fair shot,” the report added. The six-member monetary policy committee, headed by RBI governor Urjit Patel, on 6 April kept the repurchase or repo rate—at which it lends to banks—unchanged at 6.25% but increased reverse repo rate to 6% from 5.75%. The MSF, on the other hand, has been revised downwards by 0.25% to 6.5%. MSF is RBI’s overnight lending rate for banks against government securities. Following demonetisation, excess liquidity of around Rs4 trillion was sloshed around in the banking system and had distorted the short end of the yield curve, the report said.“Several short term money market rates such as the CBLO and the T-Bill rates had moved significantly below the repo rate. Pushing up the reverse repo rate is expected to raise these and bring back some normalcy,” HSBC added. There are, however, some risks associated with this move. The RBI has to be watchful of any inflationary pressures post a pick up in demand, and the central bank will also need to make sure that banks are not parking funds in unproductive or risky avenues, the note said.","RBI’s decision to narrow the policy rate corridor by raising the reverse repo rate and lowering the MSF rate killed several birds with one stone, says HSBC","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 03 30 PM IST",RBI had ‘carpe diem’ moment in last policy meet: HSBC +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/TWCpPgIjoQBId8ErgwabUP/Pokerplaying-engineers-take-on-AI-machine-get-thrashed.html,"Beijing: Alan Du, a venture capitalist and World Series of Poker veteran, was in his fifth day of matching wits against his stone-cold opponent— and his losses were piling up.His rival was literally inhuman. That’s because Du went up against “Lengpudashi” an updated version of the Libratus artificial intelligence program that achieved a major milestone by besting four of the world’s best poker pros in January. Housed within a super-computing centre near Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, its name, intended to resemble its English moniker, fittingly translates into “cold poker master.”Du and five team members played 36,000 hands against the machine over the course of five days. On Monday, at a resort conference centre on China’s Hainan island, the final point-based score was announced: the AI won by a landslide.Poker is a popular game among venture capitalists because “every hand you play is like a venture, trying to assess risk and ROI,” said Du, a seed investor who became the first mainland Chinese to win a WSOP gold bracelet in Las Vegas last year. “We held ourselves very well when playing against this world-class opponent.”Poker’s complex betting strategies and the element of bluffing make it particularly intriguing to AI researchers. A player also decides to bet, bluff or fold without ever seeing the opponent’s full hand—a different kind of challenge than games like chess or Go, in which all the pieces are clearly visible on a playing board.Du had tried to prevail where the pros had fallen short by employing an understanding of AI. Unlike the players in the January match-up who drew upon years of professional experience, Du’s Chinese team included engineers, computer scientists and investors, who attempted to apply their knowledge of machine intelligence and game theory to counter the machine’s moves. It wasn’t enough.The latest AI exhibition, organized by Sinovation Ventures and Hainan’s government, didn’t generate quite the same buzz as last year’s match-up between Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo and Korean master Lee Sedol in Seoul. Perhaps that’s because even casual observers are becoming accustomed to seeing AI software upstage humans. Google announced Monday its DeepMind AI software will take on top-ranked Chinese player Ke Jie in a rematch of man versus machine.Tuomas Sandholm, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon, has been honing the research underlying Libratus since 2004, honing its ability to make decisions in situations with imperfect information. The point of training AI to win at games like chess, Go, and poker isn’t for the sake of games themselves, but because controlled environments help computers hone strategic decision-making. Those reasoning skills can then be applied to real-world problems such as business, finance, and cybersecurity, he said.“People have a misunderstanding of what computers and people are each good at. People think that bluffing is very human—it turns out that’s not true,” said Noam Brown, Sandholm’s PhD student and a co-developer of Libratus. “A computer can learn from experience that if it has a weak hand and it bluffs, it can make more money.”The AI didn’t learn to bluff from mimicking successful human poker players, but from game theory. “Its strategies were computed from just the rules of the game,” not from analyzing historical data, Sandholm said.Venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee, founder of Sinovation and an event organizer, said the rapid acceleration of AI technology over the past five years wasn’t possible before the advent of big data analysis. His fund has invested $120 million in AI-related companies in China—including facial recognition and loan-application start-ups—and he plans to devote a significant chunk of the money he’s currently raising to other AI ventures.Also evident in the Hainan exhibition was the possibility of AI’s gradual democratization. Brown said the computing power on display over the competition could be had for under $20,000.“It’s surprisingly affordable,” he said. “Within 5 years, this could be running on smartphones.” Bloomberg",The latest version of the Libratus artificial intelligence program achieved a major milestone by besting four of the world’s best poker pros in January,"Tue, Apr 11 2017. 02 10 PM IST","Poker-playing engineers take on AI machine, get thrashed" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/rwJtRuLGfOIdL7dP8pePBK/Gartner-sees-IT-spending-growing-at-a-much-lower-14-in-201.html,"
Bengaluru: Global information technology (IT) services spend in 2017 is projected to grow 2.3% to $917 billion, estimates Gartner Inc., lower than its earlier estimate of 4.2% and the 3.6% growth recorded in 2016, on account of protectionist policies, especially in the US.The lower IT services spend does not bode well for the country’s $150-billion software services sector which is already facing challenges posed by newer technologies, such as cloud computing and blockchain, making many companies alter the way they do business.Worldwide IT spend in 2017 is projected to grow 1.4% to $3.46 trillion, down from Gartner’s earlier forecast of 2.7% on account of the strength of the US dollar. Despite the revised guidance, overall IT spend globally will be 0.4% higher than last year. “The modest changes to the IT services forecast this quarter can be characterized as adjustments to particular geographies as a result of potential changes of direction anticipated regarding US policy—both foreign and domestic,” Gartner said in a press release on Monday.“The strong US dollar has cut $67 billion out of our 2017 IT spending forecast,” said John-David Lovelock, research vice-president at Gartner. “We expect these currency headwinds to be a drag on earnings of US-based multinational IT vendors through 2017.”The IT services market accounts for $21 billion of the $67 billion decline in Gartner’s latest estimate. Data centre systems, enterprise software and communication services are the three other segments that have now been estimated to grow at a slower pace than the earlier estimate, said Gartner. Personal computers, tablets and mobile phones, classified as devices, is the only segment which Gartner expects will grow at a faster pace. Since the start of the year, Indian IT firms have been rattled by some of the decisions made by the administration of President Donald Trump. In addition to some of the legislation aimed at changing the way America allows companies to bring in engineers from abroad, the new Trump administration has made two policy changes. In March, the US government did away with a provision that allowed fast-track processing of H-1B work visas. Earlier this month, the US put out a stricture asking companies when they bring in a foreign computer engineer under an H-1B visa to prove that the employee is performing a “speciality occupation”. Equity analysts said the protectionist measures could be worrisome for Indian IT firms. “This event shows that protectionist measures can be put in place even without passing new legislation and impact IT companies as early as in FY18,” Sagar Rastogi and Utsav Mehta, analysts at Ambit Capital, wrote in a 5 April note.In February this year, industry body Nasscom surprised many when it delayed giving a growth projection for 2017-18. Nasscom cited regulatory changes in the US and uncertain macroeconomic outlook as the reasons behind pushing back its annual growth estimates for the sector.","Gartner has lowered its growth estimates in global IT services spending due to US visa policy, automation and newer tech like cloud computing and blockchain","Tue, Apr 11 2017. 03 48 AM IST",Gartner sees IT spending growing at a much lower 1.4% in 2017 +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/N3SU1An5dpHtqgC89XMwiN/Twitters-former-Asian-chief-joins-mobile-ad-startup-Unlock.html,"Singapore: Aliza Knox helped Twitter Inc. and Google Inc. build Asian businesses from scratch. Now she plans to do the same for an Australian mobile advertising start-up whose backers include 21st Century Fox Inc. co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch.Knox quit as Twitter’s most senior Asian executive this month to join Unlockd, a company that offers users a discount on wireless bills, additional data or entertainment content if they agree to view ads when unlocking their device screens. As chief operating officer, the former Google executive will spearhead the start-up’s global expansion.The Melbourne-based firm, which got off the ground in 2014, joins a growing list of companies—from Amazon.com Inc. to startup Jana—targeting a global mobile advertising market that researcher eMarketer expects to reach $101 billion in 2016.“They are totally aggressive about the business and getting things done,” said Knox, who hails from the San Francisco Bay area and worked at Boston Consulting and Visa before joining Google, mostly in Singapore and Australia. “But they also have the humility that this is a competitive environment.”Unlockd now reaches about a million users through partnerships with carriers such as Boost Mobile, a subsidiary of Sprint Corp., Tesco Mobile Ltd in the UK and Digicel Group Ltd in the Caribbean. It works with advertisers including Uber, McDonald’s, British Airways and Doritos, and its content partners include Twitter, Yahoo and the Facebook Audience Network.The company is now in talks with carriers to expand into several new markets, including India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, company co-founder and chief executive officer Matt Berriman said. Unlockd may eventually set up a regional office in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, he added.“We expect at least two or three markets to be launched in the next six to nine months,” Berriman said in a phone interview. The company, which has raised about A$25 million ($19 million), plans to announce the closing of its Series B round in coming weeks, he added. New investors as well as existing backers joined the round, he said. Unlockd’s backers include Peter Gammell, former CEO of Seven Group Holdings.Berriman, 32, met Knox over drinks in December at a restaurant across from the Twitter building in San Francisco. They were introduced by a headhunter who thought Knox’s management experience could come in handy at Unlockd. What appealed to Knox about the Australian start-up were its strong growth potential and culture. “What I love doing and I have proven to be good at doing is taking companies from almost nothing to a really significant presence,” Knox said. “Unlockd has a tremendous growth potential.” Bloomberg",Aliza Knox quit as Twitter’s most senior Asian executive this month to join Australian mobile advertising start-up Unlockd,"Tue, Apr 11 2017. 08 39 AM IST",Twitter’s former Asian chief joins mobile ad start-up Unlockd +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Xuvg6U2Awg7dRmydekSYUJ/Qualcomm-accuses-Apple-of-lying-to-regulators-and-making-thr.html,"San Francisco/ Washington: Qualcomm Inc. accused Apple Inc. of lying to regulators to spur investigations of the chipmaker, and threatening it to cover up the use of inferior parts in some iPhones.The world’s largest maker of phone semiconductors responded to a January lawsuit from Apple with counterclaims for damages late Monday, alleging the iPhone maker breached contractual pledges, mischaracterized their agreements and misrepresented facts.“We were really stunned by some of the things that they included in their suit,” said Qualcomm’s General Counsel, Don Rosenberg. “This is our attempt to respond to some disturbing elements in their complaint.”At the heart of the worsening standoff is a commercial dispute over how much Qualcomm is entitled to charge phone makers to use its patented technology, whether or not they use its chips. The San Diego, California-based company gets the majority of its profit from licensing technology that covers the fundamentals of all modern mobile phone systems. Qualcomm shares are down 12% since Apple sued 20 January, wiping more than $10 billion off the chipmaker’s market value.Apple is alone among major handset makers in not paying Qualcomm directly and has instead paid through contract manufacturers in Asia who build the iPhone. It’s now meddling in the legal agreements Qualcomm has with those suppliers, including Foxconn Technology Co. as it pressures the chipmaker to cut a more favourable deal on licensing fees, Rosenberg said.According to Qualcomm, Apple is behind regulatory investigations of its business practices worldwide. Cupertino, California-based Apple has lobbied with “false and misleading statements to induce regulators to take action against us because it would be in their commercial interests,” Rosenberg said.In December South Korea’s antitrust regulator slapped a record 1.03 trillion won ($902 million) fine on Qualcomm for violating antitrust laws. Then, in January, the US Federal Trade Commission accused it in a lawsuit of forcing Apple to use its chips exclusively in return for lower licensing fees and unfairly cutting out competitors. It’s also facing investigations in Europe and Taiwan.Apple filed its antitrust complaint 20 January in Qualcomm’s hometown of San Diego, accusing the chipmaker of illegally trying to control the market for chips and improperly withholding more than $1 billion in “rebates” to punish the iPhone-maker for talking to Korean regulators.Apple sought to have its case joined with one filed by the US Federal Trade Commission in Northern California.The FTC has also accused Qualcomm of illegally maintaining a monopoly for semiconductors in mobile phones. Apple’s request was denied 5 April. Qualcomm is now trying to have the FTC case dismissed.In addition to the $1 billion in withheld fees, Apple is seeking billions more in compensation for what it calls past overcharges, and lower royalties going forward.Qualcomm says Apple has soured a decade worth of working together and has threatened Qualcomm, to try to prevent it from publicly speaking about the performance of the iPhone 7. Some models of that device rely on Intel Corp. modems for their connections to phone networks and, according to Qualcomm, aren’t as good as the ones that use its modems.“We didn’t ask for this fight. Apple is a customer,” said Rosenberg. “We, of course, would like to continue to and will continue to do business with Apple.”While Apple’s iPhone revolutionised the smartphone industry in 2007 with its sleek design and user-friendly apps, none of them would have worked without the foundational technology developed by Qualcomm and other companies, Rosenberg said.He said Qualcomm gets “a small fraction” of the price of an iPhone, and contrasted that with the more than $1 billion Apple sought from rival Samsung Electronics Co. over the use of patented features like a pinching motion to expand or contract images.Qualcomm said it’s been the biggest contributor to the standardized technology that forms the foundation of all modern telecommunications.All companies that developed the standards pledged to license patents on those standards on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.Regulators and courts worldwide have been struggling with how to interpret that pledge, including how to calculate royalties and what rights the patent owners retain when it comes to recalcitrant would-be licensees. Qualcomm is seeking court rulings that it complied with its obligations and that its agreements with contractors follow licensing commitments. It also wants the court to rule that it’s Apple who’s been in breach of contract and that it’s engaged in unfair competition. Bloomberg",At the heart of the standoff between Apple and Qualcomm is a commercial dispute over how much the latter is entitled to charge phone makers to use its patented technology,"Tue, Apr 11 2017. 10 26 AM IST",Qualcomm accuses Apple of lying to regulators and making threats +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/bnlCHzVMaXY1kr8a8h1lLM/Symantec-attributes-40-cyber-attacks-to-CIAlinked-hacking-t.html,"San Francisco: Past cyber attacks on scores of organizations around the world were conducted with top-secret hacking tools that were exposed recently by the Web publisher Wikileaks, the security researcher Symantec Corp. said on Monday.That means the attacks were likely conducted by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The files posted by WikiLeaks appear to show internal CIA discussions of various tools for hacking into phones, computers and other electronic gear, along with programming code for some of them, and multiple people familiar with the matter have told Reuters that the documents came from the CIA or its contractors.Symantec said it had connected at least 40 attacks in 16 countries to the tools obtained by WikiLeaks, though it followed company policy by not formally blaming the CIA.The CIA has not confirmed the Wikileaks documents are genuine. But agency spokeswoman Heather Fritz Horniak said that any WikiLeaks disclosures aimed at damaging the intelligence community “not only jeopardize US personnel and operations, but also equip our adversaries with tools and information to do us harm. “It is important to note that CIA is legally prohibited from conducting electronic surveillance targeting individuals here at home, including our fellow Americans, and CIA does not do so,” Horniak said.She declined to comment on the specifics of Symantec’s research.The CIA tools described by Wikileaks do not involve mass surveillance, and all of the targets were government entities or had legitimate national security value for other reasons, Symantec researcher Eric Chien said ahead of Monday’s publication. In part because some of the targets are US allies in Europe, “there are organizations in there that people would be surprised were targets,” Chien said. Symantec said sectors targeted by operations employing the tools included financial, telecommunications, energy, aerospace, information technology, education, and natural resources.Besides Europe, countries were hit in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. One computer was infected in the US in what was likely an accident - the infection was removed within hours. All the programs were used to open back doors, collect and remove copies of files, rather than to destroy anything.The eavesdropping tools were created at least as far back as 2011 and possibly as long ago as 2007, Chien said. He said the WikiLeaks documents are so complete that they likely encompass the CIA’s entire hacking toolkit, including many taking advantage of previously unknown flaws. The CIA is best-known for its human intelligence sources and analysis, not vast electronic operations. For that reason, being forced to build new tools is a setback but not a catastrophe.It could lead to awkward conversations, however, as more allies realize the Americans were spying and confront them.Separately, a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers on Saturday released another batch of pilfered National Security Agency (NSA) hacking tools, along with a blog post criticizing President Donald Trump for attacking Syria and moving away from his conservative political base. It is unclear who is behind the Shadow Brokers or how the group obtained the files. Reuters","Symantec says it connected at least 40 attacks in 16 countries to the tools obtained by WikiLeaks, though it followed company policy by not formally blaming the CIA","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 08 08 PM IST",Symantec attributes 40 cyber attacks to CIA-linked hacking tools +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/C2F9qhI4ZexijOK2XnNcjM/Quality-in-the-age-of-quantum-computing.html,"
I left India for America as a post-graduate student in the late 1980s. In those days, the issuance of an H-1B visa to employees of Indian firms to enter America to work without having first studied at an American university was unheard of.Most Indians went to America as students on what was called an F1 visa. The line outside the US Consulate in Madras would start to form around 2am; no appointments were given, and visa interviews were on a first-come, first-served basis.Many of these Indian students opted to stay back in the US; their US employers filed for H-1Bs on their behalf—employing them after they had finished Master’s or PhD courses from an American university.The flood of H-1B visa holders who came in directly from India without first getting an American degree started in earnest only in the mid 1990s.The American-schooled Indian F1 crowd sneered at these new arrivals, and derisively referred to them as “FOB” or “fresh off the boat” Indians.The H-1B holders came up with their own unkind epithet about their American-schooled Indian brethren, calling them “coconuts”. I trust that this insult will need no further explanation if I simply ask you to look at the different hues on the inside and the outside of a coconut.In those years, the main impediment to “fresh off the boat” Indian programmers was that many Americans would complain about their Eastern, non-linear way of thinking, and bemoan the lack of quality in their work.None doubted their individual competence and sheer brilliance at raw programming, but the quality of the finished product when stitched together was doubtful. This was in contrast to America’s almost Germanic obsession with process, which, luckily for us coconuts, we had imbibed during our periods of study at American universities.The Indian IT services industry quickly caught on to this, and set about transforming themselves with zeal. They entered the cocoon of Carnegie-Mellon University’s ‘SEI’ or Software Engineering Institute’s ‘CMM’ or Capability and Maturity Model as chrysalises and emerged with wings, stamped with a CMM Level 5 certification.Any organization that received this certification could claim to be the best in the world when it came to the quality of their software engineering processes—and if my memory serves me right, when I returned to India in 2002, there were over 60 CMM Level 5 certified organizations in India, compared with a low single-digit number in the West. The “low quality” objection from American companies simply disappeared. Urban legend has it that Jack Welch, when speaking of General Electric’s large scale move into India and its use of Indian outsourcers, remarked, “We came for the cost, but stayed for the quality.”This was all very well in the 1990s and the noughties—an age when processes around computer engineering had emerged from the Neanderthal world of computer assembly language and machine-level coding into a process famously called the “waterfall process” of computer programming—a logical, sequential method for designing and developing software, more suited to the world of Homo Sapiens-Sapiens.The waterfall method begins with gathering the user’s requirements for the programme, after which the process moves into system architecture and design before it is handed over to the programmers.The programmers then write the requisite computer code before handing it over to the testers, who test each unit of code, as well as the entire programme. The finished programme is then tested by users for acceptance before a final “regression” test checks how it will interact with other computer programmes already in use.Only after a programme has passed all stages of the cascades in this waterfall process is it finally released into an “always-on” environment. The quantity of computer code was simply measured in how many thousands of lines of coding instructions a computer programme contained, and the elegance of the waterfall process allowed for CMM to easily be the arbiter of quality in what was a logical sequence of events. There have been variations on the waterfall process in the past two decades. The mid 1990s saw a move to “object-oriented” programming, which was less tightly organized around logic, and more around actual actions, and computer code came to be measured in “function points” rather than in thousands of lines of code.Methods such as “Agile” and “Dev-Ops” have been all the rage recently. I shall not delve into a detailed explanation of each of these so as not to bore you, and because I don’t understand them fully. But, as computer programming moves from the world of Homo Sapiens-Sapiens into the Artificially Intelligent world of sapient machines which can program themselves, new methods of checking for the quality and integrity of computer coding capabilities are the need of the hour. The added dimension of the cyber-security of the code and the associated data only magnify this need.Unsurprisingly, an organization is now trying to take on this mantle. The Consortium for IT Software Quality, or CISQ, is a sponsored special interest group founded jointly by the SEI at Carnegie-Mellon University and the Object Management Group. CISQ is chartered to create international standards for measuring the size and structural quality of software after analysing the actual computer source code written for Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and “bot” programmes, rather than the various processes used to build these programmes, and regardless of whether the code is generated by a human or a computer.The executive director of CISQ, Bill Curtis, led the development of the CMM model while at the SEI, and the organization is now trying to build credence as an arbiter of software quality. Its heritage, and its pivot down to the source code level while ignoring the various programming processes, means that it has a high chance of success.Siddharth Pai is a world-renowned technology consultant who has led over $20 billion in complex, first-of-a-kind outsourcing transactions.","As computer programming moves into the Artificially Intelligent world, new methods of checking for the quality and integrity of computer coding capabilities are needed","Tue, Apr 11 2017. 12 53 AM IST",Quality in the age of quantum computing +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/vp33IrYGll0KL0AEXImKNL/Technology-hits-workers-income-share-more-than-trade-IMF-s.html,"Washington: The advance of technology is the biggest reason workers are earning a shrinking slice of the income pie, according to a new study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).Labour’s share of national income declined in 29 of the world’s 50 biggest economies between 1991 and 2014, the IMF said in a study released Monday.Analysis suggests “technology is the largest contributor to the change in labour shares in the large majority of countries,” it said.The second main component of income is capital. When wages grow more slowly than productivity, labour’s share of income falls as the owners of capital reap gains at a quicker pace. That often worsens income inequality because capital tends to be concentrated in the hands of a few, the IMF said in a blog accompanying the research.The IMF’s finding is significant because economists have been debating what’s to blame for decades of sluggish wage growth. President Donald Trump has blamed trade with countries such as China and Mexico for hurting American workers and hollowing out the nation’s manufacturing sector. The IMF study suggests technology is a bigger driver.About half the decline in national labour shares can be traced to the impact of technology, according to the study, which is part of the World Economic Outlook. The full outlook, including the fund’s forecasts for global growth, will be released 18 April in Washington.Workplace robotsThe study notes the rapid advance of information and communications technology has accelerated the automation of routine tasks, causing firms to substitute capital for workers.Global economic integration has also played a part in labour’s declining share of income, the IMF said. The impact of changes in policies and institutions appears to be limited, though it’s difficult to say how much of the slump has to do with the decline of labour unions, according to the fund.The IMF has warned before of the threat from the growing use of robots. A paper by fund economists in September drew on science fiction as well as economic analysis to show the likely “profound negative implications” for income distribution of increased automation. It even depicted an extreme scenario, or singularity, “in which capital takes over the entire economy to the exclusion of labour.” Bloomberg","Analysis suggests technology is the largest contributor to the change in workers’ income share in the large majority of countries, according to a new study by the IMF","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 08 18 PM IST","Technology hits workers’ income share more than trade, IMF says" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hdKn80nNpOKPoJCYV9GeaK/Indias-201718-fuel-demand-seen-up-58-Govt.html,"New Delhi: India’s annual fuel demand is estimated to grow at 5.8% in the fiscal year 2017-18 higher than the previous year, government data showed on Tuesday, indicating improved industrial activity.Local fuel demand—a proxy for oil demand—in India rose about 5% in 2016-17 as economy slowed in the March quarter after government scraped old notes.Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November declared notes of Rs500 and Rs1,000 illegal tender, taking about 86% of total currency out of circulation, in a move that hit sales of cars and motorcycles.India is likely to consume 205.4 million tonnes of refined fuel in 2017/18, data posted on the website of the petroleum ministry’s Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell showed.“We expect slightly better than 5% growth in 2017/18, only risk is GST (goods and service tax) related. Implementation of GST could slow industrial activity in the small and medium industries and that could dampen diesel demand,” said K. Ravichandran, senior vice-president at ratings agency ICRA Ltd.From 1 July, New Delhi aims to roll out GST, one of the most significant reforms since India opened its economy in the early 1990s. The tax will harmonise a mosaic of state and central levies into a national sales tax.Diesel demand is estimated to grow 3.8% while that of petrol seen rising about 10% in this fiscal year, the data showed, reflecting robust demand for passenger vehicles.A gradual step up in gas demand and improved electricity supply could impact consumption of gasoil in the country. However, gasoil use is still expected to be higher than the last year driven by rising vehicle sales.India is promoting use of liquefied petroleum gas, used for cooking, to replace kerosene and that would raise sale of the cleaner fuel. Reuters",Local fuel demand—a proxy for oil demand—in India rose about 5% in 2016-17 as economy slowed in the March quarter after demonetisation,"Tue, Apr 11 2017. 10 31 PM IST",India’s 2017-18 fuel demand seen up 5.8%: Govt +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/lonIxboloFcHf1bTZZHnoO/Karnataka-hikes-power-tariffs-by-8.html,"Bengaluru: The Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) on Tuesday approved an 8% hike in tariff in 2017-18 for all categories of consumers in order to bridge a revenue gap for the previous fiscal, mitigate power purchase costs and an increase thermal power fuel costs. KERC cleared an 8% hike against a demand of 25% by electricity supply companies. Justifying the tariff hike, it said it was needed to cover the revenue gap of Rs2,616 crore. Karnataka has been forced to procure costlier short-term power due to reduced availability of cheaper hydel power owing to poor monsoon, the commission said.The new tariffs will come into effect retrospectively from 1 April.",Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission cleared an 8% hike against a demand of 25% by power supply companies,"Tue, Apr 11 2017. 11 10 PM IST",Karnataka hikes power tariffs by 8% +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/dhbmCVZ1DQGLf2ya3luNwO/Flying-drones-that-generate-power-from-wind-get-backing-from.html,"London: Technology that uses flying drones to generate electricity from wind is getting a boost from the German utility E.ON, which is backing a test project that may show if it can help cut the costs of producing power offshore.The machines stay airborne like kites to tap the energy of high-altitude wind currents. The force of the wind would push forward the drones, which would tug at a cable anchored to drive a power turbine. The technology still is in its early stages, with a handful of pilot projects around the world, including one bought up by Alphabet Inc. in 2013.“E.ON has been looking into airborne wind technologies for five years, and we believe it has true game-changing potential,” said Frank Meyer, a senior vice-president at the utility. “It supports one of our overall targets to drive down the cost of renewable energy, and also allowing production of renewable energy at locations where it is currently not economically and technically feasible.”E.ON believes the industry could take off in the first half of the 2020s, according to spokesman Markus Nitschke. The company is planning to be an early adopter of the technology, he said by e-mail. Airborne energy is projected to be cheaper than the mainstream form of offshore wind power if it is commercialized, partly because it doesn’t use as much material.Costly foundationsFoundations and towers for traditional wind turbines make up about 30% of the capital required to install the equipment offshore, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Moving into deeper waters further off the coast will increase these costs, although the windier conditions may balance this out by driving the turbines more often.ALSO READ: Renewables surpass other energy sources in capacity addition in FY17The drones are also expected to have a higher capacity factor because they fly higher where the winds are stronger, meaning they would produce power more often, according to Udo Zillmann, head of the Airborne Wind Energy Industry Network.“Based on tests by E.ON, the capacity factor is about 70%,” Zillmann said. “Operating offshore wind parks are less than 50%. Based on that and the lower development costs, the end goal could be to halve the cost of offshore wind energy.”Dutch developerE.ON is working with Ampyx Power, a Dutch developer, on the project. E.ON will build and operate a demonstration site for airborne wind energy in northwestern Ireland, which Ampyx will use for its current trial and the next version of its machine, which it hopes will be commercialized. The company expects to start testing by mid-2018. E.ON wants multiple companies to use the site eventually.The German utility previously invested in another airborne wind energy developer known as Kite Power Systems, or KPS. Last December, the utility, Schlumberger Ltd. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s venture fund jointly put £5 million ($6.2 million) into the UK company.“While in principle we are technology-agnostic, we consider this cooperation with Ampyx Power a major step in our efforts to take a leading role in furthering the promising emerging airborne wind energy sector,” Meyer said. Bloomberg",The German utility E.ON is backing a drone project in which the machines stay airborne like kites to tap the energy of high-altitude wind currents,"Tue, Apr 11 2017. 04 55 PM IST",Flying drones that generate power from wind get backing from German firm E.ON +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/zp2VjnX4kDUgy7RAL4IyjK/Kerala-Maharashtra-Rajasthan-top-list-in-providing-uninter.html,"New Delhi: People in Himatnagar area in Gujarat get the most uninterrupted power supply in the country, while residents of Mankachar in Assam grapple with an average 188 instances of power cuts a month.According to Urban Jyoti Abhiyaan or Urja, the power ministry’s application tracking service delivery to consumers in towns across the country, Kerala, Maharashtra and Rajasthan top the list in supplying uninterrupted power, while Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Assam have a lot to catch up.The Urja application meant to bring transparency in the performance of utilities and states captures the stark contrast in how consumers are served in different parts of the country. Data up to the town level on parameters like the number of power cuts in a month, the duration, severity of power theft and pending consumer complaints and connection requests put pressure on states to improve service delivery at the last mile of the electricity value chain.In Maharashtra and Gujarat, power supply is disrupted for only up to three hours on an average in a month, while the average monthly power outage duration in Haryana is a crippling 48 hours. Data at town level is captured to compute the state average. Bhavnagar in Gujarat and Erandol, a town in Jalgaon district in Maharashtra, have the least power outages of 0.16 hours in a month, while it is 253 hours in Karimganj in Assam.Andhra Pradesh has reported the least amount of power theft, while it is the highest in Uttar Pradesh. There were no pending requests for power connection in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Sikkim and Tripura in March 2017, while 84% of requests were pending in Goa in the same month.Utility performance varies across states as power distribution is often influenced by political considerations that prevent tough reform measures relating to pricing and power theft which in turn affect utilities’ ability to invest further in technology to boost efficiency and service quality.Union power minister Piyush Goyal is set to launch a related application ‘Urja Mitra’ on Tuesday allowing utilities to inform consumers about power outages. A rural feeder monitoring scheme, also to be launched on Tuesday, will track the quality of power supply in rural areas.State-power utilities are at present going through a debt restructure and turnaround scheme which involves reducing power theft and eliminating the gap between their average cost of power supply and the average revenue realized. State governments, which took over three-fourths of the accumulated debt of distribution companies, are keeping a close watch on the performance milestones. According to Sambitosh Mohapatra, partner, energy utilities and mining, PwC India, as the demand for power picks up and the gap between cost of service to revenue realised is bridged, many utilities will become profitable in the next two-three years.","Government’s Urja app shows Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Assam lag in supplying uninterrupted power","Tue, Apr 11 2017. 01 00 PM IST","Kerala, Maharashtra, Rajasthan top list in providing uninterrupted power: Urja app" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ps8k8siYzMnEB8A2MFZwTP/Google-offers-at-least-880-million-to-LG-Display-for-OLED-i.html,"Seoul: Google Inc. has offered to invest at least 1 trillion won ($880.29 million) to help South Korea’s LG Display Co. Ltd boost output of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens for smartphones, the Electronic Times reported on Monday citing unnamed sources. The paper said Google offered the investment to secure a stable supply of flexible OLED screens for its next Pixel smartphones. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd’s flagship Galaxy smartphones use the bendable displays, while Apple Inc. is expected to start using them in at least some of its next iPhones. LG Display declined to comment, while Google could not be immediately reached for comment. Reuters","Google offered the investment to secure a stable supply of flexible OLED screens for its next Pixel smartphones, says a report by the paper","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 11 14 AM IST",Google offers at least $880 million to LG Display for OLED investment: report +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/yLIhoLCdrzeMTOFz2RfTkI/Macquarie-to-acquire-solar-power-assets-of-Hindustan-Powerpr.html,"
Mumbai: An infrastructure fund of Australia’s Macquarie Group Ltd has agreed to buy about 330 megawatts (MW) of operational solar assets from power producer Hindustan Powerprojects Pvt. Ltd for an enterprise value of $600 million, said two people familiar with the discussions. The deal, which will give Macquarie an entry into India’s renewable energy sector, is in an advanced stage of completion and an agreement has been signed, these people said, asking not to be named as the discussions are private. Macquarie Asia Infrastructure Fund (MAIF) will hold a 100% stake in these assets, which are spread across 18 special purpose vehicles, largely in the state of Gujarat, these people said. The projects have been operational since 2010 and have thus signed power purchase agreements at tariffs higher than the prevailing solar energy tariffs. The Macquarie Group declined to comment. A spokesman for Hindustan Powerprojects also declined comment. Of the $600 million deal value, $250 million is the equity value and about $350 million is the debt associated with the projects, one of the two people cited above said. Macquarie wants to create a renewable energy portfolio consisting of solar and wind projects in India and is simultaneously on the lookout for other assets, this person said. The deal comes at a time when merger and acquisition activity in the sector has heightened and several clean power producers are looking for growth capital. Hindustan Powerprojects, formerly Moser Baer Projects Pvt. Ltd, currently operates about 600MW of solar power capacity under subsidiary Hindustan Cleanenergy and led by its chairman Ratul Puri. The firm also operates a 1,200MW coal-fired plant in Madhya Pradesh, in which a Macquarie and State Bank of India fund have previously invested Rs580 crore. Mint had reported last month that Macquarie and Hindustan Powerprojects were in talks for the sale of about 320MW in solar assets. Delhi-based Hindustan Powerprojects, formed in 2008, was among the first firms to set up solar projects in India. It plans to reach 2 gigawatts (GW) in total solar capacity by 2017 end and has a target of hitting 7GW of total capacity by 2020 from coal, solar and hydel power sources. Macquarie is a leading owner and operator of infrastructure assets globally. Since starting its first infrastructure fund in India along with the State Bank of India in 2009, Macquarie has deployed about $2 billion in India’s infrastructure sector. It invested through Macquarie-SBI Infrastructure Fund and infrastructure trust SBI-Macquarie Infrastructure Trust till 2013. It has been investing from MAIF I since 2014. Private equity firm Blackstone Group Lp, which had invested about $300 million in Hindustan Powerprojects in August 2010 and holds more than 30% in the firm, may consider exiting its stake in 2017 through a public listing of the power firm, Mint had reported on 31 December 2015. In fiscal year 2017, India added 5,526MW of new solar capacity (up 83% from the previous year) and 5,400MW of new wind capacity (up 63%), according to consultancy Bridge Io India. “While these numbers are impressive, it is worth noting that the solar capacity addition including rooftop solar is almost 50% below the annual target of 12,000MW. In contrast, wind capacity addition was +35% over the 4,000MW target,” Bridge To India said in a note on Monday. India’s renewable energy market will need $200 billion in investments to reach its target of 100GW of solar energy and 60GW of wind energy by 2022. There is currently over 10GW of solar capacity and 32GW of wind capacity installed across the country.",The acquisition of solar power assets of Hindustan Powerprojects gives Australia’s Macquarie Group an entry into India’s renewable energy sector,"Tue, Apr 11 2017. 03 29 AM IST",Macquarie to acquire solar power assets of Hindustan Powerprojects in $600 mn deal +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/RCtwimVIT8cLT2mOlIu1WJ/Batteries-developed-by-Isro-may-be-used-in-electric-vehicles.html,"
New Delhi: The Automotive Research Association of India (Arai) has successfully tested lithium-ion batteries developed by the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre for use in two- and three-wheelers, a development that is expected to provide a fillip to India’s electric vehicles (EV) push.The government is now planning to transfer the technology to companies for commercial production of these batteries, and will also set up a central agency to lead the country’s EV programme. This was decided at a meeting chaired by road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday. India’s initiatives on solar energy and electric vehicles are closely linked. The country plans to generate 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 100GW is to come from solar power projects. With storage being the next frontier for India’s clean energy push, the batteries in EVs offer a potential solution.India’s EV programme would help with grid balancing, besides complementing the government’s push for solar power, which is generated during the day and can be stored in EV batteries. “The technology should be transferred to companies in the private or public sector or joint ventures for commercial production of batteries. Bhel (Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd) is interested, but more companies should be roped in,” a government official said, requesting anonymity.Bhel is exploring the feasibility of manufacturing cells and batteries with technology developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (Isro) for application in electric vehicles, as reported by Mint on 31 March. Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre is part of Isro.Enthused by the market potential for EVs in India, state-owned firms such as Bhel, Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd (PGCIL) and NTPC Ltd are looking at new businesses catering to the space. While Bhel, India’s largest power generation equipment maker, wants to manufacture electric vehicles such as buses, cars, two-wheelers and boats, PGCIL, the power transmission utility responsible for establishing green energy transmission corridors, is considering setting up charging stations for EVs.Also, Vedanta Resources Plc is firming up its clean energy plans for India, encouraged by the opportunities offered by the country’s growing green economy. As part of the strategy, the firm is looking at developing battery storage solutions. “The need for bringing all issues related to non-polluting vehicles under one agency was also pointed out. At present, there are multiple agencies involved,” added the official cited earlier.Experts say solar power and EVs are a great combination.“EV on a clean fuel source is a better option for India. It is very important to have an enabling provision and one agency to spearhead the programme. There should also be continuous innovation to bring the cost of battery down and enabling support for infrastructure such as charging stations. It should be available across the country within a definitive time frame in order for EVs to take off as a mass product,” said Abdul Majeed, partner and national auto practice leader, PricewaterhouseCoopers.Queries emailed to cabinet secretariat, ministries of road transport and highways, Isro and the department of space late on Sunday evening remained unanswered. Arai director Rashmi Urdhwareshe didn’t respond to phone calls or a text message.The Friday meeting was also attended by cabinet secretary P.K. Sinha, road transport and highways secretary Sanjay Mitra, secretary in department of space Alur Seelin Kiran Kumar, director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre K. Sivan and Arai’s Urdhwareshe.Any shift to electric vehicles will help reduce pollution and fuel imports. India’s energy import bill is expected to double from around $150 billion to $300 billion by 2030. The government has been trying to push sales of electric vehicles and has set an ambitious target of selling six million by 2020.",The government is planning to transfer the battery technology to companies for commercial production,"Tue, Apr 11 2017. 03 29 AM IST",Batteries developed by Isro may be used in India’s electric vehicles +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/5npoCnoLZEAQJ5DIUB1PrK/H1B-visa-application-caps-reached.html,"Washington: A federal US agency responsible for processing of H 1B application for foreign IT professionals on Saturday said it has reached the congressionally mandated 65,000 visa cap for the 2018 fiscal year.“US Citizenship and Immigration Services has reached the congressionally mandated 65,000 visa H 1B cap for fiscal year 2018,” an official announcement said. Also Read: H1B visa: IT investors may as well say goodbye to recovery in FY18US Citizenship and Immigration Services has also received a sufficient number of H1B visa petitions to meet the 20,000 visa US advanced degree exemption, also known as the master’s cap, the statement said. However, unlike previous years, it did not say how it is going to determine the successful applications, which in the past had been through a computerized draw of lots.PTI","US Citizenship and Immigration Services responsible for processing of H1B application says it has reached the congressionally mandated 65,000 visa cap for the 2018 fiscal year","Sat, Apr 08 2017. 09 39 AM IST",H1B visa application caps reached +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/3oq0Ej2pZIw0z5HSSvlETK/Samsung-launches-Galaxy-C7-Pro-for-Rs27990-in-India.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/L01D1Ha3YDu1gWD7YO9TWM/Iran-said-to-cut-benefits-on-oil-sales-to-Indias-IOC-MRPL.html,"Delhi/Mumbai: Iran will cut some benefits to Indian state-run refiners on crude purchases after New Delhi decided to reduce the amount of oil it buys from the Persian Gulf nation, people with knowledge of the matter said.National Iranian Oil Co. will cut the credit period on crude oil sales to 60 days from 90 days for refiners such as Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd. and Indian Oil Corp., the people said, asking not be identified as the matter isn’t public yet. Iran will also reduce the discounts it offers on the shipping of crude to 60% from 80%, they added.The lower incentives will make Iranian purchases costlier and less competitive in a world awash with crude oil where rivals such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq are seeking to expand their market share. Iran’s crude sales to India more than doubled in 2016 after the lifting of sanctions over its nuclear program. India is Iran’s second biggest customer and the emerging center of global oil demand.India in turn, is using the supply glut to put pressure on Tehran for securing development rights to the Farzad-B gas field in the Persian Gulf, which was discovered by an Indian consortium led by ONGC Videsh Ltd. about a decade ago. Iran and India were aiming to conclude an agreement on developing the field by February. The South Asian nation, which stood by Iran during the sanctions, is seeking to invest as much as $20 billion in Iran’s energy industry and ports.Cutting purchasesIndian state-run refiners told Iran last month that they would cut oil purchases by 3 million tons during the financial year that started 1 April, the people said. MRPL and Indian Oil will reduce imports by 1 million tons each, while Hindustan Petroleum Corp. and Bharat Petroleum Corp. will cut purchases by about half a million tons each, according to the people.India’s overall oil imports from the Persian Gulf nation touched 19.8 million tons during April-December last year, compared with 12.7 million tons in the 2015-16 financial year, according to oil ministry data.Iran’s oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said “there are many other customers” if India decides to cut imports, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported on 5 April. Reuters earlier reported Indian state refiners will cut oil imports from Iran by a fifth.India’s oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said 6 April that it’s up to the state refiners to decide on Iran crude volumes.MRPL spokesman Prashanth Baliga couldn’t comment immediately, while an Indian Oil spokesman declined to comment. National Iranian Oil Co.’s public relations office in Tehran didn’t respond to an email and two calls seeking comment. Bloomberg","Iran may cut the credit period on crude oil sales to IOC, MRPL to 60 days from 90 and reduce the discounts on shipping of crude to 60% from 80%, people familiar with the matter said","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 04 43 AM IST","Iran said to cut benefits on oil sales to India’s IOC, MRPL after reduced import" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/jlC0wZAWSkU7sUC0y0BNUP/Indias-fuel-demand-fell-06-yearonyear-in-March.html,"New Delhi: India’s fuel demand fell 0.6% in March compared with the same month last year.Consumption of fuel, a proxy for oil demand, totalled 17.36 million tonnes, data from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) of the oil ministry showed.Sales of gasoline, or petrol, were 2.95 higher from a year earlier at 2.11 million tonnes.Cooking gas or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) sales increased 1.9% to 1.89 million tonnes, while naphtha sales surged 1.8% to 1.15 million tonnes.Sales of bitumen, used for making roads, were 12.25 lower, while fuel oil use edged lower 23.45 in March.","Consumption of fuel, a proxy for oil demand, totalled 17.36 million tonnes, data from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) of the oil ministry showed","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 12 32 PM IST",India’s fuel demand fell 0.6% year-on-year in March +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/h7lkXSforpRUKZr2MrVW2K/Fortum-India-to-add-250MW-solar-power-capacity-every-year.html,"
Mumbai: Finnish state-run utility Fortum Oyj’s India unit, which last year drove down solar power tariff to a new low, will set up at least 250 megawatts (MW) of solar capacity in the country every year, managing director Sanjay Aggarwal said.The local unit of Fortum will also enter the waste-to-energy sector and launch charging stations for electric vehicles to gain a larger hold in India’s renewable energy sector, Aggarwal said.Exactly a year ago, Fortum said it would invest €200-400 million (Rs1,500-3,000 crore) in India’s solar energy sector to set up some large-scale greenfield projects. The company will have about 200MW of solar energy capacity operational by August. It has a target of achieving 1GW of solar capacity in the next few years. The company plans to set up its solar projects across utility plants, business-to-business, and rooftop projects, Aggarwal said. “We will keep on bidding for new projects and our appetite would be to add about 250MW every year,” Aggarwal said. “In India, we are looking at four pillars: the first would remain solar, second would be the bio-ethanol plant, we want the third to be in waste to energy, and fourth, we want to launch charging stations for e-vehicles. But the engine of Fortum India will be solar.”The company’s bid for a solar project in a Rajasthan auction last year drove tariffs to a low of Rs4.34 per kilowatt-hour. Solar tariffs have this year fallen to a record-low of Rs3.30 a unit on a levelized basis—i.e., a value financially equivalent to the tariffs over the period of the power purchase agreement.The parent had last year bought a majority stake in a company called Chempolis Ltd, which has a memorandum of understanding with Numaligarh refinery for putting up a bioethanol plant. The plant would collect bamboo from across Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur and convert the cellulose to ethanol, which would then be blended with petroleum products. “There are no success stories in India so far in waste-to-energy, a bedrock of Fortum in the Nordics... We would like to position ourselves in the space and also use the dominant position in the Nordics with respect to charging stations for e-vehicles,” he said. Fortum opened its India office in September 2012 and acquired a 5MW solar power plant in Rajasthan in 2013. In 2015, its 10MW solar photovoltaic plant was commissioned under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission.In January 2016, Fortum won an auction for a 70MW project in Rajasthan and three months later won another for 100MW in Karnataka. By August, the company will have 200MW of operational solar power capacity in India, Aggarwal said.Aggarwal said his unit continues to look at merger and acquisition opportunities in renewables. Average solar tariffs in India have fallen by about 73% since 2010, almost in line with Chinese spot prices for solar power modules, which have also fallen by about 80% in the same period, Mercom Capital Group said in a report last month.Intense competition in reverse auctions for solar projects due to limited supply of projects has pushed companies to bid lower, sacrificing margins, in order to gain market share, the report said.","Apart from solar power, Fortum India will also enter the waste-to-energy sector and launch charging stations for electric vehicles, said MD Sanjay Aggarwal","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 04 35 AM IST",Fortum India to add 250MW solar power capacity every year +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Djntx9LXoLzPCZ2ILqJ42K/Mytrah-Energy-in-talks-to-raise-Rs1800-crore-from-Piramal-C.html,"
Mumbai: Hyderabad-based renewable energy producer Mytrah Energy India Pvt. Ltd is in advanced talks to raise Rs1,800 crore in structured debt funding from Piramal Capital’s structured finance group (SFG), two people directly aware of the development said on condition of anonymity. According to them, the deal is at a term-sheet level and will be one of the largest structured debt investments by Piramal group till date.Mytrah plans to use the funds to refinance its debt and provide exits to some of its current investors such as IDFC Alternatives, AION Capital and Merrill Lynch International before its planned initial public offering (IPO). “The transaction will go towards refinancing the company’s debt in various special purpose vehicles (SPVs),” said the first of the two people cited above. “Apart from refinancing, the funds will also go towards funding projects at various stages of development,” the person added.Emails sent to Mytrah Energy and separate emails and text messages sent to Shirish Navlekar, joint managing director and chief financial officer at Mytrah Energy, went unanswered. Piramal declined to comment.Mytrah Energy is one of the largest private firms in the renewable energy sector—it operates about 920 megawatts (MW) of wind energy projects and recently won bids to develop about 500MW of solar energy capacity. At least two of Mytrah’s existing investors, which include AION Capital and IDFC Alternatives, are keen to exit before the IPO, said the second of the two persons cited above.In September, Mint reported that Mytrah Energy has hired investment banks Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd and IDFC Bank Ltd to start working on a public listing that could see the firm raise between $250 million and $300 million.IDFC Alternatives, the asset management arm of IDFC Ltd, invested Rs350 crore in Mytrah in 2011 while AION Capital, a special situations fund, along with Merrill Lynch International, invested Rs400 crore in 2015.According to disclosures made by Mytrah Energy, its finance cost increased by $16 million by end June 2016 to $42.16 million, largely due to a higher interest on newly commissioned operating assets. In a recent report, credit ratings agency India Ratings said Mytrah Energy has refinanced existing debt of 543MW of projects and in the process raised another Rs300 crore which was used to fund the promoter’s contribution requirements for capex. “By exploiting the tail period of these operational projects, the company has leveraged the balance sheet of the SPVs and raised additional debt. This has substantially increased the debt levels of the consolidated entity to about Rs6,200 crore from close to Rs5,200 crore at end-FY16,” the report said.Piramal Capital has been largely active in the mid-market space and the potential transaction marks a shift towards higher value deals. Mint reported in March that Piramal was in talks to invest up to Rs1,500 crore in Krishnapatnam Port Co. Ltd (KPCL) to enable the firm’s promoters to buy private equity fund 3i Group Plc. “With the number of funds active in the mid-market space going up significantly in the past one year, that’s one of the primary reasons why Piramal is now looking at deals of bigger size of more than Rs1,000 crore where the competition is less,” the first person said, adding: “Apart from KKR there aren’t too many funds who can routinely fund such large transactions.”Currently, Piramal Fund Management manages or advises funds over Rs8,000 crore on the equity side and Rs4,000 crore of gross disbursements on the debt side. This includes six domestic funds, one offshore fund and three third party mandates.","Mytrah Energy plans to use the funds to refinance its debt and provide exits to investors IDFC Alternatives, AION Capital and Merrill Lynch before its planned IPO","Tue, Apr 11 2017. 02 57 AM IST","Mytrah Energy in talks to raise Rs1,800 crore from Piramal Capital SFG" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/feYircyu3afuDRCpHWKlVO/Will-UK-Sinha-exit-Sebi-with-a-bang.html,"
Barring an unlikely extension of his tenure, these are U.K. Sinha’s last few weeks as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).Will he make them count?Mint reported earlier this week that the markets regulator is looking to increase its oversight of the boards of stock exchanges.This is reportedly in response to the findings that the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd’s (NSE) practices with regards to co-location services were unfair. Sebi has already done a fair bit to address this. It took an active interest in the appointment of independent directors on NSE’s board, according to Bloomberg Quint. And one version of the turn of events at NSE is that it was the presence of these new board members that led to the eventual exit of the exchange’s chief executive officer and its group operating officer. While all of this sounds good, the elephant in the room is the lack of penal action against the exchange.Note that two separate investigations have found that the NSE provided unfair access to some trading members. And worse still, all accounts suggest NSE attempted a cover-up, which is a far worse crime.NSE is going ahead with an initial public offering, or IPO, against the backdrop of a crisis of confidence and credibility.Will Sebi penalize the exchange?From the looks of it, this seems unlikely.But Sebi and Sinha must realize that this creates a huge moral hazard.If the regulator doesn’t take penal action against NSE, the message to the exchanges is that you can take such risks and get away without a penalty.In other words, the benefits from such practices will always outweigh the costs.The best way to avoid recurrences in future is to impose high penalties in such cases.Venkatesh Panchapagesan, adjunct professor, finance and control area, Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore, says: “As exchanges transition into listed entities, it is important for the regulator to ensure that regulatory lapses are dealt with punitively. Otherwise, the desire for profits will always trump the costs associated with regulatory oversight. Self-regulation will fail then.”To elaborate: while in theory Indian exchanges are expected to perform various regulatory roles, in practice these can be viewed as irritants—costs that eat into profits made by other divisions.While this is a challenge with all exchanges, the problems are pronounced for listed exchanges, where profits are in focus far more regularly. One way to deal with this is to carve out regulatory roles into a separate entity, as suggested in this column earlier.But as we await Sebi’s readiness to move in this area, the best alternative for now is to severely penalize any lapses that come to light. That way, the exchanges won’t dream about compromising on regulatory oversight of markets, trading members and listed companies.All of this is crucial because even a mere perception of unfairness in an exchange can lead to a loss of investor confidence and result in costs to the economy such as an increase in cost of capital. Some investors could well look at an episode such as this and decide to stay away from the Indian markets.On the other hand, if Sebi is seen as a proactive regulator, which doesn’t take regulatory lapses lightly, it will attract new investors to Indian shores.In short, there’s a whole lot at stake, and it’ll be a pity if the only thing that Sebi comes up in its board meeting on Saturday is to tinker with the boards of stock exchanges.At the least, it should make its findings against NSE public. J.R. Varma of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad says in a blog post that this is material information about the operation of one of India’s most critical financial market infrastructure institutions and must be disclosed.Another aspect that has become amply clear is that having caps on shareholding hasn’t helped in this case. It’s true that a dominant shareholder may run riot and it makes sense to avoid a repeat of the National Spot Exchange Ltd fiasco. But it’s also true that even a company executive with no shareholding can run riot by being overly profit- or market share-focused.In this backdrop, all that the narrow shareholding caps have done is thwart competition for entrenched exchanges. This, in turn, has led to hubris—NSE’s appointment of its group operating officer on a contractual basis being a prime example.Even now, market participants who are unnerved by the findings at NSE have no great options to move their business. Not too long ago, they had moved business from BSE to NSE because of concerns about the former’s governance.Sebi must realize that encouraging competition in the exchange space will entail tremendous benefits to the marketplace. Of course, this will have to go hand in hand with a robust oversight of the markets by the regulator. But this can has been kicked down the road for far too long. It is high time Sebi revisits shareholding caps for investors in stock exchanges.If it even allows companies to own a 26% stake, global exchanges such as CME Inc. and Intercontinental Exchange may find it attractive to enter the Indian markets, and it can lead to far better competition in the stock exchange space.Of course, to Sebi’s credit, the listing of exchanges will result in positive outcomes, including a greater scrutiny of exchange practices. A listed NSE would have witnessed a huge slump in value because of allegations of unfair access, and may have acted as a check on the management. Even so, Sebi has far better tools at its disposal to ensure good governance at exchanges. It must use them.",Outgoing Sebi chairman U.K. Sinha should address the NSE algo trading case and avoid creating a moral hazard,"Fri, Feb 10 2017. 11 44 AM IST",Will U.K. Sinha exit Sebi with a bang? +https://www.livemint.com/Money/fhsgTTlNH1TvmQ9apTgBAL/December-quarter-results-indicate-SBI-limping-back-to-normal.html,"
A few quarters ago, a press conference on the financial results of State Bank of India (SBI) paused comically after a chunk of plaster fell on the stage from above. Smirks in the audience indicated they had taken this as a metaphor for the deteriorating bad loan situation. Stretching that metaphor, can we say SBI’s book is on the mend like the auditorium—the venue for that conference—that is under renovation now?On the face of it, the numbers for the third quarter resemble a chess board as for every positive metric, there is a negative one. The largest lender’s slippages remained around Rs10,000 crore, unlike many of its peers, which showed a decrease. But upgrades surged, indicating stress has eased. Note that this improvement is despite the demonetisation blow to the asset side. Of course, the bad loan ratios, both gross and net, rose simply because of the measly 4.2% loan growth.But for ugly bad loan ratios, two heartening numbers are the sequential reduction in stressed assets ratio (which is gross bad loans plus restructured standard assets) to 9.54% and a fall in credit costs to 1.92%. Further, more than 70% of slippages are from the watchlist that SBI put out in March, which means the lender has got its diagnosis right on toxic assets. The list itself is down 31% to Rs17,992 crore, which represents just 2.66% of the total corporate loan book.The management’s outlook for its asset book is anything but sanguine and the stock movement this year suggests even investors have not abandoned caution. SBI shares have risen 12% this year; but so have the benchmark indices. Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairman of the bank, hopes loan disbursals will grow 6.5% in 2016-17. The loan growth for FY18 is pegged at 11% and that, too, on the base effect, given this year’s limited growth.Bhattacharya also pointed out that demonetisation has set the bank back by a quarter in mending its bad loans. Its mid-corporate and small and micro enterprise customers were the worst hit by the currency withdrawal, and bad loan ratios rose sharply. Moreover, as Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd points out, SBI used the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) special dispensation to classify loans worth Rs2,000 crore as standard in the wake of demonetisation.Ignore the one-time relief and SBI’s already formidable stock of bad loans at Rs1.08 trillion would have increased further. The bank highlighted that fresh loans disbursed by it are to corporate entities having a rating above ‘A’ and that a slow but sure pick-up in economic activity would eventually translate into higher credit growth. But for FY17, asset quality will look nasty, and the only saviour for the stock is that it currently trades at 1.27 times the estimated book value of FY18 earnings, which is cheap.","But for ugly bad loan ratios, two heartening numbers at SBI are the sequential reduction in stressed assets ratio to 9.54% and a fall in credit costs to 1.92%","Sat, Feb 11 2017. 02 32 AM IST",December quarter results indicate SBI limping back to normalcy +https://www.livemint.com/Money/RNNHsLKWnhup8oEQTJDwdM/Tata-Motors-has-a-bumpy-ride-ahead-with-JLR-misfiring.html,"
There are many reasons for the Tata Motors Ltd stock to have a bumpy ride—they range from the Brexit effect to Cyrus Mistry’s exit and more recently, demonetization. And now, we have a deplorable set of numbers put forth by the company for the December quarter, which practically writes off the stock’s near-term prospects. Not surprisingly, the stock plunged by 4% and its DVR (differential voting rights) tanked even harder by 6% after the results were announced.
ALSO READ | Tata Motors Q3 profit plunges 96% on losses in India ops, lower JLR profitAlthough the consolidated net revenue at Rs66,855.1 crore was in tune with Street estimates, it was the operating performance that was the biggest let-down. It was harder to fathom because the UK subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover Ltd (JLR), which has been leading profits higher quarter after quarter, for the first time hugely failed investors.Consolidated operating margin fell by about 500 basis points to 7.6% from a year ago, mainly because JLR’s upward margin trajectory was punctured. It contracted from 14.4% to 9.3%—the first time to single digits since fiscal year 2010. The Tata Motors management in its media meet explained that runout in one of its premium models, significant marketing expenses, biennial salary negotiations and new model launches led to this margin drop. Add to this an unfavourable currency and product mix too.One wonders though, if its new product lines are yielding lower profit margins. Indeed, JLR sales have been maintained thanks to the expansion in US markets, even when China briefly wobbled and Europe was still inching up. But higher market penetration and share led to margin erosion during the quarter. The consequent weak operating profit trickled down to weaker net profit, almost half of that clocked a year back.The story was similar for the stand-alone company on home ground too. Demonetization impacted commercial vehicle sales, though its passenger cars fared better than the industry during the quarter. But again, it was the 345 basis points drop in operating margin to 1.5% that was a big let-down from the Street’s expectation of 4.2%. Net loss at Rs1,000 crore was more severe than that charted out by brokerage firms.Therefore, the consolidated net profit of Rs111.6 crore was a distant cry from the ambitious average expectation of Rs2,264.5 crore by 20 Bloomberg analysts.For now, it does not appear that the results disappointed on account of any one-off provisions or write-offs. Therefore, a bigger slide in the Tata Motors stock, which closed at Rs486.80 on Tuesday, may not be surprising. Certainly, brokerage firms will trim the earnings forecast for the near term.Yes, it cannot be ignored that JLR, the prized cash-cow of Tata Motors, is continuing to add sales volumes. What needs to be watched is whether growth will come at the cost of margins. If so, it will cap the earnings momentum leading to an erosion in valuation too.",The deplorable set of numbers put forth by Tata Motors for the December quarter practically writes off the stock’s near-term prospects,"Wed, Feb 15 2017. 07 57 AM IST","Tata Motors has a bumpy ride ahead, with JLR misfiring" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/GPI6l1VWZbEBHtdaIP0UGL/UPLs-India-business-surprises-positively-in-December-quarte.html,"
Shares of UPL Ltd, formerly United Phosphorus Ltd, gained 83% in the past one year as the company maintained the growth tempo despite the turbulence in its consumer markets. The December quarter (Q3) has been no different.Revenue and volume are up 18% from a year ago. As has been the case in recent quarters, Latin America led the growth with a 37% rise in revenue. What came as a surprise though is a strong 20% growth in the India business.A combination of dry spells, delayed crop seasons and demonetization-induced disruption to business has reduced growth expectations of agrochemical companies. Validating that view, Rallis India Ltd recently reported a subdued 8% growth for the December quarter despite a favourable base.UPL’s India business also has the benefit of a favourable base—revenue in Q3 last fiscal was down 17%. Even then, as one analyst with a domestic broking firm points out, the growth is stronger than expectations. “A crop shift in favour of pulses, soyabean, oilseeds and corn resulted in improved demand for herbicides, which helped drive the top line,” Sharekhan said in a note.In Latin America, the company benefited from better crop area and yield improvements in Brazil, a large market for UPL in terms of revenue. Its insecticide brands did well due to the high infestation of sucking insect in soybean. In North America, the business was flat as low incomes made farmers wary of investing in agriculture inputs. Business in Europe grew 8%. Its herbicides products did well, the company said in its results presentation.While revenue in the rest of the countries grew 2%, Latin America and India stood as major growth drivers for UPL. In a conference call with analysts, the management maintained a 12-15% revenue growth forecast and 60-100 basis points expansion in operating margin.Achieving the growth guidance may not look challenging, especially with revenue already rising 14% so far this fiscal.But the growth outlook in the current quarter is less sanguine. The major consumption phase is over in three key geographies-the US, Europe and India. “Management has also cautioned for a tougher operating environment during Q4 FY17 in North America, Europe and India,” Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd adds.This puts the growth burden on Latin America. Thankfully, the prospects in the region, especially Brazil, remain encouraging.Though the valuation at 16 times one-year-forward earnings estimates does not look expensive yet, two factors will play a crucial role in the continuing outperformance of the UPL stock.One is the maintenance of revenue growth momentum. The second is a recovery in the US and European farm sectors. These will ensure broad based growth and increase investors’ confidence in UPL’s 2017-18 prospects.","While revenue at UPL in the rest of the countries grew 2%, Latin America led the growth with a 37% rise in revenue","Mon, Jan 30 2017. 07 41 AM IST",UPL’s India business surprises positively in December quarter +https://www.livemint.com/Home-Page/RopJSpvPWkxOCJLC6WQWbP/There-may-be-more-to-Tata-Steels-bumper-profit-than-meets-t.html,"
Tata Steel Ltd’s shares have doubled in value in the past year, thanks to an improvement in market conditions and prospects of a cut in exposure to the loss-making European business.
ALSO READ | Tata Steel registers first profit in 5 quartersThe company’s December quarter results may cause some more cheer among investors. Reported operating profit was far higher than Street expectations, thanks largely to an unusual jump in the profits of its India business.Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of the India business rose by as much as 70% quarter-on-quarter to Rs3,393 crore, thanks to both better volumes and realizations. But as pointed out in this column last month, the jump in sales last quarter could well be due to one-off factors, and the performance may not sustain going forward.ALSO READ | Why is India’s steel consumption rising?According to analysts, sales in the December quarter were aided by advance purchases ahead of an expected price hike in January, as well as some dealers stocking up using demonetized currency. If underlying steel demand hasn’t improved as much, the increase in inventory levels may well hurt going forward. As such, it makes sense to wait and watch for signs of improvement in underlying demand before jumping to conclusions just based on last quarter’s results.The European operations reported a sharp decline in profit as expected, thanks to higher raw material and energy costs as well as due to a planned yearly maintenance stop. In the near term, the profitability of the business depends on how prices of coking coal move.More importantly, though, investors will be keen to see a lasting solution to the European problem through an M&A (mergers and acquisitions) deal, such as the one being discussed with ThyssenKrupp AG. The latter has said that Tata Steel must fix its pension deficits before merger talks can be taken forward. If the deal doesn’t materialize, investors will be clearly disappointed. After all, one of the reasons the company’s shares have done well in the past year is because of prospects of cutting losses in Europe through M&A deals.The silver lining, of course, is that price realizations have improved, and the Indian business has been doing far better than it has done in years.","Tata Steel shares have done well in the past year is because of prospects of cutting losses in Europe through M&A deals, such as the one with Thyssenkrupp","Wed, Feb 08 2017. 03 06 AM IST",There may be more to Tata Steel’s bumper profit than meets the eye +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/e7swdi19VTScdyyGntww9K/Does-private-equity-add-value-to-companies-they-invest-in.html,"
At a recent gathering of limited partners (LPs), one asked, “Can fund managers influence Indian promoters?’’ In a tone that oscillated between an unproven suspicion and an open secret, another quipped, “Some operating teams are a little more than window dressing for LPs.”In an industry where persistence in performance has fallen and available data is selective, this is not an easy question to answer. We got down to the business of comparing the performance of private equity (PE)-backed companies, and what we found may surprise you. PE advocates active governance. Empirical research demonstrates that ‘active ownership’ over strategy, executive appointments, operational improvement and acting early contribute to better returns. The converse holds true too—not acting, or doing so late, produces worse returns. Our survey of LPs and portfolio company CEOs shows investors get credit for selection, exercising controls over capital decisions and improving board efficiency. However, the operating team’s role varies widely. When it’s all about the numbers, PE delivers. Comparing PE-backed and non-PE backed company performance, PE outperforms on revenue and earnings growth. Simply put, they grow faster and deliver higher margins while doing so—this appears to be true from the first year through the fifth year of ownership (t=1 to 5). Although performance and relative outperformance diminish over time, the results are clear. So, what capabilities are being built here?• Willingness to engage in cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As): over 80% of PE-backed companies clinched their first cross-border deal after PE investment. Many portfolio companies see PE as a vehicle to make acquisitions.• Stronger export growth: At an average, PE-backed companies grow exports over 2x their non-PE backed counterparts in every sector, with the exception of pharma—where they grow exports in line with non-PE backed companies.• More jobs, better talent: PE-backed companies created more jobs. Indexed to 100 at the time of investment, over a five- year period, they grew jobs 1.5x versus 1.15x for non-PE backed companies of similar sectors and size. Clearly an outcome of higher revenue growth. Why does outperformance diminish over time? You can cut costs and introduce productivity initiatives to improve margins within 12-18 months. Quick improvements offer rapid top-line improvements. Yet, most short-term fixes, even if structural, offer short-lived advantages.Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) outperformance requires more frequent capital re-allocation. Companies often defer these strategic actions and investments, since they have a longer horizon to impact than most PE investors are willing to underwrite. There is clear evidence that with sufficient granularity in strategy, these investments pay off over time.Company outperformance needs to translate into returns for investors. This is a challenge. Where there is pricing discipline and early intervention, we are optimistic it will, especially as greater experience settles into PE teams in India. Vivek Pandit is a senior partner of McKinsey & Co. in India and is based in Mumbai. ","Comparing private equity-backed and non-private equity backed company performance, PE outperforms on revenue and earnings growth","Mon, Feb 06 2017. 01 25 AM IST",Does private equity add value to companies they invest in? +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/n79HJBxzEK76zwlM7scXuI/Toyota-might-be-losing-the-future-to-bigger-RD-spenders.html,"Sydney: Ensuring a smooth ride is all very well, but drivers need to be thinking about their destination if they hope to get anywhere. That’s a lesson Toyota Motor Corp. needs to learn before its rivals start to overtake.Shares of the world’s biggest carmaker fell the most in three months on Tuesday after third-quarter results released after the previous day’s close.The biggest worry in those numbers shouldn’t be the yen: While currency effects hacked 205 billion yen ($1.8 billion) off third-quarter operating profit, the sharp reversal in the Japanese currency after the US election means foreign exchange will provide all of the 150 billion-yen improvement in Toyota’s full-year forecast. The deeper problem for shareholders is Toyota’s curiously pessimistic assessment of the future.ALSO READ: Honda cites growing electric car demand for Hitachi ventureA look at the front page of Toyota’s investor presentation illustrates the problem:The cover stars are the latest iterations of the Toyota Camry—a vehicle first introduced in 1982—and the Camry Hybrid, a decade-old line based on the hybrid technology that Toyota first rolled out when the original Prius models went on sale 20 years ago. Even President Akio Toyoda couldn’t help making a joke out of calling the Camry “sexy” in a speech to the Detroit motor show last month.Compare this with Daimler AG, which led its investor presentation the previous week with an image of the Tron-styled grille of its EQ electric concept vehicle:If you think pretty pictures don’t give much useful information to investors, you might want to dig through the numbers, too.Toyota’s forecast research and development spending in the year through March is unchanged from the previous quarter at 1.07 trillion yen. With Daimler upgrading its own plans, that’s now just a sliver ahead of the average 8.1 billion euros ($8.8 billion) the German company has committed to spending this calendar year and next.There’s a very real chance that Daimler—which makes less than one passenger car for every four coming off Toyota’s production lines—could soon be spending more on developing the next generation of automobiles.The fall in the yen under Abenomics has helped turn Toyota’s slowing pace of R&D investment into an outright decline in dollar terms, but it’s not sufficient to explain the weakness. After all, 10 of Toyota’s 15 design and research centers are outside Japan. Among the 10 carmakers that turn out more than 3 million vehicles a year, its R&D as a percentage of sales is well below the average.ALSO READ: Toyota raises full-year profit outlook on weaker yen, cost cuttingThis spending matters because the radical technological advances that are starting to reshape the global car industry, from battery electric vehicles, to self-driving technology and shared ownership, threaten to leave behind any automakers that aren’t prepared for the way the world is changing.Toyota is still a mammoth innovator, just behind Apple Inc. as one of the top 10 R&D investors globally, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It’s got a $1 billion Google-style skunkworks to develop autonomous cars, the world’s best-selling new-energy vehicle in the form of the Prius, plus the Mirai hydrogen fuel-cell car.Still, its deals with oil companies to push hydrogen technology have a distinctly Betamax feel to them at a time when the rest of the industry is making leaps and bounds with battery electric technology.In 2015, Toyota was the only one of the world’s top five global automotive manufacturers not to also be one of the top 10 electric vehicle manufacturers. Just three months ago, it finally appeared to admit it had backed the wrong horse, conceding it may have to start mass production of battery electric vehicles after all. Perhaps the sort of visions of the future promulgated by Volkswagen AG, Daimler and Ford Motor Co. are unrealistic. If Toyota was intoxicated decades ago from the white heat of technology rather than making reliable, affordable and profitable cars, it would probably never have got where it is today. R&D is notorious for burning piles of money on moonshot projects that fail to produce any return on investment. Gadfly has often shared Toyota’s somewhat dubious view of those developments, particularly in car-sharing and autonomous vehicles—but guiding a business is a lot harder than writing opinion columns, and carries a lot more responsibility. Toyota needs to boost innovation, if only as an insurance policy. Too much skepticism about the future risks looking like insouciance. Bloomberg",The radical technological advances that are reshaping the global car industry threaten to leave behind any automakers that are not prepared for the changes,"Wed, Feb 08 2017. 01 26 AM IST",Toyota might be losing the future to bigger R&D spenders +https://www.livemint.com/Money/y9caFUwLcq06QCV2iW0ngI/Q3-results-ITC-sticks-to-diversification-strategy-eyes-hea.html,"
The wait for ITC Ltd’s consumer business to become profitable has been a long one. While the business has grown in size, now at 18% of revenue, it continues to add new products in existing categories, enters new categories and invests behind them. That insatiable appetite to diversify revenue and grow scale indicates that profits will come later. This urge to diversify may now see it enter the healthcare sector.ITC said it plans to add healthcare to its objects clause, but did not mention other details.Could ITC be planning a full-fledged entry into the healthcare sector, either on its own or by acquiring an existing hospital chain?Cigarettes and healthcare may make strange bedfellows, but hospitality and hotels do make for a good combination.Also in common, unfortunately, is that setting up hospitals requires significant investments, especially if you have to add new ones, gestation periods are relatively long and the sector is becoming more competitive.ITC’s recurring cash flows from the cigarettes business give it the requisite financial muscle, but investors may fret if the investment requirements prove to be substantial.Coming to its results, demonetisation did see its cigarette sales growth slow down to 2.2% in the December quarter, compared with a growth of 7.1% in the September quarter.It said that tight liquidity conditions affected sales growth. As the cash crunch eases, its cigarettes business should come back to more normal growth rates. The changes in tax rates in the budget, final rates and cess under goods and services tax, if any, on cigarettes, are near-term policy triggers to watch for.Along with cigarettes, demonetisation did see its consumer business sales, too slow down to 3.4%. Hotels’ revenue growth was relatively better but paper saw a slight decline. Overall, net sales rose by 4.1% but a higher increase in material costs led to expenses rising by more than sales did. Its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) margin declined from over a year ago, as a result, but improved sequentially. Its profit after tax rose 5.7%. The cigarette segment’s margin declined and the consumer business turned in a loss of Rs19.7 crore.ITC did better than what the Street was expecting. It should do even better as business improves, post-demonetisation. Still, the share fell 2.8% on Friday which may be partly due to it having rallied sharply since end-December (it is up 14% since 26 December). The diversification into healthcare, too, may have dampened investor enthusiasm. News on the taxation front and its plans for healthcare will occupy centre stage for the moment.","The changes in tax rates in the budget, final rates and cess under goods and services tax, if any, on cigarettes, are near-term policy triggers to watch for","Mon, Jan 30 2017. 07 38 AM IST","Q3 results: ITC sticks to diversification strategy, eyes healthcare now" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/owEALNgutsPaC3fb7D6X4O/LT-results-mirror-the-poor-state-of-investment-demand.html,"
The December quarter results of Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T), a proxy for the state of India’s investment demand, was disappointing. It was all the more so, as it had turned in a vibrant performance for the September quarter. What is likely to dampen investor sentiment is the management’s decision to lower growth guidance to 8-10% for the full year ending March, from the earlier forecast of 12-15%. And even that appears to be an uphill task for the juggernaut.The firm’s December quarter results surprised the Street negatively. Net revenue grew 1.4% to Rs26,287 crore from a year ago, which fell short of Bloomberg’s average estimate by a significant 11%. One could blame it on demonetisation, to some extent.The impact was felt the most in the infrastructure segment, which comprises over three-fourths of L&T’s revenue. The management said in its media release that clearance delays and the abrupt liquidity crunch at the customers’ end hindered work progress.Meanwhile, toll revenue was down, too. So were real estate sales. Yet, the segment’s revenue grew by 6%, with a robust contribution from its international projects.That’s not all. L&T’s power segment is battling a dwindling order book. Revenue fell by 23% year-on-year (y-o-y). Also, the other smaller engineering segments and information technology (IT) did little to enthuse investors.But L&T’s 9.6% operating margin matched investor expectation and was a neat 140 basis points (bps) higher than the year-ago period. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Stringent working capital management and cost-cutting exercises did the trick. In this respect, the infrastructure segment delivered a respectable 110 bps y-o-y rise, even as the hydrocarbons, heavy engineering and electrical and automation segments pulled up their socks.However, both operating profit and net profit fell short of the average brokerage estimates. Yet, the consolidated net profit was about 39% higher y-o-y at Rs972.5 crore, not a bad deal considering the macroeconomic challenges.The moot question is, will L&T meet its guided revenue and order inflow target?On the revenue front, the firm will have to ramp up execution in the fourth quarter to match even the watered down 10% growth in annual revenue. Thanks to customer delays after the currency ban, the work at many sites was almost at a standstill. These have to gain traction again. Meanwhile, segments such as IT could clock slower revenue growth.On order inflows, the challenge is no less. December-quarter order inflow was 10% lower, with a third coming in from overseas. Again, given its run-rate at the end of nine months, the firm has to clock at least Rs50-60,000 crore to meet the guided annual target. Not impossible, given that the fourth quarter is the “lumpiest” on order inflows, but a Herculean task, too.In fact, L&T’s results convey that all is not well in the economy.“Domestic growth appears to take a longer time as investment momentum is weak and the banking system is burdened with a debt overhang,” says the company's media release, adding that the challenging business conditions are likely to remain for a few more quarters.Infrastructure orders from the government are still delayed and private capex is yet to take off.L&T’s stock trades at Rs1,439 apiece, which discounts its one-year forward estimated earnings by a rich 21 times.In fact, since demonetisation, the stock, which has been a steady outperformer, has been volatile. Brokerages have trimmed both the expected earnings and valuations over the past few weeks. Only a fillip to revenue or order inflows can make this elephant dance.","What is likely to dampen investor sentiment is the management’s decision to lower growth guidance to 8-10% for the year to March, from the earlier forecast of 12-15%","Mon, Jan 30 2017. 07 38 AM IST",L&T results mirror the poor state of investment demand +https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/D4tnSJDQVfdVcs9u7T5HAP/Shombit-Sengupta-The-art-brand.html,"
In his 2013 book Zen Garden: Conversations With Pathmakers, Subroto Bagchi, co-founder of IT firm Mindtree, recalls being tipped off about Shombit Sengupta ahead of their first meeting in 1999. “I was told that if you did not have a budget of a crore as consulting fee, you didn’t go to Shombit. But wait a minute. There was another condition—he had to like you!” he writes about the man who, he says, taught him “more about brands...than anyone else in my entire career”.The trouble, though, is that Sengupta no longer wants to talk about brands. At 63, the founder and creative strategist of Shining Consulting, responsible for the consumer interface makeover of companies such as Unilever, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Rémy Martin, Johnson & Johnson, Wipro and Mahindra & Mahindra, would rather concentrate on his art. It’s the reason why, after 40-odd years in France, he now prefers to spend 60% of his time in India. In Bengaluru, to be precise, where, many years ago, he bought a dilapidated transformer factory in Whitefield and redesigned it into an abode like no other. It’s tempting to see the house, split into two wings, as a metaphor for Sengupta’s own life, divided between France and India, brand design and art.
The two parts of the house are connected by a labyrinthine corridor; the walls have Sengupta’s own exuberant artworks while the floor space resembles a fairground, installed with the most dazzling collection of colourful Indian kitsch: shiny lip balms, glittery balls, skeins of crinkled cotton, stacks of glass bangles. It’s all a bit overwhelming.Like the man himself. Kitted out in a sheep-print shirt, his shock of hair still more pepper than salt, Sengupta demands attention as he talks. His story is so fantastic, it’s hard to look away but it does not do to merely follow his words: He needs total engagement. He responds in kind, listening actively and often stepping outside himself to call you out. As he does when his wife Renee Jhala, managing director of Shining Consulting—they met while he was consulting with Wipro, where she was head of public relations—wafts by: “She is making me talk about the brands,” he mock-complains about me, but acknowledges in the next breath that the success that followed his disruptive approach to design and branding allowed him to reboot his life as a sexagenarian to focus on art.“I went into business (as a brand consultant) to earn money,” Sengupta says without preamble. “And I stuck around for 35 years. Art has always informed my work. But I never delivered something that only looked good; my work made businesses look good.”Aesthetics, one might think, was not supposed to be the strong suit of a boy born in a camp for East Pakistan refugees in Kanchrapara, West Bengal. But early on, Sengupta developed an appreciation of his surroundings. If the Bengali Bengal was defined by poverty, the Victorian Bengal was embodied in the British-built residence of his schoolteacher-mother’s friend. In Chandannagar, a row or a swim across the Hooghly, he encountered a third Bengal, a French Bengal. His father, a committed Communist and anti-British activist, had French sympathies—he was a fan of the Vincent van Gogh biopic Lust For Life, which portrayed the Dutch artist’s flowering in Paris—and subtly communicated to the young boy that an art education, to be worthwhile, had to be French.And so it was that at the age of 19, only half-done with his course at the Government College of Art and Craft in what was still Calcutta, Sengupta bought himself a ticket to Paris for Rs2,700, the sale proceeds of his mother’s gold bangles. “I could barely speak English, let alone French,” says Sengupta, his English still thickly accented by Bengali. “But I had a skill in art and I was determined to develop it.”
Though Sengupta went on to join École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, the national school of fine arts, and then studied design at École Supérieure d’Arts Graphiques Penninghen, formal degrees were not his forte. Perpetually short of funds and compelled to send money home, Sengupta took up any work he could find, from sweeping floors to assisting lithographers. “Intelligence or leadership are not qualities you learn in school. Apprenticeship is very important. I was always drawn to writers, advocates, psychologists, performing artistes—that was the way I nurtured myself, how I learnt to converge different elements when it came to branding and design as well.”A considerable part of Sengupta’s success as a brand guru championing a “consumer connect” must be laid at the door of this carefully cultivated understanding of multiple disciplines. “Art was the only way I could earn. Yves Brayer, a famous artist I met at the lithographer’s, encouraged me to consider design communication. So I studied graphic design, applied art, photography, typography. But once in the field, I found I was completely different from everybody. Because of my multiple interests, areas of expertise and a humanist outlook, I made for a grand solutions provider. I can diagnose an ailing business the way a good doctor diagnoses a patient.
“Also, my language was completely different,” Sengupta says. “So, if a chief executive officer came to me and said his product was ‘premium’, I would ask him, what’s premium about a consumer product? Affordability is a different issue but, by labelling yourself ‘premium’, you’re alienating a huge market.” His maverick approach included hanging out at a kirana, or neighbourhood grocery store, to figure out why large cooking-oil containers weren’t selling, and picking up the Britannia tag line Eat Healthy, Think Better from a Kolkata rickshaw-puller. Business magazines lavished pages on him, a colourful, plain-speaking break from the pinstriped politically correct. At its peak, the Shining client list read like the who’s who of the corporate world: Prominent among them were 3M, Dow Chemicals, Carrefour, Intermarché, Corning/Newell, Henkel, Nivea, L’Oréal, Pernod Ricard, Reckitt Benckiser, Galerie Lafayette-Monoprix, Total Petroleum internationally, and Reliance Retail, Madura Garments, Coffee Day, Jindal Steel & Power in India. Of late, Sengupta has consciously cut down consulting engagements to a few select clients, mostly in Europe. But, out of the corner of his eye, he continues to pick up on trends and behaviours in the market. Pet among his peeves are Indian businesses that aim to be conglomerates rather than single-domain enterprises. “I give them 15-20 years, they won’t last beyond that,” he says. “Before the Tatas launched the Nano, I had said it wouldn’t work—and it didn’t. When businesses believe in one thing, they can nurture people, build expertise. I hope the new generation will follow that path. Take Airtel. (Sunil Bharti Mittal) tried a couple of other things but his focus was one. Infosys, too, has focused on one domain. “As for the young people working on start-ups, I always tell them, don’t go for start-ups—shorthand for make money and go away—go for build-ups. All businesses have always been start-ups. All this new language is totally nonsense!”In the second hour of our conversation, we are sitting at a worktable in his sprawling, double-height studio, with its curving walls and natural light. All around us are works old and new: Some acrylic-on-canvas frames from Sengupta’s 2016 Night Spirit series, depicting the owl in various mythologies; a few of the tiled Désordre installation series—first made in 2008—which viewers are invited to scramble like a jigsaw puzzle; multiple large canvases featuring a woman and a horse that gallerist Vickram Sethi places in a metaphysical/sexual lineage dating back to the legend of Lady Godiva. He last showed at the Institute of Contemporary Indian Art, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai, in November; a couple of exhibitions are lined up in Europe later this year. For all the workload, art has always been a mainstay for Sengupta. “Art was the foundation of my work,” he says simply, when I ask him how he juggled the two (he was also a weekly columnist for The Indian Express between 2009-14, and is the author of the Jalebi trilogy, on managing businesses in India). “I don’t sleep for more than 4-5 hours a day. Only between 1978-84 did art take a back seat, because I was setting up Shining. But even then, my sketchbook never left my side.“Around 1994, I realized it was important for an artist to develop his own school of thought. That’s when I came up with the concept of Gesturism, basing it on a professor’s early appreciation of the kinetic energy in my works. My style changed completely after that. But Renee pointed out that my art was too Cartesian (after René Descartes, whose philosophy was the bedrock of continental rationalism), too European. I needed to re-root myself in India to define my identity, unite my French inspiration and sense of structure with the non-dogmatic, indisciplined way India uses colour. A third factor was my examination of the désordre—disorder in the French sense, related to physical objects—in India.”In a life so packed with activity, art and accolades, turning 60 was a milestone. “Renee pushed me to devote more time to art at that juncture,” says Sengupta. “Fine art is pre-civilizational; design is a post-industrialization phenomenon, aiming to satisfy a human need, stated or unstated. Art, on the other hand, is completely individual; it needs no other justification.” As we wind down our conversation, the canvases around us look on. Each of them bears the flamboyant Sen signature: The artist prefers to use a truncated version of the family name for his work. Interestingly, his son from his first marriage, too, shortened his name Saikat to Shoi. As Shoi Sen, marketing man-turned-lead guitarist for British band De Profundis, he opened for Iron Maiden in Bengaluru in 2009. Reinvention, it seems, is a family trait.","The maverick founder of Shining Consulting on connecting with the consumer, why he doesn’t believe in start-ups, and seeking reinvention at 63","Fri, Apr 07 2017. 06 03 PM IST",Shombit Sengupta: The art brand +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/0229PSUGl9BxwsW7urHATP/The-consequences-of-declining-trust-in-CEOs.html,"Two sets of findings, related to societal trust levels, in a report released last week at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, should be a cause of grave concern to all of us. Part of a study released by communications group Edelman, the survey of more than 33,000 people in 28 countries including India, recorded the largest-ever drop of trust in business, government, the media, and non-government organisations (NGOs).Corporate chief executive officers (CEOs), whose credibility level dropped in each of the countries surveyed, were aggressively targeted with only 37% of people saying they trusted them.The 12-point drop from the previous year is the all-time low since the survey began in 2001. This isn’t the first time the corporate sector has been reminded of declining people’s trust. Last January, Young & Rubicam BrandAsset Valuator revealed that consumers’ trust in well-known brands continues to fall.ALSO READ | What global CEOs are watching for, according to a PwC surveyStrangely, you would think that CEOs reputation for trust would have taken a hit from the work of the media. But that institution didn’t fare too well either with 43% of the respondents expressing trust in the press, down from 48% the year before. So if people’s falling trust in company executives isn’t driven by the reports in traditional media, where is the angst coming from? Perhaps there’s a third force now that might be responsible for generating the ire and that’s the social media, the new watchdog for corporate wrongdoing.Edelman CEO Richard Edelman, speaking at the WE, linked this to the sky-high compensation levels of top CEOs as well as the fact that employees were disappointed their leaders were not helping them deal with automation and the changing business environment. These changes have led to a rash of lay-offs in recent times with companies as diverse as Oracle Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Microsoft Corp. trimming their work forces.ALSO READ | Of founders and CEOsIn India, close on the heels of the controversy last year when several well-funded start-ups rolled back offers made to fresh graduates from engineering schools, comes the news this year of large scale sackings. Just this week, Girnar Software Pvt. Ltd, which runs a series of auto portals including CarDekho and is funded by such heavyweights as CapitalG (formerly Google Capital), Sequoia Capital, Hillhouse Capital and Ratan Tata, announced that it was axing 136 people.Paradoxically, for all the efforts CEOs and top leaders make to build their image, it is the company’s rank and file that is viewed by the public as more trustworthy.Indeed, twice as many respondents would have employees rather than CEOs communicate financial earnings and operational performance.Why is trust important? Business analysts have frequently proved that there is a direct correlation between growth and trust.ALSO READ | Optimism reigns in India as CEOs, consumers look beyond ChinaAmerican behavioural economist and psychiatrist Richard L. Peterson and sports consultant Frank Murtha noted in 2008 after the financial crisis: “Trust is the oil in the engine of capitalism, without it, the engine seizes up. Confidence is like the gasoline, without it the machine won’t move.”Part of the reason for the increasing trust deficit is of course the overall culture of lower deference towards authority figures and institutions. But that isn’t all of it. In 2016, for instance, Volkswagen AG CEO Martin Winterkorn’s resigned following the emissions scandal, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes lost his job following a sexual harassment charge, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch became a public enemy when she trebled prices of life-saving injection EpiPen, and Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf came under fire for refusing to take personal responsibility when his bank was caught creating two million fake accounts. Closer home, Vijay Mallya took employees, shareholders and bankers for a right royal ride before flying to the UK as creditors closed in on him.The resulting trust deficit has had several disastrous consequences. Corporate loyalty is fast going the way of the dinosaur. As employees feel free to change jobs at will, this has led to mounting costs of hiring and training besides a struggle to build team spirit and group dynamics. Externally, there is a lower threshold level of tolerance for any slippage in corporate performance. One quarter of declining numbers and stakeholders start demanding changes either in terms of management or worse still, strategy.Corporate trust deficit is a two-way street. It indicates that employees, customers, and company watchers have problems believing what its top executives say. But equally it also indicates that the company itself is in some kind of trouble.Sundeep Khanna is a consulting editor at Mint and oversees the newsroom’s corporate coverage. The Corporate Outsider will look at current issues and trends in the corporate sector every week.Click here to read more from The Corporate Outsider.",The resulting trust deficit has had several disastrous consequences ,"Wed, Jan 25 2017. 07 48 AM IST",The consequences of declining trust in CEOs +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Q9DQOoAXV1ggDZvcApvpBM/Airtel-fires-vicepresident-Pallab-Mitras-for-allegedly-vi.html,"New Delhi: Telecom major Bharti Airtel has terminated the services of its vice-president and head of alliances Pallab Mitra for alleged violation of code of conduct. “All employees are hereby advised that the company has terminated the services of Pallab Mitra, vice-president and head-alliance, with immediate effect for violation of the company’s code of conduct,” Airtel chief human resource officer B. Srikanth said in a communication to employees. Mitra could not be reached for his comments. Airtel spokesperson said: “The company’s code of conduct is of paramount importance and it follows a policy of zero tolerance in the event of any violation of the same.” ALSO READ: Leveraging mobile phones to boost skilling initiativeSrikanth said: “Please desist from dealing with this person, or in sharing any information whatsoever with him, verbally or in writing or through messaging.” Mitra has worked with Airtel for about 12 years with a gap of around five and half years in between. He started working with Airtel in 2001 as head of commerce for about 4 years. Mitra left the company in February 2010 to join Tata Teleservices. His second innings at Airtel started from September 2015 onwards after his one-and-half year stint with wi-fi firm Ozone Networks. Airtel learnt about the purported code of conduct violation by Mitra from a whistleblower after which it conducted a probe into the matter, the communication said. “...investigation, thereafter, substantiated the allegations,” Srikanth said.","Airtel learnt about the purported code of conduct violation by Pallab Mitra from a whistleblower after which it conducted a probe, says letter to employees","Thu, Apr 06 2017. 09 44 PM IST",Airtel fires vice-president Pallab Mitra for allegedly violating code of conduct +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/xjZ8iUq3cCN7Z7ScbWqHFJ/Jeff-Bezos-is-selling-1-billion-of-Amazon-stock-a-year-to-f.html,"Colorado Springs: Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos said on Wednesday he is selling about $1 billion worth of the internet retailer’s stock annually to fund his Blue Origin rocket company, which aims to launch paying passengers on 11-minute space rides starting next year.Blue Origin had hoped to begin test flights with company pilots and engineers in 2017, but that probably will not happen until next year, Bezos told reporters at the annual US Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.“My business model right now … for Blue Origin is I sell about $1 billion of Amazon stock a year and I use it to invest in Blue Origin,” said Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon.com Inc. and also the owner of The Washington Post newspaper.Ultimately, the plan is for Blue Origin to become a profitable, self-sustaining enterprise, with a long-term goal to cut the cost of space flight so that millions of people can live and work off Earth, Bezos said.Bezos is Amazon’s largest shareholder, with 80.9 million shares, according to Thomson Reuters data. At Wednesday’s closing share price of $909.28, Bezos would have to sell 1,099,771 shares to meet his pledge of selling $1 billion worth of Amazon stock. Bezos’ total Amazon holdings, representing a 16.95% stake in the company, are worth $73.54 billion at Wednesday’s closing price.For now, Kent, Washington-based Blue Origin is working toward far shorter hops—11 minute space rides that are not fast enough to put a spaceship into orbit around Earth.Blue Origin has not started selling tickets or set prices to ride aboard its six-passenger, gumdrop-shaped capsule, known as New Shepard.The reusable rocket and capsule is designed to carry passengers to an altitude of more than 100 miles (162km) above the planet so they can experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of Earth set against the blackness of space. Unmanned test flights have been underway since 2015. At the symposium, Bezos showed off a mockup of the passenger capsule, which sports six reclined seats, each with its own large window. Also on display was a scorched New Shepard booster rocket that was retired in October after five flights.Like fellow tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of SpaceX, Bezos says that reusability is the key to cutting the cost of space flight. Last week, SpaceX relaunched a rocket for an unprecedented second mission to put a spacecraft into orbit. “The engineering approach is a little different, but we’re very like-minded,” Bezos said of Musk.Blue Origin is developing a second launch system to carry satellites, and eventually people, into orbit, similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule.Development costs for that system, known as New Glenn, will be about $2.5 billion.There is no estimate yet for how much Bezos will invest overall on Blue Origin. But Bezos has indicated he will spend what it takes. “It’s a long road to get there and I’m happy to invest in it,” Bezos said. According to Forbes magazine, Bezos has a net worth of $78 billion. Reuters",Jeff Bezos is selling about $1 billion worth of Amazon’s stock annually to fund his Blue Origin rocket company,"Thu, Apr 06 2017. 09 35 AM IST",Jeff Bezos is selling $1 billion of Amazon stock a year to fund rocket venture +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Qn6TDuWGPx5SvrSUzVf58J/Anil-Agarwal-plans-to-bring-Anglo-Americans-business-to-Ind.html,"
Vedanta Resources Plc.’s founder and group chairman Anil Agarwal plans to leverage his association with Anglo American Plc. to persuade the British miner to set up businesses ranging from fertilizer production to diamond mining in India.Vedanta Resources also plans to spend $10 billion over the next three years across its businesses, of which $8 billion is earmarked for Indian operations, Agarwal said in an interview on the sidelines of the Global Natural Resources Conclave organized by Network18 and the Confederation of Indian Industry.In March, Agarwal announced the planned purchase of about 13% of Anglo American’s stock in an investment by his holding company Volcan Investments Ltd, making him the second-largest shareholder in the $26 billion company that counts diamond producer De Beers among its assets. “We are now looking at this work (the stake acquisition) that we have done as strategically being very important for India. We have focused on the fact that it (De Beers) is the largest global producer of diamonds and we (India) are the largest polisher of diamonds. We want all the diamonds to come to India. Secondly, India has enough diamond reserves. We will persuade them to produce diamonds in India,” said Agarwal.“We are a large shareholder in the company and they are also a friend of ours. So, we will speak with them. They are into fertilizers. They are also the largest coal producers. They also produce copper and magnesium. They are also the largest producers of platinum in the world. So, all of that can be done here,” Agarwal added.His plans come in the backdrop of the National Democratic Alliance government working on a new method of auctioning mining leases to match commodity price cycles and investor appetite.Agarwal’s stake purchase in Anglo American came after the company last year spurned his offer to merge part of his mining business.Agarwal didn’t rule out acquiring a controlling stake in the firm, one of the world’s top five mining groups alongside BHP Billiton Plc., Rio Tinto Plc., Vale SA and Glencore Plc. Its key assets include giant copper mines in Chile, iron ore operations in Brazil and South Africa and De Beers.The company is bullish on its capital expenditure plans.“We will invest $10 billion over the next three years. We will spend close to Rs60,000-70,000 crore, of which oil and gas will account for Rs15,000 crore. This will result in an increase in our capacity overall of 40-50%. Around 80% of these investments will be made in India,” Agarwal said.In 2011, Cairn Energy Plc. sold 58.5% of Cairn India Ltd to Vedanta Resources for $8.67 billion. Vedanta Resources has large debt obligations. According to data from S&P Global Ratings, Vedanta has bank loan maturities of $1 billion due in financial year 2018 and $500 million due in financial year 2019. That’s in addition to bond maturities of about $2 billion in financial year 2019. In January, Vedanta raised $1 billion by selling bonds to refinance its near-term debt obligations.In response to a query about how he plans to fund the capital expenditure, Agarwal said: “We have our internal accruals. We have also registered very good profits this year. We will redeploy this profit...We are very confident that we will invest this money. This will help in job creation and increase employment.”Vedanta’s business interests in India include oil and gas, power, iron ore, zinc, copper and aluminium production.","Vedanta also plans to spend $10 billion over the next three years across its businesses, of which $8 billion is earmarked for Indian operations, says Anil Agarwal","Thu, Apr 06 2017. 01 42 AM IST",Anil Agarwal plans to bring Anglo American’s business to India +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/QZJaXxY2MZaTpjQHi1v3rN/Donald-Trumps-economic-policies-are-phenomenal-Anil-Agarwa.html,"
Anil Agarwal, group chairman, Vedanta Resources Plc has been in the news after announcing plans to buy around $2.4 billion of Anglo American Plc shares on the exchanges after his merger proposal was rebuffed last year.
In an interview on the sidelines of a conference on natural resources organised by Network 18 and Confederation of Indian Industry, Agarwal hinted at a larger play after acquiring around 13% of Anglo American’s stock, which will make him the second-largest shareholder after South Africa’s Public Investment Corp.
Agarwal also spoke about a pending tax dispute with the Indian government after the acquisition of Cairn India Ltd by London-listed Vedanta Resources, which included Rs10,200 crore as principal tax dues and the fallout of Donald Trump’s policies and Brexit on his areas of business. Edited excerpts:
How has your experience been with this government, given that Cairn Energy is still grappling with tax issues, with the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal passing an order for a payment of Rs10,247 crore as tax?The tax issue is not from this (National Democratic Alliance) government. It was imposed by the last (United Progressive Alliance) government. This government had stated during the time of elections that this was wrong and they will remove it. They are also trying their level best. They have been talking to us day and night. Till now, no solution has been found. Whenever we go outside, the most critical question that gets asked overseas is the issue of retrospective tax. Everyone feels that the last government did it and it can be done again. However, this government has repeatedly said, and everyone feels that this government is very stable, and it is very determined that it would not do anything like that. But till the time this issue is not resolved, it is very important to resolve it and the government is working in that direction. If they accelerate it a bit, it will become better.
According to you, where is the issue stuck?These are government policies. They will have to solve it in a simple way. Big things have been done. It has gone to the courts. For how long will it go on, no one knows. It will bring bad repute globally. I don’t have an idea but whenever I go, I get a sympathetic view (from the government).
What does the government tell you?They tell me that this thing which has been done is not a right thing. We are with this issue. We have waived off the interest and will do whatever which is required... No timeline has been committed.
What is your big play in Anglo American Plc? I am a Bihari, can’t speak much (laughs). The only thing ‘right now’ is that I am an investor.
You are saying ‘right now.’ What happens going forward?We are an investor right now. Can’t say anything beyond this.
You are not denying that you will buy more stake in Anglo-American?As of today, I can’t speak about more than what I have already said.
You have said that you will persuade Anglo American to bring their businesses to India. But since you have bought the stake on behalf of the holding company, which is Volcan, you will still do business with them. Or, will they operate independently?That we will see. Whatever works out keeping in mind the governance.
Will there be a separate entity?That, we will tell you later.
What are your green energy plans?We produce wind power... around 500MW. There has been a shift in the solar business. It used to be Rs6 per unit and now it has come down to below Rs2 per unit. That is definitely an advantage. So, we are studying it very seriously and will take the clean energy plans forward.We have two plans. We will produce a lot of gas in Rajasthan...We are already producing wind energy. And we are definitely looking into solar and how do we do a strategic investment in solar.But, we will not be producing solar cells. We will be producing solar power, which will be used for our own purpose because we consume over 10,000MW.
What is the update on Cairn India’s merger with Vedanta?It is almost done. I think it should be done in 2-4 days.
Any impact of Donald Trump’s policies and Brexit on your areas of business?From a business perspective, these are positive for us. England has its own orbit. In my opinion, England may fall behind in the race for a brief time but England will be very stable. I live there and I am very confident that England will prosper.Donald Trump’s economic policies are phenomenal. He himself is a businessman and the way he spoke about (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi’s efforts to reduce the involvement of bureaucracy and red tapism... He himself is doing that.
But, he is stuck in a logjam in the Republican controlled Congress...I agree but intentions are like this. I can’t comment on him. He is such a big man. I am a very optimistic person. I believe that he will correct himself. He has no other intention except to take his country forward.
We are talking about resurgence in resources. How do you see this playing out? What is your outlook?It is going to be long-term. India is just at the tip of the iceberg. If India does not improve its natural resources, it will be a complete dumping ground for the world to unload oil and gas, gold, silver, fertilizer and this has to change. India has every resource and human resource as well. So, this is a golden opportunity for the world to come and set up the plant. And this is the first time that I am seeing awareness in the government where they have started to believe that we have natural resources.","Vedanta’s Anil Agarwal on a pending tax dispute with India after the acquisition of Cairn India Ltd, and the fallout of Donald Trump’s policies and Brexit on his areas of business","Thu, Apr 06 2017. 01 47 AM IST",Donald Trump’s economic policies are phenomenal: Anil Agarwal +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Nx9c5yKWRKsoo625u3Ae2N/Note-ban-planned-for-carefully-by-RBI-Rs500-note-only-hiccu.html,"
Normalcy has returned to the currency system post demonetization and the pace of cash withdrawls has come down, said R. Gandhi who retired as deputy governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday and was in charge of the currency management division. Calling the note ban a well-thought-out and well-deliberated decision, he said the only thing he would do differently with the wisdom of hindsight was print more Rs500 notes. Edited excerpts from an interview:
What gave you the confidence to go ahead with demonetization?That decision was not taken on a single day. Initially, it was only a thought. A lot of discussions happened: Is it good or bad? If we have to do it, what (are the) ramifications? So it was not as if somebody decided and went about doing it overnight. Secondly, even if it were to be done, we were very clear that the final call will have to be taken by the government because it is a policy decision and not in RBI’s purview. If such a policy decision is taken, then how do we implement it? (What are the) backward linkages, forward linkages? All such debating, thinking and preparation gave us the confidence to go ahead.
Which decision came first? The decision to introduce Rs2,000 notes or the withdrawal of Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes?These two decisions were in parallel. The normal practice in currency management is to periodically have a plan. In 2014, we had come to a conclusion that we need higher denomination notes. So, on that basis, we had recommended Rs5,000 and Rs10,000 notes given the pace of inflation which we had and which we had projected. Currency is an area where nothing can be done overnight. Everything has a lot of backward linkages and requires lead time. Any decision that you take, to implement it, it will be about 8 months to a year. Then the government had its own public policy ideas about demonetization as a control on black money. So discussions were happening in parallel.
With the benefit of hindsight, would you say that you did not anticipate the complexities? There were 50 notifications in the first 30 days. Would you have done anything differently?I don’t think we didn’t plan well. We planned everything. Every reaction was fully foreseen. There was no nasty surprise for us. Everything had been well identified, and debated. Several instructions were given by us. But you need to analyse it differently. About 20 (notifications) were relaxing rules. These relaxations were also pre-planned. If at all, there were one or two without planning. The rest were planned. The remaining 30 were regulatory instructions to banks. That we could not have given upfront, it would have let the cat out of the bag. In hindsight, if there’s anything I would have done differently… may be the quantum of Rs500 notes production. We may have decided differently. That’s the only correction.
When did the consultations on the note ban begin?The consultations started in January. The introduction of Rs2,000 was a decision irrespective of demonetization.
Did the printing presses have enough capacity to support the withdrawal of 86% of currency in circulation?That was a big discussion. That is why the agreement on the Rs2,000 note (majority of notes printed initially were of this denomination). Because we wanted to have that much value in exchange (for old notes).
Did nobody in the RBI central board express any concern or dissent about this decision?Discussions were already on. In any policy decision there will be questions. Finally it was presented to the board. I wouldn’t say that there were no concerns or questions. But we could address them. The way we had prepared and the way we had planned, it was possible to be implemented. Yes, the inconvenience to the public was admitted. One-is-to-one (like-for-like) cash was definitely not going to be available.
The board was apprised only one day prior to the move?Yes. We could not inform the board much in advance.
Is there any target for remonetization? Currency in circulation can never be targeted. It is in the hands of the public. We manage it by creating enough stock. If public wants more, the draw will be much faster. If they want less, draw will be much lesser. Over a period it is not a constraint to supply whatever money the public demands. In a short period, there will be leads and lags. Now with 70%, we are seeing complete normalcy across the country. There is no trouble anywhere.
So, when will normalcy be restored or when will we go back to pre-demonetization levels?We have already reached that stage. As of now, 73-74% actual cash has come. The pace of remonetization has come down because there is no demand. The pace at which money is demanded by the public is seen by the speed at which they are withdrawing from the banking system. When the pace is slowing down, then we have met their demand. From January onwards, cash withdrawals are coming down and we are also looking at how much currency is coming back. For most of the small banks and private banks, deposits are more than withdrawals. They are in surplus. They don’t need to draw more money from RBI. They are able to recycle.
Why is it taking so long to tell the public about the quantum of currency that has come back? It’s the last and final word. The final count. RBI would like to have it really, fully done. Checking for counterfeit notes will take a lot of time. To verify 24 billion SBNs (specified bank notes) collected will take months.
Demonetization has led to a debate on RBI’s autonomy. Comments?RBI does not have the power to demonetize. The power is with the government only. That’s a government call. I don’t see it as a conflict on autonomy. It is an area where only they are authorized to take a decision. It’s a joint effort. Everyday there were consultations.
You have worked for 37 years. Over the years have you seen RBI’s autonomy eroding? Different types of activities have been assigned to RBI or removed from RBI. That is the evolution of RBI. I will not read too much into that. Regulating banking is different from regulating any other financial activity. Any other financial activity or real sector activity is based on risk capital. Banking is different. People’s money is entrusted with an institution. That’s not risk capital for the bank. The way banks have to be regulated is different, it cannot be equated (with other regulators). They are trying to equate it. That is a dangerous trend in my opinion. FSLRC (Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission) has openly recommended that we should encourage regulated entities to question the decisions of the regulator and they should not hesitate to drag them to court. I understand why they are saying that. A regulator cannot unilaterally decide something and impose it on regulated entities. But the way they are putting it may not be right.
You have worked with different governors, who was it easiest to get along with?Dr C. Rangarajan. In terms of long impact, I’d say S. Venkitramanan. He made us think 10 years forward in every area.
The decision to introduce Rs200 notes... Is it a precedent to slowly demonetize Rs2,000 notes?Introducing a currency denomination is a stand-alone exercise. It has nothing to do with demonetization. In the normal course in any country’s stable of denominations, we have the 1 series, 5 series and 2 series like 10s, 20s and 50s. We have Rs100 and Rs500. Rs200 is the missing one. Is there a need for Rs2,000 notes? Will they be phased out?The need for Rs2,000 will always be there. The highest denomination requirement is based on inflation. In any continuous inflation economy, you will have to introduce higher denominations. Or you will not be able to manage. In a stable inflation economy, there is no need. In the US, for instance, the $100 bill is more than 100 years old. For us, we introduced Rs100, then Rs500 and then Rs1,000. Our economy was facing inflation. Now with the monetary policy committee and inflation control, we can definitely hope to have stable inflation. Then we may not require any more new denominations.What happens to the liquidity worth Rs 3.5 trillion in the banking system?This is temporary. We knew the impact of demonetization was transient. Excess liquidity is coming down. In another few weeks, it will not be there. With remonetization, the liquidity has gone into the hands of the public. It is not going to be there for long. To the extent, people don’t want 1:1 cash, there will be excess. Right now about 75% of currency is remonetized. Remaining 25% is the excess you are seeing in the hands of banks. Is it a permanent addition to liquidity? It’s not. During this year, normal growth in currency has not taken place. We have not filled in whatever we have withdrawn. Excess liquidity will meet that need.So, it’s not going to be inflationary?No. It will not be. Credit growth has also not picked up. Day to day excess liquidity we are absorbing through LAF (liquidity adjustment facility).Has the excess liquidity in the system made it difficult for RBI to intervene to stem the rupee’s appreciation since January?The currency appreciation is a bit of a surprise. Post Trump (US president Donald Trump) we would have expected the dollar to strengthen. The decision to intervene is based on volatility. If the market is able to bear the changes, then we do not want to intervene. We are not against the direction of the rupee, whether it is appreciating or depreciating.",R. Gandhi who retired as a deputy RBI governor this week says the note ban was a well-thought-out and well-deliberated decision,"Wed, Apr 05 2017. 02 01 AM IST","Note ban planned carefully by RBI, Rs500 note only hiccup: R. Gandhi" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/wTkX6s4Wer6OTlV0e9cxTL/SoftBank-Groups-Lydia-Bly-Jett-joins-Snapdeal-board.html,"New Delhi: Lydia Bly Jett of SoftBank Group International joined the board of e-commerce company Snapdeal on 30 March, showed the company documents sourced from Tofler.After SoftBank Group’s chief operating officer Jonathan Bullock resigned from the board in February 2017 followed by the appointment of managing partner Kabir Misra on 10 March, Jett’s appointment is the third board movement from SoftBank to Snapdeal. The move comes at a time when the company is facing financial woes of its own. In January, Mint reported that Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd-owned Snapdeal had initiated discussions to raise fresh funds at a lower valuation, which recently concluded in an intra-board tiff: a conflict of interest between Snapdeal’s investors, Kalaari Capital and Nexus Venture Partners on one side, and SoftBank Group Corp. on the other had led the company miss out on at least two funding offers over the past six months, Mint reported on 31 March.While early investors Kalaari and Nexus together own roughly 18% stake in the company, SoftBank , the largest shareholder, owns 33% in the e-commerce firm.SoftBank has also been reported to be the driver of talks with Paytm and Flipkart to sell Snapdeal, in addition to infusing $50 million cash cushion to the company until a merger materializes, Mint reported on 22 March. For such a round to happen, Snapdeal’s other board members may need to be bought out or be convinced to take a large haircut on their investments.SoftBank has already pumped roughly $900 million into Snapdeal. Pushing sales through deep discounts and large marketing spends, e-commerce in India has been popularly criticised for burning a large sum of cash, which has resulted in the cash-deprived state of Snapdeal. As a result, the company has cut hundreds of jobs, slashed spending on discounts and marketing and has seen a sharp drop in monthly sales.Mint reported on 17 February that Jasper Infotech had about Rs1,100-1,200 crore cash left in the bank and Rs300-400 crore at its payments unit Freecharge at the end of 2016; the company registers an average monthly burn of about $25 million (about Rs160 crore), which includes the cash spent on its mobile wallet firm Freecharge over the past nine months of the financial year ending March 2017. Snapdeal has also seen the exit of senior executives in the past two months, including Freecharge chief executive Govind Rajan and head of partnerships and strategic investments Tony Navin.",Lydia Bly Jett’s appointment is the third board movement from SoftBank to Snapdeal since February,"Tue, Apr 04 2017. 02 54 PM IST",SoftBank Group’s Lydia Bly Jett joins Snapdeal board +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/KASkrVmMywriAwEaOiRzEP/Still-a-long-way-to-go-to-match-Hero-MotoCorp-says-Hondas.html,"
With a target to sell six million two-wheelers in 2017-18, Honda Motor Co. will be breathing down the neck of Hero MotoCorp Ltd, India’s largest two-wheeler company and its erstwhile joint venture partner in India. Hero MotoCorp sold 6.6 million units in the year to March, compared with Honda’s five million in India. Six years after the separation, Noriaki Abe, chief executive for Honda’s global motorcycle business, talked about the difficulties in snatching marketshare from Hero in rural markets, Honda’s inability to introduce a model that will rival Hero’s Splendor or Passion, and changing the mindset of a lot of Indian buyers who are still in love with Hero. Edited excerpts:
You will now be the chief executive for Honda’s global motorcycle business. That means your involvement with India will get even more intense.India is our biggest market now. Last year, India operations exceeded volume of Indonesia.
What are your expectations from this market now?We have a very challenging target for next year (2017-18). In this year (2016-17), Honda Motorcycle India could not reach the original target because of demonetisation. Such a loss will pass to the next fiscal, which means the target will be very, very high.Basically, we will have to sell one million more next year. The target is to sell six million units.
Your ex-partner, Hero, has not seen the kind of growth you have seen. How long will Honda take to surpass Hero in sales volume?Luckily or unfortunately, the market has changed. The income of consumers is growing in urban areas. That helped us grow in India, because we have scooter models, which is very apt for urban ride. But in rural areas, Hero is very, very strong. We never give up, but it is very difficult to penetrate in rural areas. Improvement of the economy is reflecting on consumers’ choice in mass motorcycle field, and that will help us because the income of the rural area may improve gradually. Infrastructure of the country will improve and, then, many consumers will reach out to our products. We would like that to happen in motorcycle business in India. But, with some respect, Hero is very strong.ALSO READ: Honda to make a middleweight motorcycle in India to take on Royal Enfield
Your two-wheeler sales are driven by scooters. What stops you from introducing one brand that can change Honda’s fortunes in the motorcycle segment?To beat the Splendor? (laughs) Scooter is still the mainstay of our business plan. We are trying to launch many models in the motorcycle field. But in 110cc segment, we could not find one very strong scooter to compete with Splendor. But, variety of our line-up in motorcycle field surely stimulates our consumers’ mind.
What is ironic is Splendor and Passion brands were actually built on Honda technology and engines.Technology is one thing, but we learnt many things in our partnership with Hero. One of the most important things is cost structure, supplier network. We need to make similar network in the automobile field also to make our company more impactful. Price is one thing and mindset of customers is another. We have launched similar models like Hero’s in the motorcycle segment but it is really difficult to change the mindset of the consumer, which is a main issue.
If your target is six million for next year and Hero’s annual sales is about 6.5 million, it should not take you long since Hero is not growing as fast as you.Mass population is in rural areas, where we have many things to do. There, consumers are committed to Hero. So, we could not reach the real India. That’s our interpretation, but we can never give up to reach such area also. In urban area, there is new India, which has accepted Honda; but older India has not yet, which is our interpretation. So, it is quite interesting.
In the car business, do you see origin of product development moving to India anytime soon?Not soon. It will take time. Motorization in the motorcycle field is occurring now. Market is growing. But real motorization in automobile may happen in the middle of next decade. That is our expectation. So, we have sometime around 10 years. But, during such period, we have to face the new regulation, especially with environment-friendly regulation, which is very important for every manufacturer. Such kind of a change in battlefield may help us again. We are very optimistic. Indian market is very important for two decades because the potential of growth is very huge. If the country is conducted properly by the government here, the growth would be exponential.There has been a lot of consolidation in the global auto industry like Toyota-Suzuki or Toyota-Daihatsu. By nature, Honda has not been a company that would go for such strategic decisions.We don’t have such kind of alliances. But to make new technology and components, we already have a partnership with General Motors. We are open to partners but not in India. Toyota-Daihatsu in many ways are related companies. Two-three years ago, Toyota announced to have first Toyota and second Toyota. Second Toyota is for emerging markets and First Toyota is for developed markets. In that sense, below second Toyota, they needed Daihatsu.For example: Volkswagen already has that kind of culture. They have Audi as the top brand but Skoda is for mass market. Toyota is aiming for such kind of a model; but in Asia region, such European mix has struggled. Similar (is the case) with Ford and General Motors.In case of Honda, in Asia and especially in Asean countries, we are very successful. Our business is based on strong motorcycle sales; brand is well known. In automobile, we are a premium brand. But, if we were affordable to the consumer there, our volumes will grow automatically. That is happening in Malaysia and Indonesia.
It has not happened in India though. In India, competition is very difficult in Maruti. Situation is very difficult and different here. Taste and mindset of consumer is very different. India is a huge country and more than double of entire Asean. We have to recognize that India is different. In short term, we will use our global expertise to strengthen our premiumness in Indian market. But we must continue to learn. In motorcycle operations, we are gaining market share and volumes but still a long way to go to reach Hero.","Noriaki Abe, CEO of Honda’s global motorcycle business, talks about the difficulties in snatching marketshare from Hero MotoCorp in rural markets","Tue, Apr 04 2017. 01 28 AM IST","Still a long way to go to match Hero MotoCorp, says Honda’s Noriaki Abe" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/wwQfsI4lzFstjalAMO8XwJ/SBI-merger-aimed-at-boosting-efficiency-more-than-top-line.html,"
On 1 April, State Bank of India (SBI) merged its five associate banks and Bharatiya Mahila Bank with itself, a union which will catapult it to the ranks of the top 50 lenders in the world.Following the merger, SBI’s growth will not necessarily be in the top line but in increased efficiency, productivity and better ratios, said its chairman, Arundhati Bhattacharya.In an interview, she also talked about how credit growth is likely to rebound to 7-8% by the middle of the current fiscal, and called upon the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to participate more in stressed asset resolution. Edited excerpts:
Do you think your growth will slow post this consolidation with associate banks? It depends on which areas we grow. While we may not be growing in certain areas, we may grow in areas where we are still small, like wealth management. It’s an area where I am small; so I am going to grow fast there. We don’t have any compulsion to simply increase the top line. The idea (behind the merger) is to increase efficiency, increase productivity, better the ratios that we have in various areas. Growth will come not necessarily in the top line.
What will be the integration cost for SBI due to the merger? Integration cost is only in respect of VRS (voluntary retirement scheme) cost. We will know what the number is by 12th of the month. At that point of time, we can put down the cost. Most things are coming together. Other than that, there are some re-branding costs. The additional provident fund provision for employees of associate banks will not be more than Rs25 crore. There is nothing very substantial.
Do you expect to wrap up the merger by October, before you retire? It should be wrapped up well before that. We are going to wait till the 22nd or 24th of April to finish the audit; and then, the data merger of banks will start taking place. That is expected to finish by end-May. Once the data merger is finished, thereafter, there is nothing which is left over. After that, there is only the question of doing rationalization, which will take place over a period of time. It will not happen very quickly. So, we should give 18 months’ time for all of that because there is the question of relocating branches. You have to locate to other places, move people and all of that takes a bit of time.
Credit growth has shrunk to 3.3% in February. Will credit growth be muted next year as well? On growth, I don’t see things happening quickly. The first two quarters will go trying to resolve stressed assets. It is only from the next busy season that we can hope to see things growing well. We also have a caveat: the monsoon should be normal or near normal because the busy season growth is very much dependent on agriculture in our country. So, that is also very much there. Overall, I think a lot of projects are beginning to take shape. Demand is growing no matter what we say. We had a little bit of blip in between. Most of the industry is back on track. Credit growth should be around 7-8%, driven by sectors such as roads, railways, transmission, fertilizers, renewable energy, affordable housing and some amount of work in smart city projects.
Are bankers taking any steps to resolve stressed assets, or are they waiting for regulatory or political support?Some amount of support from government and regulator is required when you are looking at resolving systemic issues. This time, the NPA (non-performing assets) cycle has been systemic. It’s not a question of one or two or three corporates getting hit. It’s a question of a large number of corporates in a few identified sectors which have been hit. With that kind of a problem, it is important to have a systemic answer to these issues. A little more participation from the government and regulator is warranted and required.
Do you think the government is doing enough to protect bankers for their decisions? We are looking to come up with valuations (for resolving NPAs) that will pass scrutiny. The difficulty even when you are putting up an asset for resolution is the variety of bids that come in: somebody says they want to buy it all out. Somebody says they want to come in as a strategic investor. Somebody says they want to come in as a financial investor. With the variety of bids that come in, it’s difficult to compare one with the other in order to determine which one is the best. That is where the controversy comes in.What’s required is for somebody to say in the circumstances this is the best that could have been done. So, that is what bankers are looking for. Something that will give them the confidence to go ahead with the best of their abilities to ascertain what is good for this particular unit, without it being checked by hindsight to say “well, this could have been a better decision” or “that could have been a better decision”. So, I think, that’s what people are looking for. Private sector banks have that freedom. Their commercial decisions are not questioned. I think it’s important for all of us to be on the same playing field.
Is it the only reason stopping banks from going ahead with resolution of stressed assets?There are other issues in respect of smaller banks. When you are looking at things like needing to meet large provisions, they will not have the wherewithal to do it at one time. That is another area that needs to be looked at. So, either they have to be given capital so that they can do it all at one time, or need to be given more time so that they can earn and pay. While we are asking for this, it is apparent that these will be quite transparently disclosed. So there is nothing that the stakeholders will not be able to understand. What it will do is enable these banks to function while they assimilate the provisions that need to be taken. So some amount of flexibility is sought. What could be done is instead of making these provisions in one quarter, we can spread it out over a year, a year-and-a-half, so that provisions come at a later date. But my own feeling is that the quicker we get this behind us, the better it will be. The world is an evolving and challenging place today, whether it be (owing to) technology, competition or risk awareness. We need to have the bandwidth to address these issues instead of getting stuck with one issue.
What is the status of your tie-up with Brookfield Asset Management Inc. (over a stressed asset joint venture fund)?There is nothing as of now. We don’t have a deal on the table.
Would you like to participate in a bad bank?Frankly, I don’t know what the structure will look like.
Is the banking industry prepared to implement goods and services tax on 1 July? There is a lot we have to do internally. We are already ready for people sending the money in through us (or paying tax). That will have to be tested with government servers. For our own internal purposes, there is a lot of work that needs to be done. The rules are not finalized. It’s going to be a humongous task. It is difficult to gauge at this time if we will meet the deadline of 1 July. We need more clarity on how things will happen.
Is SBI looking at giving variable pay to its employees? We would like to do it. But the actual proposal is not yet on the table.","SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya calls on RBI to participate more in resolution of stressed assets, says merger to be wrapped by May-end","Mon, Apr 03 2017. 01 47 PM IST",SBI aims to boost efficiency rather than revenue after merger: Arundhati Bhattacharya +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/F9KOjTBH8jkg5jKVefnCSN/Tata-Motors-Q3-profit-slides-96-on-losses-in-India-ops-low.html,"
New Delhi: Tata Motors Ltd’s fiscal third-quarter profit plummeted 96% as lower sales at its British luxury car unit Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc. (JLR) and a wider loss in its domestic business took its toll on India’s largest automaker by revenue.
Net profit fell to Rs111.57 crore in the three months ended 31 December from Rs2,952.67 crore in the year-ago period, the Mumbai-based company said on Tuesday. A Bloomberg poll of 20 analysts had estimated a profit of Rs2,264.5 crore.
Consolidated sales fell 2.2% to Rs67,864.95 crore from Rs69,398.07 crore in the year-ago period.
Tata Motors said the invalidation of high-value banknotes by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 8 November hurt its domestic commercial vehicles business, a cash cow, with sales of trucks and buses declining 9%. Sales of light commercial vehicles were flat.
ALSO READ | Can’t tell right now Nano’s road ahead: Tata Motors’s Guenter Butschek
The biggest hit came from JLR, where net profit declined to £167 million ($208 million) from £440 million a year ago on a 13.1% increase in revenue to £6.5 billion.
“These are terrible numbers,” said Mahantesh Sabarad, head (retail research), SBI Cap Securities Ltd.
“That is because the JLR margin seem to be settling in to the single-digit space unlike (in) the past where a 14% was a given. More so, the JLR product mix has altered quite substantially” and variable marketing spending has been on the rise, Sabarad said.
Investors punished the stock. Tata Motors shares declined as much as 7% after the earnings announcement but recovered some ground to close down 3.68% at Rs486.80 on a day the BSE’s benchmark Sensex edged down 0.04% to 28,339.31 points on Tuesday.
The fall wiped off Rs5,993.23 crore from the company’s market value.
ALSO READ | Tata Motors reshuffles senior management for a leaner structure
On a standalone basis, the company said net loss widened to Rs1,046 crore in the December quarter from Rs137 crore a year ago. Revenues grew marginally to Rs10,167 crore from Rs10,019 crore.
“Standalone has been struggling, with the passenger vehicle business unit not really picking up pace, but this quarter has been one of the better ones,” Sabarad said.
Passenger vehicle sales rose 25.4% on the back of a continued strong customer response to the Tiago hatchback, said the company. Exports grew by 34.6% year-on-year.
Managing director and chief executive officer Guenter Butschek, a former chief operating officer at European aircraft maker Airbus, has been tasked with turning around the fortunes of Tata Motors, whose domestic passenger car sales and market share have roughly halved in the past two years.
As the domestic business floundered, JLR has sustained Tata Motors. In the December quarter, total retail sales at the unit rose 8.5% to 149,288 units, led by higher demand in China, North America and Europe.
“What is it that we need to be a high-performance organization— being lean, it’s about being agile and it’s about having clearly addressed and delegated accountability,” Butschek told a news conference on Tuesday.
The company expects to fare much better in the fourth quarter, chief financial officer C. Ramakrishnan told the conference.
Tata Motors unveils TAMO sub-brand, to showcase luxury sports car next month
“JLR margins would definitely be better in the fourth quarter, hopefully on the back of the new launches that we have,” Ramakrishnan said.
Other issues facing JLR include Britain’s Brexit vote and US President Donald Trump’s promised protectionist policies, according to a 20 January report by Mumbai-based IDFC Securities Ltd.
The US accounts for about 25% of JLR sales.
“Given this, JLR is in a more precarious position than its peers,” IDFC Securities analyst Deepak Jain wrote in the report.
The JLR unit is vulnerable because it doesn’t have factories in the US and sells much of its UK output abroad.
The unit’s operating profit margin narrowed to 9.3% from 14.4% a year earlier.
To offset the impact of a border tax now being studied by the Trump administration, JLR would need to raise prices by more than $17,000 per vehicle, according to West Bloomfield, an analyst at Michigan-based Baum & Associates Llc.
Reuters and Bloomberg contributed to this story. ","Tata Motors’ consolidated net profit stood at Rs111.57 crore for third quarter, dragged down by losses in domestic operations and lower profit of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) ","Wed, Feb 15 2017. 04 27 AM IST","Tata Motors Q3 profit plunges 96% on losses in India ops, lower JLR profit" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YzDuLxH9TogZlygx9pkEiL/EmTech-2017-Innovators-under-35.html,"Meet the 10 winners of the Mint-MIT Technology Review competition for innovators below the age of 35 from across India in different cutting-edge domains. The winners were selected after a rigorous judging process. The innovators were felicitated on 9 and 10 March at EmTech 2017, the second edition of the emerging technology conference organized in Delhi by Mint and MIT Technology Review.Akash DongreOrganization: Indus OSDesignation: Co-founder and chief product officerInnovation: A multilingual operating system available on over 50 mobile devicesEducation: BTech in mechanical engineering from IIT BombayAkash Dongre—along with co-founders Rakesh Deshmukh and Sudhir Bangarambandi—has always believed that “Indian problems require indigenous solutions”. No wonder their eponymous innovation, touted as the “world’s first regional operating system”, is blazing a trail in the Indian smartphone ecosystem. “In our short journey, beginning in 2015, we have already partnered with five domestic smartphone brands (Micromax, Intex, Karbonn, Celkon and Swipe) and built a user base of more than six million, which is consistently growing at a rate of 500,000 OS activations per month,” says Dongre. Indus OS, which is available in 12 Indian regional languages, boasts innovative features such as Indus Swipe (translation from English to a regional language and vice versa with just a swipe), Indus Keyboard (with built-in word and matra (a unit of metrical quantity in Indian languages) prediction) and Indus Reader (which can convert an English text into audio in eight regional languages). Besides, there’s a marketplace called App Bazaar, where over 50,000 apps are available in local languages.Dongre recalls one of his foreign trips when his lack of understanding of the local language made him feel handicapped: “Everything around me was in a language I did not understand.” Dongre also realized how digitally less connected the Indian heartland is and how alien English is to a lot of Indians. “After spending some more time to understand the Indian digital landscape and brainstorming with my team, we decided to start building an ecosystem for Indian consumers.” The team built Indus OS on three core pillars: simplicity, innovation and localization. “At the heart of our story lies the desire to equip anyone who is using a smartphone with a holistic ecosystem of their choice,” says Dongre.Indus OS, which introduced Indus OS 2.0 in July 2016, will introduce Indus OS 3.0 in 2017. “In 2017, we intend to continue to work with the Government of India and app developers alike to build a smartphone ecosystem of choice for the emerging markets population,” Dongre says.Ankit JhanwarOrganization: Pluss Advanced TechnologiesDesignation: Vice-president, corporate planning and strategyInnovation: A packaging box for vaccine transportation that uses phase change materials and a unique design for precise temperature controlEducation: BTech in polymer science and technology from IIT Roorkee; certificate in entrepreneurship, management and global leadership from London School of Economics and Political ScienceAn optimist by nature, Ankit Jhanwar was not put off by the disinterest displayed by some packaging companies in developing a temperature-controlled shipping solution using phase change materials (PCMs)—a domain in which his company, Pluss Advanced Technologies, had been working since 2005. Such a temperature-controlled solution could prove very useful in cutting down the 30% wastage of vaccines in the existing cold chain system in the country. So what Pluss did was develop a complete shipping solution using its own proprietary PCMs, which could not only provide better temperature control but also address the challenging Indian ambient conditions of 40°C. “A range of products were planned to address the gaps at each leg of the supply chain right from manufacturer to the depot to the distributor to chemist and finally to the patient,” says Jhanwar.The shipping solution that he developed was branded Celsure—which uses the PCM technology to provide precise temperature control. “It is the only shipping solution which provides temperature control for more than 72 hours even at ambient temperature of 40°C,” he says. Thanks to this innovation, all the current pharmaceutical shipments which happen by air can now be done by road using Celsure—something that can lead to huge savings in freight cost, thereby making it possible to lower the prices of medicines.According to Jhanwar, Celsure also addresses the unique challenge of shipping from a hot environment (say, India) to a cold environment (like Europe) or vice versa. What’s more, the solution has brought in simplicity in the packaging, removing human errors. Jhanwar says that it’s available in sizes as small as one vial to as large as 10,000 vials and can provide temperature control for as low as 2 hours to as high as 120 hours. Pluss has a goal of reducing medicine wastage due to ineffective cold chain to as low as 0.1% in the next three-five years. The firm is constantly working on scaling up and commercializing the innovation. Celsure was launched in April 2016 with only one variant; eight more variants have been added within a year. Logistics firms such as Blue Dart and DHL have adopted Celsure as one of their preferred modes of shipping temperature-sensitive pharma products. Successful trials have also been run with various pharmaceutical firms. Besides commercializing it in India, Pluss plans to go global with the launch in Singapore and the Middle East in 2018 and in the US and Europe in 2019. “We are also keen on tie-ups with the government, World Health Organization (WHO), Unicef and other related organizations for last-mile delivery of vaccines. Customized products are being planned to address the last mile challenges,” says Jhanwar. Anusha RammohanOrganization: General Electric Global ResearchDesignation: Lead engineerInnovation: Flow analytics for multi-phase flow metering in oil and gas industryEducation: BE (Hons.) in electronics and instrumentation from BITS-Pilani; MS in electrical engineering from Arizona State University, USAnusha Rammohan believes that the intersection of the digital and physical worlds is the ideal space for disruptive innovations. And that’s exactly what attracted her to the esoteric domain of flow analytics for multi-phase flow metering in the oil and gas industry.As the lead engineer at GE Global Research’s John F Welch Technology Center in Bengaluru, Anusha got the opportunity to combine physical sensors with advanced analytics to develop a solution capable of radically transforming the processes of the entire industry. “As the global energy demand continues to increase, there is an urgent need in the oil and gas industry to be more efficient with resources, people and investments to reduce the cost of producing oil while doing so safely with reduced environmental impact,” says Rammohan. Her innovation addresses this need by combining sensor and device data in the field using intelligent analytics to provide accurate and reliable information in real time about oil production. For instance, she says, timely information about well and field level production of oil, water and gas allows operators to make critical decisions related to optimizing pumps, allocating resources and energy to each well, shutting down or stimulating wells, and preventing leakage and blockage of pipes, etc. By transforming data into actionable insights, her analytics solution enables increased oil recovery, reduced human intervention and improved resource planning.Not merely restricting her innovation to a single industry, the next stop for Anusha is to extend it to applications in industries such as aviation, power and transportation. The applications include performance optimization of assets, health monitoring of safety-critical components and their increased reliability and reduced downtime—all of which can significantly improve productivity and bring down costs. Rammohan has been granted patents related to her work in image mapping, sensor positioning and flow measurement; she has filed for more. She dreams of a world powered by analytics and technologies such as artificial intelligence—one in which “autonomous decision making” would greatly reduce the ambiguity, uncertainty and human subjectivity that are currently proving to be bottlenecks in all industries.
Kshitij Marwah
Organization: Tesseract Imaging
Designation: Founder
Innovation: Virtual reality (VR) camera to create and share high resolution VR/holographic content; holographic augmented reality headset
Education: MTech in computer science from IIT Delhi; MS in media arts and sciences from MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts, US
Kshitij Marwah says virtual reality and augmented reality (VR and AR) are the new mediums for human beings to tell their stories in a much more “experiential and immersive manner”. It marks a natural progression, as he says: “From the spoken word to the written word, from photos to videos—we have always found new ways and tools to tell our stories.”The power of his belief in VR and AR, backed by the rigour of his technical education (never mind that he dropped out of his PhD at MIT Media Lab), led Marwah to his innovations: Quark VR camera and the Holoboard AR viewing headset. Says he, “The Quark VR camera will democratize mixed reality content creation and the Holoboard AR headset will allow for its viewing in a truly immersive and unique manner.”Marwah has a simple way of explaining his innovation. “Imagine the next time when you are watching a cricket match in your house. Rather than sitting in front of your television, with our Quark camera streaming the match live in VR and the Holoboard headset, you can feel as if you are sitting right in the stadium but in the comfort of your couch,” he says.His current company, Tesseract Imaging (in Norse mythology, Tesseract is said to be a cosmic cube of immense power; in geometry, the tesseract is a four-dimensional hypercube), was spun out of MIT Media Lab’s India arm, a unit that Marwah had co-founded to promote and spread inter-disciplinary learning among students in India. He is credited with growing the Lab initiative from a platform of 50 students to 500 students selected from hundreds of thousands of applicants across the country. He headed the India arm of the Lab from 2012 to 2015.Marwah believes that the innovations coming out of Tesseract will revolutionize “the way we capture, consume and see content and media”. On the anvil are plans to begin shipping the Quark VR cameras in mid-2017 and Holoboard AR headsets by the end of the year. “With our technology, we believe we can make sure that our society can capture, share and consume their daily experiences and share stories across generations with an experience that is immersive and powerful.”Nishant KumarOrganization: Embryyo Technologies Pvt. LtdDesignation: Founder and CEOInnovation: Sensor and mobile app-based drug adherence monitoring system for tuberculosisEducation: Dual degree in mechanical engineering from IIT Bombay Nishant Kumar, the founder and chief exec of Embryyo Technologies, a medical technology and research start-up incubated at Pune’s Venture Centre, was troubled by the way tuberculosis (TB) treatment was left midway by a large number of patients in India. There wasn’t an effective way of ensuring patients stayed the course. “This was because the TB medication involves a drug regimen of about 6 months where the patient is required to take a total of about 400 pills,” he says. There are several reasons why treatment is left incomplete, including side effects, forgetfulness, poor counselling and duration of the regimen. The enormity of the problem—as many as 2.5 million people in India were affected by TB in 2015 as per a World Health Organization report—inspired Kumar to do something about it. He visited the local district level hospitals and direct observation treatment (DOT) centres to interact with the clinicians, healthcare workers and patients, which helped him in “collecting more insights” and further strengthened his resolve to address this problem. He says that it demanded an easy-to-use, affordable solution which could fit seamlessly in an already established public health infrastructure in the country. The result was BoxRx, an electronic medical event monitoring system that has currently been piloted for drug adherence monitoring in TB patients. According to Kumar, most people with TB are cured by a strictly followed, six-month drug regimen but any interruption to it can cause drug resistance.That is where the innovation behind BoxRx comes in handy. The solution comprises a specially designed electronic pill box which carries the TB blister pack as prescribed by the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP). A tearable paper with conductive ink tracks printed corresponding to each pill is placed beneath the blister pack before closing the box. Whenever a pill is removed from the blister pack, the conductive track gets broken and this activity is logged and transmitted from an in-built Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) circuit to a central server in the form of an SMS. The server processes the information in the SMS and updates the mobile application of the doctor/health worker assigned to that particular patient.To scale up the innovation, Kumar plans to work very closely with the national and international organizations that are leading the TB control programmes. Also on the cards is large-scale manufacturing and on-field implementation of the innovation so that it reaches the maximum number of patients. Kumar envisions a society that is centred on harmonious and sustainable co-existence. “I believe that good health is the primary signature of prosperity for an individual, a family, a nation and the world at large,” he says.Pankaj AgarwalDesignation: Creative leaderOrganization: Samsung ElectronicsInnovation: A button-type device that connects to toys and a mobile app to enable intuitive interactions for kidsEducation: BTech in electrical engineering from IIT Kanpur; MS from Seoul National University; MBA from Harvard Business SchoolWhenever Pankaj Agarwal saw his son Anant play alone with his toy blocks, a question often nagged him: “Why does he have to play alone? Is there something I can do to make play-at-home social and interactive for him?” He was also inspired to change the status quo when he looked at the many expensive toys gathering dust around his house. Agarwal thought of the millions of middle-class homes that just couldn’t afford all those high-tech toys with pricey tags.So he added a simple and interactive, yet relatively inexpensive, tag of his own: TagPlus. The innovation comprises a button-type smart tag, a smart app (for phones/tablets), and, above all, content created and shared in the cloud by kids as young as 7-year-olds. A key benefit of TagPlus is that it can increase the repeat play value of toys. An important feature of the innovation, says Agarwal, is that there is no set-up required. “No device pairing, no logins, no passwords!” When kids buy toys that have this smart tag, they can start playing on the TagPlus platform immediately after unwrapping it. Kids can “click”, “long press”, “shake” and “bump” their smart tags and the smart app will respond accordingly. A “click” on the smart tag activates the TagPlus app on a nearby digital device to show toy-related content. A “long press” action will bring on a social media interface where kids can easily upload their creations and also see the creations of other kids playing with the same toy. “Think of this as a ‘mini Facebook for kids’,” says Agarwal. A “shake” action on the smart tag will help kids find and connect with children playing with an identical toy who could be anywhere in the world. Also, when kids “bump” two tags from two different toys, the connected app shows multiple ways in which the toys can be combined to create something entirely new. Agarwal and his other TagPlus team members at Samsung believe that this patent-pending technology platform has the potential to make kids’ playing experiences more serendipitous, socially engaging and creative “by seamlessly bridging their virtual and physical play environments”. Agarwal and his colleagues did multiple pilot tests of TagPlus in South Korea and they are also in discussion with many toy makers to adopt the platform. “The response has been very positive,” he says. Agarwal plans to continue his innovative work in the creative domain and believes that “members of our society should be educated and imbibe a culture of creativity”.Prasant MisraDesignation: ScientistOrganization: TCS Research and Innovation, Tata Consultancy Services LtdInnovation: Auditory sensing for micro unmanned aerial vehicles Education: PhD in computer science and engineering from the University of New South Wales, Sydney; postdoctoral fellowship from the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, StockholmPrasant Misra has been focusing his research efforts around building “spatially intelligent systems”. His current work pertains to the auditory sensing technology for micro unmanned aerial vehicles (MUAVs, more popularly known as drones). It’s like “growing the ears” for intelligent things, as he puts it. “It is part of a grand vision to equip this category of flying robots with a sensory gamut that is on par with humans,” he says. This will not only enable such “things” to derive better spatial intelligence, but also drive cognition to a better level of autonomy by combining auditory sensing with vision.There are, however, fundamental challenges in developing such robust auditory capabilities, especially in capturing the spatial dimensions of a sound scene and analysing its acoustic signature. “The signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio is extremely low due to the presence of (near-field) wideband acoustic interference (i.e., self-noise) from the MUAVs’ spinning rotors and motors, which is both strong and non-stationary,” he explains. Theoretically speaking, building an acoustic array with a large number of acoustic elements can overcome such high levels of noise, but the space, payload and energy limitations of an MUAV come in the way of meeting such exhaustive system requirements and computational needs.Misra is now investigating both lightweight acoustic sensing system design, and low-power (but efficient) computation paradigms to overcome this challenge. The initial results, he says, are quite promising.The impact of the work Misra is doing is far-reaching. It will not only force us to rethink the current model of aerial sensing (which is primarily vision dominated), but will also open up newer applications and usage scenarios for the betterment of society. It is now quite common to talk of aerial drones, especially tiny ones with multiple rotors that can hover mid-air, in applications ranging from e-commerce deliveries and inspection of industrial machinery to wildlife monitoring and search-and-rescue operations. Nevertheless, their sensing technology is predominately vision-centric. “While the advantages are clearly obvious in visual inspection and monitoring applications, on the flip side, they become unusable in camera-obstructed or low-light conditions, or in scenarios that offer non-visual clues such as those based on sound. In fact, these conditions are a norm in high-stress environments (dense canopy or fog, structures on fire, underground mines, etc.),” he says.Misra is working towards taking the MUAV technology from its existing level to “cognitive autonomous systems”. He believes that as spatial intelligence and cognitive technology mature, the lines between machines and humans would blur, enabling both to live together in the same society as companions. In the future, cognitive aerial drones will take up roles such as aerial cars and taxis, pick up and escort agents, search and rescue bots, and ears and eyes for the disabled. In short: anything you want them to be.Sandeep Senan Designation: Founder and directorOrganization: Evobi Automations Pvt. Ltd (Bibox Labs)Innovation: A toolkit-based approach to learning so that kids can learn through experiments by making things like a robotic toy or a fire alarmEducation: BE in computer science from Visvesvaraya Technological University, Karnataka; MBA in international business from Edith Cowan University, AustraliaWhen it comes to innovation and creativity, Sandeep Senan is as excited as the young kids he wants to empower with the innovative tools at his disposal. His innovation, Bibox (short for Brain-in-a-box), is like an “electronic brain which can be instructed by a kid using a graphical software, which can run on a tablet or smartphone or PC or even with cards”, he says. Senan is of the view that the realm of innovation must be extended to children rather than remain mostly confined to the adult world. There’s a need for a huge change in the way children are taught and allowed to be creative, he feels.“The task of making adults creative is a humongous task, but if we think about kids, they are naturally curious and thus it’s easy to instill an innovative thinking process in them,” says Senan. So when he discovered that there was a lack of tools and curricula designed for instilling the habit of innovation in kids, he decided to do something about it.“The innovation Bibox was originated out of that need to give kids the tools to change the world and thus the confidence to keep innovating and make it a habit so that when they become adults, they can go out and make large-scale impact because the thinking is ingrained into their minds,” he says.Bibox doesn’t have a definite shape or size but is basically a set of tools—processors, switches, sensors, battery and software, among others—using which children in different age groups can try their hand at innovation. This “brain”, says Senan, can be connected to a variety of accessories, including toys, lights and TV sets, and children can come up with stuff like walking robotic dogs, automatic TV and even connected health products using the Internet of Things.“Because Bibox responds to kids’ logic in the physical world, they can see what the logic means and correct themselves when required—making the learning experience truly experiential,” he says. Besides providing them such toolkits, Senan’s organization also provides them some structured mentoring to enable them to use their creative freedom and confidence to innovate more and more in any field they choose to be in. “We are just getting the process started a little early,” he says. Through Bibox Labs, he has enrolled more than 25,000 students in over 100 schools in India.To take his innovative ways to a much larger base of students, Senan and his team are digitizing the process of mentoring the kids to be innovators. Once this is in place, he says, any student anywhere in the world would be able to go through the same process that Bibox Labs follows in its affiliate schools. They also plan to partner with private firms, non-governmental organizations and various government bodies to scale up the programme.Subham Banerjee Designation: Young scientistOrganization: Centre for Biodesign and Diagnostic, Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, department of biotechnologyInnovation: Transdermal patch against neurotoxin poisoningEducation: Master of pharmacy from West Bengal University of Technology; PhD in pharmacy from Birla Institute of Technology, MesraSoldiers fighting in hostile territories often have to shield themselves against harmful or poisonous gases and chemical substances. One often hears of deadly strikes such as the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system (1995), the nerve gas attack in Syria (2013) or the recent attack in Iraq by Islamic State militants in which they set fire to a sulphur mine, spreading sulphur dioxide plumes.Subham Banerjee’s innovation concerns protecting people against neurotoxic poisoning resulting from such attacks. “The exposure of humans to neurotoxins is a major risk factor in severe mortality in chemical or biological warfare situations, as neurotoxins are one of the most potent toxins,” he says. His innovation, a transdermal patch that can provide protection against neurotoxin poisoning, comprises an inert adhesive matrix system with active pharmaceutical ingredients. The patch can be applied to intact or even burnt or blistered skin. It works by releasing a combination drug (eserine and pralidoxime chloride) through the skin in what is called a “controlled or sustained release” mechanism.According to Banerjee, the new patch has “an excellent safety profile”, can be “self-administered”, and has positive environmental as well as economic impact. “Apart from conventional dosage forms, no novel sustained release prophylactic transdermal patches are currently available in the market,” he says. Which is why this innovation has huge socio-economic benefits and the potential to achieve product dominance in the market.In order to sustain this project and take it to the next level of successful commercialization, however, Banerjee says that some studies have to be carried out. For one, process parameters have to be optimized to scale up the capability of manufacturing these patches in bulk quantities. Also, a preclinical toxicity study in rodents needs to be done, followed by a full-fledged pilot for the bioavailability study in human subjects as per the guidelines of the Drug Controller General of India.Banerjee believes that this innovation has the potential to make an “extra value-addition” to the existing measures for biological warfare protection available with India’s Armed Forces.Vinay Kumar Designation: Co-founder, director and CEOOrganization: PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. LtdInnovation: A single device that can diagnose multiple parameters related to diabetes managementEducation: MTech in microelectronics and VLSI design and MSc in electronic science from Kurukshetra University; PhD from Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science BangaloreAt age 14, when Vinay Kumar was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, his doctor told him he would have to take insulin injections. The look of disappointment on his face prompted the physician to lie that it was only for 10 days that injections were needed. Later on, when Kumar realized that he was stuck with the needle for a lifetime, he became determined to put the hurt and discomfort behind and do something about it. Over the years, diabetes took a bigger and bigger toll on his body, with episodes of hypoglycemia (abnormally low level of sugar in the blood) and even fainting—but all this only strengthened his resolve.In addition to struggling with a debilitating condition like millions in the world do, Kumar constantly thought about how a diabetic can manage his condition better and, at the same time, persisted with his studies. “These two aspects of my life merged when I decided to pursue a PhD at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc Bangalore),” he says. Besides working on novel ways to diagnose diseases and acquiring multiple patents, he also co-founded (along with Navakanta Bhat and Gautam Sharma) PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. Ltd, a start-up incubated at IISc that is focused on medical device research and development.Kumar’s innovation is a hand-held point-of-care device which, as a single unit, can measure eight different parameters related to diabetes management and early detection of its complications. “With a tiny drop of finger-pricked blood samples, patients can test HbA1c (which gives 90 days blood glucose control profile), glycated albumin (which gives 15 days blood glucose control profile) and instant blood glucose as well,” he says. The device can detect very early damage in the kidney by measuring the microalbuminuria, creatinine and ACR (albumin to creatinine ratio) in the urine samples. Apart from these, he adds, it can measure the haemoglobin level for anaemia and chronic kidney disease. “The device can measure serum albumin, an important blood marker for kidney and liver. So the single device can take care of full diabetes glycaemic management and early detection of complications such as diabetic nephropathy,” explains Kumar.The road ahead for PathShodh is well-defined. “The device is ready and regress clinical validation for most of the tests has been completed on real patient samples in collaboration with major pathology labs and hospitals in Bangalore. We also have the manufacturing line setup at IISc to manufacture the disposable test strips for these different tests,” says Kumar. The commercial launch of the device can happen any time now. That would certainly move the needle in a positive direction for PathShodh’s mission of making healthcare diagnostics affordable and available to all.",Meet the 10 winners of the Mint-MIT Technology Review competition for innovators below the age of 35 from across India in different cutting-edge domains,"Fri, Mar 31 2017. 05 26 PM IST",EmTech 2017: Innovators under 35 +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/lRm77pSsms6HtOFnoUqulO/JSPL-reports-loss-of-Rs40744-crore.html,"Mumbai: Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL) Tuesday announced a net loss of Rs407.44 crore for the December quarter, less than half of the Rs869.73 crore loss it posted a year ago, helped by higher production and sales of steel.Total income from operations rose 24.7% to Rs5,407.87 crore from Rs4,336.05 crore a year earlier.Nine analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected JSPL to report consolidated net loss of Rs611 crore while eight analysts had expected sales of Rs5,297.6 crore.ALSO READ: Jindal Steel and Power in talks to sell Chhattisgarh power plant for over $1.5 billionThe Naveen Jindal-led integrated steel and power producer’s consolidated steel sales in the quarter rose 18% to 1.16 million tonnes while consolidated steel production rose 7% to 1.15 million tonne, JSPL said.Revenue in the iron and steel business rose 40.4% to Rs4,577.71 crore while revenue in the power business rose 6.2% to Rs1,554.27 crore. A large part of the company’s power capacity remained unutilized, the company said.Total expenses in the third quarter rose 7.7% to Rs5,158.57 crore from Rs4,789.58 crore a year earlier.“Going forward, the company will continue to focus on increased volumes of steel, improve product mix with a higher focus on high yield products, improve its product mix and increased production in all mines both in India and abroad which would enhance the revenues as well as the operating margins in the coming quarters,” JSPL said in a statement.","Jindal Steel and Power’s total income from operations rose 24.7% to Rs5,407.87 crore in the December quarter from Rs4,336.05 crore a year earlier","Tue, Feb 14 2017. 11 24 PM IST",JSPL reports loss of Rs407.44 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/zlKMd3XvDmeS1t80btTzdP/Godrej-Industries-posts-Rs4231-crore-loss-for-December-quar.html,"Mumbai: Godrej Industries Ltd, one of the Godrej group holding companies, Tuesday posted a Rs42.31 crore standalone loss for the December quarter against a Rs49.42 crore profit a year ago, even as sales rose.Total revenue increased 30.34% to Rs410.52 crore from a year ago.The company’s finance costs rose 25.7% from a year ago to touch Rs52.78 crore. Godrej also posted a loss before interest and tax of Rs24.72 crore in the ‘other’ business, up 45% year-on-year. This segment includes integrated poultry, tissue culture, seeds, windmill energy generation, and gourmet and fine foods.On a consolidated basis, the company posted a Rs89.95 crore net profit, down 15.1% from a year ago. However, in a statement, the company said that consolidated results for this quarter were not comparable with previous quarters because of “changes in the shareholdings during the period in some of the subsidiaries, joint ventures, and associates.”ALSO READ: Godrej Properties Q3 net profit up nearly fourfold at Rs77.25 crore“The best way to look at this company is on a sum of the parts basis,” an analyst with an equities brokerage firm said, requesting anonymity. “The bulk of Godrej Industries’s holdings are in Godrej’s consumer business, Godrej Properties, and Godrej Agrovet. These are all fast-growing companies, and GIL’s market cap is equal to the market value of its shares in both the listed entities it holds–GCPL, and Godrej Properties,” he said. Godrej Industries currently holds 23.8% of Godrej Consumer Products and 56.7% of Godrej Properties, as per a company investor update released Tuesday.“The star business in Godrej Industries’ stable is Godrej Agrovet, their agriculture business,” the analyst said. “It has been growing at 25-30% CAGR.” Godrej Industries said this division posted an 18% growth in revenue and 369% growth in profit before tax (without exceptional items) year-on-year. The subsidiary has interests in animal feeds, oil palm, agri inputs, and life sciences, whose revenues grew steadily in the past three quarters. The agri-inputs grew fastest at 26% year-on-year.Brokerage firm Axis Capital in an October report had pointed out that Godrej Industries’s market cap is largely derived from its holdings in the listed properties and consumer businesses, ignoring the value generated by Agrovet, the company’s agri-chem business. Axis Capital estimated that Agrovet will be worth Rs7,000 crore by end of FY2018 and will be worth Rs14,000 crore by 2021, close to GIL’s current market cap of Rs17,409 crore. Shares of Godrej Industries closed 0.09% higher at Rs516.50 on the BSE on Tuesday, while the benchmark Sensex closed lower by 12 points, or 0.04%, at 28,339 points.",Godrej Industries’ total revenue in Q3 increased 30.34% to Rs410.52 crore from a year ago,"Tue, Feb 14 2017. 10 50 PM IST",Godrej Industries posts Rs42.31 crore loss for December quarter +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/bG9WE25RP0GN2PQhcBmF8H/Adani-Enterprises-posts-62-jump-in-Q3-profit-at-Rs340-crore.html,"Ahmedabad: Adani Enterprises Ltd (AEL), part of the Adani Group, posted a consolidated net profit of Rs340 crore for the quarter ended 31 December, a 62% increase from a year earlier.The company, which is in the business of mining, agro, renewable energy and city gas distribution, said in a media statement Tuesday evening that revenue rose to Rs8,606 crore from Rs7,895 crore in the same period last year.ALSO READ: Adani gets CCI nod to buy Reliance Infra’s power transmission projects in Gujarat, Maharashtra“Adani Enterprises demonstrated encouraging performance backed by mining, city gas and renewable businesses. Government’s focus of strong spending on infrastructure and energy space coupled with improving utilization and cost optimization enables the company to deliver on its growth plans,” executive director Ameet Desai said in the statement.According to Gautam Adani, chairman of the Adani Group, the government’s initiatives to curb the parallel economy and other reforms augured well for AEL’s businesses. “We at Adani Enterprises continue to focus on business opportunities with sustainable returns and value enhancement,” he added.","Adani Enterprises’ revenue rose to Rs8,606 crore in December quarter from Rs7,895 crore last year","Tue, Feb 14 2017. 08 59 PM IST",Adani Enterprises posts 62% jump in Q3 profit at Rs340 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/JA6shA8HgIixLv6yhuJxrM/SpiceJet-profit-declines-24-to-Rs181-crore-in-December-quar.html,"Bengaluru: Low-fare airline SpiceJet Ltd’s fiscal third-quarter profit declined 24% because of higher fuel prices and a drop in demand after the government invalidated high-value banknotes in a shock announcement in November.Net profit fell to Rs181.1 crore in the three months ended 31 December from Rs239.9 crore in the year earlier, the company said in a statement to BSE on Tuesday.Revenue rose 12.5% to Rs1,642.4 crore from Rs1,459.95 crore the year before. Still, it was the eighth straight quarter SpiceJet reported a profit after nearly shutting down in December 2014.Ajay Singh, chairman and managing director of SpiceJet, attributed the decline in profits on high fuel prices and demonetisation denting demand for travel in what is typically the most profitable quarter for airlines.SpiceJet’s will start inducting fuel-efficient Boeing Max planes starting next year, Singh said, adding that the new planes will help the airline save costs over the long term.Last month, SpiceJet placed a $11 billion order to buy 100 Boeing 737 Max aircraft to expand operations.“Our historic aircraft order signifies the end of the turnaround phase for SpiceJet and marks the beginning of a growth story. This order will help build an even stronger and more profitable airline. We will be relentless in reducing our costs and identifying new avenues for revenue generation,” he said.SpiceJet, with about 13% domestic market share, has 343 daily flights to 45 cities with 32 Boeing 737NG and 17 Bombardier Q-400 planes. SpiceJet’s profits mirror a similar drop in earnings for two other listed airlines in the December quarter. InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, which operates IndiGo, and Jet Airways India Ltd have reported a slump in profits in the three months ended 31 December.IndiGo said third-quarter profit dropped 25% to Rs487.25 crore from Rs657.29 crore a year earlier while revenue rose 16.8% to Rs5,158.42 crore from Rs4,481.20 crore in the year-ago period.Jet Airways’ profit slumped 69% to Rs142.38 crore from Rs.467.11 crore a year ago while revenue dropped to Rs3,344.62 crore from Rs3,608 crore a year ago.Singh had said in mid-January that the December quarter will be a profitable one for SpiceJet.SpiceJet stock rose 0.55% to Rs 64.35 on BSE, while the benchmark Sensex fell 0.04% to end at 28,339.31 points on Monday. The earnings were announced after the end of trading on Tuesday.",Budget airline SpiceJet’s profit declined 24% in the December quarter from the year-ago period on the back of higher fuel prices and competitive flight fares,"Tue, Feb 14 2017. 08 53 PM IST",SpiceJet’s Q3 profit declines 24% to Rs181 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/bZUDGVgIY9uTvFnCxXa7TJ/Adani-Ports-Q3-profit-rises-26-to-Rs848-crore.html,"Ahmedabad: Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ), the country’s largest port developer, reported a consolidated net profit of Rs848 crore for the quarter ended 31 December, a rise of 26% from a year earlier.APSEZ said in a statement that its consolidated revenue rose 32% to Rs2,235.78 crore in the same period.In Q3 FY17, APSEZ handled cargo of 41 million tonnes, an increase of 8% from 38 million tonnes it handled in Q3 FY16.“Our strategy to diversify our cargo mix and focus on high value cargo continues to yield positive results. Like last quarter, the continued outperformance in cargo volumes is backed by healthy growth in our newer ports namely Hazira, Dhamra and Kattupalli,” said Karan Adani, chief executive officer of APSEZ, in the statement. ALSO READ: Adani Enterprises posts 62% jump in Q3 profit at Rs340 croreOperational efficiencies and the company’s efforts to change the mix of bulk cargo beyond coal have resulted in all-round growth in our financial numbers, he added.APSEZ owns and operates eight ports and terminals in India including Mundra, Dahej, Kandla and Hazira in Gujarat, Dhamra in Orissa, Mormugao in Goa, Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and Katupalli in Chennai. The company is developing a terminal at Ennore in Tamil Nadu and Vizhinjam in Kerala.","Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone’s consolidated revenue rose 32% to Rs2,235.78 crore in December quarter","Tue, Feb 14 2017. 10 35 PM IST",Adani Ports Q3 profit rises 26% to Rs848 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/PPkufD5lzd7wDTq7xOTvTM/DLFs-Q3-profit-falls-46-to-Rs9814-crore.html,"Bengaluru: DLF Ltd, India’s largest property developer, said on Tuesday that fiscal third-quarter profit fell 46% to Rs98.14 crore from the year-ago period. Revenue also fell 30% to Rs2,057.92 crore during the three months ended 31 December. The realty firm’s stake sale in its rental unit, which is expected to raise about Rs12,000-13,000 crore, is at an advanced stage with discussions on with shortlisted investors. The transaction involves promoters selling 40% in DLF’s commercial property arm, DLF CyberCity Developers Ltd (DCCDL), to institutional investors. The proceeds from the sale will be infused into DLF and be used mainly to reduce debt.“In respect of DCCDL CCPS (compulsorily convertible preference shares) transaction, the discussion with shortlisted investors is at an advanced stage and shall be presented to the committee of independent directors for their evaluation and final decision. In lieu of this, conversion period for CCPS issued to the promoters in DCCDL has been extended by one year at their request to facilitate its sale,” DLF said in a release. DLF on Saturday said that its promoters have deferred till March next year the conversion of securities held in the firm’s subsidiary into equity shares. The deadline to convert CCPS into shares was 19 March this year, but the same could not be executed in view of Securities and Exchange Board of India’s order in October 2014 banning DLF and six executives from the capital market for the next three years.ALSO READ: Property developers falling in line with new stringent realty law“The performance in the last quarter was subdued as markets adjusted itself to new paradigm initiated by demonetisation move. While demonetisation is extremely positive for the company and the industry, it has had short-term negative impact on secondary sales, which in turn has impacted primary off-take. The company expects this period of adjustment may continue for next few quarters till the time secondary market stabilizes and customers start to purchase new products,” DLF said in a statement.DLF said it remains focused on execution and creation of finished inventory. With deliveries of 11 million sq. ft in the first nine months of 2016-17, under-construction residential projects have come down to 19 million sq. ft.Meanwhile, office leasing business continues to witness healthy traction, backed by expansion in services sector. Witnessing the demand in office leasing, DLF is building two new office complexes in Gurgaon and Chennai.PTI contributed to this story.","DLF Ltd’s revenue also fell 30% to Rs2,057.92 crore during the quarter ","Tue, Feb 14 2017. 10 08 PM IST",DLF’s Q3 profit falls 46% to Rs98.14 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/BG9rVaSd05ZaRTZH5vu7MO/Aditya-Birla-Nuvo-Q3-profit-falls-3515-to-Rs20623-crore.html,"New Delhi: Fortis Healthcare on Tuesday reported a net profit of Rs453.29 crore for the third quarter ended on 31 December 2016-17. The company had reported net loss of Rs29.16 crore in the same quarter of last fiscal. Its consolidated total income from operations stood at Rs 1,133.38 crore for the third quarter of current fiscal, compared with Rs1,026.52 crore in the year-ago period, Fortis said in a BSE filing. Fortis Healthcare said results are not comparable, as the consolidated result includes financial results of FHTL which it had invested in last year. It has completed acquisition of 51% economic interest in Fortis Hospotel Ltd (FHTL) from RHT.Fortis Healthcare CEO Bhavdeep Singh said: “Like all other healthcare players, we have been impacted by demonetisation, however we have still continued to grow on most parameters in comparison to last year and the trailing quarter”. During the quarter, revenue of its hospital Business stood at Rs917.2 crore while revenue from its diagnostics business was at Rs188 crore. Fortis Healthcare stock closed 5.25% up at Rs195.60 on BSE.","Fortis Healthcare consolidated total income from operations stood at Rs 1,133.38 crore for the third quarter, compared with Rs1,026.52 crore in the year-ago period","Tue, Feb 14 2017. 06 26 PM IST",Fortis Healthcare Q3 profit at Rs 453.29 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/pmx2bqnXXy68vGvaePs0MK/Sun-Pharma-Q3-profit-falls-nearly-5-to-Rs1472-crore-below.html,"Mumbai: Despite higher sales, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd’s consolidated net profit fell 4.7% year-on-year in the quarter ended December due to a sharp increase in tax expense.India’s largest pharmaceutical company reported a net profit of Rs1,471.82 crore for the quarter against Rs1,544.85 crore a year ago, missing analysts’ estimates. Sales were up 8.4% at Rs7,683.24 crore, as against Rs7,087.07 crore in the year-ago period.A Bloomberg poll of 24 brokerages had estimated the company’s net profit at Rs1,782 crore.Tax expense for the December quarter jumped four-fold to Rs372.92 crore from Rs88.82 crore in the same period last year.Sun Pharma’s sales in the US, which accounted for 45% of the total sales, rose 4% on year to $507 million, benefitting from authorized generic sales of olmesartan and its combinations, the company said in its earnings statement.The drug maker’s sales in India were up 5% at Rs1,969 crore, while sales in emerging markets grew 14% to $172 million in the quarter under review.The company’s spending on research and development stood at Rs613 crore, which was 8% of sales. During the quarter, 8 abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs) were filed with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A total of 149 of its applications await US FDA’s approval.Shares of Sun Pharma ended down 0.7% at Rs650.15 on Tuesday on the BSE, while benchmark Sensex index closed almost flat at 28339.31 points.","Sun Pharma reports a profit of Rs1,471.82 crore for the third quarter, as against Rs1,544.85 crore a year ago. Sales rises 8.4% at Rs7,683.24 crore","Tue, Feb 14 2017. 06 13 PM IST","Sun Pharma Q3 profit falls 5% to Rs1,471.82 crore on higher tax outgo" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/xndgCNQi3Pj5YTWYHceJ5M/Samsung-putting-Note-7-behind-it-as-S8-preorders-surpass-S7.html,"Seoul: Pre-orders for Samsung Electronics Co Ltd’s flagship Galaxy S8 smartphone have exceeded those of its predecessor S7, the firm’s mobile chief said on Thursday, suggesting many consumers are unfazed by last year’s Galaxy Note 7 fires.Strong initial demand for the S8 will be encouraging for a firm recovering from one of the worst product safety failures in tech history, which ended in the Note 7’s swift withdrawal.The new smartphone has received favourable reviews ahead of the start of sales in South Korea, the United States and Canada on 21 April. Some investors and analysts have even predicted a first-year sales record for the South Korean company.“It’s still a bit early, but initial response to the pre-orders that have begun at various places across the world have been better than expected,” mobile chief Koh Dong-jin said at an S8 media briefing.He said the S8 will be the safest Galaxy smartphone to date due to measures implemented to avoid the battery failures that caused some Note 7s to spontaneously combust.Analysts said strong S8 sales are likely to help Samsung to its best-ever quarterly profit in April-June, along with a booming memory chip market that is widely expected to deliver record revenue this year for the industry as a whole.Brand recoverySamsung has been working to restore investor trust as well as its reputation since the Note 7’s withdrawal in October within two months of being on the market, losing out on $5.4 billion in profit.Senior executives told foreign media on the sidelines of the briefing that it will take time for Samsung’s brand image to recover. They also said Samsung has seen a rebound in consumer sentiment towards the firm since announcing the results of a probe into the fires and preventative measures on 23 January.“It took Toyota about four years for its brand to get back to where it was, and I think ours can do it faster,” said Lee Young-hee, an executive vice president at Samsung’s mobile business, referring to a series of Toyota Motor Corp vehicle recalls from 2009 to 2011.S8 advertising focuses on features such as almost bezel-less screens rather than highlighting safety. Executives said this was deliberate in the belief that Samsung has done enough to convince consumers the Note 7’s problems will not be repeated.“We felt really comfortable that we had attained a level of confidence with consumers so that we could actually shift to the product campaign,” said Pio Schunker, global head of integrated marketing for Samsung’s mobile business.“Ultimately I think it is this product that proves this case.” Reuters","Pre-orders of flagship Galaxy S8 smartphone have exceeded those of its predecessor S7 suggesting consumers are unfazed by last year’s Note 7 fires, says Koh Dong-jin of Samsung","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 06 20 PM IST",Samsung putting Note 7 behind it as S8 pre-orders surpass S7’s +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/lon6itNYtskOqkc71GtIhK/H1B-visas-boosted-overall-welfare-of-Americans-study.html,"Washington: H1B work visas—the most sought after by Indian IT professionals—had a “positive effect” on innovation and increased the overall welfare of Americans, a new study has found, amidst uncertainty over the regulations of such visas by the Trump administration. The H1B visa allows US companies to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialised occupations. The number of these visas granted annually is capped by the federal government. Recently, the Trump administration issued a stern warning to companies not to discriminate against American workers by “misusing” the H1B work visas programme. Researchers, including John Bound and Nicolas Morales from the University of Michigan in the US, studied the impact that the recruitment of foreign computer scientists had on the US economy. They selected the time period of 1994-2001, which marked the rise of e-commerce and a growing need for technology workers. Foreign computer scientists granted H1B visas to work in the US during the IT boom of the 1990s had a significant impact on workers, consumers and tech companies, researchers said. Also Read: Tightening visa norms a blessing in disguise for IT firms, says Mohandas PaiBound, Morales and Gaurav Khanna of the University of California-San Diego found that “the high-skilled immigrants had a positive effect on innovation, increased the overall welfare of Americans and boosted profits substantially for firms in the IT sector.” Immigration also lowered prices and raised the output of IT goods by between 1.9% and 2.5%, thus benefiting consumers. Such immigration also had a big impact on the tech industry’s bottom line. “Firms in the IT sector also earned substantially higher profits thanks to immigration,” said Morales, a U-M economics doctoral student. On the flipside, the influx of immigrants dampened job prospects and wages for US computer scientists. US workers switched to other professions lowering the employment of domestic computer scientists by 6.1% to 10.8%. Based on their model, wages would have been 2.6% to 5.1% higher in 2001, researchers said. “As long as the demand curve for high-skill workers is downward sloping, the influx of foreign, high-skilled workers will both crowd out and lower the wages of US high-skill workers,” said Bound, U-M professor of economics.","Foreign computer scientists granted H1B visas to work in the US during the IT boom of the 1990s had a significant impact on workers, consumers and companies, researchers said","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 03 11 PM IST",H1B visas boosted overall welfare of Americans: study +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/DzBgGj7oWwnUeNtjSvLvwO/Vedanta-Q3-profit-rises-4times-at-Rs1866-crore.html,"New Delhi: Driven by higher income, metals and mining major Vedanta Ltd saw its consolidated net profit jump over four times to Rs1,866.28 crore during the December quarter of the current fiscal.Led by NRI billionaire Anil Agarwal, it had reported net profit of Rs408.58 crore in the October-December quarter of the previous fiscal, Vedanta said in a BSE filing.Its total consolidated income from operations of the metals-to-oil group rose significantly to Rs20,393.03 crore during the third quarter of 2016-17, as against Rs15,731.48 crore in the year-ago period. The total expenses of the firm also rose to 16,033.75 crore during the quarter as against Rs14,216.38 crore in the third quarter of 2015-16. Vedanta CEO Tom Albanese said: “Volume ramp-up and cost efficiencies across our operations, aided by higher commodity prices, have significantly driven up EBITDA y-o-y. Our financial position remains robust and we continue to strengthen our balance sheet by maximising free cash flow and reducing debt.”He further said that with the company’s focus on simplifying the group structure, the Vedanta Limited and Cairn India merger is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2017.“The proposed merger of Vedanta Limited and Cairn India is an important strategic step in simplifying the group structure. This was approved by all sets of shareholders in September 2016, and Vedanta expects the transaction to complete in the first quarter of CY2017 (by March, 2017),” the company said.It said this has been the “best ever quarter for Vedanta Limited in last 2 years. Profit after tax jumped 4.5 times (or 353%) to Rs1,866 crore in October-December 2016 quarter.”The company said results are driven by higher volumes at Iron Ore, Aluminium & Power, Copper India and Zinc India businesses as well as significant cost and marketing savings and higher commodities prices.It said it recorded “EBITDA at Rs6,002 crore, up 83% y-o-y” and EBITDA margins of 39% reflects benefits from higher commodity prices and volume ramp-up. Vedanta said that as on 31 December 2016, gross debt has been reduced by Rs1,828 crore to Rs64,966 crore and net debt stands reduced by Rs447 crore to Rs11,514 crore on account of positive free cash flow.Also, strong operating performance has led to generation of free cash flow of Rs1,801 crore, it said, adding that its financial position remains strong with total cash and liquid investments of Rs53,452 crore.The company said it is focused on strengthening its balance sheet by maximising free cash flow, refinancing and terming out maturing debt, and simplifying the group structure.It added, “Vedanta achieved cumulative cost and marketing savings of $545 million over the last 7 quarters. This is ahead of the plan to save $1.3 billion in four years.”","Vedanta’s total consolidated income from operations of the metals-to-oil group rose to Rs20,393.03 crore during third quarter of 2016-17, as against Rs15,731.48 crore in the year-ago period","Tue, Feb 14 2017. 05 34 PM IST","Vedanta Q3 profit rises 4-times at Rs1,866 crore" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/NhzWdDoChidLspxjsFNOMP/Facebook-looking-at-behaviour-to-weed-out-fake-accounts.html,"San Francisco: Facebook on Wednesday said it has started weeding out bogus accounts by watching for suspicious behaviour such as repetitive posts or torrents of messages. The security improvement was described as being part of a broader effort to rid the leading social network of hoaxes, misinformation and fake news by making sure people are who they claim to be.“We’ve found that when people represent themselves on Facebook the same way they do in real life, they act responsibly,” Shabnam Shaik of the Facebook protect and care team said in a blog post.“Fake accounts don’t follow this pattern, and are closely related to the creation and spread of spam.” Accounts suspected of being bogus are suspended and holders asked to verify identifies, which scammers typically don’t do, according to the California-based social network.In France, the new tactic has already resulted in Facebook taking action against 30,000 accounts believed to be fakes, Shaik said. “We’ve made improvements to recognize these inauthentic accounts more easily by identifying patterns of activity—without assessing the content itself,” Shaik said.“With these changes, we expect we will also reduce the spread of material generated through inauthentic activity, including spam, misinformation, or other deceptive content that is often shared by creators of fake accounts.”Under pressure to stymie the spread of fake news, Facebook has taken a series of steps including making it easier to report such posts and harder to make money from them. Facebook also modified its displays of trending topics to find stories faster, capture a broader range of news, and help ensure that trends reflect real world events being covered by multiple news outlets.Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has sought to deflect criticism that the huge social network may have been used to fuel the spread of misinformation that affected the 2016 US presidential race.Facebook last week unleashed a new weapon in the war against “revenge porn” at the social network as well as the messaging services Messenger and Instagram.When intimate images shared on Facebook without permission are reported, confirmed and removed, the company will use photo-matching technology to prevent copies from being shared again on its platform.","The security improvement is part of Facebook’s broader effort to rid the social network of hoaxes, misinformation and fake news ","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 10 54 AM IST",Facebook looking at behaviour to weed out fake accounts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/VVTajmo1cZesd14m16qcbM/Narayana-Murthy-says-need-to-reduce-friction-in-businesses.html,"Charlottesville,US: To transform India’s economy, there is a need to reduce “friction” in businesses and create an “environment” wherein the government has more trust in its entrepreneurs, Infosys founder N. R. Narayana Murthy has said. For the transformation of the Indian economy, he said it is essential for the younger generation to be daring and that India is integrated with the global economy. “We still have a little bit of work in reducing friction to businesses. We need to create an environment where the government has more trust in its entrepreneurs than it is today,” Murthy, 70, told students of the prestigious Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia here. Murthy, the recipient of the 2017 Thomas Jefferson Foundation medal in Global Innovation, was responding to Darden School of Business Dean Scott Beardsley who asked, “what do you think needs to happen next to transform India’s economy. What is next”. Also read: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“We want our youngsters to be a little bit more daring in taking the entrepreneurial route more and more than the extent to which they do today. We have to become much more integrated to the world economy so that we can consider the entire world as our market and can become globally competitive. “And most importantly we can become much more open minded to learn from the wonderful things that are happening in this country and elsewhere. I would say these are required (for transforming India’s economy to the next level),” Murthy said. He, however, refrained from elaborating what the Indian government needs to do to create the environment of trust in its entrepreneurs and said, “I will tell you why, as an Indian citizen, it may not be proper if I were to be critical about India when I am outside India”. Interacting with students, he said, challenges for entrepreneurs are now different than the time when he started Infosys. Those days access to capital was almost non-existent and government was a big irritant. “Today, challenges are different. But in some sense even more complex, because today’s entrepreneurs have to be much more smarter than what we were because there is so much of competition on a global scale. Before you can say this can be done, somebody else may have already done it.” “Therefore, today’s entrepreneurs would have to be much more nimble, global, competitive because market is truly determinant for success today unlike our time when managing government was a big determinant in India,” he said. Murthy said good governance is all about maximising shareholders’ value while ensuring fairness, transparency and accountability to all stake holders. Of all the stakeholders, society is the most important player. “Respect from the society is the most important ingredient for longevity of a corporation,” he said. “To be honoured by the most innovative country in the world and to be awarded a medal in the name of Thomas Jefferson, author of Declaration of Independence is to me a big honour. I will certainly work hard, and hopefully smart in the remaining years of my life, to deserve this kindness, this generosity and this affection on their part,” he told PTI. The fact that the university has seen it fit to pick up somebody from India, and bestow this honour shows how open this country is and how generous they are, Murthy said. “Therefore this is a clear example of how Indian students wherever they are whether in India or here or anywhere else can be sure that as long as they are good citizens of this world, contribute to make the society a better place through peaceful and harmonious methods, they will be recognised, appreciated,” he said. Murthy said that Indian students are making a positive impact in the countries they are studying. “I have not come across a single person of Indian-origin who has conducted himself or herself in a manner that has brought sorrow to the society they are living in, anywhere, wherever in the world. So I think that is the right way. “I am very very proud of our Indian students. They are smart, have very good values and are very peaceful. They contribute to the society in a very significant way wherever they are. I just want them to continue to do this,” the Infosys founder said. The one important principle that Indian students should remember in everything they do is will this make India a more respected place, a more respected nation? Will this action of mine make me a better part of this community? Will this action deserve appreciation and affection from other members in this community? If they remember these then they will do everything possible, Murthy said. PTI",Infosys founder Narayana Murthy says the younger generation needs to be daring in taking the entrepreneurial route for transformation of the Indian economy,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 02 26 PM IST",Narayana Murthy says need to reduce ‘friction’ in businesses in India +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/hf7FZlpmE3d9HBryi7Jd1L/Infosys-Q4-results-Five-things-to-watch-out-for.html,"Bengaluru: For Vishal Sikka, 2016-17 stands as a rebuke.After three consecutive downward growth revisions, Infosys’s dollar revenue growth in the year ended 31 March 2017 will be at best 7.6%, 150 basis points (bps) lower than the 9.1% growth in 2015-16, and 620 bps short of its first projected 13.8% growth outlined in April last year. One bps is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Departure of four executive vice-presidents (EVP) in financial year 2017 (in addition to four EVP exits between August 2014 and March 2016) implies that Sikka continues to struggle to build a stable top leadership team. Further, Infosys continues to look away from acquisitions (it’s been 18 months since the company made its last acquisition), which makes one wonder what Houdini trick the management has to achieve its target of becoming a $20 billion firm by March 2021.Also read: Will corporate earnings disappoint once again?Finally, Infosys founder N.R.Narayana Murthy’s outburst, twice in public, against some of the decisions by the board is another painful blow to Sikka. Agreed, Murthy has not questioned Sikka directly. But few of these decisions, including agreeing to a generous severance money to its former CFO (chief financial officer), and giving a hike to the current COO (chief operating officer), were approved by the management, and so it is naive to conclude that all is okay between Sikka and Murthy.Understandably, these developments have unnerved shareholders: in full fiscal year 2017, Infosys shares declined 16.2%, more than the 9% fall by BSE IT index, even as the benchmark Sensex index returned 17% gains. For these reasons, business historians would take note of the fall in Sikka’s popularity: from being hailed as a hero in the first 18 months, Sikka now battles allegations of skulduggery and corporate greed.So what can Sikka—and Infosys—do to possibly break this impasse?First, get back growth and improve its execution. A related second measure is to get some growth from three divisions: Infosys BPO, EdgeVerve, the products and platforms unit (together bring about 13% of revenue), and Infosys Consulting. Infosys needs to improve its ability to sell more solutions from these three services to its clients. Lastly, Sikka needs to arrest senior management departures and build a stable leadership team. All this needs to be done swiftly, and once completed, hopefully, any corporate governance concerns of shareholders (including the founders) should be assuaged. It is important to note here that the displeasure expressed by some of the founders against the board only coincided with the period when Infosys’s growth started slipping (during the first quarter of last year).Significantly, Sikka’s $8 million performance-related pay as part of his $11 million compensation is a thorny issue, and how the board justifies this variable salary to its CEO on Thursday will dictate if there is a third instance of public spat between Murthy and the board. Is all this doable? Unlikely.Simply, because for IT services firms, chasing reclusive growth is more challenging than ever. Moreover, in case of Infosys, nothing short of a miracle can bring back peace between some of the founders and the board and management. With this as a backdrop, Mint puts the spotlight on five things to watch in Infosys’s fourth quarter earnings on Thursday:Revenue forecast: Brokerage firm BNP Paribas sees Infosys recording 1.3% sequential increase in revenue at $2.58 billion for the January-March period. The Infosys management will be mindful that this growth will be 30 basis points less than what the company did in January-March last year. Analysts term the growth in the fourth quarter as “exit rate” and a strong growth helps to start on a good note in the new financial year. Again, management commentary for the April-June period will be crucial.Will Infosys give full-year guidance? For Infosys, providing a growth outlook is one decision which appears to be going down the wire. Analysts believe the management will give a growth outlook. Based on conversations with executives familiar with the development, this paper thinks otherwise and Infosys may discontinue from this practice. The board will eventually take a call when it meets on 12 and 13 April but this decision will decide the road ahead for the Infosys stock. Performance of top customers: During the second and third quarters, Infosys’s largest client and top five and top 10 clients gave less business to the company. Until the June quarter of last year, Sikka did well to get more business from its largest clients. Since Infosys gets a fifth of total revenue from its top 10 clients, the management needs to reverse this decline if Infosys expects to record sustainable growth. A rain-check on Infosys’s new initiatives in the wake of President Trump’s strict visa laws: Over the last 33 months, Sikka has steered Infosys to embrace newer ways to do business, such as by bringing elements of user-centric method of Design Thinking. At the same time, Infosys has increased its focus on building platforms, in an effort to move away from people-led model of doing business. All these measures will be tested as US President Donald Trump works to have a strict policy in place which makes it arduous for outsourcing companies to bring engineers in the US. Hence, commentary on how Infosys is monetising its platforms business and impact of changes in visa will be eyed.Weak areas: Sikka has been unable to get respectable growth from EdgeVerve and Infosys BPO in his near three-year stint at Infosys. Another disappointment has been that the consulting division too ran into trouble in April last year. Infosys has put in a new leadership team at all three units over the last year, and management commentary on how soon it expects growth from these three units should decide the overall growth for the company.","Infosys founders spat, Donald Trump’s US visa policy and three consecutive downward growth revisions are likely to weigh in on the Q4 results to be declared today","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 05 04 AM IST",Infosys results today: Five things to watch out for +https://www.livemint.com/Science/36dife57xM8S5uo3O8ZrvI/Toyota-unveils-robotic-leg-brace-that-helps-paralysed-people.html,"Tokyo: Toyota is introducing a wearable robotic leg brace designed to help partially paralysed people walk.The Welwalk WW-1000 system is made up of a motorized mechanical frame that fits on a person’s leg from the knee down. The patients can practice walking by wearing the robotic device on a special treadmill that supports their weight.Toyota Motor Corp. demonstrated the equipment for reporters at its Tokyo headquarters on Wednesday.One hundred such systems will be rented to medical facilities in Japan later this year, Toyota said. The service entails a one-time initial charge of 1 million yen ($9,000) and a 350,000 yen ($3,200) monthly fee.The gadget is designed to be worn on one leg at a time for patients severely paralysed on one side of the body due to a stroke or other ailments, Eiichi Saito, a medical doctor and executive vice-president at Fujita Health University, explained.The university collaborated with Toyota in developing the device.ALSO READ: The rise of the bad botsA demonstrator strapped the brace to her thigh, knee, ankle and foot and then showed how it is used to practice walking on the treadmill. Her body was supported from above by a harness and the motor helped to bend and straighten her knee. Sensors in the device can monitor the walking and adjust quickly to help out. Medical staff control the system through a touch panel screen.Japanese automakers have been developing robotics both for manufacturing and other uses. Honda Motor Co.’s Asimo humanoid can run and dance, pour a drink and carry on simple conversations, while WelWalk is more of a system that uses robotics rather than a stand-alone robot.Given how common paralysis due to strokes is in fast-aging Japan, Toyota’s device could be very helpful, Saito said. He said patients using it can recover more quickly as the sensitive robotic sensor in WelWalk fine-tunes the level of support better than a human therapist can.“This helps just barely enough,” said Saito, explaining that helping too much can slow progress in rehabilitation.The field of robotic aids for walking and rehabilitation is growing quickly. A battery-powered wearable exoskeleton, made by Israeli manufacturer ReWalk Robotics, enables people relying on a wheelchair to stand upright and walk.ALSO READ: Toyota makes $1.33 billion investment in Kentucky plantSuch systems also can aid therapists in monitoring a patient’s progress, Luke Hares, chief technology officer at Cambridge Medical Robotics in Britain, said in a phone interview.“They can be so much more precise,” he said.Previously, Toyota has shown robots that play the violin and trumpet. It plans to start sales in Japan of a tiny boy-like robot for conversational companionship. It is also investing in artificial intelligence and developing self-driving vehicles.Toshiyuki Isobe, Toyota’s chief officer for research, said WelWalk reflects the company’s desire to apply robotics in medicine and other social welfare areas, not just entertainment. The company also has an R2-D2-like machine, called the Human Support Robot, whose mechanical arm can help bed-ridden people pick things up.“Our vision is about trying to deliver mobility for everybody,” said Isobe. “We have been developing industrial robotics for auto manufacturing, and we are trying to figure out how we can use that technology to fill social needs and help people more.” AP",Patients suffering from paralysis can practice walking by wearing Toyota’s robotic device on a special treadmill that supports their weight,"Wed, Apr 12 2017. 03 52 PM IST",Toyota unveils robotic leg brace that helps paralysed people walk +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/P38wpO5hJsBnQhNRTEz18I/PC-shipments-rise-slightly-in-struggling-market-IDC-report.html,"San Francisco: Personal computer shipments notched their first quarterly growth in five years, researcher IDC said, though the gain of less than 1% from a year earlier underscored persistent weakness in demand, especially from consumers.Shipments totalled 60.3 million units in the first three months of the year, compared with 59.9 million in the same period a year earlier, IDC said Tuesday in a statement. It marked the first increase since the first quarter of 2012, IDC said.Gartner Inc., another major tracker of PCs, reported a decline of 2.4% for first-quarter global shipments. Both research companies said the business market for PCs had improved though not enough to offset a decline in consumer customers.Sales of desktop and laptop computers have been in decline as consumer demand shifted to smartphones and tablets for easily checking email or the internet on the go. Now the industry is counting on more interest in its machines from businesses and consumers wanting to replace aging hardware with sleeker and more powerful products that feature upgraded software. IDC and Gartner use their own methods for counting shipments in these reports, which are preliminary. Gartner, for example, includes desktops, notebooks and related devices such as Microsoft Corporation’s Surface, but not Google’s Chromebook. IDC includes Chromebooks, but not the Surface in this report, according to Jay Chou, research manager at IDC.The major brands in the industry all posted market share gains. HP retook the top spot with 22% in the first quarter, up from 19% a year earlier, IDC said. China-based Lenovo Group Ltd. posted a smaller uptick to 20.4% and Dell Technologies had 16%. Apple rose to 7% from 6.7%.Gartner puts Lenovo at number 1 with HP at number 2. Dell grabbed the number 3 spot, while Apple was number 5.Prices are climbing as key memory components get more expensive amid a shortage in the industry, according to Mikako Kitagawa, an analyst at Gartner. This doesn’t bode well for PC makers.“The price hike will suppress PC demand even further in the consumer market, discouraging buyers away from PC purchases unless it is absolutely necessary,” Kitagawa said in the statement. “The price hike started affecting the market in 1Q17.”In the US, Gartner said shipments fell 2.4%, with consumer demand dragging down sales. HP was number 1 in the US market, while Dell was number 2. Apple was number 4. Bloomberg","Personal computer shipments totalled 60.3 million units in the first three months of the year, compared with 59.9 million in the same period a year earlier, says IDC report","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 04 37 PM IST",PC shipments rise slightly in struggling market: IDC report +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/yKtdc6E2kqpgDOR7zmK1bM/Future-Retail-to-demerge-home-retail-business.html,"
Shares of Future Retail Ltd hit an all-time high on Thursday after India’s biggest departmental store chain said its board has decided to consolidate its offline and online home retail businesses under a single entity called Praxis Home Retail Pvt. Ltd.In a stock exchange filing, Future Retail said the home retail business operated through its HomeTown stores, and the e-commerce home retail business operated by Blue eServices (which owns Fabfurnish.com) will be demerged into Praxis Home Retail.Future Retail had acquired Rocket Internet-backed online furniture and home furnishings store FabFurnish.com in an all-cash deal in April last year, its first acquisition of an Internet store.With this, Future Retail will spin off its specialty retail business and focus on large format and small format pure retail businesses. The company said this will bring “greater visibility on the performance of home retail business and e-commerce home retail business”.Under a so-called scheme of arrangement, Praxis Home Retail will issue one share to Future Retail shareholders for every 20 shares of the latter and its shares will be listed on the stock exchanges. Following the demerger, there would not be any change in the shareholding pattern of Future Retail, it said.Future Retail shares rose more than 7% to hit an all-time high of Rs312.85 during the day, before shedding some gains to close 4.46% higher at Rs305.90 on BSE. The benchmark Sensex closed 0.29% up at 29,422.39 points.The scheme is subject to approval from the National Company Law Tribunal, stock exchanges, the Securities and Exchange Board of India and various statutory approvals, including those from shareholders and lenders/creditors of the firms involved.The existing network of Future Retail, the flagship of the Future Group, includes small-format EasyDay stores and large-format Big Bazaar stores, along with other chains such as apparel chain fbb, Foodhall, electronics store eZone and furniture and home decor chain HomeTown.The hypermarket and supermarket business is led by Big Bazaar, fbb, Food Bazaar and Foodhall, while home solutions segment include HomeTown and Ezone, along with newly added Fabfunish.In November, Kishore Biyani-led Future Retail agreed to acquire the retail and allied businesses of Hyderabad-based Heritage Foods Ltd in an all-stock deal.For the fiscal year ended on March 2016, the revenue of the demerged division was recorded at Rs187.36 crore, out of the company’s overall Rs6,716 crore. It was considered on the basis of the five-month turnover of the demerged business vested with the company during the previous year with effect from 31 October 2015 and total revenue for the HomeTown division for fiscal 2015-16 (Rs477 crore).",Future Retail to consolidate its offline and online home retail businesses under a single entity called Praxis Home Retail,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 02 AM IST",Future Retail to demerge home retail business +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/S9FfWJ6CN9DaWHxXBYWUHJ/Honda-Motorcycle-to-launch-four-new-models-in-FY18.html,"Mumbai: Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India Pvt. Ltd (HMSI), India’s second largest two-wheeler maker, will launch four completely new models—including the Africa Twin—in the current financial year, but is putting on hold plans to develop a middleweight motorcycle to take on Royal Enfield, a top company executive said.The new models HMSI plans to launch include the 1000cc Africa Twin that sports the advanced dual clutch technology and three more undisclosed brand new models—a bike and two scooters, said Minoru Kato, president and chief executive officer, HMSI.HMSI has already started assembling the completely knocked down kits of the Africa Twin. The model will go on sale next month. In March, Noriaki Abe, then president and chief executive officer (CEO) at Asian Honda Motor Co. Ltd, who took over as CEO of Honda’s global motorcycle business on 1 April, outlined in an interview with Mint Honda’s plans to develop a middleweight motorcycle to compete with Royal Enfield.Kato indicated on Thursday that the plans had been put on hold for now.“So far, from my point of view, the cost competitiveness as of today is not enough to compete in that segment,” Kato said. HMSI is very cost-competitive in big-volume models like the Activa scooter, which comes in 110cc and 125cc versions, but it doesn’t have the experience of developing motorcycles in the above-250cc (up to 450cc) segment, he said.HMSI is targeting the sale of 6 million scooters and motorcycles this financial year in a market that has just recovered from the impact of high-value currency invalidation. It is pinning its hopes on a normal monsoon that would boost rural demand.The two-wheeler maker sold 4.7 million units in the domestic market year ended March, up 10% from the previous year. Overall sales of bikes and scooters expanded 6.89% in the financial year; motorcycles grew at a slower pace of 4% in the same period, according to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam).Even as scooters, a market that HMSI leads, selling every second model in the country, will be the key volume driver for the company, the share of motorcycles as a percentage of sales is expected to go up, said Kato.HMSI, which emerged as the biggest contributor to Honda’s global sales in 2016, is also planning to make India an export hub once the BS-VI emission norms take effect in 2020, company officials told reporters in Mumbai. It has also formed a cross-functional team to lead the migration to BS-VI. HMSI plans to invest Rs1,600 crore this year to launch new products and enhance capacity. Its fourth Indian factory, being built in Karnataka, will commence production in July, taking its annual capacity to 6.4 million units.With sales of scooters growing at a faster pace than motorcycles, HMSI will have an edge over bigger rival and former partner Hero MotoCorp Ltd, said Nitesh Sharma, an analyst at Phillip Capital India Ltd. “Even as Honda is unlikely to dent Hero’s share in the motorcycle segment, where the latter has a dominant position, robust growth in the scooter market will help Honda increase share in the overall two wheeler market,” he said. Despite predictions of a normal monsoon and the lower base of last year, Sharma expects the two-wheeler market to expand by a mere 7-8% in the current financial year.","Honda has started assembling CKD units of Honda Africa Twin in India and slotted launch of three other models in FY18, but put on hold its Royal Enfield challenger","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 02 AM IST","Honda to launch Honda Africa Twin next month, three other models this year" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/m5gMIr8JXE16Sfjqg9xLBP/RollsRoyce-opens-defence-service-delivery-centre-in-India.html,"
Aircraft engine maker Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc on Thursday opened a new defence service delivery centre (SDC) in Bengaluru, the first outside the US and UK, to provide localized engineering support and solutions and reduce turnaround time for the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy and state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL). Rolls-Royce is looking to improve capability and provide faster front-line support for over 750 engines in a range of aircraft used by the defence as well as commercial aircraft such as the C-130J, Hawk advanced jet, Embraer and Jaguar, among others. Shaun Agle, vice-president (customer services), India defence, said the new service delivery centre will be able to deliver real-time solutions through MRO (maintenance repair and overhaul), provide first and second line of support, have field service representatives, manage the health of the fleet, manage supply chains and collaborate with the armed forces. India is the last remaining user of the Jaguar type of aircraft and is one of the largest users of the Hawk, the company said, while trying to highlight the need for a local presence. The SDC will have at least 10 specialized engineers and service personnel to find localised solutions specific to India. The SDC is based on the model operated by the company at Marham in the UK and Kingsville in the US. The company did not quantify the reduction in time or cost that would result from setting up the local SDC, which will do the work that would otherwise have been referred to Bristol, UK. Last year, Indian customers raised 138 issues, according to the company, which were referred to Bristol. Rolls Royce has over 1,600 engineers based in India who help provide solutions for the UK-based company’s global customers, Kishore Jayaraman, president, India and South Asia, said.",Rolls-Royce is looking to improve capability and provide faster front-line support for over 750 engines in a range of aircraft in India,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 00 AM IST",Rolls-Royce opens defence service delivery centre in India +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/LxA1GM7rlRgNDKHIXY1KKP/Tightening-visa-norms-a-blessing-in-disguise-for-IT-firms-s.html,"Hyderabad: The tightening of H1B work visa rules in the US would be advantageous to Indian IT firms as they would shift more work offshore and also be in a position to improve their billing rate, says industry veteran T.V. Mohandas Pai. The present business model of Indian IT companies—offshore-onsite work ratio of 70:30 would now go up to 90:10, the former chief financial officer of Infosys said. “So, what will happen is they (Indian IT firms) will offshore more work and increase their competitiveness. They will do only 10% work onsite, and 90% offshore,” Pai told PTI. “It can be done very easily for 70-80% of the business. It will improve their competitiveness and make them better,” he said. “The new H1B regulations are very good for Indian IT, and bad for companies which try to use it for cheap labour. First of all, Indian IT is not cheap because what they bill to clients is $125,000 to $150,000 per year (for an onsite employee),” he said. “The average pay is around $80,000-85,000 per year. They are unnecessarily getting a bad name, because some fly-by-night operators are trying to do body-shopping and spoil the name of the entire (Indian IT) industry,” he said. The new regulations would play to the strength Indian IT companies because they have been reducing the number of H1B visas they collected since 2014, he said. “So, they are already getting prepared. It will increase the billing because it will create artificial scarcity in America, and allow Indian companies to bill more for work because there are not enough Americans to fill the positions that are needed,” said Pai, who is chairman of Manipal Global Education Services and Aarin Capital. “It’s a blessing in disguise, I don’t think they need to be scared or anything,” he said. As for possible downsides on the visa front, Pai said there would be some uncertainties for the next six months “because nobody knows what they (US Labour department) are going to do and how they are going to behave and all that.” “Uncertainty is because the US Labour Department is threatening more inspections. They will find out the number of applications (by Indian IT firms for H1B visas) have come down and they should be happy,” Pai said. On what Indian IT companies should now do following the tightening of H1B visa regulations, he said, “Increase offshoring, increase automation and drive up billing rates. It will be to their advantage.”","The tightening of H1B work visa rules in the US will shift more work offshore, says industry veteran Mohandas Pai","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 03 27 PM IST","Tightening visa norms a blessing in disguise for IT firms, says Mohandas Pai" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EsKMo6YQPpdU6iLxsgfHvN/Sunil-Munjals-Hero-Enterprise-to-focus-on-insurance-aerosp.html,"
New Delhi: Sunil Munjal, who separated from his brothers in 2016 to carve an independent identity, has formed a new group company called Hero Enterprise that has started selling life and health insurance policies and plans to venture into aerospace parts. Hero Enterprise will, however, continue to focus on its existing real estate and steel businesses even as the group holding company consolidates its businesses and exit smaller ones such as Hero BPO.Sunil Munjal already sold motor insurance for Hero MotoCorp Ltd while he was still a part of the Pawan Munjal-led Hero Group. In an interview on Thursday, Sunil Munjal said that his insurance distribution firm, Ensure Plus, is also into non-motor insurance such as assets, buildings and aircraft. It has also started selling life insurance and health insurance policies. For life insurance, the company has a partnership with ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Ltd, while for general insurance, it has tied up with National Insurance and Tata AIG. “We are the largest distributor of insurance in India... probably in the world. We wrote 10 million policies last year. Nobody does even half of it,” Munjal said.“Distribution is where the margin is. For us, to step back and put up an insurance company is nothing... It takes around Rs100 crore to get a licence. We have looked at that a few times but distribution is where the main margin is and relationships are. That’s where market connect is and we are very good at it,” he said. Hero FinCorp Ltd, a two-wheeler financing company run by Sunil Munjal’s nephew Abhimanyu, also plans to get into insurance distribution and that means a larger chunk of Sunil Munjal’s motor insurance business that used to come from Hero MotoCorp will get affected.“They will compete like any other entity. Within our group, we always had this system. We could buy and sell from our companies as well as outside. So, that ensures that everybody maintains quality and you are buying because of merit and not because it is your company,” he added.Sunil Munjal, 56, stepped down as joint managing director of Hero MotoCorp Ltd, India’s largest motorcycle maker, in July 2016. By exiting Hero MotoCorp, he raised around Rs3,500 crore.Sunil Munjal’s businesses were a small part of the $6 billion Hero group founded by Brijmohan Lall Munjal, the family patriarch who died in 2015 at the age of 92. He had five strategic businesses: insurance distribution, Hero Realty Ltd, Hero Management Service Pvt. Ltd, Ludhiana-based Hero Steels Ltd and Hero Mindmine Institute Pvt. Ltd.Munjal has hired P.N. Gupta, a former executive from Tata Group’s TAL Manufacturing Solutions, to enter the aerospace parts manufacturing. A person aware of Munjal’s plans in the defence sector said that he is scouting for manufacturing sites for composites.“Talks are still at an exploratory stage,” the person said on condition of anonymity.Munjal said that new business initiatives are not an area of “public conversation” and declined to comment specifically on his diversification.“I have never said yes or no. I would say it is a difficult area but high potential area because India is the largest known importer, in terms of reported numbers, of defence equipment in the world,” he said. “In today’s time, there is no reason for India to be (an import-dependent country). You have every capability and potential to build that capability (to manufacture) here in India,” he added.With 60% of India’s defence requirements met through imports, local defence production has emerged at the heart of the Narendra Modi government’s ‘Make In India’ programme. Under Hero Realty, Munjal has completed one project in Haridwar and a couple of others are under construction in Ludhiana and Mohali. “We have just closed a transaction in Gurgaon,” Munjal said.“We are targeting middle India—middle income, middle class, lower middle class, small town, mid-sized cities, tier III, tier IV cities, and we are trying to see if we can help improve people’s standard of living itself. So, the model is based in the price range between Rs20-Rs80 lakh and the bulk of it will be between Rs30-65 lakh,” he said.We are hoping to provide attributes, functionality of the apartments that one buys for Rs10-20 crore, he added.Munjal added that he is looking to exit smaller businesses such as Hero BPO.“We won’t keep any small business. We don’t want to be in any of the small businesses,” he added.In a separate development, Hero Enterprises’ chairman Sunil Kant Munjal has invested about Rs 100 crore in impact investment firm Aavishkaar Venture Management Services’ new fund ‘Aavishkaar Bharat Fund’, according to a statement on Thursday.Aavishkaar Venture Management is aiming to raise Rs 2,000 crore for a fund that will invest in businesses that are working with the underserved population in sectors such as agriculture, financial services, healthcare, waste and sanitation, renewable energy and logistics and supply chain.",Sunil Munjal’s Hero Enterprise has tied up with ICICI Prudential Life for life insurance and National Insurance and Tata AIG for general insurance,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 49 AM IST","Sunil Munjal’s Hero Enterprise to focus on insurance, aerospace manufacturing" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/I9zOulsXPb2kcVSzTenbdJ/How-Infosyss-20-billion-revenue-target-by-202021-is-hurti.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/kYi75mTtGSfHgCzsCzOFBO/Unilever-says-India-business-growth-has-recovered-post-demon.html,"
Mumbai: Unilever Plc said on Thursday that its Indian business has recovered from the hit it experienced following the government’s invalidation of high-value currency notes in November. This guidance, ahead of the fourth-quarter earnings of its unit Hindustan Unilever Ltd, comes as a shot in the arm for the whole consumer packaged goods sector, which has been reeling from demonetisation. Analysts expected the lingering effects of demonetisation to hurt business for these companies in the March quarter as well.“Growth in India recovered from the uncertainty experienced due to the removal of the Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes in November 2016, while Brazil continued to be adversely impacted by the economic crisis,” Unilever said in the statement uploaded on the website and filed with stock exchanges. Brazil and India are two of the multinational’s largest markets.Overall, Unilever’s sales grew 6.9% and volumes grew 2.2% in the Asia and AMET/RUB region this quarter, the statement said. It didn’t give India-specific estimates. AMET and RUB stand for Africa, Middle East, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, whose results are reported together with Asia. ALSO READ: What impact does Unilever’s business review have on HUL?In a similar statement filed in January, the Anglo-Dutch packaged consumer goods giant said its growth in India “was below historic levels, particularly in the last quarter (October-December), when demand was adversely impacted” by demonetisation. In the December quarter, HUL’s volumes fell 4% year-on-year after the cash crunch hit consumer spending. This came after a 1% decline in the three months to September. The Unilever statement comes at a time when brokerages have pencilled in volume declines or marginal increases in their March quarter estimates. Motilal Oswal Financial Services, for instance, has forecast a 0.5% decline in HUL’s volumes and 4% for ITC Ltd. Nomura Research estimates a 1% volume growth.“Demand that had started to show signs of recovery in October got dampened due to the cash crunch. Now that money is back in the system demand has come back”, said Ajay Thakur, lead analyst, Anand Rathi Institutional Equities. “Additionally, (sales) growth in the March quarter will also be on account of price increases taken by most companies on account of inflation.”Most analysts say that companies with a tilt towards urban markets will benefit more.ALSO READ: Amul hits back at HUL in ice cream war in Bombay high court“Following demonetisation, we expect consumer companies with a focus on urban consumption, and larger contribution from direct reach to overall channels to see better results,” analysts at Nomura said in a 11 April note.In a report previewing the company’s March quarter results, ICICI Securities said it expects HUL to show a 3.59% increase in domestic revenue, partially helped by an early summer onset.“A slightly early summer resulted in growth of summer care products and is likely to benefit companies such as Emami and HUL,” the brokerage said. HUL owns several personal care brands that target summer sales including Liril, Rexona, and Dove. Since the beginning of the calendar year, the BSE FMCG Index has risen by 14.54%, outperforming the benchmark index, Sensex which has risen 10.50%.Sapna Agarwal contributed this story.","Unilever’s guidance on India, ahead of Hindustan Unilever’s Q4 results, comes as a shot in the arm for the whole FMCG sector reeling from demonetisation","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 48 AM IST",Unilever says India business growth has recovered after demonetisation +https://www.livemint.com/Money/DSOuhTXunBolD4JUrozO1O/Brics-bank-plans-to-issue-rupee-yuan-bonds-this-year-KV-Ka.html,"Beijing: The New Development Bank (NDB) set up by the Brics countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — plans to issue bonds this year in Indian rupee and Chinese yuan, its president K. V. Kamath said on Friday. The bank sold its first ¥3 billion yuan-denominated bonds in China last year in July to fund clean energy projects in member-states. Kamath, a former executive with India’s largest private lender ICICI Bank, told the state-run Xinhua news agency that after last year’s issuance of bonds, the preparation for the second batch of yuan-denominated bonds, possibly in the second half of this year, is expected to be more smooth. The size will be around ¥3 billion, similar to the last one. He said the issuance will come after the bank is rated by international rating agencies. Between $300-500 million of rupee-denominated ‘masala’ bonds will be issued after July, added Kamath, who is based in Shanghai. ‘Masala’ bonds are rupee-denominated bonds issued outside India. Kamath said the NDB plans to lend $2.5-3 billion to fund 15 projects to member-states this year, up from $1.5 billion for seven projects in 2016. Most projects last year were connected to clean energy and transportation. Kamath said the loans will go to more sectors this year. For example, in India the bank will prioritise rural drinking water networks and infrastructure projects. The Brics bank was set up with an initial authorised capital of $100 billion after leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa signed a treaty for its establishment during the sixth Brics Summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, in 2014. It officially opened in Shanghai in 2015. PTI","KV Kamath said the New Development Bank plans to lend $2.5-3 billion to fund 15 projects to member-states this year, up from $1.5 billion for seven projects in 2016","Fri, Apr 14 2017. 03 14 PM IST","Brics bank plans to issue rupee, yuan bonds this year: KV Kamath" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/77F9x3usi1EEO6LQqHtsWM/Trumps-H1B-visa-reform-hits-every-tech-billionaire-in-Indi.html,"Bengaluru: It’s hard to overstate the importance of the technology industry to India. Over the past three decades, the IT sector has helped drive the country’s economic growth, employed millions and made billionaires out of at least seven founders.Now the industry is at risk from US President Donald Trump’s policies. The administration is promising a clampdown on the work visas India’s tech services companies use to service American customers. In the days since the US government took first steps toward H1B visa reform, all of India’s high-profile technology tycoons have seen their net worth eroded.Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd and India’s fifth-richest man, and Shiv Nadar, the sixth-richest person in the country and chairman of HCL Technologies, have seen their shares slide. Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani and three other founders of Infosys Ltd, all among the top 100 of India’s richest billionaires, have taken a hit too. IT stocks have dropped about 3% over that stretch, while the benchmark index has climbed 0.6%.Also read: In Donald Trump’s H-1B visa crackdown, Indian students weigh Canada, Ireland“Whether these changes are a precursor for more radical measures is what is worrying companies,” said DD Mishra, a Pune-based research director at Gartner.Infosys, which reports earnings 13 April, may have the most at stake. The Bengaluru-based company is most vulnerable to US visa reforms because it has the lowest percentage of local hires in the US, Goldman Sachs analysts Sumeet Jain and Saurabh Thadani said in a research note last week. HCL and Wipro also have risks from visa reforms but they hire relatively more Americans, the analysts wrote.Infosys kicks off earnings season for the industry this week, giving investors a chance to get more insight into the challenges and corporate strategies for addressing them. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, the market leader, is scheduled to report results next week.The debate has been over the H1B visa program, which allows companies to bring 85,000 workers into the US from overseas each year. On 31 March, just as companies prepared to file applications for next year’s allotment, the Trump administration rolled out a series of policy measures making it harder for firms to use the program for computer programmers and announced measures to fight what it called “fraud and abuse.” In parallel, the Justice Department warned employers applying for visas not to discriminate against US workers. All of this was in line with promises made during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to overhaul the program he described as bringing cheap overseas labour at the cost of American jobs and salaries.From India, those promises look like threats to the economy. Information technology is the largest employer in the private sector, providing a livelihood to nearly 4 million, and contributes about 9% of gross domestic product. India’s software and services exports total about $110 billion, with nearly two thirds of that revenue coming from the US.Visa uncertainty could wreak havoc with planning and jeopardize profits in the industry. It may also raise risks for customers that depend on such services, from Wall Street banks to retailers and airlines. “Difficulties in getting visas or rising salaries of H-1B employees will have a material impact on companies,” said Rostow Ravanan, chief executive officer of Mindtree Ltd, a Bangalore-based outsourcer that uses hundreds of H-1B visas every year.Several countries around the world are adopting or considering similar policies. That poses a threat to the business model perfected by Indian companies, Ravanan said. “These trends are dangerous because the IT industry and its talent serve the entire world,” he said.Leading outsourcers including Infosys, Tata Consultancy, Wipro and HCL Technologies declined to comment on the visa issue.Companies have been working on contingency plans. If foreign workers cannot go to the US, it will become more expensive to hire local staff. Companies may also try to do more work for American clients from abroad, including India.Nitin Rakesh, chief executive officer of tech services provider Mphasis Ltd is optimistic. He said the industry has gone through four or five reincarnations since the outsourcing business began. A Trump crackdown may lead to more innovation in the model.“Through leveraging all the possible technology, including mobility and cloud, the growth opportunities are immense,” said Rakesh, warning however that some companies will adapt and others may not. “Growth will not be homogeneous.” Bloomberg","US President Donald Trump’s H1B visa reform policies have eroded the net worth of India’s high-profile technology tycoons, including Azim Premji ","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 02 28 PM IST","H1B visa reform hits tech billionaires, from Azim Premji to Shiv Nadar" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/jU5tAL0RbnY695X4G2FchL/LeEco-plans-to-cut-over-a-third-of-US-workforce-after-missin.html,"New York: Chinese technology conglomerate LeEco Inc. is sharply scaling back its US ambitions.The company - which oversees a range of businesses in China, from streaming video to smartphones to electric cars - missed its projections for 2016 sales in the US by a wide margin and is planning to cut more than a third of its US workforce, a person familiar with the matter said.Billionaire Jia Yueting is narrowing his vision for LeEco’s global expansion amid lacklustre sales and the prospect of a cash crunch. The company entered the North American market in October with a splashy event in San Francisco, where it showed off an array of products, including ultra high-definition televisions, phones, virtual reality goggles and electric bikes. Yet LeEco generated US revenue of less than $15 million last year after that October debut, compared to an original goal of $100 million, according to the person cited above.The company so far is only selling TVs, smartphones and some accessories in the US. The US unit is also making plans to eliminate about 175 jobs, which would shrink its staff in the country to about 300 people, said the person, who asked not to be named because the financial details have not been made public.LeEco declined to comment on the planned job cuts and revenue miss.ALSO READ: Oppo founder reveals how he toppled Apple in ChinaOn Monday, the company said it was abandoning its plan to acquire US TV maker Vizio Inc. for $2 billion, citing regulatory hurdles. The collapse of the deal, which was meant to give LeEco a beachhead to build its brand with American customers, sets LeEco even further back in the US. The two companies said they will instead collaborate on ways to bring Vizio’s products to the Chinese market and integrate LeEco’s content into Vizio’s platform.Unfamiliar marketJia pushed into the unfamiliar US market even as his umbrella company struggled to alleviate a cash shortage. Executive departures and job cuts are further fuelling concern about the future of LeEco US, where the company delayed payroll earlier this month. Frustration has also stemmed from employees with bosses in China who appear to have little understanding of the American market, according to current and former employees.At the time of LeEco’s US roll-out, Jia said the US operations employed more than 500 people “with more being added each week”. The company had also purchased 49 acres of land in Santa Clara, California, from Yahoo! Inc. to build a campus that could house as many as 12,000 employees. Those plans have now been scrapped, according to the person with knowledge of the company’s operations.After rapid expansion of his tech empire, Jia admitted late last year in a letter to employees that the company was struggling to raise cash. Some suppliers said that LeEco was behind on payments and the company was stripped of some sports broadcasting rights.ALSO READ: Xiaomi’s Lei Jun doubles bet on IndiaThe company now employs about 475 across its US offices, which are based in San Jose, California. LeEco has been planning to make another round of job cuts for several months, but the timing for the reduction depends on when the company can build up enough funds to pay for employee severance packages, the person said.At the time of its US debut, analysts questioned whether LeEco could export its business model outside of China, where its brand is less well-known. The company’s aggressive approach to international expansion sharply contrasts with that of China’s three biggest internet companies: Baidu Inc., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. They have made slow forays in the US, opening modest offices in Silicon Valley and mostly focusing on investing in US start-ups. Bloomberg",LeEco has abandoned its plan to acquire US TV maker Vizio and plans to eliminate 175 jobs in the country ,"Tue, Apr 11 2017. 05 12 PM IST",LeEco plans to cut over a third of US workforce after missing sale target +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/rczZczZSdrZmX4xxshg91M/Insurance-regulator-Irdai-unveils-portal-for-insurers-to-sel.html,"New Delhi: Insurance regulator Irdai has launched a web portal for insurers that will allow them to register and sell policies online. The portal—isnp.irda.gov.in—is also open to intermediaries in insurance business, Irdai said in a circular. Last month Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) issued guidelines on e-commerce for insurance sector. Announcing the launch of registration portal for Insurance Self Networking Platform (ISNP), Irdai said insurance companies, brokers and corporate agents can sell and service insurance policies through this platform. Also Read: Irdai wants insurance policies issued in demat formatInsurers and intermediaries can create a login credential for registration and submit ISNP application form on the portal. In its guidelines issued in March, Irdai had said that companies may offer discounts to customers if their policies are sold through e-commerce websites. This will help companies increase insurance penetration in the country, it said. The ISNP portal will offer host of services including change of policy details like name and address, collection of renewal premiums, surrender or withdrawals, fund switching, policy revival or cancellation or transfer, duplicate policy, death/maturity claim and other policy specific services, it added.","Insurance regulator Irdai said insurance companies, brokers and corporate agents can sell and service insurance policies via online platform","Fri, Apr 14 2017. 09 01 PM IST",Irdai unveils portal for insurers to sell policies online +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/97izKYQxb9aH4XaxohHcfM/Edelweiss-raises-350-million-for-creditfocused-fund.html,"
Mumbai: Edelweiss Global Asset and Wealth Management has raised $350 million for the final close of its second credit-focused fund, Edelweiss Special Opportunities Fund (ESOF) II, said a senior executive of the firm.“After successfully returning capital to investors in the first credit-focused fund, Edelweiss Special Opportunities Fund, Edelweiss has subsequently raised its second version, ESOF II. As of 31 March 2017, the firm has closed the fund at $350 million,” Nitin Jain, chief executive-global asset and wealth management, Edelweiss, said in an interview.The fund achieved a first close of $205 million in June 2015.ESOF II, which invests in privately negotiated collateralized credit transactions, has raised funds from several institutional investors including public pensions and insurance companies. ESOF I had raised $230 million.Edelweiss’s second credit fund comes at a time when a host of other firms in the alternative investment space are in the market to raise credit-focused funds. These include the likes of Reliance AIF Asset Management Co. Ltd, Avendus Capital and private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Lp and Baring Private Equity Asia.Credit products in the alternative investment space are seeing a sharp increase as investors hunt for higher yields in a lower interest rate environment, said Jain.“Increasingly, you are seeing that fixed income yields are becoming low. So, then, there is a hunt for yield. People want a higher yield, but a fixed income nature product. So a lot of interesting, absolute return products are getting traction in the market, which are alternate in nature—they can be credit funds or they can be hedge funds,” said Jain.People want double-digit returns and low volatility, so a lot of products are being created to deliver yields between 10-14% using credit, he added.The hunt for higher yields has also made other products such as public sector bank perpetual bonds or AT1 bonds (additional tier 1 bonds) attractive to investors, said Jain.“Perpetuals have become attractive and the need for higher yield is again driving that trend. Public sector banks are giving you a yield of anywhere between 9% and 10.5%. When you go to fixed deposits, you’re getting only 7-7.5%. While they have a slightly different risk profile, people are getting very comfortable with them,” said Jain.Led by Jain, the Edelweiss asset and wealth management business today manages assets worth Rs1.2 trillion, with over Rs60,000 crore worth of assets on the domestic wealth management side and the rest coming from the institutional asset management business.Edelweiss’s wealth management business caters to individuals across three categories—mass affluent, high net-worth individuals (HNI), and ultra HNI and family offices. The asset management business includes funds which invest in credit strategies across asset classes such as real estate, performing credit and distressed credit (including the Edelweiss asset reconstruction business) as well as public market funds. The firm’s wealth management business, which was set up in 2010, has witnessed a growth of almost 70-80% in the last two years, said Jain.Edelweiss is targeting a corpus of Rs1 trillion for its wealth management business, which it hopes to achieve in the next two years, he said. “For growing the wealth management business, we are tapping new generation entrepreneurs, family offices and employees in progressive organizations in sectors such as IT services and financial services,” said Jain.In order to achieve its planned growth, Edelweiss is also investing heavily in technology.“Technology is playing a very important role now. Clients want to access information, flow of information, practically on a real-time basis. Earlier it was acceptable if you told people the health of their portfolio once a quarter. Now, there are clients who want to track it on a minute by minute basis,” he said.The firm has embarked on a five-year digital transformation drive and has partnered with IT consulting and services firm IBM to help drive the transformation, said Jain.Edelweiss’s digital transformation drive is focused on increasing the productivity of its advisory team, while helping control costs to improve both the revenue and profit of the business. Edelweiss’s wealth management business employs around 1,300 people.",Edelweiss Special Opportunities Fund II comes at a time when a host of other firms in the alternative investment space are in the market to raise credit-focused funds,"Fri, Apr 14 2017. 04 47 AM IST",Edelweiss raises $350 million for credit-focused fund +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/tg1GlYUfkBwFkHePVcPMyH/RBI-tightens-rules-for-regulatory-action-on-banks.html,"
Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has tightened the rules that trigger regulatory action on lenders when they fall short of capital or exceed bad loan limits. Under the revised rules, as many as 16 banks could face RBI intervention if their December quarter numbers are considered. According to RBI’s so-called prompt corrective action (PCA) framework, banks are assessed on three parameters: capital ratios, asset quality and profitability. Failure to meet any of these norms could invite RBI action on these lenders, which could include strictures on lending and branch expansion, change in management and reduction in assets.
These norms come at a time when the bank s are struggling with Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and many banks are starved for capital.
Under the revisions announced on Thursday, the first risk threshold under PCA would be triggered if the capital-to-risk assets ratio falls below the minimum mandated 10.25%. The original rules introduced in 2002 had set this limit at 9%. Breaching this threshold would mean restrictions on dividend distribution or remittance or profits; promoters would also be asked for capital infusion, said RBI.
RBI has also defined two more risk thresholds—when the capital adequacy ratio falls below 7.75% and below 6.25%. Each higher threshold brings more strictures such as stopping branch expansion, higher provisions and even restrictions on management compensation and directors’ fees.
Apart from these mandatory actions, RBI has armed itself with discretionary powers such as winding up the bank or merging it, which it would use when the highest risk threshold is breached.
As of December, Dhanlaxmi Bank and Central Bank of India were the only ones to have a capital adequacy ratio of less than 10%. These rules are applicable based on 31 March 2017 numbers.
“The PCA framework is nothing new. In the backdrop of Basel (capital adequacy) norms incrementally going to be tighter, RBI is using this tool to finally intervene in the banks. This tool will assist in guiding banks to faster NPA (non-performing asset) resolution which, if left to their own, is only going to get delayed,” said Saswata Guha, director, Fitch Ratings.
On asset quality, RBI has mandated a maximum net NPA ratio of 6%. A net bad loan ratio of more than 12% is the highest limit and breaching it could result in RBI asking lenders to sell assets, cut unsecured exposures and so on. Under the old rules, net NPA had to breach 10% for RBI action to kick in.
There were 16 commercial banks which had a net NPA ratio of more than 6% at the end of December. Indian Overseas Bank—where RBI had previously initiated action under PCA in October 2015—had the maximum net NPA ratio of 14.32%. For Bank of Maharashtra and United Bank of India, it is in excess of 10%.
RBI will also monitor leverage as an additional parameter under the framework.",Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has tightened the rules that trigger regulatory action on banks when they fall short of capital or exceed bad loan limits,"Fri, Apr 14 2017. 04 42 AM IST",RBI tightens rules for regulatory action on banks +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/96WA4OsAhdQxnQAzm6kQvK/A-financial-health-check-of-staterun-insurers-to-be-listed.html,"
The government is working on a plan to list four state-run general insurers—United India Insurance Co. Ltd, New India Assurance Co. Ltd, Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd and National Insurance Co. Ltd—and national reinsurer General Insurance Corp. of India (GIC Re) in this financial year. Mint takes a look at some of the key financial indicators of these general insurance firms other than GIC Re and how they perform vis-à-vis some of their private sector peers. Combined ratio is an indicator of the profitability of operations of an insurance firm. It is the ratio of the sum of incurred losses plus operating expenses to earned premium. Insurance firms strive to bring their combined ratios below 100%. Combined ratios have broadly deteriorated for insurers since 2013-14.When one compares the combined ratios of the public and the private sector, private sector is seen as more efficient even in the deteriorating overall market. An an indicator of the capital strength of an insurance firm, solvency ratio refers to the company’s ability to meet its short-term and long-term liabilities. Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India mandates a solvency ratio of 1.5 for continuity in operations and stock market listing.The trend in solvency ratios shows three of the public sector firms have moved down in their capital strengths. National Insurance and Oriental Insurance have solvency ratios below 1.5. “These companies will need to improve their capital strength through improvement in their combined ratio and through better investment income. The drop in investment income of Oriental Insurance and United India is a matter of concern,” said K. Ramachandran, an insurance industry expert.Investment income is the sum of profit on the sale and redemption of investments and the interest payments, dividends, and rents. Investment income is declining significantly for three of the four state-run general insurers. But it is not the case for most of the big private insurance firms. Net worth is the amount by which assets exceed liabilities. It is an indicator of the financial strength of the firm. Three of the four state-run insurers, except New India Assurance, have seen an erosion in net worth in the last one year. “The challenge to the insurance companies lies in keeping the policyholders’ funds in excess. This would ensure a better service to shareholders’ funds,” added Ramachandran.",Mint takes a look at some of the key financial indicators of these general insurance firms and how they perform vis-à-vis some of their private sector peers,"Fri, Apr 14 2017. 04 46 AM IST",A financial health check of state-run insurers to be listed +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/vfEOzXH0zSxaT7PGnZ08lI/Lendingkart-raises-Rs30-crore-in-debt-from-Anicut-Capital.html,"New Delhi: Lendingkart Group, an online lender to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), has raised Rs30 crore in debt from Anicut Capital, the company said on Thursday.The funding has been raised against issuance of non-convertible debentures (NCDs), a type of debt security, to Anicut Capital, a Chennai-based alternative asset management firm. Lendingkart will use these funds to expand its loan book and expand to more regions in India. In June 2016, the company raised $32 million in series B round of debt plus equity funding led by Betelsmann India Investment. The company is also backed by Darrin Capital Management Mayfield India, Saama Capital and India. Founded in 2014 by Harshvardhan Lunia and Mukul Sachan, Lendingkart Group includes Lendingkart Technologies Pvt. Ltd. that has built the technology software for credit risk analysis, and a non-banking financial company (NBFC) Lendingkart Finance that underwrites the loans. “The latest round of NCD will further bolster our loan book and enable us to serve the credit needs of many more SMEs...We look forward to leverage Anicut’s rich experience in banking and small business financing in times to come.” said Lunia in a statement. It underwrites working capital loans online to SMEs, which have an annual turnover of Rs12 lakh to Rs1-1.5 crore. On an average, these SMEs are lent Rs5.5-6 lakh at an annualized interest rate ranging between 16% to 24%, for a duration of six to 12 months. Lendingkart claims to have a loan application approval rate of 22-23%, Mint reported in December 2016.Till December 2016, Lendingkart claimed to have disbursed 7,000 loans to SMEs in over 450 cities since its inception. It aims to cross 10,000 loans covering over 800 cities by June 2017. In addition, Lunia had also said that the company is launching its credit risk analytics software as a service for other financial institutions in 2017. Founded by Ashvin Chadha and IAS Balamurugan, Anicut Capital is in the process of final closing its Rs300 crore fund by September 2017. Since its first close in August 2016, Anicut has committed capital of over Rs110 crore across six investments. Chadha and Balamurugan have lent over Rs500 crore to over 70 companies in last five years, according to the statement.",Lendingkart will use the funds to expand its loan book and expand to more regions in India,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 10 10 PM IST",Lendingkart raises Rs30 crore in debt from Anicut Capital +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8SLYfe8DQr8qLUNAYsn58L/Nasscom-hopes-to-overcome-US-Australia-visa-curbs.html,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 20 PM IST","Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/nKXPKiBzLqrpUkiGdFEjnI/RBI-changes-rules-for-regulatory-action-on-banks-overshootin.html,"Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday tweaked rules that trigger regulatory action against lenders who overshoot the limit on bad loans or fail to comply with capital ratios.The changes are under the so-called Prompt Corrective Action framework unveiled in 2002, which sets thresholds that when breached trigger supervisory action from the RBI, including restriction on dividend distribution.In extreme cases, the framework provides the RBI with powers to force mergers or even wind up the non-compliant lender.Regulatory action will be taken if a bank’s capital-to-risk-assets ratio falls below 7.75%, RBI said in a statement on Thursday.If the ratio falls below 3.625%, the bank could be a candidate for a merger or may even be wound up, the regulator added.It was not immediately possible to draw a direct comparison between the new limits and the existing ones.Meanwhile, on bad loan ratios, the central bank said the first threshold will be triggered if a bank’s net non-performing assets ratio crosses 6%.A net bad loan ratio of more than 12% will invite the extreme action of winding up or merger, it added. Reuters","In extreme cases, the framework provides the RBI with powers to force mergers or even wind up the non-compliant bank","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 07 05 PM IST",RBI changes rules for regulatory action on banks overshooting limit on bad loans +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/4XAQCyRn9iYrnXht1WVROJ/Apple-wants-to-use-recycled-metal-to-make-iPhones.html,"New York: Apple Inc wants to “one day” end the need to mine materials from the earth to make its gadgets such as the iPhone, the company said in its annual environmental responsibility report out on Thursday.“Traditional supply chains are linear. Materials are mined, manufactured as products, and often end up in landfills after use. Then the process starts over and more materials are extracted from the earth for new products.We believe our goal should be a closed-loop supply chain, where products are built using only renewable resources or recycled material.”ALSO READ: iPhone supply chain bites back at AppleThe company’s research concluded that recycled aluminium should come from Apple products rather than from recycling facilities because of the high grade needed for the metal. Apple has been encouraging customers to return used products for recycling and has melted down iPhone aluminium enclosures to make mini computers used in its factories.“For tin, we took a different approach,” the tech giant said. “Unlike aluminium, there is an existing market supply of recycled tin that meets our quality standards.” As a result, Apple has been using recycled tin for its iPhone 6s. The ultimate aim is “to one day end our reliance on mining altogether,” said Apple, without settling a date.Apple did not disclose the amount of recycled products currently used in its products. The tech giant said 96% of the electricity at its global facilities comes from renewable energy and that its new corporate campus is powered entirely by renewable energy.",Apple wants to ‘one day’ end the need to mine materials from the earth to make its gadgets ,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 09 49 PM IST",Apple wants to use recycled metal to make iPhones +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/SYs1060YyZ5jeOE1KrnccO/Embassy-Industrial-to-build-warehousing-hub-in-Gurugram-for.html,"Mumbai: Embassy Industrial Parks, a joint venture between real estate developer Embassy Group and private equity firm Warburg Pincus India Ltd, on Thursday said it had purchased 24 acres of land in Gurugram, Haryana, to build an industrial and warehousing hub at a total cost of Rs140 crore.Another Rs38 crore was spent on buying the land, the company said in a statement. Property consultant CBRE is the transaction advisor. Last year, Embassy Industrial Parks signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Haryana government to build three industrial parks in the state, investing Rs1,910 crore.Located on NH-8 near Bilaspur Chowk, the warehousing facility will have 600,000 sq ft. of leasable space containing a logistics park concept with a host of amenities, the company said in a statement. The manufacturing facilities of auto companies Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, Honda Cars India Ltd and Hero MotoCorp Ltd and warehouses of Decathlon Group, Amazon India, Flipkart Ltd and Blue Dart Express Ltd are in close proximity to the acquired plotThe company said the warehouse is being constructed to meet the growing logistics requirements of e-commerce, retail, consumer durables, apparel, automotive and pharmaceutical companies.Anshul Singhal, chief executive officer (CEO), Embassy Industrial Parks said India’s warehousing sector had grown 55% from 2013 till 2016. In the national capital region centred on Delhi, the sector had grown 45% in the same period.“We have entered a significant phase in the evolution of the Embassy Industrial Parks brand in the NCR Region. It has a strong reputation and is a key focus area for the company to grow our operations,” he said.Embassy Industrial Parks has also invested Rs350 crore to build a 1.1-million sq ft industrial park at Chakan, Pune. The group is planning to invest about Rs1,600 crore as equity to build seven-eight industrial parks over the next six years.“The Delhi-National Capital Region (Delhi-NCR) is one of the most preferred warehousing hubs in the country. It is also one of the largest manufacturing and consumption hubs in the country, garnering a share of almost 25% in the overall activity in the warehousing sector in the country,” said Anshuman Magazine, chairman, India and South East Asia, at CBRE.",Embassy Industrial had purchased 24 acres of land in Gurugram to build an industrial and warehousing hub,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 04 PM IST",Embassy Industrial to build warehousing hub in Gurugram for Rs140 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/FJnlf02Ua2ipg5pVjVrOSI/RIL-starts-coal-bed-methane-gas-production-from-two-blocks-i.html,"
Mumbai: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has begun commercial production of coal bed methane (CBM) gas from two blocks in Madhya Pradesh, two people familiar with the development said. RIL’s move comes after the government approved pricing and marketing freedom for producers of natural gas from CBM on 15 March. The company has deferred production for a while due to lack of clarity over pricing CBM gas. The two blocks are located in Sohagpur East and West.“RIL has commenced commercial production from 24 March 2017 and expects sales to third party customers from May. RIL has appointed Crisil to help in price discovery process based on CCEA (cabinet committee on economic affairs) approval dated 15 March 2017. We are currently in ramp-up phase and expect to reach around 0.4 mmscmd of production by June 2017. The ramp-up phase will continue further for 15-18 months till we reach plateau production in CBM,” a RIL spokesperson said in response to a Mint query.RIL had begun test production from the block last April. “But wells had been shut as RIL wanted clarity on gas pricing. In CBM production, you need to de-water many small wells. And the de-watering sometimes takes nearly three years. Thus, RIL may take two-three years to reach peak production,” said the second of the two people mentioned above. RIL was awarded the CBM blocks in 2001, in the first round of CBM auctions. With this, RIL has become the third company in India to begin CBM gas production. Great Eastern Energy Corp. Ltd (GEECL) and Essar Oil Ltd are the two existing players selling CBM gas in the market. RIL holds another CBM block in Sonhat, Chhattisgarh.CBM is natural gas stored or absorbed in coal seams. India, with the world’s fourth largest proven coal reserves, holds significant potential for CBM exploration and production. CBM gas is similar to natural gas, containing 90-95% methane. Reliance Gas Pipeline Ltd (RGPL), an RIL subsidiary, has laid around 312km of pipeline to carry natural gas from Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh close to its CBM blocks to Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh. An RIL executive, one of the two mentioned earlier, added that initial gas output from RIL block could be around 0.4 million metric standard cubic metres per day(mmscmd). Peak output, however, is envisaged at 2.5-3 mmscmd. “RIL is best placed to sell its CBM gas as its blocks are centrally located and there will be good demand by industries nearby. Also, the cost of production for RIL may be around $3 per million British thermal unit (mBtu) and even if RIL sells the gas at around $7-8 per mBtu, it would be in a good spot,” said an oil and gas analyst with a domestic broking firm, asking not to be identified.","Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has commenced commercial production of coal bed methane, or CBM gas from 24 March and expects to start sales from May","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 04 57 AM IST",Reliance starts CBM gas production from two blocks in Madhya Pradesh +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/nmTkVu41ukQRMxTY0rNF8I/IDFC-Alternatives-eyes-First-Solars-India-assets.html,"
New Delhi: IDFC Alternatives, the asset management arm of the infrastructure-focused lender, is in talks to buy First Solar’s 200 megawatts (MW) of renewable power assets in India in a deal potentially valued at around $200 million, two people aware of the development said.Mint reported First Solar’s Indian asset sale plans on 20 March.First Solar, a US-based photovoltaic (PV) panel maker and one of the first overseas companies to enter India’s solar energy market, counts the country as its second-largest market after the US in terms of total shipments.“IDFC Alternatives is interested in acquiring First Solar’s power generation assets,” said one of the two people cited above, requesting anonymity.The second person who also didn’t wish to be identified confirmed the development.The development comes in the backdrop of falling solar power tariffs because of plunging prices of solar modules. Module prices are expected to drop further in 2017 as global supply exceeds demand. Most solar power developers in India have been sourcing solar modules and equipment from countries such as China where they are cheaper. According to information available on its website, the infrastructure team of IDFC Alternatives has $1.8 billion under management.The Indian solar power generation space is getting intensely competitive.France’s Solairedirect SA won the rights to set up 250MW of solar plants at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh and sell power to NTPC Ltd at a new record-low tariff of Rs3.15 per kilowatt hour (kWh) in an auction on Wednesday.The previous low was Rs2.97 per kWh for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh. The winning bid offered a so-called levelized tariff—the value financially equivalent to different annual tariffs over the period of the power purchase agreement (PPA)—of around Rs3.30 per unit.Spokespersons for First Solar and IDFC Alternatives declined to comment.India plans to generate 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 100GW is to come from solar power projects.There has been a spate of activity in the solar power space in India. Australia’s Macquarie Group Ltd plans to buy about 330MW of operational solar assets from Hindustan Powerprojects Pvt. Ltd for an enterprise value of $600 million.Marque deals in the Indian clean energy space include Tata Power Co. Ltd buying the entire 1.1 gigawatt renewable energy portfolio of Welspun Energy Ltd for $1.4 billion and Hyderabad-based Greenko Energies Pvt. Ltd, backed by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Holdings Pte. and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, acquiring SunEdison’s Indian assets for $392 million last year.According to analysts, the country’s push for clean energy has gathered pace. India’s total renewable capacity including solar, wind, bio-mass and small hydro grew by around 11.2GW in FY 2016-17, similar to thermal capacity addition, which declined 50% in the year, according to consulting firm Bridge to India. “The country added 5,526MW of new solar capacity (up 83% over FY2015-16) and 5,400 MW of new wind capacity (up 63%) in the year,” Bridge to India wrote in a 20 March report.",IDFC Alternatives is in talks to buy First Solar’s renewable power assets in India in a deal potentially valued at about $200 million,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 04 57 AM IST",IDFC Alternatives eyes First Solar’s India assets +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ClvuxxKqVAMbmLrKi7PxMN/Infosys-exCFO-Rajiv-Bansal-seeks-arbitration-for-severance.html,"Bengaluru:Rajiv Bansal, former CFO of Infosys, has dragged his former employer to arbitration to claim the remaining Rs12 crore of his severance pay. Infosys had agreed to pay Bansal a severance amount of Rs17.38 crore or 24 months of salary, but the company suspended payments after he got Rs5 crore as co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy and others objected to the severance package as excessive. According to sources, Bansal has invoked his rights to an arbitral tribunal and a meeting is scheduled next month. This has opened another battle front for Infosys, which is already fighting visa clampdown by US President Donald Trump and global headwinds. When contacted, Bansal declined to comment. “The company has already clarified on the severance package for the former CFO Rajiv Bansal through a detailed statement. We do not have anything additional to add at this point,” Infosys said in an e-mailed response. Bansal’s severance payout has been one of the issues that Infosys founders had raised to allege governance lapses at the Bengaluru-based firm. When Bansal left Infosys in 2015, Infosys had agreed to pay him Rs17.38 crore in severance pay, equalling 24 months of pay. In February, Infosys chairman R. Seshasayee had clarified that of the agreed amount, only Rs5 crore have been paid so far and that the remaining was withheld pending clarifications on the terms of the severance contract. He had also admitted that the “judgement” could have differed if circumstances were different or if certain processes had been in place. Murthy had raised concerns about the hefty amount and questioned if the same was “hush money”.","Former Infosys CFO Rajiv Bansal asks for arbitration for settlement of his Rs17.38 crore severance pay, which hadn’t gone down well with Infosys founders","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 09 36 PM IST",Infosys ex-CFO Rajiv Bansal seeks arbitration for severance pay: report +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/VPQEcCf5oPwMywWHogLnZP/Supreme-Court-tariff-order-reduces-options-for-Adani-Tata-P.html,"
Mumbai: Following the Supreme Court’s judgement on Tuesday that disallowed Tata Power Co. Ltd and Adani Power Ltd from raising power tariffs to compensate for expensive imported Indonesian coal, the two companies are left with few options. Both companies will have to take measures to mitigate their losses to overcome the weakening of their finances, analysts said.The two companies could likely look at cheaper fuel sources, maintain optimum generation to recover capacity charge without losing too much on fuel cost under-recovery, utilize the losses to set off against alternate income, and refinance debt, Kotak Securities analyst Murtuza Arsiwalla wrote in a report Wednesday.The judgement is credit-negative for Tata Power but does not impact its Ba3 rating, Moody’s Investors Service said.ALSO READ: What next for Adani Power, Tata Power after Supreme Court order on tariffs?In Adani Power’s case, the order has allowed for “force majeure” benefits if it is related to Indian laws. The SC has asked the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) to hear the matter and determine the amount of relief to power generators who have been hurt by changes in local laws.Thus, Adani Power could seek relief for compensatory tariffs due to poor availability of domestic coal for sale of power from its Mundra plant to the state of Haryana; and for its Tiroda and Kawai plants that have used imported coal. Adani Power and Tata Power did not respond to Mint’s queries sent on Wednesday. On Tuesday, Tata Power had said it would continue to work towards alternatives, including sourcing of competitive and alternative coals “to best contain the onslaught of under-recovery”. Adani Power had said it was yet to decide the further course of action.While Adani Power has recognized compensatory tariff of Rs8,800 crore since FY13, Tata Power hasn’t. Thus, the judgement is negative for Adani Power and neutral for Tata Power, according to Rupesh Sankhe, analyst at Reliance Securities. Sankhe had told Mint on Tuesday that an option for Tata Power was to forego its equity of Rs4,000 crore in the plant and ask its lenders to come forward and take over the project.“We, prima facie, envisage about Rs13-18 hit on Tata Power’s SOTP (sum of the parts) (Rs85) due to its inability to book any CT (compensatory tariff) which we have assumed at about 0.30 paise/unit from FY18, thus impacting the NPV (net present value) to the tune of about Rs35-50 billion. We await further clarity on the APTEL order for Adani Power (SOTP – Rs28),” Edelweiss Securities Ltd analysts Swarnim Maheshwari and Manish Saxena wrote in their report on Wednesday The two power producers have long argued that a change in Indonesian regulations has pushed up their cost of coal imported from that country to fuel their electricity plants at Mundra, forcing the companies to seek a higher price.Tata Power’s Coastal Gujarat Power Ltd (CGPL) unit and Adani Power both operate over 4,000 megawatt (MW) coal-fired project in Mundra, Gujarat, and have power purchase agreements with state discoms in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana and Punjab.In a major setback to Tata Power and Adani Power on Tuesday, the Supreme Court denied award of compensation on account of expensive Indonesian coal, setting aside an earlier tribunal ruling that had allowed the power producers to charge higher tariff.The SC order is in contrast to a judgement by CERC in December that Tata Power and Adani Power were entitled to charge their customers more to recover the higher costs stemming from an increase in the price of imported coal by invoking ‘force majeure’.Adani Power had recognized compensatory tariff of Rs14.6 billion for the first nine months of FY17 and Rs30 billion for FY16 against Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) of Rs54 billion and Rs85 billion, respectively, according to the Kotak report. “Tata Power, on the other hand, did not recognize any compensatory tariffs but had an average under-recovery of Rs9 billion or Rs0.5/ kwh for 9MFY17 against Ebitda of Rs5 billion,” it said.Adani Power’s shares fell further on Wednesday, closing 9.01% lower at Rs33.85 on BSE. Tata Power’s shares closed up 0.06% to Rs85.45.The firms’ shares could languish further as some of the projects would turn unviable, brokerage Sharekhan Ltd said in a note on Wednesday. The SC order could also impact sentiments towards public sector banks due to potential asset quality issues, the note said.","Adani Power and Tata Power will have to take measures to mitigate their losses to overcome weakening of their finances, following Supreme Court’s order on power tariff","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 03 53 AM IST","Supreme Court tariff order reduces options for Adani, Tata Power" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/z96kysgijGEwzxkC30psNM/Why-India-is-creating-an-oil-and-gas-behemoth.html,"Big plans are afoot for India’s sprawling hydrocarbons industry. Finance minister Arun Jaitley says the government aims to create an “integrated public sector oil major” to match the might of the international oil and gas giants. The big question is how that plan will unfold. Details are beginning to emerge.What’s the logic?The government owns majority stakes in eight major listed oil and gas firms. Combining some or all would create a bigger corporation with clout to negotiate better deals, for instance, on crude oil purchases. India imports some 80% of its crude needs. A merged business would also be less vulnerable to the vagaries of oil prices, say, by combining producers (which benefit from higher prices) with refiners (which get a boost from lower prices).Just how big are those eight state-owned companies?Their combined market value is almost $109 billion. If folded into one company, that would rank seventh globally among oil and gas majors. (Exxon Mobil is No. 1 at $345 billion). Such an entity would outstrip India’s private oil giant, Reliance Industries, whose market value is $71 billion. Six smaller unlisted joint-venture oil and gas companies may also come into play.What do we know about the government’s plan?Not much, in terms of detail. In August, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said his ministry was open to discussing a merger to create a larger, stronger national oil company and that the government was figuring out the appropriate model for the combination. Jaitley then spoke in mostly general terms during his 2 February budget speech, about strengthening public-sector enterprises through consolidation, mergers and acquisitions.Where are we now?According to the Economic Times, the oil ministry, which administers the industry and works independently of the finance ministry, held a meeting in March with the state-run oil companies and asked them to produce a road map for integration. So far, that road map appears to entail Oil & Natural Gas Corp. purchasing the government’s stake in either Hindustan Petroleum Corp., worth $4 billion, or Bharat Petroleum Corp., worth $7.7 billion.How would that work?Surprisingly simply. ONGC could just buy shares from the government and keep the refiner as a separate subsidiary, obviating the need for an official merger. ONGC already has a refining subsidiary -- adding HPCL or BPCL would create the nation’s third-largest refiner. India would receive vital funds for reducing the country’s fiscal deficit, but the move would imperil Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s goal of cutting crude imports, since ONGC might need to divert spending from its exploration investments aimed at boosting oil and gas output.Is there a precedent?The government attempted something similar at least once in the oil sector, during the mid-2000s. Those efforts unraveled through opposition from some of the companies and employees. The newly proposed mergers deals would also need to surmount the enormous challenge of absorbing refiners with networks across 29 states, thousands of employees and unique work cultures.What about beyond the energy world?Air India has remained unprofitable since its 2007 merger with Indian Airlines, though it managed to reduce losses this year. The government has struggled to integrate the carriers, failed to achieve the expected synergies and faced labour issues. What does the market think?Shares of all but one of the five largest state oil companies fell in the two months after the February budget, even as India’s benchmark stock index surged.A 2015 study by the Journal of Business Management and Economics concluded that while mergers in India’s energy sector may not create immediate shareholder value, they produce companies that are better placed to compete and adapt. Credit ratings company Fitch reached a similar conclusion.",The government owns majority stakes in eight listed oil and gas firms. Combining some or all would create a bigger corporation with clout to negotiate better deals on crude oil purchases,"Wed, Apr 12 2017. 02 40 PM IST",Why India is creating an oil and gas behemoth +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/1033fKpJyf66gjGfyGpUnO/State-refiners-to-revise-fuel-price-in-five-cities-daily-fro.html,"Mumbai/New Delhi: Petrol and diesel prices in some cities will now see daily change in sync with international rates, according to two officials from oil marketing companies.This will be effective 1 May in five cities including Puducherry and Visakhapatnam, Udaipur, Jamshedpur and Chandigarh as part of a pilot project. This will be extended to other parts of the country after an assessment of consumer response.Diesel and petrol prices move in tandem with the price of crude oil in most countries. In January, Mint reported that the fuel retailers plan to introduce dynamic pricing in India this year.“We have been piloting dynamic pricing at a few of our retail outlets for some months now, and the response has been encouraging. This has allowed us to go ahead and introduce it formally,” an executive director from an oil marketing company said on condition of anonymity as he is not allowed to talk to reporters.Currently, state-run fuel retailers—Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL)—revise petrol and diesel prices on the 1st and 15th of every month based on average international price of the fuel in the preceding fortnight and the currency exchange rate.“Due to the fortnightly revision of fuel prices, petroleum dealers were applying breaks (not lifting fuel daily) on uplifting of fuel. If the prices go up on the 1st or 15th of every month, there would be a rush to uplift products, else, the upliftment would be impacted. This would result in losses for OMCs and we wanted that this price predictability should go away. So dynamic pricing will be a good bet,” said a senior official from an oil marketing company on the condition of anonymity.Shares of Indian Oil fell 0.07% to Rs408.90 on BSE, Bharat Petroleum rose 1% to Rs717.60, Hindustan Petroleum rose 1% to Rs542.45 while India’s benchmark Sensex fell 0.49% to 29,643.48 points.Although state-run fuel retailers have the capability to revise petrol and diesel prices on a daily basis, what needs to be monitored is how consumers react to price volatility, industry experts say.“If there is heightened volatility in global markets due to geopolitical developments, it could get reflected in domestic retail prices too. Therefore, companies are doing the right thing in testing the model in pilot projects to see how its impact and consumer response. In the medium- to long-term, daily price revision may be a good idea as is practised elsewhere,” said R.S. Butola, a former chairman of Indian Oil.Indian Oil chairman B. Ashok and Hindustan Petroleum chairman and managing director M.K Surana didn’t immediately respond to phone calls seeking comment.Besides, global fuel prices and currency exchange rate, central and state taxes account for a major part of the fuel prices. It accounts for half of retail petrol price and 46% of retail diesel price. The central government collected Rs64,509 crore from petrol as excise duty in 2016-17 up to end-February, 20% more than what was collected in the whole of FY16. Excise receipts from diesel jumped 36% in the same period to Rs1.37 trillion.","Fuel retailers including Indian Oil will change petrol and diesel prices daily in Puducherry, Visakhapatnam, Udaipur, Jamshedpur and Chandigarh","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 02 55 AM IST","Petrol, diesel prices to change daily from 1 May" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ZEe1q7lKM6qSuMCGGwXFpJ/Anil-Agarwal-creates-BHPstyle-Indian-resources-major.html,"Anil Agarwal has sealed the merger of his mining and energy businesses in India, creating a BHP Billiton Ltd-like resources conglomerate, even as a recent investment in Anglo American Plc. raises questions about how far the billionaire’s ambitions stretch.Vedanta Ltd combined with unit Cairn India Ltd on Tuesday and fixed 27 April as the record date for determining the list of the latter’s shareholders who will be allotted stock in the parent company, according to a joint statement. Vedanta will offer minority shareholders of oil producer Cairn India one equity share and four redeemable-preference shares with a face value of Rs10 each as part of the deal agreement.The merger gives shareholders a company with a diverse portfolio encompassing iron ore, bauxite, aluminium, power, oil and gas that has the ability to ride out commodity cycles. Agarwal, a self-made billionaire, recently surprised the mining industry by becoming the second-biggest shareholder in Anglo American through an unusual deal that led analysts to speculate he might be planning to force a break up of or a merger with the century-old miner.“This merger will increase the appeal of Vedanta Ltd to global investors as it simplifies the structure and increases the size and free float of the company,” Tom Albanese, chief executive officer of Vedanta, said in the statement. The firm will continue to focus on remaining a low-cost and low-debt operator, he said.Agarwal’s fortune has been built on a series of ambitious acquisitions: In 2001, he bought control of then government-owned Bharat Aluminium Co. in one of the first tests of India’s efforts to offload state holdings. He followed with another government entity, Hindustan Zinc Ltd, in a deal that drew the attention of the nation’s top investigating agency. He successfully bid for what was India’s largest iron ore producer Sesa Goa Ltd. in 2007 and for Cairn India in 2010, despite having no oil and gas experience. Last year, Anglo American was said to have rebuffed informal approaches from the billionaire to discuss ideas including a combination with Hindustan Zinc Ltd.The Vedanta-Cairn combine was proposed by Agarwal in 2015, but delayed after Cairn shareholders held out for a better deal, which was offered last year.It will allow India’s most-indebted metals company after Tata Steel Ltd. to access Cairn’s cash pile, which stood at Rs26,000 crore ($4 billion) at the end of December. Vedanta’s debt at the time was Rs65,000 crore, while Cairn is debt-free.“They are under pressure because of the heavy debt and the merger is planned only because of this,” said Kishor Ostwal, managing director of CNI Research Ltd, an equity research provider in Mumbai. The strong commodity cycle has benefited the group and improving raw material prices will give them a further advantage, he added.Vedanta shares have nearly tripled in the past year, leading gains among India’s 100 largest companies. It advanced in March after unit Hindustan Zinc announced a special dividend of about $2.2 billion, of which the parent will get about $1.4 billion. The dividend payout will cover 68% of Vedanta’s debt maturities in the fiscal year ending March 2018 and alleviate near-term refinancing risk, according to Moody’s Investors Service.“The stock looks very interesting and our bias is positive,” Ashish Chaturmohta, head of derivatives and technicals at Sanctum Wealth Management Ltd, said by phone. “The dividend mostly is going to go for debt reduction and so will the cash with Cairn,” he added, saying the stock can move up further.Shares of Vedanta climbed 2.6% to Rs259.25 in Mumbai on Wednesday. The merged company will have a market-capitalization of about $15.6 billion and a higher free float of shares of 49.9%, according to Tuesday’s statement.Vedanta’s 6% 2019 dollar notes rallied 42% in the past year as the company reduced its leverage and strengthened prospects for repayments with dividends. Bloomberg","Anil Agarwal has sealed the merger of Vedanta and Cairn India, creating a BHP Billiton-like resources conglomerate ","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 02 15 PM IST",Anil Agarwal creates BHP-style Indian resources major +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/rJ0ZC3NBHewOIwEUkEykeP/Cabinet-approves-setting-up-Indian-Institute-of-Petroleum-at.html,"New Delhi: The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved setting up of an Indian Institute of Petroleum and Energy (IIPE) at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh at a cost of over Rs655 crore, fulfilling the commitment made to the state when Telangana was separated from it. The Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved setting IIPE as ‘an Institute of National Importance’ through an Act of Parliament. “The Institute will have the governance structure as well as legal mandate to grant degrees in a manner similar to that enjoyed by IITs,” an official statement said. A separate Act will also impart the required status to the institute to become a ‘Centre of Excellence’ in petroleum and energy studies. The Cabinet also approved Rs655.46 crore as capital expenditure to set up IIPE and contribution of Rs200 crore towards its Endowment Fund. This will be in addition to a contribution of Rs200 crore from oil companies towards the Endowment Fund. The Centre had promised a petroleum university as part of the package to Andhra Pradesh after Telangana was split from it. Andhra Pradesh has allocated 200 acres of land, free of cost, for setting up of IIPE at Sabbavaram Mandal in Visakhapatnam district. A temporary campus of IIPE has been set up from academic session 2016-17 at the Andhra University campus with two undergraduate programmes in petroleum engineering and chemical engineering (with capacity of 50 students each). IIT-Kharagpur has taken up the responsibility of mentoring the institute. “The objective is to meet the quantitative and qualitative gap in the supply of skilled manpower for the petroleum sector and to promote research activities needed for the growth of the sector. “The academic and research activities of IIPE will derive strength from the institute’s proximity to sector-related activities such as KG-Basin, Visakhapatnam refinery and the planned petrochemical complex at Kakinada,” the statement added.","Indian Institute of Petroleum , which will be build at a cost of over Rs655 crore, will have the legal mandate to grant degrees in a manner similar to that enjoyed by IITs","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 08 31 PM IST",Cabinet approves setting up Indian Institute of Petroleum at Visakhapatnam +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/P0qPi3qmMGWjyQPvemAmUM/EPFO-to-provide-865-interest-on-EPF-for-FY-17-Bandaru-Dat.html,"New Delhi: About 4 crore subscribers of EPFO will get 8.65% interest on provident fund deposits for 2016-17, as decided by the organisation’s trustees in December, labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya said on Thursday.The comments follow reports suggesting that the finance ministry is nudging the labour ministry to lower the EPF interest rate by up to 50 basis points.“It is not like that. The CBT (EPFO trustees) had decided to give 8.65%. Our ministry keeps on discussing with finance ministry. We would have surplus of Rs158 crore on providing 8.65%,” Dattatreya said on being asked whether the finance ministry is making a case for lowering the interest rate.“If need be, I will talk to them (finance ministry). I have requested them to approve 8.65%. In any case this amount (interest income) will be given to workers. But how and when it will be provided, this is the question,” he added.Also Read: EPFO subscribers to get loyalty benefit of up to Rs50,000The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation’s (EPFP) apex decision making body the Central Board of Trustees (CBT) had decided to provide 8.65% rate of interest on EPF deposits last December. As per the practice, the board’s decision is concurred by the finance ministry after evaluating whether the EPFO would be able to provide the rate approved by trustees through its own income or not. Once the finance ministry ratifies the rate of interest approved by the CBT, it is credited into the account of EPFO members for that particular financial year.The finance ministry had last year also decided to lower the EPF interest rate of 8.8% for 2015-16 decided by the CBT, to 8.7%. The decision had drawn flak from all corners forcing the government to uphold 8.8%.The finance ministry has been asking the labour ministry to rationalise the EPF interest rates in view of lowering of returns on various administered saving scheme like PPF run by it.The government generally ratifies the rate of return approved by the CBT because the EPFO is an autonomous body and provides interest on EPF deposits from its own income.Asked whether rate of interest on EPF for current fiscal would be lowered amid pressure from finance ministry, he said: “Our situation (income earning on investments) is encouraging. We can expect better returns in 2017-18. But the rate of interest for this fiscal will be decided only after working out the income estimates.”","EPFO subscribers will get 8.65% interest on provident fund deposits for 2016-17, as decided by the trustees in December, says labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya ","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 06 40 PM IST",PF body to provide 8.65% interest on EPF for FY 17: Bandaru Dattatreya +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/rQRVDcnvAlOpZQao10tM6K/SBI-merger-to-boost-profit-in-3-years-Arundhati-Bhattachary.html,"Mumbai: The head of State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender, said she expects a boost to annual profit of as much as Rs3,000 crore ($465 million) in three years on cost and efficiency gains from the absorption of associate banks.Chair Arundhati Bhattacharya also said in an interview that signs of more factory activity pointed to a turnaround in India’s weak credit cycle this financial year — welcome news for a government keen to revive private investment.State-run SBI this month merged five subsidiary lenders and absorbed them into the parent company. It had fully owned two and had majority stakes in the others, but all had previously operated separately.Workforce integration will start in June, said Bhattacharya who joined SBI 40 years ago and rose through the ranks to become its first female chief in 2013. SBI has said it will shut or move some branches and close overlapping units.“Total bottom line impact (of) around two to three thousand crores (Rs2,000-3,000 ) is what we are thinking of,” she said. “I’ll have a better hang of these numbers by the middle of May.”ALSO READ: Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout falls short of what investors needThat would compare with a net profit of Rs115.9 billion for the year ended March 2016 if results of the five subsidiary banks were included.Profits at state-run lenders have been under pressure, weighed down by a record $150 billion in stressed assets. The pile of bad debt, combined with slower economic growth and deferral of large projects, has prevented lenders from boosting credit growth.As of March 17, banking sector loans had grown just 4.4%, compared with 10.9% in the previous year, the weakest pace since the fiscal year ended March 1954. But Bhattacharya, 61, said she was hoping for good growth from the July-September quarter.“I’ve already had a number of meetings with people saying their capacity utilisation has gone up. Commodity prices have gone up, so to that extent people are coming with working capital requests,” she said.SBI has forecast loans to grow 11% this financial year after an expected 6.5% growth in the year ended March.Bhattacharya also said the central bank would need to offer rates matching or higher than the reverse repo rate of 6.00%, the rate lenders get for deposits at the RBI, should it implement a special facility to drain cash from the banking system.India’s central bank wants to withdraw some of the big cash pile accumulated in the banking system since the government banned circulation of big currency-notes, but lenders are keen to get proper returns in exchange for transferring cash. Reuters",SBI’s Arundhati Bhattacharya expects a boost to annual profit on cost and efficiency gains from the merger with five associate banks,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 05 55 PM IST",SBI merger to boost profit in 3 years: Arundhati Bhattacharya +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/rrRj47mAfnaSZmipBiaKHM/HSBC-says-companies-already-rerouting-business-due-to-Brexi.html,"London: HSBC Holdings Plc said some of its largest clients have already asked for their business to be routed through the bank’s offices in mainland Europe and aren’t waiting to see what Brexit deal the UK hammers out with the continent’s trading bloc.“A small number of our larger clients are asking us to book more of their trade and foreign-exchange activity in their French operation through our Paris office than their UK divisions,” Noel Quinn, head of global commercial banking, said in an interview. Executives at multinational companies are “making plans to ensure they can continue to trade irrespective of the outcome. They can’t afford to wait for a decision that may not emerge until two years’ time.”ALSO READ: How markets overcame past geopolitical crisesGlobal banks have started arranging for some British-based operations to move to new or expanded offices inside the EU after British Prime Minister Theresa May triggered discussions to leave the trading bloc. Privately, many executives at the world’s biggest firms say they’re now assuming the result will be a “hard Brexit”—the loss of their right to sell services freely around the region from the UK. That means they have to put contingency plans in place before the end of the two-year negotiation period.Flipping HQQuinn, who’s sat on the executive committee of HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, since December 2015, said some companies are also evaluating whether to “flip” their regional head offices to European cities from Britain. This would require them to reclassify the UK branch as a country office that would become a subsidiary of the continental headquarters, he said. This may result in some small-scale job moves and lost taxation for the UK government, as firms start reporting the purchase and distribution of services elsewhere.“Larger companies that already have a pan-European presence are going to find it easier to invoke a plan B than the smaller ones,” Quinn said. “They’re not losing faith in the UK, but the reality is businesses or even individuals themselves will start making their decisions before the answer emerges from the Brexit process.”Hoarding cashHSBC chief executive officer Stuart Gulliver has said as many as 1,000 of HSBC’s traders and salespeople, who generate about 20% of the investment bank’s revenue, will relocate from London to Paris after Prime Minister May confirmed the UK would leave the single market. Some French staff have already asked to return home, according to people familiar with the matter. The bank decided to keep its headquarters in London rather than move to Asia or France in February 2016 after a year-long review.Quinn also noted companies are maintaining higher levels of cash since the June 23 vote to leave the EU.“The quantity of cash they have in their bank accounts has progressively increased,” Quinn said in the interview. “The cause of that could be UK businesses trading really well post-Brexit because of the devaluation of sterling, or it could be the preservation of cash given the uncertain economic horizon, or it could be deferment or delay in investment activity.”The commercial bank reported a 12% increase in adjusted pretax profit to $6.1 billion last year, which was the most among HSBC’s four divisions and accounted for about a third of group’s total earnings, according to company filings. The UK contributed $1.8 billion of its pretax profit compared with $2.9 billion in the Asia region.Bloomberg",HSBC says some of its clients aren’t waiting to see what Brexit deal the UK hammers out with the European Union and want to book their trade though the bank’s Paris office ,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 04 19 PM IST",HSBC says companies already re-routing business due to Brexit +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ZzBgQVNhDMbHHS3JbgA1fM/Malcolm-Turnbulls-India-visit-boosts-Adanis-Australia-coal.html,"
Ahmedabad: The Adani group’s plan to build one of the world’s largest coal mines in Queensland moved closer to realization after Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull met founder-chairman Gautam Adani during his three-day visit to India. Turnbull assured the Indian billionaire that his government would resolve an issue with native title laws, helping take the $16.5 billion project closer to fruition, Australian media reported on Tuesday. The native title issue surrounding the Carmichael Mine project refers to an Australian Federal Court ruling that invalidated deals with traditional land owners in that country. Legislation to fix this issue is before the Senate and Turnbull is understood to have assured the company it will be resolved, Sky News reported on Tuesday.Australia ready to supply uranium to India as soon as possible: Malcolm TurnbullTurnbull is said to have told Adani that he expected the changes overruling the court’s decision to be passed by the country’s Parliament when it reconvenes in May. He also told Adani that the ruling had caused problems with many land deals across Australia, the report added. A quick resolution is crucial for Adani, which has invested $3.3 billion in the coal mine, railway and port project and said previously that it will start construction in the second half of 2017. An Adani spokesperson said that the meeting was “very positive” for the group’s Australian project, but refused to comment on details. “Happy to meet with Australian PM today. Working together for economic and stronger Australia- India ties,” Gautam Adani posted on microblogging site Twitter on Monday evening.Turnbull’s reaffirmation of his government’s commitment to Adani’s coal mine project comes after Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk met Adani last month at Mundra in Gujarat where the conglomerate runs a port. In October, the Palaszczuk government exempted the project from new water laws that could have mired it in further legal challenges. The project, announced in 2010, has run into resistance from environmentalists, resulting in delays of at least three years. Last year, the Queensland state’s department of environment and heritage protection (EHP) issued a final environmental authority (EA) for the project in the Galilee Basin. On 19 August, Adani won a major legal battle when the Australian apex court dismissed appeals lodged by indigenous community member Adrian Burragubba as well as a Brisbane-based environmental group against the project.ALSO READ: What next for Adani Power, Tata Power after Supreme Court order on tariffs?But that has not stopped protests. Last month, just ahead of the Queensland premier’s visit, a group of protestors including former Test cricket captains Ian Chappell and Greg Chappell wrote an open letter to Adani saying that the mines project will threaten the Great Barrier Reef, and asking the group to instead invest in solar energy. Adani, during the meeting which lasted for about 30 minutes, also discussed the prospect of a $900 million government loan to Adani group to fund a rail line for the Carmichael mine project, said a person familiar with the matter who did not wish to be named. “As far as the rail link is concerned, if you’re asking about Adani’s interest in securing funding from the Northern Australian Infrastructure Fund, that’s an independent process—it has to go through that process, through that independent assessment by the board,” said Turnbull, ahead of the meeting, while answering a question related to the rail funding at a press conference in Delhi. Adani expects to complete the first phase of the project by 2020-21, producing 25 million tonnes of coal annually.","Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull, who is on a three-day India visit, met Gautam Adani on Tuesday—a boost to Adani Group’s coal mine project in Queensland","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 04 59 AM IST",Malcolm Turnbull’s India visit boosts Adani’s Australia coal mine project +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/L7RRFmHEjxYKS04SIkUVpL/NTPC-puts-Katwa-power-project-on-hold.html,"Kolkata: Power utility NTPC Ltd has put its 1,320 mw Katwa project on hold even after resolving issues with land acquisition, alleges the West Bengal government, which has demanded an explanation from the central public sector enterprise for transferring key officials to other units.The project first ran into rough weather when Mamata Banerjee after taking office as chief minister in 2011 refused to acquire land for it. The state had by then already given the power utility around 556 acres to build a new thermal power generating station.NTPC needed at least 294 acres more to set up two units of 660 mw each at Katwa, but the company was asked to purchase land on its own. In 2015, the state provided around 100 acres more to the project, while NTPC on its own acquired the rest.Still, the project may not materialise in the foreseeable future, say key officials at NTPC and the state government.West Bengal’s power minister Sovandeb Chatterjee said NTPC had recently transferred several key officials from the Katwa project including its general manager. “We have written to NTPC seeking an explanation—how many officers have been transferred and why,” said the minister.On Wednesday, he will brief the chief minister on this matter, Chatterjee added.Though the key problem of land has been resolved, NTPC appears to have no immediate plans of starting construction of the power plant at Katwa, said a key power department official in Kolkata, who asked not to be named. The state will not take kindly to further delays in executing the project, he added.“These are routine transfers,” said a spokesperson for NTPC, adding that the Katwa project will “move at its own pace”. While admitting that the company had still not started the process to place orders for machines, he said the project was delayed for want of coal linkages.The state government has also been slow in sorting this out, said a former NTPC official who was closely involved with the Katwa project.The state government had earlier committed to supply coal from its own power generation units run by the West Bengal Power Development Corp. Ltd, but that arrangement requires clearance from the Centre, according to this person, who asked not to be identified.“In all these years, the state didn’t ever pressure the Centre to clear this proposal,” said this person. “It is natural that NTPC is now diverting its resources and management bandwidth to rescue distressed projects in other parts of the country such as in Rajasthan.”It was envisaged that in the long run coal for the Katwa project will come from the Deocha-Pachami coal block which has been allocated to multiple states led by West Bengal. A company has been formed and clearance given by the Centre to start exploring the 9.7 sq. km block in West Bengal’s Birbhum district.Though the block with an estimated reserve of two billion tonnes could theoretically be turned into the biggest coal mine in the country, extracting coal from it is not going to be easy because of the local geology and settlements, said a former Coal India Ltd official, who too asked not to be named.West Bengal has enough power for now and NTPC is of the view that it doesn’t need to invest in the state immediately, said the former NTPC official cited above. What is more, the political relations between West Bengal and Delhi have soured so much that central public sector enterprises such as NTPC will not be encouraged to invest in the state until things improved, he added.","West Bengal government alleges NTPC has put its 1,320 mw Katwa project on hold even after resolving issues with land acquisition","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 01 54 AM IST",NTPC puts Katwa power project on hold +https://www.livemint.com/Money/LMBoaTopaNXWIH3aZ8rIzI/Matchmaking-hopes-buoy-Bharat-Financial-shares.html,"
The Bharat Financial Inclusion Ltd stock has staged perhaps the most impressive recovery in the financial sector space with a 67% rise since demonetisation, a reflection not entirely of its balance sheet. It took a warning from, ironically, the management of the company, to make investors take a reality check on their valuations.On Monday, the Bharat Financial management warned that close to 4.5% of its loan book may turn non-performing and the recovery of dues will take three-four months as against the earlier indication of March-end. But, the lender’s shares ended nearly 2% up after falling nearly 6% during the day. What makes investors so hopeful despite many analysts worried about the effects of demonetisation on the microlender as well as the whole sector?Bharat Financial Inclusion says 4.5% of loan portfolio at risk of turning bad in Q4Analysts at Kotak Securities Ltd warn that write-offs could escalate in the fourth quarter but the higher loan growth momentum could act as a cushion. But those at UBS Securities India Pvt. Ltd said that loan growth recovery is faster. “We believe that higher credit costs are one-off (driven by demonetisation) and expect core profitability to improve sharply from H2FY18,” the firm said in a note.But is this enough to warrant current valuations?Bharat Financial’s gross loan portfolio grew 38% year-on-year in the third quarter despite demonetisation taking a chunk off disbursals and bringing collections to a grinding halt. It also had an enviable bad loan ratio of 0.06% of its loan book. And a profit growth of 80% makes a convincing argument for the 67% recovery in the stock price since demonetisation.Also, Bharat Financial’s shares gained 41% between 26 December (when they hit their low in the wake of demonetisation) and 24 January when the company announced its quarterly results. The sharp gains were vindicated as the quarterly numbers seem to allay the fears of the lender being hard hit by the currency purge.Bharat Financial shares fall as much as 6% on bad loan fearsBut a large part of its valuations also reflect the hope of Bharat Financial getting acquired by another lender, which sprang from news reports of IndusInd Bank Ltd reviving talks of buying a majority stake in the company. Mainstream private banks are increasingly finding it difficult to grow their loan book in the traditional corporate and retail segments and therefore, microfinance is an attractive opportunity. The obvious choice to gain market share is to acquire an existing microfinance firm as setting up shop would be a costly affair for banks.So, the hope of a suitor has been keeping shares of not just BFIL but also other listed microfinance firms in play even though enough anecdotal evidence shows demonetisation is hurting their business.After the Bharat Financial management’s warning on Monday, several analysts cut their ratings. Analysts at Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd and Kotak Securities have a “neutral” rating on the company, while Religare Securities Ltd has a “sell” rating.Microfinance firms seek RBI nod to extend loan tenureThe microlender’s stock now trades at a multiple of 3.4 times its estimated book value for 2017-18. That seems to be pricing in most of the positives.",The hope of a suitor has been keeping shares of not just Bharat Financial Inclusion but also other listed microfinance firms in play,"Wed, Mar 08 2017. 08 04 AM IST",Matchmaking hopes buoy Bharat Financial shares +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/rRYlaktVS3si7JK5FBtjiM/SC-sets-aside-ruling-allowing-compensatory-tariff-to-Tata-Po.html,"
New Delhi: Tata Power Co. Ltd and Adani Power Ltd were dealt a major setback on Tuesday when the Supreme Court set aside an earlier tribunal ruling that allowed the power producers to charge compensatory tariff from consumers.The ruling will likely weaken the finances of both companies, particularly Adani Power, which may have to write off some of the additional revenues it had booked in anticipation of a favourable verdict.Adani Power shares plunged 16% to Rs37.20, while those of Tata Power fell 1.95% to Rs85.40 on the BSE on Tuesday.ALSO READ: What next for Adani Power, Tata Power after Supreme Court order on tariffs?A bench comprising justices Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Rohinton F. Nariman ruled on a batch of appeals challenging a 2016 order of the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (Aptel) which held that an unforeseen increase in the cost of coal would be a “force majeure event” under the power purchase agreements (PPAs) between power-generating companies and distributors.The companies cited a change in Indonesian rules in 2010 as a force majeure event that raised the cost of coal imported from that country to fuel their electricity plants in Mundra.“The impugned order is set aside. The only benefit we are allowing is if the force majeure event is related to Indian laws,” the court said.Aptel had referred the decade-long issue to the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) to grant relief to Tata and Adani in accordance with the PPAs. In December, CERC came out with a compensation formula that allowed the companies to recover the higher costs stemming from the rise in the price of imported coal. This order will also stand nullified with the Supreme Court ruling.Tata Power’s Coastal Gujarat Power Ltd (CGPL) unit and Adani Power’s 4,000 megawatt (MW) coal-fired project in Mundra, Gujarat, have PPAs with state discoms in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana and Punjab. The annual impact for Tata Power could be a negative of Rs800-Rs1,000 crore if they want to run this plant at minimum PLF (plant load factor), according to Rupesh Sankhe, an analyst at Reliance Securities. “Since the (Mundra) plant will not be viable for Tata Power, it could look at an option of foregoing its equity of Rs4,000 crore in the plant and asking lenders to come forward and take (over) this project. Lenders, in turn, can then restructure the plant or sign new PPA or find a new developer for the project,” Sankhe said. CGPL has been consistently reporting cost under-recoveries. In the December quarter, it reported an under-recovery of 70 paise per unit, which led to a loss of Rs244 crore for the unit.“CGPL/Tata Power considers it very unfortunate that neither Regulatory Powers of CERC nor Forced Majeure as adjudicated by Aptel, have been accepted by Hon’ble Supreme Court,” Tata Power said in an emailed statement. “The final order got uploaded in the evening and the company is studying the same. However, CGPL would continue to work towards alternatives, including sourcing of competitive and alternative coals to best contain the onslaught of under recovery.”For Adani, this ruling will have more severe consequences, not just because of the additional revenues it had booked, but also due to its high leverage levels.In the past four years, the company has included likely compensatory tariffs of Rs8,800 crore—an amount higher than its net worth of Rs7,948 crore, according to analyst estimates. “Adani Power had been infusing close to Rs2,000 crore in this business every year and there is very limited visibility with respect to the profitability going forward,” said an analyst who didn’t want to be named as he is not authorized to speak to reporters. Adani Power’s consolidated debt at the end of September was Rs49,547 crore. After accounting for the cash in its books, that translates into a net debt-to-equity ratio of 6.1. Even after accounting for compensatory tariffs, Adani’s Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) accounts for about 1.25 times its interest costs for the nine months ended 31 December.However, Adani Power said in a statement to BSE that “its preliminary analysis showed that it will get benefit in respect of its power purchase agreement (PPA) for 1,424 megawatt (MW) to Haryana state distribution companies (discoms), PPA for 3,300 MW with Maharashtra Discoms and in PPA for 1,200MW with Rajasthan Discoms”.“The company would decide further course of action once the final order of Supreme Court is available,” Adani said in a filing.The company seems to be referring to the court’s order that it will allow “force majeure” benefits if it is related to Indian laws.In 2016, Aptel ruled in favour of the state electricity regulatory commissions of Maharashtra and Rajasthan, which had disallowed compensatory tariffs for Adani’s Tiroda and Kawai plants respectively, saying that the provisions of force majeure do not apply.Analysts declined to comment on this aspect without seeing the court’s order.Gireesh Chandra Prasad in New Delhi and Shailaja Sharma in Mumbai contributed to the story. ",Supreme Court sets aside an earlier tribunal ruling that allowed Tata Power and Adani Power to charge compensatory tariff from consumers,"Wed, Apr 12 2017. 12 40 AM IST","Blow to Tata Power, Adani as Supreme Court sets aside ruling on tariff" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/o2KPnLcBttr8uI3iRIjPhN/Kalpataru-Power-strong-revenue-visibility-masks-subsidiary.html,"
Kalpataru Power Transmission Ltd’s shares have lost ground in the last four trading sessions despite it reporting better-than-expected performance for the December quarter. That suggests the positives are already priced in.The stock closed at a new 52-week high early this month as the company announced a large order win and indicated good growth momentum. The December quarter results closely tracked the upbeat commentary. Stand-alone revenues are up 29%. Profits rose 57% as finance costs fell.Kalpataru did not receive any major orders in the December quarter. But it made up with new order wins in the first half of this quarter. It is seeing strong business opportunities from state electricity boards, Indian Railways and the international market.The company is favourably placed for Rs3,000 crore worth of contracts and expects to start the next fiscal year with an order backlog of Rs10,000 crore, 1.4 times the 2015-16 consolidated revenues. On stand-alone revenues, the order backlog would be 2.3 times the previous fiscal year’s revenues. According to IDBI Capital Market Services Ltd, it takes six months to convert the order backlog into revenue stream. This should ensure good revenue momentum and analysts are confident the management will comfortably meet the lower end of the 15-20% growth in the current and next fiscal years.The optimism is captured in the stock—up around 60% in the last one year. For it to continue to do well, Kalpataru will have to impress the Street with more than revenue growth.Profitability is one aspect it can improve upon. Despite strong revenue growth, the company’s profitability did not see any major improvement (see chart). Also, earnings expectations are being weighed down by continuing troubles at its subsidiaries.Growth at one of them, JMC Projects (India) Ltd, is undermined by slow moving orders from the real estate sector. It is not expected to post any revenue growth in the current fiscal year. Another unit Shree Shubham Logistics Ltd, which offers agri-logistics services, is hit by under-utilization of assets and is estimated to post losses for the current fiscal year. According to HDFC Securities Ltd, the logistics firm may require financial support (cash infusion) from Kalpaturu next fiscal year.These issues are not unknown and strong growth in the core power transmission and infrastructure EPC business is making up for the weakness in subsidiaries. EPC is short for engineering procurement and construction. According to HDFC Securities, the strong order backlog should give Kalpataru leeway in picking projects with better margins. For the stock to outperform, it is crucial the company impresses on profitability and earnings front.","Kalpataru Power did not receive any major orders in the December quarter, but it made up with new order wins in the first half of this quarter","Tue, Feb 21 2017. 07 56 AM IST",Kalpataru Power: strong revenue visibility masks subsidiary troubles +https://www.livemint.com/Money/GrvW6tc6ZmxkLt0h6Gb3xL/Auto-firms-fend-off-demonetisation-blues-but-face-the-heat.html,"
Automobile firms, apart from Tata Motors Ltd, sprung a pleasant surprise in their December quarter financial results. Operating margins topped forecasts and also inched up from the year-ago levels in some cases, in spite of subdued sales. However, the tide seems to be reversing now.Key input prices have steadily risen from their lows. Compared with a year ago, steel and rubber prices have almost doubled, while copper and aluminium are up 18-25%. This is certain to weigh on the operating margins in the March quarter. In fact, a margin correction was expected in the December quarter. But it didn’t happen because most auto companies had a high inventory of finished goods that skewed raw material costs as a percentage to sales.
Finished goods stocks were high because demonetisation played spoilsport on vehicle sales, especially in the rural markets. Auto firms also have to comply with new emission norms that will add to costs, too.For instance, brokerages have forecast a Rs600-1,000 per unit cost increase for two-wheelers on this count. It would be much higher for commercial vehicles. Therefore, the prospects for the next few quarters would hinge on the ability of auto companies to pass on the cost pressures to customers.Through the December quarter, there were no price hikes as sales were punctured. But many auto companies such as Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, Hero MotoCorp Ltd, Bajaj Auto Ltd and TVS Motor Co. Ltd reportedly raised prices in January. However, a report by Religare Capital Markets Ltd highlights that the price hikes may only partially offset cost pressures that would impact margins in the near term.Meanwhile, sales may move up as the pent-up demand of the December quarter kicks in. Another trigger could come from pre-buying by customers (especially in commercial vehicles) because vehicles may be costlier after April, when the new emission norms apply.Higher sales may then translate into operating leverage benefits such as margin improvement. This may take some time though.For now, the stocks in the auto universe trade at optimum valuations—ranging between 18-23 times estimated earnings for the fiscal year ahead. The key things to watch out for in the next few months are sales growth and price hikes in vehicles.","Steel and rubber prices have almost doubled, while copper and aluminium are up 18-25% against a year ago—certain to weigh on operating margins in March quarter","Mon, Feb 27 2017. 07 52 AM IST","Auto firms fend off demonetisation blues, but face the heat of rising costs"
+https://www.livemint.com/Money/7SyRC4WALhA9ZeubCX1ntM/Dj-vu-for-agrochemical-stocks.html,"
Until about a year ago, the agrochemical industry was beset by low demand and adverse weather conditions.
Then things seemed to ease.
But those risks are now emerging again. Shares of Rallis India Ltd and Bayer CropScience Ltd have fallen between 2% and 8% in the past month. Even shares of UPL Ltd and PI Industries Ltd, which are partly hedged because of a large overseas business, have lost 6-10% in value. The broad market has risen 1.5% during the period.Barring Bayer, all other stocks had outperformed the BSE 500 index in the past one year. But the correction in the past one month indicates that investors are getting cautious.International weather forecasts point to a reoccurrence of the El Niño warm weather pattern in 2017. The forecasts are inconclusive and clarity will emerge only in May. But if El Niño returns as feared, then it can crimp the crucial monsoon rains, which in turn, will impact agriculture activity. Though rural spending is now less dependent on agriculture, the monsoons and the corresponding agricultural output still affect rural demand, Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd said in a note.According to Aditya Jhawar, an analyst at Investec Capital, monsoon rains influence the quality and quantum of farm investments. “Agrochemical companies are exposed to the vagaries of monsoon as the consumption of agrochemicals and the up-trading/down-trading of molecules largely depends on performance of monsoon,” he says. Bayer and Rallis, with a 70-80% exposure to the domestic market, are expected to be the worst-hit companies.The concerns arise amid talk of a dull January-March quarter (fiscal Q4). Demand for agrochemical products is being hit to an extent by weak crop prices, low pest infestation and drought conditions in southern parts of the country. According to Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd, lower winter crop acreages in south India and higher inventory can weigh on pesticide consumption in the current quarter and result in muted revenue growth for the industry.Of course, the March quarter is a lean season for agrochemical companies. A large chunk of sales happen in the September and December quarters. And revenue growth till December 2016 has been good (see chart). Even so, growth is lower than initial expectations and is coming on a low base of two consecutive years of sub-par monsoon rains (2014-15, 2015-16).If current risks do not subside—deficit monsoon rains, weak crop prices and continuation of drought in several parts of the country—then revenue growth in the coming fiscal year can be hit, taking the industry back to anaemic growth levels.","If El Niño returns as feared, then it can crimp the crucial monsoon rains, which in turn, will impact agriculture activity","Tue, Mar 07 2017. 07 49 AM IST",Déjà vu for agrochemical stocks +https://www.livemint.com/Money/WRWWGeqV0X2B7cGog82HKK/Petronet-LNGs-impressive-showing.html,"
Shares of Petronet LNG Ltd have increased an impressive three-fifths so far this fiscal year.Shortage of domestically produced gas leading to better demand prospects for liquefied natural gas (LNG) is what has fundamentally propelled the company’s stock upwards.The LNG importer’s profit growth has been robust each quarter so far in fiscal year 2017 and the December quarter results are no exception. Net profit increased spectacularly, more than doubling compared to the same quarter last year to Rs397 crore. Operating profit increased 114% year-on-year to Rs607 crore.The Petronet LNG management told analysts in a conference call that the Dahej (Gujarat) capacity expansion to 15 million tonnes (from 10mt) was fully operational during the December quarter. The company said that the volume of 187 trillion British thermal units regasified at the Dahej terminal in December quarter is a marginal increase over the September quarter and a 36% increase over the December 2015 quarter.However, Petronet LNG’s Kochi (Kerala) terminal continues to operate at miserably low utilization levels—6% during the December quarter. Pipeline infrastructure problems have adversely affected utilization levels at the Kochi terminal and that has been a worry. “On the Kochi pipeline issue, Petronet LNG management shared that work on the first phase (Kochi-Mangalore pipeline) has started,” point out analysts from IIFL Institutional Equities in a report on 15 February. According to the brokerage firm, once this line is complete, utilization of the Kochi terminal would increase to 40%. However, further ramp-up in utilization would depend on completion of Kochi-Bangalore, the second pipeline, which is likely to be completed only by 2019. Needless to say, developments on this front will be an important trigger for the stock.It helps that spot LNG prices are expected to remain subdued in the coming years on account of higher supply in global markets thanks to capacity additions. The Petronet LNG stock’s remarkable appreciation reflects that it captures this good news including the recent commissioning of expanded capacity. But further outperformance could be difficult.Incremental expansion at the Dahej terminal to 17.5mt is expected to be completed by fiscal year 2019. “Given we already assume further capacity expansion benefit of 2.5mmt with full utilization by FY19/FY20 and earnings growth post-FY20 would be minimal, we expect stock would be de-rated going forward,” wrote analysts from Elara Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd in a report on 14 February.Currently, one Petronet LNG share trades at about 17 times estimated earnings for the next fiscal year based on Bloomberg data.","Shortage of domestically produced gas leading to better demand prospects for liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is what has fundamentally propelled Petronet LNG’s stock","Tue, Feb 21 2017. 07 56 AM IST",Petronet LNG’s impressive showing +https://www.livemint.com/Money/mX1sT5Htjl7EqQLAwBMIDJ/Telenors-painful-exit-and-the-writing-on-the-wall.html,"
Telenor ASA has handed its India business over on a silver platter to Bharti Airtel Ltd. Leave alone receiving any value for its equity, Telenor will also service the outstanding debt of its Indian subsidiary before the handover.Evidently, the company wants to cut losses and run. But in the process, Bharti Airtel gets spectrum worth Rs5,000 crore based on last year’s auction prices, by only making a payment of around Rs1,600 crore to the government.As consolidation has picked up pace, one thing is becoming increasingly clear—sellers are settling for lower and lower valuations. Telenor even settled for nothing, despite having 44 million customers and nearly Rs5,000 crore in annual revenues; leave alone the value of its spectrum.Remaining small- and mid-sized companies such as Reliance Communications Ltd (RCom), Aircel Ltd and Tata Teleservices Ltd should take note of the writing on the wall. Last year, when Videocon Telecommunications Ltd sold its spectrum assets, it got a considerably lower valuation than it had earlier envisaged. When Idea Cellular Ltd backed out of a generously priced deal, Airtel stepped in at lower valuations. But even then, Videocon managed to get around 1.4 times the value of the spectrum, based on recommended prices for an upcoming auction.Of course, since then, large companies filled many of their spectrum portfolio gaps in the auction. And spectrum ceases to be the scarce asset it once used to be.In addition, the massive reduction in tariffs after Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd’s launch last year has made things increasingly difficult for mid-sized companies such as RCom and Tata Teleservices. Each of them has huge debt and lacks the resources to compete in an environment where heavy capex is the order of the day. With Jio setting the pace with new tariff structures, these smaller companies no longer pose the competitive threat they once used to.News reports suggest they are in talks to combine operations to stand their ground against Airtel, Jio and the proposed Vodafone-Idea combine. Coming together may help display scale for a possible suitor, but the monumental debt on their books may more than offset any buying interest that emerges. Besides, even if they manage to overcome debt and other hurdles and combine operations, they will together have a revenue market share of around 18%. Consider that both Idea and Vodafone India Ltd individually have a higher market share (of 19% and 23.5%, respectively), but are still discussing a merger to effectively take on the might of Jio and Airtel. If Telenor’s painful exit from the Indian markets is any indication, the remaining small and mid-sized telecom companies would do well to take what they get and exit while they can.","If Telenor’s exit from the Indian markets is any indication, the remaining small and mid-sized telecom companies would do well to take what they get and exit while they can","Mon, Feb 27 2017. 07 52 AM IST",Telenor’s painful exit and the writing on the wall +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Rq5v5md5fX9bikIF4YoPLP/Unilevers-boldest-defence-A-Colgate-or-Nestle-deal.html,"London: Unilever was all smiles when Kraft Heinz Co. abandoned its attempt to buy the UK consumer company for $143 billion. In an unusual joint statement, the two companies referred to their “high regard” for each other.This isn’t how bitterly contested takeover situations normally end. The Anglo-Dutch consumer giant must have wanted to end things amicably—or at least be seen to.Why would Unilever help Kraft Heinz save face, given it manifestly doesn’t want to be acquired, let alone by the US ketchup maker?ALSO READ | Unilever shares slide after Kraft Heinz withdraws $143 billion takeover bidSure, Unilever is a good-hearted corporate citizen. But it looks like it may need something from Kraft Heinz one day, and is showing the world the pair could do business.One possibility: CEO Paul Polman has a sale of its food assets in mind, and needs to keep potential buyers sweet.Kraft Heinz is all food. Almost 60% of Unilever’s revenue comes from personal products and homecare, things like soap and washing powder. A sale of the food business would let Polman preserve the company’s independence and culture, while meeting Kraft Heinz’s need for a deal that offers plenty of margin expansion potential.So why not do such a deal now? Perhaps Kraft Heinz wasn’t keen, or it really wanted Unilever’s faster-growing household products and personal care assets.ALSO READ | Unilever can’t breathe easily after fending off Kraft HeinzOr, it’s possible Polman wasn’t ready. Conceivably, Unilever wants to bulk up its household and personal care operation before selling the food business.How could it achieve that? A purchase of New York-based Colgate-Palmolive Co. would fit the bill. With a market value of $64 billion, it’s about half Unilever’s size, and would be a strategic match, as analysts at Exane point out.Buying a storied US name might seem tricky in the current climate, but a generous offer may assuage Colgate’s managers, making the politics easier.Alternatively, there is a messier way of getting to the same result—a deal with Swiss peer Nestle SA. The world’s largest food group, with a market value of 228 billion Swiss francs ($227 billion), suffers Unilever’s same problems of weak margins and low growth.At the very least, it might make sense for the two companies to merge most of their food operations into a joint venture and spin that off, or sell it. There are surprisingly few overlaps: the Swiss have mostly exited ice cream outside North America, while Unilever still makes choc-ices, for instance.ALSO READ | Kraft Heinz and Unilever’s food fightAn all-food combination would have combined sales of €32 billion ($34 billion). It could be worth €63 billion, based on the average sales multiple for the industry.Ulf Mark Schneider, Nestle’s newish CEO, has indicated he’s not in the market for big deals, so no one should hold their breath. But a full merger of the pair, with a spin-off of the food unit, would create a global group focused on the faster growing businesses of personal care, pet care and food supplements.Either way, the consumer industry needs deals to address weak profitability and growth.Polman needs to ensure Unilever has the strongest negotiating hand as opportunities arise. For now, that means cutting costs and reducing the company’s conglomerate discount. That is where he can still earn his legacy. If he fails, others will do it for him. Bloomberg","Why would Unilever help Kraft Heinz save face? One possibility: CEO Paul Polman has a sale of its food assets in mind, and needs to keep potential buyers sweet","Mon, Feb 20 2017. 08 57 PM IST",Unilever’s boldest defence? A Colgate or Nestle deal +https://www.livemint.com/Money/ActIIgZRqcFLWuMkAI2JrN/Voltas-profit-tops-forecast-as-project-business-surprises-po.html,"
A seasonally weak quarter for air conditioners (ACs) coupled with the adverse impact of the note ban on sales was expected to be a drag on Voltas Ltd’s December quarter performance. However, although sales were affected, the projects division more than made up for it, leading to higher-than-anticipated operating profit jump.The quarter’s net revenue at Rs1,180.5 crore was 6.7% lower than the year-ago period. The unitary cooling products (UCP) division, comprising of AC sales and which accounts for a third of the total revenue, clocked a 5% drop in revenue. There was an 11% drop in the number of ACs sold as the currency crunch hit sales for most part of the quarter. Meanwhile, revenue at the electro-mechanical projects (EMP) division, too, contracted by a similar degree.Fortunately, the EMP division’s profit margin at 3.9% was better than what the Street had pencilled in. This made up for the 110 basis point decline in the UCP division’s profitability. A basis point is 0.01%.Besides, the operating expenditure as a percentage to sales fell from a year back as raw material cost was lower. Therefore, the operating profit at Rs89 crore zipped past the average estimate of 20 brokers by 40%. It was also around 52% higher year-on-year. Higher profit clocked in spite of lower revenue traction led to a significant 210 basis point jump in operating margin.Further, a steep rise in other income fuelled net profit by 55% to Rs81.6 crore.The Voltas stock, which last changed hands at around Rs350 on BSE, is on a strong wicket in spite of its relatively high price-to-earning multiple of 18 times one-year forward estimated earnings.For one, the next two quarters are better for the UCP division given that the demonetisation effect will wear off as the peak season for AC sales picks up. Note that Voltas is the market leader with a 27% share of the AC market. Also, the order inflows for its EMP projects division are likely to gain momentum as the economies of the Middle East, where Voltas has a significant presence, are improving on the back of rising crude oil prices. Above all, legacy loss-making projects are now behind the company, paving the way for improved overall profitability.","The next two quarters are better for the unitary cooling products division, given that the demonetisation effect will wear off as the peak season for AC sales picks up","Tue, Feb 21 2017. 07 56 AM IST",Voltas profit tops forecast as project business surprises positively +https://www.livemint.com/Money/17zdbqnBXHtywcBTqqjxhP/Is-Shree-Cements-rich-valuation-warranted.html,"
Shree Cement’s December quarter earnings were marred by the performance of its power segment, which incurred a loss at the operating level, thus impacting overall profitability. In the cement segment, volumes improved 4.5% year-on-year (y-o-y) to 4.91 million tonnes (mt) due to capacity additions in east India, but realizations declined sequentially as prices corrected sharply in both eastern and northern markets post demonetization. On a y-o-y basis, net profit increased by a mere 0.72% to Rs235.45 crore and net sales rose 3.24% to Rs2,091.17 crore, aided by higher other income. Last but not the least, freight costs surged, pushing cement operating cost/tonne higher.Going by these factors, there’s nothing much to cheer about, but the stock’s valuations show a different picture. Shares of Shree Cement, trading at a one-year forward price-to-earnings multiple of 33.92 times, compare well with ACC Ltd and Ambuja Cements Ltd. Shree Cement is expected to have an edge over peers in the long run given positives like a less stressed balance sheet, better operating efficiency and geographical diversification. But the question to ask is, whether such rich valuations are justified? The answer probably is that current valuations already reflect the aforementioned factors.More importantly, there are concerns which cannot be ignored. Cement volumes would remain sluggish in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab due to elections thus impacting cement realizations. Brokerages Reliance Securities Ltd and Karvy Stock Broking have trimmed their Ebitda estimates for FY17, FY18 and FY19 to factor subdued realizations in key markets. Ebitda stands for earnings before interest, tax depreciation and amortization. Secondly, freight and energy costs would weigh on margins as they are expected to harden. Also, how soon volumes in the power segment revive is key. Shree Cement is on a capacity addition spree and aims to become a 40mt capacity company by FY19. It will incur a cost of Rs1,800 crore to add clinker capacity of 2.80 mtpa and cement capacity of 3 mtpa in Karnataka. This integrated project will be funded through internal accruals and is expected to be completed by December 2018. Though the company has been adding capacity without leverage, some analysts don’t favour this move simply because south India already has excess capacity. Meanwhile, it has announced a one-time special dividend of Rs100 for every equity share held.Since the company has been expanding its footprint in various regions, a slew of brokerage houses are gung-ho on the stock citing it to be a beneficiary of cement demand recovery. When this anticipated revival will finally happen is anybody’s guess, but for now valuations need to correct.","Since Shree Cement has been expanding its footprint, a slew of brokerage houses are gung-ho on the stock, citing it to be a beneficiary of cement demand recovery","Mon, Feb 20 2017. 07 51 AM IST",Is Shree Cement’s rich valuation warranted? +https://www.livemint.com/Money/QkBCwquPDUwhW25pnJwjmI/HavellsLloyd-deal-Why-are-investors-unimpressed.html,"
Investors weren’t impressed with the Rs1,600 crore deal between Havells India Ltd and Lloyd Electric and Engineering Ltd. Shares of both companies fell on Monday—Lloyd’s shares dropped as much as 17.1% and Havells’s shares fell 3.2%. Cumulatively, their market capitalization fell by more than Rs1,000 crore. What gives?For starters, Havells hasn’t really got itself a bad deal as its shares suggest. The enterprise value (EV) of Rs1,600 crore for Lloyd’s consumer durables business translates into a valuation of 14.5 times estimated Ebitda for fiscal year 2016-17. This compares favourably with peers such as Voltas Ltd and Blue Star Ltd, which trade at an EV/Ebitda ratio of 22.9 and 23.7 times, according to an Ambit Capital Pvt. Ltd report on 20 February. Of course, Lloyd’s consumer durables business enjoys lower margins compared to these firms, although that seems to be factored in the valuations. Ebitda is short for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.But one man’s gain is another man’s loss and the Lloyd stock seems to be mirroring that sentiment. The Street clearly expected Lloyd to fetch better valuations from the sale. In fact, the stock had risen by around 25% year-till-date until last week in anticipation of the sale.As a part of the deal, Lloyd will get Rs1,550 crore, with the balance going to group company Fedders Lloyd Corp. Ltd. At the end of September, debt stood at about Rs720 crore, according to analysts. Assuming the company uses the proceeds to retire its entire debt, that leaves it with net proceeds of Rs830 crore.For perspective, its market capitalization on Monday was less than Rs1,100 crore. What this means is that the deal values Lloyd’s retained non-consumer durables business at about 2.4 times FY17 annualized earnings before interest and tax (Ebit) or, in other words, next to nothing.Of course, one can argue that the retained business largely consists of the unexciting supply to original equipment manufacturers, where margins tends to be low and working capital needs tend to be high. Even so, valuing the business at less than three times earnings net of cash suggests extremely low expectations from the company. Lloyd would do well to communicate to investors what it intends to do with the large inflow. Meanwhile, even as Havells has paid relatively cheap valuations, Lloyd’s low margin profile is understandably a cause of worry. The consumer durables business’ Ebit margin for the nine months ended December is only 7%. Compare that to Havells’s electrical consumer durables business, which enjoyed 25% margin for the same period. According to an analyst with a domestic institutional brokerage firm, the competitive intensity for Havells will increase with this deal, as it will now face competition from MNCs and Chinese firms.To be sure, Lloyd’s vast distribution network of more than 10,000 direct and indirect dealers is a positive. Havells will get access to ready infrastructure and a platform to enter the fast growing air conditioner market. But investors will watch out for improvement in margins and a pickup in growth. Else, Havells would have been better off with its money in the bank.Lloyd’s consumer durables business is expected to generate an Ebitda of Rs110 crore for FY17. Ambit Capital says that this would roughly amount to the interest income Havells could have earned on the Rs1,600 crore consideration paid to Lloyd.In that backdrop, the stock’s reaction is not totally surprising.","Even as Havells has paid relatively cheap valuations, Lloyd’s low margin profile is understandably a cause of worry","Tue, Feb 21 2017. 07 56 AM IST",Havells-Lloyd deal: Why are investors unimpressed? +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/oHgSgLwv44iQAnKtRFGFnM/Tractor-loans-could-see-rise-in-delinquency-rates-Fitch-rep.html,"Mumbai: Tractor loans could see a rise in delinquency rates as a result of political pressure for farmers to be granted waivers on agricultural loans, Fitch Ratings said in a report on Tuesday. However, the negative impact of any potential rise in tractor loan delinquencies on Fitch-rated asset-backed security (ABS) transactions is likely to be minimal, given low exposure.According to the rating agency, post Uttar Pradesh government announcing farm loan waivers where tractor loans were not included, farmers might expect a change in this position in future announcements. Also, there is a lack of clarity whether tractor loans will be included in potential loan waiver programmes in Maharashtra, Punjab and Haryana where 30% of the population resides.“We would expect the delinquency rate on agricultural loans to take several months to return to normal following the announcement of policy details. The crop season is currently in its harvesting period in most parts of India, a time when most farmers earn the bulk of their income. If the farmers postpone loan repayments and use the money earned elsewhere, it could take at least until the next harvest in six months’ time to cure delinquencies,” the report noted. Many senior Reserve Bank of India (RBI) officials in the past have stated their opposition to loan waivers as it hurts the credit culture and imposes immense pressure on the banking system.State Bank of India (SBI) in March had announced one-time settlements for tractor and farm equipment loans that make up about Rs6,000 crore of doubtful and loss cases on its books. However, the bank specifically said that its scheme has nothing to do with any government announcement.On 15 March, SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said support to farmers is necessary but not at the cost of credit discipline as people who benefit from loan waivers often expect further waivers in future, which leads to many more loans remaining unpaid. The rating agency believes that government support might help cure delinquencies faster given that state governments compensate lenders quickly. However, this is unlikely since state bureaucracy works slowly. Effective collection practices and customer-education programmes can help in containing the potential rise in delinquencies. “Indian ABS transactions are unlikely to be significantly affected, even if tractor loan delinquencies do rise. We do not expect any significant stress or rating impact and we have a stable rating outlook on these transactions,” the report added.","Tractor loans could see rise in delinquency rates due to political pressure for farmers to be granted waivers on agricultural loans, says Fitch report ","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 12 07 PM IST",Tractor loans could see rise in delinquency rates: Fitch report +https://www.livemint.com/Money/2RgG35boTzSQBLDVSUP5lJ/Q4-results-Five-numbers-that-distinguish-bruised-from-batte.html,"
Quarterly results of banks this time around would offer both the optical illusion of high profit growth and the harsh reality of a worse bad loan situation. From the looks of how the sector indices and stocks have moved over the last three months, the veneer of profit growth has been factored in. Given that the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2015-16 was horrifying due to the Reserve Bank of India’s asset quality review (AQR), by the sheer low base, profits for the same quarter in 2016-17 would be pleasing to the eyes. But the ground realities over bad loans are still the same. Investors therefore should focus on the five following numbers to judge how deep banks are in the bad-loan cesspool:Provisions: Those who had hoped for a better life after AQR are doomed to be disappointed. The gist of AQR was to identify and provide for all bad loans but lenders had hoped for quick deal-making and faster resolution thereafter. This hasn’t happened and due to ageing of non-performing assets (NPAs), provisions are unlikely to abate. With past mistakes continuing to haunt banks, corporate focused lenders such as ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and most public sector banks will continue to see erosion in profits through higher provisioning. To add insult to injury, the run-up in bond yields would trigger mark-to-market provisioning as well.Slippages: The trend in fresh slippages is perhaps the most awaited from banks because it is a gauge of how non-AQR loans have performed. Here several banks have primed investors with watchlists but past quarters have shown that trouble is brewing outside these watchlists as well. Fresh slippages for most banks had declined in the September quarter, while the impact of demonetization made them rebound in the December quarter. That of the March quarter will be the litmus test.Gross and net NPA ratios: These ratios could be tricky as they could show a decline from the year-ago period and that wouldn’t necessarily mean banks have finally got a grip on their bad loans. There is also a chance that gross and net NPA ratios may worsen because of the collapse in credit growth. Analysts at Icra Ltd expect the gross NPA ratio would hit 10% for FY17 from 7.6% in the previous year. Again, retail-focused banks win hands down here too.Core income: This is one metric that will set apart the bruised from the battered among banks. Lenders such as Kotak Mahindra Bank, Yes Bank, Federal Bank and IndusInd Bank would shine on net interest income or the income generated from core operations. Public sector banks and some private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank and Axis Bank would suffer as there are no takers for loans from the corporate sector. Analysts expect public sector lenders to show core income growth of just 5%, while private sector lenders may show around 10%.Margins: Net interest margins could take a beating simply because banks faced a deluge of deposits in the wake of demonetization and a lion’s share of these deposits have been deployed in low-yielding government bonds due to low credit demand.","Given that the Q4 of 2015-16 was horrifying due to RBI’s asset quality review, by the sheer low base, profits for the same quarter in 2016-17 would be pleasing to the eyes","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 08 20 AM IST",Q4 results: Five numbers that distinguish bruised from battered banks +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KreF9rUByhFuQClcbJaRrM/World-Bank-says-Indian-economy-to-grow-at-72-in-FY18.html,"New Delhi: Having seen a “modest setback” due to demonetisation last fiscal, the Indian economy will claw back to 7.2% growth this financial year and rise further to 7.5% in 2018-19, says a World Bank report. In its report on South Asian Economy, the World Bank said that “significant risks” to economic growth could emanate from fallout of demonetisation on small and informal economy, stress in the financial sector and uncertainty in global environment. Also, a rapid increase in oil and other commodity prices could have a negative implication for the economy, it added. The country’s economic growth is expected to see an uptick at 7.2% this fiscal and further accelerate to 7.5% in 2018-19, the report said. The growth slowed down to 6.8% in 2016-17 due to a combination of weak investments and the impact of demonetisation, the World Bank said, adding that timely and smooth implementation of the GST could prove to be a significant “upside risk” to economic activity in 2017-18. As per the report, the economic growth is projected to increase gradually to 7.7% by 2019-20, underpinned by a recovery in private investments, which are expected to be crowded in by the recent increase in public capex and an improvement in the investment climate.“India’s economic momentum suffered a modest setback due to demonetisation, while the poor and vulnerable likely witnessed a larger negative shock. The economy is expected to recover and growth will gradually accelerate to 7.7 per cent by 2019-20,” it said. The demonetisation, the World Bank said, caused an immediate cash crunch, and activity in cash reliant sectors was affected. The GDP growth slowed to 7% during the third quarter of 2016-17, from 7.3% during the first half of the fiscal. India’s fiscal, inflation and external conditions are expected to remain stable, the US-based multilateral lending agency said, adding that the centre will continue to consolidate modestly, while retaining the push towards infrastructure spending. “Inflation will stabilise, supported by favourable weather and structural reforms. Normal monsoons have so far offset increases in petroleum prices,” it said. Referring to the external factor, it said exchange rate has appreciated, partly reflecting expectations of a narrowing inflation gap between India and the US and limited external vulnerabilities as the current account deficit is expected to remain below 2% of the GDP and fully financed by FDI inflows. It said challenges to India’s favourable growth outlook could stem from continued uncertainties in the global environment, including rising global protectionism and a sharp slowdown in the Chinese economy, which could further delay a meaningful recovery of external demand. It said there is a great uncertainty about the extent to which demonetisation caused small, informal firms to exit and shed jobs. Also, private investment continues to face several impediments in the form of corporate debt overhang, stress in the financial sector, excess capacity and regulatory and policy challenges.",The World Bank report says timely and smooth implementation of the GST could prove to be a significant ‘upside risk’ to Indian economy in FY18,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 08 47 AM IST",World Bank says Indian economy to grow at 7.2% in FY18 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/X3yE7zgGy4POfqLn3bOTxI/NK-Singh-panel-backs-proposal-to-scrap-SLR-requirements-fo.html,"
New Delhi: A key government department has advocated scrapping the rule mandating banks to invest a fixed portion of their deposits in government bonds, a view that has found support in the N.K. Singh committee reviewing rules on fiscal discipline.In its discussions with the committee, the department of financial services in the finance ministry suggested an end to statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) requirements that force banks to buy bonds, reducing their lending capability. The committee led by Singh, a former revenue secretary, is reviewing India's rules governing fiscal responsibility and budget management (FRBM).Last April, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) started reducing SLR by 0.25 percentage point every quarter, and allowed over half of these holdings to meet the Basel-mandated liquidity coverage ratio. Currently, the SLR stands at 20.5% of total bank deposits.“Economists generally advocate quick SLR phase out as one of the policy instruments to end the lazy/cautious banking syndrome and also make the governments more receptive to discipline of open markets rather than relying on financial repression. Presently—when most banks are holding government securities in excess of minimum SLR—it is the opportune time to wind up SLR,” the committee report said, quoting the department’s view.Apart from Singh, other members of the committee including chief economic adviser in the finance ministry Arvind Subramanian, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy director Rathin Roy, Reserve Bank of India governor Urjit Patel and former finance secretary Sumit Bose met officials of key central government departments to seek their views on various fiscal policy issues.The members also sought the opinion of economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das on whether SLR should be dispensed with.“Urjit Patel pointed out that SLR was partly used to hold government bonds. Secretary (economic affairs) mentioned that as on date, most banks have more than the 21% stipulated SLR. However, before taking any call on the issue, the role of SLR as assets in the context of huge NPAs (non-performing assets) of banks will need to be kept in view,” the report said, citing the interaction between Das and members of the committee.","In its discussions with the N.K. Singh panel, a finance ministry department suggested an end to statutory liquidity ratio requirements that force banks to buy bonds","Mon, Apr 17 2017. 03 10 AM IST",N.K. Singh panel backs proposal to scrap SLR requirements for banks +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/EE4f5200TzxOj5vwpVYYbO/SBI-should-not-to-finalise-benefit-options-for-staff-of-merg.html,"Hyderabad: The Hyderabad high court has directed the State Bank of India (SBI) not to finalise the options regarding retirement benefits offered to the officers of its associate banks until 15 June. The SBI had set the deadline of April 13 for the officers of five associate banks (which merged with it on 1 April ) for choosing options regarding provident fund, pension and gratuity benefits, among other issues. The Associate Bank Officers’ Association and some others had moved the court against this directive, saying the time given was very short as the process of integration of the SBI and associate banks was underway and their members won’t be able to take decision before 13 April. Justice Naveen Rao said in his interim order on 13 April that as “doubts arising out of various clauses of option notification are yet to be cleared”, the SBI shall not finalise them till 15 June. The court also asked the SBI and other respondents to file their reply in the meantime. Also Read: SBI merger to boost profit in 3 years: Arundhati BhattacharyaThe State Bank of Hyderabad, the State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, the State Bank of Mysore, the State Bank of Patiala and the State Bank of Travancore merged with the SBI, the country’s largest lender, on 1 April. Harshavardhan Madabhushi, general secretary of Associate Bank Officers’ Association, said the court’s interim order may also have impact on the voluntary retirement scheme announced by the SBI for the employees of merged entities.",Hyderabad high court directs SBI not to finalise the options regarding retirement benefits offered to the staff of its associate banks until 15 June,"Mon, Apr 17 2017. 09 24 PM IST",SBI should not finalise benefit options for staff of merged banks: Hyderabad HC +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/LtQe6ydlqgrVYgeZGOxTgI/Withdrawal-trend-reverses-in-Jan-Dhan-accounts-deposits-up.html,"New Delhi: Arresting the trend of withdrawals that began in December, the net balance in Jan Dhan accounts swelled by Rs1,000 crore to Rs63,971.38 crore during the week ended 5 April.The net balance in the accounts opened under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) was Rs62,972.42 crore on 29 March, as per the finance ministry’s data. Total deposits in these accounts had increased to a record high of Rs74,610 crore on 7 December and thereafter, started declining gradually.As per the PMJDY data for 5 April, it is for the first time the net balance in the accounts has shown an increase on a weekly basis. PMJDY was launched in August 2014 to increase banking penetration and promote financial inclusion in the country. Meanwhile, the number of Jan Dhan accounts have increased to 28.23 crore of which 18.50 crore have been seeded with Aadhaar.The deposits in the accounts had surged following demonetisation of old Rs500/1,000 notes in November last year. After setting a cash deposit limit of Rs50,000 in Jan Dhan accounts, the government had on 18 November cautioned account holders that they will be prosecuted under the Income Tax Act for allowing misuse of their bank accounts through deposit of black money in Rs500/1,000 notes during the 50-day window till 30 December. The directive came against the backdrop of reports that some persons were misusing other people’ bank accounts to deposit demonetised notes.","The net balance in Jan Dhan accounts swelled by Rs1,000 crore to Rs63,971.38 crore during the week ended 5 April","Sun, Apr 16 2017. 10 36 PM IST","Withdrawal trend reverses in Jan Dhan accounts, deposits up by Rs1,000 crore" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/x8eiqzCTlj209Bji9VboCL/Govt-may-soon-allow-100-FDI-in-cash-ATM-management-compani.html,"New Delhi: Cash and ATM management companies will soon be allowed to attract 100% foreign direct investment (FDI) as they are not required to comply with the Private Security Agencies (Regulation) Act (PSARA). A clarification to this effect is likely to be issued by the home ministry shortly. The clarification will be against the backdrop of the confusion among firms in cash and ATM management relating to compliance with the Act, under which they can receive FDI only up to 49%.The issue was discussed at a meeting convened by the prime minister’s office (PMO) last month. “In that meeting, it was decided that the home ministry would be asked to issue a clarification that these companies will not have to comply with PSARA and would be eligible to attract 100% FDI,” an official said. There are about a dozen cash management players in the country, including Writer Safeguard, SIS Securitas, CMS, Secure Value, Logicash, Brinks Arya, Securitrans and Scientific Security Management Services. According to experts, companies managing cash for banks have so far been caught in a policy tangle, with the home ministry insisting that 100% FDI could not be allowed for them if they provide private security guards or armoured vehicles. Companies that make devices such as currency authenticators and sorting and currency counting machines will also benefit from this clarification, they added. Several players, including TVS Electronics and ITI, are in such businesses. Cash Management companies handle over Rs40,000 crore of cash per day. The government in 2015 permitted 100% FDI under the automatic route for white label ATM operations with an aim to promote financial inclusion. FDI into the country grew 22% to $35.85 billion during April-December of 2016-17. Foreign investment is considered crucial for India, which needs around $1 trillion for overhauling its infrastructure such as ports, airports and highways to boost growth. A strong inflow of foreign investments also helps improve balance of payments and strengthen the rupee against other global currencies, especially the dollar.",Cash and ATM management companies will soon be allowed to attract 100% FDI as they are not required to comply with the Private Security Agencies Act,"Sun, Apr 16 2017. 10 36 PM IST","Govt may soon allow 100% FDI in cash, ATM management companies" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/3C9fKqrCNh9zNTGXXqoj0L/Doordarshans-revenue-rises-to-Rs82751-crore-in-FY17.html,"
New Delhi: State-run broadcaster Doordarshan on Monday said its net revenue rose to Rs827.51 crore in the year ended 31 March, surpassing its annual target of Rs800 crore. The broadcaster got Rs318.06 crore from government advertisements and Rs157.59 crore from corporate ads during the year.Doordarshan, owned by Prasar Bharati, had reported a net revenue of Rs755 crore in 2015-16. “We surpassed our target this time and the revenue is much higher as compared to last year. Our DTH (direct-to-home) revenue has seen a significant rise. We have also tried to cut down our expenditure,” said Supriya Sahu, director general at Doordarshan, adding that the broadcaster is in the process of re-evaluating its manpower requirements in a bid to pare costs. The broadcaster, which operates 23 channels across the country, recorded the highest ever revenue from its free-to-air DTH platform DD Free Dish in 2016-17. DD Free Dish recorded a revenue of Rs264.17 crore in 2016-17, a 47% increase from a year ago. It had generated Rs180 crore from Free Dish in 2015-16.DD Free Dish currently carries 80 channels, including Star India Pvt. Ltd’s Star Utsav and Sony Pictures Network’s Sony Pal. It also broadcasts news channels such as Aaj Tak, ABP News and News 24.“The rise in our DTH revenue is a result of our expanded reach across the country. We had revised reserve prices in 2016 and have had very successful DTH slot auctions during the year,” Sahu added. DD Free Dish has 22 million subscribers across India, show recent estimates from television viewership measurement agency Barc India. Going forward, the broadcaster plans to add 24 new channels to DD Free Dish, taking the total channel count to 104. The platform is also planning to encrypt its free-to-air signals to secure the signals from being stolen by unauthorized operators.The broadcaster is in the middle of a revamp to revive its viewership and finances. In 2017-18, Doordarshan expects to generate Rs100 crore from the prime-time programming slot auction that concluded in December 2016. “We are revamping all the content on channels like DD National, DD Kashir and DD Sports. We are also curating content for our north-east channel, DD Arun Prabha. We expect the revenues to further go up this year,” Sahu said. The broadcaster is also planning to introduce new channels in kids, youth and music genres. “The overall approach is good. It is a good strategy to have a mix of Doordarshan’s own content as well as content from private producers. What Doordarshan is doing with Free Dish is outstanding. Free Dish is the largest DTH company and is only getting bigger,” said Ashish Pherwani, media and entertainment advisory leader at EY India.",Doordarshan got Rs318.06 crore from government advertisements and Rs157.59 crore from corporate ads during the year,"Tue, Apr 04 2017. 01 35 AM IST",Doordarshan’s revenue rises to Rs827.51 crore in FY17 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/F4XQzOMta5aLK0NAkXQY3M/Apple-receives-permit-in-California-to-test-selfdriving-car.html,"New York: Apple Inc has secured a permit to test autonomous vehicles in California, fuelling speculation that it is working on self-driving car technology in a crowded arena of companies hoping to offer those cars to the masses.The permit allows it to conduct test drives in three vehicles with six drivers, the state Department of Motor Vehicles said on Friday. The vehicles are all 2015 Lexus RX450h, according to the DMV.Although it has never openly acknowledged it is looking into building an electric car, Apple has recruited dozens of auto experts in recent years, and the permit pulls the curtain back a bit on any possible plan. “This does confirm what’s long been rumored: that Apple is at least toying with the idea of getting into the autonomous game in some capacity,” said Chris Theodore, president of consultancy Theodore & Associates, and a former vice president at Ford Motor Co and Chrysler. The permit does not mean Apple is definitely building a car. “This is not necessarily automobiles as initially rumored, but software or possibly hardware associated with autonomous technology,” Theodore said. An Apple spokesman declined to comment directly on the filing, pointing back to a statement the company made in November when it wrote to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on the subject of regulating self-driving vehicles.“The company is investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation,” Apple’s director of product integrity, Steve Kenner, wrote in that five-page letter.Apple executives have been coy about their interest in cars. Chief executive Tim Cook has suggested that Apple wants to move beyond integration of Apple smartphones into vehicle infotainment systems.Apple joins a growing list of traditional carmakers, technology companies, and small start ups to test drive cars in California — all vying to be the first to have commercially viable vehicles on the roads. Companies that have been issued permits also include Alphabet Inc’s Google unit, Ford Motor Co, Volkswagen AG, Daimler AG, Tesla Motors Inc and General Motors Co.Many companies have said the first cars will launch in 2020 but some experts believe it may take much longer due to regulatory challenges. Reuters","Apple has secured a permit to test autonomous vehicles in California, fuelling speculation that it is working on self-driving car technology","Sat, Apr 15 2017. 05 10 PM IST",Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars: report +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/F7UNqEPpaZhUiZA1qxdHyH/PM-Narendra-Modi-launches-BHIMAadhaar-platform-with-incent.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday launched the BHIM-Aadhaar platform—a merchant interface linking the unique identification number to the Bharat Interface for Money mobile application—at Nagpur on the 126th birth anniversary of Dr B.R. Ambedkar.“Like Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar worked to give rights to the common man through the Indian Constitution, one can expect the BHIM app to do similarly great work through the financial system,” said Modi.The new interface will enable customers to make payments using a merchant’s biometric-enabled device. The merchant merely has to download the BHIM app on his smartphone and link the device to an Aadhaar biometric reader.“Any citizen without access to smartphones, Internet, debit or credit cards will be able to transact digitally through the BHIM-Aadhaar platform,” a government statement said.Also Read: Narendra Modi to visit Nagpur on Ambedkar Jayanti tomorrow
To avail of this service, a customer has to first link his bank account to his Aadhaar number. To make a payment, all he has to do is select the bank’s name and enter the Aadhaar number. His fingerprint will serve as the password to authenticate the transaction.To start with, no transaction fee will be levied on either the merchants or customers to encourage adoption of the new digital payment service, especially in small towns and rural India. The government statement said 27 major banks had already tied up with 300,000 merchants for accepting payments using BHIM-Aadhaar. It went on to add that all public sector banks have been instructed to go live with Aadhaar Pay. In his speech, Modi said that the time is not far when premise-less and paperless banking will become part of people’s lives. He announced two new incentive schemes for the BHIM app—cashback (for merchants) and referral bonus (for customers). The schemes will start from 14 April and end on 14 October, he added.Also Read: Is Narendra Modi abandoning his promise of good governance?Under the referral bonus scheme, an individual will earn Rs10 for every new referral made—i.e., educating another person or merchant about the BHIM app and ensuring that they carry out three transactions using the same. “Even in one day, if you refer around 20 people, you can end up earning Rs200 per day. This can continue for a period of three months,” said Modi.Under the cashback scheme, merchants can earn up to Rs300 per month for transactions made using BHIM. An updated version of BHIM (version 1.3) is available on Android and ioS. Several new features have been added to its interface such as new languages, the option to block unwanted collection requests and pay by scanning QR (quick response) codes.“The new upgrade is aligned to facilitate government’s initiative of launching customer referral bonus and merchant incentive schemes. We have added more regional languages, enhanced user experience and security features for wider acceptance and usage of the BHIM app,” said A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive of National Payments Corporation of India.Three new languages—Punjabi, Marathi and Assamese—have gone live on the app. This development was reported earlier by Mint on 24 January (bit.ly/2kbqHky).According to Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union minister for electronics and information technology, 20 million people have downloaded BHIM so far, and payments worth Rs823 crore have been made. The app was launched on 30 December. It was one of several measures aimed at promoting digital transactions in the aftermath of the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes, which triggered a nationwide cash crunch.","Any citizen without access to smartphones, Internet, debit or credit cards will be able to transact digitally through the BHIM-Aadhaar platform launched by Narendr a Modi","Fri, Apr 14 2017. 10 53 PM IST","BHIM-Aadhaar platform launched, advancing PM Modi’s digital push " +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OhZbAzzcKTwmw4U1WWuZgI/Fast-Fashion-fading-HM-Zara-come-under-pressure.html,"
London: Fast fashion is getting tougher.Zara owner Inditex SA said on Wednesday that profitability shrank to an eight-year low. Main rival Hennes & Mauritz AB reported the first monthly sales drop in almost four years. Shares of both retailers sank.The reports illustrate the difficulties facing the fashion industry as consumers divert spending to leisure activities and buy more of their apparel from a rising number of online suppliers. The increased competition is putting pressure on prices, while higher production costs are also squeezing profitability.“In February, industry data was very challenging,” Richard Chamberlain, an analyst at RBC Capital, said in a note. Sales declines of 9% in Germany and 6% in Sweden reflect “some spend rotation into other consumer categories.”H&M shares fell as much as 5.1% in Stockholm, the most in three months. A 1% drop in February sales was caused by the month having one day fewer than in the leap year of 2016. Adjusting for that, revenue rose 3% in local currencies, missing estimates. Chamberlain estimates that H&M’s same-store sales fell 3% in the month, weighed down by the tough industry conditions and as initiatives to expand online options for customers and improve methods of supply take time to feed through to sales.In Zara’s shadowH&M has been in the shadow of faster-growing competitor Inditex in recent years, though Wednesday’s results from the Zara owner suggest it too is finding life more difficult.Inditex’s gross margin narrowed to 57% from 57.8% in the 12 months through January, missing the Spanish retailer’s goal to keep the measure within 0.5 percentage points of the previous year. The shares fell as much as 2.7%, the most since December, though pared their losses after chief executive officer Pablo Isla said that at current exchange rates, the gross margin won’t fall this year.Inditex said the decline in last year’s gross margin was due to currency swings. Foreign exchange stripped 3 percentage points off sales growth. Weaker currencies in Russia, China and Mexico reduce the value of sales in those markets when translated into euros. BloombergRodrigo Orihuela contributed to this story.",Zara’s profitability shrinks to eight-year low; H&M reports first monthly sales drop in four years,"Thu, Mar 16 2017. 08 56 AM IST","Fast Fashion fading? H&M, Zara come under pressure" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Due33d5HoTZzRujoRZb5PI/Housingcom-posts-FY16-losses-of-over-Rs400-crore.html,"New Delhi: Online real-estate company, Housing.com (Locon Solutions Pvt Ltd), now owned by PropTiger, posted losses that soared 45% to over Rs400 crore in the year ended 31 March 2016, financial documents sourced from Tofler showed. The company registered an 111% increase in revenue to Rs26.76 crore, while total expenditure rose to Rs430 crore, a jump of 48% during financial year 2015-16. Softbank-backed Housing.com was acquired by News Corp-backed PropTiger in January 2017 in an all-stock deal and was reported to receive $50 million in fresh funds from News Corp.’s REA Group Ltd and $5 million from SoftBank Group.Most of Housing.com’s original 12 founders left during fiscal 2015-16 when its chief executive and co-founder Rahul Yadav was fired by company directors in July 2015. As a result, the company saw many CXO level entries and appointments, reflecting in its total employee benefit expense which increased by 120% to Rs188.5 crore. In November 2015, the company appointed Jason Kothari as chief executive. After Housing.com’s acquisition, Kothari joined e-commerce company Snapdeal in January as its chief strategy and investment officer. Founded in 2012, Housing.com has undergone changes in terms of both its business model as well its top-level management in the past year. The company moved away from being a property listing portal to a property buying and selling portal in November 2015.During Kothari’s leadership, Housing had shut its rental business. In January 2016, Housing.com moved to a new model—earning advertising revenue from property listers that pay for greater visibility of their properties.In December 2016, Housing announced that it had relaunched rentals. “Last year (in 2015) Housing.com had taken a strategic decision to close rentals in order to focus the company on the home buying and selling segment... Housing.com has now started preparing for the re-entry and plans to launch home rentals early next year,” Housing had said in a statement in December 2016. In May, Mint reported that Housing.com is looking to touch $10 million in revenue in the current financial year. Housing.com had not replied to Mint’s queries.","Housing.com registered an 111% increase in revenue to Rs26.76 crore, while total expenditure rose to Rs430 crore, a jump of 48% during financial year 2015-16","Sat, Mar 11 2017. 01 34 AM IST",Housing.com posts FY16 loss of over Rs400 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/NhRTObP9pPLyZvD7ggADCM/BMWs-profitability-hits-lowest-since-2010-amid-tech-rivalry.html,"Munich: BMW AG reported its weakest profitability since 2010, capping a negative year for chief executive officer (CEO) Harald Krueger after losing the luxury-car crown to arch-rival Mercedes-Benz.Amid higher spending on electric-car and autonomous-driving technologies, BMW’s automotive profit margin narrowed to 8.9% in 2016 from 9.2% a year earlier, according to a statement on Thursday. The shares fell as much as 4.2%, the most in four months.“We are fully focused on implementing our strategy,” which involves pivoting to self-driving, electric vehicles, Krueger said in the statement. “From 2019 onwards, we will be firmly embedding all-electric, battery-powered mobility in our core brands.”ALSO READ | Geneva Motor Show: Car makers focus on technology, not consolidationBMW, lacking the financial heft of rivals backed by a larger parent, is focusing its resources on innovating for the future instead of chasing short-term sales volume. The Munich-based carmaker plans to launch the self-driving, electric iNext model in 2021 in a bid to regain its edge as an automotive leader. To manage rising development costs, BMW is pushing high-margin traditional models, such as the new X7 sport utility vehicle that’s due in 2018.Bolstered by the revamped BMW 5-Series and Mini Countryman, sales in 2017 will likely be slightly higher, the company said, adding that the overall outlook is clouded by global political and economic volatility.The world car market is cooling, with demand in the US and Europe set to peak after years of growth, and Chinese purchases forecast to slow after the government raised the sales tax on small-engine vehicles.BMW shares fell as low as €83.01, before paring the loss to 3.4% at €83.74 at 1:07pm in Frankfurt.Electric futureCarmakers are investing in battery-powered vehicles to comply with tightening emissions regulations, even though customers aren’t rewarding the effort because they’re concerned about cost and driving range. BMW said it plans to sell 100,000 electrified vehicles this year, for the first time.However, demand isn’t enough to offset the investment costs, which is burdening profitability even as BMW posted record sales last year. Groupwide earnings before interest and taxes dropped 2.2% to €9.39 billion ($9.91 billion), missing the average analyst estimate of €9.82 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.ALSO READ | These automakers could be Donald Trump’s next targets“Operational performance falls a bit short of expectations, but net result and dividend exceed expectations,” DZ Bank analyst Michael Punzet wrote in a note to clients, adding that BMW’s “competitive advantage” on electrification is a positive.The automaker was one of the first to develop an electric car from the ground up with the $42,400 i3 in 2013, and despite reining in rollouts in recent years, it’s planning to add battery packs to existing models in a move that sets it up to act quickly should demand take off.Luxury raceBMW faces the additional burden of having to spend money on redesigning a lineup at its main brand that’s been largely static for years, amid a styling lull that gave Mercedes the opening to oust its long-time rival from the top of the sales ranking.Global deliveries at BMW rose 5.2% in 2016 to 2 million cars, growing to a record but at less than half the 11% rate which lifted deliveries at Mercedes to 2.08 million. Mercedes had lagged behind its rival since 2005 and temporarily dropped below Audi to third place before a revamped SUV lineup drove a strong comeback in recent years.ALSO READ | Mercedes-Benz to overtake BMW as largest premium carmakerBMW, which also owns the Rolls-Royce brand, said growth was driven by gains in China and Europe, which offset a weaker US market.Rising sales pushed BMW’s group revenues 2.2% higher to €94.2 billion. While BMW’s automotive margin stayed within its target range of 8% to 10%, it’s lower than Mercedes’s 10%.Despite the challenges, BMW said it plans to pay a dividend of €3.50 per share for 2016, its highest ever, after €3.20 a year earlier. The carmaker is scheduled to release full 2016 earnings details on 21 March. Bloomberg","Amid higher spending on electric-car and autonomous-driving technologies, BMW’s automotive profit margin narrowed to 8.9% in 2016 from 9.2% a year earlier","Thu, Mar 09 2017. 07 27 PM IST",BMW’s profitability hits lowest since 2010 amid tech rivalry +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/n9d5GWahTZ97wcYB1g5sII/Standard-Chartered-misses-annual-profit-misses-estimates.html,"London: Standard Chartered Plc posted annual profit that missed analyst estimates as the bank took losses on a private-equity business it’s shutting down and said efforts to clean up conduct issues affected performance. The shares fell as much as 5.4%.Pretax profit for 2016 was $409 million, compared with a loss of $1.52 billion a year earlier, the London-based company said in a statement Friday. Operating profit excluding one-time items was $1.09 billion, missing the $1.42 billion average estimate of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.Chief executive officer Bill Winters, more than a year and a half into the job, has yet to convince investors he can sustainably reverse the bank’s losses and restore a dividend, after a sharp drop in revenue and surging loan impairments in 2015 drove the Asia-focused lender to its first annual loss since 1989. Winters has also vowed to clean up the culture of the firm, where senior staff flouted ethics rules and considered themselves “above the law.”“We have sharpened our focus on all aspects of conduct,” Winters said in the statement. “The pace and scale of those changes—many of which were done in parallel and required intense periods of adjustment for employees—undoubtedly impacted some elements of the group’s financial performance in the period. But they were the right things to do.”ALSO READ: Baidu needs to speed up the future after that Uber boostStandard Chartered dropped 3.8% to 722.7 pence at 11:50 am in London. The bank’s shares jumped 85% over the past 12 months before today, the best performance among major European lenders. The stock still trades at a steep discount to book value.‘Traumatic’ changeRevenue declined 11% to $13.8 billion, surpassing the average $13.7 billion estimate in the Bloomberg survey. Loan impairments fell to $2.38 billion from $4.01 billion in 2015. In August, the bank said it would probably miss a profitability target set only last year, blaming an uncertain regulatory and economic environment.While bad-debt costs almost halved, the size of the “grade 12” category that houses the loans most at risk of default increased 26% to $1.5 billion last year. A “small number of exposures in the diamond and jewellery sector” drove loan impairments up to $511 million in Europe and the Americas. The bank said in June it was closing its $2 billion diamond-financing business because it doesn’t comply with stricter lending standards.“There are still plenty of challenges, obviously, but they’re going in the right direction,” said Hugh Young, Asia managing director at Aberdeen Asset Management Plc, one of Standard Chartered’s largest shareholders.The bank recognizes it must increase revenue to hit its targets, Winters said on a call with reporters Friday. Last year, the CEO said the annual loss “rips at our souls,” but he said Friday his outlook has improved in 2016, while acknowledging the “hill is still steep.”“My soul is intact, I feel very good about the bank, but it has been a wrenching year and a half,” the CEO said. There’s been “a traumatic amount of change” as he instituted “a very different approach to business. No one harbours any illusions that we are done, we have quite a long way to go.”ALSO READ: Should the fall in Taurus mutual fund worry investors?Standard Chartered said it plans to exit its principal finance business, which includes a private-equity unit known as SCPE, after that division incurred losses of $650 million in 2016. The firm valued its assets in the principal finance business at $1.2 billion at the end of 2016, compared with $2.1 billion a year earlier, according to a company report.Standard Chartered also said it’s “addressing credit issues” and “bolstering its management team and risk discipline” at PT Bank Permata, a lender it part-owns in Indonesia. That nation’s government has changed rules on foreign-owned banks, meaning Standard Chartered must decide whether to merge the two lenders it owns in the country, or sell one of them. A decision probably won’t come until next year, Winters said today.Standard Chartered said its common equity Tier 1 capital ratio, a measure of financial strength, rose to 13.6% from 13% at the end of September. That was higher than the 13.5% average estimate from five analysts.No dividendFinance director Andy Halford said the bank decided not to reinstate a dividend, after scrapping it in November 2015, because its turnaround was still in early stages. The lack of a payout “will be taken as disappointing,” Sanford C. Bernstein analysts said in a note to clients.Despite planning 15,000 job cuts in a strategic review in 2015, full-time employees actually rose on a “scaled-up” basis to 86,693 at 31 December from 84,076 a year earlier, the bank’s annual report shows.Headcount costs are down 7% as the bank moved employees to lower cost locations, a spokesman said. The company has also hired in some strategic areas, including more than 1,000 full-time retail banking employees in India, Singapore and Bangladesh.The bank identified “new uncertainties ahead, including threats to open trade and globalization” in its statement, and Winters said he’d seen Asian companies’ behaviour start to change already.“Clients in our markets are focusing on diversifying trading partners as much as possible to avoid a cliff-edge effect,” if President Donald Trump’s administration implements protectionist policies, Winters said. “If the US for whatever reason makes itself a less desirable trading partner, some other countries will be willing to fill that gap.” Bloomberg","Pretax profit for 2016 was $409 million, compared with a loss of $1.52 billion a year earlier, says Standard Chartered in a statement ","Fri, Feb 24 2017. 09 17 PM IST",Standard Chartered misses annual profit estimates +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/77F9x3usi1EEO6LQqHtsWM/Trumps-H1B-visa-reform-hits-every-tech-billionaire-in-Indi.html,"Bengaluru: It’s hard to overstate the importance of the technology industry to India. Over the past three decades, the IT sector has helped drive the country’s economic growth, employed millions and made billionaires out of at least seven founders.Now the industry is at risk from US President Donald Trump’s policies. The administration is promising a clampdown on the work visas India’s tech services companies use to service American customers. In the days since the US government took first steps toward H1B visa reform, all of India’s high-profile technology tycoons have seen their net worth eroded.Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd and India’s fifth-richest man, and Shiv Nadar, the sixth-richest person in the country and chairman of HCL Technologies, have seen their shares slide. Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani and three other founders of Infosys Ltd, all among the top 100 of India’s richest billionaires, have taken a hit too. IT stocks have dropped about 3% over that stretch, while the benchmark index has climbed 0.6%.Also read: In Donald Trump’s H-1B visa crackdown, Indian students weigh Canada, Ireland“Whether these changes are a precursor for more radical measures is what is worrying companies,” said DD Mishra, a Pune-based research director at Gartner.Infosys, which reports earnings 13 April, may have the most at stake. The Bengaluru-based company is most vulnerable to US visa reforms because it has the lowest percentage of local hires in the US, Goldman Sachs analysts Sumeet Jain and Saurabh Thadani said in a research note last week. HCL and Wipro also have risks from visa reforms but they hire relatively more Americans, the analysts wrote.Infosys kicks off earnings season for the industry this week, giving investors a chance to get more insight into the challenges and corporate strategies for addressing them. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, the market leader, is scheduled to report results next week.The debate has been over the H1B visa program, which allows companies to bring 85,000 workers into the US from overseas each year. On 31 March, just as companies prepared to file applications for next year’s allotment, the Trump administration rolled out a series of policy measures making it harder for firms to use the program for computer programmers and announced measures to fight what it called “fraud and abuse.” In parallel, the Justice Department warned employers applying for visas not to discriminate against US workers. All of this was in line with promises made during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to overhaul the program he described as bringing cheap overseas labour at the cost of American jobs and salaries.From India, those promises look like threats to the economy. Information technology is the largest employer in the private sector, providing a livelihood to nearly 4 million, and contributes about 9% of gross domestic product. India’s software and services exports total about $110 billion, with nearly two thirds of that revenue coming from the US.Visa uncertainty could wreak havoc with planning and jeopardize profits in the industry. It may also raise risks for customers that depend on such services, from Wall Street banks to retailers and airlines. “Difficulties in getting visas or rising salaries of H-1B employees will have a material impact on companies,” said Rostow Ravanan, chief executive officer of Mindtree Ltd, a Bangalore-based outsourcer that uses hundreds of H-1B visas every year.Several countries around the world are adopting or considering similar policies. That poses a threat to the business model perfected by Indian companies, Ravanan said. “These trends are dangerous because the IT industry and its talent serve the entire world,” he said.Leading outsourcers including Infosys, Tata Consultancy, Wipro and HCL Technologies declined to comment on the visa issue.Companies have been working on contingency plans. If foreign workers cannot go to the US, it will become more expensive to hire local staff. Companies may also try to do more work for American clients from abroad, including India.Nitin Rakesh, chief executive officer of tech services provider Mphasis Ltd is optimistic. He said the industry has gone through four or five reincarnations since the outsourcing business began. A Trump crackdown may lead to more innovation in the model.“Through leveraging all the possible technology, including mobility and cloud, the growth opportunities are immense,” said Rakesh, warning however that some companies will adapt and others may not. “Growth will not be homogeneous.” Bloomberg","US President Donald Trump’s H1B visa reform policies have eroded the net worth of India’s high-profile technology tycoons, including Azim Premji ","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 02 28 PM IST","H1B visa reform hits tech billionaires, from Azim Premji to Shiv Nadar" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/VOEqIw41iO3HDhomdHp7FL/Berkshire-Hathaway-profit-advances-15-to-629-billion-on-i.html,"New York/Seattle: Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said fourth-quarter profit rose 15% as investment gains climbed.Net income climbed to $6.29 billion, or $3,823 a share, from $5.48 billion, or $3,333, a year earlier, the Omaha, Nebraska-based company said Saturday in a statement. Operating earnings, which exclude some investment results, were $2,665 a share, compared with the average $2,717 estimate of three analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.While Buffett is widely known as a gifted stock picker, Berkshire derives most of its income from the businesses he’s bought during his five decades running the firm. Its dozens of subsidiaries include auto insurer Geico, railroad BNSF, a network of auto dealerships, retailers and electric utilities.Also read: Warren Buffett says US market system to continue far into the futureThe 86-year-old billionaire keeps adding to the mix. Last year, he completed deals for battery maker Duracell and Precision Castparts, a supplier to the aerospace industry, helping to boost profit in his company’s manufacturing segment.Buffett tells investors to focus on the earnings from his stable of operating businesses, rather than one-time gains or losses on Berkshire’s securities portfolio. That’s because results can fluctuate widely on investments and derivatives contracts that he entered years ago.In the fourth quarter, Dow Chemical Co. converted Berkshire’s $3 billion preferred stake to more than $4 billion of common stock. The investment dates to the chemical maker’s 2009 takeover of Rohm & Haas, a transaction that Buffett helped finance.Berkshire has been a major beneficiary of the rally in stocks since Donald Trump was elected US president. Class A shares have climbed 15% since 8 November, bringing the company’s market capitalization above $400 billion for the first time. That compares with the 11% increase in the S&P 500 Index. Bloomberg","Berkshire Hathaway’s operating earnings, which exclude some investment results, were $2,665 a share","Sat, Feb 25 2017. 07 35 PM IST",Berkshire Hathaway profit advances 15% to $6.29 billion on investments +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/psKJpj2y430k5SV3cIEahN/Delhi-court-issues-nonbailable-warrant-against-Vijay-Mallya.html,"New Delhi: A Delhi court on Wednesday issued an open-ended non-bailable warrant against beleaguered businessman Vijay Mallya for allegedly evading summons in a Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) violation case. Chief metropolitan magistrate Sumit Dass passed the order after the Enforcement Directorate submitted that non-bailable warrant issued on 4 November last year by the court has not been executed and it needs more time to do so. An “open-ended NBW” does not carry a time limit for execution unlike NBW. The court, which put up the matter for next hearing on 8 November, however, asked the agency to file a progress report in this regard within two months.",Delhi court issues an open-ended non-bailable warrant against Vijay Mallya for allegedly evading summons in a FERA violation case,"Wed, Apr 12 2017. 12 56 PM IST",Delhi court issues non-bailable warrant against Vijay Mallya in FERA violation case +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/F6sE6nco2faA79Ubd22XRN/Amazon-Prime-Video-focusing-a-lot-on-Indian-original-shows.html,"New Delhi: Roy Price, vice-president of Amazon Studios, a unit of e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. that recently won three Academy Awards, was in Mumbai on Tuesday to announce Amazon Prime Video’s latest original content partnership with director Kabir Khan. Based on Subhash Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army, the new series, tentatively titled The Forgotten Army is the 18th Amazon India original show to go on the floors.During this third visit to India in a year, Price, who oversees all development and production of original film and television properties for Amazon, met several filmmakers and producers.“We have had positive and productive conversations with film studios and producers in India. We have been moving forward with a variety of deals many of which have been announced,” said Price on the phone from Mumbai. He talked about the significance of original content to the India strategy,streaming wars and viewership growth in India. Edited excerpts:What makes original content so integral to Amazon Prime Video’s India strategy?Our goal is to get and create compelling content for our customers whether its licensed or originals. So originals is important, it’s a differentiator, it also helps build our brand. And obviously the team globally has led the charge in that way. We have won over a 100 awards for our originals in the US. We recently won three Academy awards (for Manchester by the Sea and The Salesman) and that’s testimony to our vision that great original content is not just popular with customers but also works as a differentiator. You can have a global service but all customers are local. From a content point of view, we really have what we call a multi-local strategy. To make Prime Video India really speak to Indians we want to develop Indian shows with Indian artistes telling Indian stories that may have a universal sensibility. So our real job is to find those really great ambitious artistes and empower them and today was a great example of that.I think India is a huge and important country and there is a strong appetite here for Indian content. So, according to the multi-local strategy, we are focusing a lot of attention on Indian originals.How do you respond to Amazon Prime Video’s viewership growth in India so far?We think it’s a very strong start. I think customers are happy with what they are seeing on the service. There are a lot of titles that are doing well including Top Gear and Sultan and a mix of different kinds of things. We are always learning from what customers are enjoying and so we will continuously be looking at that to think about whether we have the exact right mix or should we invest more in a particular area and less towards some other. Its all determined by customer reactions.What’s your favourite title from Amazon’s India content library?Sultan and Bajirao Mastaani. I showed it to many people in LA and they enjoyed that.What’s your take on streaming wars in India?Wherever we operate in the world there are a lot of platforms that exist and I think the best thing to do is to really focus on customers and their wants and then focus on the talented filmmakers and creators and their wants and if you can satisfy both those groups then you’ll be just fine.How has the India journey been so far?Well, it is early; we have only been here a few months but we also discuss it a lot (globally). It is an important area of focus. I think the only two countries that I have been to three times over the past year is India and the UK. That’s not the only metric but it is very important and we are growing the team and it’s an important effort from Amazon.",Amazon Studios VP Roy Price sees original shows as central to Amazon Prime Video’s India strategy,"Wed, Apr 12 2017. 05 07 AM IST",Amazon Prime Video focusing a lot on Indian original shows: Roy Price +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/nDMsHUNrz5USj4CeIM1Q0J/Flipkarts-Sachin-Binny-Bansal-lose-billionaire-status-afte.html,"Bengaluru: Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, co-founders of India’s most valuable internet firm Flipkart, lost their billionaire status after the e-commerce firm’s valuation fell in its latest funding round.Their fortunes are now worth $650-750 million each after Flipkart’s valuation reduced to $11.6 billion in its funding round of $1.4 billion announced on Monday, according to Mint research.The Bansals became the first internet billionaires in 2015 when Flipkart raised $700 million at a valuation of $15 billion. Their fortunes were then estimated to be worth roughly $1.3 billion each, according to Forbes magazine.While that is a fall, they are still among the top three richest internet entrepreneurs, behind Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who is the only Internet billionaire currently.Also read: Why Flipkart’s valuation wasn’t hurt by multiple markdownsSachin and Binny, who are in their mid-30s, started Flipkart in a two-bedroom apartment in Bengaluru as an online bookseller inspired by their previous employer Amazon, the giant American online retailer that is Flipkart’s arch rival now.The two are now out of operational roles at Flipkart. Sachin became executive chairman in January 2016, when Binny replaced him as chief executive officer. Exactly a year later, Binny himself was replaced as CEO by Kalyan Krishnamurthy, a representative of Tiger Global Management, Flipkart’s largest investor. Binny is now Group CEO.",Sachin and Binny Bansal’s net worth has fallen to $650-750 million each after Flipkart raised $1.4 billion and acquired eBay India at a valuation of $11.6 billion,"Wed, Apr 12 2017. 05 01 AM IST","Flipkart’s Sachin, Binny Bansal no more billionaires after raising $1.4 billion" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/N3SU1An5dpHtqgC89XMwiN/Twitters-former-Asian-chief-joins-mobile-ad-startup-Unlock.html,"Singapore: Aliza Knox helped Twitter Inc. and Google Inc. build Asian businesses from scratch. Now she plans to do the same for an Australian mobile advertising start-up whose backers include 21st Century Fox Inc. co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch.Knox quit as Twitter’s most senior Asian executive this month to join Unlockd, a company that offers users a discount on wireless bills, additional data or entertainment content if they agree to view ads when unlocking their device screens. As chief operating officer, the former Google executive will spearhead the start-up’s global expansion.The Melbourne-based firm, which got off the ground in 2014, joins a growing list of companies—from Amazon.com Inc. to startup Jana—targeting a global mobile advertising market that researcher eMarketer expects to reach $101 billion in 2016.“They are totally aggressive about the business and getting things done,” said Knox, who hails from the San Francisco Bay area and worked at Boston Consulting and Visa before joining Google, mostly in Singapore and Australia. “But they also have the humility that this is a competitive environment.”Unlockd now reaches about a million users through partnerships with carriers such as Boost Mobile, a subsidiary of Sprint Corp., Tesco Mobile Ltd in the UK and Digicel Group Ltd in the Caribbean. It works with advertisers including Uber, McDonald’s, British Airways and Doritos, and its content partners include Twitter, Yahoo and the Facebook Audience Network.The company is now in talks with carriers to expand into several new markets, including India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, company co-founder and chief executive officer Matt Berriman said. Unlockd may eventually set up a regional office in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, he added.“We expect at least two or three markets to be launched in the next six to nine months,” Berriman said in a phone interview. The company, which has raised about A$25 million ($19 million), plans to announce the closing of its Series B round in coming weeks, he added. New investors as well as existing backers joined the round, he said. Unlockd’s backers include Peter Gammell, former CEO of Seven Group Holdings.Berriman, 32, met Knox over drinks in December at a restaurant across from the Twitter building in San Francisco. They were introduced by a headhunter who thought Knox’s management experience could come in handy at Unlockd. What appealed to Knox about the Australian start-up were its strong growth potential and culture. “What I love doing and I have proven to be good at doing is taking companies from almost nothing to a really significant presence,” Knox said. “Unlockd has a tremendous growth potential.” Bloomberg",Aliza Knox quit as Twitter’s most senior Asian executive this month to join Australian mobile advertising start-up Unlockd,"Tue, Apr 11 2017. 08 39 AM IST",Twitter’s former Asian chief joins mobile ad start-up Unlockd +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/i7UwWPjk5lCNFWvDE4ohzN/HSBCs-profit-misses-estimates-as-lender-extends-stock-buyba.html,"London/Hong Kong: HSBC Holdings Plc’s fourth-quarter profit missed estimates amid lower revenue, as the lender extended a stock buyback that has driven its London shares to a three-year high.Adjusted pretax profit, which excludes one-time items, jumped 39% to $2.62 billion, Europe’s largest bank said in a statement on Tuesday. That missed the $3.78 billion average estimate of six analysts compiled by Bloomberg News. On an unadjusted basis, HSBC reported a $3.4 billion pretax loss for the fourth quarter. The bank’s shares fell in Hong Kong by the most since November.Chief executive officer Stuart Gulliver said the lender will spend $1 billion buying back its stock, adding to $2.5 billion of repurchases it made last year. Gulliver is battling five years of declining revenue as he pares back HSBC’s sprawling global footprint and cuts $5 billion in costs. HSBC also has to assess its operations after the UK voted to leave the European Union and navigate the potential global disruption from US President Donald Trump’s protectionist stance.“We anticipate new challenges in 2017 from geopolitical developments, heightened trade barriers and regulatory uncertainty,” Gulliver said in the statement.Adjusted revenue in the fourth quarter fell 3% to $11 billion, less than the $12.4 billion analysts expected. Operating costs rose 3% to $8.4 billion, compared with the $8.3 billion average estimate of the six analysts surveyed.The bank’s Hong Kong stock lost 3.4% to HK$66.65 as of 1:21pm local time, the biggest intraday drop since 9 November.In London, HSBC shares surged 57% since the Brexit vote on 23 June, the most of any major European bank, rising to 712.30 pence, the highest since August 2013. Even so, the lender trades at less than its book value.Since Gulliver started restructuring in 2011, he’s slashed more than 40,000 jobs and has pledged another 25,000 cuts, exited at least 80 businesses and reduced its global footprint to 71 countries and territories from 88. Nevertheless, alongside most European lenders, HSBC has been struggling to boost profitability. Investors need to lower their expectations as a 10% return on equity is probably the best a large universal lender can do, the CEO said in January.Gulliver, 57, along with chairman Douglas Flint, 61, are the longest-serving duo heading a major European bank. HSBC said last March that it will nominate a replacement for Flint sometime in 2017 and Flint said in the statement that the process to find his successor remains “on track.”The bank reported a common equity Tier 1 ratio, the key measure of financial resilience, of 13.6%, compared with 13.9% at the end of September. While the latest figure was slightly lower than estimated, the capital position helped HSBC announce the additional buyback, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts wrote in a report.The stock purchases are expected to be completed in the first half this year, HSBC said. Bloomberg","HSBC’s adjusted pretax profit, which excludes one-time items, jumped 39% to $2.62 billion","Tue, Feb 21 2017. 11 55 AM IST",HSBC’s profit misses estimates as lender extends stock buyback +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/7gGGBT8FnSg6NDgsthwT7N/Nestle-India-Q4-net-profit-down-86-to-Rs-16731-crore.html,"New Delhi: FMCG major Nestle India on Wednesday reported a decline of 8.66% in its standalone net profit to Rs167.31 crore for the fourth quarter ended on 31 December 2016.The company, which follows January-December financial year, had posted a net profit of Rs183.19 crore during the October-December quarter last fiscal. However, net sales of the company during the quarter under review were up 16.17% to Rs2,261.28 crore as against Rs 1,946.44 crore in the corresponding quarter of the last fiscal, Nestle said in a BSE filing.Total expenses during the quarter under review moved up 15.99% to Rs1,927.16 crore as against Rs1,661.45 crore in the year-ago period.Shares of Nestle India today settled at Rs6,173.60 on BSE, down 0.58% from previous close.","Nestle India’s net sales during the fourth quarter were up 16.17% to Rs2,261.28 crore as against Rs 1,946.44 crore in the corresponding quarter of the last fiscal","Wed, Feb 15 2017. 07 36 PM IST",Nestle India Q4 net profit down 8.6% to Rs 167.31 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/NI5JcrpQXjhosrjVilThJK/Airbus-takes-new-hit-for-A400M-as-core-profit-beats-forecast.html,"Paris: European aerospace group Airbus took a new €1 billion ($1.1 billion) charge for its troubled A400M military aircraft programme as it posted higher than expected core earnings and revenues for 2016.The company, reporting for the first time as Airbus and with a new financial format after ditching the Airbus Group brand in a revamp that recognizes the dominance of its civil business, said “adjusted” operating income fell 4% to €3.955 billion on revenues which rose 3% to 66.581 billion.Its results had been buoyed by a last-minute surge in civil jetliner deliveries.Analysts were on average expecting a 7.3% drop in full-year operating earnings before one-offs to €3.83 billion on sales up 0.7% to 64.919 billion. Reuters",Airbus said ‘adjusted’ operating income fell 4% to €3.955 billion on revenues which rose 3% to 66.581 billion,"Wed, Feb 22 2017. 12 58 PM IST",Airbus takes new hit for A400M as core profit beats forecasts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/HUiWOmht4ItjC2UCv1wNQO/Microsoft-says-users-are-protected-from-alleged-NSA-malware.html,"Paris: Up-to-date Microsoft customers are safe from the purported National Security Agency (NSA) spying tools dumped online, the software company said Saturday, tamping down fears that the digital arsenal was poised to wreak havoc across the internet .In a blog post , Microsoft Corp. security manager Phillip Misner said that the software giant had already built defences against nine of the 12 tools disclosed by TheShadowBrokers, a mysterious group that has repeatedly published NSA code . The three others affected old, unsupported products.“Most of the exploits are already patched,” Misner said.The post tamped down fears expressed by some researchers that the digital espionage toolkit made public by TheShadowBrokers took advantage of undisclosed vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s code. That would have been a potentially damaging development because such tools could swiftly be repurposed to strike across the company’s massive customer base.Those fears appear to have been prompted by experts using even slightly out-of-date versions of Windows in their labs. One of Microsoft’s fixes, also called a patch, was only released last month .“I missed the patch,” said British security architect Kevin Beaumont, jokingly adding, “I’m thinking about going to live in the woods now.”Beaumont wasn’t alone. Matthew Hickey, of cybersecurity firm Hacker House, also ran the code against earlier versions of Windows on Friday. But he noted that many organizations put patches off, meaning “many servers will still be affected by these flaws.”Everyone involved recommended keeping up with software updates.“We encourage customers to ensure their computers are up-to-date,” Misner said.",Microsoft security manager Phillip Misner said that the software giant had already built defences against nine of the 12 tools disclosed by TheShadowBrokers,"Sat, Apr 15 2017. 06 26 PM IST",Microsoft says users are protected from alleged NSA malware +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/nZzaphFLFUOqP1EuegR9EL/Infosys-CEO-Vishal-Sikka-takes-home-only-61-of-eligible-pay.html,"New Delhi: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, whose pay package was a point of contention for the company’s founders, has drawn $ 6.68 million (about Rs 43 crore) or 61% of the promised compensation for the 2016-17 fiscal. Sikka was eligible for a $11 million pay including basic salary, variable pay, restricted stock units (RSUs) and performance stock options for the year. Incidentally, this is also lower than what Sikka drew in the previous financial year when he took home Rs 48.73 crore. According to Infosys’ financial statements that outline compensation to key executives, Sikka received only $3.68 million of the $8 million variable component that he was promised. One of the highest paid executives in the Indian IT industry, Sikka took home $0.82 million in variable pay, $1.9 million in RSUs and ESOPs worth $0.96 million, totalling $3.68 million. Sikka’s salary was revised from $7.08 million to a handsome $11 million package with effect from April 2016, a move that did not go down well with the founders, including NR Narayana Murthy. The $11 million package was to include a base salary of $1 million and $2 million worth of stock annually as well $3 million in variable pay. Sikka is also eligible for another $5 million worth of performance-based equity and stock options upon achievement of certain performance targets.Also Read: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka guaranteed 90% of $11 million salary“The Board, based on the recommendations of the Nominations Committee, approved on April 13, 2017, $0.82 million as variable pay to CEO for the year ended March 31, 2017,” Infosys said. It further mentions “...RSUs amounting to $1.9 million and ESOPs amounting to $0.96 million representing the performance-based equity and stock options for the financial year 2017”. While the founders had raised concerns over the significant salary hike given to Sikka, the Board, on its part, maintained that the variable component was tied to steep performance goals. However, Infosys has not made those goals public. Infosys had defended Sikka’s pay hike saying all decisions were made “in the overall interest of the company”. Infosys’ performance of 2016-17 has disappointed the street, especially after it lowered its annual revenue guidance thrice last fiscal. The “aspirational goal” of $20 billion revenue by 2020 set by Infosys looks like a tall order given the current performance, said industry watchers. The Bengaluru-based firm, which posted a revenue of $ 10.2 billion in 2016-17, has been focussing on new areas like automation and artificial intelligence to bolster its revenues to meet the said target. For the financial year 2017-18, Infosys expects its revenues to grow by 6.1-8.1% in dollar terms.","Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka has drawn about Rs43 crore or 61% of the promised compensation, $11 million, for the 2016-17 fiscal","Fri, Apr 14 2017. 07 10 PM IST",Infosys’s Vishal Sikka takes home only 61% of eligible pay +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/tKM79rbsyE9BVztFLOYMTP/Bombay-Stock-Exchange-Q3-net-profit-drops-17-to-Rs64-crore.html,"New Delhi: Leading stock exchange BSE has reported a 17% decline in consolidate net profit to Rs63.73 crore in the October-December quarter of the current fiscal.The exchange had posted a net profit of Rs76.73 crore in the third quarter ended 31 December 2015-16, latest update available with BSE (formerly known as Bombay Stock Exchange) website showed. However, total income increased to Rs174.72 crore in the third quarter, from Rs160.56 crore in the same period a year ago. Overall expenses rose to Rs112.36 crore in the quarter under review, from Rs97.78 crore in the same period last fiscal, mainly due to employees, computer technology and administration related spending. Employee costs surged by 21% to Rs32.46 crore. The exchange’s group firms include CDSL, Indian Clearing Corporation, BSE Institute and BSE Investments. On a standalone basis, BSE’s net profit rose to Rs70.07 crore during the quarter under review, from Rs32.37 crore in the year-ago period. The exchange’s total income grew to Rs122.56 crore from Rs108.53 crore. Earlier this month, BSE got listed on the rival NSE platform, becoming the first stock exchange to go public. Shares of BSE were trading at Rs998.85 apiece on the NSE on Wednesday, down 0.51% from the previous close.","BSE’s total income however increased to Rs174.72 crore in the third quarter, from Rs160.56 crore in the same period a year ago","Wed, Feb 15 2017. 02 23 PM IST",Bombay Stock Exchange Q3 net profit drops 17% to Rs64 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/TJKREchLisCi5TZWTgjKzM/A-Samsung-Group-building-in-Seoul-evacuated-on-report-of-exp.html,"Seoul: South Korean authorities found no explosives at the headquarters of Samsung Life Insurance Co Ltd in Seoul, police said on Friday. A police official told Reuters that officers dispatched to the Samsung Life building in Seocho, a southern district of Seoul, concluded there were no explosives at 1:38pm (0438 GMT). The building had been evacuated earlier in the day following a report that explosives were inside. Reuters",Samsung Life HQ building had been evacuated earlier in the day following a report that explosives were inside,"Fri, Apr 14 2017. 03 12 PM IST",South Korea police says no explosives found at Samsung Life HQ +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/F7UNqEPpaZhUiZA1qxdHyH/PM-Narendra-Modi-launches-BHIMAadhaar-platform-with-incent.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday launched the BHIM-Aadhaar platform—a merchant interface linking the unique identification number to the Bharat Interface for Money mobile application—at Nagpur on the 126th birth anniversary of Dr B.R. Ambedkar.“Like Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar worked to give rights to the common man through the Indian Constitution, one can expect the BHIM app to do similarly great work through the financial system,” said Modi.The new interface will enable customers to make payments using a merchant’s biometric-enabled device. The merchant merely has to download the BHIM app on his smartphone and link the device to an Aadhaar biometric reader.“Any citizen without access to smartphones, Internet, debit or credit cards will be able to transact digitally through the BHIM-Aadhaar platform,” a government statement said.Also Read: Narendra Modi to visit Nagpur on Ambedkar Jayanti tomorrow
To avail of this service, a customer has to first link his bank account to his Aadhaar number. To make a payment, all he has to do is select the bank’s name and enter the Aadhaar number. His fingerprint will serve as the password to authenticate the transaction.To start with, no transaction fee will be levied on either the merchants or customers to encourage adoption of the new digital payment service, especially in small towns and rural India. The government statement said 27 major banks had already tied up with 300,000 merchants for accepting payments using BHIM-Aadhaar. It went on to add that all public sector banks have been instructed to go live with Aadhaar Pay. In his speech, Modi said that the time is not far when premise-less and paperless banking will become part of people’s lives. He announced two new incentive schemes for the BHIM app—cashback (for merchants) and referral bonus (for customers). The schemes will start from 14 April and end on 14 October, he added.Also Read: Is Narendra Modi abandoning his promise of good governance?Under the referral bonus scheme, an individual will earn Rs10 for every new referral made—i.e., educating another person or merchant about the BHIM app and ensuring that they carry out three transactions using the same. “Even in one day, if you refer around 20 people, you can end up earning Rs200 per day. This can continue for a period of three months,” said Modi.Under the cashback scheme, merchants can earn up to Rs300 per month for transactions made using BHIM. An updated version of BHIM (version 1.3) is available on Android and ioS. Several new features have been added to its interface such as new languages, the option to block unwanted collection requests and pay by scanning QR (quick response) codes.“The new upgrade is aligned to facilitate government’s initiative of launching customer referral bonus and merchant incentive schemes. We have added more regional languages, enhanced user experience and security features for wider acceptance and usage of the BHIM app,” said A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive of National Payments Corporation of India.Three new languages—Punjabi, Marathi and Assamese—have gone live on the app. This development was reported earlier by Mint on 24 January (bit.ly/2kbqHky).According to Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union minister for electronics and information technology, 20 million people have downloaded BHIM so far, and payments worth Rs823 crore have been made. The app was launched on 30 December. It was one of several measures aimed at promoting digital transactions in the aftermath of the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes, which triggered a nationwide cash crunch.","Any citizen without access to smartphones, Internet, debit or credit cards will be able to transact digitally through the BHIM-Aadhaar platform launched by Narendr a Modi","Fri, Apr 14 2017. 10 53 PM IST","BHIM-Aadhaar platform launched, advancing PM Modi’s digital push " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Fgz2aPDK9zg95yL1kkanyO/TCS-Carnegie-Mellon-to-set-up-facility-for-cutting-edge-res.html,"Pittsburg: A prestigious US university and Tata Consultancy Services have collaborated to set up a state-of-the-art facility which its promoters say would lay the groundwork for the fourth industrial revolution by conducting cutting edge research.The collaboration comes more than a century after Jamshedji Tata came to this city known as the steel-making capital to understand technologies which he would later use to launch India’s own industrial revolution. Top Indian industrialist Ratan Tata, joined by Carnegie Mellon University president Subra Suresh along with Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran broke the ground of the new TCS Hall at the university campus. Supported by an unprecedented $35 million grant from TCS, which is the largest ever industry donation the CMU, the building when complete by next year, would become the hub of CMU and TCS collaborations on promoting next generation technologies that will drive the 4th Industrial revolution, Suresh said. “Today, we are not looking at heavy metal and millions of tons of steel. We are looking at a collaboration of intellectual skills and the development of two countries together that might bring about global understanding between people,” Tata said.Ratan Tata, Chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, described the CMU-TCS partnership a visionary collaboration of skills that will bring understanding between young people of India, the United States and other places in the world. “The wide-ranging multi-national partnership that is creating new research opportunities, new student aid, and a brand-new facility for educational research that we are celebrating today has deep roots. In fact, the historical parallels and connections between the Tata Group of companies and Carnegie Tech and Carnegie Mellon make this new chapter in our partnership even more meaningful,” Suresh said.“In the late 19th century - years before this university was founded - the Tata family patriarch, Jamshedji Tata, came to Pittsburgh—the steel capital of the world—to learn from expert steelmakers how to launch his own steel-making business in India,” he said. Jamshedji Tata famously had four goals in life: setting up an iron and steel company in India, opening a world-class learning institution, building a unique cartel, and constructing a hydroelectric plant, he added. “Years later, a company affiliated with one of Andrew Carnegie’s executives landed a contract to build the Tata plant in India, bringing to life the Jamshedji Tata goal that mirrored Andrew Carnegie’s life’s work: the great steel empire built here in Pittsburgh, and a great university, Carnegie Tech, now known as Carnegie Mellon as we celebrate it today,” he said. Suresh said the latest addition to the rapidly-expanding CMU landscape, this nearly 50 000 gross square-foot TCS Hall will house research and academic spaces where both institutions will collaborate on mutual interests in fields such as cognitive systems and autonomous vehicles and robotics. “TCS Hall will house a variety of activities in education and research, as well as the CMU Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Departments. And it’ll fit seamlessly into Carnegie Mellon’s pioneering work in leading the fourth industrial revolution,” said the CMU president. PTI","The TCS-Carnegie Mellon collaboration comes more than a century after Jamshedji Tata came to Pittsburg, known as the steel-making capital to understand technologies","Fri, Apr 14 2017. 12 29 PM IST","TCS, Carnegie Mellon University to set up facility for cutting edge research " +https://www.livemint.com/Money/doyLFuwB5gJVUzNY0UGt9K/Getting-hold-of-Hindustan-Zincs-cash-turning-an-expensive-a.html,"
Vedanta group has clearly given up hope that the sale of the government’s stake in Hindustan Zinc Ltd (HZL) will happen in the foreseeable future. Why else would it decide on a hefty dividend that entails a huge tax outgo and enriches the government more than anyone else? Vedanta has a 64.9% stake in HZL, but its share in the magnanimous Rs13,985 crore payout by the latter will only be 53.9%. The government, on the other hand, has a 29.5% stake in HZL, but gets 41.5% share of the spoils. This is thanks to the dividend distribution tax of over 20% that firms have to bear while paying dividends. A number of companies such as Wipro Ltd and Bharti Airtel Ltd have used tender buybacks as a means to return cash to shareholders, given the large amount of tax savings. Vedanta, unfortunately, doesn’t have that luxury. Because of a Supreme Court order that has stayed the sale of the government’s residual stake in HZL, it may not be able to participate in a tender buyback offer. And if the company were to go ahead with a buyback without the government participating, that would result in a drop in the government’s shareholding, which may again flout the apex court’s directives. As such, dividends seem to be the only option left to take cash out of HZL. From Vedanta’s point of view, the ideal outcome would be to buy the government’s stake and then use its control over the company to directly pursue inorganic opportunities such as its interest in Anglo American Plc. Now, apart from gifting the government a disproportionate share of HZL’s cash, it also has to share the company’s cash with its minority shareholders, as well as those of Vedanta Ltd and Vedanta Plc (see chart).Analysts at Credit Suisse Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd say Vedanta could use the funds to service some of its debt and to fund its stake purchase in Anglo American. “Depending on the extent of upstreaming at Vedanta Ltd and Vedanta Plc, the ultimate promoter entity (Volcan Investments Ltd) could receive $220-$500mn of dividend which could come in handy in pursuing its Anglo American ambitions,” wrote the analysts in a note to clients. Upstreaming refers to dividend payments by Vedanta Ltd and Vedanta Plc from their respective dividend income. In other words, Volcan may eventually get only 20-23% of the total payout by HZL. From HZL’s point of view, while the outflow looks huge, it hardly poses much of a problem for it. As of 31 December, the company’s net cash and cash equivalents were Rs25,319 crore. Post the dividend payouts, its cash balance is expected to drop to Rs15,000 crore, point out analysts from Edelweiss Securities Ltd. But that shouldn’t worry investors. Edelweiss pegs free cash flow generation at Rs10,000 crore each for fiscal years 2018 and 2019 on the back of robust zinc price outlook and capacity ramp-up.
HZL shares have risen about 88% in the past year, thanks to the rally in zinc prices. But as Credit Suisse’s analysts point out, valuations are rich. “Even with our bullish Ebitda estimates, the stock is trading at a high 8x EV-Ebitda multiple: valuations have rarely been this rich,” they said in another note on 6 February. EV is short for enterprise value, and Ebitda is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. HZL’s shares have been more or less flat since, while zinc prices have averaged at around $2,800/tonne, about $100/tonne lower than the levels the broker has used for its earnings estimates.",Vedanta has given up hope of a govt stake sale in Hindustan Zinc. Why else would it decide on a hefty dividend that enriches the govt more than anyone else?,"Fri, Mar 24 2017. 08 56 AM IST",Getting hold of Hindustan Zinc’s cash turning an expensive affair for Vedanta +https://www.livemint.com/Money/DzWxoR9lXQjXjJjCcczSCN/FMCG-GST-and-urban-consumers-offer-hope.html,"The packaged consumer goods sector had a difficult time in the December 2016 quarter. Even before demonetisation, demand was simply not getting off the ground. While urban demand had shown some early signs of reviving, companies said rural demand continued to show signs of strain. The BSE FMCG Index declined 4.8% in the December quarter. FMCG stands for fast-moving consumer goods. The current quarter has seen it increase by 13.5%, partly as the effects of demonetisation are fading but also because ITC Ltd’s stock has run up sharply.Demonetisation made things worse. In cities, consumption was briefly affected but revived as modern trade outlets stepped in and consumers switched to digital currency. However, rural markets were affected. Also, companies use wholesalers to service relatively smaller outlets and markets, and this channel was adversely affected.In the December quarter, the sector’s sales declined by 2.5%, while its operating profit fell 0.4%. Volume growth was affected, not only by demonetisation, but also by price hikes by companies to compensate for an increase in the price of inputs.Hindustan Unilever Ltd, for instance, reported a 4% decline in volumes, partly due to the currency ban and partly due to price hikes.ITC’s shares have gained in the current quarter as the hike in excise duties in the budget was lower than expected and even after an additional cess on cigarettes, the company is expected to benefit from the introduction of the goods and services tax, or GST, from 1 July.The outlook for packaged consumer goods makers’ stocks remains mixed. Consumer confidence improved in the December quarter, indicating urban markets can be expected to recover. Good monsoon rains in 2016-17 are expected to contribute to better farm output. While that is good, it is being tempered by a moderate increase in prices. By how much farm incomes improve and to what extent non-farm incomes revive will determine rural consumption trends in the medium term. Meanwhile, companies may use price hikes to drive growth till demand recovers. GST remains a key event to watch out for in FY18.",Volume growth was affected in the December quarter not only by demonetisation but also by price hikes taken by firms to compensate for an increase in the price of inputs,"Fri, Mar 24 2017. 09 32 AM IST",FMCG: GST and urban consumers offer hope +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/VvkgVCERaQta7dkKvOz5qN/Ravi-Venkatesan-In-turbulent-weather-it-only-helps-to-get.html,"Bengaluru: In a conversation with Mint, Ravi Venkatesan, 54, who in addition to being Infosys co-chairman is also chairman of Bank of Baroda, said that one of his immediate priorities would be to align all stakeholders around the transformational journey that Infosys is in the midst of.
Why did you agree to take on this role as co-chairman?Because the board asked me to. But also because I love Infosys. Just like the Idea of India (Sunil Khilnani’s book), the idea of Infosys is a powerful one; Infosys remains a vital institution of our country. It’s important that it continues to flourish.
Was this decision solely the board’s or was it made after some of the founders suggested it?This was a decision of the board. Why did the board decide to go for a co-chairman? Simple because when an aircraft is going through turbulent weather, it only helps to get a co-pilot.
Questions have been raised by some of the founders against the board and even against the management. So how would you get both the founders and board aligned and make sure this is not a distraction for the management? For the record, I was close to the founders of Infosys before I joined the board. What they accomplished was incredible. I hope to remain close to them long after I cease to be on the board. Equally, I believe in the strategy that (CEO) Vishal Sikka has set out for transforming Infosys. I intend to do my very best to see that he succeeds in this mission. Everything else is a sideshow. I don’t see any contradiction here.
How do you rate Vishal’s leadership in the three years that he has been CEO now?I think Infosys has done somethings incredibly well under Vishal’s leadership. We have a bold and differentiated strategy which customers are excited about; customer satisfaction is at an all-time high. Most employees are energized by the vision and strategy. Vishal and his team have built on the momentum they inherited and closed the gap with competition. Many seeds for the future have been sown and we see the green shoots in many areas—in AI, in automation, with initiatives like design thinking. That said, the transformation is a work in progress. Some things aren’t working as intended and course corrections are being applied. There are pockets of underperformance which represent opportunities. We need to rapidly scale up things that are working. There are capability gaps that need to be fixed. But overall, I am optimistic about our prospects.
How will the co-chair arrangement work? How will you delineate roles to make sure there’s no overlap?Sesh (R. Seshasayee) and I have known each other for 20 years and worked on the Infy board for six years, so we are quite comfortable with each other. We have decided that there are some areas that he will continue to lead such as overall leadership of the board or investor outreach while in other areas like strategy or talent I will work more closely with Vishal and his team. We have decided that we will work as partners rather than compartments.
What are your immediate priorities?My first priority is to help align all stakeholders around the transformation journey that we are on. The second is to work closely with Vishal in helping build a world class leadership team that can execute the transformation strategy.Your elevation has been seen positively and the general view is that relations between the board and the founders will improve now. What’s your take on that and how do you intend to repair relations with the founders?I have the greatest respect for the founders of Infosys and especially for Mr (N.R. Narayana) Murthy who has been a mentor and friend for a long time. I believe that everyone wants the same thing—which is to see Infosys flourish and prosper from the incredible opportunities that are being thrown up by technology shifts. The board and leadership team wants this. Investors want this. Employees want this. The founders want this. However, this is a journey through uncharted waters and so the key is to earn the trust of all stakeholders so we stay together through the ups and downs of this voyage. Trust really is the key. This requires intense, honest and ongoing dialogue. It also requires courage, willingness to experiment, assimilate feedback, learn and change.After a stellar year in 2015-16, the last 12 months have been slow by Infy’s lofty standards. What in your opinion needs to be fixed immediately in order to get back the company to industry-leading growth?This has been a tough year for everyone with growth slowing and severe commoditization. Infy’s performance must be seen not just in absolute terms but in the context of the industry. Vishal has already commented on our performance and what he and the team will do. I personally believe we have to more aggressively move investments and our brightest people from more commoditized areas towards our best growth prospects which are in areas such as digital, cyber security, AI, IOT and so on. Our job as a board is to support management in moving much more quickly on the many opportunities we have.Will you reduce your other board commitments now that you’re taking up this role? Will you remain chairman at BoB?The transformation of BoB is also a work in progress. (P.S.) Jayakumar and his team have worked really hard and we are seeing the green shoots of their labour. I would love to see it through if that’s what the government also wishes.","Ravi Venkatesan, who was appointed as Infosys co-chairman Thursday, says the idea of Infosys is a powerful one and it’s important that it continues to flourish","Fri, Apr 14 2017. 04 46 AM IST","Ravi Venkatesan: In turbulent weather, it only helps to get a co-pilot" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/f9eWG6W6oChU6EW5q94HDN/Subdued-performance-from-oil-firms-in-the-December-quarter.html,"Indian oil firms delivered a subdued performance in the December quarter. Take for instance Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL’s) results. Despite the fact that it crossed the Rs8,000-crore mark in stand-alone net profit for the first time, the performance would have been sweeter if income from sources other than its main business had not played a key role in boosting profit. Notably, while RIL’s gross refining margin (GRM) improved to $10.8 a barrel from $10.1 a barrel in the September quarter, the measure was lower than expected, considering that the benchmark Singapore refining margin had done much better sequentially.GRM is the realization from turning every barrel of crude oil into finished products and is an important measure of profitability for refining firms.RIL’s petrochemicals segment performed well but that couldn’t compensate for the disappointment from the refining business. However, investors have little to complain given that the stock has appreciated as much as 21% till 17 March since RIL announced it will start charging its customers in the telecom business. Further stock appreciation will be dependent on how the telecom venture fares in the days to come.State-run refining and marketing firms—Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) and India Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL)—delivered a decent performance. Reported GRMs improved sequentially. Inventory gains helped. According to analysts from Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd, core earnings, adjusted for inventory gains, came in at Rs12.7/12.1/7.6/ share for BPCL/HPCL/IOCL versus reported earnings per share of Rs15.7/15.7/8.4, respectively. “After adjusting for one-offs, core earnings of IOCL and BPCL came in-line with our estimates but HPCL missed the mark on this metric as marketing margins disappointed,” an Emkay report said last month. However, broadly, reported earnings of all three firms were in-line, according to Emkay. These stocks have done well in the past two years, helped by diesel price deregulation and improvements in earnings. A further upside can come if refining margins improve further.Meanwhile, stocks of upstream oil firms—Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd—have performed well in the past couple of months, thanks to firmer crude prices. However, if oil prices continue to remain range-bound, further appreciation in shares of ONGC and Oil India will be tough. Both firms saw their net price realization improve year-on-year as well as sequentially.",Oil firms delivered a subdued performance for the December quarter,"Fri, Mar 24 2017. 08 14 AM IST",Subdued performance from oil firms in the December quarter +https://www.livemint.com/Home-Page/VUSHJAfWDwNmKpz3Kk1qCN/IT-sector-Donald-Trump-Rupee-worsen-matters-in-December-qu.html,"Growth of information technology (IT) services firms continues to decelerate on a year-on-year basis. Growth in constant currency terms stood at 8.7% for tier-I IT companies in the December quarter, excluding Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., according to data collated by Nomura Research. Two quarters ago, growth stood at over 10%, and a year before that, growth was in the teens.Of course, that growth rates have been declining in the IT sector is well known and, as a result, IT stocks have underperformed the Nifty 50 index by around 18% in the past year.The moot question is if the December quarter results give signs of a possible turnaround. Investors will be disappointed there. Nomura’s analysts point out that growth in the key US region was the slowest in 12 quarters. Growth in some of the industry verticals that were doing well in previous quarters, such as retail, healthcare and telecom, slowed in the December quarter. And the performance of the largest industry vertical—banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI)—gave no hints of a turnaround. Besides, as US firms await the broad policy direction of the new government, there may be some delays in taking decisions.Of course, there are some silver linings. Companies, for instance, are sounding more optimistic, especially with regards to demand from BFSI. Besides, analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities say the intensity with which some large corporations shifted work to captive units earlier has abated to an extent.But, from the looks of it, things are likely to go further south before any turnaround comes about. The recent appreciation in the rupee is likely to worsen matters for Indian IT companies. Profit margins have already been under pressure, owing to the increased investments in building digital capabilities and thanks to pricing pressure in the traditional application maintenance work. Besides, all of the noise against H1B visas in the US may result in new laws that increase costs of providing on-site services. Kotak’s analysts wrote in a note to clients, “In case the rupee were to sustain at current levels, we do highlight that many traditional levers of the industry are exhausted... Our EPS (earnings per share) estimates for FY2018/19 are based on INR/USD rate of 68 and have 5-9% downside risk at spot prices.”",The recent appreciation in rupee may worsen matters for Indian IT firms as profit margins are already under pressure owing to increased investments in building digital capabilities ,"Fri, Mar 24 2017. 07 56 AM IST","IT sector: Donald Trump, rupee worsen matters in December quarter" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/98SkA1oIxibecP6r0FUgDN/Power-utilities-eye-on-key-milestones-helped-investors-over.html,"The absence of negative surprises proved to be good news for power utilities. Against an 8% rise in the Sensex, the BSE Power index gained 10% in the first two months of 2017 even as the companies reported a lacklustre performance for the December quarter.Overall generation was up 5.3%, slightly better than the 4.4% rise a year ago. Power production at NTPC Ltd was up just 1%. As power off-take remained subdued, the firm’s thermal power plants’ utilization dropped 1%. “3QFY17 has seen a continuation of the overall trend of weak power demand growth, subdued merchant prices, back-downs by discoms and marginal generation capacity addition,” Antique Stock Broking Ltd said in a review.Due to a normalization of taxes, NTPC’s unadjusted profits fell 7.5%. JSW Energy Ltd reported an even steeper drop in profit on high costs and low realizations. Still, as the rise in the BSE Utilities index shows, investors attached little importance to the results. Why? Because of positive commentary from managements and the hope that 2017 will end the woes of Tata Power Co. Ltd and Adani Power Ltd.NTPC maintained its 4,000 megawatts (MW) capacity addition guidance for the current fiscal despite adding just 1,400MW till December. Similarly, Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd, whose project start-ups grew just 2% from the September quarter, indicated strong capitalization in January-March. “As against ~4,650 ckm (circuit km) transmission line commissioned in 9mFY17, management is targeting to commission a ~4,750 ckm transmission line in 4QFY17E,” HDFC Securities Ltd wrote in a note.Tata Power’s coal business venture did well. But high coal prices affected profitability of its Mundra plant. Adani Power reported a higher-than-expected loss on low volume off-take and shortage of domestic coal. Even then both stocks went up in January-February on speculation the coming Supreme Court order will end the under-recovery woes at their plants in Mundra, Gujarat. “For us, the key trigger remains the Supreme Court’s ratification of CERC (central electricity regulatory commission) compensatory tariff recommendations,” Edelweiss Securities Ltd wrote in a note on Tata Power.The story is similar at CESC Ltd. The stock, too, has gained sharply, as the management said its Spencer’s retail business, which has been losing money, stopped making losses at the operating level in the last quarter. Further, it also indicated it is open to listing the retail business, fuelling valuation gains. With the retail business showing signs of profitability, analysts are optimistic CESC’s return ratios will improve.The optimism is also providing heft to NTPC, Power Grid, Tata Power, and Adani Power. The question is: will 2017 live up to the expectations?","Overall electricity generation in the December quarter was up 5.3%, only slightly better than the 4.4% rise in the year ago quarter","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 06 22 AM IST",Power utilities: eye on key milestones helped investors overcome subdued Q3 +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/kLLfcgwmK9tjLvQJJbsyCO/Aiming-to-launch-new-antibiotic-in-US-in-202021-Wockhardt.html,"
Mumbai: Drugmaker Wockhardt Ltd’s extensive antibiotics research is expected to start yielding benefits soon, with one of its new drugs likely to be launched in the US in 2020-21. Notwithstanding regulatory issues, the company’s new drugs pipeline of five antibiotics looks promising, says Habil Khorakiwala, founder chairman of Wockhardt. In an interview, he talks about how the new drugs portfolio will pan out and ongoing efforts to resolve compliance issues with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Edited excerpts:
Wockhardt recently got USFDA approval for the abridged phase-III clinical trial for one new antibiotic. When will the company start the trial and when can we expect the product to be launched?We will start trials for WCK 5222 in two to three months. It will take about two years to complete the trial. Today, there is a major crisis in antibiotics. It has happened mainly because large companies have reduced or given up antibiotic research over the last 30 years and the number of approvals has come down. We started our antibiotics research programme 20 years back. In all, 11 antibiotics in clinical trials have received qualified infectious disease product (QIDP) status, of which five are Wockhardt’s drugs. One of the things that the USFDA has done is that where there is a huge unmet need, they are fast-tracking approvals. For our antibiotic, WCK 5222, USFDA has asked us to do a single trial on a limited 600-650 patients. Normally, they ask for two full clinical trials with 1,000-1,200 patients. Hopefully, we will launch the drug in the US in 2020-21. We might have to do some trials post the marketing approval.
In what stage of development are the other four new antibiotics?For two drugs—WCK 771 and WCK 2349—we plan to soon begin phase-III clinical trials in India and hope to launch them in the domestic market in two years. Another one will enter phase-III trials in India after about eight to nine months. The next new drug that we plan to take to the US market is WCK 4282, which is indicated for treating urinary tract infections, hospital-acquired bacterial pneumonia and bloodstream infections.
Will you out-license the new drugs?We are not looking to out-license all of them. Some of the products for hospital-acquired infections (the company has three such products) we can commercialize on our own. For those drugs, we don’t need a large sales force. We may look at partnerships for other drugs for the US market. We plan to out-license our entire new drug portfolio for the Japan market, where we do not have any presence. For Europe and other markets, we haven’t decided yet.
How are you funding the research activities?We have about Rs2,000 crore of cash; so we are utilizing that. Plus, with our growth in India, the UK and emerging markets, we expect profitability to improve. This will be able to absorb our research and development expenses. We will maintain R&D spend around the same level as last year or slightly higher for the next two years and a significant portion of it will be spent on clinical trials of new drugs. In 2015-16, R&D spend was Rs669 crore, accounting for 15% of total sales.
Wockhardt’s five manufacturing plants are facing compliance issues with the USFDA. What remedial measures has the company taken?We have been having regular dialogues with FDA regarding remedial measures at our plants. We meet them two to three times a year. Some of the things we have done are that we have a whole new team in manufacturing and quality control and we are giving a lot of training to employees at various levels. We have automated quality systems to ensure data integrity. We are also trying to simplify operating procedures. All these activities are being done along with third-party consultants. We are focusing on one plant at a time.Were any of the company’s plants inspected recently by the USFDA or is any inspection likely in the near future?I will not be able to comment on this. Given that US business has taken a hit due to regulatory issues, what is the growth outlook for the next two-three years?We can expect double-digit revenue growth. Our India, UK and emerging markets business is doing well and it will continue. For the US market, we have already initiated a process of site transfer for critical products to third-party manufacturing plants. This is for both APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients) and formulations. So, we are trying to mitigate the risks. We might get some product approvals in the current year and also in the next two years. We also hope to get clearance from USFDA for our plants. Any positives in terms of US market will provide incremental growth.What about profitability?I would not like to comment on this. Are you planning to launch insulin products in regulated markets?We have already launched insulin products in India and in emerging markets. In the near term, we are not looking to launch them in regulated markets as our focus is on the new antibiotic drugs pipeline. However, diabetes is one area where we are trying to build a portfolio for the US market.","Wockhardt chairman Habil Khorakiwala on the pharma firm’s plans, how its new drugs portfolio will pan out and ongoing efforts to resolve compliance issues with US FDA","Tue, Apr 11 2017. 03 30 AM IST",Wockhardt aiming to launch new antibiotic in US in 2020-21: Habil Khorakiwala +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/LRIrtbIcBarOSDv7brfdAJ/In-battle-of-billionaires-Masayoshi-Son-set-to-clash-with-J.html,"Bangalore: SoftBank Group Corp.’s Masayoshi Son and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos are heading for a clash in India.SoftBank is closing in on an agreement to combine its e-commerce company Snapdeal with market leader Flipkart Online Services Pvt. Ltd, creating a stronger domestic player to compete with the American behemoth, according to people familiar with the matter. To get the merger done, Son is willing to cut Snapdeal’s valuation 85% to $1 billion, said the people, asking not to be named because the talk is private.Snapdeal’s founders and early investors had resisted such a steep cut, but SoftBank has argued the deal is necessary as venture funding dries up and competition intensifies, the people said. Talks are now in the final stages and a deal could be signed within weeks, they said, though it’s also possible they could fall apart.Snapdeal co-founder and chief executive officer Kunal Bahl raised the possibility of an acquisition in an email to employees over the weekend, explaining he and co-founder Rohit Bansal are seeking to protect employees.Also read: Snapdeal’s co-founders hint firm’s fate not in their hands“While our investors are driving the discussions around the way forward, I am reaching out to let you know that the well-being of the entire team is mine and Rohit’s top and only priority,” Bahl wrote, according to a copy obtained by Bloomberg.Flipkart, Snapdeal and SoftBank all declined to comment.The combination of India’s two leading e-commerce players is being called an arranged marriage, said the people, with Son playing the role of matchmaker. The Japanese billionaire, who owns about a third of Snapdeal parent Jasper Infotech Pvt., plans to contribute that equity to the merged entity and to infuse another $500 million to $1 billion in Flipkart through a transaction with Flipkart backer Tiger Global Management, the people said.That would give Flipkart more firepower to battle Amazon in one of the world’s fastest growing online retail markets. The Seattle-based company has vowed to spend $5 billion in the country and India chief Amit Agarwal has used the money to gain customers.Son financed a similar battle in China—and won billions. He was one of the earliest backers of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the e-commerce player that first defeated eBay in China and then successfully fended off Amazon. That investment remains one of his most successful to date, giving him stock worth more than $80 billion.Flipkart is already raising cash for the battle. The Bangalore-based company is said to have recently struck a deal for $1 billion in funding from investors including Tencent Holdings, Microsoft Corp and EBay Inc. An alliance among Flipkart, Snapdeal and EBay would give the business customers, scale and technology, though it’s not clear how easily those could be integrated.“We will do all that we can, and more, in working with our investors to ensure that there is no disruption in employment and there are positive professional as well as financial outcomes for the team as the way forward becomes clear,” Bahl said in the email. Bloomberg","Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank is closing in on a deal to merge Snapdeal with Flipkart, creating a stronger domestic player to compete with Jeff Bezos’s Amazon ","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 05 56 PM IST","In battle of billionaires, Son set to clash with Bezos in India" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/ZMZfS6KLNvyroUA8xcifCN/A-subdued-December-quarter-for-infrastructure-firms.html,"The construction sector put up an unimpressive show, although on expected lines, in the December quarter. Undoubtedly, demonetisation hurt the sector in several ways.One, engineering and construction work came to a standstill in November and December as the economy was hit by a cash crunch. Deferred payments to workers delayed execution and billing across infrastructure firms. The average net revenue of 156 firms in the mid- and large-sized category excluding Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T) fell by 8.9% year-on-year (y-o-y). L&T, too, posted marginal revenue growth.Road construction firms with operational projects were worse off than the rest of the pack because toll collections were suspended for about three weeks. How this impacts earnings for the full year depends on when and how the expected government compensation for revenue loss will shape up.Weak revenue trickled down to a similar performance on operating metrics. Firms such as IRB Infrastructure Ltd and NCC Ltd, that have been improving profitability, found the going tough, but were able to sustain profitability.Adding to the quarter’s woes was the weak ordering activity across infrastructure segments. Save for a few orders in the capital goods space, there were hardly any big-ticket orders in power, roads and railways.The only solace is that the large firms have put their house in order by deleveraging balance sheets, reducing indebtedness and optimizing cost structures.Meanwhile, firms in power transmission such as KEC International Ltd and ABB Ltd put up a decent show during the quarter. In contrast, firms whose performance is linked to power generation paled in comparison.The S&P BSE Infrastructure index has rallied sharply on hopes that the government will live up to its commitment of boosting investment in infrastructure.So far, reality is far from it and, given the current pace of new projects tendered until February, it is likely that road sector will not meet the targets both in terms of fresh ordering and execution during FY17.","Firms in power transmission such as KEC International Ltd and ABB Ltd put up a decent show, while those whose performance is linked to power generation paled","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 06 22 AM IST",A subdued December quarter for infrastructure firms +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/7iwNcC4z5vT21qGQVwQjOM/Neil-Hunt-architect-of-Netflixs-streaming-service-leaves.html,"Los Angeles: Neil Hunt, one of the chief architects of Netflix Inc.’s streaming service, is leaving after 18 years.Greg Peters, a Netflix veteran who works with telecom providers and consumer electronics makers around the world, will replace Hunt in July, the company said Friday in a statement. Peters oversaw the 2015 expansion into Japan and worked under Hunt as the head of streaming and partnerships.The company didn’t give a reason for Hunt’s departure and didn’t respond to requests for comment.Hunt oversaw everything from the design of the Netflix service to the algorithm that spits out recommendations and managed the technical challenges of introducing the world’s most popular paid video service to 190 countries. Investors tend to overlook the difficulties in delivering high-definition video online to millions of homes worldwide, fixating instead of the company’s multi-billion-dollar annual budget for movies and TV shows.“Greg and Neil have collaborated through the years to make the Netflix experience all over the world absolutely incredible,” chief executive officer Reed Hastings said in the statement.Hunt worked at Pure Software, which was founded by Hastings before Netflix.Netflix is scheduled to report first-quarter results on 17 April. The shares are up 16% this year, compared with 5.2% for the S&P Index.Tawni Cranz, Netflix’s chief talent officer, is also leaving. She joined Netflix’s human resources department in 2007 and took her current post in 2012. Bloomberg","Greg Peters, a Netflix veteran who works with telecom providers and consumer electronics makers around the world, will replace Neil Hunt in July","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 04 42 AM IST","Neil Hunt, architect of Netflix’s streaming service, leaves after 18 years" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/WcxYGAiUg1RKxwU6UsnxXO/NIIT-CEO-Rahul-Patwardhan-quits.html,"New Delhi: Skills and talent development firm NIIT on Friday said its chief executive officer (CEO) Rahul Patwardhan has put in his papers due to personal reasons. The company has appointed Sapnesh Lalla as CEO designate with immediate effect. He will take over as CEO from 1 August. “The CEO of NIIT Ltd, Rahul Keshav Patwardhan, has tendered his resignation due to compelling family reasons and has requested to be relieved from the close of business hours of 31 July 2017,” NIIT said in a BSE filing. It added that the board has accepted Patwardhan’s resignation at its meeting on Friday. Lalla currently heads the Global Corporate Business (GCB) which constitutes nearly 70% of the global business of NIIT. He has been with NIIT for 25 years and has served both in India and the US.",NIIT CEO Rahul Patwardhan tendered his resignation due to compelling family reasons and has requested to be relieved from the close of business hours of 31 July,"Fri, Apr 07 2017. 07 35 PM IST",NIIT CEO Rahul Patwardhan quits +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/PKXkUvo7AcpfCynDPqWleJ/Infosys-seeks-to-buy-peace-with-new-cochairman-Rs13000-cr.html,"Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd named Ravi Venkatesan as co-chairman and decided to payout Rs13,000 crore to shareholders through dividends and/or share buyback, in an attempt to buy peace with its promoters and other shareholders. Starting this year, the company will use 70% of its free cash flows (as against 63% earlier) to award dividends or buy back shares.The company made both announcements while declaring its results for the fourth quarter of 2016-17 and the full year. In the January-March quarter, Infosys reported a 0.7% sequential rise in dollar revenue to $2.57 billion (about Rs17,000 crore), allowing it to end fiscal 2016-17 with a 7.4% growth and $10.21 billion in revenue. Net profit declined 0.8% to $543 million in the March quarter, from $547 million in the October-December period. For the full year, the net profit was $2.14 billion.ALSO READ: Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout falls short of what investors needBut the big news in the company, which has, over the past few months witnessed an unseemly scrap between its promoters and board and management over issues related to corporate governance, an irregular and very generous severance package given to its former chief financial officer, and salaries of the chief executive and chief operating officer, was the elevation of Venkatesan, now an independent director, and the shareholder payout.The appointment of a co-chairman was one of founder N.R. Narayana Murthy’s demands when hostilities between the promoters and the board, led by chairman R. Seshasayee and management were at their peak in early February. At the time, an Infosys spokesperson termed Mint’s query on this “speculative”. It isn’t clear whether Venkatesan, former chairman of Microsoft India and the chairman of Bank of Baroda who has been on the board of Infosys since 2011, is the person Murthy wanted as co-chairman. Murthy didn’t respond to a query. Venkatesan responded with a text message saying: “Big challenges; bigger opportunities.”Analysts have also argued that the promoters could be seeking a share buyback. Two of Infosys’s former CFOs, T.V. Mohandas Pai and V. Balakrishnan have articulated this demand.Analysts see three possible reasons for the announcements made on Thursday.One, the board wants to buy peace so that the management can be insulated from what CEO Vishal Sikka calls as “distractions”, which were partially responsible for a poor 0.7% sequential growth during the January-March period.ALSO READ: Infosys will have to ‘live with’ H1B visa policy: Vishal SikkaTwo, Venkatesan’s elevation suggests that the board is working towards a succession plan, which could possibly even see Seshasayee stepping down in coming months, well before his term ends in June 2018. This too, was a demand raised by the promoters at one time.Three, the sudden elevation of Venkatesan could suggest that the founders have won their 10-month long battle to regain control of the board.Infosys’s board has Sikka and COO U.B. Pravin Rao as executive members and eight independent directors. Other than Seshasayee, Venkatesan and D.N. Prahlad, a former employee and a relative of Murthy who was appointed last year, the other independent directors are Punita Kumar-Sinha, John W. Etchemendy, Jeffrey Sean Lehman, Roopa Kudva and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw.Some analysts and executives in the IT industry who know both Murthy and Venkatesan say the two share a good rapport.“Knowing Ravi, I believe he will certainly be able to bring both parties (together) and (get them to) agree on things (so) that public spats don’t happen and consensus between the founders and the board and management is reached”.One proxy advisory firm said the appointment sends out the wrong message.“The appointment of Ravi Venkatesan as co-chairman may be construed as signs of Infosys’s board listening to feedback. But, in doing so, it has courted another controversy. IiAS believes that Infosys is now fighting the wrong battle: instead of focussing on its performance, it is now spending more time focussing internally and quelling perceptions,” IiAS, a proxy advisory firm, wrote in a note on Thursday.","Ravi Venkatesan’s appointment as Infosys co-chairman and Rs13,000 crore payout to shareholders seen as moves to placate founders led by N.R. Narayana Murthy","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 10 41 PM IST","Infosys seeks to buy peace with new co-chairman, Rs13,000 crore payout promise" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/9wRubKJYQPCH4Sgg754puM/Jeff-Bezos-says-artificial-intelligence-to-fuel-Amazons-suc.html,"Seattle: Amazon.com Inc. is embracing artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver goods more quickly, enhance its voice-activated Alexa assistant and create new tools sold to others through its cloud-computing division, chief executive officer Jeff Bezos said in his annual shareholder letter.Changes ushered in by artificial intelligence and machine learning will help the companies that embrace them and put up barriers for those who don’t, the world’s second-richest man wrote in a 1,700-word letter released Wednesday.Bezos repeated familiar themes, such as the need to operate a business like it’s always “Day 1” to keep a start-up mentality and the ability to act quickly on limited information to stay ahead, what he calls “high-velocity decision making.” His emphasis on artificial intelligence and machine learning was the most concrete indication of areas in which the e-commerce giant will continue to invest.ALSO READ: Jeff Bezos is selling $1 billion of Amazon stock a year to fund rocket ventureMachine learning is the science of getting computers to act without being programmed, and is used in autonomous cars, speech-recognition and Internet search engines. The technology has influenced high-profile projects at Amazon such as drone delivery, its popular Echo voice-activated speaker and the new cashier-less Amazon Go convenience store unveiled late last year in Seattle, Bezos wrote.“But much of what we do with machine learning happens beneath the surface,” he wrote. “Machine learning drives our algorithms for demand forecasting, product search ranking, product and deals recommendations, merchandising placements, fraud detection, translations, and much more. Though less visible, much of the impact of machine learning will be of this type—quietly but meaningfully improving core operations.”ALSO READ : Amazon Web Services head Andrew Jassy reaps $35.4 million for 2016Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud-computing division, will offer affordable tools so clients can incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning into their own operations. Such tools have already been used by to detect diseases and increase crop yields, Bezos wrote. Bloomberg","Changes ushered in by artificial intelligence will help the companies that embrace them and put up barriers for those who don’t, says Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 07 26 PM IST",Jeff Bezos says artificial intelligence to fuel Amazon’s success +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OqSE8rUIzkTocimNQTwufL/Vijay-Mallyas-Kingfisher-Villa-sold-to-actor-Sachiin-Joshi.html,"Mumbai: After three failed auctions, banks have finally managed to sell the Kingfisher Villa in Goa belonging to the troubled businessman Vijay Mallya to a city-based actor for Rs73 crore through a private treaty. The harried lenders to Kingfisher Airlines have ended the jinx to recover the dues of over Rs9,000 crore by monetising assets of the airline under their custody by selling the villa to actor-producer Sachiin Joshi. The sale of KFA Villa finally took off earlier this week after three failed auctions, the last being on 6 March. With this, the lenders’ only other asset is the Kingfisher House in the city, which had commanded a valuation of over Rs150 crore initially, but could not be auctioned even at the fourth round. Though both the parties—the 17-bank consortium led by State Bank of India (SBI) and the buyer actor-producer Sachiin Joshi, who owns Viiking Media, refused to confirm the deal, sources said the villa in north Goa has finally been sold to Joshi for Rs73.01 crore, far less than the reserve price the bankers set at upwards of Rs90 crore for auctions, which failed thrice.“Secured creditors have the right to go for a private treaty if the auction route fails. With this, it seems the jinx over the sale of KFA properties is over. The villa was sold through a bilateral agreement earlier this week for Rs 73.01 crore to actor-producer Sachiin Joshi,” a source who is aware of the development told PTI. The villa, spread over 12,350 sq. ft or three acres at Candolim (on the way to Fort Aguada), was legally owned by United Breweries Holdings, the parent of the airline. The lenders had taken physical possession of the villa in May 2016. The lenders’ bid to auction trademarks, including the brand value of the Kingfisher logo, in August 2016, too, was unsuccessful. The reserve price for the brands was set at Rs330 crore, which is not even a tenth of the Rs4,000 crore valuation it commanded when offered as collateral. Asked if a similar route will be followed to dispose of Kingfisher House in the city, which was once the headquarters of the airline, the source said with the sale of the villa, at least a process has been initiated. The source also said movable assets lying in the villa will be sold through a recovery officer as per the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) orders. For the third auction on 6 March, the reserve price for the villa was set at Rs73 crore, which was around 10% lower than the second auction held last December when the price of the sea-facing property was set at Rs81 crore. It was put under the hammer for the first time last October with a reserve price of Rs85.29 crore. The villa was used by Mallya to host lavish parties. SBI Caps Trustee was entrusted with auctioning the properties on behalf of the lenders. Mallya was declared a wilful defaulter and is wanted by authorities for default in payment for loans related to Kingfisher Airlines that was grounded in 2012. He owes over Rs9,000 crore to lenders like SBI, Punjab National Bank, IDBI Bank, Bank of Baroda, Allahabad Bank, Federal Bank and Axis Bank, among others. He left the country on 3 March last year and is currently said to be in Britain and his extradition talks are on. The SBI-led consortium had also reduced the reserve price of the Kingfisher House by 10% to Rs103.50 crore from Rs115 crore during the third failed auction last December. In the first auction in March 2016, the reserve price was set at Rs150 crore, but was lowered to Rs135 crore in the second held last August.",Lenders to Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines have sell Kingfisher Villa to actor Sachiin Joshi for a reported Rs73.01 crore,"Sun, Apr 09 2017. 11 45 PM IST",Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Villa sold to actor Sachiin Joshi for Rs73 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ziKqvNskZo1wquzzVS4YhL/Apple-hires-secret-team-to-develop-sensors-for-treating-diab.html,"Apple Inc. has hired a team of biomedical engineers as part of a secret initiative, initially envisioned by late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, to develop sensors to treat diabetes, CNBC reported, citing three people familiar with the matter.An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.The engineers are expected to work at a non-descript office in Palo Alto, California, close to the corporate headquarters, CNBC said.The news comes at the time when the line between pharmaceuticals and technology is blurring, as companies are joining forces to tackle chronic diseases using high-tech devices that combine biology, software and hardware, thereby jump-starting a novel field of medicine called bioelectronics.Last year, GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Google’s parent firm Alphabet Inc. unveiled a joint company aimed at marketing bioelectronic devices to fight illness by attaching to individual nerves.US biotech firms Setpoint Medical and EnteroMedics Inc. have already shown early benefits of bioelectronics in treating rheumatoid arthritis and suppressing appetite in the obese.Other companies playing around the idea of bioelectronics include Medtronic Plc, Proteus Digital Technology, Sanofi SA and Biogen Inc. Reuters",The development takes place as pharma and tech companies join forces to tackle chronic diseases using high-tech devices,"Fri, Apr 14 2017. 01 24 AM IST",Apple hires secret team to develop sensors for treating diabetes: report +https://www.livemint.com/Money/1yZ94wgKb84tIFt2e4x3BN/Capital-goods-No-broad-based-recovery-in-order-inflows-yet.html,"After a year of underperformance, the BSE Capital Goods index started the New Year on a positive note. Compared with an 8.7% increase in the Sensex, the capital goods index gained 12.2% in January-February as the companies delivered revenue growth despite a general sluggishness in investment activity.A Kotak Institutional Equities’ review of six notable companies’ results shows that revenues increased by about 5% in the December quarter.In the previous two quarters, they grew in the range of 3-5%.A Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd’s review of 12 companies in the sector shows that aggregate revenues grew 6% from a year ago. Profits grew at an even faster pace as companies benefited from cost rationalization measures.“Domestic revenue of industrial companies showed moderate growth in 3QFY17, which is heartening. We attribute the pick-up in domestic revenues to (1) the low base of the past several quarters and (2) modest pick-up in investments in certain sectors such as railways, roads, power generation and transmission,” Kotak Institutional Equities added.Overall order inflows, which reflect the business environment and future prospects, remained muted.At an aggregate level, firms reviewed by both Kotak and Motilal Oswal saw a decline in order inflows. Both Larsen and Toubro Ltd and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd reported a drop in order inflows. If one excludes these two firms, aggregate orders inflows will rise year-on-year, Motilal Oswal said.Compared with project-based firms, product companies did better.ABB India Ltd, Siemens Ltd, Thermax Ltd and GE T&D Ltd reported a year-on-year improvement in order inflows. According to Motilal Oswal, there is a rise in inquiries for small-ticket orders in conventional segments. Another broking firm, Sharekhan Ltd, says it is expecting better order inflows on improved prospects in international markets.While the commentary should provide comfort to investors, everybody is not convinced about the future growth trajectory yet. Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd’s study of ordering activity in West Asia, a large engineering procurement and construction market for Indian firms, shows that contract awards fell in the first 10 months of the current fiscal year.Of course, government-led investments in India have raised domestic market prospects. But as Kotak points out, conviction about immediate earnings growth trajectory is low right now. “The high valuations of industrial and infrastructure stocks reflect the market’s confidence in a recovery of revenues and profits in the medium term. We do not dispute the medium-term potential of investment in India but suspect that revenues will continue to be weak for the next few quarters,” Kotak adds.","Government-led investments have raised domestic market prospects, but conviction about immediate earnings growth trajectory is low right now, say analysts","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 06 22 AM IST",Capital goods: No broad based recovery in order inflows yet +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/NNtey8iJPECWVeFVB8i76L/Infosys-Rs13000-crore-payout-to-shareholders-too-little-e.html,"Hyderabad: Infosys Ltd’s decision to return Rs13,000 crore to shareholders is “too little”, said former chief financial officer V. Balakrishnan on Thursday, and added that appointing a co-chairman would make the structure much more complex at board level.“I think it’s a good step forward, but the quantum could have been bigger because they have Rs40,000 crore on their balancesheet. Returning Rs13,000 crore is too little,” Balakrishnan told PTI over the phone. “On go-forward basis, returning 70% of free cash flow is almost similar to what they (Infosys) have today—that is 50% of net profit,” Balakrishnan said.Infosys on Thursday said will payout up to Rs13,000 crore in FY18 either in dividends or via a buyback or a mix of both, after it reported an almost flat net profit in the March quarter and sales outlook that fell short of estimates.The Bengaluru-headquartered, NASDAQ-listed company said it would begin to pay 70% of annual free cash flow as dividend compared to a previous policy of sharing up to half its post-tax profit.“... I think the benchmark for IT services companies should be Accenture,” Balakrishnan added. “Accenture returned substantial part of existing cash, and also, if I am right, they returned around 90% of free cash flow to shareholders every year. So, progressively Infosys should move towards this. That is a good benchmark.”On the appointment of Ravi Venkatesan as co-chairman of Infosys, Balakrishnan said there is no substance in that because the company today has a chairman, chief executive, chief operating officer, co-COO, chief financial offer, and a deputy CFO.“And I think it’s too top heavy. And they have not articulated why this change is required now and what value it is going to add. So, I don’t want to read too much into it. I think it’s making the structure much more complex at the board level, and that has got its own repercussions,” he saidBalakrishnan also labelled Infosys results for the March quarter as disappointing. “Whole year (2016-17), they have not met numbers in any of the quarters. And guidance also looks muted. I think the performance is very challenging.”","Former CFO V. Balakrishnan calls Infosys results for the March quarter disappointing, wants the IT firm to emulate Accenture on dividend payout to shareholders","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 07 12 PM IST","Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout to shareholders too little: ex-CFO V. Balakrishnan" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/Zq642Iw7IsbA9OsU7KG6CN/Metals-Waiting-for-domestic-consumption-to-pick-up-speed.html,"Metal shares paused for breath in the December quarter, rising by 1.1%, coming on the back of a 14% increase in the September quarter. That pause did not hurt the sector apparently, as it gained over 15% in this quarter so far. A large part of that pause can be attributed to demonetisation, which had pulled down the broader market as well.Demonetisation was expected to have an adverse effect on the demand for metals, especially steel, due to fears that automobiles and real estate will get affected. While real estate has indeed been affected, automobiles recovered rather quickly, except for two-wheelers. Sales did not get badly affected, either.In some cases, there were reports that dealers had stocked up on inventory using old currency during the initial days, while in steel, an expectation that prices will be increased led to higher purchases. When companies announced results, the effects of demonetisation were hardly seen. Output was higher for most firms, especially as they were producing more metal from expanded or new capacity. Although domestic demand was subdued, exports have proved to be a viable option. Rising metal prices have helped. Overall, the metals sector saw sales increase by 12.9%, while operating profit increased by 19.6%.Price realizations have played a supportive role. Steel prices have been trending up, supported by rising iron ore prices and coking coal prices, too. The current quarter has seen that continue but iron-ore prices have come off their highs. Non-ferrous metals continue to do well. There is some concern that the treatment and refining charges earned by copper firms may see some pressure in 2017.Overall, the outlook for metal firms continues to look good. One weak link is that private sector capital investment is not picking up smartly. Along with a weakness in the real estate sector, that does not augur well for domestic metal demand. However, global trends are looking up, which augurs well for exports and prices. External risks include a setback to China’s plans to regulate output and if the US Federal Reserve hikes rates by more than expected.","The outlook for metal companies continues to look good, but the one weak link is that private sector capital investment is not picking up smartly","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 06 14 AM IST",Metals: Waiting for domestic consumption to pick up speed +https://www.livemint.com/Money/t8UNlvFm6TihoelnWnpFCN/Cement-After-demonetisation-rising-costs-unfavourable-vo.html,"Cement demand in the December quarter was impacted by demonetisation in most parts of the country, with southern India being an exception.Pan-India firms ACC Ltd and Ambuja Cements Ltd saw a 9% year-on-year (y-o-y) decline in volumes; and for UltraTech Cement Ltd, it was a 2% y-o-y fall. South-based firms Dalmia Bharat Ltd (36% y-o-y), India Cements Ltd (22% y-o-y) and Orient Cement Ltd (19% y-o-y) saw strong volume growth, benefiting from improved institutional demand in Andhra Pradesh/Telangana and a low-base effect on account of floods in Chennai during the same period a year ago. As a result, on an overall basis, cement companies reported a flat volume growth at 37 million tonnes (mt) in the third quarter.Not only demand, profitability also took a hit as production costs increased. Fuel prices, especially those of petroleum coke (petcoke), surged Rs400-500/tonne in the past quarter. According to a Kotak Institutional Equities (KIE) report, on a sequential basis, profitability of cement companies declined 11% to Rs753/tonne, though y-o-y it is up 10%.Meanwhile, low demand kept realizations subdued.In the past two months, the impact of demonetisation has subsided and the demand scenario has improved, but it remains below normal levels, especially retail demand. A pick-up in government spending on infrastructure and affordable housing projects may lead to a sequential demand uptick, but y-o-y demand would decline mainly due to a high base since demand growth in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2016 was strong. Cement prices in the country, except the south, have begun to rise, but if this improvement in cement prices doesn’t sustain, then realizations would decline sequentially in the March quarter.That apart, another worry is surging input costs. In the December quarter, a slew of cement manufacturers opted for alternative fuels to minimize the adverse impact on margins, while some others made use of the low-cost petcoke stock they were left with. As per analysts, the full impact of the rise in petcoke prices will be felt in the March quarter as most cement companies are likely to have exhausted that inventory. Diesel price, too, is trending upwards which will result in higher road freight costs, raising the production cost per tonne.Though the shares of large-cap cement companies have recovered from where they were when demonetisation was announced and are currently trading at rich valuations, given these concerns, March quarter earnings would be lacklustre, indicating that valuations need to correct.","Cement prices have begun to rise; but if this improvement doesn’t sustain, realizations would decline sequentially in the March quarter","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 06 22 AM IST","Cement: After demonetisation, rising costs, unfavourable volume base to hurt " +https://www.livemint.com/Money/VcAyqF6hHRgKcp09ZYWrBN/A-bleaker-FY17-for-banks.html,"If fiscal 2015-16 was annus horribilis for Indian banks, the year to March seems to be no different.Banks and their investors seem to be coming to terms with this as analysts have slashed their 2016-17 earnings per share (EPS) estimates for the Bankex by about 10% since demonetisation.The third-quarter financial results of banks, particularly large corporate lenders, were as painful if not more than those of the previous quarters as bad loans continued to pile up.The stock of gross non-performing assets (NPA) of listed banks is now a massive Rs7.1 trillion ($108 billion), a rise of 60% from a year ago.Notwithstanding NPA war rooms such as that of Punjab National Bank or watch lists made public in the case of ICICI Bank Ltd and Axis Bank Ltd, the rate of bad loan accretion remained elevated. To be fair, though, the slippage rate (good loans turning bad) slowed in the December quarter from the previous quarters.Of course, setting aside money against the NPA stockpile was mandatory and while many banks cut corners (shown by the fall in their provision coverage ratio), some lenders continued to make higher provisioning. Nevertheless, the cumulative provisioning of all listed banks fell 8% in the December quarter to Rs45,147 crore. But recoveries and upgrades being unimpressive, this bad-loan pile will age and necessitate higher provisioning in the future, which explains the bearish outlook on the full-year earnings.Analysts have understandably pencilled in a jump in credit costs for the current financial year.If bad loans were the constant bugbear for banks, a new irritant that chipped away some of the fee income was the waiver of various charges on ATM, or automated teller machine, transactions and use of cards after the demonetisation of high-value bank notes.Given the twin blows, one out of three public sector banks made losses while the cumulative profit of all listed private banks fell 14% from a year ago.Even India’s most valuable bank, HDFC Bank Ltd, couldn’t go unscathed, and its profit growth fell to 15% for the third quarter from 20% in the second quarter.That the earnings per share estimate of 2017-18 for the Bankex is also down 12% indicates that many feel the pain will persist longer.But, ironically, the shares of banks, especially those of public sector lenders, have gained sharply even after many reported worsening asset quality metrics and reduction in their core business of lending.These gains are largely on the back of hopes that the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would work out a decisive plan to tackle the bad loan problem.While balance sheets do not seem to warrant current valuations, analysts believe that if a concrete plan for bad loan resolution emerges, corporate lenders such as ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and even State Bank of India, or SBI, could be re-rated.“In our view, a joint private-government initiative may work, with the private sector providing the capital and expertise to manage the bad loans and the government’s legal backing to the PSUs (public sector undertakings) to enable them to make suitable ‘haircuts’ to bad loans,” Kotak Securities wrote in a note.","While balance sheets do not seem to warrant current valuations, analysts say if a concrete plan for bad loan resolution emerges, corporate lenders could be re-rated","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 06 14 AM IST",A bleaker FY17 for banks +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/7KSXeMSjQdUoSkb26XesHM/Developers-from-India-to-Chile-find-solar-gems-in-SunEdison.html,"New York: The spectacular failure of what was once the world’s biggest renewable-energy company has turned into a smorgasbord of wind and solar farms being gobbled up by infrastructure investors, clean-power developers and even a vegan soccer team.Since filing the largest US bankruptcy of 2016, SunEdison Inc. has hosted the biggest-ever sale of renewables assets. It’s shed at least $1 billion of assets from Southern California to Chile to India—some through record-breaking deals—including projects that would have died without new owners. With wind and solar supplying more than 11% of global electricity, the company’s debt-induced collapse enabled competitors to strengthen their existing hands or enter new markets.“Developers have been picking at the carcass,” Nathan Serota, a New York-based analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said in an interview. “As it turns out, the carcass was not so bad.”Based in Maryland Heights, Missouri, SunEdison amassed its portfolio by taking advantage of clean-energy’s push into the mainstream. Its financial engineering helped enable wind and solar to make up more than half of all new power-plant capacity in the US in the past decade. In the process, the company piled up $16.1 billion in liabilities by the time it sought court protection from creditors on 21 April, a year ago next week.Its ascent was marked by landmark acquisitions announced in the first seven months of 2015, making SunEdison a key driver for the clean-energy ambitions of some developing countries, including India.Now, it’s looking at how to make a comeback. After toggling between a wind-down or a reorganization since filing for bankruptcy, it announced last month a rough outline for restructuring. But it’s also sold off so many prized assets and lost key staff that questions remain about what of value will be left.“They’re not coming back as anything material, just the rump or shadow of their former self,” Swami Venkataraman, a New York-based analyst at Moody’s Investors Service, said last month.SunEdison didn’t offer any official comment.Bulk dealsWhether or not SunEdison prospers, its assets have found loving owners.Its piecemeal sales process started tentatively, but it soon became clear that bulk transactions were preferred. That meant fewer deals, a plus considering SunEdison had at one point marketed several gigawatts of assets. That favoured large companies able to cope with large-scale finance and project development, including the US’ largest independent power producer, NRG Energy Inc.“They could look at us with a high degree of transaction-certainty,” Craig Cornelius, NRG’s San Francisco-based senior vice president of renewables. “Otherwise, they would have needed four different buyers for the same portfolio.”NRG in November bought about 1.5 gigawatts of wind and solar projects—its biggest-ever clean-power acquisition—for as much as $183 million, depending on certain milestones. That saved three solar farms in Hawaii that a local utility had effectively halted, citing SunEdison’s uncertain status. Hawaii is a new solar state for NRG.In March, SunEdison one-upped itself with twin deals that would together represent the biggest-ever transfer of operating clean-power plants—4 gigawatts of wind and solar farms. Those transactions would shift its TerraForm yieldcos to Brookfield Asset Management Inc., Canada’s largest alternative-asset manager, valuing the two entities at $2.49 billion.The deals would make Brookfield—the owner of about 10,700 megawatts of clean-energy plants globally—a major solar force. Brookfield today owns a half-megawatt of solar, enough to power just 82 US homes.SunEdison’s aggressive bids in 2015 helped drive down solar tariffs in India, and its bankruptcy shocked the country that saw a big western company’s presence as a vote of confidence in its renewables goals.Greenko Energies Pvt., an Indian developer backed by sovereign wealth funds of Abu Dhabi and Singapore, emerged to fill the void. In January, it bought about 1.7 gigawatts of solar assets from SunEdison, valued at about $500 million.About 440 megawatts were in operation and another 1.2 gigawatts in development. The acquisition will help Greenko expand its generation capacity to about 5 gigawatts in the next two years, said Mahesh Kolli, its founder.With insolvency looming, SunEdison sold 198 megawatts of solar assets in Japan to BCPG. The deal accelerated BCPG’s clean-energy efforts, which date to its 2015 acquisition of solar projects in Thailand. It had already been evaluating Japan, and the SunEdison portfolio helped it establish itself there.Actis LLP, a London-based private equity firm, also used SunEdison assets to expand with a deal this year for a 1.5-gigawatt portfolio of Latin American solar projects. It wants to invest $525 million in renewable energy across Latin America, with a focus on Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay and Chile.In the UK, meanwhile, the Forest Green Rovers Football Club Ltd, purchased SunEdison’s residential rooftop business shortly before the bankruptcy filing.Forest Green Rovers, a vegan soccer team based in Gloucestershire, is owned by the clean-energy supplier Ecotricity Group Ltd. Chairman Dale Vince, who wants his club to be the greenest in the world, is building a new stadium made almost entirely of wood, and already uses a solar-powered robot lawnmower.ScaleIn late December through the first quarter, SunEdison closed more than $250 million in deals, according to a bankruptcy filing.“What made it exceptional was the scale of the overall portfolio—that it included every stage of development, that it covered every imaginable geography,” NRG’s Cornelius said. “That was the result of the expansion SunEdison had taken.” Bloomberg","Bankrupt Sun Edison has shed at least $1 billion of assets from Southern California to Chile to India, including projects that would have died without new owners","Fri, Apr 14 2017. 04 43 PM IST",Developers from India to Chile find solar gems in SunEdison asset sale +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/7Ylf5doorQDl1uLweHqdOP/India-solar-transactions-top-global-fund-raise-of-32-billi.html,"Mumbai: Indian renewable energy companies have raised over $1.62 billion during the first quarter of 2017 in transactions ranging from venture capital (VC) funding, debt financing, project funding and merger and acquisitions (M&A), according to data from Mercom Capital Group Llc., a global clean energy consulting firm. Transactions in Indian solar and renewable energy companies made up for nearly half of the total global funding raised by solar companies around the world in the first three months of 2017. The global solar sector raised total corporate funding of $3.2 billion in the first quarter of 2017—nearly double of $1.6 billion raised in the fourth quarter of 2016, Mercom said in a report on Thursday. This included venture capital funding, public market and debt financing. The growth in the first quarter is higher by 15% when compared with the total corporate funding of $2.8 billion raised in the first quarter of 2016, the report said. In its study, Mercom tracked 233 new large-scale project announcements worldwide in the first quarter of 2017, totaling 12.7 gigawatt (GW). Large Indian transactions included ReNew Power Ventures Pvt. Ltd securing $200 million from a joint venture between Tokyo Electric Power and Chubu Electric Power, Greenko Energy Holdings raising $155 million from an affiliate of GIC, and Hero Future Energies securing $125 million from International Finance Corporation (IFC). ReNew Power also raised $475 million through its subsidiary Neerg Energy by selling green bonds to overseas investors and also secured $390 million in project funding from Asian Development Bank. Welspun Renewables Energy Pvt. Ltd (WREPL), now owned by Tata Power Co. Ltd, raised $176.27 million through issuance of non-convertible debentures on a private placement basis. Solairedirect, a French solar project developer, through its India unit, secured a $100.4 million loan from IDFC for the construction of its two solar projects, while India Power Green Utility, a subsidiary of India Power, acquired a 49% stake in two solar project companies from Punj Lloyd Infrastructure. “Q1 funding levels were up in the solar sector from the 2016 lows, largely due to increased debt financing activity. Corporate funding never reached $3 billion in any of the quarters in 2016. M&A activity was also strong with several large deals. Solar public companies also had a good first quarter,” said Raj Prabhu, chief executive, Mercom Capital Group. Global VC funding (venture capital, private equity, and corporate venture capital) for the solar sector saw a 78% rise in the first quarter of 2017 with $585 million in 22 deals compared to $329 million raised in the same number of deals in the fourth quarter of 2016, the report said. The amount raised was also higher when compared to $406 million raised in 23 deals in the first quarter of 2016. There were 29 solar M&A transactions in the first quarter of 2017 compared to 20 transactions in the fourth quarter of 2016 and 14 transactions in the first quarter of 2016. About 7.4 GW of solar projects were acquired in the quarter compared to 5 GW in the previous quarter, Mercom said. However, residential and commercial solar funds dropped to $630 million sequentially from $1.5 billion, the report said.","Indian renewable energy companies have raised over $1.62 billion of the total $3.2 billion raised by global solar sector in the first quarter of 2017, says Mercom","Fri, Apr 14 2017. 04 51 AM IST",India solar transactions top global fund raise of $3.2 billion so far in 2017: report +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/V9vKBUbqVs5ZnVGZjdSXxI/World-oil-market-close-to-balance-despite-OPEC-cuts-IEA.html,"Paris: Supply and demand in the oil market are close to matching up, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday, as landmark Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)-led production cuts are mitigated by rising US supply and slipping worldwide demand growth. The compliance rate with the agreement among OPEC members and some non-members, including Russia, “has been impressive”, the IEA said in its monthly oil market report, giving a lift to oil prices. But oil at above $50 a barrel has, in turn, attracted higher-cost producers in the United States back to the market, and frantic American drilling will push non-OPEC supply to surprisingly high levels throughout the year, the IEA predicted. “Although the oil market will likely tighten throughout the year, overall non-OPEC production, not just in the US, will soon be on the rise again,” it said in the report. At the end of November, OPEC agreed to cut output by 1.2 million barrels per day (mb/d) from 1 January, initially for a period of six months. Then in December, non-OPEC producers led by Russia agreed to cut their own output to 558,000 barrels per day. The aim was to reduce a glut in global oil supply that had depressed prices.Reports this week said that OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia is pushing the cartel’s producers to extend the agreement by another six months at their meeting in May. The IEA made no prediction about such a likelihood, but said that a consequence of OPEC “hypothetically” renewing the deal would be to support prices more, and give further encouragement to US shale oil producers. This means that non-OPEC oil production will soon be on the rise again.Also Read: Indian Oil shares rise over 3%“Even after taking into account production cut pledges from the eleven non-OPEC countries, unplanned outages in Canada as well as in the North Sea, we expect (non-OPEC) production will grow again on a year-on-year basis by May,” the report said. Meanwhile on the demand side, the IEA revised down its estimates for the worldwide thirst for oil, meaning there will be more oil available than previously thought. “New data shows weaker-than-expected growth in a number of countries including Russia, India, several Middle Eastern countries, Korea and the US, where demand has stalled in recent months,” it said. Demand growth for 2017 is now expected to be 1.3 million barrels per day, down from the IEA’s previous forecast of 1.4 million.","The IEA in its monthly oil market report said the compliance rate with the agreement among OPEC members and some non-members, including Russia, ‘has been impressive’","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 09 16 PM IST",World oil market ‘close to balance’ despite OPEC cuts: IEA +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/bB4fsVMgWtZe4rJHYWqoDO/Reliance-Power-Q4-profit-jumps-on-lower-tax-expense.html,"Mumbai: Reliance Power Ltd posted more than a three-fold increase in March quarter consolidated profit, helped by a 40% fall in tax expenses during the period.The company, which is part of billionaire Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group, reported a consolidated profit of Rs216 crore for the quarter ended 31 March 2017, the company said. Fourth-quarter consolidated revenue from operations stood little changed at Rs2,466 crore. The company had posted a rise in its quarterly profit in three of the four quarters preceding March quarter, according to Thomson Reuters data. ReutersReliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.",Reliance Power reported a consolidated profit of Rs216 crore for the quarter ended 31 March 2017,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 06 20 PM IST",Reliance Power Q4 profit jumps on lower tax expense +https://www.livemint.com/Money/vL6gs3jOOs3v3mFQHfdAML/Indian-Oil-shares-rise-over-3.html,"New Delhi: Shares of fuel retailer Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) rose by over 3% on Thursday, helping its market valuation surge past Rs 2trillion, following a decision that state-owned firms will have price revision on daily basis in select cities from next month. Also Read: Petrol, diesel prices to change daily from 1 MayThe scrip went up by 3.30% to end at Rs 422.40 on BSE. During the day, it soared 4.84% to Rs 428.70 —52-week high. On NSE, the shares moved up by 3.21% to close at Rs 422.40. IOC apart, shares of HPCL gained 3.07% and BPCL rose by 1.85% on BSE. Led by surge in the stock price, IOC’s market valuation rose to Rs 2,05,113.43 crore. With this the company became the ninth most-valued firm in terms of market capitalisation (m-cap). TCS remains the country’s most-valued firm followed by RIL, HDFC Bank, ITC, ONGC, SBI, HDFC and Infosys. In terms of volume, 6.19 lakh shares of the company were traded on BSE and over 77 lakh shares changed hands at NSE during the day. Besides, IOC eight companies have a market valuation of more than Rs 2 lakh crore.State-owned fuel retailers IOC, Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL), which own over 95% of nearly 58,000 petrol pumps in the country, will launch a pilot for daily price revision in five select cities from May 1 and gradually extend it to all over the country.",The Indian Oil shares rose after a decision that state-owned firms will have price revision on daily basis in select cities from next month,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 06 32 PM IST",Indian Oil shares rise over 3% +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/n8Q7wuRkntNXBfFGfqk0aM/Curious-case-of-the-billiondollar-lithium-mine-sold-for-a-s.html,"Hong Kong: High in the Andes, in northwest Argentina, stories are told of fortunes being made in lithium, the wonder metal inside iPhones to Teslas that has captivated global investors from Warren Buffett down.This is not one of those stories.It begins in the lithium-rich salt pans of Argentina’s Salta Province and stretches all the way to South Korea and Hong Kong, leaving a trail of lawsuits and unhappy investors. The drama reinforces a timeless lesson about sinking money into natural resources: Chasing the latest rush, whether in lithium, uranium or oil, is a high-risk game.Just five years ago, investors were told that lithium mining company Lithea Inc. soon might be worth $1.4 billion. But last month, after various legal wrangles, a Hong Kong court ordered the assets of a businessman behind Lithea to be frozen as investigators chased him over unpaid debts.The man in question, Choi Sung-min, got in early on the lithium rush. In 2009, his British Virgin-registered Cordia Global Ltd. gained control of Lithea for $15 million, company and court documents show.Three years later, with the lithium rush in full swing, an investor presentation produced by Lithea valued Choi’s stake at $250 million. It went on to predict that its value would quickly quintuple once the mining company went public.Enter Kwon Ohjoon, chairman of Posco, the South Korean steel giant. Under Kwon, Posco had developed a new extraction method designed to speed up the processing of lithium-rich brine, which currently takes many months.Posco hired a geological firm run by Hong Kong-based Herman Tso, to assess two deposits in Argentina as potential partners for its technology, including Lithea.It turned out to be a controversial choice. Only a few months earlier, Tso had appraised a Russian coal mine part-owned by Choi, and his report was used to help raise millions in debt. Investors later claimed the mine was worthless—and the mine’s owner, Siberian Mining Group, saw its market value virtually wiped out in Hong Kong. Last year, a court in the city judged that Tso wasn’t even qualified to assess mines.Tso declined to comment on the report, while Choi says he has acted properly throughout. Posco said Tso’s bid was chosen because it was the fastest and cheapest.All of that came to light only after Posco’s foray into Argentina. In July 2013, Tso travelled to Salta Province near the Chilean border and pronounced Lithea’s project to be “technically viable” and worth $280 million, according to a copy of his report seen by Bloomberg.While Posco was talking with Lithea, troubles began to pile up for Choi. He was investigated by the Korea Deposit Insurance Corp., the government agency that insures bank deposits. Choi had guaranteed several loans from a Korean bank that had collapsed amid scandal, according to court documents.KDIC was trying to get the money back and said that Choi had routed a $2 million loan from the failed bank through various companies to his Russian coal mine.In an interview in Hong Kong, Choi denied KDIC’s version of events, saying he mostly used money made from an Indonesian mine venture to fund his investments. In 2014 he sold his stake in Lithea for $1.3 million -- less than 1 percent of the value that Tso had placed on the company a year earlier.The intrigue didn’t end there. The buyer was BMC Global Ltd., a BVI-registered firm owned by an associate of Choi’s who had worked with him on the Siberian Mining venture, corporate documents show. Choi said he sold his stake to BMC because of debts he owned to a Hong Kong lender and not to hide assets from KDIC.After learning about Choi’s troubles, Posco said it broke off talks with Lithea, only to reopen them in late 2014, on the understanding that Choi would no longer be involved. But a photo on Posco’s website shows Kwon and Choi together at the Argentina mine in early 2016. Choi said he was acting as a consultant. Posco said Kwon, 66, wasn’t available for interview.At the same time, KDIC continued to exert pressure on Choi. In February 2016, a BVI court agreed to freeze assets worth up to 102 billion won ($85 million) owned by Choi and six firms connected to him, court documents and Hong Kong exchange filings show.KDIC said it also obtained an order to freeze Choi’s $3.4 million Manhattan apartment.The Posco-Lithea venture, meantime, began to unravel. Last September, Posco finally pulled out, citing breach of contract, a Hong Kong court document shows. BMC was sued by a creditor, Tor Asia Credit Master Fund LP, according to Hong Kong court documents. The fund’s adviser, a firm set up by former Goldman Sachs banker Chris Mikosh and former Citadel LLC executive Patrick Edsparr, declined to comment.BMC last month agreed to sell Lithea to a Canadian company, LSC Lithium Corp., for $44 million. A spokeswoman for LSC declined to comment on the sale because the deal has not yet closed.The sale brings the story of the Argentine lithium deposit full circle, with a value of roughly twice what Choi paid in 2009—far less than the $280 million in Tso’s official valuation or the $1.4 billion Lithea’s presentation once boldly predicted. The mine has yet to produce any commercial lithium.","The drama reinforces a timeless lesson about sinking money into natural resources: Chasing the latest rush, whether in lithium, uranium or oil, is a high-risk game","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 11 49 AM IST",Curious case of the billion-dollar lithium mine sold for a song +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/AIRiv5thYrTcJDlUd0YYNN/Sanjeev-Guptas-Liberty-House-to-acquire-ArcelorMittals-US.html,"London: UK-based Indian-origin entrepreneur Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty House Group on Friday announced an in-principal agreement to acquire ArcelorMittal’s Georgetown Steelworks in South Carolina. The proposed deal between Liberty House and NRI steel magnate Lakshmi N. Mittal’s US steelworks includes a 5,40,000-tonne a year electric arc furnace and 6,80,000-tonne a year rod mill. The agreement is subject to final terms between the two parties and completion of due diligence by Liberty over the coming weeks, a joint statement said. If completed as planned, the acquisition will give Liberty House the opportunity to reopen and revitalise business, which was an important part of the state’s industrial infrastructure for 47 years before its closure in August 2015. It would also mark the first significant step in Liberty’s plan to make major investments in the US steel industry, the UK-based company said. “This is a landmark day for Georgetown and its residents, particularly families with a previous stake in the steel industry who will now get a chance to rediscover what was lost. Our agreement in principle with ArcelorMittal opens the door to the eventual restoration of several hundred jobs, both directly and in the supply chain, and it gives this region’s economy a new industrial focus,” Gupta said. ALSO READ: Tata Steel to issue debt securities of up to Rs9,000 croreThe businessman behind the GreenSteel strategy of Liberty House has been instrumental in a string of recent acquisitions of struggling steel units in the UK, including those formerly owned by NRI industrialist Swraj Paul’s Caparo Group and Tata Steel. He explained: “This is a key first step for us in the US. We’re keen to apply the same low-carbon GreenSteel vision here as we are doing in the UK. Acquiring the plant at Georgetown, with its ability to recycle scrap steel in an arc furnace, gives us a strong platform from which to launch our strategy in the US. “We’re confident that, with the right support from the community and authorities, we can make Georgetown and other US steel plants competitive, profitable and sustainable.” Confirming the provisional agreement, John Brett, president and CEO of ArcelorMittal US, said: “We have achieved our goal of identifying a purchaser with extensive steel experience and a commitment to returning this site to its steelmaking capability. We hope the community will welcome this opportunity that will preserve the facility and equipment and create good jobs with good wages.” Liberty House has also been in discussion with United Steelworkers and said it is confident that the workers’ union will support and assist in the process of recruiting a workforce to re-open the plant and rebuild the business. The 6,00,000 sq ft Georgetown plant sits on a 60-acre site next to a deep-water port along the Sampit River. When operating at full capacity the steelworks employed more than 320 workers directly and supported hundreds more jobs in the local economy. The plant has traditionally served the construction, automotive and industrial markets. Liberty’s GreenSteel strategy is aimed at achieving a competitive, low-carbon and sustainable steel industry worldwide.","The proposed deal between Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty House and Lakshmi N. Mittal’s ArcelorMittal includes a 5,40,000-tonne a year electric arc furnace and 6,80,000-tonne a year rod mill","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 22 PM IST",Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty House to acquire ArcelorMittal’s US unit +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/MYCy4rnbIKzJZHH6HV6HqO/Tata-Steel-board-approves-raising-Rs9000-crore-via-debt-sec.html,"Mumbai: Steelmaker Tata Steel Ltd said its board has approved issue of debt securities of up to Rs9,000 crore in order to refinance existing debt and to meet working capital requirements.The issue will be in the form of non-convertible debentures (NCDs) on private placement or foreign currency or rupee-denominated bonds, or in a combination, in one or more tranches, Tata Steel said in a BSE filing late on Thursday. Earlier on Thursday, the company’s board had met to consider the proposal for fund raising.“The funds will primarily be deployed towards re-financing the existing debt, capex/working capital requirements and general corporate purposes. The board of directors also authorized the Finance Committee of the board to determine and approve the timing and terms of such issue of securities,” the filing said.As on September 2016, Tata Steel had a consolidated debt of Rs82,777.51 crore. The company has in recent months divested certain overseas assets to cut losses. In February, the company posted its first profit in five quarters due to strong performance by its Indian business, a rebound in demand and higher pricing.On Wednesday, Economic Times reported that Tata Steel plans to pay $663 million to its UK pensioners as one-time settlement under a new scheme Regulated Appointment Arrangement. Tata Steel declined to comment on the story.The one-time payout could “remove the overhang of potential deficit contributions and the stock should likely re-rate”, Shivraj Gupta, analyst at Citigroup Global Markets Inc., said in a note to clients.In December, subsidiary Tata Steel UK reached an agreement with trade unions to replace its defined benefit pension scheme British Steel Pension Scheme with a defined contribution plan.At Rs454.30 a share, Tata Steel’s shares were little changed on Friday morning on the BSE.","Tata Steel board has approved issue of debt securities of up to Rs9,000 crore in order to refinance existing debt and to meet working capital requirements","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 46 AM IST","Tata Steel to issue debt securities of up to Rs9,000 crore" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/cdUzVyShdJFkE4VjPKTXuK/Ashok-Leyland-says-over-10000-vehicles-impacted-by-BSIII-b.html,"Chennai: Ashok Leyland on Friday said that 10,664 units of its commercial vehicles were impacted by the Supreme Court ban on BS-III vehicles but the financial hit will be minimal as the affected engines would be upgraded for aftermarket sales. The Hinduja flagship firm said the BS-III engines would be upgraded to BS-IV standard using its new intelligent exhaust gas re-circulation (iEGR) technology. “Out of a total of 10,664 units of BS-III vehicles, 95% were with us, not with dealers. So we will be upgrading the engines of those vehicles using our indigenously developed iEGR,” Ashok Leyland managing director Vinod Dasari said. The cost of fitting iEGR technology will be just around Rs20,000 per engine and these engines will be used for sales in the aftermarket at a premium, he added. “We can sell these engines at around Rs2 lakh though usually the BS-III engines are priced around Rs1.5 lakh. So the net financial impact on us because of the BS-III ban will be minimal,” Dasari said. He did not give details of the iEGR technology, citing it being a trade secret, but claimed it “is a simple innovative solution of achieving the desired results in order to meet BS-IV norms”. Dasari said BS-IV compliant engines with iEGR have 10% higher fuel economy and can be used for engines of up to 400 horsepower. Ashok Leyland has already started converting 250 old BS- III engines to BS-IV standard using iEGR. “It will take about two to three months to get all the BS-III engines (converted) to BS-IV. It is not about the financial impact but it’s about effort needed to do so, “ he added. The new BS-IV compliant engines would be fitted on the chassis of the affected vehicles for sale in the market. Ashok Leyland has been selling BS-IV compliant commercial vehicles since 2010, Dasari said. Last month, the Supreme Court had banned sale and registration of vehicles with the older BS-III emission norms from 1 April, in a blow to auto firms saddled with a stock of over 8 lakh such vehicles valued up to Rs20,000 crore.",Ashok Leyland said the BS-III engines would be upgraded to BS-IV standard using its new intelligent exhaust gas re-circulation (iEGR) technology,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 57 PM IST","Ashok Leyland says over 10,000 vehicles impacted by BS-III ban " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/c52jkCnBP9kqs3E67q3ClJ/Vodafone-to-sell-over-9-additional-stake-to-Aditya-Birla-Gr.html,"New Delhi: Vodafone has agreed to sell 9.5% additional stake to Aditya Birla Group for Rs 130 per share after they merge their telecom operations to create the country’s largest operator worth more than $23 billion. Aditya Birla Group has filed with the BSE the composite scheme of amalgamation between Vodafone and Idea Cellular, which stated that the merged entity shall be under the joint control of the two firms and will be governed by the shareholders’ agreement.In the merged entity, Vodafone will hold 50% stake, while Aditya Birla Group hold 21%. Upon completion of merger, Vodafone will transfer 4.9% shares of merged entity to Aditya Birla Group for Rs 3,874 crore. Post such transfer, Aditya Birla Group shareholding will increase to 26% and Vodafone shareholding will reduce to 45.1%, according to the scheme. The remaining 28.9% will be held by other shareholders. Also, Aditya Birla Group will have the right to acquire more shares from Vodafone at a price of Rs 130 per share, in order to equalise the shareholdings over 4 years. If equal shareholding is not achieved within four years, Vodafone will sell down its shareholding to equalise its shareholding with Aditya Birla Group over the following 5 years, the scheme said. Until equalisation the voting rights on additional shares of Vodafone shall be exercised jointly by Vodafone and Aditya Birla Group. The two firms had last month announced merger of their telecom operations in India to create the country’s largest mobile phone operator with a 35% market share.The combined entity of Vodafone and Idea Cellular, which are India’s number 2 and 3 mobile players, respectively, will overtake Bharti Airtel and would be in a better position to take on a raging price war unleashed by newcomer Reliance Jio in the world’s second-largest market.The new company, which will come into being over the next two years, will be headed by Kumar Mangalam Birla, while Vodafone will have the right to appoint chief financial officer. The CEO and the chief operating officer will be appointed with the approval of both companies. The two firms will have three nominees each on the board of the new entity, the scheme said. The merger excludes Vodafone’s 42% stake in Indus Towers and will be effected through issuing new shares in Idea to Vodafone, which will result in Vodafone deconsolidating Vodafone India. This mechanism will facilitate reducing Vodafone Group net debt by Rs 55,200 crore and lowering Vodafone Group leverage by around 0.3x net debt/EBITDA, the scheme added. Vodafone-Idea is the second merger in the sector to be announced this year.In February, Bharti Airtel unveiled plans to buy the Indian business of the Norway-based Telenor. The merged venture will create India’s largest mobile operator with almost 400 million users and a 35% market share by customers. The deal gives Vodafone India an implied enterprise value of Rs 82,800 crore and Idea an enterprise value of Rs 72,200 crore.",Vodafone has agreed to sell 9.5% additional stake to Aditya Birla Group for Rs 130 per share after the Vodafone’s merger with Idea Cellular,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 06 29 PM IST",Vodafone to sell over 9% additional stake to Aditya Birla Group post merger +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6EAhkoA9trizbJkE68IHrO/Royal-Enfield-rides-into-Brazilian-market.html,"New Delhi: Niche bike maker Royal Enfield on Friday announced its entry into Brazil, the fourth largest two-wheeler market in the world. The company has entered the Latin American country with three models—Bullet 500, Classic 500 and the Continental GT cafe racer. It has set up its second direct distribution subsidiary outside India in Brazil, with having established the first such entity in the US in 2015.The newly-formed subsidiary—Royal Enfield Brazil—at Sao Paulo will sell bikes to dealers, as well as conduct all front-end development and support activities such as marketing and after-sales in the country. A flagship store has also been opened in the city. “We are delighted to be formally entering Brazil, and are able to offer our motorcycles to a whole new group of customers, that will enable us to realise our competitive potential in the fourth biggest motorcycle market in the world,” Royal Enfield president Rudratej (Rudy) Singh said in a statement. The company sees a huge opportunity in Brazil that has a hugely underserved mid-sized motorcycle market with a massive commuter base, he added. “With motorcycle enthusiasts in Brazil waiting to upgrade to simple yet timeless and evocative motorcycles, Royal Enfield with its authentic British pedigree will be able to provide an excellent alternative with an accessible cost of ownership,” Singh said.In the coming years, Brazil can become one of the company’s biggest markets outside of India and help it become a leader in the middle weight motorcycle segment globally, he added. Royal Enfield already has strong presence in Colombia, another important two-wheeler market in Latin America. With a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 50 per cent in the last six years, Royal Enfield has become one of the most profitable automobile brands in the world. The company sold more than 6.6 lakh units globally in 2016-17 fiscal. It intends to ramp-up its production capacity to up to 9 lakh motorcycles by 2018-end, to meet its increasingly rising global demands.","Royal Enfield has entered Brazil with three models—Bullet 500, Classic 500 and the Continental GT cafe racer","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 27 PM IST",Royal Enfield rides into Brazilian market +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/dzury1HjNlbQPB9negm3QN/Govt-hopes-to-auction-coal-blocks-for-commercial-mining-by-e.html,"New Delhi: The government aims to auction coal blocks for commercial mining by end-December, coal secretary Susheel Kumar told television channel ET NOW on Thursday.India is the world’s third-biggest producer and importer of the fuel, and with coal accounting for about 70% of India’s power generation, the government wants to boost domestic output to cut imports. Reuters",Coal secretary Susheel Kumar says government aims to auction coal blocks for commercial mining by end-December,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 10 49 AM IST",Govt hopes to auction coal blocks for commercial mining by end-December +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8mlyw4zP4ItEDFFipEZvsJ/Bang-and-Olufsen-plans-810-stores-in-India-this-fiscal.html,"Mumbai: Danish stereo and speaker system maker Bang and Olufsen is planning to set up 8-10 standalone “satellite” stores this fiscal year to expand the luxury lifestyle brand’s reach in India.“We are looking at setting up at least 8-10 stores by the end of fiscal year 2018 in cities like Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Kolkata, and Ahemdabad,” said Gaganmeet Singh, CEO of Beoworld India Pvt. Ltd that licenses the Bang and Olufsen brand in India. He was speaking at the launch of the company’s final double-storey flagship store at the Taj Santa Cruz Hotel in Mumbai. Bang and Olufsen set up its first flagship store that sells all its home and recreational range of products at the luxury Emporio mall in Delhi.Each of the new “satellite stores”—of around 15-50 square metres—will cost the company Rs7-10 crore to set up, Singh said. He declined to share a total investment target.“We are already getting interest from malls and hotels in these cities such as hotel Taj Krishna in Hyderabad, Elante Mall in Chandigarh, Select City Walk in Delhi and others,” Singh said. “We are looking at the options.”Bang and Olufsen’s satellite stores will carry a limited range of their high-end products, focusing more on their affordable “B&O Play” range of speakers that start at Rs10,000-12,000 apiece.The flagship stores use more space as they carry Bang and Olufsen’s large screen televisions and customizable home theatre and sound systems that are priced at up to Rs3-5 crore each.To reach out to more customers, Singh said the company has been expanding its network of third-party sellers that has grown 30% annually.“Companies like Bose have the first mover advantage, they came to India much earlier,” Singh said. “The challenge is that not enough people know about Bang and Olufsen.”",Danish stereo and speaker system maker Bang and Olufsen set up its first flagship store —selling its home and recreational range of products—at Delhi’s Emporio mall ,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 37 AM IST",Bang and Olufsen plans 8-10 stores in India this fiscal +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ziQjid4pIVB2vzJONTn96H/Govt-should-call-for-50006000-MW-tenders-for-wind-power-s.html,"New Delhi: Rather than inviting competitive bids for 1,000 megawatt (MW) wind power projects, the Central government should call for 5,000-6,000 MW tenders to give a clear direction to the wind power sector, the Indian Wind Turbine Manufacturing Association (IWTMA) said.“The government wants everything to be procured through competitive bidding. We are for it. In their first initiative, they started with competitive bidding for 1,000 MW. But we feel that 1,000 MW is not enough... you come with 5,000-6,000 MW,” said Sarvesh Kumar, chairman of IWTMA in an interview with Mint on Wednesday.“If you have given us a target to do 60,000 MW of wind power by 2022 which means there has to be a capacity addition of 6,000-7,000 MW every year. So keeping that in mind, they should come into competitive bidding with (tenders for) 5,000-6,000 MW. Industry is ready to meet those challenges and whatever the tariff comes we are ready to work with that,” Kumar added. IWTMA has already appealed to the ministry of new and renewable energy to announce a bid for 4-5 gigawatt in 2017-18 to give a definite momentum to the process.Kumar also stressed that “while competitive bidding is a good vehicle, it must also encompass freedom in open access to sell the power to both captive and group captive transaction.”Under the Paris Climate Agreement, the Indian government has committed to install 175 GW of renewable power by 2022, of which 100GW will be from solar power and 60GW from wind power. Wind is already the mainstay of India’s renewable power. Of about 50,018 MW of installed renewable power, about 57.3% (28,700 MW) comes from wind alone. The past few months have been very positive for the wind sector. In February 2017, wind power witnessed a significant drop in tariffs when it reached Rs3.46 kilowatt hour (kWh) for a 1,000 MW tender by state-run Solar Energy Corp. of India (SECI).Also Read: India wind power tariff follows solar route, falls to record lowThe government also recently announced that India added a record 5,400 megawatts (MW) of wind power in 2016-17, exceeding its 4,000MW target.Also Read: India adds record 5,400MW wind power in 2016-17IWTMA also acknowledged the support of MNRE in framing and enforcement of various policies and initiatives for the wind power sector. The association in collaboration with the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) is organizing a mega three-day conference ‘Windergy India 2017’ during 25-27 April in Delhi. Stakeholders and experts from across the globe are expected to take part in the conference. IWTMA expressed confidence that the industry will surpass the government’s target of 60 GW by wind by 2022. Chintan Shah, vice-chairman of IWTMA, said, “Tremendous opportunity lies in exports from India as our goods are accepted with international quality.” “We need to sort out problems of freight, logistics, and favourable lines of credit and this can witness an export of 2 to 2.5 GW per annum in a span of 18 to 24 months,” Shah added.","1,000 MW wind power projects not enough, government should call for 5,000-6,000 MW tenders, says chairman of IWTMA","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 10 01 AM IST","Govt should call for 5,000-6,000 MW tenders for wind power sector: IWTMA" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6RVvkkbsHJ4786TWHuVDpL/Hyundai-Kia-Motors-will-aggressively-compete-in-India-MD-Y.html,"
New Delhi: Ahead of Kia Motors’ India entry, its sister company and the country’s second-largest car maker Hyundai Motor India Ltd said both companies will have separate strategies and aggressively compete with each other.“Kia and Hyundai will be different. Management, operations and network... Everything will be different. Vendors can be shared for cost reduction, but strategy will be different,” Y.K. Koo, managing director of Hyundai India, said in a press briefing.“We will be aggressive against Kia. They are competition,” he added.Koo said it will not be easy for Kia to make inroads in India since the market has changed dramatically.“Since 1997-98, the auto industry has changed a lot; the competition is very different. Now, the competition is very tough. Almost 19 players... To set up a factory is okay since people have money, but to survive and continue the success is a different issue,” he explained.Reuters on 7 February first reported that Kia is likely to choose a site for its plant in Andhra Pradesh’s Anantapur district. The Economic Times newspaper on 17 April said Kia’s investments in Andhra Pradesh could be as much as Rs10,000 crore. Mint could not verify these independently.Hyundai isn’t worried.“Already 19 players are here. If that becomes 20 or 21, it does not make a lot of difference,” said Koo, who was part of the original team that set up Hyundai’s operations in India.“Kia is not the same as Hyundai. Their DNA is different. They have different sales and marketing strategies. Product line-up could also be different,” he added.Hyundai has had a phenomenal ride in the Indian market. The Indian business is the third largest contributor to the South Korean firm’s revenue after its home market and China; in 2013, it accounted for 14.5% of global sales. Since inception, Hyundai has invested $3 billion in India. It has two car assembly facilities, an engine manufacturing unit (all in Chennai) and a research and development centre (in Hyderabad). Hyundai India is planning to invest Rs5,000 crore as it looks to double its sales in India to 1 million units by 2021. The company also plans to introduce eight models by 2020, including three models in the compact, small sport utility vehicle (SUV) and hybrid segments.The company plans to sell 682,000 units in 2017-18 and aims to maintain its market share, which stood at 17% during the fiscal year ended 31 March.On Thursday, Hyundai introduced a new version of its compact sedan Xcent, priced between Rs5.38 lakh and Rs8.41 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi). The six petrol variants are priced between Rs5.38 lakh and Rs7.51 lakh, while the five diesel trims are tagged between Rs6.28 lakh and Rs8.41 lakh. The company will keep selling the older versions of Xcent and old Grand i10 under the Prime brand to the fleet segment, Koo said.",Hyundai India managing director Y.K. Koo says will not be easy for Kia Motors to make inroads in India since the car market has changed dramatically,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 18 AM IST","Hyundai, Kia Motors will aggressively compete in India: MD Y.K. Koo" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/VGSYBOuDh0z5NfyJuVE8xJ/Solar-power-tariff-falls-to-record-low-of-Rs315-a-unit.html,"New Delhi: Solar power tariff discovered through auctions hit a new low on Wednesday with NTPC Ltd’s 250 mega watt (MW) project at Kadapa in south-central Andhra Pradesh getting awarded for a flat Rs3.15 per unit. The project was awarded to the Indian arm of French clean energy firm Solairedirect SA, said an NTPC official, who asked not to be named. Solairedirect Energy India Pvt. Ltd already has 182 MW of projects in India including 97 MW in operation and 85MW under construction. Power, coal, mines and new and renewable energy minister Piyush Goyal tweeted on Wednesday that solar tariff achieved another record low at a flat Rs3.15 a unit during the Kadapa auction by NTPC. The previous low was Rs3.3 a unit levelised tariff recorded when the 750 MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh was auctioned by Rewa Ultra Mega Power Ltd in February. Levelised tariff indicates the average fixed and variable tariff over the entire term of the power purchase agreement.Solar power tariff has been declining on account of sharply declining prices of solar panels, better structuring of the project that reduces risk for project developers and better currency hedging deals that make financing available at competitive cost. Also, many pension and sovereign wealth funds looking for not very high, but stable and long-term returns are willing to finance clean energy projects in India. At current rates, solar power generation cost is at par with that of thermal power generation. That is prompting many businesses in the services and manufacturing sectors to go for captive solar power generation as they could save on the cross-subsidy component that makes power from the grid costlier. When the first 150 MW of solar power project was tendered under the National Solar Mission (NSM) in 2010, the average tariff quoted was Rs12.16 a unit. Tariff has fallen since then almost in line with Chinese spot module prices, which have fallen by approximately 80% since 2010, according to Mercom Communications India, a clean energy intelligence provider.",Solar power tariff discovered through auctions hit a new low of Rs3.15 per unit with NTPC’s 250MW project at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh ,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 09 42 AM IST",Solar power tariff falls to record low of Rs3.15 a unit +https://www.livemint.com/Money/pH7m8GAKowUHg9ZwEqcyDL/Solar-power-tariffs-A-race-to-the-bottom.html,"
Solar power tariff hit a new low of Rs3.15 per unit in an auction on Wednesday. The previous low was Rs3.30 per unit discovered in February, while in an auction a year ago, the discovered tariff was about 40% higher at Rs4.34 per unit.Plunging solar tariffs may well have a disruptive impact on the power sector in the short term. The steep fall in tariffs is triggering a rethink among states, leading to a slowing down of fresh tenders and auctioning activity. According to Mercom Capital Group, a clean energy communications firm, states want new power purchase agreements (PPAs) to match the newly discovered solar tariffs and this is slowing tendering activity.Jharkhand which auctioned about 1,000 megawatts of solar capacity more than a year back is yet to sign PPAs, points out Mercom. “In this case the discom (power distribution company) was unwilling to sign the PPAs for tariffs above Rs5 per kWh claiming it is not viable for the discom,” adds Mercom. A derived unit of energy, kWh stands for kilowatt hour.Subdued demand is a major reason for the reluctance from states to sign PPAs. But the weak financial condition of discoms is also forcing them to lean towards cheaper tariffs. This can spell trouble for PPAs signed at higher tariffs some time back, as discoms will now find them unpalatable. “Due to aggressive renewable energy targets in some states such as Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, solar grew even at high tariff levels, only to leave these states struggling with finances a few years later and finding it difficult to take on new solar generation,” adds Mercom.According to an industry expert, every PPA has legal sanctity. But the weak financial condition of discoms and availability of cheaper energy options (electricity is cheaper in the spot energy market) means projects locked in at higher prices can face indirect risks such as payment delays or power offtake curtailments, the expert points out.The risks are not confined to the green energy sector. JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd in a report last month warned that weak demand and the poor financial condition of state electricity boards can hit conventional energy contracts as well. “With depressed power demand, even projects with PPAs can suffer from delayed payments/PPA cancellations, wherein the rates are high (>Rs4.5/kWh). This is because cheaper power is available in long-term bids at around Rs4/kWh, while solar/wind bids have plunged to Rs3.4-3.5/kWh levels. Power is available on exchanges at Rs2.5/kWh,” pointed out JM Financial.Of course, renewable energy and the spot electricity market are still relatively small in scale (compared to the whole power market). So they may not have a large impact yet. But the growing prevalence of renewable energy, plunging tariffs and easing congestion in the transmission sector, which makes it easier for states to buy electricity in the spot market, mean these segments are emerging as reliable options and they can have a disruptive impact on the power sector.",Plunging solar power tariffs may well have a disruptive impact on the power sector in the short term,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 07 59 AM IST",Solar power tariffs: A race to the bottom? +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/CwsNGhnurC6cbkfQJkdMTL/Kumar-Mangalam-Birla-said-to-eye-booming-global-carbon-fibre.html,"Mumbai: Indian billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla is exploring entry into the production of carbon fibre, a high-strength and light-weight composite material expected to be a $4.7 billion global business by 2022, according to a person familiar with his thinking.The Aditya Birla Group, the $40 billion mining-to-mobile phone carrier conglomerate, may buy the technology to manufacture carbon fibre at one of its existing overseas manufacturing facilities, said the person, asking not to be identified because the plan is private. Another option is to buy a carbon fibre plant from another company if the technology is too complex to be adapted at Birla plants, the person said.Carbon fibre is finding increasing traction among defence manufacturers and automobiles makers that seek strong, high-tensile, heat-resistant and light materials. The market for carbon fibre — dubbed the ‘wonder material’ by The Guardian newspaper last month — is estimated to more than double to about $4.7 billion by 2022 from $2.2 billion in 2015, according to an Allied Market Research report.“The main positive is that it’s a much lighter material versus competitors such as steel or aluminium — but is just as strong,” said Johnson Imode, a London-based analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. “This makes for energy and efficiency savings for customers.”The group’s consideration is still at an exploratory stage and there’s no timeline for entering this business, the person said. The demand from the automobile sector is particularly high as designers aim to make cars both lighter, stronger and less polluting, according to this person. A company spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment.Thinner than hairCarbon fibre is a thin long strand, far thinner than even a human hair, in which carbon atoms are bonded together in a crystal alignment that makes the fibre incredibly strong for its size. Thousands of these strands are entwined together to form a yarn, which can be then woven into a fabric or used as it is.The applications for the material range from aircraft and spacecrafts to racing cars, sailboat masts, wind turbines and even golf clubs. The market could grow as much as 10 percent annually, Imode estimates.Nearly half of the airframe of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is comprised of carbon fibre reinforced plastic and other composites, according to the airline manufacturer.Japan, US and Europe are home to the bulk of the world’s carbon fibre manufacturers, making it one of the likely corporate hunting grounds for Birla to scout for a target. The biggest players include Toray Industries Inc., Hexcel Corporation, Mitsubishi Rayon Co., Teijin Ltd., SGL Group, Cytec Industries Inc., Nippon Graphite fibre Corp. and Zoltek Companies, Inc.The conglomerate, if it takes the plunge, would be the first large Indian player in the carbon fibre market.Birla, 49, known for his penchant for dealmaking, has sealed two dozen mergers and acquisitions in the past two decades.He’s in the process of combining his mobile-phone unit Idea Cellular Ltd. with Vodafone Group Plc’s Indian business to form the nation’s largest wireless carrier. UltraTech Cement Ltd. had bought cement units from debt-laden Jaiprakash Associates Ltd. last year. This month he received a nod from shareholders to merge two listed group firms, Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd. and Grasim Industries Ltd., to create a behemoth with $9 billion in combined revenues. Bloomberg","Kumar Mangalam Birla is exploring entry into the production of carbon fibre, a high-strength and light-weight composite material expected to be a $4.7 billion global business by 2022","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 01 AM IST",Kumar Mangalam Birla said to eye booming global carbon fibre market +https://www.livemint.com/Money/hSmrVu8CCjIQqwQHcnarDN/Real-estate-firms-with-commercial-portfolio-scored-in-Decemb.html,"The mood was sombre in the December quarter among real estate firms. The November ban on old, high-value banknotes affected the real estate sector hugely, given that it is infamous for cash transactions.As liquidity was sucked out of the system through the note ban, and with the fear of unearthing “black money” transactions looming over the sector, residential unit sales on a pan-India basis fell 30-40%. In fact, realty firms were among the worst performers in terms of revenue and operating performance.For instance, the net consolidated revenue at DLF Ltd—the largest developer—plunged 29% in value terms. Even the more conservative Sobha Developers Ltd, which has a strong southern presence, posted a 22% drop in revenue year-on-year.Likewise, the entire sector saw tepid sales, almost nil new launches and even cancellation of booked units by customers, on fears that demonetisation could slow down the process of recovery in realty. Obviously, this had an impact on profits, too, in spite of firms being proactive in controlling marketing costs. Hence, profit margins shrank, too.Discernibly, though, those with a significant exposure to commercial assets sailed through plummeting residential sales. The quarter saw sector analysts turn positive on demand and rental rates for office space and malls. A report by Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd says, “amid the demonetisation storm and the high debt levels, we prefer firms that have a strong portfolio of operational rental assets and mid-income housing.”The December quarter results show that rental income from commercial property is alleviating, at least partially the financial implications of rising interest costs from the unsold inventory burden in residential projects. Even the real estate investment trusts (REITs) and private equity firms that are bold enough to enter the realty space, prefer commercial assets. So, firms such as Phoenix Mills Ltd, Prestige Estates and Developers Ltd and Brigade Enterprises Ltd are on a stronger foundation for now.Meanwhile, although the BSE Realty index has recovered from the demonetisation blues, retail investor interest is likely to be restricted to firms with asset-light balance sheets or with exposure to retail and commercial segments as a recovery in residential unit sales is still a long way off.","December quarter results show rental income from commercial assets is alleviating, at least partially. Residential properties still not up to the mark","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 05 24 AM IST",Real estate firms with commercial portfolio scored in December quarter +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/iydrpYaF6CSosdHPLfGzhO/Indian-MA-deal-value-doubles-in-Mar-quarter-Mergermarket.html,"
Indian mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deal value surged in the first quarter of the calendar year, driven by the telecom sector, according to global deal tracking firm Mergermarket.Deal value rose to $17.9 billion in January-March, from $9.2 billion in the year-ago period, Mergermarket said in its report on quarterly M&A trends. The number of deals fell to 76 from 110 in the same period last year.The telecom sector alone witnessed three transactions worth $13.6 billion in the quarter, compared to just $60 million from two deals a year ago.The top telecom deal in the quarter was Vodafone Group Plc.’s merger of Vodafone India Ltd with Idea Cellular Ltd in a $12.7 billion transaction that accounted for 70.6% of the total deal value in this quarter.Another major deal in the telecommunication sector was global private equity fund KKR & Co Lp’s $948 million investment in Bharti Infratel Ltd for a 10.3% equity stake.The second best performing sector in M&A was energy, mining and utilities (EMU), in terms of deal value, recording 11 deals worth $1.5 billion in the quarter. Across the 11 deals, six were in the renewable energy space and were valued at $419 million, the report noted.Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd’s acquisition of an 80% equity stake in the KG-OSN-2001/03 field from Gujarat State Petroleum Corp. Ltd for about $995 million topped EMU sector deals, and was the second-biggest after the Vodafone India-Idea Cellular merger.Inbound M&A activity declined by 28.2% to $2.7 billion in the quarter compared with$3.8 billion in the year-ago period, despite strong foreign interest in the renewables sector. The number of inbound M&A transactions also fell to 39 from 51.Domestic M&A activity increased 181.2% from a year ago with deals worth $15.3 billion.Also, it was the third-highest first quarter by value for private equity buyouts since 2001 by Mergermarket records, with 19 deals worth $2 billion.India’s share of the Asia-Pacific deal value in the first quarter came to 13.2%— the highest across all quarters since 2013.","The telecom sector alone witnessed three M&A transactions worth $13.6 billion in the quarter, compared to just $60 million from two deals a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 05 AM IST",Indian M&A deal value doubles in Mar quarter: Mergermarket +https://www.livemint.com/Money/pQdo735yWB9l58MZIPq76N/Irrational-exuberance-in-DMart-shares.html,"
It was a foregone conclusion that shares of Avenue Supermarts Ltd, which runs the D-Mart supermarket chain, would list at a huge premium on Tuesday. But a 115% appreciation is taking things too far, notwithstanding the pedigree of the company.At Tuesday’s closing price of Rs641.60, the D-Mart stock trades at 77 times estimated earnings for fiscal year 2016-17 and 55 times one-year forward earnings. “Valuations are certainly expensive; the euphoria around the listing is driving prices,” says Arun Kejriwal, director of Kejriwal Research and Information Services Pvt. Ltd.On an EV (enterprise value) to Ebitda basis too, valuations are sky-high at around 31.6 times, based on IIFL Institutional Equities’ FY18 estimates. Ebitda stands for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. “I find it very difficult to buy D-Mart at this valuation. It reminds me of the heydays of retail stocks,” says a fund manager.Nevertheless, the absurd valuations may well sustain, given a dearth of quality stocks and investors’ admiration for the company’s promoter, who is an ardent investor himself.ALSO READ | D-Mart IPO: Value does not come cheap“It may take some time for the euphoria to cool down”, says Kejriwal.“We expect premium valuations to sustain given strong growth and limited options to play the organised retail story in India,” analysts at Prabhudas Lilladher Pvt. Ltd said in a note to clients.To be sure, the quality of the company and its superior margin profile are appealing as well. Its net margin in the nine months to December stood at 4.4%, higher than Future Retail’s mere 2% margin. And since the IPO (initial public offering) proceeds will be used to repay debt, net margin is expected to rise to about 5%, increasing its lead over other retailers. Further, D-Mart’s return on capital employed for 9MFY17 was 22.9%, higher than Future Retail’s estimated return of 12.8% for FY17.Still, should that justify valuations of as high as 31.6 times Ebitda. Analysts at IIFL Institutional Equities, for instance, have a price target of Rs480 for the stock, at EV/Ebitda valuations of roughly 24 times, based on its FY18 estimates. In hindsight, it’s clear that the issue was underpriced. S.P. Tulsian, an independent analyst says, “It was a goodwill gesture on the part of the company to price the issue lower and the market has rewarded it generously.” But as a consequence, the company ended up raising far less funds than it could potentially have raised. The value of its free float capital has risen by around Rs2,000 crore; if it had decided to share half of the spoils by pricing the issue higher, D-Mart would have received an additional inflow of around Rs1,000 crore. That is fairly significant for a company with a balance-sheet size of around Rs4,000 crore.While the good taste of the spectacular listing may linger for some time, investors would be keen to know whether growth rates will persist. More recently, revenue growth has slowed. For FY16 and FY15, revenue growth was 33% and 37%, respectively, year-on-year. That is lower than the annual revenue growth seen in the preceding two years.It’s also worth remembering that D-Mart’s quarterly financial results history and the impact of seasonality, if any, is not known to the Street yet. Those factors are worth watching for the stock along with other factors such as same-store sales growth. And finally, with valuations so high, there is hardly any room for error on any of these counts.","The 115% appreciation in D-Mart share prices on listing day is taking things too far, notwithstanding the pedigree of the parent company Avenue Supermarts","Wed, Mar 22 2017. 03 47 AM IST",Irrational exuberance in D-Mart shares +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/qlBKKeevOpuzCLlqQmCydJ/Air-traffic-growth-slows-to-18month-low-as-fares-rise.html,"
New Delhi: Higher fares slowed air passenger traffic growth to an 18-month low in March, typically a lean month for air travel.Passenger traffic grew 14.9% to 9 million passengers during the month, as against 7.8 million a year ago, according to data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Thursday. Air traffic growth has remained around 20% in the past two and half years. The last time it fell below 15% was in September 2015, when it grew 14.56%. Despite a significant increase in capacity, airlines have been flying with high occupancy. This presented an opportunity to charge higher.“Why lose the opportunity to get higher fares?” an airline executive said, declining to be named. Fares have been raised gradually over the past few weeks, the executive added.Cheaper fares increase discretionary travel, which gets curtailed when fares rise.In March, SpiceJet flew its planes 91.4% full, AirAsia 87.8%, GoAir 84.8%,Vistara 82.2%, IndiGo 81.6%, Jet Airways 79.8% and Air India 74.6%.Flights between metros were fairly on time. IndiGo regained its top spot in terms of on-time performance after many months. Its flights in four metros were 88% on time, displacing previous No. 1 SpiceJet, which came in at 85.7%. Vistara (85.1%), GoAir (81.8%), Jet Airways (80.7%) and Air India (79.7%) followed. Regional airline Air Carnival flew 64.8% full, Zoom Air 74.6% and TruJet 75%. Air Costa did not operate, as its planes were impounded by aircraft lessors GE Capital Aviation Services over non-payment of dues. Airlines’ market share remained mostly consistent. IndiGo’s domestic market share was 39.9%, followed by Jet (17.9%), SpiceJet (13.2%), Air India (13%), GoAir (8.9%), Vistara (3.2%) and AirAsia India (3.1%). To be sure, Air India and Jet Airways have significant international operations, while the other airlines mostly fly domestic. The number of complaints against airlines fell from the month of February. There were a total of 680 complaints that DGCA received in March, compared with February’s 810. Of these, 242 were against Air India, 213 against Jet Airways, 90 against IndiGo. SpiceJet had 58 complaints, GoAir 55, AirAsia 16, TruJet and Vistara had three each. April-June is considered the peak season for air travel in India as schools shut for summer vacations. “Airfares will rise; you will see strong yields in this quarter from 15 April to June-end,” the airline official cited above said, “Once a customer become accustomed to pay less, he will never pay more.”","Air passenger traffic grew 14.9% to 9 million passengers during the month, as against 7.8 million a year ago, according to data released by the DGCA","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 51 AM IST",Air traffic growth slows to 18-month low as fares rise +https://www.livemint.com/Money/V2pc0Vfm1lm46UhL6Bq3RO/Ashoka-Buildcons-diversified-order-mix-supports-profit-marg.html,"
Private sector infrastructure firm Ashoka Buildcon Ltd scaled a 52-week high of Rs199 last week as it became the lowest bidder for a Rs1,187 crore road project. The project, once secured, will increase its already swelling order book of Rs6,220 crore, which is three times the company’s trailing consolidated revenue.What sets Ashoka Buildcon apart from its peers is that its order book comprises a healthy 44% of engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) projects, 29% of build-operate-transfer (BOT) projects and the rest in power transmission and distribution (T&D). So far, the EPC projects in its kitty have been on schedule.Its December quarter’s 18% growth in stand-alone revenue was the result of the company kick-starting projects bagged in fiscal year 2016. The operating leverage gave a leg-up to its profit margin that rose 50 basis points year-on-year. In fact, operating profitability at both EPC and BOT levels has steadily improved over the last two years. Of course, like others in the infrastructure pack, Ashoka Buildcon’s December quarter performance was hit by demonetization, when toll collection was suspended for 23 days. Collections were about 25% lower than the year-ago period.Still, this did not hamper profit growth. Net profit for the quarter was a little over double that in the year-ago period.Analysts are positive on the stock’s prospects also because the company operates roads in key mineral-rich states. Chances of revenue accretion are higher on these routes with economic and industrial recovery, both by way of increased traffic and higher incidence of commercial vehicles plying on these routes.That said, being nimble-footed in bagging orders could lead to a rise in debt, which is currently twice the equity at the consolidated level. A report by Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd says, “ABL’s (Ashoka Buildcon’s) strong order book and low stand-alone debt levels will drive the EPC revenue by a compounded annual growth rate of 17% between FY2017 and 2019.”Since January, the Ashoka Buildcon stock has gained momentum on the back of strong execution and order wins. There is significant wind beneath its wings, provided its robust order book is converted into revenue through timely execution.","There is significant wind beneath Ashoka Buildcon’s wings, provided its robust order book is converted into revenue through timely execution","Tue, Mar 21 2017. 08 12 AM IST",Ashoka Buildcon’s diversified order mix supports profit margins +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/UYeVFYlczk1w8uhIyHZRZP/An-unequal-balance.html,"
You might have met this boss. His hand brushes your back. One-on-one discussions are laced with innuendo. At meetings he will ask about your love life. He’s just being “friendly”; don’t be such a prude, yaar, the others will say. You shrug. You ignore it. You need the job. Or you could choose to complain. Should you choose this option, here is what will likely happen. You might discover that your organization is the one in three Indian companies that doesn’t have an Internal Complaints Committee (ICC), as required by the law, because “these kind of things don’t happen here”. Or, if it has one, it will initiate a hearing to which you will be summoned and asked about specific incidents and perhaps also about whether you have a boyfriend, your drinking habits and so on. Colleagues could urge you to “settle”. As you approach the water-cooler, conversation will cease because, naturally, everyone is gossiping about you—she’s not that attractive. Wasn’t she overlooked for promotion…?Despite a law since 2013 and the Vishakha guidelines before that, sexual harassment at the workplace remains a maze that nobody seems to be able to negotiate. To start with, there seems to be a complete and perhaps deliberate lack of awareness as to what constitutes sexual harassment. Is it against the law to call a female colleague “sexy”? Is it OK to do so outside the office? The answers are simple: Yes and no. So, even if you’re a heterosexual single male, you may not call a female colleague “sexy” because, guess what, to do so would be not just morally wrong and demeaning to her, it is also against the law. Easy and straightforward? Not quite. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from a spate of high profile cases from Greenpeace India to The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri), it is that the wheels of justice seem stuck in the mire. ALSO READ | Understanding the male principleAt Teri where forensics have established that R.K. Pachauri’s claim that his phone and email were hacked was a lie, the original woman complainant has quit the organization and is now working for another research institute. “Sexual harassment and assault can scar you for life,” she says. But, “if someone is willing to talk, they must be given a patient hearing because they can be true survivors of a willful misogynist crime penetrated deep in mindsets that we assume to be liberal and modern.” Why is the law failing women like her? “It’s the attitude of the organization,” she says. Companies tend to support the more powerful accused male rather than the subordinate female complainant. Moreover, there’s a tendency to brush the matter under the carpet for fear that it will damage the company’s reputation. “We don’t think the violation of a woman’s dignity or bodily integrity is a crime,” says advocate Vrinda Grover. The problem is not that organizations are unaware of the law. The problem is that they don’t care. A text-book case on how not to deal with sexual harassment would be the manner in which entertainment content start-up, The Viral Fever, dealt with an anonymous social media complaint. Refusing to even acknowledge such a possibility (and I concede that an anonymous social media complaint comes with its own set of problems), an initial company statement threatened to “find the author of the article and bring them to severe justice”. The company has since, after howls of protest on social media, admitted to being “confused” and says it is now “committed to getting to the bottom of these allegations.” At a time when India’s female labour force participation is declining and economists are talking about the potential boost to gross domestic product (GDP) from equal participation, it might be useful to look at conditions that make it hostile for women to seek jobs. National Crime Records Bureau data finds a 51% increase in cases of sexual harassment cases from 2014 to 2015. Nearly 70% of respondents in a survey by the Indian Bar Association earlier this year said they would not report sexual harassment for fear of reprisals. And smaller companies might be prone to serious under-reporting, found this Mint report.The fact that this malaise should exist across the board from multinational companies (MNCs) to public sector organizations, from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to young start-ups says something about attitudes to women at work. This is not about a few bad apples but a culture of entitlement and an attitude that states, what’s the big deal about sexual harassment? More than committees and norms, companies need policies against sexism. A female employee is not eye candy, placed for men to admire and comment on. She is a professional worthy of the dignity afforded to any man in the office. Ultimately sexual harassment at work is about unequal power balances. When that balance is so out of whack in society, how can we expect it to be any different at workplaces?Namita Bhandare writes on social and gender issues.Her Twitter handle is @namitabhandare.",A text-book case on how not to deal with sexual harassment at the workplace would be the manner in which The Viral Fever dealt with an anonymous social media complaint,"Wed, Mar 22 2017. 03 47 AM IST",An unequal balance +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/gwpGJypDwXzQh0SGkNmDYN/Vodafones-Indian-escape-act-is-heavy-on-the-contortions.html,"Vodafone chief executive Vittorio Colao has negotiated a partial retreat from a tough situation in India on reasonable terms. Given a bloody price war brought on by new rival Reliance Jio Infocomm, a merger deal with Idea Cellular Ltd is smart even though Colao has ceded control without getting a premium.Combined subscribers: 395 millionVodafone Group Plc and Idea Cellular said on Monday that they would combine their Indian mobile operations to create the country’s largest telecom firm with 395 million subscribers, vaulting the new company ahead of Bharti Airtel Ltd. At first, Vodafone and Idea will share ownership, although power will tilt towards the Indian side.To get to that supposed ownership equilibrium, Colao and negotiating partner Kumar Mangalam Birla—billionaire owner of Aditya Birla Group, Idea’s biggest shareholder—had to perform some serious contortions. Vodafone India was bigger and worth more than Idea, so the pair each contributed assets, cash and debt to get to an equal contribution.Both put in their mobile operations at roughly similar multiples of 6.4 times Ebitda for Vodafone and 6.3 times for Idea. That looks like a compromise on Vodafone’s part since Idea’s Ebitda has been falling faster than its own. Meanwhile, Vodafone has excluded its 42% stake in the Indian towers company Indus, while Idea has thrown in its 11.2% stake in that same entity, worth about $1 billion. Finally, Birla pays $579 million to buy 4.9% of the new company from Vodafone.ALSO READ | The rationale behind Idea-Vodafone merger in five chartsColao can live with the fiddly structure, given that the big prize is $10 billion of cost savings within four years from combining the number two and three operators in the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market. Vodafone and Idea will both benefit from those synergies, but how the bounty will be divided will depend on how quickly Idea ups its stake in the new entity.As for governance, Vodafone ends up being the junior partner. Both sides get to nominate the same number of board seats and choose the CEO jointly, but Birla nominates the chairman. While that may seem unfair, the reality of doing business in India means having locals in charge should be a good thing. Vodafone’s inability to end a long, acrimonious tax dispute with the government shows the problems foreign companies can face there.Reliance Jio not main reason for merger of Idea Cellular, Vodafone: Vittorio ColaoThe slightly lopsided power-sharing will make more sense if Birla later raises its stake, as it has the option to do under a shareholder agreement. Birla can buy up to an additional 9.5% from Vodafone in the first three years at an already negotiated price of Rs130 per share. If it doesn’t, then Vodafone can later begin to sell down to get to equal ownership.Much of Colao’s nine-year tenure at Vodafone has been spent undoing a global expansion undertaken by his predecessor. Its experience in India hasn’t been happy as it racked up some 900 million euros of cumulative losses, prompting a massive write-down in November.As he’s shown in well-timed exits from the US and France, Colao is an unemotional seller. With the Idea deal, he’s shown again that pragmatism beats pride. Bloomberg","Given a bloody tariff war brought on by Reliance Jio, Vodafone’s merger deal with Idea Cellular is smart even though CEO Vittorio Colao has ceded control without getting a premium","Mon, Mar 20 2017. 10 36 PM IST",Vodafone’s Indian escape act is heavy on the contortions +https://www.livemint.com/Money/7uIODGlfOSVS49KKSfqg5N/Why-the-cap-on-cess-puffed-up-ITC-shares.html,"
A 7% jump in ITC Ltd’s share on Friday was puzzling at first and though it closed with a lower gain of 4.9%, it was still substantial. The provocation was the GST council’s caps fixed on the cess on demerit goods. The reaction would have been justified if ITC’s share had fallen in anticipation of the cess. Till Thursday, ITC’s share was just a bit lower than its level in early February but a good 24.4% higher than end-December.How does the GST council’s decision benefit cigarettes? News reports state that cigarettes will, in addition to a 28% basic tax under GST, also pay a cess of either 290% or Rs4,170 per thousand sticks or a combination of both. This cess is to compensate states for potential losses in revenue due to GST. News reports say the GST Council wants the tax incidence and price of cigarettes to stay at current levels, terming it as revenue-neutral.ALSO READ | GST council clears last two bills, caps cess on demerit goodsMore details will become clear when the actual legislation and rules become available. Cigarettes are at present charged a specific excise rate, based on length, which starts from Rs1,681/thousand sticks for filter cigarettes up to 65 mm and to Rs4,421/thousand sticks for cigarettes greater than 75mm. States charge sales tax in addition.A first reading suggests cigarettes at the higher end will attract a lower levy than the current specific excise rate. But there is the basic tax of 28% also that is being levied. Also, input tax credit cannot be used to lower the cess, and will be restricted to inputs on which a similar cess has been paid, according to the draft compensation bill.If the government’s effort is to keep revenue and prices at the same level, then firms don’t really gain or lose. The real transformation appears to be a transition to a well defined tax structure. Every fiscal, before budget, ITC’s shares would swing with investor concerns on a potential hike in taxes. The reason could be to raise revenue or to use punitive taxation to curb cigarette consumption. In many years, they were proved right. The past two budgets are an exception. That changes now. Cigarettes are already in the highest tax bracket, the cess rate is capped, and states and municipal authorities cannot levy (or increase) additional taxes. Of course, if tax collections are poorer than expected, the GST council could potentially review these caps. States are to be compensated for five years. That may mean the cess may go after five years unless the governments decide to retain it under some other form.Even then, as long as there’s no devil in the details, cigarette taxation has entered an era of certainty. Companies can now focus on the market and not worry about taxation. That alone is a good reason to relook valuations and might explain why ITC’s share jumped. With tax uncertainty behind it, the only concern should be public health-related legislation to curb cigarette consumption.","GST Council wants the tax incidence and price of cigarettes to stay at current levels, hence the jump in ITC shares despite the news of cess on demerit goods","Mon, Mar 20 2017. 08 11 AM IST",Why the cap on cess puffed up ITC shares +https://www.livemint.com/Money/f8yaSuZgQSj72VfgDEREXK/A-glimmer-of-hope-for-the-IndiGo-stock.html,"
The big broad theme in the Indian aviation industry this financial year has been pricing pressures.Sure, competitive fares improved load factors but profitability was impacted adversely. InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, the company that runs IndiGo, wasn’t immune to those problems. However, a glimmer of hope is emerging. Yields are showing signs of improvement. The airline had said its January yields declined 10% year-on-year at the time of announcing its December quarter earnings.February and March have been better months on the yield front as the industry tries to deal with rising fuel costs, point out analysts.Kotak Institutional Equities notes that fares for 30 days plus advance bookings have improved only marginally in the past two months, but fares for travel dates earlier than 30 days have increased meaningfully.“This should provide some support to IndiGo’s yield in 4QFY17E, as short-notice trips usually account for a sizeable chunk of the 4QFY17E passengers, as per the management,” Mohan Lal, an analyst with Kotak, wrote in a 16 March note.Fuel surcharge to pass on the increase in crude price has been absorbed well by the market, according to IIFL Institutional Equities. The brokerage has raised its financial year 2017 earnings per share estimate by 8% to factor in this improvement.For the nine months to December, IndiGo’s Ebitdar or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and aircraft and engine rentals declined 4.4% from a year earlier. Ebitdar margin narrowed 550 basis points to 28.67%. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. To be sure, even as there are indications of improvement in yields, IndiGo’s profits for the March quarter are expected to decline year-on-year given that crude oil prices were comparatively much lower in the same period last year. Year-on-year yields, too, are expected to fall.In general, analysts hope that financial year 2018 will bring some stabilization in industry yields as the scope for a further decline in yields appears limited. Moreover, a lower base will help. The stock currently trades at Rs921.85, a bit lower than the Rs926.25 share price on 8 November when demonetization was announced. During this time, the benchmark Sensex has increased 7.5%. Based on Kotak’s estimates, one IndiGo share trades at 20 times expected financial year 2017 earnings. It goes without saying that yields and traffic growth are key measures to watch out for. Further, an upside in the stock shall depend on how these factors play out in the coming months and, of course, on the movement in crude oil prices.","For IndiGo and other aviation stocks, February and March have been better months on the yield front as the industry tries to deal with rising fuel costs","Mon, Mar 20 2017. 08 11 AM IST",A glimmer of hope for the IndiGo stock +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/4kTpwSMqU4dPUBKIWr4TAN/Donald-Trump-orders-review-of-H1B-visa-in-deterrent-to-Ind.html,"Kenosha, Wisconsin: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered federal agencies to look at tightening the H1B visa programme used to bring high-skilled foreign workers to the US, as he tries to carry out his campaign pledges to put “America First”.The move is a deterrent to Indian IT companies which send hundreds of software engineers to the US on H1B visas. Trump signed an executive order on enforcing and reviewing the H1B visa, popular in the IT industry, on a visit to the headquarters of Snap-On Inc. a tool manufacturer in Kenosha, Wisconsin.In the document, known to the White House as the “Buy American and Hire American” order, Trump also seeks changes in government procurement that would boost purchases of American products in federal contracts, with one aim being to help US steelmakers.The moves show Trump once again using his power to issue executive orders to try to fulfil promises he made last year in his election campaign, in this case to reform US immigration policies and encourage purchases of American products. Senior officials gave few details on implementation of the order but Trump aides have expressed concern that most H1B visas are awarded for lower-paid jobs at outsourcing firms, many based in India, which they say takes work away from Americans. They seek a more merit-based way to give the visas to highly skilled workers. “Right now, widespread abuse in our immigration system is allowing American workers of all backgrounds to be replaced by workers brought in from other countries,” Trump said.As he nears the 100-day benchmark of his presidency, Trump still has no major legislative achievements. With his attempts to overhaul healthcare and tax law not bearing fruit so far in a Congress controlled by his fellow Republicans, Trump has leaned heavily on executive orders to seek changes to the US economy.The venue for Trump’s visit on Tuesday is a nod to his voter base in the manufacturing centres of the American heartland. Wisconsin unexpectedly voted for the Republican last year, partly due to his promises to bring back industrial jobs. H1B visas are intended for foreign nationals in occupations that generally require higher education, including science, engineering or computer programming. The government uses a lottery to award 65,000 visas every year and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.Critics say the lottery benefits outsourcing firms that flood the system with mass applications for visas for lower-paid information technology workers. “Right now H1B visas are awarded in a totally random lottery and that’s wrong. Instead, they should be given to the most skilled and highest paid applicants and they should never, ever be used to replace Americans,” Trump said. Reuters",Donald Trump orders a look at tightening regulations on H1 B visa used by Indian IT companies to bring high-skilled foreign workers to the US,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 01 19 PM IST",Donald Trump signs H1B visa order to tighten rules on foreign workers +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/R5ggymYBFJwJczJT1Wl9hO/It-may-get-worse-before-it-gets-better-for-Indian-startups.html,"
By most accounts, Yogendra Vasupal, co-founder and chief executive officer of Chennai-based budget stays aggregator Stayzilla, is a decent human being and the least likely of people in India’s bustling start-up market to cheat anybody.
Yet, on Tuesday, Vasupal was arrested by local authorities in Chennai on charges of defrauding one of the company’s vendors, an advertising agency called Jigsaw Advertising. The arrest comes in the wake of Stayzilla, backed by front-line venture capital firms Matrix Partners India and Nexus Venture Partners, recently shuttering its operations in a bid to pivot to a more viable business model.
The details around Vasupal’s arrest remain murky but, in a rare show of solidarity, entrepreneurs and investors from across the start-up ecosystem rallied behind Vasupal, seeking his release from what they consider wrongful confinement by the authorities.
That isn’t the only ugly incident that made headlines this week. On 12 March, Sandeep Aggarwal, a founder of Delhi-based e-commerce marketplace ShopClues, took to social network Facebook to rage against his co-founders Radhika Aggarwal and Sanjay Sethi for allegedly pushing him out of the company. The Facebook post has since been removed. Sandeep Aggarwal, a former Wall Street analyst, founded ShopClues in 2011 with Radhika Aggarwal, also his wife, and Sethi, and was its CEO till he was arrested in July 2013 by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation on insider trading charges. Aggarwal immediately stepped down as CEO and subsequently pleaded guilty to the charges.
It isn’t difficult to understand why Aggarwal is keen to get back in the game with ShopClues. In his absence, Radhika Aggarwal and Sethi have grown the company’s valuation to more than $1 billion and attracted a host of well- known investors including New York-based hedge fund Tiger Global Management and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte. Ltd. It is also the only e-commerce unicorn (start-ups valued by investors privately at $1 billion or more) from India that hasn’t yet shown any outward signs of being in trouble. A squabble between its founders at this juncture would only be harmful to the company.
The two disparate incidents are manifestations of the immense stress that India’s start-up market has been under for well over a year. The market, as is now well-documented, slipped into a downturn in the final quarter of 2015. There is next to no later-stage capital available because of the withdrawal of non-traditional start-up investors such as hedge funds and strategic corporate investors. Valuations have plummeted from their dizzying heights back in 2014 and early 2015. The absence of later-stage capital has compelled traditional start-up investors, venture capital firms, to turn cautious on deploying fresh capital. There have been more than a few fire sales of start-ups that ran out of cash in the past year, and job cuts are now fairly commonplace in the ecosystem.
What’s worrying though is that the market is still some way off from a recovery. The general consensus, at least within the venture capital community, is that it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. That could just be an inordinately pessimistic view or not. Apart from the Stayzilla shutdown, other events over the first three months of this year underline that what started as a correction in the later part of 2015 is now starting to veer dangerously close to a crisis.
In February, Snapdeal, the e-commerce marketplace owned by Delhi-based Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd, became the first of India’s technology unicorns to implode. In an email to employees, which leaked out to the press, Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal admitted that their e-commerce company had fallen off the wagon. Job cuts were announced and in a somewhat empty gesture, Bahl and Bansal also said they would be taking a 100% cut in salaries in the greater interest of the company. Empty because last year the two had earned about Rs40 crore (a little over $6 million) each via salaries and stock sales. The company has burnt through most of the nearly $2 billion it raised from investors over the years.
As things stand now, according to multiple media reports, Snapdeal is trying to find a buyer for its payments platform Freecharge, which it bought for a reported $400 million in 2015. It is also in talks with SoftBank Group Corp. for a fresh round of funding—Mint had reported in January that discussions were on for a fresh round but at a valuation of $3-4 billion compared to the $6.5 billion it touched the last time it raised capital. There’s also talk of Snapdeal exploring a merger with Alibaba-backed online payments platform Paytm’s e-commerce business.
While the Snapdeal implosion sends out the message that even a unicorn backed by the most powerful of investors isn’t immune to a downturn, its state of affairs are seen as having fewer consequences for the market compared to its Bengaluru-based rival Flipkart. Early in January, Flipkart, the flag-bearer of the current start-up wave, officially became an investor-run company. Tiger Global Management, its largest investor and shareholder, shipped in one of its managing directors, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, to replace the company’s co-founder Binny Bansal as CEO. Binny Bansal, incidentally, had replaced co-founder Sachin Bansal as CEO in January last year. As of today, Flipkart retains its status as India’s most valuable start-up, despite multiple valuation markdowns by several minority shareholders. But it continues to struggle to raise fresh capital at the reported $15 billion valuation it commanded when it last got funded. That was nearly 20 months ago.
Mint reported last month that the company was in talks with several investors including Tencent Holdings Ltd, eBay Inc. and Microsoft Corp. to raise $1.5 billion. It needs the fresh capital desperately to retain its place in the market against the might of Seattle-based e-tailer Amazon. And, it has to raise the money at a decent valuation. At stake is nearly $3.5 billion in investor money that the company has burnt through. Tiger Global alone accounts for about $1 billion. Some may argue that Flipkart is too big to fail. But if it does implode, the after-effects could well be devastating.
Stayzilla, Snapdeal and Flipkart are all examples of start-ups where investors have clearly decided that it’s time to take the hardest of decisions to stem the further erosion of the value of their investments. And, these are the good ones. It’s an inevitable part of the cycle in the high-stakes venture capital business in the interest of creating a healthier start-up market when the cycle turns. It would be nice, of course, to get there without any more entrepreneurs landing themselves in jail.
Snigdha Sengupta is a consulting writer with Mint. She contributes stories on venture capital and private equity.","Apart from the Stayzilla shutdown, events in the first three months of 2017 underline that what started as a correction in late 2015 is starting to veer dangerously close to a crisis","Sat, Mar 18 2017. 12 09 AM IST",It may get worse before it gets better for Indian start-ups +https://www.livemint.com/Money/pW4pZp36E5UArT21INVoSL/Why-are-cement-prices-in-south-India-correcting.html,"
Barring south India, cement prices in other parts of the country have begun to improve after remaining subdued until January, mainly impacted by demonetisation . According to dealer channel checks by various brokers, cement prices in the southern region, which were robust in the past, are now down by nearly 2% month-on-month. Since south-based cement makers saw strong volume growth in the December quarter unfazed by the currency ban, what has pushed cement prices lower now?Increased competitive intensity, sand procurement issues, and water shortage in some of the markets of Tamil Nadu (TN) and Andhra Pradesh (AP) have hurt demand, thus hurting prices. “Companies did try to undertake hikes in the AP/Telangana (TG) markets, but the hikes didn’t sustain. Versus pre-demonetisation levels, prices are lower at Rs260/bag in AP/TG (versus Rs300/bag in October), at Rs320/bag in Karnataka (versus Rs330/bag), at Rs330-335/bag in TN (versus Rs345/bag),” said a recent Antique Stock Broking Ltd report. Also, the political situation in TN is still unstable, which may have impacted the state’s spending on infrastructure and allied activities.Interestingly, apart from the above mentioned factors, the so-called March phenomenon too has a role to play in this price correction. “Generally, in the March quarter, focus of cement companies shifts to pushing volumes, it is very likely that to meet that purpose companies may have taken a price cut,” said Vijay Goel, an analyst at Karvy Stock Broking Ltd. Some analysts point out the price correction that happened last year in March in some southern cities was steeper than this. Also, given the high volume base of last year, concerns are that volume growth of south-based cement makers may take a hit in the current quarter, so this price correction could also be with a view to minimize the adverse impact on cement volumes by boosting sales. Just like last year, the downward trend in prices is unlikely to last for more than a month and prices may begin to recover from May onwards, added the analysts.Meanwhile, on a year-to-date basis, shares of some south-based cement firms like India Cements Ltd and Dalmia Bharat Ltd have rallied 35% and 40%, respectively, much higher than pan-India companies UltraTech Cement Ltd (18%), ACC Ltd (5%) and Ambuja Cements Ltd (11%). That’s because, on the valuations front, excluding Dalmia Bharat, the one-year forward price-to-earnings multiple of many south-focused cement makers is lower than the larger pan-India companies.","Cement prices in South India are now down by nearly 2% month-on-month, show dealer channel checks by various brokers","Tue, Mar 14 2017. 10 02 AM IST",Why are cement prices in south India correcting? +https://www.livemint.com/Money/zMzeK5Wtj45xaKnOxsn3BO/Investors-see-Tech-Mahindra-shares-gaining-momentum.html,"
Tech Mahindra Ltd has made another acquisition with the aim to cross-sell its services to a new set of clients. It said on Monday it has acquired CJS Solutions Group Llc, a US-based healthcare information technology consulting firm that does business as the HCI Group.The enterprise value of $110 million seems reasonable, given HCI’s trailing 12-month revenue of $114 million. Besides, the US-based firm has grown by as much as 28% annually in the past two years. Of course, operating margin is low at high single-digit levels, but this is typical of US-based tech firms. And it seems unlikely that Tech Mahindra can bring about a meaningful improvement in margins, considering that HCI’s work is mostly done on site.
Analysts at Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd said in a note to clients, “We believe that the nature of work that HCI does in the US provides limited opportunity for offshorability. While some margin benefits might still be realized on the back of cost cutting and other efficiencies, the major benefit due to offshoring will not materialize.”The big idea behind the acquisition then appears to be the ability to cross-sell Tech Mahindra’s services to a new set of clients. The company has almost no exposure to the healthcare provider space, and the acquisition will give access to 30 new clients. Overall, the healthcare and life sciences vertical contributes less than 5% to its revenues. Jefferies’ analysts point out that the acquisition is on the same lines as two previous acquisitions in 2016—Target and Bio Agency—where a specific expertise was acquired with the cross-sell of existing services being the major incremental positive.Alongside the company’s penchant for mergers and acquisitions, the performance of its organic business has also picked up in the past two quarters. In turn, this has got investors excited. Since it announced Q2 results in end-October, Tech Mahindra’s shares have risen by around 20%, far higher than the 7% gain in the Nifty IT index.In the process, its valuations have risen to 15.6 times estimated fiscal year 2017 earnings, only slightly lower than Infosys Ltd’s 16.2 times valuation. While the better-than-expected growth in the past quarters suggests Tech Mahindra is firmly on the recovery path, not everyone is convinced. Analysts at Nomura Research said in a note to clients, “We see the telecom (~47% of revenues) segment to be stable but not in a material rebound scenario, with likely near-term headwinds from LCC (Lightbridge Communications Corp.) restructuring and non-recurrence of milestone payments (which aided growth in Q3)... Overall, we look for 8% EPS CAGR over FY17-19F (after a 3% decline in FY17).” EPS is short for earnings per share and CAGR stands for compound annual growth rate. If earnings growth ends up being in single digits, as Nomura expects, the mid-teens price-earnings multiple looks overdone.","The acquisition of CJS Solutions Group, with the aim to cross-sell its services to a new set of clients, reflects well on Tech Mahindra shares","Wed, Mar 08 2017. 08 05 AM IST",Investors see Tech Mahindra shares gaining momentum +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/syJFH0ErPmRiHiXUykq4DM/As-US-visa-troubles-deepen-more-Indians-look-to-come-back.html,"
New Delhi: More Indians living in the US want a job back home after Donald Trump became the president of the world’s largest economy. The number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has gone up more than 10-fold between December and March, according to an analysis by consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Pvt. Ltd, shared exclusively with Mint .There were approximately 600 US-based Indians seeking jobs in India in December 2016. By the end of March 2017, the number had gone up to approximately 7,000, Deloitte analysis said.ALSO READ: Donald Trump orders review of H-1B visa norms, in deterrent to Indian IT companiesThis data comes amid a crackdown by the Trump administration on job visas for skilled workers, including software engineers from India. US Citizenship and Immigration Services said employers seeking H-1B work visas—a non-immigrant visa allowing American firms to employ foreign workers—for 2018 declined for the first time in five years.The surge in the number of applicants has been triggered by Trump’s vows to protect jobs for locals. A Bloomberg report on Tuesday said Trump will take aim at information technology outsourcing companies when he orders a review of H-1B visa programmes to favour more skilled and highly paid applicants. The report also cited companies such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. and Mphasis Corp. as examples of outsourcing firms that would likely have fewer visas approved once the changes are adopted. The H-1B work visa programme channels thousands of foreign workers to the US technology industry.“While US companies will find some tech talent in the US, the numbers might be less than what are required to meet their needs. Add to that, the wages they need to pay to US employees will be much higher than what they pay to H-1B visa holders,” said C.K. Guruprasad, a consultant with executive search firm Spencer Stuart.On Tuesday, Australia abolished the 457 visa programme used by over 95,000 temporary foreign workers, the majority of them Indians, to tackle unemployment.Experts see global in-house centres (GICs) as a viable option for companies to not only retain Indian talent but also address the anticipated shortage in the required volume of workers in the US.According to Parag Saigaonkar, Principal at consulting firm Deloitte in India, while the initial thrust of GICs was on moving job roles from a high-cost to low-cost centre to get a competitive edge, companies are now looking at non-linear values that GICs can add to the business—new things that Indian GICs can produce—and supporting the parent organization.“With the seemingly shifting dynamics towards options between outsourcing and local hiring, companies with GICs in India could move Indian talent from the US to India and also hire locals into the GICs and thus sidestep the restrictions of outsourcing to third party companies,” Guruprasad said.According to K.S.Viswanathan, vice-president for industry initiatives at lobby group Nasscom, while the purpose of GICs so far has revolved around cost and skills arbitration advantages and talent consideration, it is now expected to change.“We are seeing a lot of companies looking at building newer competencies around newer technologies like machine learning, AI, automation, UI/UX, product management, DevOps etc,” said Anand Subramaniam, engagement manager and delivery head (GIC Accelerator Platform), Zinnov, a consulting firm.On an average, GICs add 50,000 to 70,000 people in India every year and due to the volume requirements, this number is expected to go up, according to Nasscom. According to the lobby group, there are over 1,000 GICs in India. Of these, around 67% of them are of US origin. Around 65% of the total workforce of 750,000 employed by these GICs are for US origin companies.",The number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has surged 10-fold since December as Donald Trump moved to tighten US visa policy,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 11 07 AM IST","As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come back" +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/4WALuNTbsytvuGytttgSqK/Reviewing-H1B-visa-program-too-little-too-late-US-lawmaker.html,"Washington: The executive order signed by President Donald Trump calling for a review of H1B visas is too little and too late, US lawmakers said, even as more than half a dozen legislations on reforming the programme remain pending in the House of Representatives and the Senate. “We already know H1B visa abuse hurts American workers. Simply reviewing the program is too little, too late,” Senator Dick Durbin said after Trump signed the order directing his administration to review the functioning of the system. US lawmakers have already tabled more than half a dozen legislations in the Congress with specific proposals to reform and improve the H1B visas systems. Many of those proposals, as per industry body Nasscom, are discriminatory and are targeted towards Indian IT companies. Trump’s long-awaited executive order drew sharp reactions from the opposition Democrat lawmakers and the sponsors of these legislations, but drew applause from the treasury benches. “I applaud President Trump for his efforts to spur job creation, economic growth, and American competitiveness by improving our country’s high-skilled immigration programs,” said House Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte. Also Read: Donald Trump calls for tighter H-1B visa programme used by Indians“The President’s Buy American, Hire American Executive Order directs the secretaries of the appropriate agencies to examine the H1B visa program and identify reforms that will root out fraud and abuse to ultimately make the program more workable for American businesses while protecting American workers,” he said. The H1B visa program allows US employers to hire foreign specialty workers in technical and highly-skilled fields, like engineering, medicine, mathematics, and science. These workers receive a non-immigrant visa that can last as long as six years. Congressman Bill Pascrell, Ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade, alleged that the executive order is yet another “broken promise” from Trump, who told the American people that he would end the H1B visa program. “For far too long the H1B visa has been abused by some as a cheap way to replace American workers. With no mandated time frames and no changes to the law, today’s executive order cannot solve the underlying problem,” Pascrell said. “I have introduced bipartisan, comprehensive reform legislation to improve the H1B visa program to ensure foreign workers are not underpaid and Americans are sought to be hired first. Real reform must happen legislatively. The Administration should come to the Congress and work with us on changing the law,” Pascrell said. Senator Chuck Grassley, an author of legislation to reform the H1B and L1 skilled work visa programs, said it is time to take action against the abuse of H1B visa system. “The H1B program was designed to fill gaps in America’s workforce with highly-skilled foreign workers, but as we’ve seen in recent years, the program has been abused and exploited at the expense of American workers and most qualified foreign workers,” he said. “We’ve seen companies use the program to fire American workers and replace them with lower-paid foreign counterparts. The visa lottery system makes this problem worse by rewarding visas randomly, instead of prioritising foreign workers with greater experience, skill, and qualifications,” he added. “I’ve introduced bipartisan legislation with Senator Durbin to address these problems, and I’ve expressed to President Trump the need to take action to restore the integrity in the H-1B Program,” Grassley said. Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown meanwhile applauded Trump for the executive order. PTI",US lawmakers have already tabled more than half a dozen legislations in the Congress with specific proposals to reform and improve the H1B visas systems,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 08 54 AM IST","Reviewing H1B visa program too little, too late: US lawmakers" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/cQiCWZccVl8vDy8RZS8ITP/Baidu-to-launch-selfdriving-car-technology-in-July.html,"Bengaluru: Baidu Inc. said on Tuesday it would launch its self-driving car technology for restricted environment in July before gradually introducing fully autonomous driving capabilities on highways and open city roads by 2020.The project is named Apollo after the lunar landing program, the Chinese search giant said, adding it would work with partners who provide vehicles, sensors and other components for the new technology.As part of its push into artificial intelligence (AI), the company in January named former Microsoft Corp. executive Qi Lu as chief operating officer. Two months after the appointment, Baidu’s chief scientist Andrew Ng, who led AI (artificial intelligence) and augmented reality (AR) projects, said he would step down.The company also launched a $200 million fund in October to focus on AI, AR and deep learning, followed by a $3 billion fund announced in September to target mid- and late- stage start-ups.“AI has great potential to drive social development, and one of AI’s biggest opportunities is intelligent vehicles,” Qi said in a statement. In November, Baidu and German automaker BMW AG said they would end their joint research on self-driving cars due to differences in opinion on how to proceed.Technology and automotive leaders contend that cars of the future will be capable of completely driving themselves, revolutionizing the transportation industry, with virtually all carmakers as well as companies such as Alphabet’s Google and parts supplier Delphi investing heavily in developing the technology.",Baidu will gradually introduce fully autonomous driving capabilities on highways and open city roads by 2020,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 09 23 AM IST",Baidu to launch self-driving car technology in July +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/4cJk9P9nGfLnQHEut2VPRM/Australian-visa-457-Indians-IT-workers-make-up-nearly-16-o.html,"New Delhi: Australia scrapping the 457 visa programme comes as a new challenge to India’s IT industry that was already facing pressure from the Donald Trump administration’s attempts to overhaul H1B visas in the US. Indian IT professionals account for nearly 18,000 visas issued under the 457 visa category, according to a research report by the Australian Population Research Institute.In 2015-16, information communication and technology (ICT) professionals accounted for 17,185 or 16% of 106,130 visas issued under visa category 457 and for those which took permanent residence, according to a 6 December 2016 report, titled Immigration Overflow: Why It Matters by The Australian Population Research Institute. Indians constituted 76% of the total 457 visas issues. The 457 visa programme allows businesses to employ foreign workers for a period up to four years in skilled jobs where there is shortage of Australian workers. “We are an immigration nation, but the fact remains: Australian workers must have priority for Australian jobs, so we are abolishing the 457 visa, the visa that brings temporary foreign workers into our country,” said prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.The report’s authors also concluded that the relative success of Indian IT companies in Australia “winning IT consulting work in the design and implementation of new IT software systems for Australian businesses and governments” was also due to “import of their own staff on temporary visas to do much of the work”. “This is a policy change and the new change comes into effect from March 2018. We still need to read the fine print but as we understand that the Australian government will do away with visa category 457 and so ICT professionals will need to apply as part of the new short-term and long-term visa categories. We do not see this change curtailing the number of visas approved for now,” said Shivendra Singh, global trade development head at the National Association of Software and services Companies (Nasscom).",Indian IT professionals accounted for 16% of the over 1 lakh visas issued under the 457 visa programme by Australia in 2015-16,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 08 42 PM IST",Australian 457 visa: Indians IT workers make up nearly 16% of applicants +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6LccsoeshAT0WqNBZMoCNO/Apple-readies-iPhone-overhaul-for-smartphones-10th-annivers.html,"San Francisco/Tokyo: Ten years after Steve Jobs held up the original iPhone to a gushing San Francisco crowd, Apple Inc. is planning its most extensive iPhone lineup to date.Apple is preparing three iPhones for launch as soon as this fall, including upgraded versions of the current two iPhone models and a new top-of-the-line handset with an overhauled look, according to people familiar with the matter. For the redesigned phone, Apple is testing a new type of screen, curved glass and stainless steel materials, and more advanced cameras, the people said. Those anxiously awaiting the redesigned iPhone, however, may have to wait because supply constraints could mean the device isn’t readily available until one or two months after the typical fall introduction. The iPhone is Apple’s most important product, representing about two-thirds of sales. It also leads customers to buy other Apple devices like the iPad and Apple Watch, and serves as a home for lucrative services like the App Store. This year’s new iPhone lineup comes at a critical time. Last year, Apple broke its typical upgrade cycle by retaining the same iPhone shape for a third year in a row and endured a rare sales slide. Samsung Electronics Co.’s new S8 lineup has also been thus far well received after last year’s Note 7 battery debacle. For the premium model, Apple is testing a screen that covers almost the entire front of the device, according to people familiar with the matter. That results in a display slightly larger than that of the iPhone 7 Plus but an overall size closer to the iPhone 7, the people said. Apple is also aiming to reduce the overall size of the handset by integrating the home button into the screen itself via software in a similar manner to Samsung’s S8, the people said.The overhauled iPhone will use an organic light-emitting diode display that more accurately shows colours, while the other two phones will continue to use liquid crystal display technology and come in the same 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch screen sizes as last year’s iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple’s iPhone feature and design plans are still in flux and can change, they added. The people asked not to be identified discussing Apple’s private testing and design plans. For its redesigned phone, Apple has tested multiple prototypes with manufacturing partners in Asia, including some versions that use curved glass and stainless steel, according to one of the people. One of the latest prototype designs includes symmetrical, slightly curved glass on the front and the back. The curves are similar in shape to those on the front of the iPhone 7. The new OLED screen itself is flat, while the cover glass curves into a steel frame. The design is similar conceptually to the iPhone 4 from 2010. An earlier prototype design had a thinner steel band, leaving more noticeable curved glass on the sides. Apple also tested a more ambitious prototype with the same slightly curved front and steel frame, but a glass back with more dramatic curves on the top and bottom like the original iPhone design from 2007, one of the people said. Apple suppliers have so far struggled to reliably produce heavily curved glass in mass quantities, so the company is more likely to ship the version with more subdued curves, the person added. The company is also testing a simpler design that has an aluminum back, rather than a glass one, and slightly larger dimensions, one of the people said.Because of its early lead in the mobile OLED display space, Samsung will enjoy a rare upper hand in this year’s high-end smartphone contest. At launch, Apple will exclusively use Samsung Display Co. OLED panels for the redesigned iPhone, as other suppliers won’t be ready to supply mass quantities until later, Bloomberg News reported last year. Apple has ordered around 100 million panels from Samsung, the people said. “This fall, it would be three years since we had a remarkable shift in iPhone hardware. This raises expectations for this year’s phone having a material change in functionality and look,” said Gene Munster, co-founder of Loup Ventures and a veteran Apple analyst. “The Samsung Galaxy S8 raises the bar for Apple to hit a home run.” Spokespeople for Apple and Samsung declined to comment. Apple has also experimented with integrating the iPhone’s fingerprint scanner into the screen of the OLED version, which would be technically challenging, the people said. It’s currently unclear if that feature will make it into the final product. Samsung also tried this approach for the S8, but ended up installing a more standard fingerprint reader on the back of its phone due to the challenges, another person said. Significant camera changes are also in testing for Apple’s overhauled iPhone. For the back of the phone, Apple is testing versions of the phone with the dual-camera system positioned vertically, instead of horizontally like on the iPhone 7 Plus, which could result in improved photos, according to people familiar with the matter. Some prototypes in testing continue to include the slight camera bump found on current iPhones, rather than having them flush with the back surface, the people said. For the front-camera, Apple is testing dual-lenses, one of the people said. The current iPhone 7 and 7 Plus have single front cameras. As it has done in the past, Apple is using camera components from Sony Corp., the person added. Apple has explored adding augmented reality-based features and depth-of-field enhancements to its iPhone camera system, Bloomberg News reported earlier this year. Company engineers in the past have also experimented with integrating cameras into screens, another person said.All the new iPhones will run iOS 11, a mobile operating system that will include a refreshed user-interface and will be announced in June at the company’s annual conference for developers, according to a person familiar with the matter.Apple has been testing using faster processors based on a smaller 10-nanometer production process for all three new models, a person familiar with Apple’s chip plans said. That’s down from 16 nanometers for existing iPhones. The smaller processors are more efficient, allowing Apple to retain its battery life standards while adding more advanced features. Bloomberg","Apple is preparing 3 iPhones for launch, including upgraded versions of the current 2 iPhone models and a new top-of-the-line handset with an overhauled look for the 10th anniversary","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 06 03 PM IST",Apple readies iPhone overhaul for smartphone’s 10th anniversary +https://www.livemint.com/Money/EWzMpJgL08FAuJ0hukTmAP/TCS-results-Upbeat-commentary-downbeat-performance-in-Marc.html,"
Often, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and its investors don’t see eye to eye. The company’s March quarter results announcement was no different. Revenue grew 1% sequentially in constant currency terms, lower than analysts’ estimates of around 1.6% growth. Worryingly, revenues in the mainstay North American region fell by 1.8%, and those of the key banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) vertical fell 0.4%.
ALSO READ: TCS misses both revenue and profit estimates in March quarterStill, chief executive officer (CEO) Rajesh Gopinathan said, “We are quite happy with the way we have ended the year.” He added on a call with analysts that the outlook for the BFSI segment remains positive, and that thanks to large deal wins, it may be only a matter of time before the expected growth comes in. TCS has been saying for the past few months that things are looking up in the US and particularly in the BFSI segment. Over 40% of its revenues come from the BFSI segment, while the North American region accounted for 54% of revenues last year.But after the March quarter performance, investors are likely to question the company’s optimism. As the chart alongside shows, year-on-year growth rates have fallen significantly at TCS in the past year. Besides, operating profit margin, too, has fallen below its targeted range of 26-28%. The result of this double whammy was that earnings per share grew by just 8.3% last year.With the rupee having appreciated sharply compared to the average rate in fiscal year 2017 (FY17), margins are expected to be under further pressure in the new fiscal year. What’s more, thanks to the many changes in H-1B visa rules and policies, costs of providing on-site services to clients are also expected to rise. As such, earnings can be under pressure in FY18. Against this backdrop, TCS shares trade at around 16 times one-year forward earnings. And while CEO Gopinathan said that he expects FY18 to be incrementally positive, things could turn out to be particularly dire, depending on new visa rules. “We see near-term impact on decision-making due to immigration-related issues, even as companies are denying this. We expect 1QFY18 to start slowly and do not build growth acceleration in FY18,” analysts at Nomura Research wrote in a note to clients. Some of the possible impact of new visa norms is detailed here: bit.ly/2ngI48H.And unlike TCS’s upbeat post-results commentary, most other technology companies including Accenture Plc. have guided for slower growth in the new fiscal year. Besides, while Infosys Ltd tried to soothe investors’ nerves by outlining a detailed capital allocation policy, TCS said it will stay with its existing payout policy.In sum, there’s nothing much to like in TCS’s March quarter results announcement, except perhaps for the management’s hopeful commentary. But given the fair bit of divergence between the company’s outlook three months ago and its actual performance, investors would do well to tread cautiously.","After the March quarter performance, investors are likely to question the optimism being shown by new TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 07 25 AM IST","TCS results: Upbeat commentary, downbeat performance in March quarter" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/0iFeclCfsM3zRSZ13jiH6J/TCS-Q4-profit-rises-42-at-Rs-6608-crore.html,"New Delhi: Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) missed analysts’ estimates for both revenue and profit in the fourth fiscal quarter, even as India’s largest software services firm’s full-year sales rose 6.2% to $17.58 billion.The company reported revenue of $4.45 billion in the three months ended 31 March, a 1.5% increase from the preceding quarter and 5.8% from the year-ago period. Net profit totalled $992 million, a 0.8% decline on a sequential basis and an increase of 5.8% from the year-ago period.A Bloomberg survey of 30 analysts had estimated TCS to report quarterly revenue of $4.62 billion and net profit of $1.03 billion in the quarter.Also read: TCS unperturbed by possible changes to H1B visa regime“FY17 was a year of broad-based growth amid economic and political turbulence in our key markets,” said Rajesh Gopinathan, who took over as chief executive of TCS in February. “We believe we are better placed for the year-ahead,” said Gopinathan, who spent much time on the numbers, suggesting that the new CEO will take time to probably replicate the success managed by his predecessor N. Chandrasekaran, the current chairman of Tata Sons Ltd. At the heart of TCS’s underperformance is the company’s inability to generate more business from its largest customers, banks, in its largest market, the US. TCS’s banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) segment, which accounts for over 40% of its revenue, grew 4.8% from a year earlier in constant currency terms. North America, which brings 54% of its business, reported a 4.3% rise.TCS does not give quarterly or annual forecasts but a few equity analysts are sceptical about the company’s prospects. The January-March quarter marks the 10th straight quarter (the company has recorded slow growth since July 2014) in which TCS has either underperformed, or at best managed to keep up with estimates. “Looking at this protracted slowdown, I believe TCS has reached a point where unless the company really brings about a change in the way it has done business, it will be tough for the company to ever beat street expectations,” said a Mumbai-based analyst at a domestic brokerage, on the condition of anonymity. “At best it can match street expectations.”TCS’s performance mirrors the poor show put up by Infosys Ltd last week, and this is worrying for three reasons.First, both growth and profitability for Indian IT firms is under pressure. Mumbai-based TCS reported a full-year increase of 8.3% in constant currency terms, similar to the full-year growth reported by Bengaluru-based Infosys (with $10.21 billion in revenue) although Infosys reported a higher 7.4% expansion in dollar revenue.Like Infosys, TCS’s growth in 2016-17 was slower than in 2015-16: TCS’s revenue growth in constant currency terms was 3.6 percentage points slower than the 11.9% increase in 2015-16. TCS added $1.03 billion in incremental revenue in the year ended 31 March 2017, less than $1.09 billion added in new business in 2015-16 when it reported a 7.1% increase and half of the $2.01 billion in new business added in 2014-15. TCS’s operating margin in the January-March quarter and for the full year stood at 25.7%. Operating margin narrowed 80 basis points from 26.5% in 2015-16, again similar to Infosys, which too saw its profitability eroded as commoditized outsourcing contracts see intense pricing pressure.Despite falling short of its operating margin forecast of 26-28% in the last financial year, the company’s management retained this guidance for the current fiscal year, which at least two analysts say will be “impossible to achieve”.“In this kind of environment, where most companies want more skilled people at client-facing sides, when most countries are adopting a protectionist stance, it looks impossible to keep operating in that band,” a Mumbai-based analyst at a foreign brokerage said, requesting anonymity.Second, despite higher growth in digital, which remains a fuzzy word, and the success of new and renew strategy rolled out by CEO Vishal Sikka to revive Infosys, both companies continue to be plagued by anaemic growth. This has made many analysts question if existing traditional contracts are merely getting rebadged as digital. A case in point: TCS claims its digital business grew 29% in the last year and now brings $3 billion in business.Finally, both TCS and Infosys continue to shy away from acquiring technology-focused firms. Infosys has not made a single acquisition in the last 18 months; TCS has looked away from acquiring a company since it partnered with Japan’s Mitsubishi Group in 2014. This is important because most large technology firms, including Accenture Plc, are looking at acquisitions to bring in new technology and skill sets. Nevertheless, the quarter does have some positives. For starters, the TCS management claimed that its insurance business under Diligenta and Japan has turned the corner, with Gopinathan expressing confidence of growth from these two lagging business units.On Tuesday, TCS shares fell 0.53% to Rs2,308.65 on BSE, while the benchmark Sensex declined 0.32% to 29,319.1 points. The results were announced after the end of trading in Mumbai.","Q4 revenue of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) rose 5.8% from the year-ago period to $4.45 billion, while Q4 profit increases 5.8% to $992 million","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",TCS misses both revenue and profit estimates in March quarter +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/hf7FZlpmE3d9HBryi7Jd1L/Infosys-Q4-results-Five-things-to-watch-out-for.html,"Bengaluru: For Vishal Sikka, 2016-17 stands as a rebuke.After three consecutive downward growth revisions, Infosys’s dollar revenue growth in the year ended 31 March 2017 will be at best 7.6%, 150 basis points (bps) lower than the 9.1% growth in 2015-16, and 620 bps short of its first projected 13.8% growth outlined in April last year. One bps is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Departure of four executive vice-presidents (EVP) in financial year 2017 (in addition to four EVP exits between August 2014 and March 2016) implies that Sikka continues to struggle to build a stable top leadership team. Further, Infosys continues to look away from acquisitions (it’s been 18 months since the company made its last acquisition), which makes one wonder what Houdini trick the management has to achieve its target of becoming a $20 billion firm by March 2021.Also read: Will corporate earnings disappoint once again?Finally, Infosys founder N.R.Narayana Murthy’s outburst, twice in public, against some of the decisions by the board is another painful blow to Sikka. Agreed, Murthy has not questioned Sikka directly. But few of these decisions, including agreeing to a generous severance money to its former CFO (chief financial officer), and giving a hike to the current COO (chief operating officer), were approved by the management, and so it is naive to conclude that all is okay between Sikka and Murthy.Understandably, these developments have unnerved shareholders: in full fiscal year 2017, Infosys shares declined 16.2%, more than the 9% fall by BSE IT index, even as the benchmark Sensex index returned 17% gains. For these reasons, business historians would take note of the fall in Sikka’s popularity: from being hailed as a hero in the first 18 months, Sikka now battles allegations of skulduggery and corporate greed.So what can Sikka—and Infosys—do to possibly break this impasse?First, get back growth and improve its execution. A related second measure is to get some growth from three divisions: Infosys BPO, EdgeVerve, the products and platforms unit (together bring about 13% of revenue), and Infosys Consulting. Infosys needs to improve its ability to sell more solutions from these three services to its clients. Lastly, Sikka needs to arrest senior management departures and build a stable leadership team. All this needs to be done swiftly, and once completed, hopefully, any corporate governance concerns of shareholders (including the founders) should be assuaged. It is important to note here that the displeasure expressed by some of the founders against the board only coincided with the period when Infosys’s growth started slipping (during the first quarter of last year).Significantly, Sikka’s $8 million performance-related pay as part of his $11 million compensation is a thorny issue, and how the board justifies this variable salary to its CEO on Thursday will dictate if there is a third instance of public spat between Murthy and the board. Is all this doable? Unlikely.Simply, because for IT services firms, chasing reclusive growth is more challenging than ever. Moreover, in case of Infosys, nothing short of a miracle can bring back peace between some of the founders and the board and management. With this as a backdrop, Mint puts the spotlight on five things to watch in Infosys’s fourth quarter earnings on Thursday:Revenue forecast: Brokerage firm BNP Paribas sees Infosys recording 1.3% sequential increase in revenue at $2.58 billion for the January-March period. The Infosys management will be mindful that this growth will be 30 basis points less than what the company did in January-March last year. Analysts term the growth in the fourth quarter as “exit rate” and a strong growth helps to start on a good note in the new financial year. Again, management commentary for the April-June period will be crucial.Will Infosys give full-year guidance? For Infosys, providing a growth outlook is one decision which appears to be going down the wire. Analysts believe the management will give a growth outlook. Based on conversations with executives familiar with the development, this paper thinks otherwise and Infosys may discontinue from this practice. The board will eventually take a call when it meets on 12 and 13 April but this decision will decide the road ahead for the Infosys stock. Performance of top customers: During the second and third quarters, Infosys’s largest client and top five and top 10 clients gave less business to the company. Until the June quarter of last year, Sikka did well to get more business from its largest clients. Since Infosys gets a fifth of total revenue from its top 10 clients, the management needs to reverse this decline if Infosys expects to record sustainable growth. A rain-check on Infosys’s new initiatives in the wake of President Trump’s strict visa laws: Over the last 33 months, Sikka has steered Infosys to embrace newer ways to do business, such as by bringing elements of user-centric method of Design Thinking. At the same time, Infosys has increased its focus on building platforms, in an effort to move away from people-led model of doing business. All these measures will be tested as US President Donald Trump works to have a strict policy in place which makes it arduous for outsourcing companies to bring engineers in the US. Hence, commentary on how Infosys is monetising its platforms business and impact of changes in visa will be eyed.Weak areas: Sikka has been unable to get respectable growth from EdgeVerve and Infosys BPO in his near three-year stint at Infosys. Another disappointment has been that the consulting division too ran into trouble in April last year. Infosys has put in a new leadership team at all three units over the last year, and management commentary on how soon it expects growth from these three units should decide the overall growth for the company.","Infosys founders spat, Donald Trump’s US visa policy and three consecutive downward growth revisions are likely to weigh in on the Q4 results to be declared today","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 05 04 AM IST",Infosys results today: Five things to watch out for +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/bB4fsVMgWtZe4rJHYWqoDO/Reliance-Power-Q4-profit-jumps-on-lower-tax-expense.html,"Mumbai: Reliance Power Ltd posted more than a three-fold increase in March quarter consolidated profit, helped by a 40% fall in tax expenses during the period.The company, which is part of billionaire Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group, reported a consolidated profit of Rs216 crore for the quarter ended 31 March 2017, the company said. Fourth-quarter consolidated revenue from operations stood little changed at Rs2,466 crore. The company had posted a rise in its quarterly profit in three of the four quarters preceding March quarter, according to Thomson Reuters data. ReutersReliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.",Reliance Power reported a consolidated profit of Rs216 crore for the quarter ended 31 March 2017,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 06 20 PM IST",Reliance Power Q4 profit jumps on lower tax expense +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/GWi7y8BiLe7GfxAl8x27aI/Google-Earth-gets-facelift-integrated-with-Knowledge-Graph.html,"San Francisco: Google on Tuesday launched a re-imagined version of its free Earth mapping service, weaving in storytelling and artificial intelligence and freeing it from apps. “This is our gift to the world,” said Google Earth director Rebecca Moore about the new version of the program that lets people range the planet from the comfort of their computers, smartphones or tablets. “It’s a product that speaks to our deepest values around education and making information available to people.” A new “Voyager” feature enables people digitally exploring the planet to be guided on interactive stories told by experts and boasting partners including BBC Earth, Nasa, Sesame Street, and the Jane Goodall Institute. Google artificial intelligence will be put to work for Earth users in the form of “knowledge cards” that let them dive deeper into online information about mountains, countries, landmarks or other places being virtually visited. It will also make suggestions on other locations that armchair explorers might be interested in exploring, based on what they have searched in the past. “This is the first time we have done this deep integration with the Google knowledge graph,” Earth engineering manager Sean Askay said. “Everything Google knows about the world, you can know about the world.” There is also a newly installed “Feeling Lucky?” feature for people who want to let the software suggest hidden gems such as Pemba Island off the Swahili coast or the Oodaira Hot Spring in Yamagata, Japan. People can choose to fly around the world in Earth, using a 3-D button to see the Grand Canyon, Chateau Loire Valley and other stunning spots from any angles they wish. “With the new Earth, we want to open up different lenses for you to see the world and learn a bit about how it all fits together; to open your mind with new stories while giving you a new perspective on the locations and experiences you cherish,” Earth product manager Gopal Shah said in a blog post. Online explorers cruising the mobile version of Earth can also capture pictures on their travels, sending friends digital postcards. New Earth was launched on Google’s Chrome and Android software, with versions tailored for Apple devices and other internet browsing software promised soon. It is the first time that Earth can be reached on a web browser instead of through applications installed on devices. The move allows Google to tap into more powerful computing power at data centres in the Internet “cloud” instead of relying on the capabilities of smartphones and other devices.","Google launches reimagined version of its free Earth mapping service, weaving in storytelling and artificial intelligence and freeing it from apps","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 05 43 PM IST","Google Earth gets facelift, integrated with Knowledge Graph " +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/hI2j9yckPHHX6PkEuKU2PK/Infosys-Q4-earnings-subdued-guidance-lower-for-201718.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd reported subdued earnings for the March quarter and gave a weak forecast for 2017-18, suggesting that India’s second largest software services company has to do more to become a next-generation services-led company and meet its target of $20 billion in revenue by 2020.In the January-March period, Infosys reported a 0.7% sequential rise in dollar revenue to $2.57 billion, allowing it to end fiscal year 2016-17 with a 7.4% year-on-year growth and $10.21 billion in revenue. Embarrassingly for the management, despite three downward revisions in annual growth, Infosys could manage only a 8.3% full-year growth in constant currency terms, missing the guidance of 8.4-8.8% made in January.Net profit declined 0.8% to $543 million in the March quarter, from $547 million in October-December. In rupee terms, revenue declined sequentially by 0.9% to Rs17,120 crore, while net profit declined 2.8% to Rs3,603 crore.ALSO READ: Infosys seeks to buy peace with new co-chairman, Rs13,000 crore payout promiseA Bloomberg survey of 34 analysts had forecast Infosys to report revenue of $2.68 billion, or Rs17,283.7 crore, in the quarter. The analysts estimated the company to report a net profit of $554.4 million, or Rs3,564.1 crore, in the period.Infosys expects its dollar revenue to expand between 6.1% and 8.1% in 2017-18, lower than the growth projected by Nasdaq-listed Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., which follows a January-December fiscal year and expects to grow between 8% and 10%. In constant currency terms, Infosys now expects 6.5-8.5% growth for the full year.Infosys’s lower growth guidance of 6.1-8.1% in 2017-18 means the firm expects less incremental revenue this year. In 2015-16, it reported a 9.1% growth and did $790 million in incremental business. In 2016-17, it managed $707 million in new business. The guidance of 6.1-8.1% means it expects to add between $600 and $800 million in new business.Q4 results: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?Another area of concern is Infosys’s lower profitability estimate of 23-25% for the current fiscal year—it has operated in a 24-26% band over the last few years—which implies that even as the firm sees pricing pressure for commoditized deals, it has been unable to sell more value-added services.Even though chief executive Vishal Sikka has tried to make engineers embrace newer ways of design thinking and tried to steer the firm to focus on building platforms, for now, it is struggling to change the way it has traditionally done business. This is the biggest worry ahead for the management, with the firm appearing to be unable to scale up business from newer offerings even as the core services business appears to be “structurally breaking down”, according to two equity analysts and one industry executive. This fact is disappointing because until the start of last fiscal year, Infosys appeared to be in the early stages of a turnaround.ALSO READ: Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout falls short of what investors need“We believe the top-line weakness and the lower-than-expected FY18 guidance is driven by the application services (Infosys had the highest exposure of 64% of its revenues to application services among peers in fiscal 2016) weakness (amid threat from cloud and SaaS, or Software as a Service) and low penetration in digital services,” Goldman Sachs analysts Sumeet Jain and Saurabh Thadani wrote in a note after Infosys declared earnings.Still, the management put up a brave face. “Yes, we have had challenges but I think we are progressing well despite all the macroeconomic challenges, pricing pressure and the distractions we have had over the last quarter,” Sikka said. The distractions he is referring to are the two public spats between Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy and the board, where the former raised issues of corporate governance and disproportionately high salaries to the CEO and COO.Although Infosys will likely grow faster than both Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and Wipro Ltd in 2016-17, its growth is lower than the 8.7% reported by Cognizant in 2016. TCS declares its earnings on 18 April and Wipro declares its fourth-quarter results on 25 April. Industry body Nasscom also avoided giving a growth outlook for India’s $150 billion outsourcing sector in February, on account of the uncertain macroeconomic outlook.“In order to get the stuttering sales engine firing again, Infosys needs to articulate its strategy in a more nuanced way and drive it through the organization,” said Thomas Reuner, managing director of IT outsourcing research at HfS Research. “Infosys urgently needs to focus on sales execution.”Investors punished the stock, which fell 3.71% to Rs932.90 on BSE at the close on Thursday, dragging the benchmark Sensex down 0.61% to 29,461.45 points.Infosys’s poor performance also hurt Sikka, who earned $6.7 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.7 million of the promised $8 million performance related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract allowing him to end his contract if his total compensation of $11 million fell more than 10%.","Infosys March quarter results show a 0.7% sequential rise in dollar revenue to $2.57 billion, allowing it to end FY17 with a 7.4% y-o-y growth and $10.21 billion in revenue","Fri, Apr 14 2017. 03 25 AM IST",Infosys Q4 results disappoint as growth sputters +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/AS0lFJqIwLP2Uy9pvuOqnK/Driverless-cars-are-learning-from-Grand-Theft-Auto.html,"San Francisco: In the race to the autonomous revolution, developers have realized there aren’t enough hours in a day to clock the real-world miles needed to teach cars how to drive themselves. Which is why Grand Theft Auto V is in the mix.The blockbuster video game is one of the simulation platforms researchers and engineers increasingly rely on to test and train the machines being primed to take control of the family sedan. Companies from Ford Motor Co. to Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo may boast about putting no-hands models on the market in three years, but there’s a lot still to learn about drilling algorithms in how to respond when, say, a mattress falls off a truck on the freeway.If automakers and tech enterprises want to make their deadline, they have to hurry up. The test cars tricked out with lasers, sensors and cameras being put through the paces on tracks and public roads can’t do it on their own. Simulators never run out of gas—and the ones at Waymo can model driving more than 3 million miles in a single day.“Just relying on data from the roads is not practical,” said Davide Bacchet, who leads the simulation effort in San Jose, California, for Nio, a start-up aiming to introduce an autonomous electric car in the US in 2020. “With simulation, you can run the same scenario over and over again for infinite times, then test it again.”As improbable as it may seem to the lay person, hyper-realistic video games are able to generate data that’s very close to what artificial-intelligence agents can glean on the road. AI software has been playing around with games from Super Mario Bros. to Angry Birds for a while now, tackling problems in controlled environments and learning through trial and error.Last year, scientists from Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany and Intel Labs developed a way to pull visual information from Grand Theft Auto V. Now some researchers are deriving algorithms from GTAV software that’s been tweaked for use in the burgeoning self-driving sector.The latest in the franchise from publisher Rockstar Games Inc. is just about as good as reality, with 262 types of vehicles, more than 1,000 different unpredictable pedestrians and animals, 14 weather conditions and countless bridges, traffic signals, tunnels and intersections. (The hoodlums, heists and accumulated corpses aren’t crucial components.)The idea isn’t that the highways and byways of the fictional city of Los Santos would ever be a substitute for bona fide asphalt. But the game “is the richest virtual environment that we could extract data from,” said Alain Kornhauser, a Princeton University professor of operations research and financial engineering who advises the Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering team.Waymo uses its simulators to create a confounding motoring situation for every variation engineers can think of: having three cars changing lanes at the same time at an assortment of speeds and directions, for instance. What’s learned virtually is applied physically, and problems encountered on the road are studied in simulation.Whenever a human has to grab the wheel of a test car because self-driving software hasn’t responded properly, “we’re able to play back the exact situation and predict via simulation what could have happened if the car had been left to drive itself,” Waymo said in a self-driving project report. “If the simulator shows better driving is called for, our engineers can make refinements to the software, and run those changes in simulation in order to test the fixes.”At Toyota Motor Corp.’s Toyota Research Institute in California, engineers try to “break the system” through what’s known as the Quick Brown Fox test: running mile after mile in the most challenging weather and traffic conditions.For all the stupid mistakes motorists regularly make, the human brain is far superior to a computer in perceiving and reacting to the unexpected, from a pothole to a construction zone to a toddler chasing a ball into the street. That’s the great challenge for all the companies competing to be first in the autonomous space: how to make on-board systems better than people at driving, and make driving safer.A looming question is what state and federal safety regulators will demand as proof an autonomous car should be given license to roam. Hundreds of billions of miles may have to be racked up, one way or another. The authorities will probably accept a combination of real and replicated, but rules spelling out requirements have yet to be written.Gill Pratt, chief executive officer of the Toyota institute, told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee in February that simulation should “be an acceptable equivalent to real-word testing,” with follow-up validation. That’s the road developers are increasingly travelling. Bloomberg",Grand Theft Auto is one of the simulation platforms researchers increasingly rely on to test and train the machines being primed to take control of driverless cars,"Mon, Apr 17 2017. 07 43 PM IST",Driverless cars are learning from Grand Theft Auto +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/SqNSGmPTIfX68gCBjJSgdL/Will-corporate-earnings-disappoint-once-again.html,"
Mumbai: The quarterly earnings season that begins this week will determine whether Indian stocks that have rallied to record highs last week will be able to sustain the gains. Inflows from foreign and domestic investors have been driving up stocks but they may easily retreat if earnings disappoint. With rising commodity prices and the lingering effects of demonetization, earnings prospects for most companies are anything but rosy, analysts say. Companies, excluding banks and commodities suppliers, are likely to be weighed down by margin pressure as raw material costs have surged from a year earlier, they said.Margins of members of the Nifty index are estimated to narrow by as much as 116 basis points in the three months ended 31 March because of rising input costs, Edelweiss Securities Ltd said in a note released on 7 April. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Infosys Ltd, Bajaj Capital Ltd and Reliance Power Ltd are scheduled to report their fourth quarter earnings on 13 April. Analysts expect quarterly earnings growth to be driven by banks and metals companies. Banks’ profit growth in the March quarter is likely to be boosted mostly as a result of a favourable base effect. They had reported weak earnings in the year-ago period because of higher provisions following the Reserve Bank of India’s asset quality review. For metals companies, higher commodity prices are expected to support earnings growth.“Excluding banks and commodities, profits are likely to contract by 9%, similar to last quarter’s contraction and significantly lower than the 10% plus profit growth seen in FY15, FY16 and H1FY17. The slowdown in profit will be more pronounced in consumption sectors and cement,” Edelweiss said in the 7 April note. The brokerage expects FY17 Nifty earnings per share (EPS) to grow 10%, a marked improvement over the past two years, with Nifty EPS expected at Rs455, Rs555 and Rs660 at the end of FY17, FY18 and FY19, respectively. The brokerage expects Nifty firms to report revenue, operating profit and net profit growth of 15%, 8% and 14%, respectively, in the March quarter. Analysts are worried that the lingering effects of demonetization are still likely to impact companies that are dependent on domestic consumption. Recovery of volume growth is likely to be one of the key concerns in the March quarter earnings, Sanjay Mookim, India equity strategist, Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA-ML), said on Thursday. BofA-ML expects earnings growth to improve from sub-5% in FY17 to 12% in FY18 and 15% in FY19. Indian markets have touched record highs in March and April after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party won the crucial Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. The Sensex and Nifty rose 11% and 12%, respectively in the March quarter and if earnings fail to deliver, the rally may lose steam.The net income of Sensex companies is likely to grow 9% on an annual basis and 15.3% quarter-on-quarter, Kotak Institutional Equities said in a report dated 7 April.Excluding banks, the brokerage expects an 8.8% year-on-year growth in net income. Weak demand environment, rising raw material costs and increase in discounts may result in an annual decline in net income for automobile firms, while downstream energy firms may be hurt because of lower refining margins, muted growth in volume and the recent decline in global crude oil prices. Kotak estimates Sensex FY18 EPS at Rs1,682 and FY19 EPS at Rs1,972. Its Nifty EPS estimates for FY18 and FY19 are Rs520 and Rs608, respectively. Gautam Duggad, head of research at Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd, said the March quarter may see margin contraction of 50 basis points for firms under the brokerage’s coverage, excluding financials. “We are expecting 23% earnings growth for our universe and 22% CAGR over FY17-19. Expectations for our Motilal Oswal universe net profit growth is 28% and largely led by three sectors—PSU banks, metals, oil and gas. Rest of the universe may decline by 5%,” he said. Rakesh Tarway, head of research at Reliance Securities, expects 10% profit growth in the March quarter, reflecting similar trends in the first nine months of the fiscal year. He, however, said commodity prices will have a marginal impact on profitability as firms in many industries like tyres, autos and packaged consumer goods have raised prices. “Also, commodity prices have now started stabilizing, which will further insulate margin erosion,” he added. According to Deutsche Bank, Sensex firms are expected to post a 9.1% profit growth in the fourth quarter. “Excluding banks, Sensex net profit growth is likely to be at 5.4%. Autos are likely to be the biggest drag on Sensex growth, as our analyst has factored in a one-time impact of the BS-III vehicle ban,” it said in a note dated 7 April. In the current fiscal year, CRISIL Ratings expects corporate revenue to grow at around 8% on a year-on-year basis. “Revival in sectors such as construction equipment, EPC (on improving order book); metals (especially non-ferrous) and sugar—on better prices, are expected to aid the improvement,” the rating agency said on 3 April.","With rising commodity prices and lingering effects of demonetisation, earnings prospects for most companies for the March quarter are anything but rosy","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 08 41 PM IST",Will corporate earnings disappoint once again? +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ppGK1roSuB3jB7f8k5CPAK/Tata-Motors-JLR-clocks-16-growth-in-sales-at-604009-units.html,"New Delhi: Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) on Friday reported its best-ever annual retail sales of 6,04,009 units in the financial year ended 31 March, 2017, up 16% from the year-ago period. The company exceeded sales of 600,000 units for the first time in its history, Tata Motors said in a BSE filing. Retail sales for the fourth quarter ended March 2017 were up 13% to 1,79,509 vehicles as compared to same quarter a year ago. In March, sales were at 90,838 units, up 21% as against March 2016, it added. Commenting on the sales performance, Jaguar Land Rover Group sales operations director Andy Goss said: “These numbers set the seal on Jaguar Land Rover’s seventh successive year of sales growth, by breaking through the 6,00,000 barrier.” He further said: “The last 12 months have seen the launch of three completely new product lines, and successful growth across many of our existing products.” Retail sales for Jaguar went up by 83% to 1,72,848 units in the financial year, primarily driven by the successful introduction of the F-PACE and solid sales of the XE and XF. Land Rover sales were marginally up by 1% to 4,31,161 units in FY17, as continuing strong sales of the Discovery Sport, Evoque and Range Rover Sport were offset by the run-out of Defender and Discovery.","The Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) recorded its best-ever annual retail sales and crossed the 600,000-mark in sales for the first time","Fri, Apr 07 2017. 09 54 PM IST","Tata Motors’ JLR clocks 16% growth in sales at 604,009 units in FY17" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/19RtEmzZlfEcIjlymQoU9M/Bengal-Chemicals-reports-profit-of-Rs4-crore-for-FY2017.html,"Kolkata: In a bid to stave off potential privatization, the management of India’s oldest pharmaceuticals company, Bengal Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals Ltd, on Wednesday said the state-owned enterprise can be turned around in five years.Acting managing director and director (finance) P.M. Chandraiah on Wednesday said the 125-year-old company had turned in an operating profit of Rs4 crore in fiscal 2016-17 as against a loss of Rs9.13 crore in the previous year, thanks to better control over costs and improved employee efficiency.Announcing the first profit in decades, Chandraiah said he was confident that in the current year, Bengal Chemicals’ operating profit can be ramped up to Rs10 crore, and in five years, the company will turn in profits of Rs30-40 crore a year if the government agreed to restructure its loans.Operating results improved in fiscal 2016-17 despite a marginal decline in revenue from Rs112.76 crore to Rs111 crore. But in the current year, the management expects to expand its product range, which, in turn, will lead to the company’s revenue jumping sharply.ALSO READ: Bengal Chemicals divestment may turn into a real estate playFor decades, Bengal Chemicals has been producing low-margin generic drugs, but from May, it proposes to start manufacturing injectable drugs, which alone can generate Rs50 crore in annual revenue, according to Chandraiah. Going forward, the company plans to start producing oral drugs as it seeks to reclaim its lost glory, he added.There is, however, no clarity immediately on the government’s plan to privatize the firm though it has been identified as one in which the government does not wish to remain invested in the long run.The company has valuable real estate across cities, including in Mumbai, where its office is conservatively valued at Rs1,000 crore, according to Chandraiah. Yet, the company has through decades scaled back production for want of working capital.Bengal Chemicals currently owes the government Rs215 crore in outstanding loans and unpaid interest. The management now wants the government to lower the interest rate on its outstanding loans from 21% to levels offered by commercial banks.Alongside, the company is also looking to shore up sales of its over-the-counter products and home disinfectants. For want of a strong distribution channel, the company was forced to sell home disinfectants largely to institutional buyers at low realizations. Now with cash flows improving, it is looking to open up channels to sell these products, which currently account for 30% of its revenue, in the retail market, Chandraiah said.","Announcing the first profit in decades, MD P.M. Chandraiah said in the current year, Bengal Chemicals’ operating profit can be ramped up to Rs10 crore","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 10 09 PM IST",Bengal Chemicals reports profit of Rs4 crore for FY2017 +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/LbbOX9EMA5sFhLJX6FlhfI/Reliance-Defence-FY2017-loss-narrows-to-Rs57722-crore.html,"New Delhi: Reliance Defence and Engineering Ltd has reduced its consolidated loss to Rs577.22 crore for the year ended March, 2017. The company had posted a loss of Rs592.42 crore for the year ended 31 March, 2016, Reliance Defence and Engineering said in a filing to BSE. The consolidated total revenue of the ocmpany for the year ended 31 March, 2017 increased to Rs603.12 crore, over Rs346.16 crore for the year ended 31 March, 2016. The company said that its board, at a meeting held on Tuesday, has approved revalidation and approval of rights issue up to Rs1,200 crore which was approved “by the board held in 22 April, 2016.” The board has also approved the appointment of Kartik Subramaniam, chief executive officer, as a whole-time director of the comapny with effect from Tuesday in place of H.S. Malhi who superannuated from the services of the comapny and “ceased to be the whole-time director with effect from 11 April, 2017.” The appointment of Subramaniam, CEO, as “whole time director of the company is approved for three years with effect from 11 April, 2017.Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.","Reliance Defence’s consolidated total revenue for the year ended 31 March, 2017 increased to Rs603.12 crore, over Rs346.16 crore a year ago","Tue, Apr 11 2017. 10 33 PM IST",Reliance Defence FY2017 loss narrows to Rs577.22 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/4BlsEs8VDqtfjllJDASokM/Recovering-Vijay-Mallya-loans-a-long-way-off-for-banks.html,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 07 30 AM IST",Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/GbhcY2xFVCyZIZb7xRzjnI/Farm-loan-writeoffs-win-votes-in-India-but-may-hurt-econom.html,"Mumbai/New Delhi: India risks straining public finances and undermining already ailing state banks, economists said, after a $5.6 billion loan write-off for farmers in Uttar Pradesh and moves to do something similar in at least four other states.One of the first acts of the new government in India’s most populous state following last month’s election triumph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was to keep a promise to provide debt relief to 21.5 million farmers.Taking their cue from Uttar Pradesh, more state governments could waive loans to farmers, senior officials there said, to fulfil election pledges or woo rural voters before further polls in the run-up to a general election in 2019 when Modi is expected to run for a second term.“This will spread like a contagious disease to most parts of the country and you will very soon see at least 3-4 states announcing similar farm loan waivers,” said Ashok Gulati, a farm economist who advised India’s last government.Economists caution that the move could encourage indebted farmers not to repay loans, deepening malaise at public sector banks already saddled with most of India’s $150 billion in stressed loans.Also Read: Loan waiver is not the solution to farm crisisUttar Pradesh will cover the cost of the waivers by issuing bonds. This would in turn constrain India’s sovereign credit because such bonds are backstopped by the federal government, the economists said.India’s total public sector debt, as a share of gross domestic product, stands at around 66 percent - high compared to other emerging economies.Economists at Merrill Lynch estimate that states will end up writing off debts equivalent to 2% of GDP — the bulk of all outstanding loans to farmers.Leverage levelsRatings agencies would like to see India’s debt-to-GDP ratio fall below 60% over the next three years to justify an upgrade in its sovereign rating. Yet debt waivers would, even if staggered, force up borrowing, analysts said.“The loan waivers would likely worsen the fiscal deficits and leverage levels of the state governments, unless other resources are mobilised or expenditure is controlled,” said Aditi Nayar of ICRA, an affiliate of Moody’s Investors Service.“There is a significant risk that productive capital spending may end up being reduced to fund a portion of the loan waivers.”A government-appointed panel has suggested capping the states’ debt at 20% of India’s GDP, while Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel has said the Uttar Pradesh loan waiver “undermines honest credit culture”.Who’s next?Maharashtra and Punjab are expected to announce similar loan waivers soon, senior officials in both states told Reuters.In Maharashtra, ruled by the BJP, farmers are clamouring for a bailout after two years of drought and falling commodity prices. In Punjab, known as India’s grain bowl, the opposition Congress party won last month’s election partly on the promise of a farm loan waiver.In Tamil Nadu, reeling from dry weather, a court asked the state government to write off loans to all farmers.Farmers from Tamil Nadu recently protested in New Delhi, showing the skulls of neighbours who had committed suicide to press their demand for drought relief and loan write-offs.Won’t paySome of India’s 263 million farmers have decided not to repay their debts, expecting loan waivers to mean they don’t have to.“I am not going to repay the loan because defaulters benefited from the previous waiver and I didn’t get any government help even as I repaid the loan on time,” said Gorakh Patil, a farmer from Jalgaon in western India.Patil was referring to an $11 billion national farm loan waiver in 2008 that helped the Congress party-led coalition of the day win re-election the following year. But non-performing assets jumped.Gross non-performing loans in agriculture and its allied sectors surged to Rs58,800 crore ($9.12 billion) at the end of the December quarter, from Rs9,740 crore in the 2007/08 fiscal year, RBI data show.“There’s no benefit from such waivers,” said a director at one state bank who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. “If you give any benefit across the board, it definitely has an adverse effect on credit discipline.” Reuters","Farm loan write-off could encourage indebted farmers not to repay loans, deepening malaise at PSU banks already saddled with $150 bn in stressed loans, say economists","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 09 32 AM IST","Farm loan write-offs win votes in India, but may hurt economy" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/wOi96ZexKrYDirTlrN08XN/Paytm-may-raise-up-to-15-billion-from-SoftBank.html,"
New Delhi/Bengaluru: Fintech start-up Paytm, run by One97 Communications Ltd, is in talks with Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. to raise $1.2-1.5 billion in cash in a deal that could raise Paytm’s valuation to $7-9 billion, according to three people familiar with the matter.The deal, which has been in the works for nearly three months now, will see SoftBank buying some shares from existing Paytm investor SAIF Partners and founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma as well as investing money in the company, the people mentioned above said on condition of anonymity.Paytm, India’s second-most valuable Internet firm, may also buy Snapdeal-owned payments firm Freecharge (SoftBank is Snapdeal’s largest shareholder) in a fire sale, though the fundraising is not contingent upon the proposed buyout, the people said.The fund infusion, one of the largest investments by a single investor in an Indian start-up, would make SoftBank one of the largest shareholders in Paytm, the country’s top mobile wallet which is set to launch a payments bank.Getting SoftBank on board as a large shareholder will help Paytm reduce the control of China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, currently its largest shareholder, and pre-empt possible government concerns about a Chinese company having a strong hold on Paytm. Financial services is considered a strategically important sector.SoftBank and Alibaba are themselves intimately connected. The Japanese company was an early backer of Alibaba and its initial investment of $20 million turned into a stake worth more than $60 billion when Alibaba listed its shares in 2014.“Getting SoftBank will help Paytm change the perception of being a Chinese company with the regulators as well as the public,” said one of the three people cited above.SoftBank and Paytm declined comment.For SoftBank, the world’s biggest investor in start-ups, an investment in Paytm means an entry into India’s big financial services market. “It is the Alipay success story it is looking to repeat in India,” said the second person, referring to the success of Alibaba’s payment services firm. The proposed deal with Paytm is another instance of SoftBank trying to get it right the second time.Separately, SoftBank is trying to sell Snapdeal, run by Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd, to Flipkart. Another of its portfolio companies, Grofers, is in initial talks with Big Basket for a merger. SoftBank initially considered investing in Paytm in late 2014 but passed on the opportunity. It instead bet on online marketplace Snapdeal. At that time, Paytm was rapidly expanding its nascent commerce business, which SoftBank was opposed to because of its Snapdeal investment.After SoftBank passed up on Paytm, the latter ended up raising $1 billion in 2015 from Alibaba and its financial arm Alipay (now called Ant Financial).Paytm’s owner One97 was valued at about $5 billion in August when the company raised $60 million from Mediatek. It saw a valuation of close to $6 billion in March when three existing investors—Reliance Capital, SVB (Saama Capital) and SAP Ventures—sold their combined stake of about 4.3% to Alibaba and Ant Financial.Investor interest in Paytm, the top online payment services provider in India, has increased after the government’s move in late 2016 to invalidate old high-value currency notes. That, and the consequent emphasis on digital payments, have worked well for Paytm.One97 founder Sharma was one of 11 recipients of a payments bank licence from the Reserve Bank of India in August 2015. Paytm Payments Bank, which now houses the electronic wallet business, plans to roll out several financial services products.",SoftBank’s $1.5 billion investment will increase Paytm’s valuation to $7-9 billion and will make the Japanese firm one of the largest shareholders alongside Alibaba,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 02 55 PM IST",SoftBank may invest around $1.5 billion in Paytm +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/G8tbcgdtcYPYVk1PHmvmaO/RBI-asks-banks-to-closely-monitor-loans-to-telecom-sector-as.html,"
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday advised banks to consider setting aside higher provisions even for good loans in stressed sectors. The advisory means the central bank is worried that banks have not fully recognized their bad loans, said experts. Indian banks are sitting on a toxic loan pile of at least Rs7 trillion, or 9% of all bank credit.The central bank specifically red-flagged the telecom industry, and asked bank boards to review their exposure to the sector by 30 June and consider making provisions at higher rates “so that necessary resilience is built in the balance sheets should the stress reflect on the quality of exposure to the sector at a future date.” This means banks should consider making higher provisions immediately for the telecom sector.Under current rules, most standard assets attract a provision of 0.4%. The few exceptions include credit to commercial real estate—which has a 1% provision, and residential real estate (0.75%). However, the regulator hasn’t specified the extent of higher provisioning for good loans to telecom or other stressed sectors. “We are not surprised that banks will see higher provisioning going forward. We have already accounted for a potential jump in fresh slippages of 2.6% of total bank loans in the next 12 months,” said Udit Kariwala, analyst-financial institutions at India Ratings and Research. In a 15 February report, the ratings agency had said that impaired assets would peak at 12.5%-13% by 2018-19.The central bank has also asked banks to put in place a board-approved policy for making higher provisions depending on the stress in various sectors. This policy should be reviewed every quarter depending on the performance of the sectors to which the bank has an exposure, the central bank said. Currently, bank lending to the telecom sector stands at around Rs82,200 crore. The industry has been going through a tumultuous period with the launch of services by Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. A 17 February India Ratings and Research Report had predicted that the industry has lost about 20% of revenues post the launch of free services by Jio. The industry’s debt levels have risen sharply from Rs2.7 trillion in 2014 to Rs4.85 trillion at the end of 31 December 2016. “Telecom industry is now on a downward trajectory as far as margins are concerned. Profitability is getting thinner. There is no scope for a volume game going forward. Because of these concerns, RBI must have asked banks to keep higher provision,” said Dharmesh Kant, vice-president and head of retail research at Motilal Oswal Securities. “The new regulation will increase credit cost for banks. However, the extent may be limited because the exposure to the telecom sector is only 1% of the total credit in the system,” said Karthik Srinivasan, senior vice-president, Icra Ltd. In a separate notification, the regulator also increased disclosure norms for banks after it noted instances of divergences in banks’ asset classification and the provisioning required as per RBI norms. “This has led to the published financial statements not depicting a true and fair view of the financial position of the bank,” the regulator said.The regulator told banks to make a disclosure in the “notes to accounts” if the additional provisioning requirement assessed by RBI exceeds 15% of their net profit. Further, banks also have to make additional disclosures if the additional gross NPAs (non-performing assets) identified by RBI under its asset quality review are greater than 15% of the incremental gross NPAs reported. The first such disclosure will have to be made for financial year 2015-16 in the annual accounts statements for the just ended fiscal 2017.","RBI tells banks to make higher provisioning for good loans in stressed sectors such as telecom, asks bank boards to review exposure by 30 June","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 04 15 AM IST",RBI asks banks to closely monitor telecom loans as debt mounts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/WBWXIWg0W3biaGRVkxc3HJ/IOB-IDBI-BoI-UBI-may-be-1st-in-line-of-RBI-fire-under-new.html,"Mumbai: Weak state-run banks like Indian Overseas Bank, IDBI Bank, Bank of India and Union Bank of India are in for regulatory action if the tightened prompt corrective action (PCA) is implemented properly, warns S&P in a report.“If the norms were applied to reported numbers for December 2016, among the banks rated by us, Indian Overseas Bank is in risk threshold 3; IDBI Bank is in risk threshold 2; and Bank of India and Union Bank of India are likely be in risk threshold 1;” S&P credit analyst Geeta Chugh said on Tuesday.She also said the revised PCA, released last week by the Reserve Bank invests a lot of powers on the regulator to supersede the troubled banks, may trigger faster consolidation among the bad loan saddled state-run banks or higher capital infusion by the government.“Our ratings on the banks factor in weak stand-alone credit profiles of ‘B-’ on IOB and IDBI Bank, and ‘BB’ on Bank of India and Union Bank. The ‘BB’ issuer credit ratings on IOB and IDBI Bank and ‘BB+’ issuer credit ratings on BoI and UBI continue to benefit from the very high likelihood of government support,” Chugh said.Welcoming the new guidelines, she said “we believe the Reserve Bank is taking a step in the right direction and the new regulations will force public sector banks to raise their generally low provisioning coverage, and likely accelerate the need for capital.” The revised norms may not necessarily be effective as early warning signals amid the current industry downcycle, she said and noted that a number of public sector banks are already knee-deep in NPAs and firmly entrenched within the new risk thresholds.She further noted that the PCA measures such as restrictions on dividend distributions or branch expansion will have limited benefit because most banks didn’t pay any dividends in fiscal 2016 as they are conserving capital.Also, most of them have shown little growth, and in many cases have contracted their balance sheets.","A report from Standard & Poor’s says weak state-run banks like IOBank, IDBI Bank, BoI and UBI are in for RBI action if the tightened PCA is implemented properly","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 21 AM IST","IOB, IDBI, BoI, UBI may be 1st in line of RBI fire under new PCA" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/CH2D2vhpuxmcxV05AU3EWI/RBI-caps-bank-exposure-to-REITs-InvITs-at-10.html,"Mumbai: The RBI on Tuesday permitted banks to invest up to 10% of the unit capital of an Real Estate Investment Trust (REITs) or Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs).The banks’ exposure to REITs/InvITs will be within the overall ceiling of 20% of the net worth permitted for direct investments in shares, convertible bonds/ debentures, units of equity-oriented mutual funds and Venture Capital Funds (VCFs).“Banks should put in place a Board approved policy on exposures to REITs/ InvITs which lays down an internal limit on such investments within the overall exposure limits in respect of the real estate sector and infrastructure sector,” the Reserve Bank said while issuing prudential guidelines in this regard. It further said banks will not invest more than 10% of the unit capital of an REIT/ InvIT. In addition, banks will have to ensure adherence to the prudential guidelines on equity investments, classification and valuation of investment portfolio, Basel III Capital requirements for commercial real estate exposures and large exposure framework. In its first bimonthly monetary policy of 2017-18, the RBI had permitted banks to invest in REITs and InvITs. The move was aimed to help revive the cash-starved infrastructure sector.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has put in place regulations for REITs and InvITs and requested the RBI to allow banks to participate in these schemes.","RBI says banks’ exposure to REITs/InvITs will be within the overall ceiling of 20% of the net worth permitted for direct investments in shares, convertible bonds/ debentures, VCFs","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 07 27 PM IST","RBI caps bank exposure to REITs, InvITs at 10%" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/xuBJNapRGBrtl05iEAvsYO/How-Union-Bank-was-hacked-and-got-its-money-back.html,"
Mumbai: It was just another Friday for the hundreds of office goers who were jostling with each other to get to their own work places in and around the corporate office of the Union Bank of India at Nariman Point in Mumbai. Even those queuing up in the early hours at the cash counters across the 4,233 branches and 7,946 ATMs of the bank spread across India, were calmly going about their tasks— depositing money or withdrawing cash.However, those early hours of 21 July 2016, were going to be anything but ordinary for the chairman and managing director of Union Bank, Arun Tiwari, who also sits in the corporate office—the Union Bank Bhavan. Happily going about his routine tasks of reading newspapers, sipping a cup of tea and updating himself of the goings-on in the bank, Tiwari was just settling in when his phone rang.He still remembers the time. “It was around 10.30am when I was informed that an unidentified hacker was attempting to swindle us of $171 million (about Rs1,100 crore at today’s rates) from our Nostro account.” A Nostro account is an account that a bank holds in a foreign currency in another bank. All hell should have broken loose. But Tiwari, who insists that he is a “non-technical” person kept his cool. “The thing uppermost in my mind was that I had to quickly get onto the money trail and recover the money.”That was easier said than done. By the time the Union Bank official in the treasury department, who was reconciling the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) payments for the day realized that an amount of $171 million had already been debited from the dollar account of the bank without his authorization, the money had travelled far and wide.The money had found its way to accounts in two banks in Cambodia—the Canadia Bank Plc and RHB IndoChina Bank Ltd, besides the Siam Commercial Bank in Thailand, Bank Sinopac in Taiwan, and a bank in Australia. These funds were routed by Citibank New York and JP Morgan Chase New York, which hold UBI’s foreign exchange accounts.Even as Tiwari informed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the ministry of external affairs and Gulshan Rai, director general of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), to apprise them of the matter and take advice, he simultaneously sent a terse message instructing all the staff at Union Bank Bhavan that “a whole floor on that building was to be cordoned off, and that all staff members working to solve this problem would only leave after the matter was resolved”.“Inspection investigation was done by CERT-In, RBI, our own team,” Tiwari recalls, adding that he also appointed consulting firm EY “the same night”. EY said “as far operations are concerned, you are ahead of time. Whatever was required to be done, as a non-technical person, has already been done.”How did it exactly happen?First, the bank had to know what exactly had gone wrong and how the hackers got access to Union Bank’s servers. Did an insider assist in the task or was it a breach by an external device?It appears, it was neither. Rather, it was an email from a very authentic source— (RBI)—with an attachment. “This email was sent to a few email IDs, and some of them were from customer care, e-banking and some were addressed to individuals too. It might have happened even before 20 July,” Tiwari recalls.Kartik Shinde, partner, advisory services, EY, recalls receiving a call at 10pm that night. “Which PSU (public sector undertaking) bank in India has that ability to take that call? I know of two-three others, who started evaluating vendors, took prices from them. UBI said start the work and we will give whatever the fees. You need to have someone authoritative in the bank like the chairman who will take the call saying that I will take the necessary approvals from CVC (Central Vigilance Commission) and all others but get this analysis done sooner because the more time you spent analysing it, you are giving more lead time for attackers to cover up their tracks, to get out of the system,” he said.It wasn’t that Union Bank was the specific target. Shinde insists that “I wouldn’t say it was a random pick. If I have to break into this network, I will send the payload or malware to all employees. It doesn’t matter who clicks on the link. The hacker simply wants to access the system from where he will do the transaction.”This is also what happened in Union Bank’s case. The “phishing”—an attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and other financial details by pretending to be a trustworthy entity—mails were sent to 15 email IDs. “Three people reported that the email was suspicious to the IT security. The other Union Bank employees were “technically-savvy” persons. They noticed that although the email address said @rbi.org.in, it had an attachment that a zip file. Within the zip file, there was a dot (xer) file and not a dot pdf file, which is why they reported it as suspicious,” Shinde said. Unfortunately, one of the “not-so-tech-savvy” Union Bank officials fell prey to the phishing email and clicked on the link which released the malware that went viral on the bank’s servers. The hackers would have got their way and swindled the cash but for a silly mistake they made, according to Shinde.When a bank does a SWIFT transaction during the day, they typically get a reconciliation report the next day and all the corresponding banks send them the “end-of-the-day balance” report the following morning. When Union Bank got it from the originating bank, they saw a difference of $170 million and that alerted them because of one mistake—the hackers deleted the six entries they had made. “That’s why we say it’s quite similar to the Bangladesh online heist (theft of $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh in February 2016). If they had not deleted the entries, it would have taken some more time for the bank to realise that there are fraudulent transactions,” Shinde explained.Every bank runs a reconciliation process at the end of the day. The malware that infected the central bank of Bangladesh, too, had a component which manipulated the SWIFT’s prt file. The prt file is a print file which usually prints the report of transactions for that day.For instance, if the report shows 106 transactions when they have actually done only 100 transactions, the discrepancy will come to light. This is one reason why the hackers deleted the six transactions in the Union Bank episode. However, this is also the reason that the hack was discovered.So what did Union Bank do?Shinde recalls some RBI officials being there when the forensics began. “The CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) had not come yet. The cybercrime cell officials were there. Traditional police mentality was it must be some insider,” Shinde said. Even a First Information Report (FIR) was filed almost a month after the incident, according to Tiwari.“It took us sometime to zero down on the fact that the attack was similar to what happened in the Bangladesh case,” Shinde explained.EY officials went about doing an analysis of the server and “some network forensics”. They, thus, narrowed down on the systems involved. “Imaging takes 48 hours, indexing takes 24 hours. For instance, when you put a system to do imaging of the disk, it takes two days for a 2 terrabyte (TB) hard disk. There is a lot of time lag that happens. We had a tough time facing the regulators and security officers. It was a high-pressure environment. RBI used to call us every day, asking us what happened. We had to tell them that analysis takes time,” Shinde said.The problem, according to Shinde, is that EY had access only to a “limited set of logs”. Organizations, according to Shinde, typically keep logs in the system for a period of 2-4 months and not for 1-2 years. The reason is also that the data is humongous. “If someone had the ability to analyse a two-year log, you’d have different answers coming out. It’s very difficult. So attribution of zeroing down on a particular geography is very difficult.”In UBI’s case, the UBI employee was sitting in the Mumbai office. But he could have been anywhere. Given that networks of most organizations are flat, SWIFT networks are not segregated—one computer can reach the other computer very easily, according to Shinde. The objective of the attacker is to infect anyone and then start searching for critical systems within the network. In technical terms, it’s called lateral movement, Shinde explained.After analyzing the problem with the “limited resources” on hand, Union Bank delinked its “380-odd SWIFT pan-India connections” in a bid to centralize operations. “Then we created space in this building (Union Bank Bhavan), and had around 40 hotline operators manning the phones. I had told them that nobody will leave till such time that this is put in place and tested,” Tiwari explained. The ploy worked. As regulation necessitates, Union Bank informed the exchanges on 22 July that “…there was an attempted cyber incidence in USD Nostro Account of the bank. The money trail was promptly traced and movement of funds was blocked. Resultantly, there is no loss caused to the bank”.“What pains me —in cricket, we call this a late run. The headlines (referring to reports that appeared a year after the heist) are screaming as if this happened yesterday,” Tiwari rued. He added, “We had, and have, concurrent manual checks too. In all these kinds of heists, money is lost or partly retrieved. Credence must be given that we did not lose a single cent. We recovered about 70% of the money within 24 hours. The last tranche of $30 million took me 50-60 hours because of a legal process.”But isn’t prevention better than cure?Union Bank, according to the 22 July press statement to the exchanges, added that a cybersecurity forensic audit was being done to “identify, plug any gaps and strengthen the system. “There is no impact on the Bank’s operations,” the note concluded.The question that begs an answer—one which even Tiwari could not answer satisfactorily—is who was to blame for the lapse: Union Bank or SWIFT?Kiran Shetty, CEO of SWIFT India, insisted that “SWIFT’s system has not been compromised. We have not got a cyber report from Union Bank or any forensic report from them. The investigation is closely held by them. In most cases, when cyber attacks happen, people are not forthcoming with information. We have not been exposed to full details.”“Globally, there are controls and principles we are defining. We are revisiting the vendors that we have in terms of our connection. We have never been compromised. We are only doing pieces to further strengthen the evolution of our system. We are doing roadshows across five cities in India along with the Indian Banks Association talking about cyber security controls, cyber hygiene, etc,” Shetty said.Shetty, though, acknowledged that “cyber threat is real and is growing”. According to him, the pace of digitization that we have seen in the last decade and at a more accelerated pace, requires the same level of investment on the cyber side as well. The regulator (RBI), he added, has introduced regulations around a CISO (chief information and security officer) directly reporting to the board. There is also a customer security programme where “we are now mandating 27 controls, of which 16 are mandates and 11 are advisory. If you don’t have 16, we will start reporting to the regulator.” Implementation of all these regulations will have to be done by the end of the year.Even Tiwari expressed his inability to share a copy of the forensics report. “I cannot share further details because even I don’t have a copy,” he said.Tiwari, however, pointed out that the measures his bank has undertaken after the incident last July included the “most stringent filtering, awareness of employees, whitelisting (proactive security technique that only allows a limited set of approved programs to run while blocking the others), BIOS passwords (to prevent external devices from accessing computers and servers) and engagement with regional office levels constantly”. He added, though, that even as the bank was fortifying its IT platform “trying to see how to make your processes efficient”, he would not rule out future cyber attacks.“We have put the best IT guys on the jobs and even a CISO but the fact is that however many locks you put on the door, a burglary can still take place. The point is to remain alert and put measures in place, which we have done already,” Tiwari insisted.Shinde concurred that cyber crimes are well thought and well researched most of the times. Even when EY does cyber attack simulations, the first part is the reconnaissance phase.“It’s like in any war on an attack, you first do a thorough reconnaissance on the target to see how weak they are, what controls are there, who to target first, what are the avenues for entry, how many avenues are there,” Shinde explained. Shinde added that one can easily pick up and sniff out email addresses from employees putting news on groups, public forums. “It’s possible that Union Bank, too, could have been targeted via a reconnaissance exercise. This is just one bank which has come out in the open. We don’t know how many banks are there who have gone through the same incident and not reported it to the regulator,” Shinde said, concluding, “Even if you fix everything, you cannot rule out the chance that it will not happen again. In UBI’s case, they responded faster. Today, the response time is critical.”Incidents of hacking in recent times
—Federal prosecutors are investigating North Korea’s possible role in a SWIFT hack that resulted in the theft of $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh in February 2016, according to a 15 April report in the New York Times. Security researchers found that traces of code used in the Bangladesh theft had been used in a cyber attack against Sony in 2014, which the Obama administration and security experts blamed North Korean hackers for carrying out, the report added. Soon after RBI asked Indian banks to immediately put in place a cyber security policy.
—Card data of 3.2 million customers was stolen between 25 May and 10 July in 2016 from a network of Yes Bank Ltd ATMs managed by Hitachi Payment Services Pvt. Ltd.
—Axis Bank reported cyber security breach in October 2016; malware found in its server; no monetary loss reported.
—Bank of Maharashtra lost Rs25 crore when a bug in the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system allowed people to send money without having the necessary funds in their accounts earlier this year.
—On 8 April SBI ATM in Odisha spews out cash without any card being swiped. Physical malware attack suspected in these ATMs.",Union Bank of India recently fell prey to hacking—robbing the lender of $171 million—but the hackers made a silly mistake,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 10 11 PM IST",How Union Bank was hacked and got its money back +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/d1XAiBURoukUu6E8wcbBoI/Titan-says-H2-FY17-exceeded-expectations-despite-demonetisat.html,"Bengaluru: Titan Co. Ltd said business in the second half of fiscal 2016-17 exceeded its expectations despite demonetization, after the maker of watches and accessories struggled in the first half due to a jewellery industry strike against excise duty and a new rule requiring customers to disclose their permanent account numbers for purchases above Rs2 lakh.Consumer sentiment and demand recovered significantly by the start of the fourth quarter of 2016-17 and sales were good across divisions in varying degrees, Titan said in a quarterly update filed with BSE Ltd on Tuesday.The jewellery unit, led by the firm’s primary brand Tanishq, had a good quarter due to the “resounding success of the studded jewellery activation”, the Titan said.The firm launched Rivaah, a range of wedding jewellery during the quarter and is going all out to promote the sub-brand under Tanishq.Gross margins from the jewellery business are expected to be good in the quarter and enrolments and redemptions in the Golden Harvest Scheme are on track, Titan said.Jewellery accounts for a major portion of Titan’s overall revenue. The firm opened 16 Tanishq stores in 2016-17.The watches unit, which had been struggling after demonetization hurt sales in both trade and multi-brand retail channels, also had a good quarter, according to the BSE filing. The trade channel has recovered from the after-effects of the cash ban, it added.However, the exports and original equipment manufacturing businesses within Titan’s watches unit continue to face headwinds, slowing down overall growth marginally. During the quarter, the company launched its slimmest ceramic watch, Edge Date, and also entered the fitness band market with an activity tracker launched under the Fastrack brand. Titan added 24 World of Titan stores and eight Helios stores during 2016-17.Titan said a revival in the demand for sunglasses turned around overall sales at its eyewear division. But the closure of 12 Spexx stores dampened top line growth to some extent. It opened 59 Titan Eye Plus stores during the year.During the fourth quarter, the company also opened its first handloom apparel store in Bengaluru’s upscale Indiranagar, marking its entry into the women’s wear segment, which is in the pilot mode for now.Titan is optimistic about revenue growth in the coming year, though a high goods and services tax rate for jewellery might have some impact on its growth rate.",Titan said the second half of 2016-17 was a reversal from the first half when the firm struggled due to policy changes in the jewellery industry,"Wed, Apr 05 2017. 01 47 AM IST",Titan says H2 FY17 exceeded expectations despite demonetisation +https://www.livemint.com/Money/elqLloECZ0IgfNpG5pZZdI/Sebi-may-allow-investors-to-buy-mutual-funds-via-digital-wal.html,"New Delhi: Markets regulator Sebi is looking to allow investors to buy mutual funds worth up to Rs50,000 through digital wallets to make it easier for investors to purchase these instruments, especially the youth. The move would help in speedy and easy transactions while reducing failures due to payment gateway issues. Besides, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is expected to put in place regulations for instant withdrawal facility in liquid mutual fund. Also, asset management companies (AMCs) can tie-up with payment banks to provide digital transaction to investors. The board of Sebi will discuss proposals in this regard next week, sources said. These new facilities will help in increasing the penetration of mutual funds and help in channelising household savings into capital markets. They would also provide a convenient option to investors to diversify from the traditional saving avenue. Under the proposal, the total subscription through an e-wallet for an investor should be restricted up to Rs50,000 per mutual fund in a financial year. The regulator may ask AMCs to enter into an agreement with pre-paid payment instruments for facilitating payment from e-wallets of the investors to mutual fund schemes. AMCs will have to ensure that e-wallet issuers must not offer incentives such as cash back directly or indirectly for investing in MFs through them. Further, an e-wallet’s balance, loaded through cash, debit card and net banking, can only be used for subscriptions to mutual funds. However, balance loaded with a credit card, cash back and promotional scheme should not be allowed for purchase of such products. Sebi may come out with a framework for an instant access facility in liquid schemes, wherein investors can withdraw their funds invested in the scheme within a very short time through an online mechanism. For the instant access facility, the regulator may set a limit of Rs50,000 or 90% of investment, whichever is lower, per day per investor per scheme. The regulator may mandate fund houses to get prior approval from the AMC board and trustee board before offering this facility to investors and also make appropriate disclosures in offer documents. Currently, 41 AMCs together manage assets worth Rs18.3 lakh crore and mutual fund investor accounts are over Rs5 crore. MFs are investment vehicles made up of a pool of funds collected from a number of investors. The funds are invested in stocks, bonds and money market instruments, among others.","Sebi is looking to allow investors to buy mutual funds worth up to Rs50,000 through digital wallets in a move aimed at enabling speedy and easy transactions ","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 05 55 PM IST",Sebi may allow investors to buy mutual funds via digital wallet +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Cph6x0CQa7EK3Hfxwv6bnI/SBI-Card-starts-charging-Rs100-on-small-payments-via-cheque.html,"New Delhi: SBI Card, with over 4 million customers, has started charging Rs100 for payment through cheque if the amount is up to Rs2,000 and anything above will attract no fee. The fee kicks in from 1 April. The move, SBI Card said, is aimed at encouraging digital payments in line with the government’s policy. “A fee of Rs100 will be charged for payments made by cheque for an amount less than or equal to Rs2,000 w.e.f 1 April 2017,” it said.The credit card company, however, said there will be no additional fee for cheque payments greater than Rs2,000. CEO of SBI Card Vijay Jasuja said that over 90% of its customers make payments through non-cheque mode. “We have observed a trend of payment related disputes arising in small cheque payments, causing inconvenience to customers as well. We offer several seamless digital modes of payment which we are seeking to encourage, in line with the government’s focus towards digital payments and this step will facilitate the same,” the CEO said.Jasuja added that there will be no charge on cheque payments on holders of SBI Card Unnati which is targeted at first-time credit card users and aimed at inclusion of people into the organised financial stream.With a customer base of over 4 million, SBI Card operates through a footprint of more than 90 locations in India. SBI Card is a joint venture between State Bank of India and GE Capital. The joint venture operates through two companies. GE Capital Business Processes Management Services (GECBPMSL) takes care of the technology and processing needs of SBI Card while SBI Cards and Payments Services (SBICPSL) focuses on customer acquisition, marketing and risk management of SBI Card.Last month, SBI had said it would increase its stake in SBI Card to 74% by June-end.","SBI Card has started charging Rs100 for payment through cheque if the amount is up to Rs2,000 and anything above will attract no fee","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 06 40 PM IST",SBI Card starts charging Rs100 on small payments via cheque +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/eOm1hacnNWs1VvNeLjL3uL/InMobi-posts-profit-in-December-quarter.html,"
Bengaluru: Advertising technology firm InMobi eked out a net profit in the last quarter of 2016 and the company expects to be profitable this year, chief executive Naveen Tewari said in an interview.Tewari declined to disclose the company’s profit figures. News website Factordaily last year reported that InMobi reported a loss of $40 million on a revenue of $262 million for the year to March 2015, citing the company’s Singapore filings. InMobi said it follows a calendar year but because it is incorporated in Singapore, the firm reports its numbers there according to the financial year.If InMobi can achieve its target of generating a net profit this year, it will mark a remarkable turnaround for a company that has been written off by many investors and analysts.“Till about the first half of last year, InMobi was struggling to make some of its recent big bets work on a sustainable basis. What they’ve done since then is they’ve gone back to the basics and doubled down on some of their core products and markets like the US and China,” said Satish Meena, a senior forecast analyst at Forrester Research. “They’ve also channelled resources into key areas such as mobile video, and that has helped them show early signs of recovery. Their other offerings around mobile are also starting to witness some traction.”He added: “However, we may have to wait a little longer to assess whether the recent recovery is sustainable. For now, mobile video holds the key for them, since most large companies that are investing in this space are betting big on mobile advertising—that’s where most of the advertising dollars are being spent right now.” Tewari said the company’s profit push, which began in mid-2015, was based on signing high-margin deals with clients, an increase in its video ad business and a shift towards more profitable markets.“We became ultra-focused on doing the right deals. You start choosing the right deals and giving up the bad deals. Then, last year, we focused only on two markets—US and China. This year, we’re focusing on three other markets—India, Indonesia and Australia. This is a big shift from previous years when we were spending freely on expanding in all markets,” Tewari said.The firm, which didn’t increase its headcount last year, was also helped by an increase in its re-seller business, in which its partners in various markets earn commissions based on the business they bring, Tewari said.The focus on profits came at a cost: sales growth at the firm dropped to roughly 20% in 2016. In previous years, InMobi has seen sales growth of at least 30%. However, Tewari said growth will pick up this year as it increases its presence in India, Indonesia and Australia, and strikes deals with large enterprises across the world that are eager to generate advertising revenues online.To be sure, InMobi has missed targets in the past. It competes with the giants of the online advertising business—Google and Facebook—both of which have been mentioned as potential buyers of InMobi in the past. It went on a hiring spree in 2012 and 2013 with disastrous consequences. And some of its products have flopped. One such, launched in 2015, was Miip, which took the form of an animated monkey that tracked users’ browsing habits across mobile apps and showed ads in the forms of bubbles and animations instead of traditional display ads. InMobi’s last fund-raising was in 2011, when it raised $200 million from SoftBank Group Corp. Since then, discussions with several investors over funding haven’t materialized.“Our need for raising money was never for operational uses even when we were losing $3-5 million a quarter. At that rate, we would have had cash to last till 2019. Now, of course, we’re adding cash. So, to clarify, we wanted to raise money to be able to do strategic things like acquisitions and not for running the business. For a variety of reasons like differences over valuation, these acquisitions didn’t go through,” Tewari said.InMobi has raised a working capital debt of $60 million, which has to be repaid by 2020. Tewari said the firm is adding to its cash reserves every month after its business turned profitable at the EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) level last March.InMobi is also in the process of hiring a new chief financial officer after its previous finance chief, Manish Dugar, left to join online healthcare platform Practo last May. “Now that we are profitable, we think we can be a public company. Either going public or figuring out if this could be a bigger play (combining) with somebody else—those are both opportunities,” Tewari said.","If InMobi can achieve its target of generating a net profit for this year, it will mark a remarkable turnaround for a company that has been written off by many analysts","Wed, Apr 05 2017. 01 41 AM IST",InMobi posts profit in December quarter +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/7EFPQC7F1PinwhLLqzPEkL/Samsung-tips-best-quarterly-profit-in-over-three-years-as-ch.html,"Seoul: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd forecast on Friday its best quarterly profit in more than three years in the January-March period, beating expectations and putting it on track for record annual earnings on the back of a memory chip super-cycle.The Apple Inc. rival has rapidly recovered from last year’s costly failure of its fire-prone Galaxy Note 7 device, despite a political scandal involving vice chairman Jay Y. Lee who appeared in a Seoul court on Friday facing charges including bribing ousted president Park Geun-hye.The global memory chip leader said first-quarter operating profit was likely 9.9 trillion won ($8.8 billion), compared with an average forecast of 9.4 trillion won from a Thomson Reuters survey of 18 analysts. Revenue rose 0.4% to 50 trillion won, just ahead of analysts’ forecasts. “The semiconductor business was likely the main driver for earnings,” said Heungkuk Securities analyst Lee Min-hee, adding that sales of mid-to-low tier smartphones also helped the mobile business remain profitable. Samsung shares touched a record high of 2.134 million won in late March on expectations of record annual profit in 2017, as the South Korean tech giant bounced back from the embarrassing withdrawal of its Note 7 devices due to combustible batteries.Investors and analysts expect Samsung to report its best-ever quarterly profit in April-June, with the Galaxy S8 smartphone hitting the market on 21 April in Samsung’s first premium device launch since the Note 7’s withdrawal in October. Some researchers forecast the S8, which sports the largest screens for Samsung high-end smartphones to date, to set a new first-year sales record.“Samsung will look to recover market share they lost last year and pump up volumes even if they have to spend more to do so,” IBK’s Kim said. All this is happening amid management upheaval at South Korea’s biggest family-run conglomerate, with third-generation leader Lee embroiled in a scandal that has already led to Park’s removal from office for allegedly receiving bribes.Lee was arrested in February over his alleged role in a corruption scandal. He denies any wrongdoing. Chips sizzle While Samsung will not provide detailed earnings results until the end of April, analysts tipped its chip division to earn a record 5.8 trillion won in January-March and propel the firm to its best overall operating profit since the third quarter of 2013. Favourable memory market conditions will likely persist throughout 2017 due to diminishing production gains on investments and careful capacity management among chipmakers.Growing demand for more firepower from devices such as smartphones and servers have also helped push up margins for Samsung and its rivals in recent quarters.Samsung shares were down 1.2% in early Friday trade, underperforming a 0.2% fall for the broader market on profit-taking pressures. Reuters","Samsung forecast its best quarterly profit in more than three years in the January-March period, putting it on track for record annual earnings on the back of a memory chip super-cycle","Fri, Apr 07 2017. 10 21 AM IST",Samsung tips best quarterly profit in over three years as chips soar +https://www.livemint.com/Money/k8OG69Ukh2nOoA2XM9CGbP/SBI-market-cap-crosses-ONGCs-becomes-Indias-most-valuable.html,"Mumbai: State Bank of India (SBI) on Tuesday surpassed ONGC to become the country’s most valuable public sector unit (PSU), in terms of market valuation. At the end of trade, the market cap of SBI stood at Rs2,35,307.51 crore. This is about Rs2,961.79 crore more than that of PSU energy major ONGC’s Rs2,32,345.72 crore. ONGC once used to be the country’s most-valued company in terms of market valuation. Among the top-10 most valued companies list, SBI is at fifth position, while ONGC is seventh. Shares of SBI ended the day with a mild gain of 0.17% at Rs290.15, while ONGC fell by 1.12% to Rs181.05 on BSE. In intra-day, shares of SBI rose by 2.33% to Rs 296.40 and ONGC lost 1.36% to Rs180.60. So far this year, shares of SBI surged almost 16% while that of ONGC fell by over 4%. IT major TCS is the most valued Indian company with a market cap of Rs4,54,902.85 crore followed by RIL (Rs4,45,578.92 crore), HDFC Bank (Rs3,70,480.05 crore), ITC (Rs3,38,851.25 crore), SBI, HDFC (Rs2,35,122.56 crore), ONGC, Infosys (Rs2,11,870.18 crore), HUL (Rs1,97,464.44 crore) and Maruti Suzuki (Rs1,85,235.49 crore).","SBI becoems India’s most valuable PSU firm after market cap rises to Rs2,35,307.51 crore , about Rs2,961.79 crore more than that of ONGC ","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 05 47 PM IST","SBI market cap crosses ONGC’s, becomes India’s most valuable PSU firm " +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/M5kW9Bygz5i9l0PIsXNb7N/Rewa-solar-power-deal-to-help-Delhi-Metro-save-energy-cost.html,"Delhi Metro Rail Corp. Ltd (DMRC) will make huge savings by purchasing power from Rewa Ultra Mega Solar Ltd which is implementing the world’s largest solar power project at a single site in Madhya Pradesh, a power ministry statement said.“There would be huge savings to the Delhi Metro because of per unit cost of power reducing from over Rs4.50 to Rs3.30,” the statement said quoting power and renewable energy minister Piyush Goyal, who presided over the signing of DMRC’s power purchase agreement in Bhopal on Monday.The 750 megawatt (MW) project sharply brought down solar power tariff to Rs3.3 a unit in February this year, the lowest discovered in an auction till then, when three 250MW projects were awarded to Mahindra Renewables Pvt. Ltd, Acme Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd and Sweden’s Solenergi Power Pvt. Ltd. Subsequently, NTPC’s 250MW project at Kadapa in south-central Andhra Pradesh was awarded for a flat Rs3.15 per unit in an auction last week.International Finance Corp. (IFC), the private lending and advisory arm of the World Bank Group, which was the transaction advisor for the Rewa project said in a statement on Monday that the project will mobilize $550 million in private investment.“The Rewa solar park transaction will have an enormous ripple effect, helping create new markets for large solar projects across India and the region,” the IFC statement said quoting executive vice president and CEO, Philippe Le Houérou. “This is the first time that solar power has achieved grid parity, which means that the ambitious renewable energy targets set by the government are within reach,” said the IFC statement quoting Rewa Ultra Mega Solar Ltd chairman and principal secretary, government of Madhya Pradesh, Manu Srivastava. The winning bidders of the project signed two sets of power purchase agreements with the Madhya Pradesh Power Management Corporation Ltd (MPPMCL) and the DMRC. With about 24% of energy from the park being sold to the Delhi Metro, it will meet about 80% of daytime energy requirement of Delhi Metro, the IFC statement said further.","Delhi Metro’s per unit cost of power would reduce from over Rs4.50 to Rs3.30, says power minister Piyush Goyal","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 01 03 AM IST",Rewa solar power deal to help Delhi Metro save energy cost: Piyush Goyal +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/wkFRsgmkg9tQQCJZfY9bUJ/NTPC-Vallure-station-to-cut-power-supply-to-3-states-over-pe.html,"New Delhi: A joint venture of state-run NTPC has decided to snap power supply to three states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana from its Vallure thermal station over non-payment of dues of Rs 1,388 crore. The NTPC Tamil Nadu Energy Company Ltd (NTECL) has issued a notice for regulation of power supply to Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Karnataka to the extent of 1,229 MW from its Vallur Thermal Power Station (1500 MW), for non-payment of long outstanding dues of Rs1,388 crore, person familiar with the development said. “The regulation or suspension of power supply shall be implemented from 00:00 hrs of 26 April 2017, and is expected to seriously affect power supply position in these states,” the person aware of the development added. The NTECL, a joint venture company between NTPC and Tamil Nadu Electricity Board, is engaged in generation, transmission and distribution of electricity. The joint venture was formed for setting up a 1,500 mw coal-based power station at Vallur, Ennore in Tamil Nadu utilising the existing infrastructure facility at Ennore and supply power mainly to Tamil Nadu and also to Kerala, Karnataka and Pondicherry.","The NTPC Tamil Nadu Energy Company has issued a notice for regulation of power supply to Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Karnataka to the extent of 1,229 MW ","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 09 26 PM IST",NTPC Vallure station to cut power supply to 3 states over pending dues +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ckuHOQWkS3E2kp2HTtbbEM/Govt-to-give-custom-excise-duty-benefits-to-boost-solar-roo.html,"New Delhi: In a boost to India’s lagging solar rooftop sector, the Union ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE) has decided to give custom and excise duty benefits to it for ensuring high growth.The move will not only bring down the costs of setting up projects but also that of generation.Solar power developers setting up grid-connected solar PV (photovoltaic) projects have been seeking “grant of duty benefits” (custom and excise duty) from the MNRE for installation of rooftop systems.“The matter of extending the duty benefits to the rooftop grid connected solar PV power plants has been under consideration in this ministry for past some time. After examination of various issues involved, it has been decided to give customs and excise duty exemption certificates, with immediate effect, to all rooftop solar PV power projects upto a minimum capacity of 100 KW (Kilowatt) as a single project or bundled project,” said an MNRE order dated 11 April.India has set up an ambitious 100 GW solar power target by 2022. Of the 100 GW, 60 GW is planned through large- and medium-scale grid-connected solar power projects while 40 GW is planned from the solar PV (photovoltaic) rooftop system. But the sector has not seen great growth and the target of 40 GW by 2022 remains a mammoth task. As per reports, India’s rooftop solar capacity till 2016-end was about 1GW only.Experts welcomed the custom and excise duty benefits for the solar sector. “It’s a good decision. We have ambitious targets and we need to take various steps to encourage the solar rooftop sector. We need to bring the cost down and make it more lucrative,” said Rakesh Kamal, a consultant with The Climate Reality Project, an independent organisation working on climate change-related issues.Kamal, however, cautioned that MNRE should also focus on maintaining the quality of solar panels being used.India has given a huge thrust to the solar rooftop sector as it does not require pooling of land or separate transmission facilities and has minimal technical losses, unlike ground-mounted solar projects.The solar rooftop sector also benefits power distribution companies in various ways. For instance, rooftop projects enable these companies to meet their renewable purchase obligations, help them in managing daytime peak loads which are projected to become more widespread as India’s economy grows and in localised generation of power that ultimately helps them in avoiding costly power.States leading in providing solar rooftop power are Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Punjab.",The ministry of new and renewable energy has decided to give custom and excise duty benefits to the solar rooftop sector to boost growth,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 05 39 PM IST","Govt to give customs, excise duty benefits to boost solar rooftop sector" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/wCo7QIJoAOP8xr9exsPgSM/Use-of-kerosene-diesel-falls-LPG-consumption-rises-on-clea.html,"New Delhi: India’s fossil fuel consumption trend is suggesting a shift away from inefficient and highly polluting use of hydrocarbons, as a result of efforts to move towards a less-carbon-intensive economy.Consumption of kerosene, used primarily for lighting and cooking purposes in rural areas, has dropped by a sharp 21% in 2016-17 from a year ago to 5.3 million tonnes, aided by greater use of cleaner liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking and coverage of more villages under the rural electrification programme, as per data from Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, an arm of the oil ministry.In the same period, consumption of LPG jumped 9.8% to 21.5 million tonnes, supported by a nationwide drive to boost consumption of clean cooking fuel. In 2016-17, state-owned fuel retailers Indian Oil Corp. (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp. and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. issued a total 3.25 crore new connections, the highest number of connections given in any year ever. The number included the 2 crore connections given under the “LPG-for poor women” scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana.The Central government has been encouraging states to cut down their kerosene use in line with progress in village electrification and LPG penetration as it is widely believed that a large part of kerosene meant to be distributed through state public distribution system is diverted for adulteration of diesel.The data showed that consumption of diesel, which, apart from as a transportation fuel, is used in power generation sets by businesses and commercial enterprises, grew at a modest pace of 1.8% in 2016-17 to 76 million tonnes compared to a 7.5% growth in the previous 12 months, as the country added more renewable power capacity.India added 5,526 MW of new solar capacity in 2016-17, up 83% from a year ago. Addition in wind power capacity in the same period was 5,400 MW, 63% more than what was achieved a year ago.A draft five-year electricity plan brought out by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), a federal statutory body, last December said that the share of non-fossil fuels in India’s sources of electricity will reach 46.8% by 2021-22. This projection suggests the country could improve upon its climate change goal of generating 40% of electricity from non-fossil fuels by 2030—the intended nationally determined contribution, a commitment made at the UN framework convention on climate change in Paris last December.Indian Oil Corp. chairman B. Ashok said that the growth rate in diesel should be seen in the context of its high base—three times that of petrol. Ashok said that every class of fuel has scope for growth in line with the country’s economic growth rate and rising energy requirement.Petrol consumption grew 8.7% during the year under review to 23.7 million tonnes and jet fuel by 12% to 7 million tonnes. Gas consumption during the period grew to 8.7% to 50.7 billion cubic metres.","Consumption of kerosene dropped by 21% in 2016-17 from a year ago to 5.3 million tonnes, while that of LPG jumped 9.8% to 21.5 million tonnes in the same period","Mon, Apr 17 2017. 12 47 PM IST","Use of kerosene, diesel falls, LPG consumption rises on clean energy drive" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/xBwLitZoEzpFMOv7vHKtzK/177-mines-of-Coal-India-downgraded-on-quality-concerns.html,"
Kolkata: The national coal quality watchdog has downgraded 177 of Coal India Ltd’s 413 mines, potentially impairing the monopoly miner’s profitability, starting from the current year. The downgrades took effect 1 April. A total of 2,636 samples from the miner’s seven subsidiaries were examined and that led to the downgrading of 177 mines, said a key official at Coal Controller’s Organization (CCO)—the watchdog. A few mines were upgraded too, added this person, asking not to be identified.Admitting the downgrade, key Coal India officials said the miner’s focus in the current year will be on quality of coal, and that in most cases downgrading was by 1-2 grades only. The company’s profitability will surely be impacted by the move, but it is too early to assess to what extent, the Coal India officials said, asking not to be named.There will be a negative impact in the short run, said Goutam Chakraborty, an analyst (metals and mining) with Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd. “However, at the same time, the impact may not be too significant going forward,” he added. Because of the downgrade, Coal India’s realization from the 177 coal mines will decline whereas the cost of mining will remain unchanged or inch up due to inflation. Coal grades are determined by the gross calorific value of the fuel. Earlier, Coal India used to determine the grade on its own.After years of bickering between power producers and Coal India over grades and quality slippages, the union government agreed to start a process of independent inspection of coal for quality.Since the Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research started monitoring quality, the slippages have declined, said Ashok Khurana, the secretary general of lobby group Association of Power Producers.Cases of recurrent slippages were referred to the Coal Controller’s Organization and that led to the downgrading of 177 mines, according to Khurana.“The results of the past year have been encouraging and several power producers have benefited,” he added.","Coal Controller’s Organization has downgraded 177 of Coal India’s 413 mines, potentially impairing the monopoly miner’s profitability","Mon, Apr 17 2017. 04 41 AM IST",177 mines of Coal India downgraded on quality concerns +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/exwdIfFMClC6oQK3qTCGEI/BP-races-to-contain-Alaskas-North-Slope-well-after-finding.html,"New York: A well operated by BP Exploration Alaska Inc. on Alaska’s frigid North Slope is no longer spraying crude oil after leaks were discovered Friday morning.The well, located in the Greater Prudhoe Bay area, was venting gas, which caused a spray of crude oil to impact the well pad. By Sunday afternoon in Alaska, that had been stopped. A second leak had been reduced but was still emitting gas, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said in a statement. Well pressure was monitored throughout the night and excess pressure was bled off to keep it within a safe range.The volume of the leak hasn’t been determined, and the cause of the release is unknown, the Department said. There have been no injuries and no reports of harm to wildlife.Based on aerial pictures, the release appears to be contained to the gravel pad surrounding the well head and hasn’t reached the surrounding tundra, BP said in a statement. The well has been shut in since Friday and the response is ongoing, BP spokeswoman Dawn Patience said by email Sunday.The leak comes as the remote North Slope, once home to America’s biggest oilfields, enjoys a resurgence as producers work to boost output from aging wells and extend their reach to new supplies. North Slope production rose to 565,000 barrels a day in March, its highest level since December 2013. It’s another sign, along with multibillion-barrel discoveries in recent months, that the area may be reversing decades of declining volumes and investment.Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.’s Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which runs from Prudhoe Bay south to Valdez, isn’t affected by this incident and is operating normally, Michelle Egan, a company spokeswoman, said by telephone Sunday. Alyeska is a joint partnership led by the North Slope’s top producers, BP Plc, Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips. Bloomberg",BP’s well on Alaska’s frigid North Slope is no longer spraying crude oil after leaks were discovered Friday morning,"Mon, Apr 17 2017. 12 47 PM IST",BP races to contain Alaska’s North Slope well after finding leaks +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ZMi3HLEHBtuJgadvdpxhpJ/Indian-refiners-eye-entry-into-Myanmar-to-supply-auto-fuel.html,"
New Delhi: After making forays into Bangladesh and Nepal, Indian refiners are about to venture into Myanmar to supply auto fuel. At the same time, they are also consolidating their presence in their earlier South Asian markets. Later this year, Numaligarh Refinery Ltd in Assam will be the first off the block in selling petroleum products to Myanmar. “Supply of fuel will initially be by road and if the quantity required turns out to be huge, then it will make sense to invest in pipelines,” a person with direct knowledge of the matter said on condition of anonymity. State-owned Indian Oil Corp. is also keen to start retailing operations in Myanmar for which it has submitted a proposal to the government of that country, the person said. Indian Oil is also preparing to expand its Nepal operations by opening 100 retail outlets in partnership with Nepal Oil Corp., a state-owned trading company. Besides, talks are on to extend the scope of an earlier planned pipeline between Raxaul in Bihar to Amlekhganj in eastern Nepal, the person said. Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Nepal’s minister for supplies Deepak Bohara discussed the possibility of expanding the proposed pipeline to connect Motihari in Bihar and Chitwan in Nepal when they met in the last week of March, said the person cited above. The governments are also studying the possibility of two additional pipelines to transport liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and natural gas. During Bohara’s visit, Nepal renewed its fuel purchase deal with India for another five years. The Himalayan nation will buy 1.3 million tonnes of fuel from India every year during the period.Indian Oil chairman B. Ashok told Mint in an interview published on 6 March that the company is working on expanding almost all of its existing refineries including the ones in the north-east. The move is part of the Make in India drive, and aimed at adding jobs in the refining and petrochemical sectors. Earlier this week, India and Bangladesh agreed to increase energy cooperation which included business-to-business deals in the hydrocarbon sector. A $1 billion contract between Petronet LNG Ltd. and Bangladesh Oil, Gas and Mineral Corp., (Petrobangla) for use of Petronet’s LNG terminal and a $300 million deal between Reliance Power Ltd. and Petrobangla for setting up a 500 million standard cubic feet per day LNG terminal at Kutubdia island near Chittagong are among them. A report by the Boston Consulting Group in 2016 titled Hydrocarbons to Fuel the Future noted that India’s refinery capacity addition witnessed a halt between the period 2012-2015, driven largely by project delays and that it was important the country regained its lost momentum in adding capacity to reinvigorate export potential. India has a 230 million tonne a year refining capacity. “India has demonstrated technical capability and cost competitiveness in building and operating large refineries. It makes sense to invest in mega coastal refineries of high complexity to serve growing domestic demand and also to serve markets such as East Africa and Asia,” said Debasish Mishra, partner at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP.",Indian Oil Corp. is keen to start retailing operations in Myanmar for which it has submitted a proposal to the government of that country,"Sat, Apr 15 2017. 12 10 AM IST",Indian refiners eye entry into Myanmar to supply auto fuel +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/bl88GlegfJMPyDVdVlxVeM/Petrol-price-hiked-by-Rs139-per-litre-diesel-up-by-Rs104.html,"New Delhi: The price of petrol was hiked by Rs1.39 per litre and diesel by Rs1.04 a litre in sync with firming international rates. The hike comes on the back of a Rs4.85 per litre reduction in rates of petrol and Rs3.41 a litre in diesel effected from 1 April. Indian Oil Corp (IOC), the nation’s largest fuel retailer, said price of petrol is being increased by Rs1.39 per litre, excluding state levies, and that of diesel by Rs1.04 (excluding state levies) with effect from Saturday midnight. Actual increase in price will be more after taking into account local value added tax (VAT). Petrol in Delhi currently costs Rs66.29 a litre while a litre of diesel is priced at Rs55.61. Also Read: Limerick: On petrol and diesel prices“The current level of international product prices of petrol and diesel and INR-USD exchange rate warrant increase in selling price of petrol and diesel, the impact of which is being passed on to the consumers with this price revision,” IOC said in a statement. The movement of prices in the international oil market and INR-USD exchange rate shall continue to be monitored closely and developing trends of the market will be reflected in future price changes, it said. IOC also said it intends to shortly start daily changes in price of petrol and diesel on pilot basis, in Udaipur, Jamshedpur, Pondicherry, Chandigarh and Vizag.",Petrol in Delhi currently costs Rs66.29 a litre while a litre of diesel is priced at Rs55.61,"Sun, Apr 16 2017. 08 42 AM IST","Petrol price hiked by Rs1.39 per litre, diesel up by Rs1.04" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/XVxSuX2Ps4Pb6hicDnNzgL/Cairn-India-partners-to-invest-Rs3240-crore-in-Ravva-Field.html,"Hyderabad: Cairn India Limited, along with its partners is set to invest Rs3,240 crore in the Ravva Fields in the Krishna-Godavari Basin, to undertake 20 Developmental Wells and for setting up related infrastructure, as the oil and gas production is dwindling from the existing wells. Cairn India Limited approached the ministry of environment forest and climate change seeking necessary clearances for the proposed project. According to the minutes of the meeting by Expert Appraisal Committee under the ministry, the proposal was given green signal as far as Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) is concerned. “In order to enhance the hydrocarbon production within the already approved capacities, Cairn India Limited on behalf of Ravva JV proposes the following oil and gas developments to produce contingent hydrocarbon resources available in Ravva Field-Drilling of 20 developmental wells: 6 from new RI Platform and 14 from existing platforms... Drilling of 6 nos. of exploratory/appraisal wells to assess presence of hydrocarbons in identified pockets.. “The cost of the above proposed oil and gas development is estimated to be approximately Rs3,240 crore,” the EAC said in the minutes of the meeting held last month. According to the company’s annual report of FY 16, the Ravva Fields produced 18,602 Barrels of Oil Equivalent per Day (BOEPD) average daily gross operated production in 2016-17 against 23, 845 BOEPD in FY 16. Cairn India officials did not respond to mail seeking additional information. The Ravva field (PKGM-1 Block) located in the shallow offshore area of Krishna Godavari Basin, has completed 21 years of successful operations with ,Cairn India as the operator with 22.5% participating Interest. Exploration, development and production in the block are governed by a PSC that runs until 2019, which is in partnership with ONGC, Videocon and Ravva Oil Singapore. Currently, there are eight unmanned offshore platforms and a 225 acre onshore processing facility at Surasaniyanam in East Godavari of Andhra Pradesh which processes the natural gas and crude oil produced from the field, the annual report said. Over the years due to ageing of the field, production of oil and gas has declined. The onshore processing facility though has approved capacity to produce 50,000 Barrels of Oil Per Day (BOPD) crude oil and 2.32 Million Metric Standard Cubic Meters per Day MMSMD ( MMSMD) of gas and is presently producing approximately 22,000 BOPD of crude oil and 1.44 MMSCMD of natural gas, the minutes added.","Cairn India Limited along with its partners to invest Rs3,240 crore in the Ravva Fields in the Krishna-Godavari Basin","Sun, Apr 16 2017. 03 10 PM IST","Cairn India, partners to invest Rs3,240 crore in Ravva Field" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/P1NhTppKJaCyQtCmKwqMPP/Govt-to-replace-77-GW-old-power-units-with-energy-efficient.html,"New Delhi: The government has identified old power projects totalling 7,738 MW capacity owned by the Centre and states for replacement with energy-efficient supercritical plants, which will generate a gross 18,560 MW.“The government has identified 7,738 MW inefficient thermal plants, which would be replaced with supercritical units, to conserve scarce natural resources like land, water and coal,” a senior official said. According to the official, the replacement will result in creation of 18,560 MW of capacity as per the assessment of power generation utilities. The move is expected to not just save natural resources, but help in boosting generation capacity of the plants. Taking an example, the official added that 440 MW of the Haryana Power Generation Corporation in Panipat will be replaced with an 800 MW energy efficient plant, which will almost double the generation capacity. Breaking down the numbers, state power generation utilities have marked out 6,608 MW for the purpose, which will lead to creation of 16,580 MW. The central utilities have marked 1,130 MW for replacement that will create 1,980 MW, going forward. According to power ministry estimates, as on 31 March, 2016, the capacity of coal-based thermal plants that are more than 25 years old was about 37,453 MW, including 35,509 MW in the government sector and 1,947 MW in private space. The official said the move towards energy efficiency and less-polluting technology makes more sense than renovation and modernisation and will yield long-term benefits. The plan is being chalked out after stringent norms for thermal power plants were laid down by the environment ministry. The new guidelines for coal-based power stations were introduced in December 2015 to cut down emission of PM10, SO2 and NOx and improve ambient air quality around plants. The ministry for the first time had fixed SOx and NOx norms for such stations and mandated that plants must adhere to these guidelines by 2017. According to industry estimate, the cost for technical changes at these plants could entail up to Rs1.5 crore per megawatt. Besides, the domestic capacity to manufacture power equipment for the upgrade is not more than 15 GW a year compared to demand of around 40 GW per annum for meeting SOx norms alone.","The inefficient 7,738 MW thermal power plants would be replaced with supercritical units to generate a gross 18,560 MW","Sun, Apr 16 2017. 10 43 AM IST",Govt to replace 7.7 GW old power units with energy efficient plants +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/pzfRqs0omHG34RCz0bSIBI/Amazon-Web-Services-head-Andrew-Jassy-reaps-354-million-fo.html,"New York: Leading the fastest-growing and most profitable division of Amazon.com Inc. is paying off for Andrew Jassy.The head of Amazon Web Services, which includes the company’s cloud business, received $35.4 million in stock and about $179,000 in salary and a 401(k) match, according to a regulatory filing from the Seattle-based company Wednesday. The shares rose in value to about $54 million as of Tuesday’s close. Jassy, promoted to a new CEO role for the division a year ago, was the company’s top-paid employee among the six executives whose compensation has to be publicly disclosed, including chief executive officer Jeff Bezos.Jassy is leading a push into artificial intelligence to boost Amazon’s cloud computing, which commands about 45% of the market for infrastructure as a service, where companies buy basic computing and storage power from the cloud. The unit, which Jassy has run since its inception 11 years ago, brought in a record $12.2 billion in revenue last year as the company introduced an image-recognition program, a speech-to-text service dubbed Polly and tools for building conversational apps. AWS has data centres around the world that provide computing power for many large companies, such as Netflix Inc. and Capital One Corp.“Inside AWS, we’re excited to lower the costs and barriers to machine learning and AI so organizations of all sizes can take advantage of these advanced techniques,” Bezos wrote in his annual letter to shareholders, which was also released Wednesday.Biennial grantsLike fellow tech giant Alphabet Inc., Amazon mainly pays top employees with biennial grants of restricted shares that vest over several years independently of company performance. That sets them apart from large companies in other industries, which tend to link payouts to specific goals such as revenue or stock return. Emphasizing certain criteria “could cause employees to focus solely on short-term returns at the expense of long-term growth and innovation,” Amazon’s board said in the filing.Amazon last year also promoted Jeffrey Wilke to CEO of the worldwide consumer business, awarding him a $33 million compensation package, the bulk coming from restricted shares vesting over several years.Senior vice presidents Jeffrey Blackburn and Diego Piacentini got $22.2 million and $23.7 million, respectively, mostly coming from biennial stock grants.CEO Bezos, who’s the world’s second-richest person with net worth of $77.7 billion, got his usual $81,840 annual salary and $1.6 million in security services last year. The billionaire, whose wealth comes from his ownership stake in the company, has never received equity compensation from Amazon. Bloomberg","Andrew Jassy, the head of Amazon Web Services received $35.4 million in stock and about $179,000 in salary and a 401(k) match","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 11 04 AM IST",Amazon Web Services head Andrew Jassy reaps $35.4 million for 2016 +https://www.livemint.com/Money/jH7oortdw0GvOodZvQhgTO/Jim-Rogers-changes-his-mind-on-India-again-says-he-missed-t.html,"
Singapore: One of the world’s best known investment gurus, Jim Rogers of Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interests, admitted in an interview that he may have been too hasty in exiting India in 2015, but says he won’t enter it now when the markets are at record highs. He says he was surprised that the government managed to get the legislation for the goods and services tax (GST) through. “It is a historic move as this has been a very contentious issue among Indian politicians for several years,” he added.Rogers said that in addition to GST, he has also been tracking the Indian market, the best performer among the world’s 10 largest stock markets thus far in 2017. “Yes, I am impressed, and I see that the markets are at an all-time high, currency is going up—they are making new highs without me, and that does not make me happy.”Also read: Jim Rogers: Surprised Modi government got GST throughKeen as he is to enter India, Rogers says he will wait because it doesn’t make sense to enter a market when it is on a high. “I don’t want to jump on to a moving train. When you jump on to a moving train, you’ll get hurt.”Rogers, a hedge fund manager whose investments serve as leads for many other investors, has long been an India bear. In 2014, though, soon after the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance came to power, he changed his tune. He explains that his investments in India were driven by his understanding of Modi’s achievements in Gujarat as chief minister and policy-leanings. “See, first I was interested in India because of his (Modi’s) record and what he said he planned to do,” he said. Then, in 2015, disappointed with the pace of progress in terms of reforms, he exited India. “He (Modi) did nothing much for two years, and I sold,” Rogers added. “Unfortunately, I sold too soon.”If the government continues in the same lines, India can’t be ignored, Rogers said. “If Modi continues doing stuff like GST, then not just me— everybody has to pay a lot more attention to India.”",Investment guru Jim Rogers says he may have been too hasty in exiting India in 2015,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 11 31 AM IST","Jim Rogers changes his mind on India again, says he missed the bus" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/3xBfWzDvpcpUtIeSb6oQMJ/Jim-Rogers-Surprised-Modi-government-got-GST-through.html,"
Singapore: Commodities trading guru and hedge fund manager Jim Rogers, who had sold his holdings in Indian companies and exited the country in late 2015 on the grounds that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had failed to live up to investors’ expectations, said he was reconsidering entering India.With Indian markets sustaining a record-breaking rally, Rogers admitted that he may have missed the bus on India, “On GST, I am amazed, shocked and stunned,” he said in an interaction, referring to the goods and services tax that will create a unified market in India.ALSO READ: Jim Rogers changes his mind on India again, says he missed the bus“If Modi continues doing stuff like GST, then not just me—everybody has to pay a lot more attention to India. This does not mean that I won’t have another chance to enter—India is currently on my list of something to do,” he added.Edited excerpts from an interview:
In September 2015, when we last spoke, you said you had sold all your holdings in Indian companies and exited India because the NDA government had failed to live up to investors’ expectations. But since then, the Indian markets have rallied and are at record highs, and reforms are on track, including the passage of GST. Foreign direct investment (FDI) into India touched an eight-year high of $46.4 billion in 2016.Wait—India passed the GST and that astonished me. I am surprised that Mr Modi’s government got that through. It is a historic move as this has been a very contentious issue among Indian politicians for several years.You say FDI flows into India are at record highs, and it is certainly not me. I am surprised with the FDI inflows—while Modi has undertaken small reforms, and cleaned up some stuff, I am not aware of any big steps to boost FDI. Yes, I am impressed, and I see that the markets are at an all-time high; currency is going up—they are making new highs without me, and that does not make me happy.This has made me realize that something is happening in India. When GST was passed, I reconsidered investing in India, and I thought, “wait a minute—this is going to work”. I am positively impressed, but I’am not back to investing in India yet—the markets are at an all-time high, but I don’t want to jump on to a moving train. When you jump on to a moving train, you’ll get hurt.I missed the bus in India. If Modi continues doing stuff like GST, then not just me—everybody has to pay a lot more attention to India. This does not mean that I won’t have another chance to enter—India is currently on my list of something to do.
When you look at emerging markets as an investor, where do you see India?India still has a lot of debt, unlike Russia that has a convertible currency and does not have much debt. I am invested in Russia. One reason why Russia does not have a high level of debt is that no one was willing to lend them money—and that is not necessarily a good thing. Indian politicians have been saying for a while now that the country will address this situation of debt, but nothing has been done. Some studies say India’s debt-to-GDP ratio is at 90% now. It is difficult to grow at a rapid pace when you have such high levels of debt, because you are dragging along interest rate payments. But India is still on my list, especially if Mr Modi can continue doing some of the stuff that he said he would do, and especially if the government makes the currency convertible and opens up the markets. I am more impressed by Mr Modi as a politician than as someone who is executing reforms—yes, GST was extraordinary. But your prime minister is a great politician; he is travelling around the world and making friends everywhere. As a politician, Mr Modi is one of the most successful and exceptional of this generation—no question about that. No surprise that he has picked up all states in the recent elections. Seventy years since independence, he is cleaning up the gigantic mess with moves like GST, which no on else has been able to do so far.
Finance minister Arun Jaitley recently said India’s economy is expected to grow at 7.2% in 2017 and 7.7% in 2018. What is your view?Most people don’t trust these numbers, including me. I used to say that what India does is to wait for China to announce its numbers, and then top them. I am skeptical of Chinese numbers and I am skeptical of Indian data. I am skeptical of American numbers, too. I’ve learnt over the years that if you are sitting and watching government numbers, and do your investments based on that, you are not going to make much money. Not too long ago, they caught the Germans faking numbers—the Germans of all people!
When you look at India, what are the risks? Could it be populist steps leading to 2019, the reforms process not continuing, or rising oil prices?I am more worried about the world because that will impact India. Yes, India has elections coming, and normally when that happens, any politician will do anything to win elections. Mr Modi is in a position to do a lot of stuff. I am not too worried about what is happening internally in India as the Modi-led government has momentum and everything going for it. The world situation is more worrying. Mr Trump has now bombed Syria. Many American presidents love war, and Mr Trump had said he was a non-interventionist. Now look at him! He is involved with Syria, and also saying he is going to get involved with North Korea. These can potentially not be good for the world. If the Middle East blows up in the next year or two, it won’t help the markets. It will help Russia and oil. It won’t help India or China. Mr Trump has promised to have trade wars with Mexico and China. He has not done it so far and so, maybe, is just another lying politician. But he said the same of Syria and then he intervened. He has said North Korea better watch out. He met with the Chinese and did not get anything. Power corrupts. Interest rates are going higher no matter what happens. The French and German elections are coming up—they could be disruptive. These worry me more than what Mr Modi is doing inside India.See, first I was interested in India because of his (Modi’s) record and what he said he planned to do. Then I invested. But he did nothing much for two years, and I sold. Unfortunately, I sold too soon. Modi will not do anything foolish before next elections—but the global situation can have an impact on India, irrespective of what Modi does. On the (farm) loan waivers, while I would say it is terrible economics, it is also brilliant politics.
Not just India, the global markets have rallied since Trump took over. So where can one invest in times like these?America is at an all-time high, and be it Japan or Germany—their markets are all doing well. There is a lot of money floating around. I had expected it all to slow down by now, but it has not. The Americans say they are going to be cutting back—but nobody has really done that in that past year or two. The only place I am looking to invest right now is Russian government bonds because the yields are very high—the rouble is down a lot. For whatever reason, Russia, which has been the most hated market in the world, is becoming less hated—more countries and politicians are reconsidering Russia. I’ve learnt in my life that if you buy things that are hated, they will make a lot of money even if takes a couple of years.India is at an all-time high.I own a lot of US dollars, and the reason I own it is because of the turmoil that I see coming, and people look for a safe haven in times like that and the dollar, rightly or wrongly, is considered a safe haven. But it is not—America is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world. What will happen is the US dollar will get overpriced and may even turn into a bubble, depending on where the turmoil is, and I hope that at that time, I am smart enough to sell the US dollar and put my monies elsewhere. Conceivably, it will be gold. Often, when the US dollar is very strong, gold goes down. I own gold, but I’ve not been buying gold in recent years. But if gold goes down sufficiently, I will sell my US dollars and buy gold. I expect the dollar to go substantially higher, and I hope I can sell then.Crude is in the process of making a bottom—it is a complicated bottom—we are going to look back in a few years from now and say that in 2015, 2016 and 2017, crude made its bottoming pattern. I will not sell crude now, especially if Trump is going to throw some more bombs around.
The Fed has said they will raise rates again this year. What’s your view on that?The Fed will continue to raise interest rates—we cannot continue like this—negative interest rates in most parts of the world are destroying a lot of people. Many pension plans, insurance companies and trusts are suffering badly now—you are going to have some pension plans in America go bankrupt, or not earn any money. They have the obligations to meet their promises as people continue to get older. When interest rates go higher, they are going to make bonds go lower—it is going to help the US dollar. Historically, in the US, if the Fed raised interest rates four times, it meant the stock market would go down and go down substantially for a while—it is clear that the Fed will raise interest rates four times, and it does not mean that it has to happen that way. One could counter and say, rates going up from zero to four times is not such a big deal and, therefore, it is different this time. Four of the most dangerous words in the financial markets are: “it’s different this time”. It is very dangerous when you hear people say that.
We are already four months into this calendar year. What do we need to look out for when it comes to the rest of 2017?We are also eight years into an economic recovery in the US, which is also very unusual. Most times in the US, every four years to 7-8 years, we’ve had economic setbacks since the beginning of the republic. Again, it does not always have to happen that way, but it nearly always has. Yes, we are four months into 2017, but I am more worried about the next couple of years. Mr Trump has promised some wonderful things. He has promised lower taxes, which is great for any economy and America is the largest in the world. He has promised to rebuild infrastructure, and that is wonderful, and we need it. He has promised to bring US dollars home—we have $3 trillion sitting outside the US by American companies and he has promised tax incentives to bring that home. He has promised to cut regulations and controls in the US economy—all of that is fantastic. If he does all this, and does not go to war, and also does not engage in a trade war, we can continue to have a good time for the foreseeable future. But I am skeptical because interest rates will be going higher, and because it has been eight years since we’ve had no problems in the US. For the US to continue this run, it can happen, but it has to be on a lot more debt. If all of that leads to a bubble…The other side will be very bad. Don’t worry—you will have a job and Mint will be in business because someone will have to be reporting all of this coming turmoil.","Investment guru Jim Rogers says if PM Narendra Modi continues doing stuff like GST, then not just him, everybody has to pay a lot more attention to India","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 06 21 PM IST",Jim Rogers: I am surprised Modi government got GST through +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/VVTajmo1cZesd14m16qcbM/Narayana-Murthy-says-need-to-reduce-friction-in-businesses.html,"Charlottesville,US: To transform India’s economy, there is a need to reduce “friction” in businesses and create an “environment” wherein the government has more trust in its entrepreneurs, Infosys founder N. R. Narayana Murthy has said. For the transformation of the Indian economy, he said it is essential for the younger generation to be daring and that India is integrated with the global economy. “We still have a little bit of work in reducing friction to businesses. We need to create an environment where the government has more trust in its entrepreneurs than it is today,” Murthy, 70, told students of the prestigious Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia here. Murthy, the recipient of the 2017 Thomas Jefferson Foundation medal in Global Innovation, was responding to Darden School of Business Dean Scott Beardsley who asked, “what do you think needs to happen next to transform India’s economy. What is next”. Also read: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“We want our youngsters to be a little bit more daring in taking the entrepreneurial route more and more than the extent to which they do today. We have to become much more integrated to the world economy so that we can consider the entire world as our market and can become globally competitive. “And most importantly we can become much more open minded to learn from the wonderful things that are happening in this country and elsewhere. I would say these are required (for transforming India’s economy to the next level),” Murthy said. He, however, refrained from elaborating what the Indian government needs to do to create the environment of trust in its entrepreneurs and said, “I will tell you why, as an Indian citizen, it may not be proper if I were to be critical about India when I am outside India”. Interacting with students, he said, challenges for entrepreneurs are now different than the time when he started Infosys. Those days access to capital was almost non-existent and government was a big irritant. “Today, challenges are different. But in some sense even more complex, because today’s entrepreneurs have to be much more smarter than what we were because there is so much of competition on a global scale. Before you can say this can be done, somebody else may have already done it.” “Therefore, today’s entrepreneurs would have to be much more nimble, global, competitive because market is truly determinant for success today unlike our time when managing government was a big determinant in India,” he said. Murthy said good governance is all about maximising shareholders’ value while ensuring fairness, transparency and accountability to all stake holders. Of all the stakeholders, society is the most important player. “Respect from the society is the most important ingredient for longevity of a corporation,” he said. “To be honoured by the most innovative country in the world and to be awarded a medal in the name of Thomas Jefferson, author of Declaration of Independence is to me a big honour. I will certainly work hard, and hopefully smart in the remaining years of my life, to deserve this kindness, this generosity and this affection on their part,” he told PTI. The fact that the university has seen it fit to pick up somebody from India, and bestow this honour shows how open this country is and how generous they are, Murthy said. “Therefore this is a clear example of how Indian students wherever they are whether in India or here or anywhere else can be sure that as long as they are good citizens of this world, contribute to make the society a better place through peaceful and harmonious methods, they will be recognised, appreciated,” he said. Murthy said that Indian students are making a positive impact in the countries they are studying. “I have not come across a single person of Indian-origin who has conducted himself or herself in a manner that has brought sorrow to the society they are living in, anywhere, wherever in the world. So I think that is the right way. “I am very very proud of our Indian students. They are smart, have very good values and are very peaceful. They contribute to the society in a very significant way wherever they are. I just want them to continue to do this,” the Infosys founder said. The one important principle that Indian students should remember in everything they do is will this make India a more respected place, a more respected nation? Will this action of mine make me a better part of this community? Will this action deserve appreciation and affection from other members in this community? If they remember these then they will do everything possible, Murthy said. PTI",Infosys founder Narayana Murthy says the younger generation needs to be daring in taking the entrepreneurial route for transformation of the Indian economy,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 02 26 PM IST",Narayana Murthy says need to reduce ‘friction’ in businesses in India +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/76cODva7pNPG4Kgq5r0JIM/United-Airlines-tied-500000-CEO-bonus-to-customer-satisfac.html,"New York: Angry United Airlines customers can now vent their fury at a juicy target: the chief executive’s pocketbook.United ties about $500,000 of CEO Oscar Munoz’s annual bonus to customer satisfaction questionnaires. The manhandling of a doctor dragged off an overbooked flight in Chicago—and Munoz’s response, widely viewed as ham-handed—doesn’t figure to help his cause.Each day, United collects about 8,000 customer surveys on items such as legroom and the quality of in-flight coffee. Fliers were already pretty disgruntled. In 2016, researcher J.D. Power rated United dead last of traditional North American carriers. Early returns are now even less promising.“United Airlines just sent me a customer survey about my flight yesterday,” Meredith Tucker deadpanned on Twitter after the overbooking episode. “Looking forward to sharing my thoughts.”Of course, Munoz won’t be begging on street corners if he’s docked the half a million. The CEO has 2016 target compensation of about $14.3 million, according to his employment agreement. The actual amount for last year is expected to be disclosed by month’s end.In a filing, the company’s board said executive pay is “designed to further our objective of aligning the interests of our employees with those of our stockholders and customers.” United declined to comment.Hashtag: awkwardSouthwest Airlines Co. also ties part of CEO Gary Kelly’s bonus to a measure of customer loyalty. Delta Air Lines Inc. links a part of CEO Ed Bastian’s annual long-term stock award to customer service.At the airline officially known as United Continental Holdings Inc., the board mentions “customer satisfaction” in the pay filing no less than 20 times. The company didn’t specify exactly how that’s calculated, though the bonus is tied to improvement of the survey results.Presumably, dragging customers out of their seats won’t help. A Twitter wag named Joe Householder wrote, under the hashtag, #awkward: “Based on experience, the guy on the #united flight is getting his, ‘tell us about your trip,” email survey about now.”Another Twitter commentator said he actually received one, which asked, “According to you, why do we consider ourselves the best airline to fly with?” His answer: “beats me.” Bloomberg",The manhandling of a doctor dragged off an overbooked United Airlines flight in Chicago—and CEO Oscar Munoz’s response—doesn’t figure to help his cause,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 10 19 AM IST","United Airlines tied $500,000 CEO bonus to customer satisfaction results" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/98SkA1oIxibecP6r0FUgDN/Power-utilities-eye-on-key-milestones-helped-investors-over.html,"The absence of negative surprises proved to be good news for power utilities. Against an 8% rise in the Sensex, the BSE Power index gained 10% in the first two months of 2017 even as the companies reported a lacklustre performance for the December quarter.Overall generation was up 5.3%, slightly better than the 4.4% rise a year ago. Power production at NTPC Ltd was up just 1%. As power off-take remained subdued, the firm’s thermal power plants’ utilization dropped 1%. “3QFY17 has seen a continuation of the overall trend of weak power demand growth, subdued merchant prices, back-downs by discoms and marginal generation capacity addition,” Antique Stock Broking Ltd said in a review.Due to a normalization of taxes, NTPC’s unadjusted profits fell 7.5%. JSW Energy Ltd reported an even steeper drop in profit on high costs and low realizations. Still, as the rise in the BSE Utilities index shows, investors attached little importance to the results. Why? Because of positive commentary from managements and the hope that 2017 will end the woes of Tata Power Co. Ltd and Adani Power Ltd.NTPC maintained its 4,000 megawatts (MW) capacity addition guidance for the current fiscal despite adding just 1,400MW till December. Similarly, Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd, whose project start-ups grew just 2% from the September quarter, indicated strong capitalization in January-March. “As against ~4,650 ckm (circuit km) transmission line commissioned in 9mFY17, management is targeting to commission a ~4,750 ckm transmission line in 4QFY17E,” HDFC Securities Ltd wrote in a note.Tata Power’s coal business venture did well. But high coal prices affected profitability of its Mundra plant. Adani Power reported a higher-than-expected loss on low volume off-take and shortage of domestic coal. Even then both stocks went up in January-February on speculation the coming Supreme Court order will end the under-recovery woes at their plants in Mundra, Gujarat. “For us, the key trigger remains the Supreme Court’s ratification of CERC (central electricity regulatory commission) compensatory tariff recommendations,” Edelweiss Securities Ltd wrote in a note on Tata Power.The story is similar at CESC Ltd. The stock, too, has gained sharply, as the management said its Spencer’s retail business, which has been losing money, stopped making losses at the operating level in the last quarter. Further, it also indicated it is open to listing the retail business, fuelling valuation gains. With the retail business showing signs of profitability, analysts are optimistic CESC’s return ratios will improve.The optimism is also providing heft to NTPC, Power Grid, Tata Power, and Adani Power. The question is: will 2017 live up to the expectations?","Overall electricity generation in the December quarter was up 5.3%, only slightly better than the 4.4% rise in the year ago quarter","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 06 22 AM IST",Power utilities: eye on key milestones helped investors overcome subdued Q3 +https://www.livemint.com/Money/f9eWG6W6oChU6EW5q94HDN/Subdued-performance-from-oil-firms-in-the-December-quarter.html,"Indian oil firms delivered a subdued performance in the December quarter. Take for instance Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL’s) results. Despite the fact that it crossed the Rs8,000-crore mark in stand-alone net profit for the first time, the performance would have been sweeter if income from sources other than its main business had not played a key role in boosting profit. Notably, while RIL’s gross refining margin (GRM) improved to $10.8 a barrel from $10.1 a barrel in the September quarter, the measure was lower than expected, considering that the benchmark Singapore refining margin had done much better sequentially.GRM is the realization from turning every barrel of crude oil into finished products and is an important measure of profitability for refining firms.RIL’s petrochemicals segment performed well but that couldn’t compensate for the disappointment from the refining business. However, investors have little to complain given that the stock has appreciated as much as 21% till 17 March since RIL announced it will start charging its customers in the telecom business. Further stock appreciation will be dependent on how the telecom venture fares in the days to come.State-run refining and marketing firms—Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) and India Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL)—delivered a decent performance. Reported GRMs improved sequentially. Inventory gains helped. According to analysts from Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd, core earnings, adjusted for inventory gains, came in at Rs12.7/12.1/7.6/ share for BPCL/HPCL/IOCL versus reported earnings per share of Rs15.7/15.7/8.4, respectively. “After adjusting for one-offs, core earnings of IOCL and BPCL came in-line with our estimates but HPCL missed the mark on this metric as marketing margins disappointed,” an Emkay report said last month. However, broadly, reported earnings of all three firms were in-line, according to Emkay. These stocks have done well in the past two years, helped by diesel price deregulation and improvements in earnings. A further upside can come if refining margins improve further.Meanwhile, stocks of upstream oil firms—Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd—have performed well in the past couple of months, thanks to firmer crude prices. However, if oil prices continue to remain range-bound, further appreciation in shares of ONGC and Oil India will be tough. Both firms saw their net price realization improve year-on-year as well as sequentially.",Oil firms delivered a subdued performance for the December quarter,"Fri, Mar 24 2017. 08 14 AM IST",Subdued performance from oil firms in the December quarter +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/jjfjGSfbSAglVqYVb8lrQL/Henry-Kravis-the-high-priest-of-private-equity.html,"New Delhi: Henry Kravis, the boss of private equity pioneer KKR & Co. walks into the slightly cramped meeting room of the Vigyan Bhawan with a stride that belies his 73 years and his diminutive build. Sporting a conservative grey suit with a stylish pocket square, the man who is effectively the CEO to 129 CEOs of KKR’s portfolio companies, kicks off the proceedings by delivering a concise insight into what’s happening in the US and closes on the hour by talking about India’s narrow credit market and the lack of depth in its equity markets, both of which have restricted the financing options for small and medium enterprises.Vigyan Bhawan on Motilal Nehru Road in New Delhi’s central district is an odd choice for the meeting. In the past it was the venue for dull global events like meetings of Non Aligned countries or commonwealth heads of states. That was when the government could not be seen patronizing private hotels. Now most ministers call editors to meals at the best hotels. So this is a real surprise—one of the world’s most successful capitalists with a net worth close to $5 billion who is at the very top of the private enterprise food cycle, now meeting selected journalists at this throwback to India’s socialist era.Kravis is a contrarian and instead of dwelling on US President Donald Trump’s many gaffes, talks of how he is a business-friendly president who has a big task ahead to deliver on his many promises, including tax reforms and infrastructure development. He is optimistic, if cautious, on the prospects for his country, pointing to the high levels of enthusiasm among US business people but tempers that by accepting growth could be lower than 2% in the coming year. The humour though, trenchant and pointed, is never far away. Despairing on the lack of dialogue between the Democrats and the Republicans he adds that now he’s not sure “if the Republicans are talking to each other” either.On Europe, he points to the elections in France and Germany as the wild cards that could upset all projections. China, on the other hand, will have to make some tough decisions. It is a country he knows well and it is his next stop after this trip.On India, as much as on any other subject, he is precise and razor sharp. No surprise that. He is after all an Ashkenazi Jew. Legend and scholarly academic papers have it that Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group in the world. Says a paper by researchers at University of Utah, “During the 20th century, they made up about 3% of the US population but won 27% of the US Nobel science prizes and 25% of the ACM Turing awards. They account for more than half of world chess champions.”Coming from that genetic pool you would expect him to be successful and the co-chairman and co-chief executive officer of KKR is among the most successful money managers in the world. The “co” bit is a consequence of sharing the job, the role and the founding of the company with his first cousin George R. Roberts.Kravis pioneered the private equity business when with two other partners he founded a leveraged buyout company called Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. L.P. (KKR) in 1976. Since then the company has grown—22 offices and over $130 billion of assets under management worldwide. Equally the PE business has transformed from being purely the money bags in spectacular deals to being an active participant in corporate change from within. In fact, KKR’s 100-day plan for the companies it invests in is both dreaded by managers and also emulated widely. Nor is the firm restricted merely to private equity. It offers all manner of financing solutions to companies.In India since 2009, it has investments of over $8 billion in companies like Bharti Infratel, Aricent, Café Day Enterprises, Dalmia Cement and Gland Pharma. But for a self-confessed Indophile who likes both Indian food as well the country’s temples (Hampi and the Golden Temple in Amritsar are particular favourites), that doesn’t seem like enough. Maybe that’s what he’s here to fix. With some help from India CEO Sanjay Nayar. After Kravis advised Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his first visit to the US on the need for a bankruptcy code, Nayar played a key role in helping the government frame and structure the same.It marks the evolution of the company from brash upstart in the 1980s memorably dubbed “barbarians at the gate” for its role in the audacious leveraged buy-out of RJR Nabisco, to the high seat of global finance.",Henry Kravis pioneered the private equity business when with two other partners he founded KKR in 1976,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 01 55 AM IST","Henry Kravis, the high priest of private equity" +https://www.livemint.com/Home-Page/VUSHJAfWDwNmKpz3Kk1qCN/IT-sector-Donald-Trump-Rupee-worsen-matters-in-December-qu.html,"Growth of information technology (IT) services firms continues to decelerate on a year-on-year basis. Growth in constant currency terms stood at 8.7% for tier-I IT companies in the December quarter, excluding Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., according to data collated by Nomura Research. Two quarters ago, growth stood at over 10%, and a year before that, growth was in the teens.Of course, that growth rates have been declining in the IT sector is well known and, as a result, IT stocks have underperformed the Nifty 50 index by around 18% in the past year.The moot question is if the December quarter results give signs of a possible turnaround. Investors will be disappointed there. Nomura’s analysts point out that growth in the key US region was the slowest in 12 quarters. Growth in some of the industry verticals that were doing well in previous quarters, such as retail, healthcare and telecom, slowed in the December quarter. And the performance of the largest industry vertical—banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI)—gave no hints of a turnaround. Besides, as US firms await the broad policy direction of the new government, there may be some delays in taking decisions.Of course, there are some silver linings. Companies, for instance, are sounding more optimistic, especially with regards to demand from BFSI. Besides, analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities say the intensity with which some large corporations shifted work to captive units earlier has abated to an extent.But, from the looks of it, things are likely to go further south before any turnaround comes about. The recent appreciation in the rupee is likely to worsen matters for Indian IT companies. Profit margins have already been under pressure, owing to the increased investments in building digital capabilities and thanks to pricing pressure in the traditional application maintenance work. Besides, all of the noise against H1B visas in the US may result in new laws that increase costs of providing on-site services. Kotak’s analysts wrote in a note to clients, “In case the rupee were to sustain at current levels, we do highlight that many traditional levers of the industry are exhausted... Our EPS (earnings per share) estimates for FY2018/19 are based on INR/USD rate of 68 and have 5-9% downside risk at spot prices.”",The recent appreciation in rupee may worsen matters for Indian IT firms as profit margins are already under pressure owing to increased investments in building digital capabilities ,"Fri, Mar 24 2017. 07 56 AM IST","IT sector: Donald Trump, rupee worsen matters in December quarter" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/ZMZfS6KLNvyroUA8xcifCN/A-subdued-December-quarter-for-infrastructure-firms.html,"The construction sector put up an unimpressive show, although on expected lines, in the December quarter. Undoubtedly, demonetisation hurt the sector in several ways.One, engineering and construction work came to a standstill in November and December as the economy was hit by a cash crunch. Deferred payments to workers delayed execution and billing across infrastructure firms. The average net revenue of 156 firms in the mid- and large-sized category excluding Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T) fell by 8.9% year-on-year (y-o-y). L&T, too, posted marginal revenue growth.Road construction firms with operational projects were worse off than the rest of the pack because toll collections were suspended for about three weeks. How this impacts earnings for the full year depends on when and how the expected government compensation for revenue loss will shape up.Weak revenue trickled down to a similar performance on operating metrics. Firms such as IRB Infrastructure Ltd and NCC Ltd, that have been improving profitability, found the going tough, but were able to sustain profitability.Adding to the quarter’s woes was the weak ordering activity across infrastructure segments. Save for a few orders in the capital goods space, there were hardly any big-ticket orders in power, roads and railways.The only solace is that the large firms have put their house in order by deleveraging balance sheets, reducing indebtedness and optimizing cost structures.Meanwhile, firms in power transmission such as KEC International Ltd and ABB Ltd put up a decent show during the quarter. In contrast, firms whose performance is linked to power generation paled in comparison.The S&P BSE Infrastructure index has rallied sharply on hopes that the government will live up to its commitment of boosting investment in infrastructure.So far, reality is far from it and, given the current pace of new projects tendered until February, it is likely that road sector will not meet the targets both in terms of fresh ordering and execution during FY17.","Firms in power transmission such as KEC International Ltd and ABB Ltd put up a decent show, while those whose performance is linked to power generation paled","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 06 22 AM IST",A subdued December quarter for infrastructure firms +https://www.livemint.com/Money/VcAyqF6hHRgKcp09ZYWrBN/A-bleaker-FY17-for-banks.html,"If fiscal 2015-16 was annus horribilis for Indian banks, the year to March seems to be no different.Banks and their investors seem to be coming to terms with this as analysts have slashed their 2016-17 earnings per share (EPS) estimates for the Bankex by about 10% since demonetisation.The third-quarter financial results of banks, particularly large corporate lenders, were as painful if not more than those of the previous quarters as bad loans continued to pile up.The stock of gross non-performing assets (NPA) of listed banks is now a massive Rs7.1 trillion ($108 billion), a rise of 60% from a year ago.Notwithstanding NPA war rooms such as that of Punjab National Bank or watch lists made public in the case of ICICI Bank Ltd and Axis Bank Ltd, the rate of bad loan accretion remained elevated. To be fair, though, the slippage rate (good loans turning bad) slowed in the December quarter from the previous quarters.Of course, setting aside money against the NPA stockpile was mandatory and while many banks cut corners (shown by the fall in their provision coverage ratio), some lenders continued to make higher provisioning. Nevertheless, the cumulative provisioning of all listed banks fell 8% in the December quarter to Rs45,147 crore. But recoveries and upgrades being unimpressive, this bad-loan pile will age and necessitate higher provisioning in the future, which explains the bearish outlook on the full-year earnings.Analysts have understandably pencilled in a jump in credit costs for the current financial year.If bad loans were the constant bugbear for banks, a new irritant that chipped away some of the fee income was the waiver of various charges on ATM, or automated teller machine, transactions and use of cards after the demonetisation of high-value bank notes.Given the twin blows, one out of three public sector banks made losses while the cumulative profit of all listed private banks fell 14% from a year ago.Even India’s most valuable bank, HDFC Bank Ltd, couldn’t go unscathed, and its profit growth fell to 15% for the third quarter from 20% in the second quarter.That the earnings per share estimate of 2017-18 for the Bankex is also down 12% indicates that many feel the pain will persist longer.But, ironically, the shares of banks, especially those of public sector lenders, have gained sharply even after many reported worsening asset quality metrics and reduction in their core business of lending.These gains are largely on the back of hopes that the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would work out a decisive plan to tackle the bad loan problem.While balance sheets do not seem to warrant current valuations, analysts believe that if a concrete plan for bad loan resolution emerges, corporate lenders such as ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and even State Bank of India, or SBI, could be re-rated.“In our view, a joint private-government initiative may work, with the private sector providing the capital and expertise to manage the bad loans and the government’s legal backing to the PSUs (public sector undertakings) to enable them to make suitable ‘haircuts’ to bad loans,” Kotak Securities wrote in a note.","While balance sheets do not seem to warrant current valuations, analysts say if a concrete plan for bad loan resolution emerges, corporate lenders could be re-rated","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 06 14 AM IST",A bleaker FY17 for banks +https://www.livemint.com/Money/t8UNlvFm6TihoelnWnpFCN/Cement-After-demonetisation-rising-costs-unfavourable-vo.html,"Cement demand in the December quarter was impacted by demonetisation in most parts of the country, with southern India being an exception.Pan-India firms ACC Ltd and Ambuja Cements Ltd saw a 9% year-on-year (y-o-y) decline in volumes; and for UltraTech Cement Ltd, it was a 2% y-o-y fall. South-based firms Dalmia Bharat Ltd (36% y-o-y), India Cements Ltd (22% y-o-y) and Orient Cement Ltd (19% y-o-y) saw strong volume growth, benefiting from improved institutional demand in Andhra Pradesh/Telangana and a low-base effect on account of floods in Chennai during the same period a year ago. As a result, on an overall basis, cement companies reported a flat volume growth at 37 million tonnes (mt) in the third quarter.Not only demand, profitability also took a hit as production costs increased. Fuel prices, especially those of petroleum coke (petcoke), surged Rs400-500/tonne in the past quarter. According to a Kotak Institutional Equities (KIE) report, on a sequential basis, profitability of cement companies declined 11% to Rs753/tonne, though y-o-y it is up 10%.Meanwhile, low demand kept realizations subdued.In the past two months, the impact of demonetisation has subsided and the demand scenario has improved, but it remains below normal levels, especially retail demand. A pick-up in government spending on infrastructure and affordable housing projects may lead to a sequential demand uptick, but y-o-y demand would decline mainly due to a high base since demand growth in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2016 was strong. Cement prices in the country, except the south, have begun to rise, but if this improvement in cement prices doesn’t sustain, then realizations would decline sequentially in the March quarter.That apart, another worry is surging input costs. In the December quarter, a slew of cement manufacturers opted for alternative fuels to minimize the adverse impact on margins, while some others made use of the low-cost petcoke stock they were left with. As per analysts, the full impact of the rise in petcoke prices will be felt in the March quarter as most cement companies are likely to have exhausted that inventory. Diesel price, too, is trending upwards which will result in higher road freight costs, raising the production cost per tonne.Though the shares of large-cap cement companies have recovered from where they were when demonetisation was announced and are currently trading at rich valuations, given these concerns, March quarter earnings would be lacklustre, indicating that valuations need to correct.","Cement prices have begun to rise; but if this improvement doesn’t sustain, realizations would decline sequentially in the March quarter","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 06 22 AM IST","Cement: After demonetisation, rising costs, unfavourable volume base to hurt " +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Vh7TrYKgyERidQdo2LZfSO/Fox-host-Bill-OReilly-taking-vacation-amid-sex-harassment-f.html,"Los Angeles: Fox News’s most-popular host, Bill O’Reilly, is taking what he called a long-scheduled vacation after revelations of financial settlements over alleged sexual harassment.While New York magazine reported Tuesday that 21st Century Fox Inc. chief executive officer (CEO) James Murdoch wants him to step down permanently, people familiar with Fox’s plans said O’Reilly intends to return to the The O’Reilly Factor. The people asked not to be identified because the matter is private.O’Reilly’s holiday until 24 April follows a wave of companies pulling advertisements from his prime-time show, the cable news channel’s biggest. The media group controlled by Rupert Murdoch has been dealing with the fallout of alleged sexual harassment at Fox News since last summer, leading to the ouster of its former CEO Roger Ailes. The claims against O’Reilly, reported in the New York Times, add to pressure on a company that is seeking regulatory approval for its bid for Sky PLC.“Last fall I booked a trip that should be terrific,” O’Reilly told viewers. “All of us deserve a break.”Fox News anchors Dana Perino will fill in Wednesday night and Monday through Thursday next week, while Bret Baier will host Thursday’s show and Greg Gutfeld will fill O’Reilly’s seat Friday this week and next, a person familiar with the situation said.“Other than the vacation guest hosts, The Factor broadcast will remain unchanged,” Mark Fabiani, an attorney representing the host, said by e-mail. Fabiani said arrangements for the vacation were made in October and the timing coincides with O’Reilly’s children’s spring break.Fox said in a recent statement that it “investigates all complaints and we have asked the law firm Paul Weiss to continue assisting the company in these serious matters.”The New York Times reported last week that five women received payments from either 21st Century Fox or from O’Reilly in exchange for agreeing not to sue or talk about their allegations that O’Reilly verbally abused them, subjected them to unwanted advances or made lewd comments. Fox said no employees had raised concerns about O’Reilly and it had been looking into the matter in recent months.No one has filed a complaint about O’Reilly with the company’s human resources department over the more than 20 years he has been at Fox News Channel, the host said in an 1 April statement.Fox News, which accounts for an estimated quarter of Fox’s profit, has stayed on top in cable ratings despite the internal turmoil. The network remains the most-watched on cable year-to-date, with 2.8 million average daily viewers, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence analysis. Ratings have seen a bump by several appearances of President Donald Trump.Bloomberg",Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s holiday until 24 April follows a wave of companies pulling ads from his prime-time show over sexual harassment allegations,"Wed, Apr 12 2017. 07 59 PM IST",Fox News host Bill O’Reilly taking vacation amid sex harassment furore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/xsewJMsVHnom34eS3gNXxL/Ramesh-Agrawal-Dainik-Bhaskar-group-chairman-dies-at-73.html,"
New Delhi: Ramesh Chandra Agarwal inherited a publishing business set up by his father Dwarka Prasad Agarwal in 1956.In 1983, he decided to expand and diversify the business. “The rest is history,” says Arun Pareek, a former employee who worked closely with Agarwal. Agarwal, who died following a heart attack upon his arrival at Ahmedabad airport on Wednesday, leaves behind a company, DB Corp Ltd, that publishes seven newspapers including its three flagship newspapers Dainik Bhaskar, Divya Bhaskar and Saurashtra Samachar. The three have a combined average daily readership of 19.8 million across the country, according to the company’s BSE filings. The company that was listed in 2010 reported a revenue of Rs630.9 crore in the quarter ended December 2016, up 6% from a year ago. The company also has interests in radio as well as outdoor advertising. It operates 30 radio stations under the 94.3 My FM brand. Agarwal and DB Corp’s journey started in 1983 with the launch of the Indore edition of Dainik Bhaskar. In the mid 1990s, Bhaskar stepped out of Madhya Pradesh and launched in Rajasthan. Currently, Dainik Bhaskar is among the top three most-read newspapers in the country, according to the Indian Readership Survey published by the Readership Studies Council of India (RSCI), an industry body formed jointly by the Media Research Users Council (MRUC) and the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC).Along with his three sons— Sudhir, Girish and Pawan— Ramesh Agarwal further expanded the newspaper business when he launched the Gujarati daily Divya Bhaskar in 2003. The newspaper’s success story became a case study at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. Later, in 2005, he also launched DNA (Daily News & Analysis) an English language newspaper in Mumbai in a joint venture with Subhash Chandra’s Essel group. However, in 2012 it sold its 50% stake in the business to Essel group. As per the report Press in India 2015-16, prepared by the Registrar of Newspapers of India (RNI), Dainik Bhaskar was the most circulated multi-edition daily in 2015-16 with 45 editions and a total claimed circulation of 4.6 million copies per publishing day. Speaking about Ramesh Agarwal, former group editor of Dainik Bhaskar Shravan Garg said: “He was a visionary. He was a man of determination and courage. No one can imagine the kind of leadership he provided to the group. He was responsible for taking the group to such heights. He launched the paper in Indore at a time when the market was completely dominated by other players.”Mint’s publisher HT Media and its subsidiary HMVL compete with DB in some markets.",Dainik Bhaskar group chairman Ramesh Agrawal died following a heart attack upon his arrival at Ahmedabad airport on Wednesday,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 01 51 AM IST","Ramesh Agrawal, Dainik Bhaskar group chairman, dies at 73" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/BsXPkss2DuYMe5srIGbfBN/Aviation-stocks-Turbulent-journey-in-the-December-quarter.html,"The Indian aviation sector continues to be plagued by pricing pressures. What stood out in the December quarter was that SpiceJet Ltd, which hadn’t succumbed to pricing woes in the September quarter, gave in. Its average fare fell 7% year-on-year (y-o-y) for the December quarter, compared with a 5% increase seen during the September quarter.Sure, healthy load factors helped, resulting in a 12.5% rise in SpiceJet’s operating revenue. But profit growth wasn’t commensurate, thanks to higher fuel costs as a percentage of revenue.Ebitdar declined by one-fifth, whereas earnings before tax and exceptional items dropped two-fifths. Ebitdar is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and aircraft lease rentals, and is an important measure of profitability for airlines.To be fair, it’s not as if SpiceJet’s peers—InterGlobe Aviation Ltd (which runs IndiGo) and Jet Airways (India) Ltd, had a great quarter either. Airlines also had to bear the brunt of the adverse impact of demonetisation in the past quarter.IndiGo said its yields declined 20% and 17%, respectively, in November and December, thanks to demonetisation. That decline was sharper than what analysts had expected. Overall, IndiGo’s Ebitdar fell about 14%, despite the fact that operating revenue increased 16% (helped by better volumes).Post-results, Kotak Institutional Equities cut its fiscal 2017 earnings per share (EPS) estimate by 15% to account for a likely poor performance in the second half of the year to March. “This has resulted in a 10-12% cut in our FY2018-19E EPS (earnings per share) estimates as well,” added Kotak in a report on 31 January.Apart from pricing issues, Jet’s financials were also affected on account of demand problems from the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC, countries. Consolidated December-quarter operating revenue increased by a mere 1.4% and average fare per passenger fell 1.6%. Jet’s Ebitdar was lower than analysts’ estimates. Operating costs—including fuel, employee costs, selling and distribution expenses, and other operating expenses—increased at a much faster pace. Jet’s stock has declined in the past year, whereas IndiGo and SpiceJet have seen their stocks rise. High debt continues to remain a worry for investors in Jet stock.Meanwhile, traffic growth is strong. Passengers carried by domestic airlines in January rose 25% y-o-y, according to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. While that augurs well, firmer crude prices are a threat as they account for a huge portion of operating costs for airlines. Also, in such an environment, fares need to improve to support profit margins, which may have an impact on volume growth. But analysts say pricing pressures will continue for some time. That could well mean that aviation stocks may find it difficult to take off in the interim.","With pricing pressures likely to continue for some more time, aviation stocks may find it difficult to take off in the interim","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 06 14 AM IST",Aviation stocks: Turbulent journey in the December quarter +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/D4nDsykIlCjf8JNNFkXazH/United-Airlines-CEO-Oscar-Munoz-goes-from-saviour-to-man-on.html,"Atlanta/Dallas: For most of his 19-month tenure, United Continental Holdings Inc. chief executive officer (CEO) Oscar Munoz has cleaned up messes left behind by others. Now he’s mopping up a PR disaster at United Airlines that’s unfolded under his watch.After United Airlines ordered a passenger forcibly removed from a plane in Chicago shortly before departure to make room for a United employee, Munoz’s initial response made the company a punch line on social media. He said United Airlines had to “re-accommodate’’ the man, who was bloodied in the encounter with security officials. In a subsequent letter to employees, the CEO called the customer “disruptive’’ and “belligerent’’ when he would not voluntarily relinquish his seat.“It’s sort of a self-immolation and makes you wonder about his choice as CEO,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management, said of Munoz’s handling of the crisis. He “worked at Coke and Pepsi and AT&T, and someone would have thought he had a better customer sensitivity.”ALSO READ : United Airlines seat fiasco among worst corporate PR gaffesAlmost 24 hours later, after global condemnation of United Airline’s behaviour had time to sink in, Munoz struck a far more contrite tone.“The truly horrific event that occurred on this flight has elicited many responses from all of us: outrage, anger, disappointment. I share all of those sentiments,” Munoz said in a statement Tuesday. “I deeply apologize to the customer forcibly removed and to all the customers aboard. No one should ever be mistreated this way.”On Wednesday he said the carrier no longer will rely on law enforcement to remove seated, paying customers.“This can never, will never, happen again on a United Airlines flight,” he said on ABC’s Good Morning America. He said he hasn’t considered resigning after the incident.‘Thorough review’He committed the third-largest US airline to “a thorough review” of its policies for handling oversold flights and vowed to report back to the public by 30 April. “I promise you we will do better,” he said in the Tuesday statement.Yet the damage had already been done. With a few ill-chosen words, Munoz stoked the flames of an already raging social-media firestorm and squandered goodwill he had worked hard to generate by forging a turnaround plan since joining the company in September 2015. He has overseen a 23% stock rally since then, compared with 13% for the Bloomberg US Airlines Index.Previously known for his deft touch in rescuing United from a corruption scandal, weathering a proxy fight and winning unprecedented labour peace, now he’s the head of an airline that, for some passengers, has instantly become Public Enemy No. 1.ALSO READ : United Airlines CEO: ‘I’m sorry’, in response to dragged passengerThe fallout continued Tuesday with some people saying on United’s Facebook page that they would boycott the Chicago-based carrier. Others said on Twitter that they’d cancelled their United-affiliated credit cards—a key revenue source for airlines.In China, a crucial part of United’s lucrative trans-Pacific network, the incident was a focus of social media and editorials in the state-controlled Global Times newspaper. The hashtag #UnitedForcesPassengerOffPlane was the top trending item on Sina Weibo, the equivalent of Twitter, with more than 270 million views. The man who was removed, David Dao, appeared to be of Asian descent.Dao is receiving treatment in a Chicago hospital for his injuries, according to a statement from lawyers who said they represent him. Video posted to Facebook and Twitter showed him as he was dragged out of his seat and down the aisle of the plane after refusing to give up his seat.United overhaulFor Munoz, the timing of the worldwide outcry is, at the very least, extremely awkward and at worst a serious setback for his overhaul of United, which suffered for years as the industry laggard in both profitability and on-time performance. In an ironic touch, Munoz just last month was named “Communicator of the Year for 2017” by PRWeek. The public-relations industry publication said Munoz “has shown himself to be a smart, dedicated, and excellent leader who understands the value of communications.”In 2015, Munoz took over as CEO from Jeff Smisek, who was ousted amid a federal investigation into ties between the carrier and the former chairman of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. The next month, Munoz suffered a serious heart attack and underwent a transplant in early 2016. He bounced back only to face a proxy challenge from two hedge funds. United named a new chairman and agreed to add new board members approved by PAR Capital Management and Altimeter Capital Management.Within months after the board tussle, Munoz had unveiled a $3.1 billion plan to cut costs and boost revenue, and he set the stage for labour peace for the first time since the 2010 merger with Continental Airlines that created the company. He also brought in new senior leadership including President Scott Kirby, who previously served in the same position at American Airlines Group Inc. This year, United’s market value surpassed that of American, which generates more in annual sales.‘Some credit’The Monday incident comes two weeks after United drew social-media scorn for enforcing its employee dress code for those who fly as non-revenue passengers, such as relatives of employees. Two young girls flying from Denver were told to change their leggings before boarding. In response, the airline then took efforts to tell “our regular customers” that “leggings are welcome.”In his letter to United workers Monday night, the CEO said he stood behind employees and criticized the passenger for refusing to deplane. Sara Nelson, international president of the flight attendants union representing United, said the incident was the most severe customer backlash she’d seen in 20 years on the job and was “completely unacceptable.” Still, employees were grateful to have a chief executive who “has their backs.”“When something like this happens and people have to go to work and have order in their workplace to keep everyone safe, it can be incredibly demoralizing,” Nelson said. “Some credit needs to be given to him.” Bloomberg","In his 19-month tenure, United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz cleaned up mess left behind by others. Now he’s mopping up a PR disaster that’s unfolded under his watch","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 07 37 PM IST",United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz goes from saviour to man on hot seat real fast +https://www.livemint.com/Money/F256G8rbpmmTBuFlpU5UDN/Q3-results-show-pharma-sector-recovering-in-fits-and-starts.html,"The pharmaceutical sector had a difficult time in the December quarter, with the BSE Healthcare index falling 10.6%. It has done relatively better in the quarter so far, with the index gaining 5%.The heavyweights in the sector found the going tough in the US as a combination of pricing pressure, stiff competition and a relatively slow pace of approvals affected growth. Although demonetisation did cause some disruption, the effect was not as adverse as feared. Data from market research firm AIOCD-Awacs showed sales rose 10.5% in the December quarter over a year ago. This was lower than the 13.5% growth in the September quarter. While November saw sales growth improve since chemists could accept old notes, December saw it slow down after the concession ended.Overall, the pharmaceutical sector’s sales rose 8.8% over a year ago but other operating income rose 22% (this component includes licensing/drug development revenue). As material costs rose only 8%, that constrained expenditure growth, leading to an 18.4% increase in operating profit. Profit after tax rose 15.4%. For a sector that is trading at a price-to-earnings multiple of 29 times its trailing 12-month earnings, that’s not enough.Among firms that reported relatively better sales growth were Biocon Ltd, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Lupin Ltd and Cipla Ltd, partly due to revenue from the launch of important products in the US. Emerging markets and currencies have turned relatively stable, which augurs well as most companies have built sizeable businesses here.On the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) front, the news has been mixed. Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd and Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd got observations from the regulator on a re-inspection of their facilities. This dashed investor hopes that these plants would be cleared. But the news is not uniformly bad, with companies such as Lupin and Cadila Healthcare Ltd getting approvals for their units after re-inspection. More recently, Sun Pharma also announced that the warning letter on its Mohali plant has been lifted by the US FDA.Companies have been going after acquisitions to boost their revenue and keep the growth engine humming. They continue to be on the hunt and the risk here is that companies overpay or the acquired assets don’t generate value.The sector’s valuations suggest that investors still hold hope that the US market problems will get resolved and earnings growth of the sector will recover. FY18 is likely to provide a reality check on that front.",Valuations of pharma firms suggest investors still hold hope that the US market problems will get resolved and earnings growth of the sector will recover,"Fri, Mar 24 2017. 05 28 AM IST",Q3 results show pharma sector recovering in fits and starts +https://www.livemint.com/Money/JiiwEoP8yqIe0Ejmm7oFEN/Reliance-Jio-wreaks-havoc-on-Q3-results-of-telecom-firms.html,"Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd’s free services wreaked havoc on the December quarter financial statements of India’s leading telecom companies. Idea Cellular Ltd reported losses, and Bharti Airtel Ltd reported a 16% sequential drop in operating profit for its wireless business. Airtel generated barely enough cash flow from operations to cover increased capital expenditure (capex). Idea’s cash profits weren’t enough to meet enhanced capex needs and, as a result, its debt has gone out of whack.Analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities wrote in a note to clients after Airtel’s results announcement, “We could be down to as low as Rs20,000-25,000 crore in annualized Ebitda (ex-Jio) for an industry sitting on an aggregate net debt in the vicinity of Rs3 trillion (ex-Jio). This is as distressed as it gets, in our view.” Ebitda is short for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization—an indicator of operating profitability.Customers who availed themselves of Jio’s free services simply stopped using paid data services of incumbents, leading to a drop in revenue and profits. Things are likely to be far worse in the March quarter as Jio’s free services have continued over this period and were used by a far higher number of customers. The silver lining is that Jio will start charging customers from 1 April, although that doesn’t reduce the pressure on incumbents much. Already, they have been forced to bring down tariffs substantially to try and match Jio’s offers to their subscribers. Yet, while it’s clear that revenues and profits will be under pressure for some time to come, it’s anybody’s guess how long the pain will continue and to what extent profits will fall.","While it’s clear revenue and profits will continue to be under pressure, it’s anybody’s guess how long the pain will continue and to what extent profits will fall","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 06 13 AM IST",Reliance Jio wreaks havoc on Q3 results of telecom firms +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/PDmAOHCPmvpE0Uo8rEoUyH/Adi-Godrej-disapproves-of-NR-Narayana-Murthys-pay-hike-com.html,"Hyderabad: Veteran industrialist Adi B. Godrej has disapproved the move of Infosys co-founder N. R. Narayana Murthy to publicly express concern over the pay hike of the company’s chief operating officer (COO), as he justified a big gap between salaries at the entry and top levels. “Of course, there will be a big gap because there are very few people capable of taking top-level things but I think that it (executive pay packets) should be left to each company,” the Godrej Group chairman told PTI. “And I don’t think people should publicly comment on such issues. There is no need to publicly comment on such issues,” he said. Godrej was responding to questions on Murthy criticising the pay hike of COO of Infosys, U.B. Pravin Rao. “Each company should decide, its Board should decide. If the Board has decided after proper considerations why should others complain?” the former president of the Confederation of Indian Industry asked.","Adi Godrej says people should not publicly comment on issues such as pay hikes, responding questions on Infosys co-founder N. R. Narayana Murthy’s comments ","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 06 12 PM IST",Adi Godrej disapproves of N.R Narayana Murthy’s pay hike comments +https://www.livemint.com/Money/18ydlpCYLYqsIiA3sRiTBN/Auto-firms-Q3-results-A-blip-in-growth-as-demonetisation-cr.html,"Auto firms’ performance in the December quarter was under stress on account of the ban on high-value banknotes that crippled sales for almost half the quarter. Net revenue of leading auto firms, therefore, declined slightly from the year-ago quarter, with the biggest impact being on two-wheelers.Save for premium motorcycle manufacturer Royal Enfield, which bucked the trend, both Hero MotoCorp Ltd and Bajaj Auto Ltd sold fewer vehicles. This, in turn, led to a sales year-on-year decline. However, TVS Motor Co. Ltd’s mopeds fared well, lifting overall sales slightly.Commercial vehicle (CV) firms presented a divergent trend. No. 2 player Ashok Leyland Ltd’s sales bumped up significantly. Realization and profits rose. The CV market leader Tata Motors Ltd, on the other hand, posted weak growth. Its passenger car segment was the saving grace on the domestic front.The country’s largest car manufacturer Maruti Suzuki India Ltd saw dull growth. This is because the firm has a significant exposure to rural markets with entry-level cars. This segment did badly. Fortunately, the higher-end segment, comprising utility vehicles along with new launches, compensated for the drop in sales of entry-level cars.The biggest takeaway is that most firms maintained operating margins at cushy year-ago levels despite the odds. A higher inventory of unsold vehicles masked cost increases. Further, other expenses and staff costs were trimmed too. But then, higher inventory of finished goods offset the material cost increase and lifted profitability. This trend is unlikely to continue in the quarters ahead. Higher material costs could cap margins.What stuck out as a sore thumb was Tata Motors. Its results were dismal, thanks to dismal global sales and operating performance by its UK subsidiary and cash cow, Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc.That said, in spite of the sudden blip, analysts feel demonetisation blues are already behind the sector. All eyes are now on a sales revival, especially in two-wheelers and CVs, driven by the race to buy vehicles before the new and more expensive vehicles, compliant with the new emission norms (BS-IV), hit the market in April.Here again, in the two months of the March quarter already gone by, the “pre-buying” story has not been impressive. Sales continue to be weak across most vehicle categories.Further, the higher raw material cost effect is bound to weigh on profit margins in the current and forthcoming quarters, unless price hikes and sales offset the same. Of course, valuations are fair at the current stock prices. A robust pick-up in sales, along with the ability of firms to pass on any cost pressures to customers, will be key in the coming quarters.","A higher raw material cost effect is bound to weigh on profit margins in the current and forthcoming quarters, unless price hikes and sales offset the same","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 06 14 AM IST",Auto firms Q3 results: A blip in growth as demonetisation cripples sales +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/iTiiGB5yZk1EI8JURWzijI/Govt-prepares-to-strike-off-registration-of-over-two-lakh-fi.html,"New Delhi: The government plans to cancel the registration of more than two lakh companies that have not been carrying out business for a considerable period of time, amid stepped up efforts to tackle the black money menace.More than 200,000 companies, spread across various states, have been served with show cause notices as they have not been carrying out any operation or business activity for a prolonged time.The corporate affairs ministry’s move also comes against the backdrop of overall efforts by the authorities to crack the whip on shell companies, suspected to be used for money laundering activities.The Registrars of Companies (RoCs) in various states and union territories have issued notices to more than 200,000 firms under the Companies Act, 2013, according to information available with the ministry.These notices have been issued under Section 248 of the Act, which is implemented by the Ministry. This section pertains to striking off names of companies on certain grounds.With the issuance of notices, the companies concerned have to explain their position and if the responses are not satisfactory, then their names would be struck off by the Ministry.Data showed that RoC Mumbai has issued notices to more than 71,000 companies while RoC Delhi has served notices to over 53,000 firms, among others.As per the regulations, an RoC can seek explanation from a company if the latter has not commenced business within one year of getting incorporated under the Act.Notice is also issued if a particular company has not been carrying out business for at least two continuous financial years and has not applied for dormant status. Such entities are given a time of 30 days to submit objections if any.The Ministry has power to remove or strike off the names of such entities from the “register of companies” if the response is not satisfactory. Earlier this month, the Ministry had amended the Companies (Removal of Names of Companies from the Register of Companies) Rules. There are more than 15 lakh registered companies in the country.","The firms, spread across various states, have been served with show cause notices as they have not been carrying out any operation or business activity for a prolonged time","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 14 AM IST",Govt prepares to strike off registration of over two lakh firms +https://www.livemint.com/Home-Page/e5EpYSd3OBr9pQ5Mkz5SfI/LT-signs-deal-with-SKoreas-Hanwha-Techwin-for-artillery-g.html,"New Delhi: Indian engineering firm Larsen & Toubro signed a deal with South Korea’s Hanwha Techwin to supply artillery guns to the Indian army in a deal estimated to be 4.5 billion rupees ($696.38 million), the two firms said on Friday.Jayant Patil, head of the defence and aerospace wing of L&T, said the two companies will jointly manufacture the self-propelled howitzer—a boost for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make-in-India drive to push domestic industry.The Indian army had chosen L&T to supply 100 guns, Patil said, adding the contract will be among the first under the indigenisation campaign aimed at reducing the military’s dependence on foreign imports.The military’s bigger projects such as acquisition of fighter planes, helicopters and submarines are making slower progress because of the government’s insistence on involvement of local players.South Korea’s Minister for Defence Acquisition Program Administration, Chang Myoung Jin, said Seoul was looking to significantly expand defence ties with India. Reuters",L&T and Hanwha Techwin to jointly manufacture self-propelled howitzer in a boost for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make-in-India drive to push domestic industry,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 06 AM IST",L&T signs deal with S.Korea’s Hanwha Techwin for artillery guns +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/QAHd9dJGI2kkuHbPpvXelK/KKR-sells-56-stake-in-Dalmia-Bharat-for-Rs575-crore.html,"New Delhi: Global private equity giant KKR on Friday sold a 5.6% stake in Dalmia Bharat for an estimated Rs575 crore through an open market transaction. The shares were purchased by a host of entities, including Kuwait Investment Authority, Birla Mutual Fund and Franklin Templeton Investment Funds.According to block deal data available with stock exchanges, KKR Mauritius Cement Investments Ltd offloaded a total of 49,65,270 shares, amounting to 5.58 per cent stake, of Dalmia Bharat. The shares were sold on an average price of Rs 2,047.5, valuing the transaction at Rs574.86 crore, it added.In January 2016, Dalmia Bharat had announced that it signed a pact with KKR to acquire the global private equity giant’s 15 per cent stake in its subsidiary Dalmia Cement Bharat Ltd for over Rs 1,218 crore in a cash-and-stock deal. The deal had earned the private equity player a return of 2.4 times on its investment of Rs 500 crore it made in September 2010. The stock of Dalmia Bharat today closed at Rs 2,048.95 on BSE, down 1.74 per cent from the previous close.","The shares were purchased by a host of entities, including Kuwait Investment Authority, Birla Mutual Fund and Franklin Templeton Investment Funds","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 00 AM IST",KKR sells 5.6% stake in Dalmia Bharat for Rs575 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/WYBYCDEMknGl642e1gkVRP/RIL-may-post-higher-Marchquarter-profit.html,"
Mumbai: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) is likely to report a higher fourth-quarter profit on Monday, as it likely benefited from higher margins in its petrochemical and refining businesses. The company is expected to post a standalone net profit of Rs8,015.70 crore on revenue of Rs67,467.10 crore for the three months ended 31 March, according to a Bloomberg poll of 16 analysts.RIL, which runs the world’s largest refining and petrochemicals complex at Jamnagar in Gujarat, posted a standalone net profit of Rs7,320 crore on revenue of Rs49,957 crore in the year-ago period.“We expect strong earnings driven by refining and petchem (higher volumes, improved margins). Despite increased losses in domestic exploration and production, we expect RIL to report a ninth straight quarter of quarter-on-quarter stand-alone profit after tax growth,” Nomura Research said in a report dated 7 April. RIL’s standalone profit for the quarter ended 31 January was Rs8,022 crore.Analysts expect RIL to post a gross refining margin, or GRM, of between $10.5 and $11 per barrel against $10.8 per barrel a year ago. GRM is the difference between the per-barrel price of crude and the value of products distilled from it.In the March quarter, Brent crude oil prices averaged $54 per barrel, up 8% on a quarterly basis. The average rupee-dollar rate improved on a quarterly basis to 67 and closed at 64.9 at the end of March against 67.9 in the third quarter. This may lead to forex gains for refiners on their crude payables and foreign debt.Singapore’s benchmark GRM was slightly down on a quarterly basis at $6.5 per barrel. “We expect GRM at $11 per barrel (up 2% quarter-on-quarter), a $4.6 per barrel premium over Singapore benchmark,” Edelweiss Securities Ltd in a report dated 7 April.Over the last few quarters RIL’s refineries have enjoyed a premium of $4-5 per barrel to Singapore GRMs. RIL’s petrochemicals business is estimated to report better earnings on account of an improvement in margins and higher volumes. “We expect petchem EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) to rise 11% quarter on quarter (q-o-q) on stronger margins and slight uptick in volumes. Polymer margins are near-record levels, aromatics margins have rebounded q-o-q and integrated polyester margins are also at multi-quarter highs in the fourth quarter,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a report dated 10 April. Ebit is an indication of a company’s operating profitability.Losses in the exploration and production front may widen for RIL, with production from its KG D6 block expected to have declined 23% year-on-year to 7.3 million metric standard cubic metres per day. On Friday, RIL’s scrip ended at Rs1,399.75, up 2.22% on the BSE, while the benchmark Sensex closed at 29,365.30 points, down 0.19%.","Analysts expect better petrochemical, refining margins to have aided profit growth ","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 12 51 AM IST",RIL may post higher March-quarter profit +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/GQP1dt3zm4n15e4TX8f19J/Cognizant-CEOs-salary-falls-31-in-2016-as-growth-slows.html,"
Bengaluru: Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp.’s growth of 8.6% in calendar year 2016, the slowest in the history of the Nasdaq-listed company, hurt its senior management ranks, including chief executive officer Francisco D’Souza, whose compensation last year fell by a sharp 31%. D’Souza took home $8.26 million, against $11.95 million in 2015.Cognizant’s subdued performance last year—along with the company moving the grant of restricted stock units (RSU) to its senior management from the fourth quarter of last year to the first quarter of this calendar year—further hit the earnings of other senior management members, including president Rajeev Mehta and chief financial officer Karen McLoughlin. Mehta and McLoughlin saw their compensation drop by 30.5% and 30% respectively last year, as compared to 2015, according to filings made to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.ALSO READ: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backCognizant’s 8.6% growth in 2016 paled in comparison with the 21% growth it posted in 2015, underlining a broader slowdown witnessed by technology outsourcing companies, which are battling to keep themselves relevant. Newer technologies like cloud computing and data analytics are making the largest Fortune 1000 companies, across industries, cut reliance on traditional solutions offered under application development and maintenance by technology outsourcers.For this reason, chief executives are seeing a fall in their compensation. Vishal Sikka, CEO of Infosys Ltd, saw his compensation for 2016-17 decline 8.1% to $6.8 million from $7.4 million earned in 2015-16, after the firm’s growth slipped to 7.4%, compared to 9.1% in 2015-16.D’Souza, son of an Indian diplomat, has been at the helm of Cognizant for over a decade. Since he took over as CEO in January 2007, Cognizant has grown from a $1.4 billion company to end last year with $13.5 billion in revenue, overtaking both Infosys and Wipro Ltd.Starting in 2010, Cognizant added over $1 billion in new revenue or incremental revenue every year for seven straight years, a feat only matched by Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.","Due to the poor show by Cognizant, CEO Francisco D’Souza took home $8.26 million, against $11.95 million in 2015.","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 12 51 AM IST",Cognizant CEO Francisco D’Souza’s pay falls 31% in 2016 as growth slows +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/iZHd7zQweLl11iDXUJOMjP/Delhi-HC-stays-DOT-order-levying-Rs290-crore-penalty-on-ATT.html,"New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Friday stayed an order imposing a penalty of Rs290 crore on AT&T Global Network Services India Pvt. Ltd for unpaid licence fees between 2002-2005 by its affiliate AT & T Communication Services India Pvt. Ltd.Both AT&T Global Network Services and AT&T Communication Services India are subsidiaries of AT&T Global Network Holdings LLC.Based on a show cause notice issued to AT & T Communication Services India Pvt. Ltd in August 2005, the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) passed an order on 5 April imposing the penalty for unpaid license fee on AT & T Global Network Services India. Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva questioned the validity of imposing penalty on a company which had not been issued a notice or given a chance to be heard in the first place.Rajiv Nayyar, counsel for AT & T, told the court that AT & T Global Network Services was incorporated in 2005 and could not be penalized for breaches committed earlier. He added that AT&T Communication Services India had been involved in the proceedings from the very beginning, and yet the demand was levied on AT&T Global Network Services, which had not been a party to the dispute. Nayyar told the court that the 5 April order was “cryptic, bad in law, arbitrary and against the principles of natural justice” and was passed by a committee comprising members who were different from those who had heard the entire issue.AT & T Global Network Services sought for the order to be set aside and contended that the although it belonged to the AT & T group, it was economically and operationally independent from AT&T Communication Services India.The matter will be heard next on 19 May.",The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) passed an order on 5 April imposing the penalty for unpaid license fee on AT & T Global Network Services India,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 39 PM IST",Delhi HC stays DOT order levying Rs290 crore penalty on AT&T Global over unpaid fees +https://www.livemint.com/Money/M5H7WTTKqU3VRXn04vcEOP/Is-Accenture-making-things-worse-for-Indian-IT.html,"
Investors were underwhelmed by Accenture Plc’s results for the quarter ended February 2017. While revenue was more or less in line with expectations, new order bookings fell below expectations, and so did the company’s outlook for the consulting business. Accenture’s shares have fallen by around 4% since the results were announced last week. Some analysts have cheered the relatively higher growth in the company’s outsourcing business, suggesting this augurs well for India’s IT services industry. Outsourcing services grew 8% in constant currency terms last quarter, compared to 5% growth in consulting services. This is the first time in two years that Accenture’s outsourcing segment has outgrown its consulting practice. But as analysts at Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd point out, “(The outsourcing segment) is largely market share gain-driven and cannot be read positively from an Indian IT perspective, in our view.” In other words, the pickup in Accenture’s outsourcing business may well be coming at the expense of Indian IT, with which it competes directly. Worse still, the analysts add that the heightening of immigration fears could put the multinational firm in an advantageous position in this segment versus Indian IT, which is far more dependent on H-1B visas. Not very long ago, Indian investors were celebrating the fact that Tata Consultancy Services Ltd’s (TCS’s) market capitalization exceeded the combined value of Accenture and Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. Now, Accenture’s value exceeds that of TCS by around $5.5 billion. Note that Accenture’s new order bookings fell by 4% year-on-year and were below expectations. Growth in the key North American region fell to 4%, compared to double-digit growth a year ago. Company-wide growth has more-or-less halved in the past one year. These aren’t comforting signs for Indian IT, by any stretch of imagination. Some analysts see the relatively higher growth in Accenture’s outsourcing business as a positive for Indian IT, since it points to a shift in the nature of digital spends by customers, which may provide more opportunities for Indian companies. The argument goes that digital has moved beyond the consulting phase and is now scaling up, where Indian IT’s capabilities will be required. It would be prudent for investors to look for more datapoints that attest this. For now, what’s working in the favour of IT stocks is that since valuations are low when compared to the broad market, they have takers when stocks fall below a certain threshold. Although revenue growth has come down substantially, these companies still generate high amounts of cash, and have lately increased payout ratios.","The pickup in Accenture’s outsourcing business may well be coming at the expense of Indian IT firms, such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro","Fri, Mar 31 2017. 07 42 AM IST",Is Accenture making things worse for Indian IT? +https://www.livemint.com/Money/crmsofySTtq83zsUJEpybJ/Marico-numbers-to-get-a-massage-with-pricier-coconut-oil.html,"
Is coconut oil a hair oil or edible oil? Marico Ltd would be keen to know the answer, as the GST (goods and services tax) Council will soon get down to deciding rates. While GST rates on all consumer products are of interest, if one takes the government’s word at face value — that consumer prices will not increase—then the impact on companies should be minimal. In any case, many FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) firms, including Marico, have units in states such as Assam to avail of excise benefits. These will continue under the GST regime.Of more immediate interest to Marico’s investors should be an increase in its Parachute pure coconut oil sold in bottles. Some pack sizes have seen prices increase by 7-10% in March. This comes on the back of a sustained increase in copra prices, which are up by 38% since October while coconut oil is up by 42%, as per prices maintained by Marico.The increase in Parachute prices may seem relatively less and even delayed, compared to the raw material price trend. This may be deliberate. For one, Marico may have locked in earlier to lower input prices. Also, the company did not reduce prices sharply when input costs fell. It prefers to maintain its margins in a range. When input prices increase, this strategy allows it to increase market share, as buyers of loose oil shift to Parachute as the price differential between the two narrows. About a third of the coconut oil market by volume is still sold in loose form.Parachute’s market share in coconut oil is likely to have risen in the March quarter, and with the increase in price, margins should improve in fiscal year 2018. Post-December quarter results, when domestic coconut oil volume had declined by 1% due to demonetization, the company said it expects to recover and grow by 5-6% in the near term. In Bangladesh, which contributes to 45% of Marico’s international sales, the firm had said sales growth of coconut oil will return to constant currency growth in the fourth quarter.The raw material prices in other inputs in edible oils for its Saffola range or for paraffin oil for its value-added hair oils are stable or increasing. Broadly speaking, a firming of its cost base should allow for price hikes, with the extent depending on demand and competition. Urban demand is expected to be in better form in FY18, which should help the premium part of Marico’s portfolio.Rural markets were affected more by demonetization than urban markets in the December quarter. FY17 was expected to be better due to a better monsoon. If rural demand recovers, that should help its low-price packs and hair oil sales.The Marico stock has risen by 23% since end-December and is trading around the same level it was in early September. It trades at a price-to-earnings multiple of 40 times the estimated FY18 mean earnings per share, based on estimates polled by Reuters. That makes it a relatively expensive stock. If product prices keep increasing, if demand improves and if GST benefits become evident, the stock’s valuation could still be justified. A near-term risk is supply disruption when GST is implemented.",Sustained increase in copra prices have starting reflecting in Parachute coconut oil prices—a matter of much interest to investors and beneficial to Marico share prices,"Fri, Mar 31 2017. 07 42 AM IST",Marico numbers to get a massage with pricier coconut oil +https://www.livemint.com/Money/kjAm1V9ZS6sgiXS8anLWDN/Airtel-finally-gets-decent-deal-for-its-Bharti-Infratel-shar.html,"
Bharti Airtel Ltd has been looking to sell a stake in its tower infrastructure subsidiary, Bharti Infratel Ltd, for some now. It was initially even willing to give up majority control, although it has dropped those plans for now. According to an analyst at a domestic institutional brokerage firm, a majority stake sale may not have been feasible given the hit on tower companies owing to the consolidation in the telecom sector. With Airtel deciding to retain a stake of over 50%, a stake of up to 21.6% was up for grabs in Infratel. The company announced on Tuesday it has sold a 10.3% stake for Rs6,194 crore. The shares were sold at Rs325 apiece, or a 4% premium over Monday’s close and a 6% premium compared to the average price in the past one month. Given the selling pressure and the 12% correction in Infratel shares since end-January, Airtel has got itself a fairly decent deal. Based on the transaction price, the tower company has been valued at a healthy EV/Ebitda multiple of 9.5 times, based on FY17 earnings and 8.7 times based on FY18 earnings, according to JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd’s estimates. EV is short for enterprise value. Ebitda stands for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.Airtel’s Bharti Infratel stake sale: KKR, CPPIB part of bigger agreement?Valuations were even higher earlier this year before Vodafone India Ltd and Idea Cellular Ltd said they were in talks for a potential merger. Evidently, the combined entity will no longer need as many towers as they did when they ran separate operations. But as it turns out, the two companies said last week while announcing their merger that the overlap on tower tenancies amounts to only around 20% of the total. Analysts at Credit Suisse, for instance, had estimated the overlap to be as high as 33%, and hence a greater hit on Infratel as redundancies are removed from the system post-merger. “Idea management believes that with subscribers of over 400 million (combined entity) and rapidly growing data volumes, it would be risky to shut down other tenancies. In other words, they see 220,000 sites as the size of the network in the long term. Seen from point of view of Bharti/Jio (165,000/100,000 tenancies), this could become a benchmark for nationwide network and accelerate new tenancy demands from these two operators,” Credit Suisse’s analysts wrote in a note to clients.As such, the outlook for Infratel has improved marginally after Idea and Vodafone’s merger announcement last week. Of course, this is not to say that everything is hunky-dory. Revenue growth will be hit as Idea and Vodafone rationalize tower assets, and this will have an impact on economies of scale, and hence, margins. It is also not clear whether Infratel will be compensated by the combined entity through the payment of exit penalties. Meanwhile, with Idea looking to sell its tower assets, as well as its stake in Indus Towers Ltd, and Vodafone possibly looking for an exit, too, Infratel could well consolidate its position in the sector, and gain a sizeable lead over competitors. Perhaps, this prospect helped get Airtel a premium for its Infratel shares.","Airtel has sold 10.3% stake in Bharti Infratel for Rs6,194 crore with shares valued at Rs325 apiece, or a 4% premium over Monday’s close","Wed, Mar 29 2017. 07 57 AM IST",Airtel finally gets decent deal for its Bharti Infratel shares +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/SNKLZC4OyZ5aHfo70zV2yM/Why-national-flags-dont-change.html,"
All nation-states have armed forces which consist of individuals who are willing to sacrifice their lives for the country. How many corporations in the world, with all their management systems and resources, have managed to create employees with such dedication? This was a question I had raised in my last article. The question that follows is: How does a nation-state build loyalty among its citizens? What can human resources professionals in various organizations learn from this?All strong nations have enemies they have fought multiple wars with. This column had earlier referred to the creation of out-groups to effectively consolidate the members of an in-group. Starting a war does a far more effective job of binding the nation together than the creation of an out-group. The famous historian Ian Morris, in his book War! What Is It good For? : Conflict And The Progress Of Civilization From Primates To Robots, has pointed out that, throughout history, by fighting wars, people have created larger, more organized societies that have gone on to be richer. Creation of conflict is integral to all great human movements too. Communism is not about peaceful coexistence of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie but a conflict between them. Organized religions know that the concepts of God and heaven are strong only when there is an equally strong concept of devil and hell as part of their belief systems. Most organizations have a vision of what they aspire to be. But very few have defined what they don’t want to be, the enemy they are at war with. Steve Jobs, in the “1984” launch commercial, made it clear that his organization was not interested in peaceful coexistence with other existing technology giants. At the outset he declared a war on technology that was not human friendly (read IBM and Microsoft). That belief is reflected even today in the design of Apple products. This also explains why Jobs and the brand he created continue to have a mass following of dedicated, aggressive fans.From the many wars that nation-states fight, heroes emerge. All strong nations have their national heroes—those who fought for its people, laid down their lives for the flag. Even after their death, nations ensure that these heroes are remembered. The history of nations is filled with stories of their valour. These stories help preserve the memories of the past for many generations of its citizens to come. How many organizations have a well thought out strategy to identify and project their heroes? Is there a process to collect their stories? Is there a mechanism to disseminate the inspiring stories, not just through formal training programmes, but also through water-cooler conversations? Why have nations not redesigned their flags or remixed their national anthems?Management experts who profess that “change is the only constant” forget the scientific fact—the human brain loves status quo. As Stephen Fleming of University College London says, whether it’s moving house or changing a TV channel, there is a considerable tendency for the human brain to stick with the current situation and choose not to act anew. When any action is repeated, the corresponding neural connections become stronger and over a point of time the brain gets to perform that action without even consciously thinking. The comfort of not thinking too much is disturbed by new stimuli. Political parties, organized religion and even god-men who manage to build strong loyalty with their followers have understood this brain fact. No political party or organized religion changes their symbols. Some of these symbols are thousands of years old. All godmen make sure that not just their attire, even their hairstyles remain constant over decades. And, organized religions have not allowed anyone to change even a comma in their holy books. But many organizations change their logos and other physical expressions at the drop of a hat. Such rebranding exercises are short cuts used by organizational leaders to show that they are making “visible” changes. Design agencies whose business thrives with every logo change will continue to give plausible arguments to prove that the new font and colours are far superior to the previous ones!Very few professional organizations have exploited the powers of consistency. To do that, organizational leaders should begin with a strong vision that has depth and width. They should know what expressions of that vision are permanent and what facets of that vision could change with the times. From its economic policies to global status to the demographic profile of its citizens, India has changed a lot. But the design of the national flag and the tune of its national anthem has always remained constant. Great nations understand the power of consistency. Nation-states do not try to build strong bonds with their citizens through financial incentives. The bond between all nations and their citizens is emotional. Political leaders know the power of emotional rewards over monetary rewards. And these emotional rewards are amplified through rituals. All nations have several rituals: standing up when the national anthem is sung, hoisting a flag, republic day parades—all add to strengthening the emotional bond between the nation and its citizen.An intuitive understanding of the core concepts of human behaviour has been used by nation leaders to build strong loyalty among its citizens. What prevents organizations from learning from these national leaders?Biju Dominic is the chief executive officer of Final Mile Consulting, a behaviour architecture firm.Comments are welcome at views@livemint.com",How does a nation-state build loyalty among its citizens? What can human resources professionals in various organizations learn from this?,"Thu, Mar 30 2017. 08 46 AM IST",Why national flags don’t change +https://www.livemint.com/Money/cn2rHXZQRhLVezxpJOWXnM/Prospects-light-up-for-power-transmission-and-distribution-f.html,"
There’s a noticeable dichotomy within power sector companies. While there is surplus capacity and low utilization of existing capacity among power generation firms, the stage is all set for revenue and order book growth for power transmission and distribution (T&D) firms.This is not without reason. Analysts from the sector are hopeful that the draft National Electricity Plan (December 2016), which signals a sizeable Rs2.6 trillion investment into building T&D networks between 2017 and 2022, should open avenues for firms in this business.In any case, after some sluggishness until fiscal year 2015, domestic T&D orders started to pick up. Firms like KEC International Ltd, Kalpataru Power Transmission Ltd, Techno Electric and Engineering Co. Ltd, and ABB India Ltd have shown robust order inflows in the last three-four quarters. The road ahead is clear too. An Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd report says, “The addressable opportunity for larger engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) players in transmission lines would be around Rs900 billion (Rs90,000 crore) and in the substation segment around Rs750 billion, over the next five years.”It was after the FY08-09 downturn that some of these firms battled losses and were also caught in a debt trap. However, stringent cost management has now brought large-sized companies back on to the profit track. Those that could not cope are not in the race to bid for new orders. Further, the government is also clear that firms that are yet to complete orders will not be given fresh contracts. Hence, there is lower competition for large-sized companies that have weathered the tough times.Meanwhile, some firms have struck a meaningful geographic balance to diversify risks. For example, two-thirds of Kalpataru Power’s current order book accrues from the Middle-East, Africa and South-East Asia. KEC and Thermax Ltd have successfully diversified in terms of geographic regions and business verticals. Else, the T&D orders, which are mainly government tenders, run the risk of delays in awards and cost overruns.Some others are restructuring businesses to improve profitability. Techno Electric, for instance, has taken the decision to exit the wind power generation business and plough back the funds raised towards more viable substation projects, besides repaying debt.Such efforts have powered up the operating margins by 100-150 basis points in the last few quarters and they are poised to grow further as order inflows bring in benefits of operating leverage too. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.No doubt, T&D stocks in the entire power sector are to investors what roads are in the infrastructure universe. In a year, shares of KEC and Kalpataru Power have returned twice that of the BSE Capital Goods index. Although the price-to-earnings multiple did expand, the expected order inflows and revenue momentum should expand earnings to support valuations.",Analysts are hopeful that the draft National Electricity Plan should open avenues for power transmission companies and power discoms,"Wed, Mar 29 2017. 07 58 AM IST",Prospects light up for power transmission and distribution firms +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/q9aUeygWlYytZUfbVBssXL/Why-less-is-more.html,"
I am not a big fan of shopping at D-Mart. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not that I dislike it. I like to buy my fresh fruits and vegetables at the farmers’ market on Sunday at a park close to where I live in Juhu. They also sell staples, organic honey, preserves and cookies. I enjoy the interaction with the farmers, the experience and discovery. To me retail is not just about value for money, functionality and utility, it’s also about theatre, experience and discovery.Unlike me, millions of consumers in western India love shopping at D-Mart. The fact that the no-frills discount retail chain’s parent Avenue Supermarts Ltd listed on 21 March with a 115% premium to its sale price is testimony to that.To be sure, it’s not without reason that investors drove up the stock so steeply. The regional chain is India’s most profitable retailer. Over 90% of D-Mart’s customers are regular shoppers who buy from the retailer 2-3 times a month on average. This is despite having no loyalty programme.What seems to be working for D-Mart is offering limited merchandise at prices lower than its rivals. If Future Retail’s large format stores like Big Bazaar stock 30,0000-50,000 units on average, a D-Mart store stocks just 40-50% of that merchandise. Most of this seems to defy logic. After all, over the years, we have been getting used to increased choices. Today, there are around 141 models of passenger vehicles from 15 car manufacturers on Indian roads. This is without taking into consideration luxury car models such as BMW, Audi and Mercedes. In the early 1990s, there were just four passenger car manufacturers with about a dozen car models, which included Hindustan’s Ambassador and Contessa, Premier Padmini, Standard Herald and 2000, the Maruti 800, Omni and Gypsy, and a range of Mahindra utility vehicles.A search for soap on online retailer Amazon.com Inc.’s India website shows up 324,992 results whereas a search for shampoo produces 17,028 results. A huge change from 30-40 years ago when bath soaps were dominated by the red Lifebuoy, pink Lux, Liril and Cinthol soaps and hair wash options were largely Shikakai soap, Halo and Sunsilk shampoo. However, too much is not always a good thing. Especially given our stressful and busy urban lives, offering more options to consumers may just lead to confusion, making shopping an ordeal instead of a pleasure. Psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper said that consumers who are offered fewer choices are more likely to purchase, based on an experiment that they conducted with jam at an upscale food market in a landmark study in 2000. The psychologists put up a display of 24 varieties of gourmet jam on one table one evening and on another day, shoppers saw a similar table, except that only six varieties of the jam were on display. The large display attracted more interest than the small one. But when the time came to purchase, people who saw the large display were one-tenth as likely to buy as people who saw the small display.In his provocative book, The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz warns that giving consumers more product choices actually lowers their purchase satisfaction. Schwartz reasons that having too many options makes us fear missing out, which causes anxiety, analysis paralysis and regret.Globally, some of the biggest success stories in food retailing in recent years are not that of US retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. or UK retailer Tesco Plc. They are of the international expansion of German no-frills retail chains Aldi and Lidl, founded in 1946 and 1973, respectively.Aldi and Lidl only offer between 2,000 and 3,000 lines. In comparison an average Walmart store has 100,000 products and an average retailer 45,000 items. It’s not only in retail. Look at some of the most successful brands—Tesla Inc., Apple Inc. and Google’s home page. What stands out is the simplicity of design, a clean interface, and no clutter.Among large retailers and manufacturers, the shift towards simplicity and offering less choice has already started happening. In 2015, Tesco announced cutting its range on its retail shelves by a third. Walmart reduced its average number of store displays by 15%. Even Procter and Gamble reduced its range of Head and Shoulders shampoos by nearly half—and ended up seeing a 10% bump in sales.Interestingly, for India, the journey from having no choices to having a plethora of choices, and now to preferring our choices curated for us has happened in a very short time frame of 25-26 years. It was only in 1991 that India opened its doors to multinationals and we saw our markets being flooded by foreign manufacturers like The Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. The lessons, though, are crystal clear. D-Mart, even though much smaller in size, on listing, had a market capitalization of Rs39,916.44 crore, more than the aggregate of all of its key listed national rivals including Future Retail Ltd, Shoppers Stop Ltd and Trent Ltd.Shop Talk will take a weekly look at consumer trends, behaviour and insights.","Given our stressful and busy urban lives, offering more options to consumers may just lead to confusion, making shopping an ordeal instead of a pleasure","Wed, Mar 29 2017. 11 36 AM IST",Why less is more +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/y787OM973qACNDVPPYO0yL/Air-India-lowers-age-limit-for-elderly-travel-concession-to.html,"New Delhi: National carrier Air India has lowered the age limit for availing travel concession under its scheme for senior citizens to 60. As per the scheme, an Indian citizen who has attained the age of 60 on the date of commencement of journey is entitled to a 50% discount on the basic fare of an economy class seat, an Air India spokesperson confirmed. Earlier, the age limit for this offer was 63 years. This offer, however, is only valid for domestic travel. Those seeking to avail this scheme will have to produce a valid identity proof like voter identity card, passport, driving licence, or a senior citizen card issued by Air India.","Earlier, the age limit for Air India’s elderly travel concession was 63 years","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 52 PM IST",Air India lowers age limit for elderly travel concession to 60 +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/m8RpqX8Hk75FQ8Qd7HiCwL/Narayana-Hrudayalaya-to-buy-Panacea-Biotecs-NewRise-Healthc.html,"New Delhi: Bengaluru-based hospital chain Narayana Hrudayalaya Ltd has acquired Gurgaon-based multi-speciality hospital NewRise Healthcare Pvt. Ltd from drug maker Panacea Biotech Ltd for Rs180 crore. The 230-bed hospital is in the final stages of completion and is likely to be commissioned within the next nine months, Narayana Hrudayalaya said in a stock exchange filing on Friday, adding that the acquisition is expected to strengthen its position in the north. Narayana Hrudayalaya currently has a network of 23 hospitals and seven heart centres across India. As per the agreement, Panacea Biotech and its associate firm PanEra Biotech Pvt. Ltd will sell 100% equity shares and 100% preference shares, respectively, in NewRise Healthcare to Narayana Hrudayalaya.In a separate stock exchange filing, Panacea Biotech said that NewRise Healthcare’s net worth was Rs55.31 crore as of 31 March 2017. Panacea Biotech had entered into a corporate debt restructuring exercise in 2014-15 and the company had total liabilities of Rs1,807.43 crore as of 31 March 2016. On Friday, shares of Narayana Hrudayalaya ended down 0.2% at Rs317.65 apiece on BSE, while Panacea Biotech’s shares closed 3.6% higher at Rs164.85 each. The benchmark Sensex index fell 0.2% to 29,365.30 points.","The company has entered an agreement to acquire 100% stake in NewRise Healthcare from Panacea Biotec, Narayana Hrudayalaya said in a BSE filing","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 09 PM IST",Narayana Hrudayalaya to buy Panacea Biotec’s NewRise Healthcare for Rs180 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Money/qEkXlJDekwXrhaLI48a1DM/Mindtree-shows-signs-of-a-recovery.html,"
Mindtree Ltd’s shares have fallen 44.3% since it issued a profit warning for the March quarter. Growth at the company has taken a tumble since then, owing to delays in project starts and troubles at its UK subsidiary Bluefin Solutions. In this backdrop, it may come as a relief for investors that for the first time in over a year, Mindtree has beaten the Street’s expectations by a meaningful margin. Revenue grew 2% sequentially in constant currency terms last quarter, compared to estimated growth of less than 1%. What’s more, margins rose by 60 basis points, again ahead of estimates, indicating that the burn at Bluefin has reduced meaningfully. The company said that Bluefin’s revenue increased more than 11% sequentially; although, of course, it makes sense to wait and see if the recovery will sustain. The churn in Mindtree’s top 10 customers continues, and the company said it is in the process of rebuilding its top 10 portfolio. Last quarter, growth in the revenues of top 10 customers rose 0.7%, far lower than the company’s average growth rate. And in a clear sign that Mindtree isn’t exactly out of the woods, year-on-year growth in revenue stood at merely 0.3%. In this backdrop, the company’s assertion that growth in fiscal year 2018 will be in low double-digits seems ambitious at first. Having said that, Mindtree’s strong deal wins in the past few quarters also provide hope that growth will pick up in the new fiscal year. Work has commenced on some of the large deal wins in the December quarter, with on-site effort increasing by 6.1% sequentially last quarter. And while deal wins in the March quarter was considerably lower vis-à-vis December, at $209 million, on a cumulative basis the total contract value won by the company in the past few quarters should help sustain growth. “Even as the overall growth has slipped, Mindtree’s customer relationships and engagement with deal advisory (firms) continues to be strong and could result in an improvement in growth rates starting the June quarter,” analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities said in a recent note to clients. Of course, given the rough ride investors have had with Mindtree shares in the past year, they may do well to be cautious. Besides the fact that it makes sense to wait for the company to deliver consistent performance, it’s also important to remember that valuations aren’t cheap at 17.8 times trailing earnings.","While Mindtree shares have fallen 44.3% since it issued a profit warning for March quarter, its better-than-expected Q4 results should come as a relief to investors","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 41 AM IST",Mindtree shows signs of a recovery +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/8vn22k2MZeSZ9sy8w3lhyN/Sun-Pharmas-Dadra-unit-gets-11-US-FDA-observations-includin.html,"Mumbai: The US Food and Drug Administration noted incomplete laboratory records among potential manufacturing violations it observed during an inspection of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.’s Dadra unit this month, according to an inspection report obtained by Bloomberg News.Other observations included failure to create accurate duplicates of key records, and to properly investigate drug batches that didn’t meet specifications, according to the FDA’s report, called a Form 483, obtained through a Freedom of Information request. Sun Pharma’s stock fell as much as 3% to Rs636.60, the lowest intra-day level in more than two months, before trading at Rs637.70 at 1:47pm in Mumbai.Frederick Castro, a spokesman for Sun Pharma, declined to comment on the FDA’s observations.Sun Pharma, India’s largest drugmaker, has been contending with increased scrutiny from US regulators that has constrained access to the market where it gets about half its sales, slowing revenue growth. Another Sun Pharma plant in Halol, Gujarat, remains under an FDA warning letter that prevents new product launches from that facility to the US. A reinspection of the Halol plant last year produced 14 pages of new observations, including poorly designed tests and tardiness reporting results. Sun has said it is responding to those observations.“They need to improve on the documentation aspect across their plants,” said Surya Patra, an analyst at PhillipCapital India Pvt. “But improving their documentation systems will not hamper their manufacturing activities, so their business is not likely to be hampered.” The observations at the Dadra and the Halol plants were of a similar nature, and don’t appear to be serious as they are procedural, he said.In March, Sun announced the FDA had lifted its import ban against a facility in Punjab which had been acquired with the 2015 purchase of Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd.FDA observationsDadra is a union territory in western India. The FDA made 11 total observations on the plant. The remainder range from an instance where expired intermediate-stage drugs were stored with unexpired batches, to a quality control unit that lacked authority to review manufacturing records, to criticisms of the lighting, employee clothing and equipment maintenance schedules, according to the document.In explaining the observation of incomplete lab records the report says inspectors noticed a torn and discarded printout showing data which was not included in records of test data for a batch of medicine. Inspectors also found an Excel spreadsheet on a shared computer network which was not included in official data elsewhere, and in another instance raw data was missing from some drug production activities, according to the report.The FDA’s website says that a Form 483 is issued to a company when inspectors note any conditions that may constitute violations of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The agency also says that the report does not constitute a final decision of whether any regulations were violated. The FDA considers company responses and other documents before deciding what further action, if any, is appropriate after a Form 483.",US FDA reports incomplete laboratory records among potential manufacturing violations during an inspection of Sun Pharmaceutical’s Dadra unit this month,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 22 PM IST",US FDA inspection of Sun Pharma’s Dadra unit finds incomplete lab records +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/e7NThTyZXdn0rEZv8YgTjO/Jet-Airways-flight-suffers-tail-strike.html,"Mumbai: A Jet Airways flight from Amsterdam to Toronto on Friday suffered a tail strike, forcing the pilot to return to the Dutch capital. The airline was operating a Boeing 777-300ER plane, which has capacity to seat more than 300 passengers. Sources said the flight suffered a tail strike while taking off from Amsterdam to Toronto and later faced pressurisation problems. Following the issues, the pilot decided to return to Amsterdam, they added. The exact number of passengers on board the aircraft was not immediately known. In January this year, a Jet Airways plane’s tail had touched the runway during landing at the Dhaka airport. The flight was from Mumbai.","The Jet airways flight, from Amsterdam to Toronto, suffered a tail strike while taking off, forcing the pilot to return to the Dutch capital","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 31 PM IST",Jet Airways flight suffers tail strike +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/nosAVM50qToYZylBipBDcO/Is-Flipkarts-latest-fundraising-a-game-changer.html,"
On 10 April, Flipkart announced a new funding round and the acquisition of eBay India. Let us look at this development through the filter of something previously discussed in this column: the winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce.Since there is little differentiation between e-commerce firms, price becomes the sole differentiator. The company with most money to burn wins, while others sell out, usually to the winner. This may be simplistic, but it captures the essence of how e-commerce has played out globally.India is witnessing that scenario right now. Flipkart just announced acquisition of eBay India, and is likely to strike a similar deal with Snapdeal. Does this change the endgame? Can Flipkart outlast Amazon India? Or somehow settle into a stable duopoly beating the global trend? Or is it just delaying the inevitable? And what of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd?The winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce has not changed at all. And it will not until firms find a way to differentiate. Do customers see any real difference between Amazon and Flipkart? Both have great customer service, and similar merchandise. Even the frills are the same: if one has Amazon Prime, the other has Flipkart First. Does this acquisition change the endgame for Flipkart? Let us go through the arguments.Unique positioning of the acquired company: if the acquired company has unique strengths, it probably wouldn’t be up for acquisition. One argument could be that the target is strong in a certain segment such as a product category or geography. That may be true but it does not take that much effort or time to build from scratch. One has to only see how Amazon India has grown.Synergies with the acquired firm: the less said about this, the better, but we would be happy to be proven wrong. Flipkart’s deal-making has always been more about value buying, or common investors triggering a consolidation, than tapping synergies. Making the most of the opportunity of Rocket Internet pulling out of India, Flipkart snapped up Jabong for a song at $70 million. Its acquisition of Letsbuy and Myntra was triggered by common early stage investors. Its next buy Snapdeal, if the deal closes, will happen for similar reasons. With no home-grown mid-stage to late-stage venture funding available in India, Snapdeal is left with no choice but to sell.One oft-heard argument is that by buying everyone else, Flipkart will acquire such scale that it will either be able to survive stand-alone or force either Alibaba or Amazon to buy it. Given that all e-commerce firms are losing money, being bigger may just mean losing more money. Also, scale and customer base are meaningful only when entry barriers exist and there is some sort of customer loyalty. Otherwise, both are just vanity metrics.However, it is true that by acquiring all other rivals, Flipkart’s ability to present itself as the sole alternative to Amazon to investors and customers increases.There are other reasons for investors to back such acquisitions. The incentives of fund managers may not be aligned with those of the company. Many such deals are driven by investors such as Tiger Global and SoftBank, explained a limited partner (an investor in venture capital and private equity firms) from Hong Kong. In Flipkart’s case, Tiger has been an investor in the company for more than seven years and has to start thinking of providing liquidity to its investors. A deal to acquire Snapdeal, with an added deal for money from SoftBank (the single largest shareholder in Snapdeal), may provide this, this person added.ALSO READ: Why Flipkart’s valuation wasn’t hurt by multiple markdownsNew investors may be driven by a different logic, the limited partner explained. This could be strong liquidation preference terms that reduce downside risk. Or it could just be the opportunity to back a winning horse—or, at least, one that has a better chance of at least being there when the last race is run. Shrija Agrawal is Mint’s deals editor. Due Diligence will cover issues in India’s venture capital, private equity and deals space.","Flipkart’s $1.4 billion fundraising, acquisition of eBay India and a likely Snapdeal buyout shows the winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce hasn’t changed at all","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 01 57 AM IST",Is Flipkart’s latest fundraising a game changer? +https://www.livemint.com/Money/W6u9TnMLPuMKPIP5UB2cgN/Akzo-Nobel-India-stock-hits-alltime-high-but-valuations-ye.html,"
Shares of paint maker Akzo Nobel India touched an all-time high of Rs1,965 on BSE last week, on 3 April.The stock has been on market participants’ radar after its Dutch parent, Akzo Nobel NV, rejected US rival PPG Industries unsolicited takeover bid, twice, in March, stating that the proposal doesn’t reflect the current and future value of the firm. Akzo Nobel NV will hold an investor update on 19 April, where it will provide updated financial guidance and a detailed plan for separation of its specialty chemicals business, in an attempt to avoid the bid.Despite the deal not going through, they remain bullish on the stock because of a slew of domestic factors.First and foremost, they cite the firm’s rising market share in premium decorative paints segment. The industry has grown at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 12% over FY11-16 and most other firms have reflected the same trend. However, Akzo has grown at 20% CAGR in the same period, said an Angel Broking report.Secondly, its premium decorative paint brand, Dulux, is well positioned in that segment, the second largest after Asian Paints; and the firm’s recent unconventional strategy of introducing wholesalers into paint distribution would boost its presence in under-penetrated tier-II and tier-III cities, and provide the brand a competitive pricing advantage over peers, added analysts.Not only that, the company has also been aggressively adding capacities, expanding its base and making acquisitions. In December, Akzo Nobel India commissioned a specialty coatings production facility in Noida that can manufacture 600 kilolitres of coatings annually, with an investment of Rs3 crore. In the same month, it also bought BASF India’s industrial coating business. It is setting up a facility in Mumbai to serve its customers in the Northern and Western parts of India. Akzo Nobel India has six manufacturing facilities in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mohali, Gwalior, Raigad and Navi Mumbai.A steady balance sheet and lucrative dividend payout ratio are some other positives.However, what concerns analysts is Akzo Nobel’s operating margin, which had taken a beating for two years following the amalgamation of three subsidiaries with itself in FY12. Though the operating margin has improved from then, it still lags peers.“Despite continuing to deliver robust gross margins, which are at par with the market leader, Akzo’s operating margins have remained significantly lower (with a minimal differential of ~350 basis points with the closest peer) than peers in the paints sector on account of higher operating costs,” said a Spark Capital Research report. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. In FY16, operating margin came in at 11%, and Angel Broking foresees a further improvement of 200-250 bps. The firm has taken many cost-control steps, especially keeping staff costs in check, to improve operating margins.Meanwhile, talking about valuations, Akzo Nobel India is the fourth largest firm by market-cap in the organized paint sector, but trades at a significant discount to larger peers (see chart). After soaring to a new high, the stock witnessed some profit-booking and is currently trading at Rs1,867. Though the stock’s recent surge had to do with the aforementioned global factor, bridging of the valuation gap would largely depend on improvement in its operating margin.","Akzo Nobel India’s operating margin, which had taken a beating for two years following the amalgamation of three subsidiaries with itself in FY12, has improved from then, but still lags peers","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 08 00 AM IST","Akzo Nobel India stock hits all-time high, but valuations yet to catch-up" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/hRYRY4ur3QSMspGq0EJIKJ/Flipkarts-largest-funding-may-also-be-the-trickiest-to-navi.html,"
Flipkart announced a massive funding round this week, after a gap of nearly two years. Although, at $1.4 billion, it’s the company largest, the backdrop for the funding is markedly different from previous funding rounds. About two years ago, in July 2015, the e-commerce firm had raised $2.4 billion in three funding rounds over a 12- month period. Funds flowed in easily back then, not only for Flipkart, but also for its competitors and all forms of start-ups. Companies used these funds to provide huge discounts and gain customers, which in turn brought in a new set of investors.ALSO READ: Why Flipkart valuation wasn’t hurt by multiple markdownsIn the past 18 months or so, investors have become a lot more discerning. They’ve realized India’s e-commerce opportunity is no longer as big as it once seemed to be. Their focus has shifted to unit economics and other efficiency parameters. Flipkart said in a meet organized by an investment bank late last year that its cash burn has reduced by around 25% from peak levels. The flip side is that growth has faltered in the past year.Among other things, the large funding by Tencent Holdings Ltd, eBay Inc. and Microsoft Corp. can be seen as a sign of approval for this more sensible strategy. As such, unlike previous years, Flipkart will be expected to use its freshly raised funds far more cautiously. According to an analyst at a multinational bank, the new investors may well have included terms where funds are released based on certain milestones being met. With Amazon.com Inc. breathing down its neck with high levels of discounting in the Indian market, Flipkart could be walking a very tight rope, trying to protect market share as well as improve unit economics and reduce cash burn.ALSO READ: Flipkart’s Sachin, Binny Bansal no more billionaires after raising $1.4 billionHaving said that, Flipkart’s latest funding round provides the reassurance that there are still some takers for the Indian e-commerce story. In particular, that there is room for another large company alongside Amazon. While the growth opportunity may not be as big as estimated earlier, it is still clearly big enough to attract some investors. When funding had nearly dried up in the past 18 months, financial investor Morgan Stanley Institutional Fund Trust marked down Flipkart’s valuation to around $5.4 billion, or about 65% lower compared to its valuation in July 2015. The latest funding values the firm at $11.6 billion on a post-money basis. Of the total equity issuance of $1.4 billion, about $200-250 million is estimated to be in exchange for eBay’s India business. The net inflow of $1.2 billion or so should easily suffice in terms of funding cash burn for another two years. If Flipkart manages these funds well, and uses it to gain scale and improve unit economics, it may continue to find new investors; especially since most of its competitors are gradually shutting shop.","If Flipkart manages the new funds well, and uses it to gain scale and improve unit economics, it may continue to find new investors","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 03 15 AM IST",Flipkart’s largest funding may also be the trickiest to navigate +https://www.livemint.com/Money/To5oP49o3H2x6etfJelZkO/Slipping-global-iron-ore-prices-worry-NMDC-investors.html,"
NMDC Ltd was slow to increase iron ore prices when global prices soared to high levels in fiscal year 2017. Now that global prices are slipping, the company’s investors will hope it will be slow to cut them as well. Between October 2016 and early-March 2017, the prices of seaborne iron ore rose by 63.3% during which NMDC’s domestic prices rose by 15.5% (for iron ore lumps) and 24.1% (fines). Domestic market conditions would be one reason for the slower increase in prices, while the government’s desire to keep the cost of steel-making down may be another.The global iron ore market has turned bearish, says a Bloomberg report, as bankers turn nervous about its future in a scenario where China cuts back its steel output. Whether the bear case is here to stay will be known in a few months from now. On earlier occasions too, iron prices have rebounded after falling sharply for some time, due to adverse news. Iron ore in Qingdao, China, closed at $75.5/tonne on 7 April, according to Bloomberg, which is still 35% higher than its level in October.Unless prices fall sharply, NMDC may still be able to justify in holding on to prices at current levels. Last week, it disclosed that sales for the March quarter had risen by 14.3% over a year ago but declined by 2.9% sequentially. Average prices during the quarter are up by 10.7% in the case of lumps and 16% in the case of fines, which indicates that sales and profit should post good growth rates both over a year ago and sequentially.Rising domestic steel capacity is a good sign for NMDC, although one worrying sign is slower growth in steel consumption. A pickup in domestic consumption will help steel makers earn better margins, improve steel output and in turn benefit the company. The main risk it is facing at present is if iron ore prices crash, as that will directly affect profitability and cash flows.NMDC had said in December that it may exit its three-million-tonne steel project under construction through a strategic disinvestment. Clarity on whether it will focus on iron ore going forward and leave steel-making to others will be useful to investors. That will mean its cash surplus will be available for distribution, either by way of dividends or by buying back of shares. While the government is the moving force behind the return of cash, minority shareholders also gain in the process. The company’s share is up by 31% over a year ago but is below its February levels as falling global iron prices worry investors.","Unless prices fall sharply, NMDC may still be able to justify in holding on to prices at current levels","Tue, Apr 11 2017. 08 02 AM IST",Slipping global iron ore prices worry NMDC investors +https://www.livemint.com/Money/iUgZHjWl4Ux2aoF5LMbd2L/Concors-earnings-expectations-get-a-boost-from-higher-volum.html,"
Improving volume is raising earnings expectations of Container Corp. of India Ltd (Concor). Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd revised the company’s fiscal 2016-17 to 2018-19 earnings estimates upwards by 2-3% after the container rail and logistics solutions provider reported a 7.8% growth in volume in tonnage terms for 2016-17. They had fallen in 2015-16. Exim (export-import) volume, its core business, is up 9.2%.Of course, the earnings upgrade is moderate, and it is not yet clear if higher volume will translate into revenue.Due to the fall in lead distance, the company’s revenue in the December quarter dropped about 5% from the year-ago quarter. But that should not bother investors much. The company’s steps to lower empty (container) running costs are bearing fruit. This factor, coupled with volume recovery, can help it extract better economies of scale, which should aid earnings.“Volume-linked leverage clearly helps Concor, given the fixed-cost nature of the business. Also in 3Q, just between higher double stacking to 216 trains from 188 trains q-o-q (quarter-on-quarter) and lower rebates, ConCor’s EXIM EBIT margins improved to 17.1% from 15.7% q-o-q ,” Jefferies adds. “Double stacking (of containers) benefits should also play out in 4QFY17E (fourth quarter FY17 estimates).”Adding to the optimism is the improving volume outlook. Maersk Line, a container shipping line, says Exim container trade volume growth, which doubled in 2016 from 2015, can be maintained if the government keeps up policy action.Sandeep Mathew, an analyst at SBICAP Securities Ltd, says the prospects of core Exim trade (excluding crude and oil products) are improving. This should improve Concor’s volume outlook, given its dominant position in the domestic Exim container market.Further, the Indian Railways’ initiatives to strengthen its freight traffic business, focus on dedicated freight corridor construction, and government initiatives such as multi-modal logistics parks are expected to help improve rail container operators’ competitive positioning. JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd expects the creation of a rail development authority and other initiatives to help rail container operators to regain freight market share from the road transport sector.The optimism has driven up the stock 26% so far this calendar year. The BSE 500 index during the period is up less than 16%. While valuations at 26 times 2017-18 earnings estimate are not cheap, a sustained recovery in volumes will be crucial for continuation of the stock’s outperformance.","While Concor’s valuations at 26 times 2017-18 earnings estimate are not cheap, a sustained recovery in volumes will be crucial for continuation of the outperformance","Mon, Apr 10 2017. 07 59 AM IST",Concor’s earnings expectations get a boost from higher volumes +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/sZPfALRP8iXVEoWIwzTLeP/How-RBIs-Monetary-Policy-Committee-has-been-thinking.html,"
The monetary policy committee (MPC) will meet in the first week of April to discuss what the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) should do next. A lot of attention in the next few days will quite naturally be focused on what it will decide or what it should decide as far as interest rates go. This will be the fourth meeting of the MPC. The minutes of the three MPC meetings over the past six months offer some important clues on an issue that needs more clarity—how the committee has been interpreting the inflation-targeting mandate given to it by the government.
What is the inflation target?
The official inflation target notified by the government is 4%, with a band of 2% on either side. A lot depends on how the MPC interprets this target. There were concerns after the surprise 25 basis points rate cut in October 2016 that the committee was in effect considering the upper end of the band as the inflation target, thus raising fears about a compromise in the long fight against high inflation.
But RBI governor Urjit Patel has subsequently made clear in the December 2016 and February 2017 MPC meetings that the primary objective of the Indian central bank should be to secure the central point of the notified inflation target, i.e. 4%.
Does the real economy matter?
The minutes of the first three MPC meetings show that developments in the real economy are a central concern for monetary policy decisions. This is evident from the number of times the output gap has been mentioned in the MPC meetings. Few seem to appreciate that RBI has embraced flexible inflation targeting. It is quite different from pure inflation targeting where the central bank is solely concerned about inflation while the government is solely concerned about growth.
The importance of the output gap is implicitly recognized in the theoretical model that provides the theoretical framework of the Urjit Patel committee report. The real economy enters the model in terms of the Taylor Rule as well as the New Keynesian Phillips Curve.
However, one current problem is that RBI has not clearly indicated what it believes to be the potential rate of economic growth in India right now, so it is difficult for outsiders to assess how large the output gap is. The Indian central bank needs to share more information about its assessment of potential output.
One additional point: The discussions on the impact of demonetisation, especially in the December meeting, show that the MPC will look past temporary shocks to output or inflation rather than respond in a knee-jerk fashion—and that is how it should be.
Is there an intermediate target for Indian monetary policy?
The RBI has traditionally used money supply growth, the nominal exchange rate and the interest rate as intermediate targets to control inflation. It has now moved to directly targeting inflation, but that does not mean that the central bank has completely abandoned intermediate targets. As Michael Patra made clear in the October MPC meeting, the inflation forecast now serves as the intermediate target of monetary policy. Many central banks that have embraced flexible inflation targeting use the inflation forecast as the intermediate target. So RBI is on good ground here: it seems committed to the notified inflation target in the long run and the inflation forecast in the medium term.
However, the main problem here is that the Indian central bank does not provide enough information about its inflation forecast over the medium term in the fan charts that are released with every monetary policy statement.
What about the exchange rate?
Indian monetary policy has till now kept a close eye on the exchange rate as well. There are good reasons for central banks in emerging markets to do so—because of the impact of exchange rate shocks on inflation on the one hand and on private sector balance sheets on the other. Some versions of the Taylor Rule define the central bank response function not only in terms of the inflation gap and output gap, but also exchange rate dynamics (which in the Indian case could be the real exchange rate).
The MPC has not given too much importance to the exchange rate in its first three meetings. It is not clear whether this is because the rupee has been stable in the past six months or because the MPC members do not give weightage to the exchange rate while setting interest rates.
The MPC has also been silent on financial stability issues. One reason could be that the current monetary policy orthodoxy is that macro prudential regulations rather than monetary policy tools are a better way to achieve financial stability.
These are early days yet. The new MPC arrangement is barely six months old. There have been only three meetings till now. But the discussions during these meetings—as revealed in the minutes that have been made public—do offer some important clues on how inflation targeting is getting operationalized in India.
Finally, the unanimity in the MPC is still puzzling given the fact that a committee is supposed to be less prone to groupthink. This will undoubtedly change as the committee settles down.Niranjan Rajadhyaksha is executive editor of Mint.Comments are welcome at cafeeconomics@livemint.com. Read Niranjan Rajadhyaksha’s previous Mint columns at www.livemint.com/cafeeconomics",The minutes of the past three MPC meetings offer important clues on how it has been interpreting the inflation-targeting mandate given to it by the govt,"Wed, Mar 29 2017. 02 19 AM IST",How RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee has been thinking +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/HTTU0wRpaahSLWSRTGmB4O/Bad-loan-resolution-Its-now-or-never.html,"
On Friday, most state-owned bank stocks rose. For a few of them, the rise was spectacular. For instance, the Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC) stock jumped 6.6% and Bank of India (BoI) 5.2% on the National Stock Exchange. The Nifty PSU Bank Index, a measure of public sector banks’ shares, gained 3.31% on Friday compared with less than a quarter percentage point rise in the exchange’s benchmark 50-stock Nifty.Incidentally, in the quarter ended 31 December, both OBC and BoI had at least 13% gross bad loans on their books. After setting aside money, OBC’s net bad loans were 9.68% of its overall loan book; for BoI, 7.09%. Still their stocks jumped, along with most other public sector banks’, after finance minister Arun Jaitley announced that the government has been working on a radical proposal to resolve the bad loans crisis in Indian banking.Banks bat for relaxed RBI norms on bad loan resolution as deadline loomsI presume the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the government have been discussing this radical proposal for weeks. It appears to have been galvanized by, and likely evolved around, what the RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya outlined in his maiden speech—on “Some Ways to Decisively Resolve Bank Stressed Assets”—delivered at an Indian Banks’ Association conference in February. Some of the banking sector analysts have found the proposal too academic and not feasible in the Indian context and the “status quoist” bankers are not too excited since it talks about resolving the bad loan problem in a time-bound, decisive manner.I will be happy if indeed the proposal turns out to be the blueprint for resolving the bad loan problem in Indian banking. Collectively, all listed banks recorded around Rs7.2 trillion gross bad loans in the December quarter; it will rise further in March. The state-run banks are far more affected by this malaise than their counterparts in the private sector. More importantly, this does not represent the bad loan scenario accurately.Every bank is carrying dollops of restructured loans on its books and a portion of that is likely to turn bad; at least Rs3 trillion worth of bad loans have been written off by the banks in the past few years and there is no clarity on how much bad loans are on the books of non-banking financial companies (including microfinance entities), regional rural banks, housing companies and cooperative banks. If we add all of them, the bad loan figures might look staggering.Not a blanket bad bankWhat is interesting is that the plan has not proposed a blanket bad bank, separating the bad loans of troubled banks from performing loans and creating a pool without any clear resolution path.It is also not in favour of leaving things to the banks, as most bank managements are not in a hurry to resolve the problem. Given a choice, they would like to postpone the inevitable as they are not comfortable getting rid of bad assets at a steep discount for fear of being hounded by investigative agencies. This is one of the many reasons why they would like to delay the resolution process and instead focus solely on persuading the government for capital every year.ALSO READ | Banks’ bad loan growth slowing but the last word can’t be said as yetThe proposal is, instead, to create special structures to deal with stressed loans keeping in mind the turnaround potential of the companies that have borrowed money from banks.One such structure is a private asset management company to handle the creation, selection and implementation of a feasible resolution plan for a quick turnaround of the 50 largest troubled companies in telecoms, metals (iron and steel, in particular), engineering-procurement-construction and textiles within a fixed time frame. One or more credit rating agencies will rate the resolution plans and the promoters of the companies will have no say in the restructuring plan.The banks will choose from among those resolution plans that ensure adequately high credit rating of the restructured entity, and likely take a deep haircut approved by the government (or likely, by an approved oversight committee) and accepted by the vigilance authorities.The insolvency code will come into play only if the process to arrive at an acceptable resolution plan fails.For those sectors such as power, which suffer from excess capacity and need a longer-term solution, the plan is to create a quasi-government body – a national asset management company with a minority government stake. This will raise debt, possibly government-guaranteed, and manage the asset reconstruction companies and private equity firms which will be responsible for turning around the stressed companies.Radical departure from the pastThe proposal is a radical departure from measures that RBI has so far adopted to resolve the bad loan problems.The platforms such as corporate debt restructuring (CDR), strategic debt restructuring (SDR) and the scheme for sustainable structuring of stressed assets (S4A) which have been used to clean up the bank balance sheets have left the job to the banks. Here, for the first time, we are seeing an aggressive regulatory intervention with a clear incentive structure. Those banks which will not be able to implement them or do not coordinate well with others run the risk of being punished.SDR, introduced in June 2015, gave banks the power to convert a part of their debt in stressed companies into majority equity but it didn’t work because promoters delayed the restructuring, dangling the promise of bringing in new investors. Before that, in February 2014, RBI had allowed a change in management of stressed companies. The principle of the restructuring exercise was that the shareholders must bear the first loss and not the lenders; and the promoters must have more skin in the game.This was done after the regulator realized that the CDR mechanism, put in place in August 2001, could not do much to alleviate the pain of the lenders. Any loan exposure of Rs10 crore and more (including non-fund limits) and involving at least two lenders could have been tackled on this platform. Of the 530 cases with loans worth over Rs4.3 trillion that were approved for restructuring at the CDR cell as on 31 December, 2016, 264 cases with loans worth Rs1.25 trillion failed their restructuring agreements.The S4A scheme allowed the banks to convert up to half the loans of stressed companies into equity or equity-like securities. Meant for restructuring companies with an overall exposure of at least Rs500 crore, this scheme can come into play only when the bankers are convinced that the cash flows of the stressed companies are enough to service at least half of the funded liabilities or “sustainable debt”. Not much has, however, got resolved under this scheme either.The most important point in the new proposal is that it has subtly shifted the focus from banks to the larger economic scenario, as a banking crisis can morph into a larger crisis that hits the industrial growth in Asia’s third-largest economy. Without dissecting the economic viability of underlying assets and finding ways of restructuring them, if we want to save the banks first and take care of the industries later, it could be too late to lift the economic growth and create jobs. We can have healthy banks but who will they lend to? In other words, the suggestion is not to look at the health of the banking sector in isolation but to treat the sick banks and sick industries at the same time.Bang for the buckFor that, a big hit on the bank balance sheets and additional bank recapitalization is a given. The best way to get the maximum bang for the buck is to make the banks understand that they would need to opt for a deep haircut or get rid of the bad assets at a steep discount before the assets are nurtured back to health by one of the two agencies.The proposal has also called for a significant restructuring of the public sector banks, including raising private capital, sale of assets or securitizing them, merging banks and getting rid of non-performing work force by offering voluntary retirement schemes and replacing them with a younger, digitally-savvy talent pool. Those banks which show no signs of improvement would be put under the so-called prompt corrective action plan of RBI that curbs their growth. It’s refreshing to hear the Indian banking regulator talk about “tough love” and allow the market forces to decide which banks should be around and which shouldn’t.If both the banking regulator and the government are ready to bite the bullet, the banks will be left with no choice but to toe the line.And Friday’s market reaction suggests many banks might, in fact, be better off if their stressed assets are resolved swiftly. Their valuation will go up and if the government wants to divest its stake in some of the banks, it will be able to make some money and bring down the fiscal deficit.Is this the silver bullet to address the problem which is getting deeper by the day? I don’t know. But there is little doubt that we need to get the job done and time is of the essence. Neither the regulator nor the government can remain in denial anymore. The days of forbearance are over. One of the reasons why global rating agencies seem unwilling to raise the sovereign rating of the world’s fastest-growing large economy is its not-so-healthy banking system. In short, it’s now or never.Tamal Bandyopadhyay, consulting editor at Mint, is adviser to Bandhan Bank. He is also the author of A Bank for the Buck, Sahara: The Untold Story and Bandhan: The Making of a Bank.His Twitter handle is @tamalbandyo",We can have healthy banks but who will they lend to? Let’s treat the sick banks and sick industries simultaneously,"Mon, Mar 27 2017. 12 17 PM IST",Bad loan resolution: It’s now or never +https://www.livemint.com/Money/LjimtfE9dfSU4BxF9bf3DN/Retail-stocks-Q3-results-exceed-expectations.html,"The demonetisation-led cash crunch meant expectations for the December quarter results of retail firms—Titan Co. Ltd, Shoppers Stop Ltd and Bata India Ltd—were running low. In that backdrop, these companies did better than expected.Titan’s jewellery business, which contributes the lion’s share of its overall revenue, performed well, reporting a 15.4% year-on-year revenue growth. This looks even better considering that the December 2015 quarter had a high base, thanks to the presence in the initial days of studded jewellery activation. Gold jewellery volume growth for the December 2016 quarter was 4%. Titan’s watch business performed well, too.Shoppers Stop’s like-to-like sales growth for its department stores came in at 6.4%. Now, by itself that number isn’t impressive considering this is the stronger festive quarter we are talking about. Note that the measure had increased 17.4% a year ago. But the December 2016 quarter like-to-like performance was better than analysts’ estimates. The firm maintains like-to-like growth saw double-digit year-on-year decline in November, compared with double-digit increase in October and December.Like-to-like sales growth is the comparable sales growth of stores that have been operational for over a year.Bata India’s revenue rose 2.4%, while its operating profit declined as staff costs, rent and other expenses rose at a faster pace. For the nine-month period to December, revenue increased just 0.8%. This is estimated to improve. ICICI Securities Ltd expects Bata India’s revenue growth to revive from fiscal 2018 onwards on account of an improved product mix and the company following a dual strategy of driving same-store sales growth and opening new stores in untapped locations. “We expect revenue to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 8.1% year-on-year during FY16-19E,” wrote ICICI Securities in a report last month.From 8 November (when demonetisation was announced) till 17 March, share prices of Titan and Bata India have appreciated, while those of Shoppers Stop have declined. Analysts at Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd say Shoppers Stop has nudged ahead its Ebitda margin target of 6.5% by one year to FY18E on the back of demand disruption owing to demonetisation. Ebitda is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The performance of subsidiary HyperCity will be a key thing to follow for the Shoppers Stop stock. In general, improvement in consumer demand translating into better like-to-like growth and eventually higher revenue growth are key factors to watch out for.","Retail firms Titan, Shoppers Stop and Bata India performed well in the December quarter though demonetisation ensured expectations were running low","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 09 32 AM IST",Retail stocks: Q3 results exceed expectations +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6O1xQC3VIwlyQt1bYK3sVI/Indian-CEOs-more-optimistic-than-global-counterparts-PwC.html,"New Delhi: Confidence in India’s company corner rooms has climbed and now far outpace that at their global counterparts despite concerns over economic growth, regulation and protectionism, a global survey showed. According to the results of PricewaterhouseCoopers’s 20th global survey of chief executive officers released on Tuesday, 71% of India’s CEOs are very confident of their company’s prospects for revenue growth over the next 12 months as opposed to 64% a year ago. Worldwide, only 38% of CEOs exude similar confidence.Across geographies, the concerns on top of CEOs’ minds seem to be similar. This year, 82% of CEOs are concerned about uncertain economic growth, while 81% are concerned about over-regulation. These concerns, along with looming protectionism, are seen by CEOs as threats to growth. In India, 64% of the CEOs surveyed were concerned about protectionism, against 59% globally. Inadequate infrastructure and the lack of availability of key skills in the country—key enablers for growth— continue to be major concerns.Eighty-one per cent of CEOs in India rated inadequate basic infrastructure as the top threat to growth as opposed to 54% of CEOs globally. Further, 87% of India’s CEOs rated availability of key skills as a key threat to growth, compared to 77% globally. Strong growth fundamentals and upcoming policy reforms, including the Goods and Services Tax (GST) expected to be rolled out on 1 July, are giving CEOs reasons to be optimistic about the overall business environment in India. Foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country has grown by 53% in the past two years to reach $55 billion in 2015-16.","According to the results of PwC survey, 71% of India’s CEOs are very confident of their company’s prospects for revenue growth over the next 12 months as opposed to 64% a year ago","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 12 27 AM IST",Indian CEOs more optimistic than global counterparts: PwC +https://www.livemint.com/Money/7bADuqm1wCDRWvqk8WIPBK/Logistics-companies-will-have-to-sweat-it-out-for-GST-benefi.html,"
There is a widespread belief that the implementation of the goods and services tax (GST) will herald a new era for logistics firms. The new regulation will strengthen organized companies’ competitive position vis-à-vis the unorganized sector, as customers will be allowed to offset service tax under GST. Currently, a large part of the surface logistics business is handled by the unorganized sector as tax avoidance helps them keep prices lower.The second benefit is the transformation of India into one market. Post GST, stakeholders expect customers to consolidate their warehousing requirement to the hub and spoke model and drive business to efficient transportation solutions providers. “As inefficiencies and costs come down, inland transport would be more cost effective. This increases business, creating the space for expansion,” says Prakash Tulsiani, executive director and chief operating officer, Allcargo Logistics Ltd.But the Street is not yet fully convinced. As GST implementation is now round the corner, shares of TCI Express Ltd and Gati Ltd have gained 19-38% in the past two months. VRL Logistics Ltd, which is also focused on local logistics, is up less than 2%, while Allcargo Logistics Ltd lost 5%. VRL and Allcargo are also lagging behind on one-year returns, compared with the BSE 500 index.Some stocks recovered a bit in recent weeks. But the euphoria is missing. Why? Among the several reasons, one is the subdued business environment. The second is the lack of clarity on GST benefits. Antique Stock Broking Ltd notes that the business model which will lead growth post the roll-out of GST is still unclear even as “managements share different insights on growth opportunities”.Analysts warn competitive intensity can rise as the sector consolidates post GST. Besides, they expect the unorganized logistics sector to move into the tax net rather than risk losing business. In other words, there may not be a large amount of business for grabs, as many of these firms may remain in business.Tulsiani of Allcargo Logistics says demand may see a gradual rise as customers will take time to adapt to the new system. “We sense that companies will take some time to adopt and understand the implications of GST and then take a cautious call.The demand increase should be able to take care of available supply,” Tulsiani adds.Sandeep Mathew, an analyst at SBICAP Securities Ltd, reasons that the requirement for scale and cost-efficient solutions may benefit large organized firms more than smaller firms. “Smaller players will have to start focusing on niches (eg. underserved markets) to effectively compete with larger players,” Mathew adds.Of course, the overarching belief among the experts cited above is that GST will have a positive impact on the sector. Tulsiani of Allcargo Logistics validates his view by pointing to outsourcing of warehousing activity by private companies.Mathew of SBICAP Securities expects companies to start reflecting the positive impact of GST in earnings from 2018-19 onwards in a more meaningful manner.While these expectations should keep hopes alive for logistics firms, the way things are currently also suggests that business will not come on a platter for them. Depending on the region and client profile, they will have to realign their service offerings in a cost-efficient manner. The next six months will provide much required cues about the kind of growth opportunities that GST throws up, and how companies are pursuing them.","The next 6 months will provide much required cues about kind of growth opportunities that GST throws up, and how companies are pursuing them","Mon, Mar 27 2017. 07 47 AM IST",Logistics companies will have to sweat it out for GST benefits +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/SHIo5iRXAFIvx96VjXGuvM/Vijay-Mallya-arrested-by-Scotland-Yard-to-appear-before-Lon.html,"New Delhi: Businessman Vijay Mallya was arrested by the Scotland Yard in London on Monday on India’s request for his extradition on fraud charges. He was released on bail a few hours later after he appeared at a central London police station.“Officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Extradition Unit this morning arrested a man on an extradition warrant. Vijay Mallya was arrested on behalf of the Indian authorities in relation to accusations of fraud,” said the Scotland Yard.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise: lawyersThe London Metropolitan Police said Mallya was arrested after appearing at a central London police station. He appeared at Westminster magistrates’ court in London and was seen walking out with his legal team a few hours later after being granted bail.An unfazed Mallya later tweeted on Tuesday, “Usual Indian media hype. Extradition hearing in Court started today as expected.”The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Indian High Commission in London will now present India’s case in the UK court for Vijay Mallya’s extradition as the country “wants to the myth that by crossing boundaries you are out of bounds“, said a person aware of the developments. India is seeking extradition of Mallya for defaulting on Kingfisher Airlines loans due to IDBI Bank.CBI has been investigating a case against Mallya and the companies he controlled over allegations of money laundering since early last year and had secured a non-bailable warrant against the absconding businessman in a case related to money laundering and wilful default of loans, Mint reported on 22 November. CBI clarified that the arrest was in connection with his extradition.“Vijay Mallya has been arrested in connection with the IDBI bank case. We cannot comment further on the matter till it is heard at the London Court,” a senior CBI official told Mint, on condition of anonymity.A senior government official on condition of anonymity stated that, “protocol would now require Mallya’s case to be heard in London. The extradition case will be heard and evidence related to the same will be produced on the basis of which the London courts will take an informed decision. It is too soon to comment on when he will be extradited to India.”On 23 January, CBI’s central and Bengaluru division raided the premises of the Vijay Mallya-run UB Group in Bengaluru in connection with a Rs900-crore loan default and money laundering case. On the same day, CBI arrested nine officials of Kingfisher Airlines and IDBI Bank Ltd, including the bank’s former chief.In September 2016, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had issued the order, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), to attach the various properties including flats, a farmhouse, shares and fixed deposits in Mallya’s name and his associate firms. The agency had earlier said that the market value of these assets was Rs6,630 crore.The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had stated that India’s request for Mallya’s extradition had recently been certified by the UK, after the UK’s home department on 21 February conveyed India’s request for Mallya’s extradition to the Westminster magistrate’s court, after being certified by the UK secretary of state. However, with Mallya’s extradition proceedings just beginning in the UK, India may well have to wait till he is handed over by the British authorities.In New Delhi, MoS (finance) Santosh Kumar Gangwar said, “We are now assessing the facts how we can bring him back into the country and start judicial proceedings against him.” The government, he said, will leave no stone unturned to bring to justice anyone indulging in financial irregularities.On 23 March, MoS (external affairs) V.K. Singh informed the Rajya Sabha that while India and the UK had an Extradition Treaty which has been in force since 1993, “In the last five years, only one fugitive criminal namely Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel has been extradited from the UK. As per Article 2 of the India-UK Extradition Treaty, an extradition offence for the purposes of this Treaty is constituted by conduct which under the laws of each Contracting State is punishable by a term of imprisonment for a period of at least one year. An offence may be an extradition offence notwithstanding that it relates to taxation or revenue or is one of a purely fiscal character.” Singh also added that the extradition requests in respect of criminal fugitives namely Raymond Varley, Ravi Shankaran, Velu Boopalan, Ajay Prasad Khaitan, Virendra Kumar Rastogi and Anand Kumar Jain had been rejected by the UK government.Meanwhile, S.S.Naganad, who is the senior counsel appearing for the consortium of banks led by State Bank of India stated that, “There was more than one issue against him (Mallya). There was money laundering case, Karnataka high court has issued an arrest warrant, a magistrate court has also issued an arrest warrant. All this put together is what the Indian government had sought an extradition for.”Sharan Poovanna in Bengaluru contributed to this story.",Vijay Mallya was arrested in London by Scotland Yard on India’s request for his extradition on fraud charges relating to Kingfisher Airlines loans but was soon released on bail,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 04 17 AM IST","Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hours" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/URUxXMgYHeY7IyAe2u0WyI/IndusInd-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-21-to-Rs75161-crore.html,"Mumbai: Private sector lender IndusInd Bank Ltd on Wednesday said its net profit for the March quarter rose 21.16% from a year ago due to higher net interest income and other income.Net profit for the quarter stood at Rs751.61 crore as compared with Rs620.35 crore a year ago. A Bloomberg poll of 24 analysts had forecast a net profit of Rs791 crore.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, increased 31.5% to Rs1,667.45 crore from Rs1,268.21 crore last year. Other income jumped 32.70% to Rs1,211.30 crore from Rs912.80 crore in the same period last year.Provisions and contingencies jumped 101.32% to Rs430.13 crore in the quarter from Rs213.66 crore in the same quarter last year. The bank’s gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rose 8.57% to Rs1,054.87 crore at the end of the March quarter from Rs971.62 crore in the December quarter. On year-on-year basis, it jumped 35.8% from Rs776.82 crore.As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were at 0.93% at the end of the March quarter, as compared to 0.94% in the previous quarter and 0.87% in the year-ago quarter. Net NPAs were at 0.39% in the quarter, unchanged from the previous quarter and 0.36% in the same quarter last year.Deposits rose 36.1% to Rs126.57 billion, while advances rose 27.9% to Rs1.13 trillion.The bank announced a dividend of Rs6 a share.At 2.22pm, IndusInd Bank fell 0.47% to Rs1,425 on the BSE, while India's benchmark Sensex Index fell 0.04% to 29,317.39 points.",IndusInd Bank's net profit for the fourth quarter stood at Rs751.61 crore as compared with Rs620.35 crore a year ago,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 08 41 PM IST",IndusInd Bank Q4 profit rises 21% to Rs751.61 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/iNxJ1VLhgxxvmVY20OmsQJ/United-Airlines-CEO-takes-apology-to-investors-after-passeng.html,"Atlanta: United Airlines chief executive officer (CEO) Oscar Munoz, pivoting from a public apology to face investors, assured Wall Street that the carrier would rebound from the uproar that followed the dragging of a passenger off one of its planes.“This will prove to be a watershed moment for our company, and we are more determined than ever to put our customers at the center of everything we do,” Munoz said in a statement Monday. “We are dedicated to setting the standard for customer service among U.S. airlines, as we elevate the experience our customers have with us from booking to baggage claim.”ALSO READ : United Airlines tied $500,000 CEO bonus to customer satisfaction resultsThe comments were the CEO’s first to investors since the 9 April incident, when security officers forcibly removed David Dao from a flight after he refused to give up his seat to make room for airline employees. Munoz, who also announced a first-quarter financial performance that topped expectations, is trying to maintain momentum for his plan to catch up to Delta Air Lines Inc. and American Airlines Group Inc. in profitability and operational performance.“United said the right things regarding its need to upgrade its customer service and should be able to move past its PR nightmare,” Jim Corridore, an analyst at CFRA Research, said in a note to clients in which he reiterated a “strong buy” rating on the shares.The shares rose less than 1% to $71.20 before regular trading hours Tuesday in New York. The company plans to hold a conference call Tuesday to discuss the financial results.Earnings performanceMunoz’s sober tone contrasted with a better-than-expected financial performance. Adjusted earnings of 41 cents a share beat the 38-cent average of analyst estimates even as higher fuel and labour costs caused profit to fall from a year earlier. Sales were $8.42 billion, topping the $8.38 billion that analysts anticipated.ALSO READ : Lessons from the United Airlines debaclePassenger revenue for each seat flown a mile will rise by 1% to 3% in the current quarter, the Chicago-based airline said. That would be the first increase since the first three months of 2015.“We are most interested with how each region is performing,” Cowen & Co. analyst Helane Becker wrote in a note to investors. “We suspect the underlying improvement is being driven by the domestic and Latin American markets. It will be interesting to see how the Pacific and Atlantic are performing, given both regions have been drags” on profit.Domestic capacity will climb by as much as 5.5% in the second quarter while total capacity will rise by a maximum of 4%, United said.‘Humbling experience’Munoz said Dao’s treatment was a “humbling experience” for United and accepted full responsibility.ALSO READ : The game theory of overbooking flightsThe CEO’s initial reaction drew scorn worldwide last week when he called the incident “upsetting” and apologized for having to “re-accommodate” the passengers who were asked to leave the plane. Hours later he told employees that Dao had been “disruptive and belligerent” after being asked to leave the plane, based on early reports.He finally went on ABC’s Good Morning America with a more contrite message and promised a full review of United’s policies regarding oversold flights.Dao suffered a concussion, broken nose and two lost teeth, and “probably” will sue the carrier, his lawyer, Thomas Demetrio, said at a press conference last week. Bloomberg",United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz assured investors that the carrier would rebound from the uproar that followed the dragging of a passenger off one of its flights,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 06 45 PM IST",United Airlines CEO takes apology to investors after passenger dragging fiasco +https://www.livemint.com/Money/GlorZzpWFtl3BgXn5HNGrL/Yes-Bank-first-casualty-in-RBIs-rule-to-pull-out-bad-loan-s.html,"Past mistakes tend to come back to haunt you at the most inopportune moment, and Yes Bank’s financial results are a case in point. The private lender reported a 169% rise in gross bad loans for the fourth quarter and a resultant 66% increase in provisions. Recall that the March quarter of 2015-16 was the worst in terms of asset quality for banks.The stock has gained a massive 39% so far this year, fuelled partly by the news and then subsequent success of its qualified institutional placement (QIP). This impressive rise now seems like an overkill and analysts are already expecting a correction.In Yes Bank’s case, the indiscretion pertains to a single borrower which the bank should have labelled as non-performing asset (NPA) in the previous financial year. What made the lender do it now is the new rule put in place by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday that mandates banks to disclose deviations in the asset quality assessment of the central bank and the lender in question.If the mandated provisioning by the RBI exceeds 15% of published profit after tax of FY16 or additional gross NPA exceeds 15% of the published figure, the lenders have to disclose the same in full in their financial statements for FY17. If the RBI’s asset quality review brought to light a massive pool of decaying loans, Tuesday’s rule makes sure any residual bad loan skeletons come in full view of investors.In Yes Bank’s case, this meant an additional slippage of Rs911.5 crore in the March quarter. But the lender still saw healthy profit growth of 30% from the year-ago period because of a sustained robust growth in core income. The bank’s core metrics including loan growth, net interest income and even net interest margin held up. This perhaps was the saving grace of the quarterly results.The stock trades at a price-to-book value multiple of 3.12 of the estimated earnings of FY18 and for these valuations to be justified, the bank will have to show a quick turnaround in its asset quality.Ever since RBI triggered widespread recognition of stressed loans through its asset quality review (AQR) in 2015, the unease that banks have not revealed the rot in loan books in its entirety has set in. The quarterly results of Yes Bank deepen this unease.","Yes Bank reports 169% rise in gross bad loans for the March quarter and 66% increase in provisions, following RBI’s new asset quality rules","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 08 41 PM IST",Yes Bank first casualty in RBI’s rule to pull out bad loan skeletons +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oeYdJea921ccTMm3zN6u7J/Vijay-Mallya-pokes-fun-at-Indian-media-hype-over-his-arres.html,"New Delhi: Vijay Mallya took to Twitter on Tuesday to poke fun at the “Indian media hype” over his arrest in London and said the extradition hearing was “as expected”. The 61-year-old businessman, who is co-owner of Sahara Force India Formula One Team, made a series of retweets of the team’s practice session in Bahrain. Known for his flamboyance, the only reference Mallya made to his arrest was to blame the Indian media with an earlier tweet. “Usual Indian media hype. Extradition hearing in Court started today as expected,” Mallya tweeted.Apart from the Formula One action, he showed his interest in health matters, retweeting two tweets from Doctify, a health platform in the UK that offers solutions to patients who want to search, compare and book doctors online. While one was on medical data security and health challenges, his other retweet was on contact lens hygiene routine. Earlier in the day, Mallya—who has been declared a proclaimed offender—was arrested in London after he appeared at a central London police station. Mallya is wanted in India for defaulting on loans. His now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines owes more than Rs9,000 crore to many banks. He had fled India on 2 March 2016 and has repeatedly dismissed the charges against him.","Vijay Mallya tweets ‘usual media hype’ over his arrest in London, adding that his extradition process has started as expected in a UK court","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 09 10 PM IST",Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in London +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/GJYAQ1j6WqkgYly3y1WRJK/This-man-is-spending-millions-to-break-Elon-Musks-Trump-tie.html,"Palo Alto: The day Donald Trump was elected US President, Doug Derwin came into a lot of money. Derwin is a lawyer turned venture capitalist, and he’d cashed in on a successful investment. Like so many wealthy, Silicon Valley types, Derwin used the windfall to buy a Tesla Inc. electric car and stick it to the man—or at least to the climate-change deniers he thought Trump represented. “One of the reasons I felt good about buying it was as a sort of statement in opposition to what was happening around me,” Derwin says.But, as Derwin’s order worked its way through Tesla’s manufacturing backlog, he had second thoughts. Elon Musk, Tesla’s co-founder and chief executive officer, was meeting Trump and joining committees in the new administration. The more Derwin dwelled on this, the angrier he became. And so, after receiving an email in February saying his Model S sedan was finally ready, Derwin cancelled the purchase. He still cut a check for $150,000—only he donated it to the American Civil Liberties Union.“Trump was using Elon to legitimize himself,” says Derwin. “It says a lot to low information voters that Trump can’t possibly be that bad because here is Elon Musk hanging on his every word. That’s why I canceled the order. A principled opposition is important here.” Musk declined to comment for this story, but he has argued that moderates should engage with Trump, rather than leaving only extremists advising the president.Derwin’s personal protest has now morphed into a full-on public campaign to force Musk to sever all ties with the President. Derwin is the secret backer of billboards that appeared in recent weeks near Tesla’s headquarters and factory in Silicon Valley that said “Elon: Please dump Trump.” And, on Monday, he launched a website—featuring videos of upset Tesla owners, “Elon: Dump Trump” bumper stickers and hats and shirts that say, “Resist.”It’s just the start. Derwin, 59, is prepared to spend $2 million on Musk-Trump protests. He’s bought $500,000 worth of media, including ads that will run 23 April in the New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News, and television ads that will appear during Meet The Press, Morning Joe and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. He’s going to set up information booths on college campuses in a bid to dissuade young engineers from working at Tesla or Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Musk’s rocket company. He’s going to offer to pay people who sent in deposits for the upcoming Tesla Model 3, if they cancel their orders. And he’s going to partner with anti-Trump groups in Silicon Valley to make the Musk attack part of their campaigns.Derwin stuck to Silicon Valley law and start-up investing most of his career. He’s never owned a Tesla and did not follow Musk’s every move as millions of others do—which makes his new fixation all the more quixotic. His anger stems more from a dislike of Trump, with Musk serving as a proxy for that rage.“The worst thing that happens is that I lose some money and maybe make a public idiot out of myself,” he says. “But it seemed to me that it would make sense to push back on Trump in a way that I could.”Musk has become a cult of personality, and it’s understandable that loyal customers were upset when he started showing up at Trump Tower and then joined Trump’s business advisory council. Musk has been a relentless fighter against climate change. Many Tesla customers share Musk’s concerns and bought his products as statements. Trump, by contrast, has described global warming as a hoax and loosened environmental policies, while surrounding himself with people who dispute the scientific climate-change consensus. It’s been hard for many Musk fans to square this circle.Uber Technologies Inc. chief executive officer Travis Kalanick was quick to leave Trump’s business advisory council after an online backlash. Musk, though, has held his ground amid criticism on Twitter and in the press. Musk’s old friend and business partner Peter Thiel is a close Trump advisor, so there’s a meeting of the minds there. Musk has also argued on Twitter that it makes sense to have a moderate voice as close as possible to Trump to sway him on issues. Musk is supremely logical and smart enough to capitalize on opportunities like having a close relationship with the President. Time and again, Musk has watched lobbyists from automotive, aerospace and energy sectors sway policies in favour of incumbents, while positioning Musk and his companies as radical hucksters. Now he may have an edge with the administration and could turn things in his favour.If you’re a man who wants to settle Mars and have electric cars swarm the Earth, then having friends in high places makes sense. Musk, for example, has been pushing to get Pete Worden, a longtime commercial space supporter, tapped as the new director of Nasa. Worden advised SpaceX early on and could advocate for the company.Derwin, though, argues Musk has already lost whatever influence may have existed. Despite Musk’s presence, Trump has moved to cut funding to the sciences and the Environmental Protection Agency, while rolling back regulations against coal mining companies. “Short of putting a big pile of old tires on the White House lawn and lighting them on fire, I don’t know what Donald Trump could do that is worse for climate change,” Derwin says. “Musk got rolled by Trump. He has gotten absolutely nothing.”Derwin recently told Musk’s camp about his campaign and asked to meet with the CEO. Musk declined, but did have three top lieutenants sit down with Derwin. Nothing much came of the meeting, Derwin said, prompting him to go live with the web site and other efforts. Musk declined to comment through a spokesman.“If Elon will resign from the boards and speak out against what Trump is doing, I’ll call off the campaign,” Derwin says. He’s pledged to donate $1 million to the charity of Musk’s choice, if Musk dons a “Resist” hat and tweets that he disagrees with Trump’s climate-change policies. Derwin has his work cut out. Musk revels in the opportunity to prove critics wrong and rarely backs down from a fight. The uproar over advising Trump has died down, and Musk continues to dazzle fans and confound naysayers: Tesla’s share price has surged to records this year and SpaceX has upended the aerospace industry by proving the abilities of its reusable rockets. The baggage that comes with Trump associations in Silicon Valley circles seems to have done little to dull Musk’s shine. Bloomberg",Venture capitalist Doug Derwin has launched a full-on public campaign to force Tesla co-founder Elon Musk to sever all ties with President Donald Trump,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 11 27 AM IST",This man is spending millions to break Elon Musk’s Trump ties +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/gaIBHw72tTIBzqy3gPFSlO/Yes-Bank-Q4-profit-jumps-30-to-Rs91412-crore.html,"Private sector lender Yes Bank Ltd on Wednesday said its March quarter net profit rose 30.2% due to higher net interest income and other income.Net profit for the quarter stood at Rs914.12 crore as compared with Rs702.11 crore a year ago. A Bloomberg poll of 24 analysts had forecast a net profit of Rs791 crore.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, increased 32.08% to Rs1639.70 crore from Rs1241.44 crore last year. Other income jumped 56.62% to Rs1257.39 crore from Rs802.81 crore in the same period last year.Net interest margin expanded to 3.6% in the quarter from 3.5% a quarter ago. “The Bank continued delivering sustained financial performance through robust growth in earnings and expanding net interest margins despite challenging operating environment”, said Rana Kapoor managing director and chief executive officer, Yes Bank.“Additionally, continued investments in Human Capital, Technology and Digitization has resulted in significant momentum across Retail Assets, Liabilities and Retail Fees. The bank’s growth and earning models continue to remain robust with increasing granularity and diversity across Asset, Liabilities and Earnings”, Kapoor added.Provisions and contingencies climbed 66.11% to Rs309.73 crore in the quarter from Rs186.46 crore in the same quarter last year.The bank’s gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rose 100.68% to Rs2018.56 crore at the end of the March quarter from Rs1005.85 crore in the December quarter. On year-on-year basis, it jumped 169.51% from Rs748.98 crore.As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were at 1.52% at the end of the March quarter, as compared to 0.85% in the previous quarter and 0.76% in the year-ago quarter. Net NPAs were at 0.81% in the quarter against 0.29% each from a quarter and year ago.“The increase in NPA and consequent provision is in conformity with the divergences observed by the RBI as per its compliance process referred to in the RBI circular dated April 18, 2017 on ‘Disclosure in the Notes to Accounts to the Financial Statements – Divergence in Asset Classification and Provisioning”, the bank said in a notice to BSE.Deposits rose 27.89% to Rs1.43 trillion, while advances rose 34.67% to Rs1.32 trillion.On Wednesday, Yes Bank ended at Rs 1605.40 on BSE, down 0.03% from previous close while India’s benchmark Sensex Index rose 0.06% to closed at 29336.57 points.",Yes Bank’s net profit for the fourth quarter stood at Rs914.12 crore as compared with Rs702.11 crore a year ago,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 07 53 PM IST","Yes Bank Q4 profit rises 30%, non-performing assets jump 169.51%" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/GNYlVUUjpLQkasC0Q5fDzL/Yahoo-shows-some-progress-in-last-stretch-as-standalone-comp.html,"San Francisco: In its final months as a standalone company, Yahoo Inc. is showing signs it can move toward growth.Yahoo made progress in its last quarterly earnings report before the sale of its main internet operations to Verizon Communications Inc., posting adjusted revenue and profit that topped analysts’ estimates. The web portal, which had said the Verizon deal would close in the current quarter, on Tuesday narrowed the time frame to June.The sale, which comes after chief executive officer Marissa Mayer’s tumultuous tenure leading Yahoo, was threatened by two massive hacks that exposed user account data. The companies agreed to reduce the value of the deal by about $350 million in February to about $4.5 billion after the telecommunications giant had earlier suggested concessions closer to $1 billion.“As we enter our final quarter as an independent company, we are committed to finishing strong and planning for the best possible integration with Verizon,” Mayer said in a statement on the results.Revenue, excluding sales passed on to partners, was $833.8 million, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $814 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Profit, before certain items, was 18 cents a share. Analysts projected 14 cents.Before Tuesday’s announcement, the company had failed to meet estimates for revenue and adjusted earnings in four of the last nine quarterly reports. Shares of Yahoo were little changed in extended trading after closing at $47.56 in New York.Mayer, who arrived in July 2012 from Google to fanfare, pushed Yahoo into more mobile services and tried to attract better talent to improve products. But that never translated into much sales growth—and early last year the company began entertaining offers that led to the Verizon deal.In September, investors got a surprise when Yahoo said the personal information from at least 500 million user accounts was stolen in 2014. An attack that breached the security of more than 1 billion user accounts in 2013 was revealed in December. By last month, the company said its general counsel was resigning, and Mayer’s compensation was trimmed. Later in March, the US government accused Russia of directing some of the world’s most notorious cybercriminals to break into the web portal’s systems.The acquisition offers some interesting assets for Verizon. It gets a large, mature, consumer internet service with hundreds of millions of users in areas such as video, email, news and search. The operations will become part of a unit called Oath that includes Verizon’s earlier acquisition of AOL, another web portal that rose to prominence in the 1990s.Mayer’s focus on mobile revenue from smartphones and tablets showed positive results in the first quarter, increasing 58% to $412 million, the company said.What remains are the most valuable parts of Yahoo’s current company: the stakes in Alibaba Group Holding Inc. and Yahoo Japan that are worth more than $40 billion. Those holdings will become part of a new company called Altaba Inc., and will be led by CEO Thomas McInerney, a current Yahoo board member.Bloomberg",Yahoo posted adjusted revenue and profit that topped analysts’ estimates in its last quarterly earnings report before sale to Verizon,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 07 44 PM IST",Yahoo shows some progress in last stretch as standalone company +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/wE2h4nLOCmBhFyn4TIdYzJ/Technology-dominance-and-charitable-giving.html,"
The business of technology can turn people into billionaires overnight. Well, that’s if you consider that in any field of human endeavour “overnight success” usually takes at least 15 years. Despite the complaints one hears about venture capitalists wanting quick returns on their investments, the battle for real dominance of a corner of the information technology space (IT) takes at least 15 years, after which the ruptures begin. The fissures that cause the eventual rupture are several. Here are four: Some observers warn that both Amazon Inc. and its various businesses like Amazon Web Services are creating such a hegemony that they will soon begin to bait anti-monopoly legislation. Giants like International Business Machines Corp. and AT&T Inc. were broken up for similar reasons in the past. Google has run afoul of some its advertising customers this week, including the UK government, as it has become apparent that these advertisers’ commercials are featured before videos carrying objectionable content played on YouTube, one of that company’s subsidiaries. Meanwhile, many IT services firms are facing the growing squeeze of the double-ended vise of nationalism and automation; many firms with large employee-centric operations have cut down on hiring and some have even announced layoffs. Yet other firms simply lose their edge when it comes to innovation and start regurgitating old technology packaged as new. The road from there is often downhill. The introduction of a new red iPhone 7 has been in the news this week. Same innards, different hue. However, this isn’t a column that’s only about the varying cycles of fortune for technology firms. Apple Inc.’s new phone isn’t just another marketing gimmick being employed by a tired firm whose critics say that it has been coming up short with respect to technological advances when compared with its competitors in the mobile handset business. Apple’s red devices are not new. Some years ago, it had created a series of red iPods with the object that some of the money from the sale of these devices would go to an AIDS foundation that was jointly created by Apple and by some-time musician and whole-time campaigner, Bono. A portion of the proceeds from sales of the new red iPhone 7 will similarly be disbursed to this charity.Over the last several years, I have been fortunate enough to interact closely with almost every chairman or CEO in India’s IT sector, but Azim Premji is one of the few hyper-successful technology entrepreneurs whom I truly respect and admire. Not for his business-building skills, which in my estimation are about the same as those of anyone else who has been at the helm of these extraordinarily fortunate enterprises, but for the extent of his charitable giving. In January last year, Mint reported that he had donated Rs27,514 crore to various charitable initiatives, through the foundation that bears his name.Bill Gates has also given generously of his fortune, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been involved in many philanthropic efforts all over the world. When at the height of his power as Microsoft Corp.’s boss during the 1990s, Gates was roundly criticized for not contributing to charity. Despite his detractors, he maintained that he would do so at the right time, and sure enough, the Gates Foundation ensued in the year 2000. It now has almost $40 billion in its corpus.In contrast to Premji and Gates, and other technology titans who have also given generously, Steve Jobs, the iconoclast behind Apple’s success over the past decade or so, was famously niggardly with his public giving. However, his friend Bono came to his defence, disclosing in an op-ed piece Jobs’ and Apple’s contribution to charity, especially to Bono’s project RED, which is where some of the proceeds from Apple’s red devices go.Jobs even famously refused to discuss the subject of his niggardliness with Walter Isaacson, his biographer. He preferred instead to focus on how much his work had changed the lives of millions of people—not only did he enrich himself and hundreds of employees at Apple, he said, the products that Apple produced had inarguably changed the lives of hundreds of millions. To be fair, that is exactly what Jobs did. He dedicated himself completely, despite his battle with cancer, to improving the company’s products. And the competitors who modelled their products on Apple’s groundbreaking iPhone have changed the lives of several hundred million more. There is the possibility, of course that Jobs donated anonymously. Perhaps he knew that giving is to be done quietly, and without publicity.Then there is the third type of giver: the lavish spender. Larry Ellison of Oracle Corp. falls in this class. While he is not ungenerous by any stretch of the imagination, having donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charity, he is also profligate. Inc. magazine reports that when a judge unsealed court records in 2006 from a shareholder lawsuit, it was revealed that Ellison’s accountant had chastised him for repeatedly pushing his credit limit to the maximum with extravagant purchases including mansions, yachts, and luxury cars. That said, the truth is that this sort of conspicuous consumption is itself charity in a manner of speaking—it creates jobs, and puts food on the tables of the people manufacturing these expensive items.But the fourth class, the miser, may be the most generous of all. As Chanakya said: “No greater donor was ever born than the miser.” The miser donates everything when he dies without ever having touched his wealth. His left hand truly does not know what his right hand gives!Siddharth Pai is a world-renowned technology consultant who has led over $20 billion in complex, first-of-a-kind outsourcing transactions.","The battle for real dominance of a corner of IT takes at least 15 years, after which the ruptures begin. A look at four of the fissures that cause the eventual rupture ","Tue, Mar 28 2017. 12 14 PM IST",Technology dominance and charitable giving +https://www.livemint.com/Money/GppUwjZlvysy4ANln5wzGN/Why-have-SpiceJet-shares-done-better-than-IndiGos.html,"
After crash landing in 2016, airline stocks are taking off again. Since mid-February, shares of IndiGo parent InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, Jet Airways (India) Ltd and SpiceJet Ltd have risen between 28% and 68%. Interestingly, the 28% appreciation in IndiGo’s stock pales in comparison with SpiceJet’s spectacular 68% gain during this period. Even the Jet Airways stock has done much better, with a 41% gain. What gives?For starters, analysts say that SpiceJet was trading at a large discount to its bigger rival IndiGo, and that it was unwarranted considering that the former has managed its profit margins better. SpiceJet’s profits have grown in the nine-month period ended December, whereas profits of the other two airlines have fallen. Moreover, on the yields front, too, it has performed comparatively better.While Jet Airways shares have risen sharply since mid-February, they had underperformed by a huge margin prior to that. As such, it remains the least preferred airline stock in terms of valuation multiples.According to Praveen Sahay, a research analyst at Edelweiss Broking, SpiceJet with its smaller Bombardier Q-400s is better placed than IndiGo, which has Airbus A320 aircraft, as far as the regional connectivity scheme (RCS) is concerned. That is because traffic from RCS is not expected to be robust in the initial stages, making smaller aircraft more suitable under this scheme. “Further, there may not be adequate airport infrastructure to accommodate bigger aircraft,” adds Sahay. News reports say 11 airlines including SpiceJet have bid under the scheme. Needless to say, investors need to be clued in for more details on this and for announcements on the routes that SpiceJet will fly to.Despite the sharp rally, SpiceJet shares still trade at a meaningful discount to those of IndiGo. Based on Bloomberg data, SpiceJet trades at 10 times estimated earnings for the next fiscal year compared to 18 times in the case of IndiGo. In terms of EV/Ebitda, SpiceJet trades at 8.3 times, lower than Indigo’s 11.8 times valuation. EV stands for enterprise value, while Ebitda is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. Of course, the fact that IndiGo is the market leader and still runs a tight ship will continue to result in premium valuations.For any further rerating of valuations, yields, which have been a big pain point this year, have to inch up.Among the reasons airline stocks have risen, in general, is the strengthening rupee and a correction in oil prices. Since mid-February, the rupee has appreciated close to 3% against the dollar. Further, while the rally in crude oil looked threatening earlier, prices have softened since. Brent crude prices have declined around a tenth since mid-February. It is a relief that earlier expectations of much stronger crude oil prices on account of measures taken by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to curb output, hasn’t really played out.“A 1% appreciation of the rupee changes earnings positively by around 3.5%, while a similar reduction in crude price changes earnings positively by around 2%”, JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd said in a note to clients.","SpiceJet’s profits have grown in the nine-month period ended December, whereas profits of IndiGo (Interglobe Aviation) and Jet Airways have fallen","Tue, Mar 28 2017. 07 49 AM IST",Why have SpiceJet shares done better than IndiGo’s? +https://www.livemint.com/Money/LjimtfE9dfSU4BxF9bf3DN/Retail-stocks-Q3-results-exceed-expectations.html,"The demonetisation-led cash crunch meant expectations for the December quarter results of retail firms—Titan Co. Ltd, Shoppers Stop Ltd and Bata India Ltd—were running low. In that backdrop, these companies did better than expected.Titan’s jewellery business, which contributes the lion’s share of its overall revenue, performed well, reporting a 15.4% year-on-year revenue growth. This looks even better considering that the December 2015 quarter had a high base, thanks to the presence in the initial days of studded jewellery activation. Gold jewellery volume growth for the December 2016 quarter was 4%. Titan’s watch business performed well, too.Shoppers Stop’s like-to-like sales growth for its department stores came in at 6.4%. Now, by itself that number isn’t impressive considering this is the stronger festive quarter we are talking about. Note that the measure had increased 17.4% a year ago. But the December 2016 quarter like-to-like performance was better than analysts’ estimates. The firm maintains like-to-like growth saw double-digit year-on-year decline in November, compared with double-digit increase in October and December.Like-to-like sales growth is the comparable sales growth of stores that have been operational for over a year.Bata India’s revenue rose 2.4%, while its operating profit declined as staff costs, rent and other expenses rose at a faster pace. For the nine-month period to December, revenue increased just 0.8%. This is estimated to improve. ICICI Securities Ltd expects Bata India’s revenue growth to revive from fiscal 2018 onwards on account of an improved product mix and the company following a dual strategy of driving same-store sales growth and opening new stores in untapped locations. “We expect revenue to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 8.1% year-on-year during FY16-19E,” wrote ICICI Securities in a report last month.From 8 November (when demonetisation was announced) till 17 March, share prices of Titan and Bata India have appreciated, while those of Shoppers Stop have declined. Analysts at Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd say Shoppers Stop has nudged ahead its Ebitda margin target of 6.5% by one year to FY18E on the back of demand disruption owing to demonetisation. Ebitda is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The performance of subsidiary HyperCity will be a key thing to follow for the Shoppers Stop stock. In general, improvement in consumer demand translating into better like-to-like growth and eventually higher revenue growth are key factors to watch out for.","Retail firms Titan, Shoppers Stop and Bata India performed well in the December quarter though demonetisation ensured expectations were running low","Fri, Mar 24 2017. 09 32 AM IST",Retail stocks: Q3 results exceed expectations +https://www.livemint.com/Money/DzWxoR9lXQjXjJjCcczSCN/FMCG-GST-and-urban-consumers-offer-hope.html,"The packaged consumer goods sector had a difficult time in the December 2016 quarter. Even before demonetisation, demand was simply not getting off the ground. While urban demand had shown some early signs of reviving, companies said rural demand continued to show signs of strain. The BSE FMCG Index declined 4.8% in the December quarter. FMCG stands for fast-moving consumer goods. The current quarter has seen it increase by 13.5%, partly as the effects of demonetisation are fading but also because ITC Ltd’s stock has run up sharply.Demonetisation made things worse. In cities, consumption was briefly affected but revived as modern trade outlets stepped in and consumers switched to digital currency. However, rural markets were affected. Also, companies use wholesalers to service relatively smaller outlets and markets, and this channel was adversely affected.In the December quarter, the sector’s sales declined by 2.5%, while its operating profit fell 0.4%. Volume growth was affected, not only by demonetisation, but also by price hikes by companies to compensate for an increase in the price of inputs.Hindustan Unilever Ltd, for instance, reported a 4% decline in volumes, partly due to the currency ban and partly due to price hikes.ITC’s shares have gained in the current quarter as the hike in excise duties in the budget was lower than expected and even after an additional cess on cigarettes, the company is expected to benefit from the introduction of the goods and services tax, or GST, from 1 July.The outlook for packaged consumer goods makers’ stocks remains mixed. Consumer confidence improved in the December quarter, indicating urban markets can be expected to recover. Good monsoon rains in 2016-17 are expected to contribute to better farm output. While that is good, it is being tempered by a moderate increase in prices. By how much farm incomes improve and to what extent non-farm incomes revive will determine rural consumption trends in the medium term. Meanwhile, companies may use price hikes to drive growth till demand recovers. GST remains a key event to watch out for in FY18.",Volume growth was affected in the December quarter not only by demonetisation but also by price hikes taken by firms to compensate for an increase in the price of inputs,"Fri, Mar 24 2017. 09 32 AM IST",FMCG: GST and urban consumers offer hope +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0zrMJ80uYo9oi1Pj5tUaQI/Wipro-said-to-sack-600-employees-after-performance-appraisal.html,"New Delhi: The country’s third largest software services firm Wipro is learnt to have fired hundreds of employees as part of its annual “performance appraisal”. According to sources, Wipro has shown the door to about 600 employees, while speculation was rife that the number could go as high as 2,000. At the end of December 2016, the Bengaluru-based company had over 1.79 lakh employees. When contacted, Wipro said it undertakes a “rigorous performance appraisal process” on a regular basis to align its workforce with business objectives, strategic priorities of the company, and client requirements. “The performance appraisal may also lead to the separation of some employees from the company and these numbers vary from year to year,” it added. The company, however, did not comment on the number of employees that have been asked to leave. Wipro said its comprehensive performance evaluation process includes mentoring, re-training and upskilling of employees. The company is scheduled to report its fourth quarter and full-year numbers on 25 April.The development comes at a time when Indian IT companies are facing an uncertain environment given the curbs being proposed on worker visa norms by various countries like the US, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.These companies use temporary work visas to send employees to work on client sites. With visa programmes in these countries becoming more rigorous, Indian IT companies are likely to face challenges in movement of labour as well as a spike in operational costs. Indian IT companies get over 60% of their revenues from the North American market, about 20% from Europe and the remaining from other economies. Besides, higher adoption of technologies like automation and artificial intelligence is also reducing the need to have a large number of employees at client site.","Wipro is learnt to have sacked 600 employees as part of its annual ‘performance appraisal’, at a time when IT firms are facing curbs on work visas in US and Australia","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 10 17 PM IST",600 Wipro employees sacked after performance appraisal: report +https://www.livemint.com/Home-Page/8zt0QeSnAcmHk0KChVPycN/Dell-on-track-to-hit-the-3-billion-revenue-mark-in-India-C.html,"
Mumbai: Dell Technologies, the company that was formed when Dell Inc. acquired EMC Corp. for $67 billion, remains bullish on its “long-term” growth prospects in India, which is the company’s third-largest market.“I think we are on track to hit the $3 billion revenue mark in this country in a couple of years,” Thomas Sweet, executive vice-president and chief financial officer (CFO), Dell Inc., said in an interview last week.Explaining why he is bullish on the Indian market, Sweet reasoned that the country now had “a government that is pro-growth, pro-development, and which is also pro-technology in helping to enable that growth and the government’s mission”. Further, he claimed that the Dell-EMC combine in India is growing faster than the domestic IT market growth. According to Nasscom’s Strategic Review 2017 report, in FY2017, India’s domestic IT-BPM (information technology-business process management) market is likely to grow 8.5% year on year to reach $38 billion (excluding e-commerce).To accelerate the pace of growth globally, Dell rolled out a distribution, or the so-called channel strategy in February. According to Sweet, half of the company’s revenue is routed through its distributors and his company hopes to increase their output with the recent reorganization it initiated to bring together the distribution partners of the erstwhile Dell and EMC companies.What the company did two months back, according to Sweet, was to merge the EMC and Dell sales forces (which existed as separate entities before the merger) into two units. One is an enterprise sales unit that would now focus on the top 3,000 customers, and the second is a commercial sales organization that will focus on an estimated 500,000 clients. Sweet said he is “pretty pleased” with how the combined sales units have shaped up so far.The company also plans to sharpen its focus on its digital transformation push. Dell Technologies breaks up digital transformation into three parts, according to Sweet: IT transformation-how IT can support what the business needs; security transformation-how a company can tackle multiple threats; and workforce transformation-how an organization makes its employees more productive in a mobile environment.In the past couple of years, most large technology solution providers such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE), International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Accenture Plc., Oracle Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others have been competing fiercely for the increasingly lucrative digital transformation pie. According to research firm International Data Corp. (IDC) forecasts, global spending on digital transformation technologies is projected to be more than $1.2 trillion in 2017—an increase of 17.8% over 2016.“There is clearly a greater focus among our customers on digital, but most of them are currently focused on IT transformation,” said Sweet. According to him, companies are looking to modernize their IT infrastructure to support cloud-native applications. In cloud computing, companies can consume IT services and only pay for the applications or infrastructure they use rather than buy the equipment upfront, thus reducing capital expenditure (capex).One change in the way technology adoption occurs in companies, according to Sweet, is the growing involvement of top management, especially when it comes to digital. “We are seeing more C-suite executives, particularly the chief executive officers (CEOs), chief operating officers (COOs) and CFOs, participating in the conversation on digital as, increasingly, they are seeking business solutions and business model evolution,” he said. The focus for CFOs, he said, continues to be on return on investment, even as most of them are also ready to bet on emerging technologies that are still not mature in order to future-proof their organizations.Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst of Greyhound Research, said that while the Dell-EMC combine has done a good job of “integrating the channel network” of both the organizations, managing the reskilling of the partners and introducing customised solutions tailored for specific industry segments may require an intensive focus, especially in the short term. “If they can manage this aspect well, they can have an edge in the digital transformation infrastructure market, where companies such as HPE and Lenovo have been showing renewed aggression of late,” he concluded.",Dell Inc. CFO Thomas Sweet claims that the Dell-EMC combine in India is growing faster than the domestic IT market growth,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 34 AM IST",Dell on track to hit the $3 billion revenue mark in India: CFO Thomas Sweet +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ClvuxxKqVAMbmLrKi7PxMN/Infosys-exCFO-Rajiv-Bansal-seeks-arbitration-for-severance.html,"Bengaluru:Rajiv Bansal, former CFO of Infosys, has dragged his former employer to arbitration to claim the remaining Rs12 crore of his severance pay. Infosys had agreed to pay Bansal a severance amount of Rs17.38 crore or 24 months of salary, but the company suspended payments after he got Rs5 crore as co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy and others objected to the severance package as excessive. According to sources, Bansal has invoked his rights to an arbitral tribunal and a meeting is scheduled next month. This has opened another battle front for Infosys, which is already fighting visa clampdown by US President Donald Trump and global headwinds. When contacted, Bansal declined to comment. “The company has already clarified on the severance package for the former CFO Rajiv Bansal through a detailed statement. We do not have anything additional to add at this point,” Infosys said in an e-mailed response. Bansal’s severance payout has been one of the issues that Infosys founders had raised to allege governance lapses at the Bengaluru-based firm. When Bansal left Infosys in 2015, Infosys had agreed to pay him Rs17.38 crore in severance pay, equalling 24 months of pay. In February, Infosys chairman R. Seshasayee had clarified that of the agreed amount, only Rs5 crore have been paid so far and that the remaining was withheld pending clarifications on the terms of the severance contract. He had also admitted that the “judgement” could have differed if circumstances were different or if certain processes had been in place. Murthy had raised concerns about the hefty amount and questioned if the same was “hush money”.","Former Infosys CFO Rajiv Bansal asks for arbitration for settlement of his Rs17.38 crore severance pay, which hadn’t gone down well with Infosys founders","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 09 36 PM IST",Infosys ex-CFO Rajiv Bansal seeks arbitration for severance pay: report +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/CChn0p21UAnQmaKV0kPglM/Delhi-tops-among-states-in-Internet-readiness-report.html,"New Delhi: Delhi has emerged as the top ranked state in terms of overall Internet readiness including e-infrastructure and e-participation, overtaking last year’s winner Maharashtra, according to a report titled ‘Index of Internet readiness of Indian states’ by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and Nielsen Holdings PLC, a global information and data measurement company unveiled on Wednesday.The capital city-state is followed by Karnataka, Maharashtra, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.Internet readiness index is a composite benchmark of four components, i.e., e-infrastructure, e-participation, IT-environment and government e-services. All four components have been given equal weightage in the model, claims the research report.Among the smaller states, Delhi is at the top followed by Chandigarh and Puducherry. Chandigarh is ranked second in both e-infrastructure and e-participation. Puducherry ranks after Chandigarh when measured on the e-infrastructure index.The report also highlights the status of digital start-up ecosystem of the states. It finds that Karnataka, Delhi and Maharashtra are the top three states with the highest number of digital start-ups. There are a total of 242 start-up incubators in the country, out of which 61 incubators are in Tamil Nadu.Speaking at the launch of the report, IT secretary, Aruna Sundararajan, said, “Niti Aayog and other ministries of the government are increasingly trying to see that which states are leading in best practices. We are trying to find out these practices and the possibility of sharing these practices in benchmarking where each state can be.”Among the northeastern states, Nagaland tops the list, closely followed by Manipur and Tripura. Nagaland leads in IT environment and performs moderately well in other categories to get to the top.“Significantly, even within smaller states, the northeastern states ranked low in terms of overall Internet readiness. Therefore, much more needs to be done in the form of investment and infrastructure development in the region,” the report said.","Delhi has emerged as the top state in terms of overall Internet readiness including e-infrastructure and e-participation, overtaking last year’s winner Maharashtra, a report says","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 01 05 AM IST",Delhi tops among states in Internet readiness: report +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/cFUpp8wN9sXhXBVaBXRHlM/95-engineers-in-India-unfit-for-software-development-jobs.html,"New Delhi: Talent shortage is acute in the IT and data science ecosystem in India with a survey claiming that 95% of engineers in the country are not fit to take up software development jobs. According to a study by employability assessment company Aspiring Minds, only 4.77% candidates can write the correct logic for a programme — a minimum requirement for any programming job. Over 36,000 engineering students form IT related branches of over 500 colleges took Automata — a machine learning-based assessment of software development skills — and over two-thirds could not even write code that compiles. The study further noted that while more than 60% candidates cannot even write code that compiles, only 1.4% can write functionally correct and efficient code. “Lack of programming skills is adversely impacting the IT and data science ecosystem in India... India needs to catch up,” Aspiring Minds CTO and co-founder Varun Aggarwal said. The employability gap can be attributed to rote learning based approaches rather than actually writing programmes on a computer for different problems. Also, there is a dearth of good teachers for programming, since most good programmers get jobs in industry at good salaries, the study said. Moreover, programming skills are five times poorer for tier III colleges as compared to tier 1 colleges. “69% of candidates from top 100 colleges are able to write a compilable code versus rest of the colleges where only 31% are able to write a compilable code,” the report said.","Only 4.77% engineering students can write correct logic—the minimum requirement for any computer programming job, over two-thirds are inept at coding","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 37 PM IST",95% engineers in India unfit for programming jobs: study +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/HYOpHtwKp5SmD0HXOkjgXM/Struggling-tech-giant-LeEco-loses-global-corporate-finance-h.html,"New York: LeEco Inc.’s global head of corporate finance is leaving, according to a person familiar with the matter, the latest sign of retrenchment by the Chinese technology giant.Winston Cheng, who joined LeEco in 2015, will be president of international at Chinese e-commerce company JD.com Inc., leading new business initiatives including investments and mergers and acquisitions, the person said. LeEco declined to comment. JD.com didn’t respond to a request for comment on Friday.Cheng previously held managing director roles at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Merrill Lynch was a lead underwriter for JD.com when the company went public in 2014, a deal Cheng worked on. He also advised JD.com that same year when Tencent Holdings Ltd bought a 15% stake. JD.com has become Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s biggest competitor in China’s online shopping sector.LeEco’s ambitious international expansion plans have suffered from a cash squeeze and other roadblocks. Cheng played a key role in LeEco’s proposed acquisition of TV maker Vizio Inc. for $2 billion, a deal that the company said fell apart because of regulatory hurdles. LeEco’s US plans have also been set back by lacklustre sales, job cuts, and delayed payroll to US employees.Controlled by billionaire Jia Yueting, LeEco lured executives from global technology giants and banks to run its operations. In the past year, there have been several high-profile executive departures. Todd Pendleton, a marketing executive, and Shawn Williams, a senior vice president from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, left LeEco after about a year, according to several people familiar with the matter and Williams’ LinkedIn profile. Bloomberg","Winston Cheng, who joined LeEco in 2015, will be president of international at Chinese e-commerce company JD.com Inc.","Sat, Apr 15 2017. 04 13 PM IST",Struggling tech giant LeEco loses global corporate finance head +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/cLNOsN945C993Hqj7wgeSP/Vijay-Mallya-faces-London-extradition-hearing-on-17-May.html,"New Delhi/London: Vijay Mallya, the Kingfisher Airlines Ltd executive arrested in London on Tuesday, will return to UK court next month as authorities attempt to extradite him to face fraud accusations in India.The 61-year-old surrendered his Indian passport during a London court hearing Tuesday before being released on £650,000 ($830,000) bail, according to court records. He’s scheduled to return for another hearing 17 May. A spokesman for Mallya, who disputes the charges against him, declined to comment.Mallya’s arrest comes after a special Indian court in June declared the flamboyant former beer baron a proclaimed offender in a case involving loans to his airline. That helped pave the way for banks to take over his properties and auction assets such as his personal private jet, and sought to have him extradited from the UK. A consortium of 17 banks accuses him of wilfully defaulting on more than Rs9,100 crore ($1.4 billion) in debt accumulated by Kingfisher Airlines.The UK court “will consider” if he can get a fair trial in India, the nation’s former additional solicitor general A.S. Chandhiok said in an interview. “He may say ‘Everything is against me, the media is prejudiced against me,’” to avoid getting extradited, he said.Also Read: Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banksThe tycoon left the country a year ago saying he was moving to England to be closer to his children. Lawmakers criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government for failing to impound his passport and prevent him from leaving. His airline defaulted on the loans guaranteed by Mallya and United Breweries Holdings Ltd.“Vijay Mallya is a victim of circumstance,” Satish Maneshinde, an Indian lawyer told BloombergQuint. “His contention that he is being hounded politically and through the media may find favour” in the UK, he said.Mallya has maintained that Kingfisher was an “unfortunate commercial failure” because of macroeconomic factors and government policies. He has sparred with local media for portraying him as the poster boy for the nation’s bad loans. He has said that government agencies “are pursuing a heavily biased investigation and are already holding me guilty without trial after which I need to prove my innocence.” “Usual Indian media hype,” Mallya wrote in a Twitter post on Tuesday after reports of his arrest.Mallya left the country 2 March, prompting the government’s attorney general to label the businessman as a fugitive at a hearing in the Supreme Court in New Delhi. The Indian banks, fighting to recover dues from the chairman and founder of the airline — named after Mallya’s best-selling beer brand — were told in court that their petition to bar him from leaving the country was filed a few days too late.Also Read: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursIndia’s Enforcement Directorate, a federal body that probes violations in foreign exchange transactions, has been seeking Mallya’s extradition over accusations of diverting some funds from loans to buy property abroad. A Mumbai court had previously issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya, whose businesses included liquor and an airline.“Extradition from the UK is a long winding procedure and Mallya will have enough opportunities to challenge it in various forums,” said Pooja Dutta, managing partner at Mumbai-based Astute Law. “The process is complex and can go on for years.”The Indian government eventually cancelled his passport after he failed to appear before the Supreme Court in a separate case.Bail conditionsIn addition to the bail and surrendering his passport, the London court on Tuesday ordered Mallya not to leave England or Wales and keep his mobile phone — fully charged — with him at all times.After taking over a beer and liquor empire from his father in the 1980s, he started Kingfisher Airlines in 2005, which was one of India’s leading carriers until it was grounded in 2012 amid mounting debt.Mallya also gradually ceded control of his beer and liquor empire to rivals. Diageo Plc bought his United Spirits Ltd. in April 2014. Heineken NV is now the biggest shareholder of United Breweries, the maker of the nation’s best-selling Kingfisher beer.Mallya said previously he neither had the intention or any reason to flee, and personally he wasn’t a borrower or a “judgment defaulter.” He said he was “most pained as being painted as an absconder” when he was a non-resident for almost 28 years.The man at the center of India’s battle against soured loans was ranked the 45th-richest Indian by Forbes in 2012, with a net worth of $1 billion. He was earlier elected to the Rajya Sabha, India’s upper house of Parliament, in 2002 and again in 2010, both as an independent. Bloomberg","Vijay Mallya, who was arrested in London on Tuesday, will return to UK court on 17 May as authorities attempt to extradite him to face fraud accusations in India","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 01 22 PM IST","Vijay Mallya surrenders passport, faces UK extradition hearing on 17 May" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/AWUYPTxcT1dAt0TMGtkouL/Times-Group-bars-Arnab-Goswami-from-using-nation-wants-to-k.html,"New Delhi: Journalist Arnab Goswami’s soon-to-be launched news channel Republic TV has been served a legal notice by his former employer The Times Group over use of the phrase “nation wants to know”.The Times Group runs the English language news channels Times Now and ET Now and publishes The Times of India and The Economic Times newspapers.In a three-minute audio clip posted on YouTube, Goswami claimed that he has been served with yet another legal threat and this time for using the aforementioned phrase. “A media group has sent me a six-page letter threatening me with imprisonment if I ever use the phrase ‘Nation wants to know’. They say that they own the phrase,” said Goswami, in the clip without naming the media group. HT Media Ltd, the publisher of Mint and Hindustan Times, competes with The Times Group in some markets.Goswami was using the catch phrase ‘Nation wants to know’ on his popular prime time show Newshour on Times Now till he quit the company on 1 November 2016. He was the president and editor-in-chief of news channels Times Now and ET Now. In the YouTube clip, Goswami further said that the threat of imprisonment will not deter him and that he has been using the phrase for the last 20 years throughout his reporting career. “ARG Outliers had filed for trademark for these and similar phrases which were already filed for and extensively used for years by Times Now. We have responded with a standard caution notice. He (Arnab) is just trying to gain soundbytes from it,” said a spokesperson for the Times Network, when contacted for comments. Republic is a part of a company called ARG Outlier Media Pvt. Ltd, of which Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar is the biggest investor. Goswami’s Republic made its social media debut on 7 January with a Facebook page and a Twitter handle @republicworld. The company has received the regulatory nod from the information and broadcasting ministry and is expected to launch the news channel soon.",Arnab Goswami claims he has been served a legal notice by Times Group against using the ‘nation wants to know’ phrase on his Republic TV venture,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 12 50 AM IST",Times Group serves Arnab Goswami notice on using ‘nation wants to know’ +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/nZzaphFLFUOqP1EuegR9EL/Infosys-CEO-Vishal-Sikka-takes-home-only-61-of-eligible-pay.html,"New Delhi: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, whose pay package was a point of contention for the company’s founders, has drawn $ 6.68 million (about Rs 43 crore) or 61% of the promised compensation for the 2016-17 fiscal. Sikka was eligible for a $11 million pay including basic salary, variable pay, restricted stock units (RSUs) and performance stock options for the year. Incidentally, this is also lower than what Sikka drew in the previous financial year when he took home Rs 48.73 crore. According to Infosys’ financial statements that outline compensation to key executives, Sikka received only $3.68 million of the $8 million variable component that he was promised. One of the highest paid executives in the Indian IT industry, Sikka took home $0.82 million in variable pay, $1.9 million in RSUs and ESOPs worth $0.96 million, totalling $3.68 million. Sikka’s salary was revised from $7.08 million to a handsome $11 million package with effect from April 2016, a move that did not go down well with the founders, including NR Narayana Murthy. The $11 million package was to include a base salary of $1 million and $2 million worth of stock annually as well $3 million in variable pay. Sikka is also eligible for another $5 million worth of performance-based equity and stock options upon achievement of certain performance targets.Also Read: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka guaranteed 90% of $11 million salary“The Board, based on the recommendations of the Nominations Committee, approved on April 13, 2017, $0.82 million as variable pay to CEO for the year ended March 31, 2017,” Infosys said. It further mentions “...RSUs amounting to $1.9 million and ESOPs amounting to $0.96 million representing the performance-based equity and stock options for the financial year 2017”. While the founders had raised concerns over the significant salary hike given to Sikka, the Board, on its part, maintained that the variable component was tied to steep performance goals. However, Infosys has not made those goals public. Infosys had defended Sikka’s pay hike saying all decisions were made “in the overall interest of the company”. Infosys’ performance of 2016-17 has disappointed the street, especially after it lowered its annual revenue guidance thrice last fiscal. The “aspirational goal” of $20 billion revenue by 2020 set by Infosys looks like a tall order given the current performance, said industry watchers. The Bengaluru-based firm, which posted a revenue of $ 10.2 billion in 2016-17, has been focussing on new areas like automation and artificial intelligence to bolster its revenues to meet the said target. For the financial year 2017-18, Infosys expects its revenues to grow by 6.1-8.1% in dollar terms.","Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka has drawn about Rs43 crore or 61% of the promised compensation, $11 million, for the 2016-17 fiscal","Fri, Apr 14 2017. 07 10 PM IST",Infosys’s Vishal Sikka takes home only 61% of eligible pay +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/7CYyvZxyCq5CUG70aQfsgP/Fine-dining-is-dead-says-deGustibus-Hospitalitys-Anurag-Ka.html,"
Mumbai: In the last two-three years, many dining concepts have emerged from chefs-turned-restaurateurs and established restaurateurs launching new brands. So there is Floyd Cardoz’s The Bombay Canteen and Vicky Ratnani with The Korner House, which are less than two years old. Meanwhile a company like Massive Restaurants Pvt. Ltd has launched concepts like Farzi Café, a modern Indian bistro, and Pa Pa Ya, a pan-Asian bistro. Likewise Olive Bar and Kitchen Pvt. Ltd, which operates Olive, has in the last three-four years diversified to open SodaBottleOpenerWala and Monkey Bar. deGustibus Hospitality Pvt. Ltd of Indigo fame, which has been opening, on average, one restaurant every two years, has launched a new concept D:Oh two months ago. The coming year will see the company stepping on the accelerator and doing things differently, says Anurag Katriar, executive director and chief executive officer of deGustibus Hospitality. Edited excerpts from an interview:
You have moved from fine dining to casual dining to what now looks like a mix between quick service restaurants (QSR) and casual dining. What was the rationale behind this journey?Our journey started with fine dining—Indigo. At some point in time I realized that Indigo, despite all the lovely numbers it was doing, had its own limitations. So in 2003 we decided to do something for the larger mass and that is how the first Indigo Deli was launched in 2005, which is in the casual dining space. We now have seven Indigo Delis in Mumbai, one in Gurgaon and one in Pune. I felt Mumbai could take maybe a couple more Delis. So a year ago I came back to the same question: now what? My initial thoughts were QSR and I spent a lot of time at food courts across the country observing.
Are you saying that you needed a cheaper per-head average cost offering to expand?Today 65% of our population is millennials. They are young and go to QSRs and bars selling at economical prices. We wanted to have a place for them that is fun and economical.
But D:Oh is not really a QSR...QSR is not essentially good food served quick. It has become convenient food served cheap. I was unnerved by this realization. So, I did a rethink and picked up the niceties of a QSR—quick service, easy-to-understand menu—and merged it with the goodness of casual dining—ambience and limited service. This is the area we will be expanding into now.
Why not take Indigo Deli to newer geographies? There is Delhi for instance which can take a few more...In Delhi we had a very poor experience honestly. Also every city is different. I prefer to expand in my core area and that is where D:Oh fits in.
Your peers have been on an expansion spree, launching new formats and opening branches. What’s holding you back?Yes, we have been a little slow. We were not innovating as quickly as we could have. We were in our comfort zone. On average we have been opening one restaurant every two years. Having said that, we were also trying to restructure our company as investors came in. We consolidated and also gave every brand a leadership team to grow their business. But that was our principle earlier, we didn’t believe in doing too many things. Today I think differently. I believe that gone are the days when you could multiply one brand into 500 locations. You have to think differently. The socio-economic changes are driving a very different kind of a market. The boredom creeps in a lot faster. Consumers are not as loyal. The shelf life is a lot shorter and therefore brands have to be innovative.
So does that mean you are ready to launch more new brands for faster growth?In the last financial year we opened five new restaurants. In the coming year we will be opening nine restaurants, which will be our fastest expansion. We are also open to inorganic growth and are in talks with a couple of brands, which I can’t disclose right now. In the next one-two years, we will also expand outside India.
You have made some changes at Neel. Can you share what prompted them?Neel, which is at Turf Club, is fine dining. We are not expanding that format. The one in Powai is casual dining. We have realized that in casual dining, vegetarian and seafood works better than red meat. So we have reduced the red meat and increased vegetarian to get more balance in the menu. We have also introduced evening snacks like kathi rolls.The conversion on vegetarian snacks is 46%, which is a lot.
Your expansion is in the casual dining space with Indigo Deli and Neel-All-day Diner, and now in the new concept, which is even more casual. What about fine dining where you have the Indigo restaurant and Tote on the Turf brand?Fine dining is a dying format. No one wants such an elaborate meal. It’s become a place only for celebrations. For me the biggest benchmark of fine dining was Zodiac Grill. If that shut down, how long will the bachas (kids) survive? For me the Indigo restaurant business is good but it’s 40% down from its peak. We have one Indigo restaurant and one Tote on the Turf restaurant. We are not expanding these fine dining formats any more.
You have been in the restaurant space for the last 15-20 years. Can you tell us what has changed over the years?Today, drinking is out of the closet. Earlier you would be very shy to say you were going for a drink. Now you would be looked down upon if you say you are not going out for a drink. Secondly, value-for- money expectations have gone up. Today people want good experiences at QSR prices. Also shelf life of a brand has reduced. Let’s look at the last 10 years and restaurant chains that have started and are still thriving. There are hardly any. Today a lot of new restaurants are focused on gimmickry and that is why the novelty factor wears off and they fade away.
At D:Oh, you have cold sandwiches on offer. Do cold sandwiches work in India?Indians are not used to cold food. We like our food hot. Customers feel cold food means purana (stale) even though we are not selling anything more than 24 hours old. So we are doing away with the grab-a-tray concept and cold sandwiches.
Overall the restaurant and out-of-home eating sector has had muted growth for the last couple of years. Also there was the impact of demonetization. Are we seeing a revival now?I don’t see any major difference. There was no major downturn or revival. There was some stress on operating margins as costs of doing business were going up. Demonetization impact was for two weeks. The change in business was a 3% drop year-on-year this November. Yes, one can argue that there could have been growth but that’s fine; it’s not as bad as it was made out to be.
We are seeing so many new launches. Chefs turning restaurateurs and restaurant chains like yours now looking at rapid expansion. What’s happening?The entry barrier for this profession is very low. A lot of start-ups with no background in hospitality want to start a restaurant as they feel it’s attractive. I was once approached by a traditional metal business family who said they want to start a restaurant for their son as it would help them get a good marriage proposal for him. For chefs turning entrepreneurs it’s a good time to start up. Having said that, today the risk of failure is also very high and they have a reputation at stake. It’s interesting times.
Has the recent Supreme Court ruling on not serving alcohol within 500 metres of highways impacted you?Two of our restaurants have been impacted. One is in Cyber Hub in Gurgaon and the second is in Phoenix Market City in Pune. From 1 April we have not served any alcohol at these two places and business has dropped by 50% already. Overall this rule will be catastrophic for the industry.
What are your thoughts on the proposed initiative to regulate food portions?Following this announcement we did a two-day survey in our restaurants. There is very little wastage of food at restaurants. People don’t order to waste. If there is extra food, customers usually pack it and take it back. What is returned on the plates is something they don’t like. We hope they don’t regulate food portions.","No one wants such an elaborate meal; it’s become a place only for celebrations, says Anurag Katriar","Sat, Apr 15 2017. 12 10 AM IST","Fine dining is dead, says deGustibus Hospitality’s Anurag Katriar" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/0iFeclCfsM3zRSZ13jiH6J/TCS-Q4-profit-rises-42-at-Rs-6608-crore.html,"New Delhi: Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) missed analysts’ estimates for both revenue and profit in the fourth fiscal quarter, even as India’s largest software services firm’s full-year sales rose 6.2% to $17.58 billion.The company reported revenue of $4.45 billion in the three months ended 31 March, a 1.5% increase from the preceding quarter and 5.8% from the year-ago period. Net profit totalled $992 million, a 0.8% decline on a sequential basis and an increase of 5.8% from the year-ago period.A Bloomberg survey of 30 analysts had estimated TCS to report quarterly revenue of $4.62 billion and net profit of $1.03 billion in the quarter.Also read: TCS unperturbed by possible changes to H1B visa regime“FY17 was a year of broad-based growth amid economic and political turbulence in our key markets,” said Rajesh Gopinathan, who took over as chief executive of TCS in February. “We believe we are better placed for the year-ahead,” said Gopinathan, who spent much time on the numbers, suggesting that the new CEO will take time to probably replicate the success managed by his predecessor N. Chandrasekaran, the current chairman of Tata Sons Ltd. At the heart of TCS’s underperformance is the company’s inability to generate more business from its largest customers, banks, in its largest market, the US. TCS’s banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) segment, which accounts for over 40% of its revenue, grew 4.8% from a year earlier in constant currency terms. North America, which brings 54% of its business, reported a 4.3% rise.TCS does not give quarterly or annual forecasts but a few equity analysts are sceptical about the company’s prospects. The January-March quarter marks the 10th straight quarter (the company has recorded slow growth since July 2014) in which TCS has either underperformed, or at best managed to keep up with estimates. “Looking at this protracted slowdown, I believe TCS has reached a point where unless the company really brings about a change in the way it has done business, it will be tough for the company to ever beat street expectations,” said a Mumbai-based analyst at a domestic brokerage, on the condition of anonymity. “At best it can match street expectations.”TCS’s performance mirrors the poor show put up by Infosys Ltd last week, and this is worrying for three reasons.First, both growth and profitability for Indian IT firms is under pressure. Mumbai-based TCS reported a full-year increase of 8.3% in constant currency terms, similar to the full-year growth reported by Bengaluru-based Infosys (with $10.21 billion in revenue) although Infosys reported a higher 7.4% expansion in dollar revenue.Like Infosys, TCS’s growth in 2016-17 was slower than in 2015-16: TCS’s revenue growth in constant currency terms was 3.6 percentage points slower than the 11.9% increase in 2015-16. TCS added $1.03 billion in incremental revenue in the year ended 31 March 2017, less than $1.09 billion added in new business in 2015-16 when it reported a 7.1% increase and half of the $2.01 billion in new business added in 2014-15. TCS’s operating margin in the January-March quarter and for the full year stood at 25.7%. Operating margin narrowed 80 basis points from 26.5% in 2015-16, again similar to Infosys, which too saw its profitability eroded as commoditized outsourcing contracts see intense pricing pressure.Despite falling short of its operating margin forecast of 26-28% in the last financial year, the company’s management retained this guidance for the current fiscal year, which at least two analysts say will be “impossible to achieve”.“In this kind of environment, where most companies want more skilled people at client-facing sides, when most countries are adopting a protectionist stance, it looks impossible to keep operating in that band,” a Mumbai-based analyst at a foreign brokerage said, requesting anonymity.Second, despite higher growth in digital, which remains a fuzzy word, and the success of new and renew strategy rolled out by CEO Vishal Sikka to revive Infosys, both companies continue to be plagued by anaemic growth. This has made many analysts question if existing traditional contracts are merely getting rebadged as digital. A case in point: TCS claims its digital business grew 29% in the last year and now brings $3 billion in business.Finally, both TCS and Infosys continue to shy away from acquiring technology-focused firms. Infosys has not made a single acquisition in the last 18 months; TCS has looked away from acquiring a company since it partnered with Japan’s Mitsubishi Group in 2014. This is important because most large technology firms, including Accenture Plc, are looking at acquisitions to bring in new technology and skill sets. Nevertheless, the quarter does have some positives. For starters, the TCS management claimed that its insurance business under Diligenta and Japan has turned the corner, with Gopinathan expressing confidence of growth from these two lagging business units.On Tuesday, TCS shares fell 0.53% to Rs2,308.65 on BSE, while the benchmark Sensex declined 0.32% to 29,319.1 points. The results were announced after the end of trading in Mumbai.","Q4 revenue of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) rose 5.8% from the year-ago period to $4.45 billion, while Q4 profit increases 5.8% to $992 million","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",TCS misses both revenue and profit estimates in March quarter +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/5tqa6Or24XPKfzMIf4BdUJ/Reliance-Infrastructure-Q4-profit-at-Rs4094-crore.html,"New Delhi: Reliance Infrastructure Ltd on Saturday reported a net profit of Rs40.94 crore for the quarter ended 31 March. The company had recorded a consolidated net loss of Rs327.41 crore during the January-March quarter in 2015-16, Reliance Infrastructure said in a BSE filing. According to the statement, total income of the company was recorded at Rs6,145 crore in the quarter against Rs6,910 crore in the year-ago period. The company’s consolidated net profit for 2016-17 rose to Rs1,425.18 crore as compared to Rs759.63 crore in 2015-16. The total income in the fiscal under review was Rs28,222 crore against Rs28,462 crore in 2015-16. Its engineering procurement and construction order book stood at Rs5,960 crore and earned a revenue of Rs2,492 crore in the last fiscal from this business. The company won EPC contract for setting up 2 x 250 MW thermal power plants worth Rs3,675 crore in Rajasthan from Neyveli Lignite Corporation Ltd. It also bagged EPC contract to build 66km road project worth Rs711 crore in Tamil Nadu. All its 11 road projects of Rs4,370 lane km are now revenue generating , it said. The company said the arbitration award won for 2 road projects—NK Toll Road and DS Toll Road—was worth Rs170 crore. Besides, over Rs14,000 crore is under advanced stage of arbitration. Reliance Infrastructure develop projects through various special purpose vehicles in several high growth areas such as power, roads and metro rail in the infrastructure space and the defence sector. The company’s board has recommended a dividend of Rs9 per share. Its share prices closed at Rs556.50 a piece, down 0.47% on the BSE. Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.","Reliance Infrastructure’s Q4 consolidated net profit for FY17 rose to Rs1,425.18 crore as compared to Rs759.63 crore in FY16","Sat, Apr 15 2017. 11 15 PM IST",Reliance Infrastructure Q4 profit at Rs40.94 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Money/EWzMpJgL08FAuJ0hukTmAP/TCS-results-Upbeat-commentary-downbeat-performance-in-Marc.html,"
Often, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and its investors don’t see eye to eye. The company’s March quarter results announcement was no different. Revenue grew 1% sequentially in constant currency terms, lower than analysts’ estimates of around 1.6% growth. Worryingly, revenues in the mainstay North American region fell by 1.8%, and those of the key banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) vertical fell 0.4%.
ALSO READ: TCS misses both revenue and profit estimates in March quarterStill, chief executive officer (CEO) Rajesh Gopinathan said, “We are quite happy with the way we have ended the year.” He added on a call with analysts that the outlook for the BFSI segment remains positive, and that thanks to large deal wins, it may be only a matter of time before the expected growth comes in. TCS has been saying for the past few months that things are looking up in the US and particularly in the BFSI segment. Over 40% of its revenues come from the BFSI segment, while the North American region accounted for 54% of revenues last year.But after the March quarter performance, investors are likely to question the company’s optimism. As the chart alongside shows, year-on-year growth rates have fallen significantly at TCS in the past year. Besides, operating profit margin, too, has fallen below its targeted range of 26-28%. The result of this double whammy was that earnings per share grew by just 8.3% last year.With the rupee having appreciated sharply compared to the average rate in fiscal year 2017 (FY17), margins are expected to be under further pressure in the new fiscal year. What’s more, thanks to the many changes in H-1B visa rules and policies, costs of providing on-site services to clients are also expected to rise. As such, earnings can be under pressure in FY18. Against this backdrop, TCS shares trade at around 16 times one-year forward earnings. And while CEO Gopinathan said that he expects FY18 to be incrementally positive, things could turn out to be particularly dire, depending on new visa rules. “We see near-term impact on decision-making due to immigration-related issues, even as companies are denying this. We expect 1QFY18 to start slowly and do not build growth acceleration in FY18,” analysts at Nomura Research wrote in a note to clients. Some of the possible impact of new visa norms is detailed here: bit.ly/2ngI48H.And unlike TCS’s upbeat post-results commentary, most other technology companies including Accenture Plc. have guided for slower growth in the new fiscal year. Besides, while Infosys Ltd tried to soothe investors’ nerves by outlining a detailed capital allocation policy, TCS said it will stay with its existing payout policy.In sum, there’s nothing much to like in TCS’s March quarter results announcement, except perhaps for the management’s hopeful commentary. But given the fair bit of divergence between the company’s outlook three months ago and its actual performance, investors would do well to tread cautiously.","After the March quarter performance, investors are likely to question the optimism being shown by new TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 07 25 AM IST","TCS results: Upbeat commentary, downbeat performance in March quarter" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/AqM7XSKjh61n9iJew2nqKP/Netflix-trades-user-growth-for-profits-with-no-House-of-Car.html,"Los Angeles: For now, Netflix Inc. investors can have rapid subscriber growth or a big jump in profit—not both.The streaming-video giant reported first-quarter user gains that fell short of estimates because there wasn’t a House of Cards-style hit to draw new viewers and retain others. On the other hand, the lack of big-budget productions boosted net income. Next quarter, with the return of House of Cards and three major movies on the release schedule, profit will miss estimates while customer gains will improve, Netflix said Monday.The dilemma whipsawed Netflix investors late Monday, with the stock dropping on the subscriber figures before recovering later and moving higher. The shares rose 1.4% to $149.30 in extended trading after results were announced. They had gained 15% this year through 13 April.The world’s biggest paid video service signed 4.95 million new customers last quarter, less than the 5.49 million analysts were expecting. It’ll make up some of that in the current period, with a forecast for viewer growth that beat analysts’ forecasts.“There’s nothing here that changes the thesis,” said Anthony DiClemente, an Instinet LLC analyst who recommends buying the shares. “If you own Netflix because you think they are going to add subscribers globally, you’re still going to own it. If you don’t own it because you think Netflix was spending too much money to invest in said growth, you still feel the same way.”Netflix needs to add millions of subscribers every quarter to help pay for the billions of dollars the company spends making TV shows and movies or licensing programs from others. The company, which has committed $15.3 billion for movies and TV shows over the next five years, hasn’t given any indication it plans to slow those outlays and said Monday it plans to raise money this quarter by issuing long-term debt.Netflix released 17 stand-up specials, nine feature films and an array of original series for kids and adults, but blamed the absence of one show—House of Cards—for its slower-than-projected viewer growth.The company could turn the tide in the second quarter, typically one of its weakest. Netflix, based in Los Gatos, California, has lined up a slew of high-profile releases in the coming months, including new seasons of House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black and Master of None.The heavy second-quarter schedule comes with costs and highlights a dilemma. Because of those expenses, Netflix said profit in the period will be 15 cents a share, short of analysts’ estimate of 23 cents. Revenue will be $2.75 billion, versus Wall Street projections of $2.76 billion. The first quarter, lighter on new releases, was the company’s most profitable ever and the first time international operations made money.Future profitInvestors have permitted Netflix to operate near break-even on the expectation that the company, which expects to top 100 million customers this week, will continue to grow rapidly, especially outside the US chief executive officer Reed Hastings has also pledged to deliver material profits starting this year. Analysts are forecasting net income of $477.2 million, or $1.09 a share, on revenue of $11.2 billion, based on the average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg.The company said first-quarter profit more than quadrupled to $178 million, or 40 cents a share, compared with analysts’ predictions of 37 cents. Revenue grew 35% to $2.64 billion.The company wants to be assessed in the future based on sales and margins, as opposed to subscriber growth.Netflix’s investment in original programming has inspired competing technology companies and TV networks up their spending, creating more competition for attention and eyeballs. Netflix said it will spend $1 billion marketing in 2017 to bring more attention to its shows.Analysts were expecting slower growth this quarter, after Netflix expanded to more than 130 new countries in the year-earlier period. The company has expanded in stages, and is having more success with older markets.“We have high satisfaction and are rapidly growing in Latin America, Europe, and North America,” the company said in a letter to investors. “We are making good strides in improving our content offering to match local tastes in Asia, Middle East, and Africa, but have much progress to make, like in Latin America a few years ago.” Bloomberg",Netflix reports first-quarter user gains that fell short of estimates because there wasn’t a House of Cards-style hit to draw new viewers and retain others,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 01 57 PM IST",Netflix trades user growth for profits with no ‘House of Cards’ +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mAntpq1OMH4F7DjheOt62H/UIDAI-files-FIRs-against-8-websites-for-collecting-Aadhaarr.html,"New Delhi: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has filed FIRs against eight websites, seeking to curb fraudulent activities promising Aadhaar-related services and illegal collection of information from people.The sites are aadhaarupdate.com, aadhaarindia.com, pvcaadhaar.in, aadhaarprinters.com, geteaadhaar.com, downloadaadhaarcard.in, aadharcopy.in, and duplicateaadharcard.com.“We found that even after we ordered the shutting down of some unauthorised websites, some new websites had come up. This time, we have lodged an FIR against the erring websites,” said Ajay Bhushan Pandey, chief executive officer, UIDAI.These websites were collecting Aadhaar number and enrolment details illegally from residents and promising Aadhaar services posing as entities authorized by UIDAI. In February, UIDAI had shut down 12 websites and 12 mobile applications to curb unauthorized Aadhaar related services.It had also directed authorities to close another 26 fraudulent and illegal websites and mobile applications.According to UIDAI, the websites and companies extending unauthorized services, tantamount to violation under Information Technology Act 2000, Section 38 of Aadhaar Act 2016, and Section 409 (Criminal breach of trust) and Section 420 (cheating) of IPC.Under the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, intentionally copying Aadhaar data is a criminal offence and entails a three-year sentence and a fine.The authority will continue to take stringent action against such sites and also asked the public to use UIDAI official website (www.uidai.gov.in) for all Aadhaar-related services, added Pandey.Late February, UIDAI had also filed a complaint against Axis Bank Ltd, business correspondent Suvidhaa Infoserve and e-sign provider eMudhra, alleging they had attempted unauthorized authentication and impersonation by illegally storing Aadhaar biometrics. The breach was noticed after one individual performed 397 biometric transactions between 14 July 2016 and 19 February 2017. All three entities have been temporarily barred from offering Aadhaar-related services until UIDAI makes a final decision.Last month, UIDAI blacklisted an overenthusiastic common services centre for 10 years after the Aadhaar details of former cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni were shared on social media.At present, any Aadhaar-related demographic information can only be shared following the procedures laid down in the Aadhaar Act, 2016.There are more than 1.13 billion Aadhaar number holders in the country. PTI contributed to this copy.","UIDAI filed FIRs against eight websites, seeking to curb fraudulent activities promising Aadhaar-related services and illegal collection of information from people","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 10 00 PM IST",UIDAI files FIRs against 8 websites for collecting Aadhaar-related information +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/krLoJdwTRnZAPHpX1qI32K/Scrapping-H1B-visa-lottery-can-have-unintended-consequences.html,"New Delhi: Industry body Nasscom on Wednesday warned that the US’ move to replace the lottery system for issuing H1B work visas with a merit-based approach could have “unintended consequences” even as it sought to downplay any immediate impact on IT companies this year. Under a new executive order signed by US President Donald Trump, America is reviewing its visa programme for foreign workers, while ensuring a crackdown on visa abuse and frauds. The H1B visa programme is most sought-after by Indian IT firms and professionals to work on customer sites. Every year, the US grants 65,000 H1B visas, while another 20,000 are set aside for those with US advanced degrees. “No new changes are being implemented immediately... Nothing is being proposed that would impact or change the FY18 H1B lottery that is currently underway,” Nasscom said in a statement. ALSO READ: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookThe proposed changes are forward-looking and non- specific, it contended. Any change in visa norms can affect the movement of labour as well as spike operational costs for IT players. Most Indian IT companies get over 60% of their revenues from the North American market. The Indian government, on its part, has said it will take up the issue with the American authorities during the upcoming visit of finance minister Arun Jaitley to the US. Another industry body Assocham also expressed concern over the tightening of the visa norms. “...Indian IT companies are bound to face disruptions by way of higher costs and even some laying off work force back home, as the rising rupee is aggravating the situation further for the technology export firms,” it said. Indian IT firms, however, put a brave face to the impending changes being mooted by the US. “We continue to invest in the local communities in which we operate, including hiring local American top talent, bringing education and training to our clients to shrink the skills gap in the US, and working with policymakers to foster innovation,” Infosys said in a statement. Larger rival TCS, too, has exuded confidence that these issues can be tackled through greater engagement. It has also said it will “tweak” its business model to continue to be in compliance with regulations. With rising protectionism across markets like the US, Singapore and now Australia, companies are beginning to adjust their business models to reduce their dependence on visas, hiring more locals instead. Nasscom also highlighted that there is shortage of highly-skilled domestic talent in the US in IT, healthcare, education, and other fields.",Nasscom warned that the US’ move to replace the lottery system for issuing H1B work visas with a merit-based approach could have ‘unintended consequences’ ,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 06 09 PM IST",Scrapping H1B visa lottery can have unintended consequences: Nasscom +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/MgOI1xHIi6QMUHRSEm9YAO/Arun-Jaitley-may-take-up-H1B-visa-issue-with-US-authorities.html,"New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday indicated that he would take up the visa issue with the US authorities during his visit to America. “These (IT industry issues) are matters of discussion with the appropriate authorities there. Once I do discuss and get an opportunity, I will let you know,” he told reporters when asked whether he would take up the concerns of the Indian IT sector with the US administration. The Indian IT industry has expressed serious concerns over the US government moving towards tightening the rules for grant of H1B visa, mainly used by domestic IT professionals for short-term work. US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order for tightening the rules of the H1B visa programme to stop its “abuse” and ensure that the visas are given to the “most- skilled or highest paid” petitioners. Also read | As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backJaitley is leaving tonight on a five-day visit to the United States to attend the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF as well as deliberations of G20 nations. During his stay in Washington and New York, he will hold meetings with American CEOs and institutional and pension fund investors, where he will pitch India as a favourable investment destination. The finance minister is also slated to hold a meeting with the US Treasury Secretary. India has time and again flagged its concerns over tightening of the visa regime in the US which targets the movement of professionals particularly in the IT sector. Also read | Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookThe H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise in specialised fields. Indian technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year for their US operations. The US market accounts for about 60% of the revenue of the Indian IT industry.",FM Arun Jaitley is leaving tonight on a 5-day visit to the US to attend the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF as well as deliberations of G20 nations,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 06 21 PM IST",Arun Jaitley may take up H1B visa issue with US authorities during his visit +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/8guEQHASl8AscQVYS2M8mO/Why-Donald-Trumps-curbs-on-H1B-visas-are-good-for-Tim-Cook.html,"Taipei: President Donald Trump just made life a little easier for Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai. And a lot harder for Vishal Sikka and Rajesh Gopinathan.“Right now, H1B visas are being awarded in a totally random lottery. And that’s wrong,” Trump told workers in Wisconsin, announcing a reform of the visa category. “Instead, they should be given to the most skilled and highest paid applicants.”Whatever your views on Trump, he is factually correct on that last point. H1Bs are supposed to go to those working in an occupation that requires “theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge.”It’s hard to make a case that the jobs being filled by the Indian IT outsourcing firms that dominate H1B visa issuance—such as Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys Ltd, which Sikka and Gopinathan helm—make use of highly specialized knowledge when they regularly pay less than other firms like Apple Inc. or Google parent Alphabet Inc.On the first point, Trump’s a little off, though, because the awarding of H1Bs isn’t a totally random lottery: A 2015 amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act outlined a pecking order the secretary of labour is meant to follow. The 65,000 annual cap is also exceeded because of exceptions and rollovers that put the annual figure at over 180,000 last year.The flood of H1B applications does make the reviewing and awarding of visas a slow process. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services centre in California is only now processing applications made back in August, for example.That’s bad for companies like Apple and Google, led by Cook and Pichai, which seek far fewer H1Bs. I’ve written before of employees being parked offshore while they await the correct paperwork, and the risks to the US of this situation continuing.In tightening the rules—he can’t unilaterally rewrite them—Trump will help those tech titans that really need the talent, as evidenced by them paying such high salaries for their H1B workers.Yet he won’t be doing much for manufacturers like tool maker Snap-on Inc, where he delivered his broadside. That’s because factories in Asia still offer cost benefits over the US, and Trump’s decision to trade a weaker Chinese currency for assistance on North Korea shows how hard he’s willing to push Beijing in the effort to ease the plight of American workers.By making bold statements about H1Bs, Trump has played to his working-class support base but also diverted attention away from dependence on Chinese manufacturing. And that’s definitely good for Apple. Bloomberg","Companies like Apple and Google, led by Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, seek far fewer H1Bs, while Indian IT firms such as TCS and Infosys dominate H1B visa issuance","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 01 34 PM IST",Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps Cook +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/vircWyjTVzdFf11Xc7Lc8I/DCB-Bank-Q4-profit-down-24-to-Rs5286-crore.html,"Mumbai: DCB Bank Ltd on Friday reported 24% drop in net profit for the fourth quarter on higher provisioning and higher tax expense.Net profit for the quarter was Rs 52.86 crore as compared to Rs 69.53 crore a year ago. Nine analysts polled by Bloomberg had forecast a net profit of Rs 53.72 crore.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, increased 30.57% to Rs 220.26 crore from Rs 168.69 crore last year. Other income increased to Rs 63.59 crore from Rs 61.45 crore in the same period last year, a rise of 3.48%.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rose 11.53% to Rs 254.20 crore at the end of the March quarter from Rs 227.93 crore in the December quarter. On year-on-year basis, it jumped 28.79% from Rs 197.38 crore.Provisions and contingencies rose 11.14% to Rs 33.93 crore in the quarter from Rs 30.53 crore a quarter ago. On a year-on-year basis, it rose 24.51% from Rs 27.25 crore.As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs rose to 1.59% at the end of the March quarter from 1.55% in the previous quarter and 1.51% in the year-ago quarter.Net NPAs rose to 0.79% in the March quarter from 0.74% in the previous quarter and 0.75% in the same quarter last year.On Thursday, DCB Bank shares closed at Rs 179.65 on the BSE, down 1.07% from its previous close, while India’s benchmark Sensex index lost 0.61% to 29461.45 points. Indian Markets are closed for a holiday on Friday.",DCB Bank’s fourth quarter profit was Rs52.86 crore as compared to Rs69.53 crore a year ago on the higher provisioning and higher tax expense,"Fri, Apr 14 2017. 08 59 PM IST",DCB Bank Q4 profit down 24% to Rs52.86 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/VvkgVCERaQta7dkKvOz5qN/Ravi-Venkatesan-In-turbulent-weather-it-only-helps-to-get.html,"Bengaluru: In a conversation with Mint, Ravi Venkatesan, 54, who in addition to being Infosys co-chairman is also chairman of Bank of Baroda, said that one of his immediate priorities would be to align all stakeholders around the transformational journey that Infosys is in the midst of.
Why did you agree to take on this role as co-chairman?Because the board asked me to. But also because I love Infosys. Just like the Idea of India (Sunil Khilnani’s book), the idea of Infosys is a powerful one; Infosys remains a vital institution of our country. It’s important that it continues to flourish.
Was this decision solely the board’s or was it made after some of the founders suggested it?This was a decision of the board. Why did the board decide to go for a co-chairman? Simple because when an aircraft is going through turbulent weather, it only helps to get a co-pilot.
Questions have been raised by some of the founders against the board and even against the management. So how would you get both the founders and board aligned and make sure this is not a distraction for the management? For the record, I was close to the founders of Infosys before I joined the board. What they accomplished was incredible. I hope to remain close to them long after I cease to be on the board. Equally, I believe in the strategy that (CEO) Vishal Sikka has set out for transforming Infosys. I intend to do my very best to see that he succeeds in this mission. Everything else is a sideshow. I don’t see any contradiction here.
How do you rate Vishal’s leadership in the three years that he has been CEO now?I think Infosys has done somethings incredibly well under Vishal’s leadership. We have a bold and differentiated strategy which customers are excited about; customer satisfaction is at an all-time high. Most employees are energized by the vision and strategy. Vishal and his team have built on the momentum they inherited and closed the gap with competition. Many seeds for the future have been sown and we see the green shoots in many areas—in AI, in automation, with initiatives like design thinking. That said, the transformation is a work in progress. Some things aren’t working as intended and course corrections are being applied. There are pockets of underperformance which represent opportunities. We need to rapidly scale up things that are working. There are capability gaps that need to be fixed. But overall, I am optimistic about our prospects.
How will the co-chair arrangement work? How will you delineate roles to make sure there’s no overlap?Sesh (R. Seshasayee) and I have known each other for 20 years and worked on the Infy board for six years, so we are quite comfortable with each other. We have decided that there are some areas that he will continue to lead such as overall leadership of the board or investor outreach while in other areas like strategy or talent I will work more closely with Vishal and his team. We have decided that we will work as partners rather than compartments.
What are your immediate priorities?My first priority is to help align all stakeholders around the transformation journey that we are on. The second is to work closely with Vishal in helping build a world class leadership team that can execute the transformation strategy.Your elevation has been seen positively and the general view is that relations between the board and the founders will improve now. What’s your take on that and how do you intend to repair relations with the founders?I have the greatest respect for the founders of Infosys and especially for Mr (N.R. Narayana) Murthy who has been a mentor and friend for a long time. I believe that everyone wants the same thing—which is to see Infosys flourish and prosper from the incredible opportunities that are being thrown up by technology shifts. The board and leadership team wants this. Investors want this. Employees want this. The founders want this. However, this is a journey through uncharted waters and so the key is to earn the trust of all stakeholders so we stay together through the ups and downs of this voyage. Trust really is the key. This requires intense, honest and ongoing dialogue. It also requires courage, willingness to experiment, assimilate feedback, learn and change.After a stellar year in 2015-16, the last 12 months have been slow by Infy’s lofty standards. What in your opinion needs to be fixed immediately in order to get back the company to industry-leading growth?This has been a tough year for everyone with growth slowing and severe commoditization. Infy’s performance must be seen not just in absolute terms but in the context of the industry. Vishal has already commented on our performance and what he and the team will do. I personally believe we have to more aggressively move investments and our brightest people from more commoditized areas towards our best growth prospects which are in areas such as digital, cyber security, AI, IOT and so on. Our job as a board is to support management in moving much more quickly on the many opportunities we have.Will you reduce your other board commitments now that you’re taking up this role? Will you remain chairman at BoB?The transformation of BoB is also a work in progress. (P.S.) Jayakumar and his team have worked really hard and we are seeing the green shoots of their labour. I would love to see it through if that’s what the government also wishes.","Ravi Venkatesan, who was appointed as Infosys co-chairman Thursday, says the idea of Infosys is a powerful one and it’s important that it continues to flourish","Fri, Apr 14 2017. 04 46 AM IST","Ravi Venkatesan: In turbulent weather, it only helps to get a co-pilot" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/483rDy6StDKQFrunSOlt2I/Facebook-for-everyone-and-not-just-high-end-says-Mark-Zuc.html,"New York: Facebook does innovation to serve “everyone” in the community and not just the “high end”, its chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has said in an apparent swipe at Snapchat boss’s reported “poor countries” remark that triggered a controversy in India. “I think one thing that people probably don’t think about as much as we do is innovation to serve everyone in the community, not just the high end, right?,” Zuckerberg told Tech Crunch on the sidelines of the annual Facebook developer conference (F8) at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California on Tuesday. When asked about the perception of Facebook being less innovative, Zuckerberg said, “I guess I’m not that worried about that. I mean, I feel like we do different kinds of work in different areas. I mean, I think certainly, no one who looks at the solar-powered planes that we’re building or the satellites that were making, and thinks that that stuff isn’t interesting.” Zuckerberg, 32, said we focus on a lot of things like Facebook Lite. It’s up to 200 million people in like a year...I tend to worry more and think more about the substance of what our community actually wants, Tech Crunch reported. Snapchat is strongly denying allegations by a former employee Anthony Pompliano, who alleged in a lawsuit that Spiegel had once shot down his suggestion to pursue growth in certain international markets. Pompliano alleged that Spiegel said Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India and Spain. Snapchat had refuted the reported claims of a former employee who alleged that its CEO Evan Spiegel made negative comments about the Indian market, saying the multimedia mobile app is for everyone and the company is “grateful” to its Indian users. Spiegels remarks caused an uproar in India where users are quickly uninstalling the Snapchat app.","Facebook does innovation to serve ‘everyone’ in the community, says Mark Zuckerberg in the face of Snapchat boss’s reported ‘poor countries remark ","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 03 05 PM IST","Facebook for ‘everyone’ and not just high end, says Mark Zuckerberg " +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/GxeLZ1dVAqWO88zUyw3HuN/Beware-the-weak-debt-tail-wagging-emerging-markets.html,"Singapore: It’s not often that the International Monetary Fund warns of a risk to global financial stability at its spring meeting in Washington, and almost immediately evidence jumps out of a bank earnings report in Mumbai.That’s what happened on Wednesday. The IMF released analysis showing an alarming buildup of vulnerable corporate debt—the kind where operating profit is falling short of interest payments—in India, Indonesia, China, Turkey and Brazil. And right on cue, Yes Bank Ltd, an Indian lender that raised fresh money from equity investors only last month, reported a near-doubling of its gross non-performing assets to 1.52% at the end of March, from 0.85% in December.India has many troubled state-run lenders; Yes Bank is not one of them. The spike in its soured loans is due to the cement units of Jaiprakash Associates Ltd. The builder of India’s sole Formula One track is a distressed borrower with a US currency bond due in September that’s trading below 42 cents on the dollar. Its cement assets are in the process of being sold to billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla, so Yes Bank will probably get repaid after all.Still, corporate leverage is a worry for emerging markets like India precisely because a disproportionately large chunk of it can be found on rickety balance sheets like Jaiprakash’s. The obligations of companies that have an interest coverage ratio of less than one account for 22% of total debt in India, 17.5% in Indonesia, and almost 13% in China.Worse, as the IMF notes, a rise in global risk premiums alone would add $135 billion to this weak tail of debt distribution. Protectionism is the other way for the back end to get longer. The Trump administration’s trade policies should matter less to commodity exporters such as Russia or Saudi Arabia, but China’s corporate debt profile could weaken sharply.Also read: New RBI rules on provisioning, bad loans seen taking a toll on banks Luckily for Indonesia, its banking system is in reasonably good shape. India, South Africa, Russia and China face a double whammy. Their lenders may not have enough profit—or capital—to absorb a further souring of corporate debt. After making additional loan-loss provisions, between 45 and 77% of corporate loan assets in these markets would be with banks that have Tier 1 capital ratios below 10%.When it comes to company profitability, the weak tail of debt is already wagging the dog in India. If it grows any longer because of risk premiums or protectionism, other emerging economies may not be all that safe either. Bloomberg",Corporate leverage is a worry for emerging markets like India precisely because a disproportionately large chunk of it can be found on rickety balance sheets ,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 01 06 PM IST",Beware the weak debt tail wagging emerging markets +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/y8CpNlB6dX6eBjMi7R8BqK/Dewan-Housing-Finance-may-sell-majority-stake-in-Aadhar-Hous.html,"
Mumbai: Mortgage lender Dewan Housing Finance Corp. Ltd (DHFL) plans to sell a majority stake in its Aadhar Housing Finance Ltd unit, two people aware of the development said. Aadhar Housing Finance, which provides housing loans for low- and middle-income customers, had a loan book of Rs1,736 crore as of 31 March 2016. DHFL has hired investment bank Rothschild to find a buyer, one of the two persons said on condition of anonymity.International Finance Corp. (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, holds about a 20% stake in Aadhar Housing.“The process has been just launched and it is too early to talk about potential investors. But, there would be serious interest from private equity investors,” the second person said, also on condition of anonymity. It was too early to talk about valuation, but it could be anywhere between 1.5-3 times the loan book, he added.Established in 2011, Aadhar Housing has operations in 13 states including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar, which account for 72% of India’s population, according to the company website. It lends to those with income levels of between Rs60,000 and Rs6 lakh per annum. Home loans are capped at Rs25 lakh. In FY15, Aadhar Housing’s loan book stood at Rs933 crore.Aadhar disbursed Rs1,032 crore in the first nine months of FY17.An email, text messages and several calls made to a DHFL spokesperson did not elicit any response. An email sent to IFC also did not elicit any response. A Rothschild spokesperson declined to comment.Housing credit growth slowed to 16% from a year earlier, taking overall housing credit to Rs13.7 trillion in the year ended 31 March from Rs12.4 trillion in the previous year, according to a March report by rating agency ICRA Ltd.The affordable housing segment is likely to continue to grow at a faster pace than the industry average, supported by the government’s efforts to address supply, demand and affordability issues. Higher allocations by the government, providing infrastructure status to affordable housing projects and extension of the credit-linked subsidy scheme, which, coupled with the current low-to-moderate penetration levels, are likely to help growth in the affordable housing segment, the ICRA report added.With the prospects of the luxury real estate market remaining bleak, more builders are shifting their focus to the affordable housing sector in India, which may create increased revenue for housing finance firms in India. Besides, the government’s push for affordable housing also created a boom in this space. A new credit-linked subsidy scheme for the middle-income group with a budget of Rs1,000 crore has been launched by the Union government. As part of its vision of ‘Housing for All by 2020’, credit-linked subsidy scheme was launched under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana programme targeted at the middle-income group earning as much as Rs18 lakh a year.Against the backdrop of increased demand in affordable housing , a handful of leading home financiers are raising funds. Discussions are on with private equity (PE) investors to raise money to meet expansion plans.In February, Mumbai-based Home First Finance Co. India Pvt. Ltd said private equity firm True North was in advanced talks to acquire a majority stake in Home First Finance for around $100 million. Shubham Housing Development Finance Co. Pvt. Ltd is looking to raise around $100 million from PE funds, as the company looks to increase its loan portfolio and expand its network nationally, Mint reported last year.Aspire Home Finance Corp. Ltd, the mortgage lending unit of Motilal Oswal Group, is also in the market to raise funds.Expanding its presence in a segment that offers loans for low-cost houses, IFC announced its plan to invest in three housing finance firms—Aspire Home Finance, Micro Housing Finance Corp., and Aptus Value Housing Finance India Ltd—through non-convertible debentures.The US-based PE fund Carlyle had purchased New Silk Route-controlled financial services firm Destimoney in February 2015, which also resulted in an indirect acquisition of a 49% stake in PNB Housing Finance Ltd.",Dewan Housing Finance has hired investment bank Rothschild to find a buyer for its 80% stake in Aadhar Housing Finance,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 47 AM IST",Dewan Housing Finance may sell majority stake in Aadhar Housing Finance +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/OYPeKj8nhUjmkb1qIrCPGP/Govt-RBI-have-not-agreed-on-bad-debt-cleanup-plan-SS-Mun.html,"Mumbai: The Indian government and the Reserve Bank of India had not yet reached an agreement on a new plan to clean up the record troubled debt accumulated at the country’s lenders, S.S. Mundra, a deputy governor at the central bank, said on Thursday.Mundra, in an interview with CNBC TV18, added it would be “difficult to put a timeline” on when consensus could be reached, but said it “could be very near”.Investors have been waiting for India to come up with a new plan on how to deal with almost $150 billion stressed assets at banks after finance minister Arun Jaitley said last month it would soon announce new action.Mundra said among the considerations would be how to provide more capital for the banks, making it important to get consensus from the government, which owns majority stakes in nearly two dozen lenders that together dominate India’s banking system. Reuters","RBI deputy governor S.S. Mundra says it is ‘difficult to put a timeline’ on when the consensus be reached over bad debt cleanup plan, but it ‘could be very near’","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 49 PM IST","Govt, RBI have not agreed on bad debt cleanup plan: S.S. Mundra" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/CQwRnl4scqquCQgDXtUOHP/RBIs-PCA-norm-for-greater-regulatory-action-on-banks-Fitch.html,"New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s ‘prompt corrective action’ (PCA) framework suggests a greater willingness to regulatory action to address problems of struggling banks, Fitch Ratings said on Thursday. However, its implementation is only likely to be effective if it is matched by credible plans to address banks’ significant asset quality issues and capital shortages, it said. The RBI has tightened the thresholds—for capital ratios, non-performing loans (NPLs), profitability and leverage—at which banks enter the PCA framework. “This appears to be an acknowledgement of the significant asset quality stress in the system and that more banks are in need of regulatory intervention,” the US-based agency said. It said PCA was previously viewed as an extraordinary step, which the RBI urged banks to make great efforts to avoid. That now looks likely to change. “More than half of state-owned banks would breach at least one of the new thresholds, mainly owing to high NPLs, based on their latest financial reports,” it said. ALSO READ: Govt, RBI have not agreed on bad debt cleanup plan: S.S. MundraThe gross NPAs of public sector banks have risen from Rs5.02 lakh crore at the end of March 2016 to Rs6.06 lakh crore in December 2016. The new PCA framework will be invoked on the basis of the banks’ 2016-17 financials. The RBI has also given itself greater discretion in terms of the measures it can use to intervene in banks once they fall under the PCA framework, which suggests it has recognised a need to take corrective action at an earlier stage when banks run into difficulties. Fitch said the previous PCA, in contrast, explicitly reserved the most interventionist actions for banks that had breached more extreme thresholds. “It is possible that intervention could involve forcing banks to conserve capital, if other actions do not address problems. The risk of non-performance on bank capital instruments may, therefore, have risen,” it said, adding the actual impact of the new rules will depend on how the RBI uses them. The RBI has recently tightened the PCA rules requiring regulatory action on lenders if they fall short of capital or exceed bad loan limits. According to PCA framework, banks are assessed on three grounds—asset quality, profitability and capital ratios. Not meeting the requirements in any of these parameters could lead to RBI action on banks. The actions could include stricter norms for lending, branch expansion, management change and asset reduction. “These circulars might weigh on bank earnings in the next round of reports. Should the additional disclosures reveal weaknesses that are greater than expected, there could be further pressure on the banks’ Viability Ratings,” the agency said. Under the amended PCA norms the scope for possible regulatory actions has been broadened, but it remains uncertain to what extent the RBI will use the tools it has just made available, it added: “The RBI may use the PCA framework to identify weak banks as candidates for mergers. State Bank of India took over five smaller lenders earlier this month, and further consolidation could be part of the overall strategy to clean up the banking system. However, mergers would also require the support of the government,” Fitch said.",Fitch Ratings says implementation of RBI’s PCA is only likely to be effective if it is matched by credible plans to address banks’ significant asset quality issues ,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 05 33 PM IST",RBI’s PCA norm for greater regulatory action on banks: Fitch +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/wbYkBjZkhbgOGW5zoyMg1L/RBIs-monetary-policy-minutes-show-inflation-primary-concern.html,"Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday.The 6-member monetary policy committee (MPC) which had unanimously decided to keep the repo rate unchanged at 6.25% in early April, had raised a secondary rate called the reverse repo rate, which is used to drain excess funds from banks.The MPC, which aims to bring down inflation to 4% in the medium term, maintained its hawkish stance on inflation, with most members expressing concern over upside risks to core inflation.One member, M. D. Patra, the executive director of the RBI, and in charge of monetary policy, favoured an increase in the repo rate by 25 basis points as a pre-emptive move to curb inflation pressures.But Patra finally agreed with the rest of the panel on holding the rate unchanged for now. Reuters",RBI’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged ,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 12 PM IST",RBI’s monetary policy minutes show inflation primary concern +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/QDwCnej8Q6F1N40kuXftOI/Edelweiss-plans-3040-distressed-asset-deals-a-year-CEO-Ras.html,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 40 AM IST",Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/qYaHgU3tH5Vrfujk9SpFII/Yes-Bank-IndusInd-bad-loan-provisions-rise-on-exposure-to-J.html,"
Mumbai: Private sector lenders Yes Bank Ltd and IndusInd Bank Ltd on Wednesday reported a sharp rise in their quarterly bad loan provisioning, eroding profits, after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) advised lenders to follow stricter standard asset provisioning and disclosure rules.The additional provisioning pertains to their exposure to the Jaiprakash Associates Ltd cement assets that are being purchased by UltraTech Cement Ltd, said three people aware of the matter. Other banks which have the same exposure are also likely to report a jump in their provisions in the March quarter. However, these provisions are likely to be written back as the UltraTech-Jaiprakash deal will be completed by the end of this quarter, they said. UltraTech has agreed to buy Jaiprakash Associates’ cement assets for Rs16,189 crore.ALSO READ: Yes Bank first casualty in RBI’s rule to pull out bad loan skeletonsYes Bank reported a doubling of gross non-performing assets (NPAs) to Rs2,018 crore in the March quarter, as it had to set aside an additional Rs228 crore to cover potential loan losses. Yes Bank’s gross NPAs were at 1.52% at the end of the March quarter and net NPAs were at 0.81%.“The increase in NPA and consequent provision is in conformity with the divergences observed by the RBI as per its compliance process” mentioned in the RBI circular on Tuesday, a Yes Bank statement said. According to the RBI circular, banks have to make disclosures if their asset classification and provisioning diverge from the central bank norms.“As of 31 March 2017, the impact of divergences overall is at Rs1,040 crore on which we have made 25% provisioning. This includes one borrower exposure of Rs911 crore towards a Delhi-based cement company. However, this is a performing asset which has been servicing interest regularly. We expect to recover the amount in the near term,” said Rana Kapoor, managing director and chief executive officer, Yes Bank.Despite the higher provisions, Yes Bank’s net profit for the quarter ended 31 March rose 30% to Rs914 crore from a year ago. Net interest income, or the income that a bank earns by giving loans, increased 32% to Rs1,639.70 crore. This comes on the heels of a strong loan book growth of 34.7% and deposit growth of 28% during the quarter.
“Yes Bank has negatively surprised by almost doubling on gross non-performing assets during Q4, which is likely to overshadow its strong operational performance and strong capital position. Thus, the sentiments are likely to turn weak in short term,” said Lalitabh Shrivastawa, associate vice-president, research, for banking, financial services and insurance, at Sharekhan.IndusInd Bank reported a 21% rise in net profit to Rs751 crore during the quarter, even as it saw its provisions double to Rs430 crore on account of RBI’s latest disclosure and provisioning norms. Gross NPAs rose 8.57% to Rs1,054.87 crore at the end of the March quarter from Rs971.62 crore in the preceding quarter. “We have provided Rs122 crore against a M&A (mergers and acquisitions) case in the cement sector on advice from the RBI. The repayment is due in June 2017, which we are sure is going to happen,” said Romesh Sobti, managing director and CEO, IndusInd Bank.Yes Bank shares edged down 0.03% and IndusInd Bank shares fell 0.63% on a day the BSE’s benchmark Sensex inched up 0.06% to 29,336.57 points.According to Sobti, the bank has closed its third three-year plan and is going to start on its fourth such plan, where it plans to double its presence as well as its profits by March 2020. The bank aims to have a microfinance portfolio of Rs10,000 crore and its rural finance business will contribute 10% of the overall earnings in this period.“Our plan has not taken into account any inorganic play during this period. We are, however, open to inorganic growth as well. We are looking at various opportunities including microfinance,” Sobti said.“IndusInd Bank results were largely in line, and would have been termed strong if not for the one-off provision impact of Rs122 crore on a standard asset exposure. The ability to outperform industry growth as well as maintain less than 1% gross NPA is commendable, and with its strong management and performance delivery, the bank should be attractive for long-term investors,” said Shrivastawa.",Yes Bank and IndusInd Bank’s Q4 results showed surge in bad loans and provisions following RBI’s new asset quality rules and exposure to Jaiprakash Associates,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 40 AM IST","Yes Bank, IndusInd bad loan provisions rise on exposure to Jaiprakash Associates"
+https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8qfOoukBgwpgeNK7p2YMgN/New-RBI-rules-on-provisioning-bad-loans-seen-taking-a-toll.html,"
Mumbai: New RBI guidelines on standard asset provisioning and disclosure of details regarding non-performing assets (NPAs) may create difficulties for Indian banks, thanks to additional provisioning requirements, analysts estimate. Public sector banks are likely to see a 5-15% impact on their earnings going ahead, while private sector lenders would see their earnings hurt by 1-2% due to the new norms, Credit Suisse said in a report on Wednesday. Prior to this advisory, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) required banks to set aside 0.4% as provision against standard assets. The RBI on Tuesday had advised banks to consider setting aside higher provisions even for good loans in stressed sectors.According to Credit Suisse analysts, the hit on profitability has been calculated on a 50 basis points (bps) increase in provisioning owing to the RBI guidelines. The central bank specifically red-flagged the telecom industry, and asked bank boards to review their exposure to the sector by 30 June and consider making provisions at higher rates “so that necessary resilience is built in the balance sheets should the stress reflect on the quality of exposure to the sector at a future date”. According to data available with the RBI, bank exposure to the telecom sector was Rs82,200 crore at the end of February.In a report that Nomura released on Wednesday, analysts note that the risk on the telecom sector is likely to be limited owing to the expected consolidation, with the merger of Vodafone Group Plc and Idea Cellular Ltd. Weaker companies like GTL Infrastructure Ltd have already been classified as non-performing assets. In the case of Reliance Communications Ltd, most of the debt is from foreign banks which limits the impact on Indian banks, while in case of Aircel, even though the research firm sees risk, it is not big enough to change much for the sector. “This, in our view, would lead to faster recognition of future asset quality issues and will help avoid the cliff effect of large and lumpy provisions,” Kotak Institutional Equities Research said in a report on Wednesday.“This approach is closer to Ind-AS (to be applicable from April 2018 CHK onwards) which requires a dynamic approach to provisioning based on expected credit losses, instead of the current system based on days-past-due,” the Kotak report said.In addition to these norms, the regulator has also asked banks to disclose any major divergence in reporting of NPAs, when compared with what it had asked banks to do under the supervisory processes. In situations like the asset quality review (AQR), the central bank had asked lenders to classify certain accounts as NPAs even though the banks had classified them as standard.These norms have already started having an impact on bank results for the quarter ended 31 March. Private sector lenders IndusInd Bank and Yes Bank both reported increased provisions owing to the RBI directions on NPA disclosure.",Credit Suisse report says PSU banks are likely to see a 5-15% and private banks 1-2% impact on quarterly results due to new RBI rules on bad loans and provisions,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 40 AM IST","New RBI rules on provisioning, bad loans seen taking a toll on banks" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/k7bATvPCxbwza7lKGzSzjO/Deposits-under-income-amnesty-scheme-can-be-made-till-30-Apr.html,"New Delhi: The government and the RBI on Wednesday gave time till 30 April for “commensurate deposits” by people who have declared their unaccounted income under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Deposit Scheme (PMGKDS) that allowed parking money in non-interest bearing deposits for four years. The extension of time till 30 April has also been given to banks for uploading details into the RBI’s E-Kuber system. The PMGKDS, which opened on 17 December last year, provided a last chance to holders of undisclosed income to come clean by paying tax and penalty. The scheme closed on 31 March. In a press release, the RBI said, “It has now been decided by the government of India, in case of persons who had filed the declaration by depositing tax, surcharge and penalty under PMGKDS on or before March 31, to allow extension of time till April 30 for banks to upload details into RBI’s E-Kuber system and for depositors to make commensurate deposits, if not already done.” “The date of deposit and uploading would not be extended beyond April 30, 2017,” it added. Separately, the finance ministry said in a notification in this regard, “The effective date of opening of the bonds ledger account shall be the date of receipt of deposits by the Reserve Bank of India from the authorised banks; wherein the due tax, surcharge and penalty has been received till March 31, 2017.” Earlier the “effective date” of opening of the bonds ledger account was the date of tender of cash or the date of realisation of draft or cheque or transfer through electronic transfer. Under the scheme, a person having undisclosed income in the form of cash or deposit in an account maintained with a specified entity (which includes banks and post office) could come clean by declaring such income and pay tax, surcharge and penalty totaling in all to 49.9% of such declared income. Also, a mandatory deposit of 25% of such income was to be made in the zero-interest bearing PMGKDS for four years.","Govt, RBI give time till 30 April for ’commensurate deposits’ by people who have declared their unaccounted income under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Deposit Scheme ","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 10 10 PM IST",Deposits under income amnesty scheme can be made till 30 April +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mT5iMbhlQr572RKNSS2vNI/Lodha-Developers-to-invest-Rs4300-crore-in-construction-to.html,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ","Sun, Apr 23 2017. 03 45 PM IST","Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/O9ybjew1fPKkKMiyKA47ZN/Overbooking-flights-Civil-aviation-ministry-pushes-for-tran.html,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 12 02 PM IST",Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +https://www.livemint.com/Money/GlorZzpWFtl3BgXn5HNGrL/Yes-Bank-first-casualty-in-RBIs-rule-to-pull-out-bad-loan-s.html,"Past mistakes tend to come back to haunt you at the most inopportune moment, and Yes Bank’s financial results are a case in point. The private lender reported a 169% rise in gross bad loans for the fourth quarter and a resultant 66% increase in provisions. Recall that the March quarter of 2015-16 was the worst in terms of asset quality for banks.The stock has gained a massive 39% so far this year, fuelled partly by the news and then subsequent success of its qualified institutional placement (QIP). This impressive rise now seems like an overkill and analysts are already expecting a correction.In Yes Bank’s case, the indiscretion pertains to a single borrower which the bank should have labelled as non-performing asset (NPA) in the previous financial year. What made the lender do it now is the new rule put in place by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday that mandates banks to disclose deviations in the asset quality assessment of the central bank and the lender in question.If the mandated provisioning by the RBI exceeds 15% of published profit after tax of FY16 or additional gross NPA exceeds 15% of the published figure, the lenders have to disclose the same in full in their financial statements for FY17. If the RBI’s asset quality review brought to light a massive pool of decaying loans, Tuesday’s rule makes sure any residual bad loan skeletons come in full view of investors.In Yes Bank’s case, this meant an additional slippage of Rs911.5 crore in the March quarter. But the lender still saw healthy profit growth of 30% from the year-ago period because of a sustained robust growth in core income. The bank’s core metrics including loan growth, net interest income and even net interest margin held up. This perhaps was the saving grace of the quarterly results.The stock trades at a price-to-book value multiple of 3.12 of the estimated earnings of FY18 and for these valuations to be justified, the bank will have to show a quick turnaround in its asset quality.Ever since RBI triggered widespread recognition of stressed loans through its asset quality review (AQR) in 2015, the unease that banks have not revealed the rot in loan books in its entirety has set in. The quarterly results of Yes Bank deepen this unease.","Yes Bank reports 169% rise in gross bad loans for the March quarter and 66% increase in provisions, following RBI’s new asset quality rules","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 08 41 PM IST",Yes Bank first casualty in RBI’s rule to pull out bad loan skeletons +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/utY4oU6ZBD2v0jSzeeS0LL/ACC-profit-falls-89-but-sales-beat-estimates.html,"Mumbai: Cement maker ACC Ltd on Friday reported an 8.9% fall in net profit for the quarter ended 31 March, hurt in part by higher costs. Consolidated net profit for the quarter fell to Rs211.06 crore from Rs231.70 crore a year earlier. Consolidated sales in the quarter rose 9.1% to Rs3,556.70 crore from Rs3,259.95 crore a year earlier. The company follows a January-December financial year.The results, however, beat analyst estimates, helped by higher sales. Four analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected ACC to report consolidated net profit of Rs166.4 crore on sales of Rs3152.5 crore. Revenue in its largest cement business rose 9.3% to Rs3,401.27 crore, helped in part by a price hike, while those in its ready-mix concrete business rose about 10% to Rs285 crore. During the quarter, the company launched two cement products ACC Suraksha and ACC HPC (high performance cement). The company said its total expenses during the March-ended quarter rose 11.8% to Rs3,404.41 crore. Increased government spending on infrastructure development, housing, roads, railways, and irrigation is likely to boost cement demand in the rest of 2017, ACC said in a statement.Separately, ACC said it has appointed Surendra Mehta as company secretary and head of compliance with immediate effect. ACC’s shares closed down 1.03% to Rs1,496.75 a share on the BSE on Friday.","ACC’s net profit for the quarter fell to Rs211.06 crore from Rs231.70 crore a year earlier while its sales in the quarter rose 9.1% to Rs3,556.70 crore from Rs3,259.95 crore a year earlier","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 57 PM IST",ACC profit falls 8.9% but sales beat estimates +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/4gLaUB1aLYz6sE1GiXT9PL/Why-are-brands-turning-to-live-video-streaming.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/GOQYIe1i3FS90FGTnLtQ2H/For-us-time-is-a-very-different-concept-Eric-Vallat.html,,,, +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OigiVBKZEGQOglsVs9VMLO/Crisil-Q4-profit-stays-flat-at-Rs-73-crore.html,"Mumbai: Rating agency Crisil has reported a muted net profit at Rs 73.34 crore for the March quarter, largely due to adverse forex movement and subdued growth in the mid-corporate and MSME segments. Its March 2016 net profit stood at Rs 73.15 crore. Net was impacted by Rs 11.9 crore due to adverse forex movement against a gain of Rs 3.31 crore in the year-ago period. Its consolidated income grew 12% to Rs 402.23 crore, the company said in a statement. “Growth for the quarter was driven by our research segment on account of opportunities in risk & analytics such as model validation, stress testing and regulatory change management,” the company said, adding the ratings business witnessed modest growth despite a continued weak investment climate and soft credit growth.",Rating agency Crisil has reported a muted net profit in March quarter at Rs 73.34 crore while its March 2016 net profit stood at Rs73.15 crore,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 09 PM IST",Crisil Q4 profit stays flat at Rs 73 crore +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/2MRT2krLG6UBJEztYTh90J/IT-dept-seeks-Rs30000-crore-penalty-from-Cairn-for-nonpay.html,"New Delhi: The income tax department has slapped a fresh notice on British firm Cairn Energy, seeking up to Rs30,700 crore in penalties for its alleged failure to pay Rs10,247 crore capital gains tax on time. Within weeks of tax tribunal ITAT upholding levy of retrospective tax, the income tax department first sent a fresh demand note of Rs10,247 crore and another show cause notice asking as to why penalty should not be levied for its failure in paying tax on time and filing of returns. Senior tax department officials said Cairn Energy has sought 10 more days to reply to the show cause seeking levy of penalty. “Capital gains was due on Cairn Energy on March 31, 2007, and due date for filing return was December 2007. But the company filed return by 31 March 2014” after the tax department on 24 January 2014 sent a draft assessment order, an official told PTI. The assessment, the official said, got completed in January 2016 and a final order was issued raising a tax demand of Rs 10,247 crore and another Rs18,800 crore in interest for 10 years. The ITAT, however, in its 9 March order held that while Cairn Energy was liable to pay tax on the 2006 transfer of India assets to newly created Cairn India, prior to its listing, interest cannot be charged as the demand was raised using retrospective tax legislation. The official said the ITAT had not barred levy of penalties and so the fresh notice is being sent. The Income Tax Act provides for penalties of 100 per cent to 300 per cent of the tax due, the official said, adding that the notice sent does not mention of the quantum of penalties the tax department is seeking. “It is a show cause kind of a notice and further action will follow based on the response the company files,” the official said, adding that the tax department has six months from the passage of ITAT order to impose penalty. The penalties are being sought under Section 271 (1)(c) of the Income Tax Act for failing to pay tax on capital gains made. A Cairn Energy spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comments. The company had earlier this month in a notice to shareholders acknowledged that it had received an amended tax demand on 31 March 2017 that also talked about late payment of interest to be charged from February 2016—30 days following the date of the final assessment order.The final assessment order did not include any penalties which may also be applied to the final assessment (potentially up to 300% of any tax finally agreed), it had said. Following the January 2014 draft assessment order, the tax department had restrained the company from selling the residual 9.8% stake it holds in Cairn India. Cairn Energy had in 2011 sold Cairn India to Vedanta.The company had in the shareholder notice stated that it strongly contests the final assessment order and that the enforcement of any tax liability deemed due by the tax department will be limited to India assets, which had a value of about $ 750 million as of 31 December 2016.These assets comprised principally Cairn’s residual shareholding in Cairn India. Cairn also said that it had on 11 March 2015 filed a notice of dispute under The UK-India Investment Treaty in order to protect its legal position and shareholder interests.","Income tax department slaps fresh notice on Cairn Energy seeking Rs30,700 crore in penalties for its alleged failure to pay Rs10,247 crore capital gains tax on time","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 49 PM IST","I-T dept seeks Rs30,000 crore penalty from Cairn for non-payment of tax" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/CtxVD4sNoydqjxwLjWpy2N/Major-oil-producers-reach-agreement-to-extend-output-cuts.html,"Abu Dhabi:Crude-producing countries reached an initial agreement to extend output cuts, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister said on Thursday, as persistently high stockpiles and resurgent output from US shale fields weigh on prices.The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and other major suppliers have failed, after three months of limiting production, to achieve their target of reducing oil inventories below the five-year historical average, Saudi Arabia’s Khalid Al-Falih said. The producers pledged to reduce output for six months starting in January.“Although there is a high level of commitment, we haven’t reached our goal, which is to reach the five-year average,” Al-Falih said. “There is an initial agreement that we might be obligated to extend to get to our target.” Countries participating in the cuts have yet to reach a consensus on prolonging their agreement into the second half of the year, and an extension would not necessarily be for an additional six months. he said.Opec and other producers, including Russia, agreed in December to pump less oil in an effort to counter a global glut. Output shows signs of rebounding in the US, where explorers have added rigs for the past 13 weeks, data from Baker Hughes Inc. show. Opec will decide at a meeting on 25 May whether to prolong its pledged cuts into the second half, the group’s secretary-general Mohammad Barkindo said on Wednesday. Gulf cooperation council countries agreed to push for an extension of cuts in a meeting on Wednesday, Oman oil minister Mohammed Al Rumhy said. The GCC comprises Opec members Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Oman and Bahrain. GCC states are participating in the current deal to cap output.Iran and Venezuela, both members of Opec, have expressed support for an extension of the production cuts, Al Rumhy said. Iran’s oil minister made a commitment to freeze output at 3.8 million barrels a day for the rest of the year on the assumption the cuts are extended beyond June, Kuwait oil minister Issam Almarzooq told reporters.","Opec and other producers, including Russia, agreed in December to pump less oil in an effort to counter a global glut","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 05 58 PM IST",Major oil producers reach agreement to extend output cuts +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/uty5mGM8XNas8EqajJXlEP/Oil-ministry-redflags-Sunday-Closed-move-of-petrol-pump-o.html,"New Delhi: The oil ministry has denounced the decision of some petrol pump operators to keep outlets closed on Sundays, saying such a move will be of inconvenience to the public.“@PetroleumMin neither endorses nor approves of move by a small section of dealers to keep their petrol pumps closed on Sundays,” the ministry said in a series of tweets. Such closure, the ministry said, “by a small section of dealers will lead to inconvenience for the general public”.The tweets, which were retweeted by oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan, also stated that major dealer associations are not participating in the closure.“Major dealers’ federations have clarified that they don’t endorse any closure of petrol pumps on any day,” the oil ministry tweeted.On the issue of Modi’s slogan, the ministry said, “The Prime Minister in #MannKiBaat appealed to People of India not to use fuel once a week and not to dealers to close their pumps on Sundays.”The All India Petroleum Dealers Association, which claims to represent 80% of the 53,224 petrol pumps of public sector oil companies, has said not participating in the closure exercise. The association’s president Ajay Bansal said not participating in the closure.A few petrol pump associations had called for petrol pumps to remain shut on Sundays in eight states following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal to cut down on fuel consumption. Southern states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, parts of Karnataka—mostly around Bengaluru—and some areas of Maharashtra, especially Mumbai, may see petrol pump owners down their shutters on Sundays beginning 14 May to press for higher commission on petrol and diesel they sell.“Our members in 22 states are not going on any protests,” he clarified, adding that the association has called a meeting of the general body in the next few weeks to discuss the agreement PSU oil companies had signed with it in November last year to consider their demand for raising fuel margins.",Oil ministry says the move to keep petrol pumps closed on Sundays will be of much inconvenience to the public,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 24 PM IST",Oil ministry red-flags ‘Sunday Closed’ move of petrol pump operators +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/WbvfHnxvaKU94XhFJ3e6TP/India-said-to-woo-Aramco-for-50-OPaL-sale-as-Kuwait-talks-s.html,"New Delhi/Mumbai: India’s newest petrochemicals maker is seeking to sell half its $4.6 billion facility to Saudi Arabian Oil Co., according to people with knowledge of the matter.Formal talks between ONGC Petro additions Ltd (OPaL). and the world’s biggest oil exporter, known as Saudi Aramco, will start soon, said the people, who asked not to be named as the information isn’t public. OPaL’s earlier talks with a unit of Kuwait Petroleum Corp. about investing in the project stalled last year, the people said.A spokesman for OPaL was unable to comment. Saudi Aramco and Kuwait Petroleum didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.The investment could help Saudi Aramco strengthen its hand in the world’s largest oil consuming region as it prepares for what may be the biggest-ever initial public offering. India’s per capita consumption of polymer products, which is about a third of the global average, is expected to expand as a growing middle class, increasing income levels and higher urbanization drive growth, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said last month while inaugurating OPaL’s plant.“India’s petrochemical business is booming and Aramco will definitely want to be a part of this growth,” said Vaibhav Chowdhry, an analyst at KR Choksey Shares & Securities Pvt. Ltd. The country’s petrochemical market is expected to grow as fast as 12% annually for next several years, he said.Oil & Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC), which owns the biggest stake in OPaL, entered into a preliminary cooperation agreement in January 2014 with Petrochemical Industries Co., a subsidiary of state-owned Kuwait Petroleum. Talks between OPaL and PIC about the Kuwaiti company investing in the Indian project stalled last year, according to the people. OPaL hosted a team from Saudi Aramco at its plant in Gujarat last month, they said.Rising incomeHigher demand for these products prompted billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd and the nation’s biggest refiner Indian Oil Corp. to expand their petrochemicals businesses. Reliance invested about $19 billion to double the capacity of its petrochemicals unit, while Indian Oil will spend $4.6 billion to add new facilities and expand existing units.Saudi Aramco, which is the biggest supplier of crude oil to India, has shown interest in a proposed 60 million tonnes-a-year refinery and petrochemicals project being planned by Indian state refiners on the nation’s west coast, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on 30 March.The Saudi oil major has already invested in integrated refining, chemicals, marketing and distribution companies in the region. Last month, it bought half of a Malaysian oil refinery and petrochemical plant and signed a deal to provide up to 70% of its crude requirements. Separately, the Saudi oil giant signed a $6 billion oil refinery deal with Indonesia’s PT Pertamina.Dahej plantOPaL’s Rs30,000-crore petrochemical project is a dual-feed cracker with a capacity to produce 1.1 million tonnes a year of ethylene and 400,000 tonnes of propylene, according to its website. The plant, located at the Dahej Special Economic Zone, started production last year and aims to capture 13% of India’s polymer sector by next year, according to its website.While investment in OPaL will allow Aramco to access India’s growing market, the Indian company will be able to use the Saudi company’s export channels to push products in the international market, two of the people said. ONGC has said it intends to hold 26%, with state utility GAIL India Ltd owning 15.5%, after half of OPaL is sold. Bloomberg","Formal talks between ONGC Petro additions Ltd (OPaL), and the world’s biggest oil exporter, Saudi Aramco, will start soon","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 56 AM IST",India said to woo Aramco for 50% OPaL sale as Kuwait talks stall +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KNtUNVtc3dQGalhizYS7xO/Indian-techies-IT-firms-fret-as-Donald-Trump-orders-US-visa.html,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 43 PM IST","Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/sqLY7qemti9W9fo6VHvBAL/Waiting-for-green-cards-Indian-H1B-visa-holders-see-hope-in.html,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 19 AM IST","Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/2UP2BGSVZoWjAfKWwfKKMK/Power-utilization-continues-to-drop-due-to-supply-glut-repo.html,"Mumbai: Capacity utilization of generation assets in the power sector continues to drop and scope for improvement in capacity utilization is expected to be limited, highlighting a supply glut in the power sector, according to a Kotak Securities report.“Power demand has grown at a CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) of 3% over the past five years, which means that supply will continue to outstrip demand and keep capacity utilization in check,” Kotak Securities analyst Murtuza Arsiwalla said in an 18 April report. All India power volume, excluding renewable energy, rose 5.5% in the month of March to 101.8 billion units and 4.7% for FY17, according to an Elara Capital report this week. Coal-fired volume rose 6.5% to 83 billion units in March, while plant load factor (PLF) dropped 34 basis points to 63%, the Elara report said. “In March, coal-fired volume is up 6.5% but gas is down 9% and hydro is up by 12%. Government volume is up 8% and private IPP (individual power producer) volume rises by 1,” the report said. India currently has about 320 gigawatt (GW) of installed power capacity compared with peak demand of about 160 GW, and about another 87 GW of assets are under construction. Over 60% of this total installed capacity is coal-based, 16% is in renewable energy, 14% in hydropower, 8% in gas, and the remaining in nuclear and diesel. The private sector owns 44% of the total installed power capacity in the country, while the government controls the remaining. Total loans worth Rs1.2 trillion toward the power sector are currently at risk with an upside risk from cases where power purchase agreement (PPA) tariffs are high, there is an overleveraged parent balance sheet and where PPA rate is unprofitable, according to an 8 March report by JM Financial. About 28,000 megawatt (MW) or 28 GW of power capacity lacks PPAs and about 14GW of these are at a high risk, the report had said. With improved cash flows, the power sector may witness revival in demand by state distribution companies (discoms), but incremental benefits could accrue over the next two-three years, Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd said in a 3 April note.","All India power volume, excluding renewable energy, rose 5.5% in the month of March to 101.8 billion units and 4.7% for FY17, says report","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 39 AM IST",Power utilization continues to drop due to supply glut: report +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Z46Ubc5E6c4lNZj2SGVw9M/How-to-start-an-analytics-journey.html,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 18 PM IST",How to start an analytics journey +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ATONaFop3NvfvEKNXY5Q8L/Elon-Musk-plans-to-link-human-brains-with-computers-in-4-yea.html,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 37 AM IST",Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/4ItpsVUuXrtimX2wLZXlnL/H1B-visa-curbs-India-threatens-US-with-trade-retaliation.html,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 02 PM IST","H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/mbTZKdkBru2fvzUgdavZbI/Maruti-Suzuki-to-launch-all-new-Dzire-next-month.html,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/uoj2t79xZJDpO5LWpHIq2L/KKR-said-to-be-in-advanced-talks-to-acquire-diagnostics-firm.html,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 34 PM IST",KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/sAOesy1LFN3Z66UjHZiK1M/Abbott-withdraws-2-stent-types-from-India-following-NPPAs-m.html,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 10 38 AM IST",Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6AAYRp8Ffn3CYRQBpIbYsL/ShopClues-bets-on-fashion-segment-to-drive-growth.html,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST",ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/MHX8R7YsCi0Mvcr4wz5thO/ICICI-Lombard-net-profit-grows-38-to-Rs-702-crore-last-fisc.html,"New Delhi: ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company on Friday reported an increase of 38.3% in net profit at Rs 701.9 crore for the fiscal ended March 2017. The company’s net profit in the preceding fiscal 2015-16 stood at Rs507.5 crore. The gross domestic premium income of the company rose by 32.6% to Rs 10,725.90 crore, a company statement said. “The robust performance was delivered on the back of increase in policies serviced at 1.77 crore in 2016-17 compared to 1.58 crore policies in 2015-16,” it said. “As we progress through the year, we shall...further expand our insurance solutions proposition as well as enhance our customer service and claim leadership stature backed by innovative technology,” ICICI Lombard, MD and CEO, Bhargav Dasgupta said. ICICI Lombard GIC Ltd is a joint venture between country’s largest private lender ICICI Bank and Canada-based Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited. The general insurance subsidiary of the bank is a non- listed entity though the life insurance joint venture— ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Co—is a listed firm. Shares of ICICI Bank closed 1.34% down at Rs 269.15 apiece on BSE today.",ICICI Lombard’s net profit in the 2015-16 fiscal stood at Rs507.5 crore,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 04 36 PM IST",ICICI Lombard net profit grows 38% to Rs 702 crore in fiscal 2017 +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/cSfu7o26XfmspGNzuwIAQL/EBay-Q2-profit-forecast-falls-short-of-estimates.html,"Bengaluru: EBay Inc. on Wednesday forecast second-quarter profit that fell short of analysts’ estimates, as it spends heavily on revamping and marketing its e-commerce platform amid stiff competition from much larger rival Amazon.com Inc.Shares of the company fell 2.5% to $33 in trading after the bell. San Jose, California-based eBay has been making changes to its platform to lure more shoppers as well as better compete with Amazon. That has meant a shift away from online auctions towards fixed-price sales and product landing pages, which are easier to navigate than the dozens of listings sellers would generate for a single good.EBay has also increased its marketing spending, running a rare TV campaign ahead of last year’s holiday shopping period.Sales and marketing costs climbed 4.5% to $562 million in the first quarter ended 31 March, while product development expenses jumped 16.3% to $278 million. The company’s profit in the second quarter would be affected by “increased investment to drive improved user experiences and to market our brand,” eBay’s finance chief Scott Schenkel said on a call with analysts.EBay said it expects second-quarter adjusted profit of 43 to 45 cents per share. Analysts on average were expecting a profit of 47 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The company, however, stuck to its earlier forecast for full-year adjusted profit of $1.98 to $2.03 per share, expecting more growth in the second half of 2017.The first quarter “showed some early indication that their efforts are beginning to bear fruit,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Aaron Turner, citing more active buyers coming to the site. “We’re still waiting to see” the outcome, he added.EBay said gross merchandise volume—the total value of all goods sold on its websites—rose 2.4% to $20.95 billion in the first quarter. But the result fell short of analysts’ average estimate of $21.06 billion, according to research firm FactSet StreetAccount.The company’s net income rose to $1.04 billion, or 94 cents per share in the quarter, from $482 million, or 41 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, the company earned 49 cents per share, beating analysts’ average expectation of 48 cents per share.Revenue rose 3.7% to $2.22 billion. Analysts on average had expected $2.21 billion. Reuters","EBay’s Q2 profit forecast fell short of analysts’ estimates, as it spends heavily on revamping and marketing its e-commerce platform amid stiff competition from Amazon","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 19 AM IST",EBay Q2 profit forecast falls short of estimates +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/4fOhYqv6yyHetUgWJboGzK/Hindustan-Zinc-Q4-profit-jumps-42-to-Rs-3057-crore.html,"Bengaluru: India’s biggest zinc miner Hindustan Zinc Ltd posted a 42% jump in fourth-quarter net profit on Thursday, topping street estimates, helped by higher income from zinc production and an increase in metal prices.Net profit rose to Rs3,057 crore for the January-March quarter from Rs2,147 crore a year earlier. The profit growth is the biggest in at least nine quarters. Analysts on average had expected a net profit of Rs2,852 crore, according to Thomson Reuters data.Total income rose 72.4% to Rs7,237 crore. The LME zinc prices have risen about 53 percent from March-end 2016 to March-end 2017.Income from zinc operations rose over two fold to Rs5160 crore, said the company, which is a subsidiary of billionaire Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Ltd. The Indian government has a 29.5% stake in Hindustan Zinc.Hindustan Zinc shares rose as much as 5.5% after the results.","Hindustan Zinc’s fourth quarter net profit rose to Rs3,057 crore from Rs2,147 crore a year earlier","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 54 PM IST","Hindustan Zinc Q4 profit jumps 42% to Rs 3,057 crore " +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/EseGEAQFgZa0pAjrQ8FPhK/HUL-counters-Amul-with-new-ad-to-defend-frozen-desserts.html,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/qqNIsJmx7RPVIa4wRG82yM/Mindtree-Q4-profit-plunges-27-misses-estimates.html,"Bengaluru: Information technology company Mindtree Ltd said consolidated net profit fell 27% in the fourth quarter hurt by a foreign exchange loss and fewer client additions. The lower-than-expected profit came in at Rs97.2 crore ($15.04 million) for the three months ended 31 March, marking the fourth consecutive quarterly profit decline.Analysts on average were expecting consolidated profit at Rs105 crore, Thomson Reuters data showed.Mindtree incurred a consolidated foreign exchange loss of Rs28.8 crore in the quarter, against a gain of Rs3.1 crore a year earlier. Clients added in the fourth quarter dropped 46% to 20. Reuters","Mindtree’s lower-than-expected profit came in at Rs97.2 crore for the fourth quarter ended 31 March, marking the fourth consecutive quarterly profit decline","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 52 PM IST","Mindtree Q4 profit plunges 27%, misses estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OiCdEqSEBdIQU9rLsEzrkI/Network18s-net-loss-widens-to-Rs333-crore-in-March-quarter.html,"New Delhi: Network18 Media and Investments Ltd, the media company controlled by Reliance Industries Ltd, on Wednesday said its consolidated loss widened to Rs33.3 crore in the March quarter, from Rs25 crore in the year-ago period. The company, which has interests in television, films and online retailing, generated revenue of Rs3,471.1 crore, up 5% from Rs3,321 crore last year. For the full year to 31 March, the company swung to a loss of Rs233.5 crore from a profit of Rs25.4 crore in the previous year. A decline in advertising spending following demonetization of high-value currency notes, operating losses from new initiatives in regional and digital broadcasting, and losses in the digital commerce businesses contributed to the overall net loss.“The media industry is still facing impact of deferment of advertising spends that kicked in from November-December 2016 on likely slowdown in consumer spending. Further, the revival of advertising spends has been witnessed at a much faster clip for national channels, while regional markets are still recovering with a lag,” Network18 said in a statement. Revenue from TV18 Broadcast Ltd, a unit of Network18 that operates news channels CNN-News18 and CNBC TV18, rose 7% in the year to Rs2,677 crore from Rs2,494.8 crore in the previous year. Net profit declined 90% to Rs19.1 crore. Network18 also runs digital news websites moneycontrol.com, news18.com and firstpost.com as well as the movie and events ticketing website BookMyShow.“The digital space in India continues to become more and more vibrant, as bottlenecks around connectivity and cost reduce substantially. We see the emergence of new formats and services, and rapidly evolving business models and aim to be at the forefront of this change. Our strength in linear media provides us the edge, helping us leapfrog in our aspiration to be a channel-agnostic provider of top-drawer content,” said Adil Zainulbhai, chairman of Network18.","For the full year to 31 March, Network18 swung to a loss of Rs233.5 crore from a profit of Rs25.4 crore in the previous year","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 09 08 PM IST",Network18’s net loss widens to Rs33.3 crore in March quarter +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Hf5YqwaHOS3jaXLswrvMdP/Indias-Upendra-Tripathy-to-head-International-Solar-Allianc.html,"New Delhi: Upendra Tripathy, a former secretary of the renewable energy ministry, has been appointed interim director general of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), which brings together countries with abundant sunshine with the aim of lowering solar energy costs. India has taken a lead role in setting up the ISA—an alliance of 121 sunshine countries situated between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The first treaty-based international government organisation which is headquartered in India, ISA, was launched at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in November 2015.The idea of a solar alliance of countries that receive sunshine for around 300 days in a year was mooted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.Other prominent intergovernmental organisations in the energy sector include the Vienna-headquartered Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA).Confirming his appointment, Tripathy said, “We will be involving all the stakeholders in finding out how the programs can be implemented to mobilise more finances to the solar sector globally and how to help the farmers across the member countries to go for affordable solar pumps so that farmer’s income gets enhanced. It is also equally important that other solar applications address the issue of roti, kapdaa and makaan.”In January last year, Prime Minister Modi and French President Francois Hollande laid the foundation stone of the ISA at Gurgaon. Besides, the World Bank last year signed an agreement with the ISA to mobilize $1 trillion in investments by 2030.One of the ways that the ISA is exploring to reduce costs is to aggregate the demand from member nations and then call for tenders. To start with, this approach is being explored for bringing down the cost of solar powered agricultural pumps.Tripathy, a former Indian Administrative Service officer from the Karnataka cadre, has been closely involved in solar power development in the country. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government raised the target for solar power production in India to 100 gigawatt (GW) by 2022 from 20,000 megawatts (MW) earlier.Experts welcomed Tripathy’s appointment. “Bringing Upendra Tripathy is a good step as he was deeply involved when ISA was envisaged. But then the hurdle of finance for activities of ISA is still there. There is a lot of scope for ISA but let’s see as there is a still a long way to go,” said Rakesh Kamal, a consultant with The Climate Reality Project, an independent organisation working on climate change related issues.“However, India should be proud of hosting ISA. It is a big step for India as ISA is a first of a kind body on a world scale. It also shows our commitment to the world,” he added.The ISA framework agreement was opened for signing up at the Conference of the Parties (COP 22) at Marrakesh in November last year and 25 countries including France, Bangladesh, Brazil and Tanzania have joined it. The assembly will meet after 15 of these signatories ratify the ISA.ISA will have an assembly, a council and a secretariat. The Indian government will support the secretariat for five years, after which would have to generate its own resources. The secretariat has been set up at the National Institute of Solar Energy in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of New Delhi.Queries emailed late on Monday to a spokesperson at the ministry of new and renewable energy remained unanswered till the time of publishing.ISA will also collaborate with other multilateral bodies such as the IEA, International Renewable Energy Agency and the United Nations.Tripathy’s appointment comes in the backdrop of record low Indian solar power tariffs that have raised viability concerns. Solar power project developers placed a record low bid of Rs2.97 per kWh to win contracts for a 750 MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh. A so-called levelized tariff—the value financially equivalent to different annual tariffs over the period of the power purchase agreement (PPA)—of around Rs3.30 per unit will be charged.","Upendra Tripathy, a former secretary of the renewable energy ministry, has been appointed interim director general of the International Solar Alliance","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 06 30 PM IST",India’s Upendra Tripathy to head International Solar Alliance +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/s2HdC72GXU9nD7ydk4JZGN/Rural-Electrification-eyes-Rs10000-crore-renewables-lending.html,"New Delhi: Rural Electrification Corp. (REC), a state-owned backer of India’s power sector, plans to lend billions of rupees to clean-energy projects and equipment makers this fiscal year as part of an expanded push into renewables that will also see it issue green bonds overseas.The non-banking financial company is aiming to triple its clean-energy lending and is expecting to set aside nearly Rs10,000 crore ($1.5 billion) for renewable energy in the financial year ending 31 March, chairman P.V. Ramesh said in an interview.“We’re not only financing projects but also evacuation infrastructure and have been talking with manufacturers of equipment like wind turbines, solar panels and storage batteries,” Ramesh said in an interview in New Delhi where the lender, which has a loan book of Rs2 trillion, is based.REC’s renewables strategy underscores a push by companies associated with conventional power to shift resources toward clean energy. The move, which supports Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s climate goals, also comes as some coal-fired electricity generators struggle to service debts.The lender could issue clean-energy bonds outside India by the end of June, Ramesh said.Lending shift“We are also looking at mobilizing resources from raising green bonds in Europe and social impact bonds in Scandinavia,” he said.Tesla Inc., the maker of electric vehicles, is another company that REC would be interested in backing should it decide to establish a presence in India, Ramesh added. Tesla founder Elon Musk tweeted in February that the company may enter the Indian market this summer.With demand from equipment manufacturers largely unknown at the moment, lending to the sector would be separate from what REC wants to set aside for renewable projects, Ramesh said.The shift in lending at REC takes place against a backdrop of an expansion in clean energy led by Modi and his promise to install 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable capacity by 2022.Between April 2016 to February, India added 8 GW of new renewable energy, reaching total installed capacity of 51 GW, according to government data. Meanwhile, thermal capacity grew by 8 GW in the same period, 36% lower than the previous year.Saddled with power plants running under their maximum capacity, India’s thermal-energy producers like NTPC Ltd and RattanIndia Power Ltd have been considering setting up solar-power projects on land initially intended for coal-fired facilities.REC, which has traditionally financed large-sized power and related infrastructure projects, is customizing products to suit the needs of clean-energy projects, which are often small compared with conventional plants and much quicker to set up, Ramesh said.“We’re customizing products for each project so it’s tailor-made for each of them because not everyone wants a standard product,” Ramesh said, adding that his company needs to be agile in the new market because the days of lending a billion dollars to a single big project are nearing an end.REC has been appointed by India’s government as the central agency responsible for implementing two nationwide power reform projects aimed at increasing electricity coverage in rural areas through the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana and the financial turnaround of state-owned power retailers through the Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojna (UDAY). Bloomberg","Rural Electrification Corp. (REC) is aiming to triple its clean-energy lending and is expecting to set aside nearly Rs10,000 for renewable energy in this fiscal","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 34 AM IST","Rural Electrification eyes Rs10,000 crore renewables lending push" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8qfOoukBgwpgeNK7p2YMgN/New-RBI-rules-on-provisioning-bad-loans-seen-taking-a-toll.html,"
Mumbai: New RBI guidelines on standard asset provisioning and disclosure of details regarding non-performing assets (NPAs) may create difficulties for Indian banks, thanks to additional provisioning requirements, analysts estimate. Public sector banks are likely to see a 5-15% impact on their earnings going ahead, while private sector lenders would see their earnings hurt by 1-2% due to the new norms, Credit Suisse said in a report on Wednesday. Prior to this advisory, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) required banks to set aside 0.4% as provision against standard assets. The RBI on Tuesday had advised banks to consider setting aside higher provisions even for good loans in stressed sectors.According to Credit Suisse analysts, the hit on profitability has been calculated on a 50 basis points (bps) increase in provisioning owing to the RBI guidelines. The central bank specifically red-flagged the telecom industry, and asked bank boards to review their exposure to the sector by 30 June and consider making provisions at higher rates “so that necessary resilience is built in the balance sheets should the stress reflect on the quality of exposure to the sector at a future date”. According to data available with the RBI, bank exposure to the telecom sector was Rs82,200 crore at the end of February.In a report that Nomura released on Wednesday, analysts note that the risk on the telecom sector is likely to be limited owing to the expected consolidation, with the merger of Vodafone Group Plc and Idea Cellular Ltd. Weaker companies like GTL Infrastructure Ltd have already been classified as non-performing assets. In the case of Reliance Communications Ltd, most of the debt is from foreign banks which limits the impact on Indian banks, while in case of Aircel, even though the research firm sees risk, it is not big enough to change much for the sector. “This, in our view, would lead to faster recognition of future asset quality issues and will help avoid the cliff effect of large and lumpy provisions,” Kotak Institutional Equities Research said in a report on Wednesday.“This approach is closer to Ind-AS (to be applicable from April 2018 CHK onwards) which requires a dynamic approach to provisioning based on expected credit losses, instead of the current system based on days-past-due,” the Kotak report said.In addition to these norms, the regulator has also asked banks to disclose any major divergence in reporting of NPAs, when compared with what it had asked banks to do under the supervisory processes. In situations like the asset quality review (AQR), the central bank had asked lenders to classify certain accounts as NPAs even though the banks had classified them as standard.These norms have already started having an impact on bank results for the quarter ended 31 March. Private sector lenders IndusInd Bank and Yes Bank both reported increased provisions owing to the RBI directions on NPA disclosure.",Credit Suisse report says PSU banks are likely to see a 5-15% and private banks 1-2% impact on quarterly results due to new RBI rules on bad loans and provisions,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 40 AM IST","New RBI rules on provisioning, bad loans seen taking a toll on banks" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mzpSmk3P7Nqi1bPqFPBEQI/HPCL-signs-pact-with-Rajasthan-govt-to-set-up-refinery.html,"New Delhi: State-run Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) on Tuesday signed an agreement with the Rajasthan government to set up a 9 million tonne joint venture refinery at a cost of Rs43,129 crore, a statement from oil ministry said. HPCL will hold 74% equity in the joint venture, HPCL Rajasthan Refinery Ltd, while the state government will hold the balance. The agreement signed in the presence of oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje entitles the company to a viability gap funding of Rs1,123 crore a year for 15 years from the year of commercial production. The funding will be in the form of an interest-free loan to be refunded in subsequent 15 years.The project includes a petrochemicals complex too. The proposed refinery will be able to process local crude from Vedanta Ltd’s Barmer oil field in the state as well as imported crude. Vedanta, which recently merged its group company Cairn India Ltd with itself, is planning more investments into enhanced oil recovery from its Barmer assets. Anil Agarwal, chairman, Vedanta Group had last December said the group was committed to investing Rs30,000 crore to add 100,000 barrels of oil and oil equivalent over the next three years, primarily from its prolific Rajasthan fields.For the proposed refinery, the state has already allotted 4,800 acres at Pachpadra in Barmer. The statement said quoting Pradhan that construction work will begin in the current financial year and will be completed in four years. Separately, another deal was signed between Rajasthan State Gas Ltd and GAIL Gas Ltd for creating a city gas network in Kota district. India is at present adding its refining capacity in line with growing energy requirement and with an ambition to emerge as a regional refining hub. State-owned refiners which supply autofuel to neighbouring markets like Bangladesh and Nepal are in the process of expanding their presence in these markets.",The joint venture HPCL Rajasthan Refinery Ltd will be able to process local crude from Vedanta’s Barmer oil field in the state as well as imported crude,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 10 42 PM IST",HPCL signs pact with Rajasthan govt to set up refinery +https://www.livemint.com/Money/eg5B7iLOX4PXWYHQkEeEWI/Mixed-outlook-for-oil-firms-in-Q4.html,"
The Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) stock has gained 27% since its December quarter results. However, the appreciation is attributable less to its performance and more to anticipation that Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (the company’s telecom business) may perform better than expected.When RIL announces its March quarter results too, investors will be keenly watching out for updates on Jio, apart from the company’s downstream projects and its capex plans. Its March quarter results are expected to be good despite the fact that the benchmark Singapore gross refining margin (GRM) has declined about 5% sequentially to $6.4 a barrel. Analysts expect RIL to report better GRMs during the March quarter.According to analysts at Nomura Research, RIL’s premium to Singapore GRM will likely improve (the December quarter had a shutdown of the fluidized catalytic cracking unit; also Brent-Dubai crude spreads were favourable). “Petchem (petrochemical) earnings will likely increase further both as Reliance benefits from higher volumes (new capacities) and firmed up margins particularly in aromatics chain,” pointed out Nomura’s March quarter preview for the oil and gas sector.GRM is the realization from turning every barrel of crude oil into finished products and is an important measure of profitability for refining firms.Even as RIL’s numbers may bring good tidings, expectations from oil marketing companies (OMCs)—Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) and Indian Oil Corp. Ltd—are not rosy. Analysts from Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd expect weaker earnings for OMCs due to inventory losses in both refining and marketing, and lower core GRMs year-on-year. With oil prices declining towards the end of the March quarter, OMCs are expected to report inventory losses. However, “full year consolidated earnings should surprise positively, particularly for HPCL and BPCL, due to strong performance in subsidiaries in FY17 vs FY16”, said Jefferies in a report to clients on 6 April.On an average, crude oil prices rose year-on-year and that will reflect positively in price realizations of upstream companies such as Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd and Oil India Ltd. Investors will have to keep a tab on output numbers and production outlook in the near future. So far, both these stocks have underperformed compared to their peers in the oil sector. Given the muted outlook on crude oil prices over the medium term, there is little to suggest the trend in their stock performance will change for the better.","Even as RIL’s numbers may bring good tidings, expectations from oil marketing companies like BPCL, HPCL and Indian Oil are not rosy","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 07 27 AM IST",Mixed outlook for oil firms in Q4 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/m83GjZAfpnMj2T0sMQNhpJ/Green-energy-firms-explore-portfolio-mergers-to-aid-selloff.html,"
India’s clean energy project developers are in talks to merge their portfolios as part of a strategy to achieve scale for selling the assets to overseas investors scouting for large investment opportunities in the country. A case in point is Ravi Jhunjhunwala’s LNJ Bhilwara Group, which is in talks with rivals to merge its wind energy portfolio. Another company following this strategy is Continuum Wind Energy Pte Ltd.Mint reported on 20 February about LNJ Bhilwara Group putting up its wind energy portfolio for sale and hiring Yes Bank Ltd to manage the sale. “The idea here is to create and offer a portfolio which is large and is of interest to big investors,” said a New Delhi-based clean energy projects deal maker aware of LNJ Bhilwara Group’s strategy, requesting anonymity.Another person who also didn’t wish to be named confirmed LNJ Bhilwara Group’s plan and added several firms such as Continuum Wind Energy are exploring a similar strategy. Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners invested $212.03 million in Continuum Wind Energy in 2012.Queries emailed to the spokespersons for LNJ Bhilwara Group and Morgan Stanley remained unanswered. A Yes Bank spokesperson declined to comment in an emailed response.There has been a host of investors such as Australian Government Future Fund, Investment Corporation of Dubai, Singapore’s GIC Pte Ltd, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Development Co. looking to invest in the Indian infrastructure space in sectors such as clean energy. Wind power tariffs have followed the solar route and fell to a record low of Rs3.46 per kilowatt hour (kWh) in a 1 gigawatt (GW) tender by state-run Solar Energy Corp. of India in February. India plans to install 175GW of renewable power by 2022, of which 100GW will be from solar power and 60GW from wind power.Wind is already the mainstay of India’s renewable power. Of about 50,018MW of installed renewable power, about 57.3% (28,700MW) comes from wind alone. Also, India added a record 5,400MW of wind power in 2016-17, exceeding its 4,000MW target.However, a few concerns remain. Payment delays by distribution companies (discoms) to wind and solar projects in India is hurting project costs for companies and posing a challenge to the sector’s growth plans, Mercom Capital Group said in a report earlier this month.","There has been a host of investors such as Investment Corporation of Dubai, Singapore’s GIC looking to invest in sectors such as clean energy in India","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 21 AM IST",Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-off +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0eXiDa4cu92HpPI4bxDenJ/Finance-ministry-in-talks-with-PSBs-to-get-a-fix-on-growth-p.html,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,"Sun, Apr 23 2017. 01 09 PM IST","Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/A5zgbPsz1o1gNj5Cv1QoyL/HDFC-Bank-defies-a-challenging-environment.html,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 06 47 PM IST",HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q20gy9h6tzZ74RjldRbtqK/HDFC-Bank-headcount-falls-for-2nd-quarter-down-by-6100-in.html,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 28 PM IST","HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/OeQN4QZK0cvMqa4N8bis8N/HDFC-Bank-Q4-profit-rises-18-to-Rs3990-crore-bad-loans-st.html,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 09 13 PM IST","HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/m9S8uI8tDR1bh3nZ2DLUQI/What-the-IMF-global-financial-stability-report-says-about-In.html,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 51 AM IST",What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Ymo3EawZpeIMPFNZe3XexM/One-MPC-member-mulled-a-repo-rate-hike-say-minutes.html,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 54 AM IST","One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o1XkNF6icfWF792xrQgnAL/How-important-is-the-Indian-market-for-the-likes-of-Snapchat.html,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 05 05 AM IST",How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/I9zOulsXPb2kcVSzTenbdJ/How-Infosyss-20-billion-revenue-target-by-202021-is-hurti.html,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/qkKtoHUvBxOSkk9daQ8A5O/Fintech-friction-takes-root-in-Indias-banking-landscape.html,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 12 52 AM IST",Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/oDsH7fRPiOwj8SkFZhdfPI/Cyrus-Mistrys-family-firms-challenge-NCLT-order-on-maintain.html,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 01 41 AM IST",Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/KUE7JGODJlGgYdmQ2VX5KM/Making-predictions-with-Big-Data.html,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains","Tue, May 02 2017. 10 20 PM IST",Making predictions with Big Data +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/OWeeqJSiHwcDFrOH9kJQoN/Govt-IT-data-on-cloud-system-must-be-stored-within-India-Me.html,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 13 PM IST",Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/8SLYfe8DQr8qLUNAYsn58L/Nasscom-hopes-to-overcome-US-Australia-visa-curbs.html,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 20 PM IST","Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +https://www.livemint.com/Money/NLKJUCO9dOhrim5Y82wBEL/RBI-mantra-Look-forward-to-deftly-manage-cash-and-forex.html,"
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has a time-tested response every time rupee liquidity swells to an unmanageable surplus or is too deep in deficit and undermines the central bank’s ability to intervene in the foreign exchange market: it intervenes in the forward market.The central bank is back to doing this now, to not just stem the rupee’s rise but also prevent the undesired outcome of adding to an already colossal level of liquidity. For every dollar it buys, RBI releases rupees into the banking system, which is already awash with surplus cash after demonetisation. By buying forward contracts instead, the central bank can postpone such an infusion.RBI’s net outstanding position in the forward market in February trebled to $2.84 billion, according to data from the central bank. Movements in the forward rates ultimately influence the day’s spot market as well. The objective of stemming the rupee’s rise is met while deferring the consequence on liquidity.Of course, RBI turned a net buyer of dollars in February by buying $1.19 billion in the spot market. But this is not a large mop-up in the wake of an inflow of $2.45 billion into local bond and equity markets. Consequently, the rupee gained 1.76% during the month despite intervention.RBI has used the forward market intensively to manage liquidity, outflows and the exchange rate at several times in the last four years. The most recent case was during the redemption of the foreign currency non-resident deposits. A few years ago, when D. Subbarao was governor, it used the forward market whenever an immediate impact of forex intervention on domestic liquidity was not desired. The extent of intervention using forwards increased during Raghuram Rajan’s tenure and continues under current governor Urjit Patel. The reason for this increase in the central bank’s frequency and scale of visits to the forex market lies in a change in RBI’s liquidity stance. Under Rajan, the central bank had adopted the thinking that a liquidity deficit is best for transmission of policy rate changes onto market and loan rates. Now the stance has changed towards a neutral level of liquidity.Given that the problem now is one of plenty, it makes perfect sense for RBI to rely on the forward market to prevent the rupee from appreciating sharply without adding to liquidity on an immediate basis.","For every dollar it buys, RBI releases rupees into the banking system, which is already awash with surplus cash after demonetisation","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 07 59 AM IST",RBI mantra: Look forward to deftly manage cash and forex +https://www.livemint.com/Money/hRYRY4ur3QSMspGq0EJIKJ/Flipkarts-largest-funding-may-also-be-the-trickiest-to-navi.html,"
Flipkart announced a massive funding round this week, after a gap of nearly two years. Although, at $1.4 billion, it’s the company largest, the backdrop for the funding is markedly different from previous funding rounds. About two years ago, in July 2015, the e-commerce firm had raised $2.4 billion in three funding rounds over a 12- month period. Funds flowed in easily back then, not only for Flipkart, but also for its competitors and all forms of start-ups. Companies used these funds to provide huge discounts and gain customers, which in turn brought in a new set of investors.ALSO READ: Why Flipkart valuation wasn’t hurt by multiple markdownsIn the past 18 months or so, investors have become a lot more discerning. They’ve realized India’s e-commerce opportunity is no longer as big as it once seemed to be. Their focus has shifted to unit economics and other efficiency parameters. Flipkart said in a meet organized by an investment bank late last year that its cash burn has reduced by around 25% from peak levels. The flip side is that growth has faltered in the past year.Among other things, the large funding by Tencent Holdings Ltd, eBay Inc. and Microsoft Corp. can be seen as a sign of approval for this more sensible strategy. As such, unlike previous years, Flipkart will be expected to use its freshly raised funds far more cautiously. According to an analyst at a multinational bank, the new investors may well have included terms where funds are released based on certain milestones being met. With Amazon.com Inc. breathing down its neck with high levels of discounting in the Indian market, Flipkart could be walking a very tight rope, trying to protect market share as well as improve unit economics and reduce cash burn.ALSO READ: Flipkart’s Sachin, Binny Bansal no more billionaires after raising $1.4 billionHaving said that, Flipkart’s latest funding round provides the reassurance that there are still some takers for the Indian e-commerce story. In particular, that there is room for another large company alongside Amazon. While the growth opportunity may not be as big as estimated earlier, it is still clearly big enough to attract some investors. When funding had nearly dried up in the past 18 months, financial investor Morgan Stanley Institutional Fund Trust marked down Flipkart’s valuation to around $5.4 billion, or about 65% lower compared to its valuation in July 2015. The latest funding values the firm at $11.6 billion on a post-money basis. Of the total equity issuance of $1.4 billion, about $200-250 million is estimated to be in exchange for eBay’s India business. The net inflow of $1.2 billion or so should easily suffice in terms of funding cash burn for another two years. If Flipkart manages these funds well, and uses it to gain scale and improve unit economics, it may continue to find new investors; especially since most of its competitors are gradually shutting shop.","If Flipkart manages the new funds well, and uses it to gain scale and improve unit economics, it may continue to find new investors","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 03 15 AM IST",Flipkart’s largest funding may also be the trickiest to navigate +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/nosAVM50qToYZylBipBDcO/Is-Flipkarts-latest-fundraising-a-game-changer.html,"
On 10 April, Flipkart announced a new funding round and the acquisition of eBay India. Let us look at this development through the filter of something previously discussed in this column: the winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce.Since there is little differentiation between e-commerce firms, price becomes the sole differentiator. The company with most money to burn wins, while others sell out, usually to the winner. This may be simplistic, but it captures the essence of how e-commerce has played out globally.India is witnessing that scenario right now. Flipkart just announced acquisition of eBay India, and is likely to strike a similar deal with Snapdeal. Does this change the endgame? Can Flipkart outlast Amazon India? Or somehow settle into a stable duopoly beating the global trend? Or is it just delaying the inevitable? And what of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd?The winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce has not changed at all. And it will not until firms find a way to differentiate. Do customers see any real difference between Amazon and Flipkart? Both have great customer service, and similar merchandise. Even the frills are the same: if one has Amazon Prime, the other has Flipkart First. Does this acquisition change the endgame for Flipkart? Let us go through the arguments.Unique positioning of the acquired company: if the acquired company has unique strengths, it probably wouldn’t be up for acquisition. One argument could be that the target is strong in a certain segment such as a product category or geography. That may be true but it does not take that much effort or time to build from scratch. One has to only see how Amazon India has grown.Synergies with the acquired firm: the less said about this, the better, but we would be happy to be proven wrong. Flipkart’s deal-making has always been more about value buying, or common investors triggering a consolidation, than tapping synergies. Making the most of the opportunity of Rocket Internet pulling out of India, Flipkart snapped up Jabong for a song at $70 million. Its acquisition of Letsbuy and Myntra was triggered by common early stage investors. Its next buy Snapdeal, if the deal closes, will happen for similar reasons. With no home-grown mid-stage to late-stage venture funding available in India, Snapdeal is left with no choice but to sell.One oft-heard argument is that by buying everyone else, Flipkart will acquire such scale that it will either be able to survive stand-alone or force either Alibaba or Amazon to buy it. Given that all e-commerce firms are losing money, being bigger may just mean losing more money. Also, scale and customer base are meaningful only when entry barriers exist and there is some sort of customer loyalty. Otherwise, both are just vanity metrics.However, it is true that by acquiring all other rivals, Flipkart’s ability to present itself as the sole alternative to Amazon to investors and customers increases.There are other reasons for investors to back such acquisitions. The incentives of fund managers may not be aligned with those of the company. Many such deals are driven by investors such as Tiger Global and SoftBank, explained a limited partner (an investor in venture capital and private equity firms) from Hong Kong. In Flipkart’s case, Tiger has been an investor in the company for more than seven years and has to start thinking of providing liquidity to its investors. A deal to acquire Snapdeal, with an added deal for money from SoftBank (the single largest shareholder in Snapdeal), may provide this, this person added.ALSO READ: Why Flipkart’s valuation wasn’t hurt by multiple markdownsNew investors may be driven by a different logic, the limited partner explained. This could be strong liquidation preference terms that reduce downside risk. Or it could just be the opportunity to back a winning horse—or, at least, one that has a better chance of at least being there when the last race is run. Shrija Agrawal is Mint’s deals editor. Due Diligence will cover issues in India’s venture capital, private equity and deals space.","Flipkart’s $1.4 billion fundraising, acquisition of eBay India and a likely Snapdeal buyout shows the winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce hasn’t changed at all","Wed, Apr 12 2017. 01 57 AM IST",Is Flipkart’s latest fundraising a game changer? +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/GgTaUs5JX4ugJZV3uKaL9N/How-public-sector-bank-CEOs-are-selected.html,"
The Banks Board Bureau has recommended five executive directors of public sector banks for top posts in state-run banks which will fall vacant in coming months. They are Sunil Mehta of Corporation Bank, Dina Bandhu Mohapatra of Canara Bank, Rajkiran Rai of Oriental Bank of Commerce, R.A. Sankara Narayanan of Bank of India and R. Subramaniakumar of Indian Overseas Bank.Within hours of selection, the Bureau put up the names on its website—probably to bring in transparency and ward off any pressure from any quarter to change the names later. In the past, there has been at least one instance where the Bureau’s recommendation was not accepted by the government, the majority owner of these banks.The selection process of these five gentlemen also marks a departure from the past. This is for the first time the so-called assessment centre exercises were conducted to select the CEOs of India’s public sector banks. Assessment centre is a catch-all term which refers to a standardized evaluation of behaviour, based on multiple evaluations, including job-related simulations, interviews, and psychological tests. An assessment centre is defined as “a variety of testing techniques designed to allow candidates to demonstrate, under standardized conditions, the skills and abilities that are most essential for success in a given job”.ALSO READ | A paper tiger called Banks Board BureauOne critical component of this is psychometric tests—a standard and scientific method to measure individuals’ mental capabilities and behavioural style. Such a test helps identify the hidden aspects of candidates that are difficult to extract from a face-to-face interview. The Bureau sought the assistance of Egon Zehnder, a global executive search, talent strategy and leadership development firm, to conduct such tests.Do these five candidates have great leadership qualities? I don’t know about that, but they seem to be the best in the talent pool from which the Bureau had to select the prospective CEOs. Unlike in the past, when the government invited applications from the private sector for the top jobs in state-run banks, this time around the selection was done from among the talent available within the industry.In 2015, two large public sector banks got CEOs from the private sector—P.S. Jayakumar (Bank of Baroda) and Rakesh Sharma (Canara Bank). A former Citibanker, Jayakumar was heading VBHC Value Homes Pvt. Ltd as managing director and CEO while Sharma was running Lakshmi Vilas Bank. Unlike Jayakumar who had worked in the private sector throughout his career, Sharma had spent three decades with the State Bank of India (SBI) before his 18-month stint in the old private bank. The government is still watching the experiment of managing a state-run bank with a private sector executive before opening the doors for more.Indeed, the selection process of the five CEOs is innovative, but no less interesting is the act of swapping the top jobs of two banks last month. The Bureau was not involved in that exercise as its mandate is selection of the CEOs of public sector banks and it doesn’t have a say in lateral entries. The government swapped the top posts of IDBI Bank Ltd and Indian Bank. Kishor Piraji Kharat, the CEO and MD of IDBI Bank since 18 August 2015, has been made the boss of Indian Bank and Mahesh Kumar Jain, MD and CEO of the Chennai-headquartered bank since 2 November 2015, is now heading the Mumbai-based IDBI Bank.Why has this been done? There have been various theories doing the rounds. Many believe that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is instrumental in doing this. This is probably not correct. I understand that the banking regulator expressed concerns about the health of IDBI Bank and wanted the government to strengthen its management bandwidth but did not recommend shifting its CEO to another bank.Yet another theory is Jain has been rewarded for its brilliant performance in Indian Bank and Kharat had to go as he had not managed IDBI Bank well. This is also difficult to believe as neither the top post in IDBI Bank can be a reward for a performer and nor the CEO’s job in Indian Bank is a punishment for a non-performer. IDBI Bank is a much larger bank than Indian Bank, but it’s sick. Indian Bank is roughly half the size of IDBI Bank in terms of assets but in the first three quarters of fiscal year 2017 it recorded a net profit of Rs1,086 crore against a Rs1,958 crore loss by IDBI Bank. It is better capitalised (13.89% capital adequacy ratio) than IDBI Bank (11.29%) and has far less bad assets (4.76% net bad loans and 7.69% gross bad loans) than IDBI Bank (9.61% and 15.16%, respectively). Bad loans of IDBI Bank have doubled since September 2015 when the RBI put in place the so-called asset quality review and its overall stressed assets are more than one-fourth of the loan book.Of course, Jain can take up his new assignment as the biggest challenge in his career and if he turns around the bank, that will be an achievement. Since Indian Bank is in a far better shape than IDBI Bank on every count, its top job can never be a punishment for any professional.Most importantly, if one is not found suitable to manage one particular bank, should the person be given another bank to run—or should she be asked to hang up her boots? Clearly, there is something else behind this development which we do not know. Incidentally, the government took extra care in the appointments of CEOs at five big banks, IDBI Bank being one of them. In 2015 (the Bureau didn’t exist at that time), the government invited applications from the private sector to fill in the top posts at these banks—Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank, Bank of India, Punjab National Bank and IDBI Bank.Jayakumar was picked for Bank of Baroda; Sharma for Canara Bank; Melwyn Rego, deputy managing director of IDBI Bank, for Bank of India; Usha Ananthasubramanian, chairman and MD of Bharatiya Mahila Bank (this has been merged with SBI) for Punjab National Bank; and Kharat, an executive director of Union Bank of India, for IDBI Bank.Kharat had spent only five months as an ED of Union Bank, but in his previous 37 years with Bank of Baroda, he had held several positions in India and overseas, including setting up and heading the bank’s subsidiary in Trinidad and Tobago.The government had appointed global management consulting firm Hay Group (which was acquired by Korn Ferry in end 2015), to identify the candidates for the top jobs in these five banks. Ironically, Jain who has now been called to steer IDBI Bank out of the mess, had applied for the top job at one of these banks at that time but could not make it.Tamal Bandyopadhyay, consulting editor at Mint, is adviser to Bandhan Bank. He is also the author of A Bank for the Buck, Sahara: The Untold Story and Bandhan: The Making of a Bank.His Twitter handle is @tamalbandyo.Respond to this column at tamal.b@livemint.com",The Banks Board Bureau is conducting—for the first time—the so-called assessment centre exercises to select the CEOs of India’s public sector banks,"Mon, Apr 10 2017. 08 42 PM IST",How public sector bank CEOs are selected +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/iu3kQ0FE1gkBZmopyY0TtJ/GE-without-light-bulbs-puts-focus-on-other-industrial-spare.html,"New York: It’s light (bulbs) out at General Electric Co.Almost 140 years after GE founder Thomas Edison developed the first practical incandescent light bulb, the industrial giant is considering parting with its consumer lighting business, according to the Wall Street Journal. Frankly, it’s been a long time coming and is more of a symbolic step than anything else: The unit’s reported potential sale price of about $500 million amounts to just 0.2% of GE’s current market value. But symbolism matters at a company like GE, whose long history has included a series of evolutions. It will be sad if GE gets rid of light bulbs. But the business just doesn’t fit anymore: it’s a commoditized industry with weak growth, fewer innovation opportunities and different distribution channels than those used to sell locomotives or parts for a Boeing Co. plane. The unit stood out all the more as GE separated the other consumer-facing parts of its empire including NBC Universal, appliances and the Synchrony Financial credit-card business. Home-bound light bulbs have also become more marginalized within GE’s broader lighting unit, which has shifted its focus to data-driven and energy efficient LED solutions for commercial entities and cities.The potential sale of a business so core to GE’s historical identity and yet so irrelevant to the modern day reality of what the company has become got me thinking: What other legacy consumer-facing businesses are industrial companies holding onto despite a push across the sector toward higher-margin, technologically advanced products? Could these operations also end up out the door?ALSO READ: GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s pay falls 35% to $21.3 million amid weak oil marketSome companies have already been pruning. Illinois Tool Works Inc. sold its Space Bag brand—which makes vacuum-seal storage products akin to those featured on infomercials—to SC Johnson in 2012. GE’s rival across the sea, Siemens AG, spun off its Osram Licht AG lighting division years ago and that business itself just completed the sale of its lower-margin general lamps operations to a Chinese consortium including MLS Co. But there are plenty of holdouts. 3M Co. is the obvious one, with an entire consumer division dedicated to things like Scotch tape, Post-it notes, wall-hooks and soap dishes. Philips Lighting, spun off from Royal Philips NV last year, has vowed to stick with traditional and consumer light bulbs rather than follow in Osram’s divestiture footsteps. In addition to selling jet engines and turbochargers, Honeywell International Inc. has a home-products business that offers humidifiers, doorbells and thermostats. The company also makes Puddletons rain boots for women and children (who knew?) and Muck boots, which sort of kind of maybe fit with its portfolio of professional safety gear. United Technologies Corp. sells elevators to building operators, but it also sells smoke detectors to average Joes. Pentair Plc offers pool cleaners. Ingersoll-Rand Plc has a golf-cart business, which isn’t really a consumer product unless you’re Donald Trump but it’s random for a company that makes HVAC systems.Not all of these are so easily gotten rid of. 3M is highly unlikely to part with its consumer unit. The shorter life cycle of those kinds of products works to 3M’s benefit as a company that’s built a reputation for being an innovator, says Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Joel Levington. The division has had some struggles lately, but it’s generally been a steady, high-margin business and has overlaps with the company’s industrial abrasives and adhesives products. If anything, Philips Lighting’s commitment to light bulbs may actually make it a buyer of GE’s business, barring antitrust concerns. United Technologies’ residential air conditioners and security products aren’t clearly delineated from more-commercial products. Honeywell’s emphasis on home devices that can be controlled via smartphone fits with its new CEO’s software and connectivity push. But a potential sale of GE’s light bulb business raises the question of whether these companies should take a harder look at what all they put under their industrial umbrella. Like that rain boots business—what’s up with that? Bloomberg","Almost 140 years after GE founder Thomas Edison developed the first practical incandescent light bulb, GE is considering parting with its consumer lighting business","Sun, Apr 09 2017. 05 19 PM IST",GE without light bulbs puts focus on other industrial spare parts +https://www.livemint.com/Money/yyHhSqKq2qJNgvCsXXxb4H/Government-intervention-a-potential-risk-for-sugar-producers.html,"
The government appears to have disagreed with the sugar industry’s contention on imports. While sugar output is now estimated at 20.3 million tonnes (mt), compared with initial estimates of 23.4 mt, the industry had opening stock of 7.75 mt. Consumption is expected to be lower due to the effect of demonetisation. Also, once crushing in the new season (beginning October) commences, supplies will improve.The government is unwilling to take that chance. A surge in sugar consumption could see a higher-than-expected drawdown of sugar. It does not want prices to crash either, explaining why it has allowed a relatively small limit of 500,000 tonnes. If prices increase even after this measure, it may allow more imports.As of 4 April, sugar prices were up by 8.8% over January; but they fell by 4.5%, as of 6 April, after this announcement. Shares of sugar mills weakened last week at the prospect of lower prices. That may be a premature reaction. One, mills had expected this development. Also, since crushing season is coming to a close, a Crisil Ratings note rightly points out that mills have already benefited from higher prices.The government’s intention is to ensure that speculation does not drive up prices once cane crushing ends in April. In the current season, lower output in Maharashtra and Karnataka and the southern states was the main reason for lower output. Uttar Pradesh mills’ output is higher. However, the new sugar season (starting October) is expected to see higher cane output.Still, a balanced market even in the next season (due to a shortfall in the current season) augurs well for sugar prices and for sugar mills. What are the concerns?India’s interest in imports could send global prices up. Raw sugar prices rose by 4% last week after the import announcement, and could increase further if traders expect India to import more.That is a tricky situation for the government as higher landed costs could mean imports lose their deterrent value. It may then resort to non-tariff measures to quell rising prices, which is a risk for the sugar producers.A new government in Uttar Pradesh is another factor to be watched. It has cracked down hard on mills defaulting on paying arrears to cane farmers. It has also called for a probe into the sale of government-owned sugar mills in 2010-11, according to news reports.The party manifesto had also said it will seek to introduce direct ethanol production from cane. That may reduce cane availability for sugar. Its view on cane pricing will be watched for.UP has traditionally fixed a higher price for cane, compared with the central government-determined price. That creates problems for mills, especially when sugar prices trend lower. If the new government implements a more stable pricing and operational environment, it can improve the longer-term outlook for UP-based sugar mills. But for now, the centre’s stance on sugar pricing is the main risk that investors need to watch out for.",The government’s intention is to ensure that speculation does not drive up prices once cane crushing ends in April,"Mon, Apr 10 2017. 07 59 AM IST",Government intervention a potential risk for sugar producers +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/tXcyLAYhqV8FUvC9KrarHP/WhatsApp-payments-to-be-Facebooks-saving-grace-in-India.html,"Taipei: After its plan to offer free internet in India was rejected, Facebook Inc. may soon find that the fastest way to consumers’ hearts is through their wallets. Digitally.Its WhatsApp service is preparing to start digital payments in the country, a move that would leverage India’s rush to online transactions after November’s sudden demonetisation, the Financial Times reported. WhatsApp would challenge local players including PayTM, which is backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.The service would probably tap into India’s Unified Payments System, which is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and was set up to facilitate the transfer of funds instantly over mobile devices.More than a third of Indians now access the internet and mobile-phone penetration stands at around 80%, with both figures rising rapidly. Yet only 78% access the internet at least once per week, according to research compiled by consultancy Kepios.Facebook copped a lot of flack for trying to offer a free but scaled-down version of the internet in India as part of a program it has successfully deployed elsewhere. With the abolition of large-denomination banknotes forcing Indians to jump into digital alternatives, Facebook may benefit from a concept known as loss aversion.In their work on the topic, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman discovered that the fear of loss is a more powerful driver of action than the prospect of an equivalent gain. Kahneman went on to win a Nobel Prize in Economics for that research (Tversky died before it was awarded).With much Indian commerce grinding to a standstill because of a shortage of cash, fear of being unable to perform transactions may be a bigger driver of digital-payments adoption than the prospect of gains from efficiency or ease of use.It’s unlikely any offering would be a major profit contributor for WhatsApp, but it would help achieve what Facebook had hoped for in seeking to provide free web access, which is to get more people online regularly and spur consumers to use its services.After a humiliating loss last time, Facebook could be setting itself up for a win in India. Bloomberg","It’s unlikely any payments offering would be a major profit contributor for WhatsApp, but it would help Facebook to get more people online regularly","Wed, Apr 05 2017. 10 51 AM IST",WhatsApp payments to be Facebook’s saving grace in India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/hAEUnVMkkYlg93knIdPrFO/The-issue-is-that-digital-needs-to-get-into-banks-DBS-Bank.html,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking","Thu, May 04 2017. 11 20 PM IST",The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +https://www.livemint.com/Money/bQPJ8lVn8OEk3IHbZfbPzK/RBI-Plug-the-liquidity-tap-to-avoid-inflation-deja-vu.html,"
The last time the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) restrained itself from acting on excessive liquidity, it had to face a double-digit inflation rate in the years ahead. This was the flood of liquidity around September 2009 and the years of double-digit inflation started in 2011. Granted, the situation was not so linear and the rise in inflation was not a mere ignition of demand by excess money. But there are enough history lessons to warn what excessive money can lead to.When the monetary policy committee (MPC) begins its two-day deliberations on policy rates on Wednesday, it will in all probability not just include but highlight the current deluge of liquidity. After all, RBI’s monetary policy stance and the impact of MPC’s decision on interest rates hinges solely on how much money should be allowed to slosh around in the banking system and for how long. The favourite tool to suck out liquidity in the past was the cash reserve ratio (CRR). But it would be a waste to hike the CRR now as a 50 basis point increase would impound only a fraction of the liquidity surplus, which is currently a massive Rs3.5 trillion. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. CRR is also a blunt tool and it affects all banks in the same manner although liquidity is almost always skewed among lenders.While many other tools have been discussed including a new one called standing deposit facility, what matters is that the surplus money should be impounded immediately.Why should the central bank hurry on liquidity? One argument is that investment demand is tepid and as credit growth is unlikely to pick up from its historic lows, there is no way surplus liquidity can fuel inflation. However, corporate bond yields are down more than 50 basis points and the benchmark equity indices have soared more than 20% in fiscal year 2016-17, a year in which corporate balance sheets were under severe pressure. These are evidences enough to show that liquidity has begun fuelling asset prices.Leaving the surplus liquidity problem unattended would lead to money chasing yields and thereby investments into riskier assets. In its worst form, the surplus could find its way into stressed assets at an unwarranted price.MPC voted to put an end to easing the interest rate regime in February to safeguard the medium-term retail inflation target of 4%.This time, the vote should be for changing surplus liquidity conditions that may undermine its inflation management.","When the monetary policy committee begins its two-day deliberations on policy rates tomorrow, it will in all probability not just include but highlight the current deluge of liquidity","Tue, Apr 04 2017. 08 06 AM IST",RBI: Plug the liquidity tap to avoid inflation deja vu +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/eiwotgdAxZt98pGOgmJLCO/Mastercard-unveils-biometric-card-to-replace-ATM-pin-with-fi.html,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 06 48 PM IST",Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/w9dYOrpluXo29iyzbUZXEJ/Full-text-of-RBIs-monetary-policy-statement.html,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 11 23 PM IST",Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/ozanrVoibOjSFCXrGeAaeL/Of-executives-programmers-and-fairness.html,"
Early in the morning of Monday, 3 April, serendipity sat me next to N.R. Narayana Murthy on a long transcontinental flight leaving Bengaluru. As the flight attendants handed out newspapers for the passengers to read while on the journey, I couldn’t help but notice that Murthy had made front-page news, this time for questioning the extent of the raise given to an executive at Infosys Ltd, the company that he founded over three decades ago along with a few of his junior colleagues. I turned to him and we began a conversation. I shall not focus here on the specific comments about Infosys, but there were several parts of the conversation that covered Murthy’s philosophy around topics that I have written about in this column before, and which provide insights into the character of the man. Unsurprisingly, we spoke of the social issues being caused by the changes in the way corporations recruit and retain talent. We spoke of organizations such as TopCoder, now part of an Indian IT services firm after the acquisition of its parent by Wipro. TopCoder is a marketplace for computer programmers, who can get compensated for their work through this marketplace without ever having to be an employee of a services firm. It is like a taxi aggregator among programming firms. I have written in this column before about how marketplaces like these can eventually change the construct of the employer-employee contract now prevalent among many firms and have also mused about whether unionization may be around the corner at some Indian IT services firms as the employer-employee relationship construct begins to disintegrate.Murthy explained that there are circumstances where unions can play a pivotal role in ensuring equity. He said the fact that unions look out for employees’ welfare is inescapable, and proffered the example of the US. According to him, when unionization covered 35% of the American workforce, American labour was better looked after. Now that this figure has slipped to around 15%, the poor have become poorer as corporations and their leaders have followed an Ayn-Rand-esque view of “rational self-interest” and social Darwinism. Pushing crumbs off one’s table and trusting that the aspiring classes in society will have enough is a sure recipe in fomenting labour class unrest, as the recent Brexit and US presidential elections have shown. Murthy’s opinion is that such unrest is also lying dormant and is barely beneath the surface in India, and that leaders of India’s capitalist revolution cannot afford to blithely ignore this.Also read | Infosys strongly defends COO pay hike criticized by Narayana MurthyWe also spoke of the fledgling experiments with universal basic income (UBI) that have begun to pop up in various corners of the earth. UBI is essentially a dole paid out to every citizen, whether they are out of work or not, in a nod to the fact that relentless mechanization and automation will take away many people’s livelihoods in the near- to medium-term future. While classical economics tells us that disruptive changes in labour mechanics such as offshoring and automation only cause a temporary loss in jobs before there is a “job shift” when people start to work in other fields of endeavour so that they may earn a living, the short-term pain caused by the original job displacement is undeniable. UBI is a well-meaning attempt to alleviate some of that pain. It comes with the same plethora of problems around unemployment doles, but Murthy’s view was that societies have a responsibility to their underprivileged or displaced populaces and that he would welcome higher taxes on the IT industry that are meant to go directly to those whose jobs IT displaces. He said that the only society that is stable is one that is seen to be moving, however haltingly, towards an atmosphere of equity and fairness among all its members.Leaders in the IT industry need to be seen as fair by the people under their command. Giving raises at the top that are 10 or even 20 times the rate of the raises being given at the bottom runs the risk of creating an impression that those at the top are greedy opportunists most interested in snatching what they can while the going is good. I have been part of a company where the boss raised his own salary by over 250%, leaving others in his second line like me to explain to the rest of the workforce that they had to make do with a 2% increase. The rationale for the anaemic salary increase for everyone but the boss was that the firm had not reached its (internally set) earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, targets. As an aside, I am sure the boss’s new salary contributed to the company repeating this miss in the next year. That year, even though my own compensation increase was also in the low single digits, I felt great discomfiture at having to justify and explain the boss’s salary increase, which the board had seen right to give him since “he could easily get another job in the industry paying just as much”. To paraphrase the Bard of Avon, all the mouthwash in India has not cured me of the ensuing halitosis from those conversations.Recalling a time when the industry finally saw the light and banded together in the common interest to fight high levels of attrition when companies were blithely poaching talent from one another, I asked Murthy whether Nasscom or some such industry body could now be entrusted with this looming question of “fairness”. He was unequivocal that an ombudsman is needed. Maybe it is time we allow ourselves to be policed.Siddharth Pai is a world-renowned technology consultant who has led over $20 billion in complex, first-of-a-kind outsourcing transactions.","In IT firms such as Infosys, giving raises at the top many times the rate of the raises at the bottom risks creating an impression that those at the top are greedy opportunists ","Tue, Apr 04 2017. 01 26 AM IST","Infosys compensation row: Of executives, programmers and fairness" +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/6Asu1jOUHUUglzSP6ItmzO/VijayMallya-extradition-case-India-says-internal-process-on.html,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.","The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 10 12 PM IST",Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Qb2vbIdW1Ped1HRMcGRUdL/Ratan-Tata-praises-judicial-professionalism-after-Cyrus-Mist.html,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 09 01 PM IST",Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/glZkxOZyHogf98Ub1kVxpM/Elon-Musk-nears-14-billion-windfall-as-Tesla-hits-mileston.html,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 27 AM IST",Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/K5aRiAQ7LgtzDNoSuJpaYJ/Enjoy-your-India-moment-Xiaomi-it-might-not-last.html,"Xiaomi Corp. is going to double down on India. Literally.Chairman and CEO Lei Jun sat down with Bloomberg’s Saritha Rai and Jason Gale in Bangalore this week to explain how he plans to resume rapid growth. The Chinese smartphone maker will spend $500 million in the country over the next three to five years, after spending a similar amount since entering India two years ago.Right now is the perfect time for Xiaomi to make a claim of renewed vigour. It came in second by share of the Indian smartphone market in the fourth quarter, topping all local and international competitors except Samsung Electronics Co., according to IDC data.One great quarter does not a renaissance make, however. Almost 40% of full-year sales came in that single three-month period, according to IDC. That’s not necessarily unusual, because the Diwali shopping season falls in the quarter, but it should be noted that Xiaomi’s share climbed as much because the entire market fell as because of its own growth.Xiaomi’s 2016 India smartphone rankingIDC notes that the higher-priced smartphone segment actually expanded during November because demonetisation saw many customers rush to offload cash. It’s likely Xiaomi was a beneficiary of this, given that it sells premium devices compared with local offerings.For the full year, Xiaomi placed fifth, selling around 7.2 million units. That’s still an impressive 119% growth, according to IDC, but it’s coming off a low base. What should worry Xiaomi is that its old nemeses are approaching fast. Compatriots Oppo and Vivo were just a few percentage points behind in the fourth quarter and they have more growth momentum, again because they’re coming from a low starting point.What’s really seeing renewed vigour is the feature-phone market. The addition of 4G and increasing functionality, coupled with lower prices, has kept this older category relevant. HMD Global reviving the Nokia brand, a popular name in India, adds to the reasons why feature phones will again outsell smartphones this year, and delay migration up the product value chain.In summary: You’ve got competitors closing in fast, demonetisation possibly providing a single-quarter boost, and feature phones remaining a competitive threat. If there’s a time for Xiaomi to assert that rapid growth is ahead, it’s now. They may not be saying it again for a while. Bloomberg","What should worry Xiaomi is that its old nemeses are approaching fast. Compatriots Oppo, Vivo are just a few percentage points behind in the Q4 and they have more growth momentum","Fri, Mar 31 2017. 11 40 AM IST","Enjoy your India moment, Xiaomi, it might not last" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/mIxk76Xm7lzsbLaOjeIdoK/Oil-companies-to-set-up-more-plants-in-Jammu-and-Kashmir.html,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,"Sat, Apr 22 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/ajoMykZ2e3I5lM3SlCvz4L/A-short-history-of-extradition-from-UK-to-India.html,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.","India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 21 AM IST",A short history of extradition from UK to India +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/4BlsEs8VDqtfjllJDASokM/Recovering-Vijay-Mallya-loans-a-long-way-off-for-banks.html,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 07 30 AM IST",Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/QDwCnej8Q6F1N40kuXftOI/Edelweiss-plans-3040-distressed-asset-deals-a-year-CEO-Ras.html,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 04 40 AM IST",Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/0IM4UPDSJz5GDqnvt4bDcI/Merger-of-oil-PSUs-will-hurt-consumers-harm-Indias-energy.html,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report","Sat, Apr 22 2017. 07 15 PM IST","Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/o5rTmASGpUmWY8QUVL9juI/Northern-India-can-be-a-hub-of-renewable-energy-says-study.html,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 55 PM IST","Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +https://www.livemint.com/Politics/kLTmAS9MdEP7isqPsAp7IN/Oil-marketing-firms-working-to-boost-digital-payments-Dharm.html,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 11 48 PM IST",Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/YZFuGcfjSrgSn8lWlnKiiM/Homedelivered-petroleum-may-be-reality-soon.html,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 08 26 PM IST",Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/6q3fK2dlQBrxgFzDdcuIGN/Vijay-Mallya-The-story-so-far.html,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court","A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday","Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",Vijay Mallya: The story so far +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/CrcdE6rgGQUwf5i8BMDapK/Vijay-Mallya-extradition-process-to-be-a-long-cumbersome-ex.html,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 18 AM IST","Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/M4SonfozH3m2Rh9EYoZZ0O/Whats-next-in-the-Vijay-Mallya-extradition-process.html,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 11 AM IST",What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +https://www.livemint.com/Companies/smvfjlMWKkl5aX6RZo9MiK/The-cases-against-Vijay-Mallya-and-Kingfisher-Airlines.html,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,"Wed, Apr 19 2017. 05 15 AM IST",The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6TCfli3eJLUVH2dFnxuWEN/Tata-Power-inks-pact-for-electricity-distribution-in-Ajmer.html,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 03 50 PM IST",Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/svrC8u3YCgAn01vEN75p7K/Solar-power-may-become-cheaper-than-coal-in-India.html,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 49 AM IST",Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/iixnKtMIN7WojPH84yPpuO/Modi-govt-plans-to-auction-4-gigawatts-of-wind-energy-in-FY.html,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 10 20 AM IST",Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/Q5Florefv9lbFwnMQhsXpO/Foreign-investors-giving-MA-deals-in-Indias-renewable-ener.html,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 01 19 AM IST",Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +https://www.livemint.com/Industry/IVvYXfLryBb8gEz7YYIFiP/World-Bank-to-continue-alternative-energy-financing-efforts.html,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,"Thu, Apr 20 2017. 08 11 PM IST",World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +https://www.livemint.com/Money/KgMW4bw3D87FKZhvuS0WtM/Hindustan-Zinc-Its-all-in-the-price.html,"
Hindustan Zinc Ltd’s plan to produce 17% more metal in fiscal year 2018 (FY18), even as it expects the global zinc supply position to remain tight, should be good news for investors. Tempering this good news is the recent decline in metal prices.All industrial commodities have come under pressure in the past 30 days. Concerns revolve around China, where economic growth has been better than expected but there are worries around metal-intensive sectors such as construction. This is the main risk that the company’s investors have to keep an eye on.In the March quarter, Hindustan Zinc’s mined metal output rose by 13% sequentially, while that of refined lead and zinc combined rose by 6%. Realizations were in its favour, as zinc prices rose by 10% on an average, while that of lead rose by 5.5%. Revenue rose by 25.5% in the quarter to Rs6,756 crore, while operating profit increased by 34.7%. Net profit rose 12.2% sequentially and by 42.3% over a year ago.Hindustan Zinc plans to tweak its existing smelting capacity so that it can produce more metal. It has carried over 80,000 tonnes of mined metal into FY18, after selling some in the market. The company intends to invest $350-360million in FY18 towards enhancing metal capacity and mine expansion, among others. The more refined metal it sells, compared to selling concentrate, the more money it makes.The first half of FY17 had seen lower mined output, as per Hindustan Zinc’s mining plan. While that will mean the first half financials of FY18 will look good year-on-year, the correct factor to look at will be how the company does on a sequential basis.While metal output is expected to be higher in FY18, it has also cautioned that the cost of production in dollar terms could increase slightly, because of higher coal and input prices. These could be concerns, but only if metal prices don’t recover from their current decline. Zinc prices are nearing their lowest levels seen in 2017 so far, and are down by 14.7% from peak levels during the year. An appreciating rupee against the dollar is not good news either for Hindustan Zinc.The company’s share trades at 14 times its FY17 earnings per share and rose by 4% on Thursday as its results were much better than what the Street was expecting. The projected increase in its metal output puts Hindustan Zinc on a strong footing for FY18 but the shift in the trend in metal prices puts a question mark on earnings growth. Once prices settle into a trend, its share will follow suit.","Hindustan Zinc’s plan for to produce 17% more metal in FY18, even as it sees a tight global zinc supply, should be good news for investors","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 41 AM IST",Hindustan Zinc: It’s all in the price +https://www.livemint.com/Money/qEkXlJDekwXrhaLI48a1DM/Mindtree-shows-signs-of-a-recovery.html,"
Mindtree Ltd’s shares have fallen 44.3% since it issued a profit warning for the March quarter. Growth at the company has taken a tumble since then, owing to delays in project starts and troubles at its UK subsidiary Bluefin Solutions. In this backdrop, it may come as a relief for investors that for the first time in over a year, Mindtree has beaten the Street’s expectations by a meaningful margin. Revenue grew 2% sequentially in constant currency terms last quarter, compared to estimated growth of less than 1%. What’s more, margins rose by 60 basis points, again ahead of estimates, indicating that the burn at Bluefin has reduced meaningfully. The company said that Bluefin’s revenue increased more than 11% sequentially; although, of course, it makes sense to wait and see if the recovery will sustain. The churn in Mindtree’s top 10 customers continues, and the company said it is in the process of rebuilding its top 10 portfolio. Last quarter, growth in the revenues of top 10 customers rose 0.7%, far lower than the company’s average growth rate. And in a clear sign that Mindtree isn’t exactly out of the woods, year-on-year growth in revenue stood at merely 0.3%. In this backdrop, the company’s assertion that growth in fiscal year 2018 will be in low double-digits seems ambitious at first. Having said that, Mindtree’s strong deal wins in the past few quarters also provide hope that growth will pick up in the new fiscal year. Work has commenced on some of the large deal wins in the December quarter, with on-site effort increasing by 6.1% sequentially last quarter. And while deal wins in the March quarter was considerably lower vis-à-vis December, at $209 million, on a cumulative basis the total contract value won by the company in the past few quarters should help sustain growth. “Even as the overall growth has slipped, Mindtree’s customer relationships and engagement with deal advisory (firms) continues to be strong and could result in an improvement in growth rates starting the June quarter,” analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities said in a recent note to clients. Of course, given the rough ride investors have had with Mindtree shares in the past year, they may do well to be cautious. Besides the fact that it makes sense to wait for the company to deliver consistent performance, it’s also important to remember that valuations aren’t cheap at 17.8 times trailing earnings.","While Mindtree shares have fallen 44.3% since it issued a profit warning for March quarter, its better-than-expected Q4 results should come as a relief to investors","Fri, Apr 21 2017. 07 41 AM IST",Mindtree shows signs of a recovery +https://www.livemint.com/Money/2TT9WPUgD4pZ2mR5Fb9K0L/Summer-demand-advantage-market-leaders-in-consumer-electric.html,"
The onset of the summer season and rising temperatures have brought shares of consumer electrical product companies back in focus. Shares of Symphony Ltd, Havells India Ltd and Bajaj Electricals Ltd have gained 29-60% so far this calendar year. In the year-ago period, they were up 3-11%. Voltas Ltd, which derives a sizeable part of its revenue from air conditioners, has gained 23%, compared to a 12% loss in the year-ago period.
The gains reflect the business recovery. Channel checks by IIFL Institutional Equities show a rise in demand for fans and air coolers. The business environment is back to pre-demonetisation levels and dealers are said to have begun restocking.According to Himanshu Shah, director (sales and marketing) at Symphony, consumer buying started in February while demand recovery is more gradual in the north and the eastern parts of the country. The January-March quarter results will reflect some benefits of the demand recovery, though the full impact can be gauged only after the current quarter. Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities expects revenues of Whirlpool of India Ltd, Havells and V-Guard Industries Ltd to have grown in double-digits in the quarter gone by.The air cooler industry is seeing increased competition with the entry of new companies. But according to IIFL, the new entrants will help expand the organized market. Symphony, which has the widest range of coolers and good brand recall, is said to be better placed to benefit from summer demand. In fans, new product launches are expected to aid large companies’ market shares. “The fans and coolers segment is expected to grow by 8/15% respectively, wherein the leading brands in each category (Crompton and Symphony) are expected to grow by at least 4-5% percentage points ahead of the market,” adds IIFL.The story is slightly different in air conditioners where after-sales service and dealer margins will have a determining role on sales growth. Even then, thanks to rising mercury levels, air-conditioner sales have picked up.Voltas, with a large market share and wide reach, is expected to benefit from higher demand. But the challenge lies in profitability. There are fears that high competition (both from new products and new entrants) may weigh on Voltas’s margins. “Competition has increased with players such as Daikin, LG, Panasonic, Lloyd Electric and Blue Star eyeing a larger market share,” Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd wrote in a note.Dealer checks by Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd show stable pricing with limited discounts.But as they say one swallow does not a summer make. A clear picture will emerge only towards the end of the season. In the meantime, all hopes are now pinned on a good summer season. A good season, according to Symphony’s Shah, will extend the sales period to July.",Onset of summer and rising temperatures bring shares of consumer electrical product companies back in focus,"Tue, Apr 18 2017. 08 20 AM IST",Summer demand: advantage market leaders in consumer electrical products +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/RYYQ6qnNFCXrhSU3EiO9bN/What-Suresh-Prabhu-can-learn-from-Dave-Donaldsons-paper-on.html,"
Suresh Prabhu may not have heard of Dave Donaldson, but the Indian railways minister would do well to read an insightful paper by the Stanford University economist who has been awarded the prestigious John Bates Clark medal for American economists under 40.The John Bates Clark medal is a good predictor of future achievement. Twelve of the 39 economists who have won the medal have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in economics. The strike rate increases to almost one in every two if one considers only medal winners before 1993. The more recent winners are obviously too young to be in the running for a Nobel right now, so what happened to the first 25 winners is a better gauge.One of the works by Davidson that is specifically cited by the American Economics Association in their press release last week is his paper on how the spree of railway building by the British Raj impacted the Indian economy. Some 60,000km of track was laid in the 75 years after the first train chugged out of Bori Bunder station in Mumbai in 1853. The military intention is well known. A network of railways was seen as a convenient way to move troops across India by a colonial establishment that had been rattled by the first war of independence in 1857.There were economic benefits as well. Karl Marx wrote presciently in 1853 that the railways would be the forerunner of modern industry. He added that trains would also dissolve traditional social arrangements.The British funded the expansion of the railways network by floating bonds in the London market—at a guaranteed return of 5% a year. The early nationalist critics of colonial economic policy such as Dadabhai Naoroji argued that the high cost of capital was more than the returns from the railways, and hence amounted to a drain of national resources.Donaldson is one of the new generation of development economists who use unique data sets to examine what happened in the past. His research on the economic impact of railways uses some innovative district-level data sets that he has constructed on prices, output, rainfall, domestic trade and international trade. These are based on digitized records of the British Raj. Davidson has also developed a digital map of the railways network. Each 20km stretch is coded with its year of opening.His three key conclusions: railway expansion led to a fall in trading costs, it increased the volume of goods shipped and the economic benefits greatly exceeded the cost of construction.“When observing the railroad network in India, I estimated that in a typical district, the arrival of railroad access caused real gross domestic product in the agricultural sector (the largest sector of India’s economy at that time) to increase by around 17%,” writes Davidson. This estimate was arrived at after taking into account both the positive and negative impact of the train on economic activity in a district.There are two important lessons from the sort of innovative work being done by economists such as Donaldson.First, debates about the past can be enriched if the data is carefully examined. One recent example is a paper published by three scholars on the website Ideas for India. Sriya Iyer, Anand Shrivastava and Rohit Ticku have constructed a geo-coded dataset to examine whether temple desecrations by Muslim rulers in medieval India are better explained by political dominance or religious iconoclasm. Second, there are contemporary policy lessons as well. Railroads of the Raj: Estimating the Impact of Transportation Infrastructure, which Davidson wrote in September 2012, as well as his later work on the expansion of railways in the US, provides ample proof that ramping up investment in railways and roads is one of the best ways to promote development in the hinterland.This lesson should be even more resonant at a time when the new goods and services tax will remove obstacles to internal trade by creating a truly integrated Indian market.",Economist Dave Donaldson’s paper on Indian Railways shows ramping up investment in railways and roads is one of the best ways to promote development in the hinterland,"Fri, Apr 21 2017. 02 43 AM IST",What Suresh Prabhu can learn from Dave Donaldson’s paper on Indian Railways +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/rtapb4IVt1frt2z0ZL7bqL/Billionaires-and-the-government-shake-up-tech-in-India.html,"Jeff Bezos. Masayoshi Son. Jack Ma. Mukesh Ambani. Some of the world’s richest people also happen to be combatants in the expensive war over the future of technology in India.Bezos’s Amazon.com Inc. and Indian rival Snapdeal, backed by Son, are spending billions of dollars to build e-commerce in India. Alibaba founder Ma has splurged on investments aimed at popularizing digital payments. Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd is on track to spend about $30 billion (gulp!) to shake up India’s stodgy mobile internet service. Google, Tencent, Uber, Xiaomi, Apple and Facebook are also betting on growth in India.It’s easy to see why India and its 1.3 billion people are the No. 1 prize in technology. About one-quarter of Indians used the internet in 2015, according to the most recently available data from the World Bank, but the percentage is expected to explode in coming years. And compared with China—a quick-to-digitize country that was quicksand for non-Chinese tech companies—India has been relatively open to companies from outside the country.The battle for supremacy is great for Indians, who will get better and cheaper technologies tailored to their needs. But gobs of money are being spent now for what is a very, very long game with an uncertain toll on both winners and losers.ALSO READ: Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout falls short of what investors needApple CEO Tim Cook has said India is seven to 10 years behind China in technology market potential, and other executives echo that view. Building the future involves many, often low-tech, struggles like dealing with bad and clogged roads to deliver online orders, poor internet access for customers and dinged reputations from fears that foreign companies like Facebook are trying to monopolize internet use in the country. But a couple of recent actions—one by the government, the other by a billionaire—have been important developments in India’s tech market. They show how individual actions can be unexpected sparks for technology use and the tech business in India. Spending by India’s richest person on a new mobile network: About $30 billion. First, the decision last year by India’s government to ban the vast majority of cash in circulation did more for adoption of digital payments than anything a rich techie could have done. That move helped payments services like Paytm, backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, but it also gives a leg up to on-demand ride companies, e-commerce and other services that depend on a shift toward electronic payments in a country with low credit card penetration. (India’s central bank on Thursday also cleared Amazon India to start its own digital payments service.) The second jolt was the launch last fall by Ambani, India’s richest person, of a national mobile network that offered free cellphone calls and cheap, fast mobile web surfing. Competitors complained, but they quickly cut customers’ bills, too, and gave them more data. Ambani’s Reliance Jio mobile network signed up about 100 million customers. That is nearly as many customers on contracts with Verizon, the largest wireless company in the US by that measure. And Verizon didn’t get those customers in six months, as Reliance Jio did.Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc.,’s Google, has said the biggest barrier to technology development in India is affordable, available and high-quality internet access, which like in China is mostly done on mobile phones. Ambani has helped bring down that internet access barrier. Technology development in India will be unpredictable and halting, but the potential payoff is too alluring to ignore. Expect the billionaire battle in India to continue. Bloomberg",It’s easy to see why India is the no. 1 prize in technology as about one-quarter of Indians used the Internet in 2015 and the percentage is expected to explode in coming years,"Thu, Apr 13 2017. 09 09 PM IST",Billionaires and the government shake up tech in India +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/z8tRtRuZYvrT9aRJhcB2MP/Is-Trai-a-competent-authority-to-rule-on-Reliance-Jios-alle.html,"
Is Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd’s pricing strategy predatory and anti-competitive? Multiple agencies—Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT), the Competition Commission of India (CCI)—and even the Delhi high court are simultaneously seized of the matter. No one seems to be anywhere close to ruling on the issue, although Trai asked Jio last week to withdraw one of its offers which entailed complimentary services for three months.Jio complied, but added that it would do so when it was “operationally feasible”. Its competitors alleged that in the two-three days it took to close the offer, the company and its agents continued to promote it. Those who managed to subscribe before this window closed, availed of the complimentary services. And when Reliance Jio launched new plans this week, competitors such as Bharti Airtel Ltd were quick to point out that the new plans weren’t very different from the one Trai had frowned upon.In this backdrop, a moot question is if Trai is a competent authority to rule on Jio’s alleged predatory pricing; or, to put it bluntly, competent enough to handle the issue.ALSO READ: Reliance Jio is exploiting the gaps left by AirtelFor perspective, Jio’s services were launched free of cost last September, with customers being allowed unlimited voice calls and data usage. Services remained free between January and March, with the difference being that data usage was capped at 1GB/day. The company said it would start charging customers from 1 April, but later changed its mind and said services between April and June would remain free for those who pay in advance for services in July.This offer, called Summer Surprise, is what prompted Trai to finally act. But in what has been a terrible example of regulation, Trai hasn’t made its communication to Jio public. As such, we can only guess what reasons it gave for disapproving of the Summer Surprise offer.Presumably, Trai has come to the conclusion that Jio must stop free/complimentary services and start charging customers. Jio’s new plans avoid the use of the terms free or complimentary. But if one were to use the tariffs it announced earlier this year as a yardstick, the new plan effectively offers three months’ services for the price of one. One way of looking at the Summer Surprise offer is that it offered four months’ services for the price of one.This is the reason incumbents have been crying foul about the new plans, stating that it is essentially a similar plan “masquerading under a different name”. But, it can also be argued that the days of free offers are over and that Trai has been successful in getting Jio to start charging something for its services.Whether the new charges of around Rs97 per month (net of service tax) are higher than the company’s variable cost, and are predatory, is a complex question. As pointed out in this newspaper earlier, this is a question best answered by CCI. Besides, with a sector regulator, there are typically concerns and/or allegations about regulatory capture, and a sector-neutral agency such as CCI is generally recognized as one that doesn’t have any such entrapments. Having said that, the role of a sector regulator such as Trai cannot be underestimated. CCI typically takes two-three years to complete its investigations and hearings before finally passing an order. At best, its measures are remedial; although in some cases the damage in market structure may be too high to rectify.A sector regulator can move much quicker and take preventive steps to ensure that a market’s structure isn’t damaged beyond repair. It has become amply evident, even to Trai itself, that its regulations are woefully inadequate to address issues related to anti-competitive behaviour.While its laws state that pricing of telecom companies must be non-predatory, there are no clear definitions on what this entails. Neither is there clarity about other related issues such as what amounts to market dominance, and what the relevant market is when it comes to ruling on predatory pricing. For instance, Jio’s critics will argue that it has a dominant share in the market for mobile broadband services, while its supporters will say its share in overall mobile services is still small.Earlier this year, Trai issued a consultation paper to help it frame regulations that address these questions. It may be a while before it arrives at a conclusion and frames new regulations. If Trai had been a more nimble regulator and framed regulations in advance, it would have been able to address the Jio situation far better.Still, this is an important exercise, and Trai will do well to complete it sooner than later. Likewise, the example in the telecom market should be a wake-up call for other sector regulators who don’t have clearly defined rules on anti-competitive behaviour. In addition, Trai must also consult CCI while framing its new guidelines and while responding to charges of anti-competitive behaviour. Policy makers must realize such co-operation will be necessary for our regulators to respond reasonably as well as quickly enough to the threat of anti-competitive behaviour.And last, but not the least, Trai should realize that a healthy dose of transparency will do wonders in gaining the trust of regulated entities and customers.","It has become amply evident, even to Trai itself, that its regulations are woefully inadequate to address issues related to anti-competitive behaviour","Thu, Apr 13 2017. 07 59 AM IST",Is Trai a competent authority to rule on Reliance Jio’s alleged predatory pricing? +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/Z0Q0liYWqfgUjVYMOHhubL/The-untold-story-of-Indias-bond-market.html,"
It is no secret that Indian banks’ treasury income, which contributed handsomely to their profit in calendar year 2016 as bond prices rose and yields fell, has been substantially eroded since January. The yield on the benchmark 10-year paper rose 29 basis points during the last quarter of fiscal year 2017, from 6.4% on 1 January to 6.69% on 31 March. One basis point is a hundredth of a percentage point. Many banks would probably end up booking treasury losses in this quarter. The 10-year yield has risen further in the past fortnight to 6.78% and will probably remain range bound in the first quarter of the current fiscal year.While the focus is on the rise of bond yields and erosion in banks’ treasury profits, many are missing an interesting development—the intense fight between the bulls and the bears in the Indian bond market, aggressive short-selling by some of the foreign banks and primary dealers, and the counter-attack by some of the state-run banks, leading to the so-called short squeeze. The primary dealers buy and sell government bonds while foreign banks, like all other banks operating in India, need to have a mandatory bond portfolio to the extent of 20.5% of their net demand and time liability (NDTL), a loose proxy for deposits. However, unlike the state-owned banks, they buy shorter maturity bonds and continuously trade to make profits.Twice in the recent past—in the first week of March and again in the first week of April 2017—the stability of the market was threatened. But for the banking regulator’s intervention, some of the foreign banks and primary dealers could have defaulted, leading to chaos in the bond market.A short sale is a transaction in which a trader sells a bond which it does not own. So, the trader borrows from others to meet its delivery obligations to the Clearing Corp. of India Ltd (CCIL), which runs the bond market, till it buys the bonds and squares off the position. The banks and the primary dealers resort to short selling when their view is bearish—that is, the prices of the bond will fall and the yield will rise. They make money if the bond prices drop. In contrast to that, those who hold long positions make money when the bond prices go up. A short squeeze happens when there is a lack of supply of the bond which the short sellers need to borrow.In the two instances in March and April, the public sector banks, led by a very large bank, refused to lend bonds to the foreign banks and primary dealers for covering in the Clearcorp Repo Order Matching System or CROMS platform of CCIL, even though the short sellers were ready to pay a hefty price for it. Had the public sector banks, which allegedly formed a cartel to teach the short sellers a lesson, stuck to their stand, then the short sellers would not have been able to cover their short positions and defaulted—something that never happened in the history of the Indian bond market.Before we delve deep, let’s first take a look at how the bond market operates in India. CCIL runs the cash market, where the daily average volume is around Rs30,000 crore. The future market, a much thinner market and a relatively new one, is run by stock exchanges. On the lines of most international markets, CCIL follows the so-called T+1 settlement system—the settlement happens a day after the transaction takes place.One can resort to short selling intra-day (meaning covering the position on the same day) but can also keep it open overnight if the view is that the prices will drop further the next day. Short selling is an accepted market practice but there are limits to what extent one can go short. For instance, for an illiquid bond—which does not see much trading—the limit is capped at 0.25% of its outstanding stock. This means, if the outstanding security stock is Rs10,000 crore, one can short sell up to Rs25 crore. For a liquid security, the ceiling is higher—0.75% or Rs600 crore, the lower of the two.A short seller borrows the security from others in the market through the so-called repo or repurchase deals on the CROMS platform of CCIL. One can borrow the security for one day and keep on rolling it over up to 90 days till one actually buys the security. However, typically, the short sellers do not keep the position open for more than a fortnight. In other words, for two weeks, they keep on rolling over their borrowed security from the repo market.For the repo deal, the bank which lends the bonds gets money in lieu of that and, of course, it needs to pay interest on that money. Typically, the interest rate for such deals is slightly lower than the overnight call money rate, around 4.5% at this time. However, the short sellers—desperate to borrow security—were willing to give the money (and borrow securities) almost free, at an interest of 0.01%! Still, the public sector banks holding the securities were not willing to lend the bonds to them as they felt the short sellers were instrumental in pushing the bond prices down.A drop in bond prices hurts the banks as they need to mark to market (MTM) or value a substantial portion of their bond portfolio in accordance with the market price and not the prices at which they were bought historically. Even though the banks in India need to have a mandatory investment of 20.5% of their deposits in government bonds, many banks, particularly the state-run ones, hold more; the average bond holding in the industry could be around 26%. The mandated holding of 20.5% can be kept in the so-called held to maturity, or HTM segment, which does not need to be marked to market; but the rest of the portfolio can be kept in a combination of the so-called available for sale (AFS) and held for trading (HFT) baskets, and it needs to be valued in accordance with the prevailing market price, or marked to market. Foreign banks too are subject to the same regulations but typically, they mark to market their entire bond portfolio.Indeed, short selling is the lifeblood for the development of any securities market as it creates liquidity and helps in price discovery. Long-only players alone cannot add depth to the market. But, how do we prevent recurrence of such incidents in the future and keep the bond market stable and growing? Is the regulator’s intervention ideal in such a situation? Doesn’t it spoil the spirit of the free market? Similarly, some market players can certainly refuse to lend security to the short sellers but can they do it en masse by forming a cartel? I understand that a deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) held a meeting with some of the foreign banks and primary dealers and told the public sector banks to make the securities available for lending or else face penalty.One way of tackling this could be, allowing more players such as mutual funds and insurance companies in the repo market. If that happens, certain banks cannot dictate terms and there will be more entities to take care of the supply of bonds. Another option could be, allowing repo transactions at negative interest rates. Anyway, the short sellers are taking risks to make profits and they must be prepared to pay a price. They were ready to give money at 0.01% for bonds in the first week of April. Negative interest will make the transaction even costlier for them but there is no harm as they are ready to take risks to make money. RBI can also supply bonds in the repo market to the short sellers if it has the stock. Finally, we need to develop the futures market. Once the futures market is deep and wide enough, the short sellers will be able to arbitrage between the two markets. Right now, stiff stamp duty adds to the transaction costs in the futures market. As a result of this, the futures market—which is meant to attract retail investors—does not even see too many institutional players. I understand that some banks, who have become members of the exchanges, have found ways to avoid payment of stamp duty. Currently, the non-members need to pay stamp duty. Even the members may ultimately have to pay—as and when the Maharashtra government wakes up.Tamal Bandyopadhyay, consulting editor at Mint, is adviser to Bandhan Bank. He is also the author of A Bank for the Buck, Sahara: The Untold Story and Bandhan: The Making of a Bank.His Twitter handle is @tamalbandyoRespond to this column at tamal.b@livemint.com.","While the focus is on rising bond yields and erosion in bank treasury profits, many are missing the intense fight between bulls and bears in India’s bond market","Mon, Apr 17 2017. 04 57 PM IST",The untold story of India’s bond market +https://www.livemint.com/Money/2RgG35boTzSQBLDVSUP5lJ/Q4-results-Five-numbers-that-distinguish-bruised-from-batte.html,"
Quarterly results of banks this time around would offer both the optical illusion of high profit growth and the harsh reality of a worse bad loan situation. From the looks of how the sector indices and stocks have moved over the last three months, the veneer of profit growth has been factored in. Given that the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2015-16 was horrifying due to the Reserve Bank of India’s asset quality review (AQR), by the sheer low base, profits for the same quarter in 2016-17 would be pleasing to the eyes. But the ground realities over bad loans are still the same. Investors therefore should focus on the five following numbers to judge how deep banks are in the bad-loan cesspool:Provisions: Those who had hoped for a better life after AQR are doomed to be disappointed. The gist of AQR was to identify and provide for all bad loans but lenders had hoped for quick deal-making and faster resolution thereafter. This hasn’t happened and due to ageing of non-performing assets (NPAs), provisions are unlikely to abate. With past mistakes continuing to haunt banks, corporate focused lenders such as ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and most public sector banks will continue to see erosion in profits through higher provisioning. To add insult to injury, the run-up in bond yields would trigger mark-to-market provisioning as well.Slippages: The trend in fresh slippages is perhaps the most awaited from banks because it is a gauge of how non-AQR loans have performed. Here several banks have primed investors with watchlists but past quarters have shown that trouble is brewing outside these watchlists as well. Fresh slippages for most banks had declined in the September quarter, while the impact of demonetization made them rebound in the December quarter. That of the March quarter will be the litmus test.Gross and net NPA ratios: These ratios could be tricky as they could show a decline from the year-ago period and that wouldn’t necessarily mean banks have finally got a grip on their bad loans. There is also a chance that gross and net NPA ratios may worsen because of the collapse in credit growth. Analysts at Icra Ltd expect the gross NPA ratio would hit 10% for FY17 from 7.6% in the previous year. Again, retail-focused banks win hands down here too.Core income: This is one metric that will set apart the bruised from the battered among banks. Lenders such as Kotak Mahindra Bank, Yes Bank, Federal Bank and IndusInd Bank would shine on net interest income or the income generated from core operations. Public sector banks and some private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank and Axis Bank would suffer as there are no takers for loans from the corporate sector. Analysts expect public sector lenders to show core income growth of just 5%, while private sector lenders may show around 10%.Margins: Net interest margins could take a beating simply because banks faced a deluge of deposits in the wake of demonetization and a lion’s share of these deposits have been deployed in low-yielding government bonds due to low credit demand.","Given that the Q4 of 2015-16 was horrifying due to RBI’s asset quality review, by the sheer low base, profits for the same quarter in 2016-17 would be pleasing to the eyes","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 08 20 AM IST",Q4 results: Five numbers that distinguish bruised from battered banks +https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/wyY3SFfXCoHIyWGFrSyETL/The-case-for-longterm-finance-banks.html,"
After having issued licences for new-age payments and small finance banks, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has now published a discussion paper on the need for wholesale and long-term finance (WLTF) banks. The idea is that as the financial sector grows, apart from a number of universal banks, it may be useful to have differentiated banks focusing on different areas and developing competence. This will reduce the cost of intermediation and lead to better economic outcomes. The discussion paper notes that WLTF banks will focus on lending to the corporate sector, small and medium businesses, and the infrastructure sector. They may also offer services in the area of foreign exchange and trade finance. Further, they can act as market makers in instruments like corporate bonds and credit derivatives. There is a gamut of specialized services that these banks can offer to Indian businesses. WLTF banks can raise funds through issuance of debt and equity. They may also be allowed to accept term deposits above a threshold.The idea of WLTF banks is worth trying out. As specialized institutions, they will be in a much better position compared with commercial banks in evaluating and funding long-term projects. It’s not easy for companies to get long-term financing because of the underdeveloped corporate bond market and possible asset liability mismatch in the banking system. One of the reasons for the subdued level of investment in the Indian economy is that the banking system is saddled with non-performing assets (NPAs), and a large portion is concentrated in the infrastructure sector. With specialized banks, such risks could possibly be avoided in the future. It may also help the rest of the banking sector in the case of joint lending, or by simply getting the project evaluation from these banks. Establishment of WLTF banks will also enhance competition, which will lead to more efficient allocation of financial resources.However, there is no guarantee that WLTF banks will succeed. India has tried the development finance institution (DFI) model in the past with limited success. After independence, DFIs were established to increase the level of investment in the economy. Industrial Finance Corp. of India (IFCI) was the first such institution to be established in 1948. This was followed by the establishment of state finance corporations. In later years, other institutions like the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI) and Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) were established. However, DFIs struggled with government interference and changes in the economy, and accumulated high levels of NPAs. ICICI and IDBI have transformed themselves into commercial banks.One of the biggest problems facing long-term finance institutions is competing for funds in the marketplace and being able to lend at competitive rates. A working group of the RBI on DFIs in 2004, for instance, noted: “In a purely market-driven situation, the business model of any DFI which raises long-term resources from the market, at rates governed by the market forces and extends only very long-term credit to fund capital formation of long gestation, is unlikely to succeed…. DFIs are, therefore, crucially dependent for their continued existence on government commitment for continued support.” However, government support is no guarantee of success, as has been the case with DFIs in the past and public sector banks in present times. As the banking regulator mulls over issuing licences for new-age WLTF banks, there are at least three aspects that will need greater attention. First, government participation in setting up WLTF banks should be avoided as it could end up defeating the purpose. Government ownership would lead to the same problems that public sector banks are facing at the moment. Further, these banks will be highly specialized and will need operational freedom, which is not possible with government ownership.Second, licences should only be issued to entities that are able to demonstrate the ability to build such a highly specialized bank, and are in a position to bring in capital to both meet regulatory requirements and run the business on a sustainable basis. The central bank may allow industrial houses to participate to the extent that they are not in a position to influence business decisions.Third, the RBI will need to design a regulatory architecture that will enable growth with adequate safeguards. For example, the regulator may choose to exempt these banks from cash reserve ratio and statutory liquidity ratio requirements. These banks will compete directly with the bond market.WLTF banks will have to be designed well. With the right kind of ownership and regulatory architecture, these banks will help improve efficiency in the financial system and enhance the flow of credit to businesses with large and long-term financing needs.Will long-term finance banks improve efficiency in the financial sector? Tell us at views@livemint.com ","As specialized institutions, long-term finance banks will be in a much better position to evaluate and fund long-term projects","Thu, Apr 20 2017. 01 50 PM IST",The case for long-term finance banks +https://www.livemint.com/Money/gklzeSZQl6V4qf4vBCDMqI/Wholesale-Price-Indexbased-inflation-and-metal-prices.html,"
Wholesale Price Index (WPI)-based inflation for March 2017 came in at 5.7% year-on-year, well below February’s 6.55%. But as the chart shows, one big reason for the slowing of inflation is the fall in metal prices. The group “Basic metals, alloy & metal products” has a weight of 10.75% in the index. The chart shows how the spurt in metals prices has moderated in the last two months, in part due to lower international prices and partly due to a stronger rupee.Has the rise in metals prices run its course? Much depends on China. Gaurav Kapur, chief economist at IndusInd Bank Ltd, says the bulk of the rise in metals prices is behind us and WPI is also likely to remain low in the next four months due to a higher base. It is difficult to predict Chinese policy though and its first-quarter GDP growth came in at a higher-than-expected 6.9%.Lower WPI inflation, however, is unlikely to affect monetary policy, which is now intent on bringing Consumer Price Index-based inflation down to 4% in the medium term.","Lower Wholesale Price Index, or WPI, inflation is unlikely to affect monetary policy, which is now intent on bringing Consumer Price Index-based inflation down to 4% in the medium term","Tue, Apr 18 2017. 08 20 AM IST",Wholesale Price Index-based inflation and metal prices diff --git a/Stock Prediction/hybrid-Linear-Regression.py b/Stock Prediction/hybrid-Linear-Regression.py new file mode 100644 index 0000000..204e233 --- /dev/null +++ b/Stock Prediction/hybrid-Linear-Regression.py @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ + +import numpy as np +from sklearn import preprocessing, cross_validation +from sklearn.linear_model import LinearRegression +from sklearn.svm import SVC +import pandas as pd +import matplotlib.pyplot as plt +import copy +import platform +import sys +forecast_out=-1 +df=pd.read_csv('TCS_qs.csv') +forecast_col = ['Open', 'High', 'Low', 'Close'] +df.fillna(value=-99999, inplace=True) +df['ForecastOpen'] = df[forecast_col[0]].shift(forecast_out) +df['ForecastClose'] = df[forecast_col[3]].shift(forecast_out) + +#print(df) +df=df[:forecast_out] +X=df[['Open', 'High', 'Low', 'Close', 'open_score', 'close_score','PC_open','PC_close']] +#X=df.drop(['ForecastOpen','ForecastClose','#''],1) +y=df['ForecastOpen'] + +X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = cross_validation.train_test_split(X, y, test_size=0.2,random_state=324) +clf = LinearRegression() +clf.fit(X_train, y_train) +confidence = clf.score(X_test, y_test) +print("Hybrid Method Accuracy for Open Price: ") +print(confidence * 100.0) + +plt.scatter(X['Open'],y,color="m",marker="o",s=30) +plt.plot() +plt.show() + + +z=df['ForecastClose'] + +X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = cross_validation.train_test_split(X, z, test_size=0.2,random_state=324) +clf = LinearRegression() +clf.fit(X_train, y_train) +confidence = clf.score(X_test, y_test) +print("Hybrid Method Accuracy for Close Price: ") +print(confidence * 100.0) diff --git a/Stock Prediction/hybrid-SVM.py b/Stock Prediction/hybrid-SVM.py new file mode 100644 index 0000000..816dbfe --- /dev/null +++ b/Stock Prediction/hybrid-SVM.py @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +import numpy as np +from sklearn import preprocessing, cross_validation +from sklearn.linear_model import LinearRegression +from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestClassifier +from sklearn.svm import SVC +import pandas as pd +import copy +import platform +import sys +forecast_out=-1 +df1=pd.read_csv('TCS_qs_NSE.csv') + +df1=df1.set_index('Date') + +def status_calc(stock, nse, outperformance=0.001): + return stock - nse >= outperformance + + +X=df1.drop(['shift_close','p_change'],1) +y=status_calc(df1['PC_close'],df1['p_change'],0.001) + +X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = cross_validation.train_test_split(X, y, test_size=0.2,random_state=324) +clf=SVC(kernel="rbf") +#clf=RandomForestClassifier(n_estimators=100, random_state=0) +clf.fit(X_train, y_train) +confidence = clf.score(X_test, y_test) +print("Hybrid Method Accuracy for SVM close Price: ") +print(confidence * 100.0) + + + diff --git a/Stock Prediction/interpolation.py b/Stock Prediction/interpolation.py new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c2c6137 --- /dev/null +++ b/Stock Prediction/interpolation.py @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +import quandl +import math +import numpy as np +from sklearn import preprocessing, cross_validation, svm +from sklearn.linear_model import LinearRegression +from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestClassifier +import matplotlib.pyplot as plt + +def interpolate(dataframe, cols_to_interpolate): + + print(dataframe.shape) + #dataframe.drop(['2017-03-21','2017-03-22']) + #dataframe.drop([80:82]) + + ''' + plt.figure(1) + plt.title('Interpolated data') + plt.subplot(2, 1, 1) + plt.plot(dataframe) + ''' + #dataframe.resample('D') + cols=list(dataframe) + for col in cols: + dataframe[col].interpolate(method='linear') + + print(dataframe.shape) + ''' + plt.subplot(2,1,2) + plt.plot(dataframe) + + plt.show() + ''' + return dataframe diff --git a/Stock Prediction/interpolation.pyc b/Stock Prediction/interpolation.pyc new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1e60c90 Binary files /dev/null and b/Stock Prediction/interpolation.pyc differ diff --git a/Stock Prediction/keyword_extraction_v3.py b/Stock Prediction/keyword_extraction_v3.py new file mode 100644 index 0000000..768510c --- /dev/null +++ b/Stock Prediction/keyword_extraction_v3.py @@ -0,0 +1,116 @@ + +import sys +import platform +import pandas as pd +from collections import defaultdict +import re + + +company_id='TCS' + +# company_id=sys.argv[1] + +# read file +filenames=['labeled_round.csv','company_keyword.xlsx'] + +df =pd.read_csv(filenames[0]) +df1=pd.read_excel(filenames[1],sheetname='Sheet1') +df2=pd.read_excel(filenames[1],sheetname='Sheet2') + + +''' +#company keyword dict +company = defaultdict(list) +for i,r in df1.iterrows(): + company[str(r.company)]=str(r.keyword).split(',') +#competitor keyword dict +competitor = defaultdict(list) +for i,r in df2.iterrows(): + ids,others=str(r.competitor).split(';') + comp_id=str(ids).split(',') + +#id,sector=sys.argv[1],sys.argv[2] +id,sector='TCS','IT' +company[id].extend(company[sector]) +print(company[id]) +''' +sector,company,competitor=dict(),dict(),dict() + +#hardcode database for demo + + +if company_id=='REL': + company[company_id]='Reliance Industries,Mukesh Ambani,Anil Ambani,Reliance Commercial Corporation,RELIANCE,RIL,Jio' + competitor[company_id]='BPCL,GAIL,NTPC,ONGC,PG,TP,Airtel,Vodafone,Idea,BSNL' + sector[company_id]='Telecom,Telecommunication,Department of Telecommunications,mopng,Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas,mop&ng,natural gas,petroleum,energy sector,powermin,Ministry of Energy sources,Ministry of New and Renewable' + +elif company_id=='TCS': + company[company_id]='Tata Consultancy Services,TCS,Natarajan Chandrasekaran,Ratan Tata,Tata Group,JRD Tata,J.R.D. Tata,F.C. Kohli,FC Kohli' + competitor[company_id]='Infosys,HCL,TechMahindra,Wipro,Accenture,Cognizant,HP,Genpact,IBM' + sector[company_id]='information technology,IT industry' +elif company_id=='AX': + company[company_id]='AXIS bank,AXISBANK,Shikha Sharma,Sanjiv Misra' + competitor[company_id]='BOB,HDFC,HDFCB,ICICI,ININ,KMB,SBI,YB' + sector[company_id]='banking,finance,financial services,Reserve Bank of India,RBI,R.B.I.,banking system,banking structure,finmin,Ministry of Finance, Department of Financial Services' + + + + + + +result = pd.DataFrame() + +for i,r in df.iterrows(): + t=str(r.title).lower() + i=str(r.intro).lower() + b=str(r.body).lower() + + + cmpy_list,cmpt_list,sect_list=company[company_id].split(','),competitor[company_id].split(','),sector[company_id].split(',') + cmpy_set,cmpt_set,sect_set=set(cmpy_list),set(cmpt_list),set(sect_list) + tag='' + score=0.0 + match=False + + # company + keywords=cmpy_list + for k in keywords: + pattern=k.lower() + if re.search(pattern,i) or re.search(pattern,t) or re.search(pattern,b): + tag='company' + match=True + score=float(r.score) + break + # competitor + keywords=cmpt_list + for k in keywords: + pattern=k.lower() + if re.search(pattern,i) or re.search(pattern,t) or re.search(pattern,b): + tag='competitor' + match=True + score=0.0-float(r.score) + break + # sector + keywords=sect_list + for k in keywords: + pattern=k.lower() + if re.search(pattern,i) or re.search(pattern,t) or re.search(pattern,b): + if match: + tag='both' + else: + tag='general' + # check in title + if re.search(pattern,t) or re.search(pattern,i) and k in cmpy_set: + score=float(r.score) + elif re.search(pattern,t) or re.search(pattern,i) and k in cmpt_set: + score=0.0-float(r.score) + break + if match: + temp=pd.DataFrame({'date':[r.date],'time':[r.time],'title':[r.title],'intro':[r.intro],'body':[r.body],'score':score,'tag':tag}) + result=pd.concat([result,temp]) + + + +result = result.set_index(['score']) +print(result.describe()) +result.to_csv(company_id+'.csv',encoding='utf-8',sep=',') diff --git a/Stock Prediction/keyword_extraction_v3BACKUP.py b/Stock Prediction/keyword_extraction_v3BACKUP.py new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f8fbd84 --- /dev/null +++ b/Stock Prediction/keyword_extraction_v3BACKUP.py @@ -0,0 +1,47 @@ +import sys +import pandas as pd +from collections import defaultdict +import re + +# read file +filenames=['labeled_round.csv','company_keyword.xlsx'] +df = pd.read_csv(filenames[0]) + +#print(df.describe(),df.head()) + + +#company keyword dict +company=pd.read_excel(filenames[1],sheetname='Sheet1') +helper = defaultdict(list) + +for i,r in company.iterrows(): + helper[str(r.company)]=str(r.keyword).split(',') +#print(helper) + +#id,sector=sys.argv[1],sys.argv[2] +id,sector='TCS','IT' + +helper[id].extend(helper[sector]) + + +print(helper[id]) + +c=0 +result = pd.DataFrame() + +for i,r in df.iterrows(): + t=str(r.title).lower() + i=str(r.intro).lower() + b=str(r.body).lower() + + for k in helper[id]: + pattern=k.lower() + if re.search(pattern,i) or re.search(pattern,t) or re.search(pattern,b): + c=c+1 + temp=pd.DataFrame({'date':[r.date],'time':[r.time],'title':[r.title],'intro':[r.intro],'body':[r.body],'score':[r.score]}) + result=pd.concat([result,temp]) + break +#print(c) +result = result.set_index(['score']) +print(result.describe()) +result.to_csv(id+'.csv',encoding='utf-8',sep=',') diff --git a/Stock Prediction/labeled_round.csv b/Stock Prediction/labeled_round.csv new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ec55ed7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Stock Prediction/labeled_round.csv @@ -0,0 +1,1332 @@ +,body,date,intro,score,time,title +0,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.",2017-04-23,"Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",0.64,15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +0,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.",2017-04-22,"Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",0.56,19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +0,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",2017-04-22,Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,-0.1,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +0,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",2017-04-23,The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,-0.19,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +0,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.",2017-04-23,"Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",0.64,15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +0,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",2017-04-23,The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,-0.19,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +0,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.",2017-04-22,"Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",0.56,19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +0,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg",2017-04-22,"KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",0.62,18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +0,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",2017-04-22,ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,0.89,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +0,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",2017-04-22,ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,0.89,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +0,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",-0.05,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +0,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”",2017-04-22,"Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",0.0,01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +0,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”",2017-04-22,"Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",0.0,01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +0,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",2017-04-22,Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,-0.1,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +0,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg",2017-04-22,"KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",0.62,18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +0,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",2017-04-23,The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,0.78,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +0,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",-0.05,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",2017-04-21,IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,0.08,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +0,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",0.57,22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +0,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.",2017-05-04,"DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",0.59,23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +0,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",2017-04-21,RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,0.4,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",2017-04-23,The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,0.78,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +0,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.",2017-04-21,"As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",0.09,00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +0,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",0.57,22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",2017-04-21,IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,0.08,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +0,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",0.6,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +0,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.",2017-04-22,"A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",0.04,19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +0,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",2017-04-20,Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,0.49,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +0,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",2017-04-22,Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,-0.12,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +0,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",2017-04-20,Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,0.25,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +0,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.",2017-04-21,"As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",0.09,00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +0,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.",2017-04-21,"The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",0.76,19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +0,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",2017-04-21,RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,0.4,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +0,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",2017-04-21,Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,0.24,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +0,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.",2017-04-21,"Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",-0.15,20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +0,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",2017-04-20,Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,0.49,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +0,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.",2017-05-04,"DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",0.59,23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +0,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",2017-04-20,Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,0.25,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,0.52,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).",2017-04-21,"Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",0.24,02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +0,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.",2017-04-21,"Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",1.0,01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +0,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters",2017-04-22,"Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",1.0,10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +0,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",2017-04-20,World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,0.57,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +0,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",0.61,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.",2017-05-04,"When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",0.25,23:18,How to start an analytics journey +0,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",0.61,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters",2017-04-22,"Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",1.0,10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +0,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",2017-04-21,Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,0.37,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +0,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.",2017-05-04,"When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",0.25,23:18,How to start an analytics journey +0,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",2017-04-21,India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,-0.24,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +0,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",2017-04-21,India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,-0.24,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +0,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",2017-04-21,Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,0.37,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +0,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.",2017-04-23,"Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",0.64,15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +0,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",2017-04-23,The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,-0.19,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +0,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.",2017-04-22,"Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",0.56,19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +0,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",2017-04-23,The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,-0.19,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +0,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.",2017-04-23,"Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",0.64,15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +0,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters",2017-04-22,"Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",1.0,10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +0,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.",2017-05-04,"When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",0.25,23:18,How to start an analytics journey +0,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",0.61,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.",2017-04-22,"Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",0.56,19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +0,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",2017-04-21,Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,0.37,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +0,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",2017-04-21,India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,-0.24,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +0,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters",2017-04-22,"Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",1.0,10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +0,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",2017-04-21,India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,-0.24,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +0,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.",2017-05-04,"When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",0.25,23:18,How to start an analytics journey +0,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",0.61,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",2017-04-21,Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,0.37,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",0.13,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",0.35,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",2017-04-21,Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,0.41,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +0,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.",2017-04-20,"Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",0.65,23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +0,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",0.25,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",0.25,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",2017-04-21,Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,0.41,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +0,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.",2017-04-20,"Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",0.65,23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",0.13,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg",2017-04-22,"KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",0.62,18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +0,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",0.35,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”",2017-04-22,"Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",0.0,01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +0,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",-0.05,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +0,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",2017-04-22,ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,0.89,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +0,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",2017-04-23,The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,0.78,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +0,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",2017-04-22,Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,-0.1,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",0.57,22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg",2017-04-22,"KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",0.62,18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +0,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",2017-04-22,ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,0.89,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +0,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",2017-04-22,Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,-0.1,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +0,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",2017-04-21,Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,0.41,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +0,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",2017-04-21,IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,0.08,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +0,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",-0.05,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",0.13,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”",2017-04-22,"Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",0.0,01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +0,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",0.35,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.",2017-04-20,"Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",0.65,23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +0,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",2017-04-21,Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,0.41,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +0,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",0.35,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",0.13,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.",2017-04-20,"Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",0.65,23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +0,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",2017-04-22,Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,-0.12,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +0,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.",2017-04-22,"A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",0.04,19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +0,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",0.6,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +0,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.",2017-04-21,"Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",-0.15,20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +0,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.",2017-04-21,"The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",0.76,19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +0,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",0.6,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +0,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.",2017-04-22,"A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",0.04,19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +0,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.",2017-04-21,"The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",0.76,19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +0,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",2017-04-22,Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,-0.12,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +0,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",2017-04-22,Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,-0.12,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +0,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.",2017-04-21,"Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",-0.15,20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +0,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.",2017-04-22,"A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",0.04,19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +0,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",0.6,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +0,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.",2017-04-21,"The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",0.76,19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +0,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.",2017-04-21,"Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",-0.15,20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +0,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",2017-04-23,The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,0.78,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",0.57,22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",2017-04-21,IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,0.08,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +0,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",2017-04-21,RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,0.4,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +0,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.",2017-04-21,"As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",0.09,00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +0,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",2017-04-20,Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,0.49,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +0,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.",2017-05-04,"DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",0.59,23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +0,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",0.25,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",2017-04-20,Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,0.25,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +0,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",0.25,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",2017-04-21,Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,0.24,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,0.52,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.",2017-04-21,"Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",1.0,01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +0,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).",2017-04-21,"Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",0.24,02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +0,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",2017-04-20,World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,0.57,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +0,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).",2017-04-21,"Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",0.24,02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +0,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",2017-04-21,Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,0.24,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,0.52,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",2017-04-20,World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,0.57,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +0,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.",2017-04-21,"Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",1.0,01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +0,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",2017-04-21,Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,0.24,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,0.52,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",2017-04-20,World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,0.57,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +0,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).",2017-04-21,"Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",0.24,02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +0,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.",2017-04-21,"Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",1.0,01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +0,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",2017-04-21,RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,0.4,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +0,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.",2017-05-04,"DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",0.59,23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +0,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.",2017-04-21,"As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",0.09,00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +0,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",2017-04-20,Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,0.25,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +0,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",2017-04-20,Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,0.49,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +0,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",2017-04-23,The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,0.78,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +0,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",0.57,22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +0,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",2017-04-21,RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,0.4,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +0,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters",2017-04-22,"Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",1.0,10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",2017-04-21,IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,0.08,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +0,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",0.61,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.",2017-05-04,"When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",0.25,23:18,How to start an analytics journey +0,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",2017-04-23,The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,-0.19,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +0,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",2017-04-21,Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,0.37,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +0,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",2017-04-21,India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,-0.24,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +0,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.",2017-04-23,"Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",0.64,15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +0,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.",2017-04-22,"Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",0.56,19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +0,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",2017-04-22,ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,0.89,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +0,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.",2017-04-21,"As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",0.09,00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +0,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.",2017-05-04,"DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",0.59,23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +0,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",2017-04-20,Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,0.49,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +0,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",2017-04-20,Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,0.25,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +0,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",2017-04-21,Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,0.41,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",0.13,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",0.25,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",0.35,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.",2017-04-20,"Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",0.65,23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +0,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",-0.05,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +0,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg",2017-04-22,"KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",0.62,18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +0,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”",2017-04-22,"Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",0.0,01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +0,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",2017-04-22,Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,-0.1,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +0,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.",2017-04-22,"A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",0.04,19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +0,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",2017-04-22,Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,-0.12,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +0,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",0.6,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +0,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.",2017-04-21,"Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",-0.15,20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +0,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.",2017-04-21,"The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",0.76,19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +0,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.",2017-04-23,"Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",0.64,15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +0,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",2017-04-21,Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,0.24,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +0,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",2017-04-23,The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,-0.19,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +0,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.",2017-04-21,"The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",0.76,19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +0,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.",2017-04-22,"A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",0.04,19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +0,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",2017-04-22,Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,-0.12,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +0,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.",2017-04-22,"Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",0.56,19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +0,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.",2017-04-21,"Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",-0.15,20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +0,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",0.6,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +0,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",2017-04-23,The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,0.78,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +0,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",2017-04-21,Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,0.24,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",0.57,22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +0,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",2017-04-21,IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,0.08,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +0,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",2017-04-21,RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,0.4,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",0.61,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",2017-04-21,India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,-0.24,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +0,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters",2017-04-22,"Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",1.0,10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +0,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.",2017-05-04,"When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",0.25,23:18,How to start an analytics journey +0,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",2017-04-21,Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,0.37,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +0,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).",2017-04-21,"Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",0.24,02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,0.52,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.",2017-04-21,"Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",1.0,01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +0,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",2017-04-21,Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,0.41,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +0,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",2017-04-22,ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,0.89,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +0,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",2017-04-20,World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,0.57,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +0,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg",2017-04-22,"KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",0.62,18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +0,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",2017-04-22,Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,-0.1,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,0.52,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).",2017-04-21,"Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",0.24,02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +0,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",2017-04-20,World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,0.57,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +0,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",-0.05,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +0,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.",2017-04-21,"Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",1.0,01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +0,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”",2017-04-22,"Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",0.0,01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +0,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",2017-04-20,Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,0.49,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +0,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.",2017-05-04,"DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",0.59,23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +0,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.",2017-04-21,"As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",0.09,00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +0,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",2017-04-20,Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,0.25,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +0,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",0.35,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",0.13,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",0.25,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.",2017-04-20,"Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",0.65,23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +0,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters",2017-04-22,"Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",1.0,10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +0,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",0.61,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",2017-04-21,Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,0.37,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +0,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.",2017-05-04,"When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",0.25,23:18,How to start an analytics journey +0,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",2017-04-21,Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,0.41,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +0,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",2017-04-21,India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,-0.24,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",0.13,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",0.35,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.",2017-04-22,"A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",0.04,19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +0,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",0.25,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",0.6,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +0,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",2017-04-22,Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,-0.12,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +0,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.",2017-04-20,"Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",0.65,23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +0,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.",2017-04-21,"Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",-0.15,20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +0,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",2017-04-21,Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,0.24,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +0,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.",2017-04-21,"The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",0.76,19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +0,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters",2017-04-22,"Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",1.0,10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +0,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",0.61,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",2017-04-21,India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,-0.24,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +0,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",2017-04-21,Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,0.37,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,0.52,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.",2017-05-04,"When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",0.25,23:18,How to start an analytics journey +0,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).",2017-04-21,"Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",0.24,02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +0,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",2017-04-21,Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,0.41,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +0,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.",2017-04-21,"Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",1.0,01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",0.35,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",2017-04-23,The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,0.78,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +0,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",2017-04-20,World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,0.57,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",0.13,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",0.57,22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",2017-04-21,RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,0.4,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +0,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",2017-04-21,IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,0.08,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +0,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.",2017-04-20,"Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",0.65,23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +0,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",0.25,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.",2017-04-23,"Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",0.64,15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +0,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.",2017-04-22,"Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",0.56,19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +0,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",2017-04-23,The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,-0.19,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +0,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.",2017-04-21,"As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",0.09,00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +0,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",2017-04-22,ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,0.89,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +0,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.",2017-05-04,"DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",0.59,23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +0,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",2017-04-20,Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,0.25,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +0,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",2017-04-20,Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,0.49,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +0,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg",2017-04-22,"KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",0.62,18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +0,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",2017-04-22,Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,-0.1,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +0,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",-0.05,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +0,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",2017-04-22,Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,-0.12,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +0,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”",2017-04-22,"Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",0.0,01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +0,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",0.6,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +0,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.",2017-04-22,"A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",0.04,19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +0,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.",2017-04-21,"The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",0.76,19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +0,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",2017-04-23,The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,0.78,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +0,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.",2017-04-21,"Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",-0.15,20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +0,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",2017-04-21,Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,0.24,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",2017-04-21,RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,0.4,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +0,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",0.57,22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +0,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",2017-04-21,IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,0.08,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",2017-04-23,The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,-0.19,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +0,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.",2017-04-23,"Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",0.64,15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +0,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.",2017-04-22,"Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",0.56,19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +0,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",2017-04-22,ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,0.89,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +0,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",2017-04-23,The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,-0.19,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +0,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg",2017-04-22,"KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",0.62,18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +0,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.",2017-04-23,"Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",0.64,15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +0,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.",2017-04-22,"Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",0.56,19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +0,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).",2017-04-21,"Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",0.24,02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,0.52,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",2017-04-20,World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,0.57,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +0,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.",2017-04-21,"As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",0.09,00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +0,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.",2017-04-21,"Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",1.0,01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +0,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",2017-04-20,Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,0.25,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +0,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.",2017-05-04,"DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",0.59,23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +0,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",2017-04-22,Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,-0.1,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +0,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",2017-04-20,Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,0.49,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +0,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”",2017-04-22,"Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",0.0,01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +0,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",2017-04-21,Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,0.37,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +0,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",2017-04-21,India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,-0.24,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +0,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",0.61,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",-0.05,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +0,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.",2017-05-04,"When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",0.25,23:18,How to start an analytics journey +0,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters",2017-04-22,"Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",1.0,10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +0,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.",2017-04-23,"Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",0.64,15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +0,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",2017-04-21,Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,0.41,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +0,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",2017-04-23,The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,-0.19,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",0.13,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.",2017-04-22,"Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",0.56,19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +0,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",2017-04-22,Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,-0.12,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +0,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",2017-04-22,ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,0.89,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +0,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg",2017-04-22,"KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",0.62,18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +0,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",0.6,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,0.52,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.",2017-04-21,"The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",0.76,19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +0,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",2017-04-21,Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,0.24,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +0,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.",2017-04-21,"Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",-0.15,20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +0,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.",2017-04-22,"A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",0.04,19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +0,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).",2017-04-21,"Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",0.24,02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +0,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”",2017-04-22,"Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",0.0,01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +0,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",2017-04-22,Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,-0.1,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +0,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg",2017-04-22,"KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",0.62,18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +0,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",2017-04-22,ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,0.89,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +0,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",0.35,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",-0.05,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +0,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",0.25,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",2017-04-22,Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,-0.1,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +0,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.",2017-04-20,"Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",0.65,23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +0,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”",2017-04-22,"Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",0.0,01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.",2017-04-21,"Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",1.0,01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +0,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",-0.05,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +0,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",2017-04-23,The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,0.78,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +0,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",2017-04-20,World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,0.57,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +0,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",0.57,22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +0,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",2017-04-21,IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,0.08,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters",2017-04-22,"Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",1.0,10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +0,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",0.61,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",2017-04-21,India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,-0.24,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +0,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.",2017-05-04,"When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",0.25,23:18,How to start an analytics journey +0,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",2017-04-21,Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,0.37,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +0,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",2017-04-21,RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,0.4,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +0,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",2017-04-21,Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,0.41,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",0.13,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",2017-04-20,Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,0.25,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +0,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",2017-04-20,Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,0.49,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +0,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.",2017-05-04,"DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",0.59,23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +0,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.",2017-04-20,"Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",0.65,23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +0,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.",2017-04-21,"As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",0.09,00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +0,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",0.35,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.",2017-04-20,"The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said",-0.23,22:12,Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +0,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",2017-04-22,Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,0.21,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +0,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,0.25,10:27,Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +0,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",0.25,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",2017-04-20,Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,0.16,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +0,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.",2017-04-19,"For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",-0.12,07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +0,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",2017-04-22,Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,0.21,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +0,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.",2017-04-19,"India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending",0.24,05:21,A short history of extradition from UK to India +0,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.",2017-04-20,"The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said",-0.23,22:12,Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +0,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,0.25,10:27,Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +0,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",2017-04-20,Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,0.16,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +0,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.",2017-04-19,"India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending",0.24,05:21,A short history of extradition from UK to India +0,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.",2017-04-22,"A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",0.04,19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +0,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",2017-04-19,Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,-0.52,05:18,"Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +0,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",2017-04-22,Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,-0.12,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +0,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.",2017-04-19,"For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",-0.12,07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +0,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",0.6,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +0,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.",2017-04-21,"Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",-0.15,20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +0,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.",2017-04-21,"The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",0.76,19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +0,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",2017-04-21,Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,0.24,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +0,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",2017-04-23,The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,0.78,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,0.52,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",0.57,22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +0,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",2017-04-21,IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,0.08,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +0,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",2017-04-21,RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,0.4,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +0,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",2017-04-19,Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,-0.52,05:18,"Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +0,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",2017-04-19,Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,0.19,05:15,The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +0,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court",2017-04-19,"A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",-0.36,05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +0,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",2017-04-19,Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,-0.24,05:11,What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +0,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.",2017-04-21,"As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",0.09,00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +0,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court",2017-04-19,"A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",-0.36,05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +0,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",2017-04-19,Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,-0.24,05:11,What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +0,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.",2017-04-23,"Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",0.64,15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +0,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",2017-04-19,Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,0.19,05:15,The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +0,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",2017-04-23,The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,-0.19,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +0,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).",2017-04-21,"Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",0.24,02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +0,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",2017-04-22,ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,0.89,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +0,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.",2017-04-22,"Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",0.56,19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +0,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.",2017-04-21,"Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",1.0,01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +0,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",2017-04-20,Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,0.49,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +0,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",2017-04-20,World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,0.57,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +0,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",2017-04-22,Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,0.21,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +0,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.",2017-05-04,"DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",0.59,23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +0,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,0.25,10:27,Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +0,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",2017-04-20,Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,0.25,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +0,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.",2017-04-20,"The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said",-0.23,22:12,Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +0,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.",2017-04-19,"For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",-0.12,07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +0,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",2017-04-20,Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,0.16,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +0,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.",2017-04-19,"India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending",0.24,05:21,A short history of extradition from UK to India +0,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg",2017-04-22,"KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",0.62,18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +0,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",2017-04-22,Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,-0.1,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +0,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.",2017-04-22,"A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",0.04,19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +0,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",2017-04-22,Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,-0.12,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +0,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",-0.05,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +0,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”",2017-04-22,"Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",0.0,01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",2017-04-21,Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,0.24,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +0,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",0.6,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +0,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.",2017-04-21,"The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",0.76,19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +0,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",2017-04-23,The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,0.78,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +0,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.",2017-04-21,"Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",-0.15,20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +0,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",2017-04-21,RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,0.4,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",0.57,22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +0,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.",2017-04-21,"As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",0.09,00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +0,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",2017-04-21,India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,-0.24,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +0,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",0.61,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",2017-04-21,Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,0.37,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +0,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters",2017-04-22,"Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",1.0,10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +0,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.",2017-05-04,"When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",0.25,23:18,How to start an analytics journey +0,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",2017-04-21,Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,0.41,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +0,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",2017-04-19,Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,-0.52,05:18,"Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",0.13,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",2017-04-19,Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,0.19,05:15,The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +0,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court",2017-04-19,"A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",-0.36,05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +0,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",2017-04-19,Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,-0.24,05:11,What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +0,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",2017-04-21,IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,0.08,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,0.52,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).",2017-04-21,"Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",0.24,02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +0,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.",2017-04-21,"Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",1.0,01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +0,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",2017-04-20,World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,0.57,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +0,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",2017-04-20,Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,0.25,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +0,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.",2017-05-04,"DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",0.59,23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +0,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",2017-04-20,Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,0.49,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +0,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",0.35,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",2017-04-22,Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,0.21,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +0,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",0.25,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,0.25,10:27,Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +0,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.",2017-04-20,"Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",0.65,23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +0,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.",2017-04-19,"India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending",0.24,05:21,A short history of extradition from UK to India +0,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",2017-04-20,Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,0.16,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +0,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.",2017-04-19,"For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",-0.12,07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +0,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.",2017-04-20,"The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said",-0.23,22:12,Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +0,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",2017-04-23,The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,-0.19,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +0,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.",2017-04-23,"Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",0.64,15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +0,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.",2017-04-22,"Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",0.56,19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +0,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",2017-04-22,ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,0.89,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +0,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",2017-04-19,Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,-0.52,05:18,"Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +0,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court",2017-04-19,"A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",-0.36,05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +0,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",2017-04-19,Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,0.19,05:15,The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +0,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",2017-04-19,Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,-0.24,05:11,What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +0,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",2017-04-22,Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,-0.1,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +0,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg",2017-04-22,"KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",0.62,18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +0,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.",2017-04-22,"A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",0.04,19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +0,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",2017-04-22,Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,-0.12,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +0,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",-0.05,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +0,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”",2017-04-22,"Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",0.0,01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +0,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",0.6,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +0,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.",2017-04-21,"Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",-0.15,20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +0,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.",2017-04-21,"The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",0.76,19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +0,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",2017-04-21,Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,0.24,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,0.52,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).",2017-04-21,"Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",0.24,02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +0,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",2017-04-20,World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,0.57,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +0,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.",2017-04-21,"Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",1.0,01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +0,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.",2017-05-04,"When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",0.25,23:18,How to start an analytics journey +0,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",0.61,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters",2017-04-22,"Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",1.0,10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +0,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",2017-04-21,India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,-0.24,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",2017-04-21,Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,0.37,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +0,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",2017-04-21,Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,0.41,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +0,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",2017-04-23,The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,0.78,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +0,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",0.57,22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +0,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",2017-04-21,RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,0.4,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +0,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",2017-04-21,IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,0.08,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",0.35,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",0.25,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",0.13,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.",2017-04-20,"Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",0.65,23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +0,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,0.25,10:27,Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +0,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",2017-04-22,Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,0.21,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +0,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",2017-04-20,Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,0.16,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +0,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.",2017-04-20,"The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said",-0.23,22:12,Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +0,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.",2017-04-19,"India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending",0.24,05:21,A short history of extradition from UK to India +0,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.",2017-04-19,"For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",-0.12,07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +0,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.",2017-04-21,"As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",0.09,00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +0,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.",2017-05-04,"DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",0.59,23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +0,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",2017-04-20,Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,0.25,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +0,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",2017-04-19,Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,-0.52,05:18,"Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +0,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",2017-04-20,Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,0.49,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +0,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court",2017-04-19,"A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",-0.36,05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +0,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters",2017-04-22,"Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",1.0,10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +0,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",2017-04-19,Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,-0.24,05:11,What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +0,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",0.61,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",2017-04-19,Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,0.19,05:15,The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +0,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",2017-04-21,India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,-0.24,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +0,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.",2017-05-04,"When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",0.25,23:18,How to start an analytics journey +0,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",2017-04-21,Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,0.37,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +0,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",2017-04-21,Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,0.41,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",0.13,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",0.25,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.",2017-04-20,"Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",0.65,23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +0,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",0.35,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.",2017-04-23,"Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",0.64,15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +0,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",2017-04-23,The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,-0.19,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +0,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.",2017-04-22,"Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",0.56,19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +0,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",2017-04-22,Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,-0.1,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +0,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",2017-04-22,ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,0.89,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +0,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”",2017-04-22,"Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",0.0,01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +0,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg",2017-04-22,"KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",0.62,18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +0,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",-0.05,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +0,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.",2017-04-22,"A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",0.04,19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +0,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",2017-04-22,Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,-0.12,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +0,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",0.6,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +0,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.",2017-04-21,"Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",-0.15,20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +0,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",2017-04-21,Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,0.24,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +0,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.",2017-04-21,"The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",0.76,19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,0.52,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.",2017-04-21,"Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",1.0,01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +0,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",2017-04-20,World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,0.57,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +0,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).",2017-04-21,"Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",0.24,02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +0,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",2017-04-23,The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,0.78,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",0.57,22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",2017-04-21,IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,0.08,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +0,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",2017-04-21,RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,0.4,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +0,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.",2017-04-21,"As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",0.09,00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +0,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.",2017-04-23,"Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",0.64,15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +0,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",2017-04-23,The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,-0.19,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +0,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.",2017-04-22,"Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",0.56,19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +0,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",2017-04-22,ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,0.89,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +0,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg",2017-04-22,"KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",0.62,18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +0,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.",2017-05-04,"DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",0.59,23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +0,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",2017-04-20,Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,0.25,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +0,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",2017-04-20,Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,0.49,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +0,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",2017-04-22,Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,-0.12,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +0,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.",2017-04-22,"A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",0.04,19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +0,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",0.6,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +0,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.",2017-04-21,"Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",-0.15,20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +0,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.",2017-04-21,"The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",0.76,19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +0,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",2017-04-21,Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,0.24,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,0.52,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",2017-04-22,Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,-0.1,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +0,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”",2017-04-22,"Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",0.0,01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +0,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",2017-04-22,Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,0.21,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +0,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",-0.05,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +0,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,0.25,10:27,Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +0,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.",2017-04-20,"The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said",-0.23,22:12,Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +0,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",2017-04-20,Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,0.16,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +0,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.",2017-04-19,"For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",-0.12,07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +0,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.",2017-04-19,"India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending",0.24,05:21,A short history of extradition from UK to India +0,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",2017-04-19,Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,-0.52,05:18,"Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +0,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).",2017-04-21,"Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",0.24,02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +0,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",2017-04-20,World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,0.57,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +0,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.",2017-04-21,"Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",1.0,01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +0,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.",2017-04-23,"Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",0.64,15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +0,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",2017-04-23,The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,-0.19,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +0,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.",2017-04-22,"Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",0.56,19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +0,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg",2017-04-22,"KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",0.62,18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +0,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",2017-04-22,ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,0.89,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +0,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",2017-04-22,Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,-0.1,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +0,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",0.57,22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",2017-04-21,IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,0.08,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +0,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",2017-04-23,The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,0.78,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",2017-04-21,RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,0.4,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +0,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",2017-04-19,Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,0.19,05:15,The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +0,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.",2017-04-21,"As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",0.09,00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +0,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",2017-04-19,Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,-0.24,05:11,What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +0,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court",2017-04-19,"A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",-0.36,05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +0,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.",2017-05-04,"DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",0.59,23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +0,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",-0.05,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +0,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”",2017-04-22,"Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",0.0,01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +0,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",2017-04-20,Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,0.49,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +0,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters",2017-04-22,"Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",1.0,10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +0,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",2017-04-20,Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,0.25,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +0,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",2017-04-21,Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,0.41,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +0,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",0.61,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.",2017-05-04,"When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",0.25,23:18,How to start an analytics journey +0,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",2017-04-21,Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,0.37,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +0,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",2017-04-21,India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,-0.24,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +0,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.",2017-04-20,"Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",0.65,23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +0,"
Shares of Indiabulls Real Estate Ltd (IBREL) on Monday jumped 40% on Monday after the property developer revealed plans to carve out its leasing and commercial businesses into a separate entity. The IBREL board that met on Monday morning decided to create a new vertical to house the two businesses.The residential business will continue to remain with IBREL.The new entity—Indiabulls Commercial Assets Ltd (IBCAL)—will hold existing leasing and commercial assets, as well as future projects.IBREL expects the new vertical to earn a rental income of Rs692 crore in 2017-18. The board also decided to explore opportunities for bringing strategic investments into the new entity, the company informed the stock exchanges.It proposes to either get a strategic investor for its rental arm or demerge the rental arm from the development arm.A restructuring committee will study the plan and prepare a draft scheme or proposal for the board’s approval.IBCAL will have a separate management team with a chief executive and a new investor is expected to come on board in the next few months, said a person familiar with the company’s plans, who did not want to be named.According to the company’s projections on the basis of accounts as of 31 March, IBCAL will have a net worth of Rs2,311 crore and a debt of Rs3,950 crore, with a potential revenue generation of Rs1,357 crore in 2020-21.IBCAL will have a portfolio of 8.35 million sq. ft of office buildings in Mumbai, Gurgaon and Chennai.“The net debt of IBCAL (post restructuring) will be reduced over medium- to long-term from the annuity revenues. We believe this model will provide cheaper cost of capital to fund the expansion of business after FY2020-21,” the company said in its filing.IBREL shares closed 39.96% higher at Rs148.15 on BSE on Monday, while the BSE Sensex lost 0.16% to close at 29,413.66 points.In the recent past, there have been some large deals in the commercial office space. Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte. Ltd, private equity firm Blackstone Group Lp and Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management Inc., have been buying out some of the largest office parks and acquiring rental portfolios of developers at a time India’s residential market has seen tepid sales and a price correction. “The eventual plan is to create a separate entity for the commercial and leasing business and target listing the stock at a later date. Indiabulls will also be looking at getting a foreign investor or PE fund to participate in the equity of IBCAL. Most large global investors have preferred to participate in the commercial or leasing market in India...,” said Abhishek Lodhiya, senior equity research analyst-infrastructure, capital goods and real estate, Angel Broking Ltd, in a note.",2017-04-18,"Indiabulls Commercial Assets will focus on the annuity business through rental income of existing office projects, under-development and new projects",0.31,03:43,Indiabulls to carve out commercial office business into separate firm +0,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",0.25,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",0.35,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",0.13,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0,"Mumbai: The Bombay high court (HC) on Monday said it will hear on 27 April a plea against the government and state-run insurers, including Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), for holding shares in cigarette maker ITC Ltd.The petition, which also names the insurance regulator, has argued that the government, which is tackling health issues arising out of tobacco consumption, should not directly or indirectly hold a stake in ITC and other companies in the tobacco business.The insurance companies, Union of India, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, have been asked to file their responses to the petition before the matter is heard next. The government of India, through five state-run insurance companies and Specified Undertaking of Unit Trust of India, owns a 32% stake in ITC.",2017-04-18,Petition argues that the government should not directly or indirectly hold a stake in ITC and other companies in tobacco business,-0.07,03:22,Bombay HC to hear plea on issue of govt stake in ITC on 27 April +0,"Mumbai: The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Monday refused to grant a waiver to Cyrus Mistry family firms from the minimum shareholding requirement for filing a petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons Ltd. NCLT also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression. In an oral order, the two-member bench dismissed the waiver petition and main petition . The final order will be available on Friday. The Mistry family firms will now be moving the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) against NCLT’s decision once they receive a copy of the order, said their lawyers.Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd asked the NCLT to waive the requirement that shareholders hold at least 10% of a firm to file a petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.They were seeking the waiver after NCLT on 7 March ruled that their petition was not maintainable because of this technical requirement. While these firms hold 18.4% of ordinary shares in Tata Sons, when preference shares are counted, their ownership comes down to only about 2.17%.Aryama Sundaram, counsel for the Mistry family firms, argued for the waiver citing concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.The spat between the Mistry firms and the Tatas started on 24 October when Mistry was removed as chairman of Tata Sons. He was later ousted from its board.“Tata Sons interprets the ruling by the NCLT as demonstrating that the petitioners failed to make a convincing or compelling case that warranted a hearing on alleged mismanagement, oppression or other actions,” the holding company of the salt-to-software group said in an emailed statement. “We hope this brings to an end a vexatious campaign against the Company, the Tata Trusts and Mr. Ratan N. Tata.”A spokesperson for Cyrus Mistry declined comment.Some legal experts said they were surprised at NCLT’s decision. “They had a valid reason for a waiver because it’s (Tata Sons) not a private company and the holding company holds several public companies,” said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at law firm Advaya Legal. “Therefore, in my view, the option could have been exercised in favour of the petitioner. The tribunal, by dismissing the petition, has adopted a very hyper-technical approach.”That said, the legal battle has not ended as there are several options for the Mistry investment firms, including approaching the high court or civil sessions court apart from NCLAT. Adverse decisions at these forums can be challenged all the way till the Supreme Court depending on either party’s stomach for the fight. NCLAT can refer the waiver plea back to the tribunal only if it finds fault in the order passed by NCLT. It can also dismiss the appeal filed by the Mistry firms. If it does, the Mistry firms can go to the Supreme Court. If NCLAT finds merit in the appeal of Mistry firms, then NCLT would need to hear the main plea, lawyers said, pointing out that so far NCLT has not heard the main petition. J. N Gupta, managing director and co-founder at proxy advisory firm Stakeholders Empowerment Services, said it was highly unlikely that NCLAT will come up with a different interpretation of the law.“I don’t think NCLAT will have a different view. This being a high-profile case, the NCLT would have applied all its wisdom. Nobody writes an order that stands the risk of being overthrown,” said Gupta. Others agreed. “It will be challenging, since the waiver can be sought in compelling circumstances which are beyond ordinary (things), like on account of public interest. This appears to be a little tricky to prove for the Mistry camp,” said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at IC Legal.",2017-04-18,NCLT also refused a waiver plea to Cyrus Mistry family firms for filing a petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons,0.1,02:35,Cyrus Mistry’s main NCLT petition against Tata Sons dismissed +0,"
Mumbai: Till even six years back, R.S. Thakur, who was then the managing director and chief executive of Tata AutoComp Systems Ltd, harboured one niggling grouse. Despite having 18,000 employees, he was finding it increasingly difficult to get “employees to man certain positions that were slightly on the dangerous side”.To address the issue, he “did bounce the idea of making an industrial robot at a couple of board meetings”. The concept, Thakur explained, was to take away “dull, dangerous and monotonous work like welding, etc., from workers who could then concentrate on higher levels of productivity”. However, nothing firm materialized from those meetings.A couple of years passed by and, in 2013, Thakur retired from Tata AutoComp and became non-executive director and chairman of TAL Manufacturing Solutions Ltd, a subsidiary of Tata Motors Ltd. Yet, the thought of making an industrial robot lingered. “After all, it was a subject close to my heart,” Thakur said.In 2014, Amit Bhingurde joined TAL as its chief operations officer (COO). An industrial engineer who also served as president and CEO of Kuka Robotics India before joining TAL, Bhingurde gave shape to Thakur’s dream of manufacturing ‘BRABO’—the first “Made in India” industrial robot. “It was when Bhingurde joined that the actual development work on Brabo began,” Thakur acknowledged.BRABO—short for “Bravo Robot”—has been priced between Rs5 lakh and Rs7 lakh and can even be bought on equated monthly instalments, or EMIs. BRABO comes in two variants that can handle payloads of 2kg and 10kg, respectively.“As per ILO (International Labour Organization) standards, a human should not lift more than 10kg, hence the (maximum) payload for the robot was fixed at 10kg,” Thakur noted, adding that an industrial robot, which can handle a 10kg payload can replace 1-2 operators per shift with a payback of less than two years for a customer.Manufactured at the TAL’s Pune factory, the design of Brabo has been done in house at TAL, styling at Tata Elxsi, and manufacturing of some parts at Tata AutoComp, while Tata Capital provides the finance.Other than the motors and drives for the robo arm, which are sourced from Italy, “all the other parts of BRABO are manufactured in India”, according to Thakur who acknowledges that this “is a challenge we face right now because we don’t have enough good motor and drive manufacturers in India currently”. TAL currently has a strategic collaboration with RTA-Motion Control Systems of Italy to source the motors and drives.BRABO, insisted Thakur, isn’t just an industrial robot—it is the first Indian “conceptualized, designed and manufactured articulated industrial robot”, and is a “unique product” suited to Indian conditions. Articulated robots are those that are fitted with rotary joints, which allow a full range of precise movements and, thus, increase the capabilities of the robot. An articulated robot can have one or more rotary joints, depending on the design of the robot and its intended function.First showcased at the Make in India week in 2016, Brabo was developed by a team of six engineers “whose average age was 24 years”. Today, TAL has around 800 employees. “More than 20% of our team has students with an engineering background who came for a two-month training but have stayed back because of their passion and commitment. We plan to retain them,” Bhingurde said, adding that over the last three years, the development cost “has been very small for us, which is Rs10 crore as we had a small team of extremely passionate people”.BRABO, according to Thakur, is a result of “focused innovation”, and targeted primarily at micro, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), “while also remaining relevant to large manufacturing industries, who have appreciated the positive difference that these robots have made”. “We have 55 happy customers who have already begun using BRABO and have achieved some really great results,” Thakur said.BRABO, which according to Thakur is “30-40% cheaper than any international industrial robot with similar applications”, can be used for varied applications for tasks like pick and placement of materials, assembly of parts, machine and press tending, as a sealing application, and camera and vision-based jobs.“We have made BRABO so user-friendly that anyone without any previous robotics experience can effectively operate it. A majority of Indian MSMEs are yet to realize the advantages of using industrial robots. Our effort is to change the manufacturing ecosystem, where not only large but micro industries can upgrade their operations by deploying robots which would complement the people workforce. We are also committed to offering the most comprehensive on-site customer service at a very reasonable cost,” Thakur said.In a bid to provide the best “customer experience”, TAL plans to have a wide network of service engineers, supported by systems integrators “in practically every major industrial hub in India, to ensure service call response within a few hours”.Five to six months before the actual launch, TAL identified customers and started putting its robots in industries for testing. “Initially, we got an order for 25 robots and later, an order for 30 robots was made. In total, we have supplied around 55 till date—25 were sold and 30 were given on a six-month trial,” Thakur pointed out.TAL’s current customers include Tata Motors Ltd, Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, Larsen and Toubro Ltd, Diebold, CPG Industries, Hydromatik, SGK Industries and BITS Dubai Campus.It takes two days to train the supervisors and workers for programming, running and using it regularly.“Orders received will depend on how fast we deliver solutions to the customers and we are continuously increasing our engineering strength. We are looking at an order size of 500 robots for this year,” said Thakur, adding that the Pune factory has a production capacity of 3,000 units annually.It currently takes TAL about a month to deliver BRABO on the shop floor: about three weeks to manufacture the robot and 3-7 days to deliver it to the site. TAL says it is trying to cut this time to about 15 days.Training programmes for engineers are under way. TAL is also signing more system integrators who manufacture grippers and other parts of the robot. The next focus will be to have a longer arm for the robot. Currently, it is a five-axis, and TAL soon plans to introduce the robot with a six-axis. The firm is also looking at making robots for specific purposes such as welding, as the workforce available for this specific task is reducing given that welding is “dangerous and tiring”. “We should be able to launch robots for welding application by the end of this year,” Thakur said.TAL, according to Thakur, also plans to make significant investments in research and development (R&D) to regularly launch new products (higher payloads and longer reach) and address applications like welding, “for which we are on the lookout for a new partner”.TAL has also applied for an intellectual property (IP) certification for BRABO, “which will represent a degree of protection provided against the entry of foreign objects, especially water in the machine”.BRABO already has four patents in its name and a recently-acquired CE certification that will enable TAL to export BRABO to Europe and the US. However, according to Thakur, “India is a virgin market. Our aim is to populate it first.”The company has also set up a live demonstration centre for its customers at its Pune facility, where the robots perform multiple applications such as sorting with a vision system, press tending, gluing, sealing, machine tending and pick and place. BRABO’s primary focus is on sectors such as automotive, electronics, logistics, food, packaging and pharma.Thakur, of course, has no plans to make humanoids—robots seen in sci-fi movies that think, walk and behave like humans. “For now, our focus is to manufacture industrial robots.” He did admit, though, that in “one of my weaker moments”, he did give in to the temptation of catering to the request of one of our customers who owns a pub in Bandra, a Mumbai suburb.“The customer wanted a prototype for a robot that can pour liquor too. We submitted a plan for the same and the slogan at the pub will be: ‘Your drink untouched by human hands’.” Thakur, though, now has a problem on his hands: this customer now wants the same robot to play music at times when liquor is not being served.Thakur promises not to succumb to the temptation easily. “We have not worked on that as yet,” he says with a laugh. In the interim, as Thakur grapples with these temptations, he believes that BRABO will usher in a ‘Robolution’, similar to an Industrial Revolution 2.0—one that will potentially change the manufacturing scenario of our country.Industrial robots market to hit $79.58 bn in five years
The use of industrial robots, according to MarketsandMarkets Research Pvt. Ltd, is expected to grow exponentially in the future as they help cost reduction, improved quality, increased production, and improved workplace health and safety. The global industrial robotics market is expected to reach $79.58 billion by 2022, growing at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.92% between 2016 and 2022. The main growth drivers, according to the research firm, are the adoption of automation to ensure quality production and meet market demand, and the rising demand from small- and medium-scale enterprises in developing nations.Articulated robots held the major share of the market in 2015, and this market is expected to grow at the highest CAGR between 2016 and 2022. Owing to the structure and operational capabilities of articulated arm robots, they are widely used by various industrial applications in the automotive and electrical and electronics industry among others.The Asia Pacific market (APAC) is expected to grow at the highest CAGR between 2016 and 2022. The main drivers for this growth are the demand for collaborative industrial robots from small- and medium-scale enterprises in China, Japan, South Korea, and India as well as the growing investments in countries such as India to boost manufacturing under projects such as Make in India, according to the research firm.The major firms in this sector are ABB Ltd (Switzerland), KUKA AG (Germany), FANUC Corp. (Japan), Yaskawa Electric Corp. (Japan), and Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd (Japan), the research firm says.",2017-04-18,"BRABO, according to TAL Manufacturing Solutions, is the first Indian ‘conceptualized, designed and manufactured articulated industrial robot’",0.34,03:30,BRABO: How India got its first Made in India industrial robot +0,"New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday directed the official liquidator of the Bombay high court to auction Aamby Valley City, Sahara Group’s flagship property in Maharashtra, to recover the money it owes investors.The apex court also directed Sahara India chief Subrata Roy to personally appear before the court at the next hearing in the case on 27 April. “Verify, make an evaluation and proceed with sale,” the court said in a directive to the official liquidator of the Bombay high court.Justices Dipak Misra, Ranjan Gogoi and A.K. Sikri directed the auction of Aamby Valley, located in Pune district, after Sahara failed to deposit Rs5,092.64 crore with the capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India. It owes the money to investors who purchased securities sold by two group companies through schemes that Sebi ruled were illegal.Aamby Valley is Sahara’s flagship project, consisting of luxury resorts, man-made lakes and an airport. It is spread over 4,000 hectares. In January 2012, Sahara valued the property at Rs34,000 crore.“The market valuation of Aamby Valley is over Rs1 lakh crore so auctioning under distress will be an undue benefit for any bidder,” Sahara said in a statement on Monday.“The property...would be saleable only if it is sold in... 50-100 acre parcels instead of trying to sell it to a single buyer,” said a top executive at a property advisory on condition of anonymity. Senior advocate Salman Khurshid, who appeared for Sahara, said the sale of three overseas hotels owned by Sahara Group—two in downtown New York and the plush Grosvenor House in London—will be finalized by 28 May.The court also imposed costs of Rs10 crore on MG Capital Holdings, a US-based real estate company that had moved the apex court seeking to buy Sahara’s stake in the overseas hotels. The US company failed to heed a previous court directive to deposit Rs750 crore as earnest money in Sebi’s dedicated Sahara account.In March 2014, Roy and two associates were placed under judicial custody after Sahara Group failed to comply with the court’s directions to refund investors. In May 2016, Roy and the two were granted parole by the court. This was extended to 17 April in February.Madhurima Nandy in Bengaluru contributed to this story.Sahara has filed a defamation case in a Patna court against Mint’s editor and some reporters over the newspaper’s coverage of the company’s dispute with the Securities and Exchange Board of India. Mint is contesting the case.",2017-04-18,"Supreme Court orders Aamby Valley auction after Sahara failed to deposit Rs5,092.64 crore with Sebi to secure Subrata Roy’s bail",0.96,02:35,"Supreme Court orders Aamby Valley auction, summons Subrata Roy" +0,"New Delhi: Telecom gear maker Ericsson AB has signed an agreement with Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi to jointly work on a programme for 5G technology development in India.“Ericsson and the IIT Delhi have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly roll out a ‘5G for India’ programme,” Ericsson said in a statement. Under the agreement, Ericsson will set up a Centre of Excellence with a 5G test bed and incubation centre at IIT Delhi and use this facility to drive the development of the country’s 5G ecosystem. The first series of tests under this programme are due to begin in the second half of 2017 and will place India on par with other developed countries in terms of 5G network and application deployment. ALSO READ: Ericsson sees up to $1.7 billion in costs as revamp beginsGlobally, limited deployment and 5G trials are expected to start by mid-2018 while commercial availability is slated for 2020. “The 5G for India programme is a major step towards understanding the power of 5G technology and how it can help aid Digital India initiatives, including the development of smart cities. The programme will focus on delivering research, innovation and industrial pilots that use next-generation 5G networks as an enabler,” Ericsson’s head of region India Paolo Colella said. This programme has been conceptualised to fast-track realisation of Digital India initiatives and aid application development for Indian start-ups and industries, the statement said. In addition to hosting the Center of Excellence, IIT Delhi will conduct research and development to explore how some of the country’s challenges can be addressed with mobile technologies, it added. “IIT Delhi has been committed to developing the latest technologies in close collaboration with industry. We are glad to be hosting the Ericsson Centre of Excellence and Incubation Centre, providing a big leap forward for 5G technologies ecosystem development in the country,” IIT Delhi director Ramgopal Rao said.",2017-03-30,"Ericsson and IIT Delhi have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to jointly roll out a ‘5G for India’ programme, the company said in a statement",0.25,19:18,Ericsson partners IIT Delhi for 5G technology in India +0,"
Defined as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programmes” by the late John McCarthy—one of the founding fathers of the discipline—Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has subtly made inroads into the daily lives of Indian citizens in the form of app-based cab aggregators and digital assistants on smartphones. However, public policy in India has not been able to take much advantage of AI applications, suggests a report published jointly by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) and consulting firm PwC. The report titled Artificial Intelligence and Robotics–2017 believes that national initiatives like Make in India, Skill India and Digital India could immensely benefit from AI technologies. Alternatively, early public sector interest in AI could trigger a spurt of activity in the AI field in India.AI, for instance, can be applied to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s initiatives such as the Digital India initiative, Skill India and Make in India; in large-scale public endeavours ranging from crop insurance schemes, tax fraud detection, and detecting subsidy leakage, and to helping hone the country’s defence strategy.AI, the report states, can also be consumed in traditional industries like agriculture. The department of agriculture cooperation and farmers welfare, ministry of agriculture runs the Kisan Call Centres across the country to respond to issues raised by farmers instantly and in their local language. An AI system could help in assisting the call centre by linking available information. It could pick up soil reports from government agencies and link them to the environmental conditions prevalent over the years using data from a remote sensing satellite. The call centre could, then, provide advice on the optimal crop that can be sown in that land pocket. This information could also be used to determine the crop’s susceptibility to pests. Necessary pre-emptive measures can then be taken—for instance, supplying the required pesticides to that land pocket as well as notifying farmers about the risk. With a high level of connectivity, this is a feasible and ready to deploy solution which uses AI as an augmentation to the system.An enabling infrastructureCompared to the West and front runners of AI adoption in Asia, such as China and South Korea, the culture and infrastructure needed to develop a base for the adoption of AI in mainstream applications in India is in need of an impetus, the report acknowledges.To begin with, Indian academics, researchers and entrepreneurs face a more acute challenge than companies in terms of the less-than-ideal infrastructure available for an AI revolution in India. For example, cloud computing infrastructure, which is capable of storing large amounts of data and facilitating the huge amount of computing power essential for AI applications, is largely located on servers abroad. Hence, an AI-supportive cultural environment will require homegrown infrastructure. India will also require ecosystem-fostering innovation. Fostering a culture of innovation and research beyond the organization is common to global technology giants. To encourage the same level of innovation in AI research efforts in India, initiatives to hold events and build user communities in the field of AI will go a long way, the report notes.The main dichotomy that the regulations will have to deal with relates to who will be liable for the activities of AI systems. These systems are designed to be creative and to continue learning from the data analysed. Hence, designers may not be able to understand how the system will work in the future. For instance, while the US is currently in the process of implementing laws concerning driverless vehicles, India still lags behind. Instead of waiting for technology to reach a level where regulatory intervention becomes necessary, India could be a front runner by establishing a legal infrastructure in advance, the report suggests.Issues of scaleDeep Learning, a part of AI, can be employed to tackle issues of scale often prevalent in the execution of government schemes, the PwC-Assocham report notes. It is essentially a process that can be used for pattern recognition, image analysis and natural language processing (NLP) by modelling high-level abstractions in data which can then be compared with various other recognized contents in a conceptual way rather than using just a rule-based method.The report cites the example of the Clean India initiative, directed towards the construction of toilets in rural India. Public servants are tasked with uploading images of these toilet constructions to a central server for sampling and assessment. Image processing AI, the PwC-Assocham report suggests, can be used to flag photographs that do not resemble completely built toilets. Image recognition capabilities can also be used to identify whether the same official appears in multiple images or if photos have been uploaded by officials from a location other than the intended site. Considering the scale of this initiative, which involves creating more functional toilets, being able to check every image rather than a small sample will actually help increase effectiveness.Ethical, legal and social implicationsLast but not the least, to reap the societal benefits of AI systems, we would need to be able to trust them and ensure that they comply with an ethical, moral and social framework analogous to that for humans, notes the PwC-Assocham report. It urges that research efforts must be concentrated on implementing regulations in AI system design that are updated on a continual basis to respond appropriately to different application fields and actual situations. The design philosophy must be such that it ensures security against external attacks, anomalies and cyberattacks, the PwC-Assochamreport insists, adding that policy initiatives should explicitly touch upon building an incubatory environment for AI-based research and training.",2017-03-30,AI can be effectively used in a wide range of government initiatives,0.72,04:40,How India’s public policy can take maximum advantage of AI +0,"
By 2025, the healthcare industry will face numerous challenges including an ageing population, government policy that will need to keep pace with this population, and making healthcare services and infrastructure more accessible to the masses. The technology-driven world that we find ourselves in has provided us with a great opportunity to incorporate technological tools into the delivery of healthcare. Specifically, Big Data, mobile and the Internet of Things (IoT) can support and facilitate the flow of information for effective care coordination and greater patient and citizen empowerment, according to the Healthcare in 2025 report by videoconferencing, telepresence and communications firm Polycom Inc.
Big Data has immense potential in healthcare, especially when it comes to the consolidation of data to allow for more efficient and effective decision-making. Data collection and utilization through cloud systems will allow better sample sizes for prescription models, access to patient information no matter the location where they seek treatment and better allocation of limited resources.
By 2020, IoT—which is “a scenario in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction”—will likely have 25 billion connected “things”, which includes more than 250 million connected vehicles, according to research firm Gartner.
An Accenture report stated that IoT could add $14.2 trillion to the world economy over the next 15 years. Many believe healthcare will be a prime beneficiary—wearable technology is often cited as one of the tools to support prevention and wellness in IoT, according to the Polycom report.
Mobile 3G and 4G connectivity has truly revolutionized personal connectivity. When mobile integrates with healthcare delivery, the problem of accessibility reduces significantly. Virtual consultations or having surgeons in urban areas assist those in rural areas with surgeries virtually would become more feasible options; touchsurgery.com is one such example, according to the report.
The potential is evident. However, the success of mobile will also depend on how governments shape healthcare policy and distribute funding, revamping the current incentive framework in many of the regions and core markets, and hiring technological experts as employees in healthcare organizations, the report notes.
As collaboration between multiple parties for the future healthcare business model is a critical requirement, having a scalable network and a robust unified communications environment is necessary. The ability to integrate voice, video, content, specific healthcare applications and medical devices to support better and more efficient collaboration among clinicians, healthcare educators, administrators, patients and families will result in better patient outcomes and reduced costs, as long as it’s simple to use and a familiar, consistent experience. The right technology environment should support multiple applications for economies of scale like care team collaboration and administration, medical education as well as telemedicine.",2017-03-30,Technology-driven world that we find ourselves in has provided us with a great opportunity to incorporate technological tools into the delivery of healthcare,0.91,04:19,Can tech solve the healthcare challenges of 2025? +0,"
New Delhi: Chances are, you are already visualizing a self-driving Uber dropping you home after you’ve had one drink too many at a party on a Friday night. With increasing connectivity on the move, integration with your smartphone and smartwatch, sensors and radars for assistance and safety features such as auto-braking and blind spot detection, that dream may soon come true.
“Self-driving vehicles are developing at a rapid pace and such technological advancements can help us reach our destination faster and safer. They will also help us reduce emissions and protect the environment,” said Violeta Bulc, a Slovenian entrepreneur and European Commissioner for Transport, while announcing the European Union’s initiatives around smart and green mobility in 2016.
Chipmaker Intel Corp. is focusing on data, telematics and hardware for smart cars, and is already powering infotainment systems in cars made by Hyundai Motor Co., Kia Motors Corp. and Infiniti Motor Co. Ltd.
“Cars are rapidly becoming some of the world’s most intelligent connected devices, using sensor technology and powerful processors to sense and continuously respond to their surroundings,” said Brian Krzanich, CEO, Intel, ahead of the Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference in July 2016.
Smartphones driving smart car evolution
Smartphones are the very foundation of this change. Research firm Gartner Inc. forecasts that by the year 2020, more than 250 million cars will have Internet access. “Cars are increasingly taking place of a second home and we believe that customers are progressing rapidly,” says Guillaume Sicard, president, Nissan India operations. It is no surprise that tech giants Apple Inc. and Google Inc. are investing heavily in the CarPlay and Android Auto platforms, respectively.
By connecting your smartphone to the car infotainment system and with voice commands, you can make and receive calls, have messages read out to you, and get access to your music library and navigation.
Maruti Suzuki India Ltd was among the first carmakers in India to offer the Apple CarPlay feature, in cars including the Ciaz sedan and the Baleno hatchback. “The major risk associated with Apple CarPlay was the acceptability of the feature by Indian car consumers. However, the initial response has been very encouraging and consumers are valuing this feature a lot,” says C.V. Raman, executive director, engineering, Maruti Suzuki.
But Maruti Suzuki wasn’t really the first mover in India. American carmaker Ford Motor Co. had developed smart in-car systems, along with BlackBerry Ltd and Microsoft Corp. much earlier and the Indian market got its first taste of the Sync platform in 2013 in the EcoSport crossover, which featured voice commands to control phone and music, and emergency assistance which, in the case of an accident, activates the airbags, shuts off the fuel pump and makes a distress call to the helpline number. Sync has since been updated, and now supports third-party apps as well. Indian carmaker Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd allows users of the XUV500, TUV300, TUV100 and Scorpio vehicles to connect to their car using a free app called Blue Sense (Android and iOS), and users can control the air-conditioning and audio functions, and also monitor real-time vehicle information, including tyre pressure, fuel economy and more.
Assisting the driver
Smartness is not just about the smartphone and Internet-driven features for your car. “Globally, we are investing in autonomous drive, electric vehicles, and connected mobility solutions, three forces which are going to change our industry, and our world,” says Nissan India’s Sicard. One of the primary tenets of this smartness is to assist the driver, making the sometimes perilous activity of driving simpler and safer through advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). These include radar-based adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning and autonomous emergency braking.
Car buyers in India are still behind the curve when it comes to the newer technology. Regulations, economics and prevailing infrastructure dictate what car makers can and cannot do in India. Ford Motor, in the US for example, sells the Escape SUV ($23,600 onwards; Rs15.8 lakh approx.) with technology that can alert the driver in case of an unintentional lane drift, if there is another vehicle in your blind spot zone and also auto-manoeuvre you in and out of a tight parking spot. The new Endeavour SUV in India (Rs23.78 lakh onwards) offers only the semi-auto parking assist feature at present. Unfortunately, unique conditions dictate the relevance of some of these features. Says Maruti Suzuki’s Raman, “Bumper-to-bumper traffic is very common in metros, driving habits are a little unusual and there can be abrupt intervention by pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes or even cars and there are infrastructure concerns for detecting unregulated overhanging hoardings, signs on roads and the radar’s own field of vision.”
However, things are slowly changing. “The government’s opening up of radar frequency earlier this year shall see more such features in cars. This is just a start and a step-by-step approach needs to be taken for a long-term benefit,” says Tom von Bonsdorff, managing director, Volvo Auto India. The company’s S90 luxury sedan has semi-autonomous features, which includes Lane Keeping Aid—there is a digital camera in the car which keeps an eye on the lane markers and if the driver does not provide steering input to correct a drift, the steering automatically corrects itself to keep the car within the lane.
The government, on its part, is making basic safety features mandatory in all cars from October 2017. Carmakers will have to provide airbags, vehicle reverse sensors, speed-warning systems and seatbelt reminder systems as standard features from October 2017, according to a draft notification issued on 9 November by the ministry of road transport and highways.
Me time
Self-driving and semi-autonomous cars, just as ADAS features, rely on multiple radars, LIDAR (laser imaging detection and ranging), various sensors, smart algorithms and powerful processors to find their way from point A to point B. The processing speeds are already mind-numbingly fast, with no room for even the slightest error.
The prospect of a self-driven Uber taking you to office every day is a reality that is being constructed rapidly. “It’s still very early. Self-driving Ubers have a safety driver in the front seat because they require human intervention in many conditions, including bad weather. In many cities these will be very hard problems to solve, so there will be some time before we see this technology everywhere,” said an Uber spokesperson.
The company’s self-driving car trials in Pittsburgh, US, involve automaker Volvo. An autonomous vehicle software start-up, nuTonomy, is testing self-driving taxis in Singapore. It started off with six cars, and the fleet is soon expected to double. Moreover, by the year 2020, almost all major car makers, including Audi AG, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, Daimler AG, Ford, General Motors Co., Kia, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd, Renault SA, Tesla Inc. and Toyota Motor Corp., are likely to be selling vehicles that can at least partly drive themselves.
To ensure that autonomous vehicles have a smooth ride, the vehicle-to-vehicle as well as vehicle-to-infrastructure communication with smart road networks, roadside sensors and smart signal systems will prove critical . For example, such infrastructure has allowed Google to do driverless car tests in the US, Volvo in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Volkswagen AG in Braunschweig, Germany. Bonsdorff concludes: “One important factor is to create and develop laws and traffic regulations on self-drive. Till now, India does not have these. Also, car insurance companies need to include driverless cars into their coverage.” India’s policy makers will do well to listen to this.",2017-03-30,"With increasing connectivity, smartphone integration, sensors and radars for assistance, auto-braking and blind spot detection becoming the norm these days, it seems safe self-driving cars will become a reality soon",0.68,04:06,Smart cars: changing lanes +0,"
New Delhi: Innovation may not be the forte of every entrepreneur, but everyone must understand its importance and build an ecosystem around it.
“The purpose should never be that everyone must become an innovator at the end of the day, but everyone must understand the ecosystem around their business and try to build something out of it,” said Gourav Jaswal, founder and director, Prototyze, an incubator that claims to turn ideas into businesses.
Speaking at EmTech India 2017, the Mint-MIT Technology Review conference on emerging technology in New Delhi 9-10 March, Jaswal said Prototyze is working in that direction.
“I thought at some point that it would be a great idea to set up an incubator, which is what Prototyze is all about,” Jaswal said.
“We invest and venture out into several start-ups and build their business models,” he added.
Based in Goa, Prototyze has incubated nine companies belonging to sectors as varied as automobiles and fintech.
Jaswal said that in the long run, entrepreneurs who can manage the risks associated with their business models and learn from their experiences will be ones who will be successful.
According to Jaswal, a genius is someone who can “replicate an existing, successful model with excellence”.",2017-03-30,"Every entrepreneur must understand the importance of innovation and build an ecosystem around it, says Gourav Jaswal, founder and director, Prototyze",0.94,03:50,How to foster a culture of innovation +0,"
In the world we live in, some technologies are advancing at a breakneck pace, or exponentially. This means that capabilities are doubling or more with every step, often at the same or reduced cost, leading to digitization, democratization and disruption.This has been most evident with Moore’s law in semiconductors (with the transistor density on silicon doubling every 18 months) over two decades, which led to miniaturization and cost efficiencies for electronics. But, it is not limited to this. We have seen similar trends in wireless spectral efficiency and bandwidth doubling every 30 months (Cooper’s law) and an exponential trend in the scale and cost of data storage media like hard drives (Kryder’s law). Swanson’s law talks about a 20% drop in price of solar photovoltaic modules for every doubling of cumulative shipped volume.These examples are all around us. However, the impact and speed of change is probably most visible in what we carry around daily in our pockets and purses—our smartphones. They enable us to routinely do things that even just a few years ago required a completely different approach. Think of how many more pictures you take and how quickly you share them with others.Think of WhatsApp, Facebook, Ola/Uber, Amazon/Flipkart, Paytm or BookMyShow. These technologies not only digitize and democratize services and products, but also (sometimes in a matter of months) disrupt established industries that have stood for decades. Exponential technologies can be deceptive.They don’t seem like they have the power to disrupt—until they do. Artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, machine learning, networks and computing, biotechnology, additive manufacturing, genetic sequencing, nanotechnology and others are all advancing exponentially. In fact, if trends continue at this pace, then by 2025, (as per a McKinsey 2013 study) we will have 150x storage density, 22x solar panels, 27x industrial robots and 95x 3D printers. What does this mean for the world we live in?Consider a few examples:The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of our planet is so vast that in one year it is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from all of the earth’s non-renewable resources of coal, oil and natural gas combined. Will exponential improvements in our ability to capture, store, distribute and utilize solar energy make energy so abundant that it is non-limiting and “free”? What does “free energy” do for the availability of clean water through technologies like desalination? What does unlimited energy and clean water do for the availability of food around the world?How will advances in robotics, AI and machine learning change the way we design, manufacture and service the world’s infrastructure? What will digitization of product development, additive manufacturing and augmented reality do to the age-old established processes of product design, manufacturing, distribution and service? Will factories and shop floors ever look the same again?What happens when self-driving (autonomous) vehicles give back 20-30% productivity to hundreds of millions of people who commute to work every day? Would you own a car if you can buy a ride in any kind of car you want at any time, depending on what you want to do while it’s driving you…work, relax, socialize, travel with family, etc.? What does this, in turn, do to the automobile industry, car financing, insurance and even real estate (where would you choose to live if the duration of your commute mattered less, since you are productive throughout). Interactive virtual and augmented reality can be a game-changer in safety, productivity, and the way people learn and interact. Today we already have “teleportation” technology (suitabletech.com/) that uses sight, sound and movement to “beam” people into other locations using a robotic interface and a high-fidelity sound and visual display. That’s three of the five capabilities we use when we interact with others in person! Last year, I “met” a person who attended a conference remotely using this technology and was moving from one session to the next, asking questions and interacting with others...all while sitting at his desk, hundreds of kilometres away. What does this do to the demand for air travel if it continues to get better over the coming years? What is good enough?“Point of care” technologies have helped significantly reduce the cost and increase the speed of medical diagnostic testing compared with healthcare facilities. Home blood sugar monitors, portable ECG devices, easily accessible genotyping capability are all examples of such technology advancements. Surgical implants and human tissue are already being 3D printed. The confluence of medical technologies and informatics can be a big disruptor: what do AI and deep learning do to medicine when it becomes possible to integrate large amounts of demographic, historical, pathology, imaging, genomic and disease information to develop insights into diagnosis and most effective treatment? What does that mean for the healthcare industry? My intent in sharing these examples—and this is just a sampling of the possibilities— is not to instill fear but rather to inspire curiosity. I hope they excite you about the potential of these exponential technologies, and stress the value of being aware of and watching their trajectories closely. It is important to be proactive and intentionally develop an offensive or defensive position that you believe in. Be an early adopter, disruptor, avid watcher, investor, experimenter, enthusiast, active cynic, disprover—anything but a victim—and most importantly, do it in advance of being forced. The trick is to identify which of these trends are the most relevant to you and do that two to three cycles ahead of when they actually become good enough to unseat the “old way”. At GE, we work on tough stuff—solving problems in energy, healthcare, water and transportation for people and countries around the world. It is both hard and rewarding. It requires years, decades of domain expertise and may sometimes make us feel that we are somewhat protected or insulated from this scale of exponential disruption. Not true. Some time ago, along with a group of colleagues, I had a stimulating discussion on potential ways to identify these disruptors. We are now mapping ecosystems to help us see these disruptions…for example in the energy space we call it “dinosaurs to dining tables”, i.e. the BTU (British thermal unit—traditional unit of heat) flow and revenue/profit flow across the entire spectrum from fossil fuel exploration to consumer consumption. We are embracing and experimenting with several of these technologies in our labs and building use cases to see the possibilities in our domains. These teams are horizontal in their capabilities but with focused missions—balancing domain experts with lateral thinkers. And a couple of our key learnings: the big disruptions happen at the intersection of multiple exponential trends.And leadership matters—breakthroughs come from empowering teams to suspend disbelief, question the sacred cows and not be afraid to unlearn.Does all this sound like science fiction, or are we seeing the future? No matter where you stand, one thing is for sure…we’re in for the ride of our lives. The question is, are we laying the tracks ahead of us or is someone else?Munesh Makhija is chairman and managing director of GE India Technology Center, and CTO, GE South Asia.",2017-03-30,"The pace at which technology is advancing is resulting in doubling of capabilities, often at the same or reduced cost, paving the way for digitization, democratization and disruption",0.07,03:52,Seeing the future: Exploring exponential technology +0,"
New Delhi: For the Mahindra Group, the key to digital transformation lies in the use of technology in moving away from legacy models to create new ones.“We have come a long way from the traditional legacy model of Mahindra or that of any established firm... Our current focus is directed towards expanding businesses into rural areas,” said Jaspreet Bindra, senior vice-president, digital transformation, Mahindra Group. Speaking at EmTech India 2017, the Mint-MIT Technology Review Conference on technology innovations, Bindra said digital transformation is not just about creating an app or a website but about creating business models and customer experiences. He further stressed on effective use of technology wherever it is appropriate to foster innovation. “We have used blockchain— one of the newest technologies—in our financial services sector and it has impacted our businesses positively,” Bindra added.As a $17-billion conglomerate with businesses in various sectors and geographies, he said it is the group’s belief that as each sector evolves due to innovation, the impact is felt on all businesses associated with it.Citing an example, he said there is a lot of innovation happening in the agriculture sector and a lot of data about weather conditions and crop patterns gets generated and captured by technology systems. “Therefore, how we target farmers is also changing in tune with the shifts in technology,” he added.The Mahindra Group is incubating start-ups in areas such as financial technology to facilitate digital transformation.",2017-03-30,"Speaking at EmTech India 2017, Jaspreet Bindra of Mahindra Group says group’s current focus is directed towards expanding businesses into rural areas ",0.51,03:48,Digital transformation is about creating business models: Jaspreet Bindra +0,"
Private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) investments in India increased 13% to $5 billion in the quarter ended 31 March, Bain & Co. said in a report released last week.Investments rose in the first quarter of 2017 from a year earlier despite a 33% drop in the number of transactions during the period. PE investments stood at $4.4 billion in the year-earlier period.A few large deals contributed disproportionately to overall deal value. The top 15 transactions accounted for about 76% of total deal value in the March quarter from just about 50% in the year-earlier period.Some of the major deals in the quarter included Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) and Caisse de Depot Quebec (CDPQ) buying a 1.5% stake in Kotak Mahindra Bank from Uday Kotak for Rs2,254 crore; Bharti Airtel Ltd selling a 10.3% stake in its tower unit for about Rs6,193.9 crore to a consortium of investors that included KKR & Co. and CPPIB; Apax Partners selling about a 48% stake in GlobalLogic Inc. to CPPIB, among others.The consumer technology sector saw a 21% drop in terms of deal value and a 27.4% decline in terms of deal volume in the first quarter of 2017 from a year earlier.There was, however, a significant increase in large deals (more than $50 million) across key sectors including telecom, consumer technology, financial services and logistics. Besides, the average transaction size rose 69% to $32 million from a year earlier, while deals worth less than $10 million comprised 66% of total activity in the quarter.The number of investor exits rose 26% to 48 in the March quarter from a year earlier. However, the total transaction value of exits dropped 4% to $2.6 billion in the quarter.Consumer tech, real estate and BFSI (banking, insurance and financial services) were key sectors that witnessed exits during the period. Strategic sales were the preferred exit mode and the top 10 exits contributed about 80% of total value. “The first quarter of 2017 saw a strong momentum of exits in line with the trend we saw in 2016. Consumer Tech and Internet world is witnessing consolidation.” said Madhur Singhal, partner at Bain & Co.",2017-04-18,Rise in PE and VC Investments in March quarter comes despite a 33% drop in the number of transactions from a year earlier,0.38,00:07,"PE, VC investments up 13% in March quarter: report" +0,"The Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) on Monday cleared a proposal by Ahmedabad-based Claris Lifesciences Ltd to sell its global generic injectables business to US-based Baxter International Inc. for Rs4,020 crore ($625 million), a finance ministry official said on condition of anonymity.Claris said in December last year that it intends to share a significant majority of net cash proceeds from the sale, post expenses and taxes, with shareholders.Claris operated the global generic injectables business through several wholly-owned subsidiaries. It has a total of 40 abbreviated new drug applications filed with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), of which 16 have been approved, the firm said in a statement. The company markets its products in more than 75 countries.The injectables business has also been one of the fastest growing for Claris, expanding in double digits annually over the last several years driven by new product launches and geographic expansion.There have been a couple of other big deals in this space. In 2013, Strides Arcolab Ltd sold its injectables unit, Agila Specialties, to US-based Mylan Inc. for $1.6 billion. In July last year, Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical (Group) Co. Ltd said it will acquire India’s Gland Pharma Ltd, an injectables specialist, for $1.3 billion (Rs8,700 crore).With the addition of Claris’s portfolio, Baxter plans to launch seven to nine new products annually over the next few years and 10-15 per year beyond 2019.",2017-04-18,"Claris Lifesciences has a total of 40 abbreviated new drug applications filed with the US FDA, of which 16 have been approved",0.48,00:36,FIPB clears Claris Lifesciences’ bid to sell global generic injectables +0,"New Delhi: Commuters in Delhi-NCR may find it hard to hire taxis on tuesday as the drivers of two app- based cab aggregators Ola and Uber have threatened to go on strike for a day against “low fares”. This is the second such strike called by the drivers. They had gone on strike in February too, which had lasted 13 days, causing inconvenience to commuters in Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Faridabad. The strike might hit private transport services in Delhi and neighbouring cities as some groups of tourist taxi providers, autorickshaw unions, according to the Sarvodaya Drivers’ Association, have extended their support to it. The Association, which claims to represent around 1.25 lakh app-based taxis in the the Delhi-NCR, is demanding that fares be increased from existing Rs6 per km to around 20 per km. It is also demanding the abolition of 25% commission the drivers are charged by companies. Ravi Rathore, vice-president of the Sarvodaya Drivers’ Association, said drivers will take out a protest march against the Delhi government which, he alleged, is not intervening to resolve the issue. “The protest march will be taken out from Majnu-ka-Tila to the CM’s residence in North Delhi’s Civil Lines area. There is anger among drivers that government is not intervening in raising their issues with Ola and Uber,” Rathore said. He said the association has called for the one-day strike in favour of the demands and if companies and government do not pay heed, they will go on an indefinite strike. According to the association, the app-based cab companies made “tall promises” to drivers—like they would earn as much as Rs1.5 lakh every month. “But the situation is different. They are making us run taxis at Rs6 per km while they charge 25% from us,” Rathore also said.Also Read: Delhi high court stops taxi driver unions from disrupting Ola, Uber services Contrary to the association’s claim that most autorickshaw and tourists associations have decided to lend their support to the strike, Delhi Autorickshaw Sangh and Delhi Pradesh Taxi Union (yellow-black taxis) said they will not participate in it. “We will not support the strike in Delhi,” Rajendra Soni, general secretary of both the associations, said. Earlier in the day, the Delhi high court restrained two taxi drivers’ unions—the Sarvodaya Driver Association of Delhi (SDAD) and the Rajdhani Tourist Drivers’ Union—from disrupting services of cabs run by Ola and Uber in the national capital region. Welcoming the court order, Uber in a statement said it hopes it will enable drivers to stay behind the wheel, without fear or harassment. “We are hopeful that the order will be effectively enforced and that action is taken against any person who attempts to block cars, confiscate devices or harass riders and drivers and that the safety of everyone using the Uber App in Delhi is ensured. “We are committed to keeping Delhi moving and ensuring a reliable experience for riders and drivers,” Uber said.",2017-04-17,"Some groups of tourist taxi providers and autorickshaw unions are backing the strike by the Ola and Uber drivers, says Sarvodaya Drivers’ Association",-0.05,21:08,"Ola, Uber drivers in Delhi NCR may go on strike tomorrow" +0,"Mumbai/New Delhi: Deutsche Lufthansa AG said starting a domestic airline in India, the world’s fastest growing aviation market, will be a “misadventure” because of high jet fuel taxes and the cost of operations.Lufthansa’s comments come weeks after Qatar Airways Ltd said it plans to start an airline in India with as many as 100 planes, as the Gulf carrier looks for a bigger share of a market projected to sell half a billion domestic tickets in a decade. Singapore Airlines Ltd, Etihad Airways PJSC and AirAsia Bhd. have also bought stakes in local carriers buoyed by an emerging middle-class flying for the first time.“You only go make business when you have business plans which give you hope that you can be very successful,” said Wolfgang Will, a senior director for South Asia at Lufthansa, “And I did not hear up to now of any domestic airline in India making a lot of profit.”Lufthansa has a history of running an Indian airline. It was part of a partnership that ran ModiLuft, which was grounded in 1996 after disputes over payments with the German carrier, creditors, oil companies and the Airports Authority of India. The airline’s permit was later used by two entrepreneurs to start SpiceJet Ltd, now India’s second-largest budget carrier.Lured by an expanding market, more airlines are coming up in India. At least 43 businesses have applied to Indian regulators in the past two years to start some form of passenger air transport service in what’s projected to be the world’s third-biggest aviation market by 2020 and the largest by 2030. The increase in local traffic—estimated to reach half a billion in a decade—has outpaced all other markets for 23 straight months.Fuel costsStill, the nation is home to some of the world’s costliest jet fuel, mainly due to provincial taxes of as much as 30% and cut-throat competition that forces airlines to sell tickets below cost. Aviation turbine fuel in India costs 70% more than it does abroad, and has led to the shuttering of as many as 17 airlines in the past two decades, according to a research paper by KPMG and The Associated Chambers of Commerce of India.Indian carriers lost money every single year for a decade before posting a combined profit of $122 million in the year ended March 2016, helped by a crash in oil prices, according to Sydney-based CAPA Centre for Aviation. The industry is set to report losses of as much as $750 million in the two years ending March 2018, according to CAPA estimates. Bloomberg",2017-04-17,Lufthansa’s comments come weeks after Qatar Airways Ltd said it plans to start an airline in India with as many as 100 planes,0.14,19:24,Lufthansa says starting local airline in India a ‘misadventure’ +0,"Mumbai: Jet Airways Monday said it has expanded its codeshare agreement with Virgin Atlantic between India and the US.Starting 19 April, flyers can combine flights from Jet Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Delta Air Lines in a single booking. Jet Airways passengers travelling between India and the US can connect through London Heathrow on to nine US destinations operated by Virgin Atlantic; Atlanta, Boston, Newark, Washington (IAD), New York, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco and Seattle.Codeshare for the Seattle airport opens for travel effective 1 May 2017.There is an existing agreement between Jet Airways and Virgin Atlantic in place since 2009—enabling Virgin Atlantic passengers to travel on Jet Airways operated services between Mumbai and London Heathrow in addition to its own direct Delhi to London service. In 2015, this codeshare was extended to Jet Airways domestic services allowing Virgin Atlantic guests to travel between London Heathrow and five destinations across India via Delhi or Mumbai.Gaurang Shetty, whole-time director, Jet Airways, said the new codeshares build on the success of Jet’s ongoing cooperation with Delta Air Lines and Virgin Atlantic over London Heathrow and provide its passengers with more connectivity to and within the US. In October, Delta Air Lines and Jet Airways announced a codeshare cooperation between India and US over London Heathrow, where Delta guests flying between North America and India can connect on flights operated by Jet Airways to 20 destinations within India.",2017-04-17,Jet Airways passengers travelling between India and the US can connect through London Heathrow on to nine US destinations operated by Virgin Atlantic,0.9,19:31,Jet Airways and Virgin Atlantic expand codeshare agreement +0,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,0.25,10:27,Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +0,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.",2017-04-20,"The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said",-0.23,22:12,Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +0,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",2017-04-22,Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,0.21,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +0,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",2017-04-20,Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,0.16,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +0,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.",2017-04-19,"India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending",0.24,05:21,A short history of extradition from UK to India +0,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.",2017-04-19,"For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",-0.12,07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +0,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",2017-04-19,Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,-0.52,05:18,"Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"
Design thinking is an area which calls for a lot of research, said G.V. Sreekumar, head of Industrial Design Centre (IDC), School of Design at IIT Bombay. He defines it as “creative strategies that designers utilize during the process of designing”.
At EmTech India 2017, Sreekumar said, “Designing is a conscious and intuitive effort to impose order with a clear goal. Design thinking is also an approach that can be used to consider issues and find solutions for professional commitments, business and social issues.”
Emphasizing the importance of creativity and aesthetic brilliance in design thinking—which set a designer apart from an engineer—he said, “An industry designer will have to be an expert about the manufacturing processes involved, the raw materials required, the context of the product being manufactured, along with creativity and aesthetic brilliance.”
According to him, design thinking is a method of meeting people’s needs and desires in a technologically feasible and strategically viable way. “The study of the product has to be done in detail, i.e., the context of the product launch and the kind of solution that the company is looking at—articulation of all the desired qualities or parameters of the final product is a very important step in the designing process. The form of the product emerges from the articulation and the knowledge of the product,” he said, explaining the methodology and steps involved in designing a product.
Sreekumar is of the view that the relatively new concept of design thinking is a form of solution-based thinking, with the intent of producing something constructive.",2017-03-30,"G.V. Sreekumar, head of Industrial Design Centre, School of Design at IIT Bombay, can be used to consider issues and find solutions for professional commitments, business and social issues",0.39,03:44,EmTech India 2017: Why India needs design thinking +0,"
New Delhi: EmTech, an emerging technology conference organized by Mint and MIT Technology Review in Delhi on 9-10 March, saw presentations and demonstrations of some cutting-edge technologies that are set to change the way manufacturing is done in India, how automation in logistics will impact businesses and how people will communicate or travel in future.
One such company that made a presentation at the event is Imaginate Technologies, which operates in the domain of mixed reality—an amalgamation of virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR). Hemanth Satyanarayana, the chief executive of Imaginate, had the audience watch in wonder as he gave a live demonstration of what it is like to interact with a given environment through AR.
The demonstration was set up so that the audience saw on the large screen what Satyanarayana saw on his AR headset: he could interact with the hologram of a virtual machine or any other object he wanted to place, watch videos, and even interact with the “avatar” of his colleague, who too wore a headset and connected with Satyanarayana from the hall next door.
The demonstration provided not only a sneak peek into how people would interact or “virtually teleport” in the future but also how they would conduct businesses.
Financial company MetLife, for instance, is using Imaginate’s technology to offer a virtual customer experience wherein customers can talk to an avatar of a customer service agent, Satyanarayana said.
He pointed out two major limitations to mixed reality. “Two big bottlenecks would be availability of good content (of objects and people to create holograms, which is integral to experiencing AR and VR) and the fact that while Imaginate’s technology is compatible with all kinds of headsets, not many people have an AR/VR headset yet,” he said.
Another technology that has gained momentum in the past decade is three-dimensional (3D) printing. “3D printing has cut across industries--be it healthcare, fashion, packaging for FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) companies, architecture, automotive or aerospace,” said Guruprasad Rao, director and mentor-leadership team, Imaginarium.
He added that 3D printing is a green technology: it is faster, efficient, produces less scrap (waste) and uses less energy than conventional manufacturing.
The Mumbai-based company, which initially started 3D printing of jewellery, has over the years entered healthcare and many other industry segments.
Among others that made presentations at EmTech were GreyOrange, which deploys robots in the warehouses of e-commerce logistics firms as well as those of many FMCG companies for making their supply chains faster, and Boltt, which is building an artificial intelligence-based health assistant to improve lifestyles.
And then there was Team Indus, part of Bengaluru-based aerospace start-up Axiom Research Labs, which is in contention to send a spacecraft to the moon as part of the Google Lunar X Prize. It plans to do so on 28 December this year. “We are trying to build a spacecraft that can soft-land on the moon,” Rahul Narayan, one of the co-founders of Team Indus, told the audience at EmTech. The company is building a nine-foot craft that can carry up to 25kg of weight on a journey of over 400,000km.
“With the aim to land on the Mare Imbrium crater of the moon—a crater as big as Europe—we plan to make two orbits around the Earth and four rounds of the moon,” he said.
In order to engage India at large, the organization plans to launch several campaigns, including competitions for engaging students in rural India and creating awareness about Team Indus through a bus dubbed Moonshot Wheels.",2017-03-30,"Hemanth Satyanarayana, Imaginate CEO, demonstrated at EmTech organized by Mint and MIT Technology Review what it is like to interact with a given environment via augmented reality ",0.43,03:46,"Augmented reality, 3D printing and a shot at the moon" +0,"
New Delhi: Companies can derive value from big data by effectively managing customer relationships and safeguarding their trust, said John Rose, senior partner and managing director, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), New York, at EmTech India 2017, a conference on emerging technologies organized by Mint and MIT Technology Review in New Delhi on 9-10 March.
Addressing the event, Rose said, “Half or more customers do not trust the companies or entities they bank or shop with, in the context of their personal data.”
Rose, who is the former global leader of technology, media and telecommunications practice at BCG and became a BCG Fellow in 2014, has been working on helping companies foster trust among their consumers in order to gain access to—and unlock value from—the ever-widening stream of complex, fast-moving Big Data that is generated online.
His presentation at EmTech focused on how customer trust matters in Big Data and how the misuse or perceived misuse of customer data can lead to financial and reputational damage for brands.
“Trust is not a generational issue; it is important for consumers of all ages,” said Rose.
According to a study he cited, the lack of alignment between companies and consumers about data privacy has real consequences. When consumers perceive data misuse—when they are unpleasantly surprised by the collection or new use of personal data—they either reduce their spending drastically or boycott a company’s products and services altogether, the study noted.
“There is around 33% drop in spending during the first year when US consumers perceive a data misuse. Out of the 33% customers, 18% totally stop spending whereas the remaining 15% reduce spending,” he cited from his findings.
Explaining the consumers’ perspective on privacy and data usage, Rose said, “Consumers take a wider and much less legalistic approach to these issues.”
“They want to be informed about how companies gather and safeguard data about them, and they want to understand the different ways in which companies use personal data. Additionally, they want that information delivered in clear language,” she added.",2017-03-30,"Companies can derive value from big data by effectively managing customer relationships and safeguarding their trust, says John Rose of the BCG",1.0,03:42,EmTech India: Unlocking value from Big Data +0,"Mumbai: Cement maker ACC Ltd on Friday reported an 8.9% fall in net profit for the quarter ended 31 March, hurt in part by higher costs. Consolidated net profit for the quarter fell to Rs211.06 crore from Rs231.70 crore a year earlier. Consolidated sales in the quarter rose 9.1% to Rs3,556.70 crore from Rs3,259.95 crore a year earlier. The company follows a January-December financial year.The results, however, beat analyst estimates, helped by higher sales. Four analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected ACC to report consolidated net profit of Rs166.4 crore on sales of Rs3152.5 crore. Revenue in its largest cement business rose 9.3% to Rs3,401.27 crore, helped in part by a price hike, while those in its ready-mix concrete business rose about 10% to Rs285 crore. During the quarter, the company launched two cement products ACC Suraksha and ACC HPC (high performance cement). The company said its total expenses during the March-ended quarter rose 11.8% to Rs3,404.41 crore. Increased government spending on infrastructure development, housing, roads, railways, and irrigation is likely to boost cement demand in the rest of 2017, ACC said in a statement.Separately, ACC said it has appointed Surendra Mehta as company secretary and head of compliance with immediate effect. ACC’s shares closed down 1.03% to Rs1,496.75 a share on the BSE on Friday.",2017-04-21,"ACC’s net profit for the quarter fell to Rs211.06 crore from Rs231.70 crore a year earlier while its sales in the quarter rose 9.1% to Rs3,556.70 crore from Rs3,259.95 crore a year earlier",0.69,21:57,ACC profit falls 8.9% but sales beat estimates +0,"New Delhi: ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company on Friday reported an increase of 38.3% in net profit at Rs 701.9 crore for the fiscal ended March 2017. The company’s net profit in the preceding fiscal 2015-16 stood at Rs507.5 crore. The gross domestic premium income of the company rose by 32.6% to Rs 10,725.90 crore, a company statement said. “The robust performance was delivered on the back of increase in policies serviced at 1.77 crore in 2016-17 compared to 1.58 crore policies in 2015-16,” it said. “As we progress through the year, we shall...further expand our insurance solutions proposition as well as enhance our customer service and claim leadership stature backed by innovative technology,” ICICI Lombard, MD and CEO, Bhargav Dasgupta said. ICICI Lombard GIC Ltd is a joint venture between country’s largest private lender ICICI Bank and Canada-based Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited. The general insurance subsidiary of the bank is a non- listed entity though the life insurance joint venture— ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Co—is a listed firm. Shares of ICICI Bank closed 1.34% down at Rs 269.15 apiece on BSE today.",2017-04-21,ICICI Lombard’s net profit in the 2015-16 fiscal stood at Rs507.5 crore,0.9,16:36,ICICI Lombard net profit grows 38% to Rs 702 crore in fiscal 2017 +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"Mumbai: Rating agency Crisil has reported a muted net profit at Rs 73.34 crore for the March quarter, largely due to adverse forex movement and subdued growth in the mid-corporate and MSME segments. Its March 2016 net profit stood at Rs 73.15 crore. Net was impacted by Rs 11.9 crore due to adverse forex movement against a gain of Rs 3.31 crore in the year-ago period. Its consolidated income grew 12% to Rs 402.23 crore, the company said in a statement. “Growth for the quarter was driven by our research segment on account of opportunities in risk & analytics such as model validation, stress testing and regulatory change management,” the company said, adding the ratings business witnessed modest growth despite a continued weak investment climate and soft credit growth.",2017-04-21,Rating agency Crisil has reported a muted net profit in March quarter at Rs 73.34 crore while its March 2016 net profit stood at Rs73.15 crore,1.0,17:09,Crisil Q4 profit stays flat at Rs 73 crore +0,"Bengaluru: India’s biggest zinc miner Hindustan Zinc Ltd posted a 42% jump in fourth-quarter net profit on Thursday, topping street estimates, helped by higher income from zinc production and an increase in metal prices.Net profit rose to Rs3,057 crore for the January-March quarter from Rs2,147 crore a year earlier. The profit growth is the biggest in at least nine quarters. Analysts on average had expected a net profit of Rs2,852 crore, according to Thomson Reuters data.Total income rose 72.4% to Rs7,237 crore. The LME zinc prices have risen about 53 percent from March-end 2016 to March-end 2017.Income from zinc operations rose over two fold to Rs5160 crore, said the company, which is a subsidiary of billionaire Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Ltd. The Indian government has a 29.5% stake in Hindustan Zinc.Hindustan Zinc shares rose as much as 5.5% after the results.",2017-04-20,"Hindustan Zinc’s fourth quarter net profit rose to Rs3,057 crore from Rs2,147 crore a year earlier",0.9,16:54,"Hindustan Zinc Q4 profit jumps 42% to Rs 3,057 crore " +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"Bengaluru: Information technology company Mindtree Ltd said consolidated net profit fell 27% in the fourth quarter hurt by a foreign exchange loss and fewer client additions. The lower-than-expected profit came in at Rs97.2 crore ($15.04 million) for the three months ended 31 March, marking the fourth consecutive quarterly profit decline.Analysts on average were expecting consolidated profit at Rs105 crore, Thomson Reuters data showed.Mindtree incurred a consolidated foreign exchange loss of Rs28.8 crore in the quarter, against a gain of Rs3.1 crore a year earlier. Clients added in the fourth quarter dropped 46% to 20. Reuters",2017-04-20,"Mindtree’s lower-than-expected profit came in at Rs97.2 crore for the fourth quarter ended 31 March, marking the fourth consecutive quarterly profit decline",0.8,16:52,"Mindtree Q4 profit plunges 27%, misses estimates" +0,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",0.57,22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +0,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",2017-04-23,The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,0.78,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",2017-04-21,IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,0.08,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +0,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",2017-04-21,RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,0.4,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +0,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court",2017-04-19,"A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",-0.36,05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +0,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",2017-04-19,Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,-0.24,05:11,What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +0,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",2017-04-19,Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,0.19,05:15,The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +0,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.",2017-04-21,"As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",0.09,00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +0,"Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is expected to keep policy interest rates unchanged for a third straight meeting, shifting focus to the tools it will use to mop up excess cash in the banking system that threatens to stoke inflation.The RBI will keep the repurchase rate at 6.25% on Thursday, according to all 52 economists in a Bloomberg survey; 42 of 44 see the cash reserve ratio held at 4%. However, two see the CRR raised to 5% and some analysts flag the potential creation of a new deposit window.If governor Urjit Patel raises the proportion of deposits banks need to maintain as cash, it will continue a string of surprises that culminated in February with a shift to a neutral stance, ending a two-year easing cycle. Money market levers offer the RBI more flexibility than policy rates to control borrowing costs in a world where inflation is accelerating though investment stays slow.“Despite the increase in currency in circulation, liquidity at around 3 trillion rupees through the first-half of the financial year will strengthen the case for near term RBI action,” said Madhavi Arora, an economist at Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd in Mumbai.The monetary authority will announce its decision at 2:30pm in Mumbai followed by a press conference 15 minutes later. It will also release growth and inflation forecasts for the financial year started 1 April.Sticky depositsKey to the RBI’s decision will be whether it believes banks will be able to retain deposits that poured in after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s November clampdown on cash. Excess funds are limiting the central bank’s ability to intervene in the foreign-exchange market to rein in the rupee’s rally.The currency is among Asia’s top performers, advancing 4.7% this year as Modi consolidates power following important state election wins. While a stronger rupee stands to lower India’s import bill and contain price pressures, runaway gains could threaten a recent export recovery.Liquidity toolsThe RBI has been using a slew of instruments such as reverse repo auctions and cash management bills to absorb excess funds, but these bear interest costs. The CRR however is interest-free and any increase would be the first since 2010.To lower effective interest rates and encourage productive lending, policy makers may also consider capping the amount of funds banks can park with it under the reverse repo window while creating a new tool called the Standing Deposit Facility. Banks that park cash with the RBI under the SDF will be paid a lower-than-policy-rate without any accompanying collateral, which could prompt them to opt for riskier lending instead.Establishing the SDF would however need parliament to amend the RBI Act, so Patel on Thursday will probably lay out a road map to introduce the facility, said Indranil Sen Gupta, chief economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.“Though the RBI has been strategically intervening in both spot and forward markets, unless it tightens its belt on the sterilization tools, liquidity and FX management could get more complex,” Kotak’s Arora said.V-shaped recoveryLiquidity management is essential because policy rates can take as much as three quarters to transmit through Asia’s third-largest economy. That’s a luxury Patel doesn’t have: private investment is near a decade low and inflation accelerated in February for the first time in seven months. Core inflation—the RBI’s choice measure that strips out volatile food and fuel costs—is seen as uncomfortably high for too long, imperiling the inflation target.Investors will also be awaiting a reiteration of a sharp rebound forecast for domestic demand after the cash-ban dip, and more clarity on how the RBI foresees the impact of a planned 1 July roll out of a national sales tax as well as an expected increase in house rent allowances for state staff. Bloomberg",2017-04-06,"RBI will keep the repurchase rate at 6.25% on Thursday, according to all 52 economists in a ‘Bloomberg’ survey; 42 of 44 see the cash reserve ratio held at 4%",0.25,09:29,RBI monetary policy guide: Cash tools in focus as rates unchanged +0,"Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to slash clearance time for National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) in an attempt to enhance efficiency of the electronic payment system and add to customer convenience.In line with the document on Vision-2018 for Payment and Settlement Systems, the NEFT settlement cycle will be reduced from hourly batches to half hourly batches, the RBI said in the first bi-monthly monetary policy for 2017-18.“Consequently, 11 additional settlement batches will be introduced at 8.30am onwards, taking the total number of half hourly settlement batches during the day to 23,” the newly appointed deputy governor B.P. Kanungo said. This will enhance the efficiency of the NEFT system and add to customer convenience, he said.The starting batch at 8am and closing batch at 7pm shall remain the same and the return discipline will also remain the same, that is B+2 hours (settlement batch time plus two hours) as per the existing practice, it said.Also Read: RBI governor Urjit Patel says farm loan waiver a ‘moral hazard’On promoting financial inclusion and literacy, it said the RBI is initiating a pilot project on financial literacy at the block level to explore innovative and participatory approaches to financial literacy.The pilot project will be commissioned in nine states across 80 blocks by non-government organisations (NGOs) in collaboration with sponsor banks, it said.Six NGOs registered with the Depositor Education and Awareness Fund, viz. CRISIL Foundation, Mumbai; Dhan Foundation; Swadhaar Fin Access, Mumbai; Indian School of Micro Finance for Women (ISMW); Samarpit, Chhattisgarh and the PACE Foundation have been selected to execute the pilot project in collaboration with banks, it said.The pilot project will be executed with the following broad objectives — active saving and good borrowing; financial planning and goal setting and going digital and consumer protection.The Centres for Financial Literacy (CFL) will be set up under a common name and logo, Money-wise Centre for Financial Literacy.“The sponsor banks will enter into contracts with the identified NGOs within three months, that is, by June 30, 2017. Thereafter, the NGOs will start operating the CFLs within three months of entering into contracts with banks,” it said.",2017-04-06,The RBI cuts clearance time for NEFT in an attempt to enhance efficiency of the electronic payment system and add to customer convenience,-0.04,20:32,NEFT transfers to be faster as RBI cuts clearance time +0,"Shanghai: China’s central bank is expected to resume cash injections to the financial system this month as tax demands on commercial lenders spur another round of tight liquidity.The need for lenders to park corporate tax payments with the central bank could drain hundreds of billions of yuan in the second half of April, ending a period of relative calm in China’s money markets. The People’s Bank of China has refrained from adding cash to the system for nine days, the longest stretch since it started daily open-market operations at the beginning of last year, citing a relatively high level of liquidity.“The central bank will probably have to resume the reverse-repurchase operations in the middle of this month on a cash shortage,” said Shen Bifan, an analyst in Shenzhen at First Capital’s fixed income department. “Of course it can now tolerate a more volatile funding market, but when it really tightens, it will respond to it to avoid a cash crunch.”Skipping reverse-repo auctions is part of the PBOC’s campaign to reduce leverage in China’s financial system. The pause in adding cash covered the quarter-end period — a time when interbank liquidity usually tightens as lenders hoard funds to meet regulatory checks. That said, China’s seven-day repo rate has fallen 57 basis points over the first two trading days in April, after surging to an almost two-year high on 31 March.Also Read: RBI keeps repo rate unchanged at 6.25%“The liquidity won’t be loose in April, but it’d also be difficult to see persistent tightness as well,” analysts led by Tang Yue at Industrial Securities wrote in a note Thursday.Since 24 March, when the PBOC stopped injecting cash, policy makers have withdrawn a net ¥420 billion ($60.9 billion) from the system, data compiled by Bloomberg show. China’s markets were closed 3-4 April for a holiday.The seven-day repo, a gauge of of interbank funding availability, rose 15 basis points to 2.74% on Thursday, according to weighted average prices. The cost of one-year interest-rate swaps, the fixed payment to receive the seven-day repo rate, climbed one basis point to 3.58%. Bloomberg",2017-04-06,China’s central bank is expected to resume cash injections to the financial system this month as tax demands on commercial lenders spur another round of tight liquidity,-0.02,14:58,China tipped to boost liquidity again as bank tax payments loom +0,"The Reserve Bank of India’s monetary policy committee (MPC) on Thursday voted unanimously to raise the reverse repo rate—the rate at which sucks out excess liquidity from the system—by 25 basis points to 6%. The repo rate, however, has been kept unchanged at 6.25%. Here is the full text of the first Bi-monthly monetary policy statement of the Monetary Policy Committee.First Bi-monthly Monetary Policy Statement, 2017-18Resolution of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC)Reserve Bank of IndiaOn the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:1. Keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment2. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter.Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or underachievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six-year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger. 3. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.4. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.5. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements. Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March. EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.6. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly yearon-year after two consecutive years of sub-one per cent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.7. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).8. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broad-based turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted.The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.9. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and threewheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.10. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 –February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.11. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month.Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.12. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March. Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.13. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.14. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7% of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook15. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0% for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4% readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half. Chart 1 16. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around JulyAugust, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12- 18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by secondorder effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST.The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers. Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation.Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.17. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4% in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced. See Chart 2.18. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains.Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.19. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly,external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.20. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year.Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.21. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.22. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.23. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on 5 and 6 June 2017.Jose J. Kattoor(Chief General Manager)(Source: RBI)",2017-04-06,Here is the full text of the first bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee,0.25,21:48,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy statement +0,"Mumbai: By virtue of being the first monetary policy of this financial year, the upcoming announcement of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will be a signal of the way the central bank views various macroeconomic parameters and the pace at which it expects the gross domestic product (GDP) growth to come back. While a majority of the economists surveyed by Mint expect the RBI to hold the repo rate at 6.25% and continue with its neutral stance, they also expect more announcements around excess liquidity. Here are five things that might be on the radar of the monetary policy committee:Growth: Ever since demonetisation took away the buying power of a large number of people, there have been concerns around the impact it could have on growth numbers for financial years 2016-17 and 2017-18. The RBI itself had revised its GDP growth expectations in February, when it said that the expected rate of growth for financial year ending March 2017 would be 6.9%, as opposed to 7.1% earlier, owing to demonetisation. For the new financial year, the RBI has estimated a growth rate of 7.4%, which is only 50 basis points (bps) higher than what it had estimated earlier, despite the central bank expecting a bounceback in growth as the impact of demonetisation wears off. In the last policy, the regulator had adopted a neutral stance due to hardening inflation numbers, which may make rooting for fast-paced growth a little difficult.Inflation: The banking sector regulator’s change in stance in the last monetary policy announcement came as a surprise to many who felt that it was being needlessly hawkish. However, wholesale inflation soared to a 39-month high of 6.55% in February, while retail inflation inched up to 3.65% due to rise in food and fuel prices, signalling that hardening inflation rate was still a legitimate concern for the regulator. It is unlikely that the RBI would change its stance in just two months. However, since this year is expected to be about economic growth and a bounceback in general, it would be interesting to note the central bank’s commentary around how it would balance its monetary policy around this.Excess liquidity: The banking sector regulator is widely expected to announce special measures to take out the additional liquidity in the system to further support its neutral stance on interest rates. The excess liquidity which entered the banking system due to large amount of deposits by the people during the two months of demonetisation has still been lying around in bank accounts as the restrictions on withdrawals were only removed recently. Moreover, as banks struggle with lack of credit growth, they will need to find avenues to deploy the liquidity available with them. Clarity around deposits: The RBI is yet to give a clear picture on the amount of deposits that have returned to the banking system owing to demonetisation in November and December. While it has been three months since the regulator closed the window to deposit the old Rs500 and Rs1,000 currency notes for most people, it has always maintained that collection of data was still work in progress. Once it clarifies the amount of currency notes that has returned into the system and the level of new currency notes pumped in, market watchers would be able to determine the true level of remonetisation in the economy.Bad loans: Over the last few weeks, the government, the RBI and chiefs of large banks have had multiple meetings to discuss ways and means to deal with the stressed loan situation in the Indian banking system. The high level of bad loans in the public sector banking space and low credit growth has resulted in many banks fully focussing their efforts on recovery of bad loans, rather than growing their business. The RBI is expected to make some announcements around a new scheme around dealing with bad loans or introduce some vital changes into the scheme for sustainable structuring of stressed assets (S4A) and strategic debt restructuring (SDR) scheme.",2017-04-06,RBI’s monetary policy will be a signal of the way the central bank views macroeconomic parameters and the pace at which it expects GDP growth to come back,0.44,12:36,RBI monetary policy: Five things to watch out for +0,"Mumbai: British chancellor of the exchequer Philip Hammond on Wednesday said the United Kingdom and India can become strong partner nations in the financial technology (fintech) industry as UK is keen to make its market truly global after its exit from European Union, while on the other hand, investments into India’s fintech sector have been rising over the past year.Hammond is on a three-day tour called FinTech Trade Mission to India to engage in dialogue with the Indian finance ministry, financial regulators and other industry bodies in order to strengthen UK’s e-conomic and trading relations with the country.“The vote for the UK to leave the EU was clear. It reflected a desire for Britain to make its own decisions and to determine its own destiny. But it wasn’t a vote for isolation…British companies have invested more in India since 2000 than the United States or any other European nation has done. And investment from UK companies accounts for 1 in 20 Indian jobs in the organised private sector. Indian companies, meanwhile, invest more in Britain than in the rest of the EU put together,” Hammond said while speaking at a conference in Mumbai.ALSO READ: India, UK to jointly invest £240 million in green energy sectorHammond said Indian companies such as the Tata Group are among the biggest employers in the UK, transforming British businesses with their focused management and long-term investments.“In the last year we’ve seen the creation of a whole new market, with the world’s first masala bonds issued in London – raising over $1.5 billion. To date, almost 80% of all masala bonds have been issued in London. And we will see even more, very soon from the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency and the National Highways Authority of India…the UK and India can collaborate to our mutual advantage – in FinTech,” said Hammond.There are at least 15 India-headquartered banks which are engaged in international banking businesses in the UK. On the other hand, there are several British financial services firms that are present in India’s insurance, asset management, fintech and banking industries.Hammond hinted that strengthening ties with UK may fulfil India’s appetite for investments, particularly in infrastructure.ALSO READ: India, Britain talk up post-Brexit trade prospects“India has 220 million active smartphone users–over three times the entire UK population. What’s more, India’s demonetisation programme means its financial services sector is undergoing a significant transformation…New fintech payment firms, small finance lenders, and insurance players are entering the market. These firms will be crucial in helping the RBI achieve its target of 90% of the population having access to banking services by 2034,” said Hammond.",2017-04-06,Philip Hammond says UK and India can become strong partners in the financial technology industry as it is keen to make its market truly global after its exit from EU,1.0,01:04,UK exchequer chancellor Hammond urges strong ties with India in fintech +0,"Mumbai: Fertilizers and chemicals maker Tata Chemicals Ltd posted Wednesday a 12% decline in consolidated revenue for the third quarter, hurt by shrinking fertilizer sales as the company switches focus to its consumer business.Profit after tax, however, rose 31.6% to Rs318.39 crore in the quarter ended 31 December, from a year earlier. Revenue fell to Rs3,494.80 crore with fertilizer sales dropping 31% to Rs913.8 crore year-on-year. Sales from the inorganic chemicals business fell marginally by 0.05%.Mint had in April reported that Tata Chemicals intended to shift its focus away from fertilisers as it did not want to continue investing in a “regulated and subsidy-ridden business” and wanted to free up working capital.The company is now focusing on its higher-margin “living essentials” consumer business comprising five brands of table salt, Tata Sampann that sells pulses and spices, and Tata Swach non-electric water purifiers. Tata Sampann was launched in October 2015.“The company is seeking to move away from soda ash production to cater more to the demand for salt,” managing director R. Mukundan said at a press conference in Mumbai on Wednesday. Tata Chemicals is the world’s second largest manufacturer of soda ash, which is largely used to manufacture glass. Tata Chemicals has also announced it is selling its urea business to Yara Fertlisers for Rs 2,670 crore. “We are in the process of completing this deal, we have already received approval from the CCI (Competition Commission of India) for the deal,” Mukundan said.Tata Chemicals’ consumer business now comprises around 12-15% of the company’s total revenue, Mukundan said. “We are currently focused on our spices and pulses categories and we have always said we will wait for one of these two to turn profitable before moving to another category,” he added.“We are going steady in the north and west and are looking at the east. South is an extremely different region with (products) like sambar masala and rasam masala among others. So we’re waiting to stabilize in these three regions.”Tata Chemicals pared its consolidated debt by 33% to Rs 5,833 crore in the last three quarters. The company has been paying off debt with cash generated from operations and anticipates it would have zero standalone net debt in the next six to eight quarters. Current standalone debt fell 55% to Rs 1,318 crore in the last three quarters.",2017-02-09,"Tata Chemicals’ income from operations fell to Rs3,494.8 crore in the third quarter from Rs3,991.25 crore in the corresponding period of previous year",0.47,01:24,Tata Chemicals Q3 net profit rises 32% to Rs318 crore +0,"New Delhi: Ban on cash transaction in excess of Rs2 lakh will not be applicable to withdrawals from banks and post office savings accounts, the income tax department said on Wednesday.Through the Finance Act 2017, the government has banned cash transactions of over Rs2 lakh and said a penalty of an equal amount would be levied on the receiver. In a clarification on the newly inserted Section— 269ST—in the I-T Act, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said the restriction shall not apply to withdrawal from banks and post offices.“It has also been decided that the restriction on cash transaction shall not apply to withdrawal of cash from a bank, co-operative bank or a post office savings bank,” the statement said. It said necessary notification in this regard would be issued. In the 2017-18 Budget, finance minister Arun Jaitley had proposed to ban cash transaction of over Rs3 lakh. This limit was lowered to Rs2 lakh as an amendment to the Finance Bill, which was passed by the Lok Sabha last month. The said restriction is also not applicable to any receipt by government, banking company, post office savings bank or co-operative bank, the CBDT said. The move to ban cash transaction above a threshold was aimed at curbing black money by discouraging cash transaction and promoting digital economy. According to the rule, no individual can deal in cash in excess of Rs2 lakh on a single day, in respect of a single transaction or in respect of transactions relating to one event or occasion from an individual. The Finance Act also provides that any capital expenditure in cash exceeding Rs10,000 shall not be eligible for claiming depreciation allowance or investment-linked deduction. Similarly, the limit on revenue expenditure in cash has been reduced from Rs20,000 to Rs10,000. In order to promote digital payments in case of small unorganised businesses, the rate of presumptive taxation has been reduced from 8% to 6% for the amount of turnover realised through cheque/digital mode. Also, it has restricted cash donation up to Rs2,000 for political parties for availing exemption from Income-tax. “Further, it has also mandated that any donation in cash exceeding Rs2,000 to a charitable institution shall not be allowed as a deduction under the Income-tax Act,” the CBDT statement said.",2017-04-05,Income tax department said ban on cash transaction in excess of Rs2 lakh will not be applicable to withdrawals from banks and post office savings accounts,-1.0,23:41,"Ban on cash transaction above Rs2 lakh not applicable for bank, post office withdrawals" +0,"Bengaluru: United Breweries Ltd (UBL), the maker of Kingfisher beer, late on Wednesday asked Vijay Mallya to step down as non-executive chairman of the company, effective immediately.The decision was taken at the company’s board meeting on Wednesday.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had last month barred Mallya and six former United Spirits Ltd executives from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud.Mallya and the others have also been barred from holding directorships in any listed company.“I am directed by the board to convey that in order to comply with the Sebi order and in the absence of any stay or vacation of the said order, the board is compelled to request you to step down from the board of United Breweries Ltd with immediate effect,” Govind Iyengar, UB’s secretary and senior vice-president, legal, said in an email to Mallya that was filed with BSE on Wednesday.The board has deliberated this matter and also reviewed the legal opinions in this regard, the company said.The board had also resolved on 6 February not to send notices and agenda relating to board meetings and/or other privileged information to Mallya till such time as he obtains a stay of the Sebi order, and the same was conveyed to him.On Wednesday, UBL also reported a 31.94% fall in net profit to Rs48.49 crore for the December quarter. Revenue rose 1.2% to Rs2230.86 crore.United Breweries said unfavourable market conditions, together with the impact of demonetisation, excise duty increases in several states and raw material price pressures, resulted in a drop in its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) and profit after tax in the quarter.Sales volumes were flat for the nine months ending 31 December 2016 and declined in the western region on a year-to-date basis while growing in almost all other regions.Input costs continued to be under pressure during the period with price increases in barley and sugar, which were in part offset by “improved efficiencies.”",2017-02-09,United Breweries’s move comes after a Sebi order barred Vijay Mallya from holding directorship in any listed company,0.88,00:05,United Breweries asks Vijay Mallya to step down as non-executive chairman +0,"Mumbai: Union Bank of India on Wednesday reported a 32% increase in net profit in the December quarter on increase in other income.Net profit for the quarter increased to Rs104 crore compared with Rs78.54 crore a year ago. According to estimates of 14 Bloomberg analysts, the bank was expected to post a net profit of Rs227.40 crore.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 7.01% to Rs2,136.62 crore in the December quarter from Rs1,996.51 crore last year.ALSO READ: NPA norms to keep exerting pressure on banks’ profit, says RBI’s S.S. MundraOther income increased 50% to Rs1,339.67 crore in the third quarter from Rs892.69 crore in the same period last year.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) at Union Bank rose 3.07% to Rs32,402.74 crore at the end of the December quarter from Rs29,862.05 crore in the September quarter. As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were 11.7% at the end of the December quarter compared with 10.73% in the previous quarter and 7.05% a year ago.Provisions and contingencies increased 27.22% to Rs1,581.85 crore in the third quarter from Rs1,243.30 crore a quarter ago. Net NPAs rose to 6.95% in the December quarter compared with 6.39% in the previous quarter and 4.07% in the same quarter last year.ALSO READ: United Bank of India posts net profit of Rs64.10 crore in Q3Shares of Union Bank lost 1.13% to close at Rs166.75 per share on Wednesday on the BSE, while the benchmark index, Sensex lost 0.16% to close at 28289.92 points.",2017-02-08,"Union Bank of India’s net interest income rose 7.01% to Rs2,136.62 crore in the December quarter from Rs1,996.51 crore last year",0.91,19:39,Union Bank of India Q3 profit rises 32% to Rs104 crore +0,"Mumbai: Reliance Power Ltd on Wednesday said net profit in the December quarter rose 14.4% as its plants performed better, but the earnings failed to meet market expectations.The Anil Ambani-led power producer reported a consolidated net profit of Rs275.70 crore, against Rs241.06 crore a year ago. Net sales rose 14.2% to Rs2,456.31 crore in the quarter from Rs2,150.49 crore a year earlier.Both profit and sales missed analysts’ estimates. Five analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected Reliance Power to report a consolidated net profit of Rs354.8 crore on net sales of Rs2,715.40 crore.ALSO READ: Power companies tap smart meters to change consumer behaviour patternReliance Power’s 3,960 megawatt (MW) Sasan ultra mega power plant (UMPP) in Madhya Pradesh generated 7,718 million units during the quarter, operating at a plant availability factor of 89%, while the Rosa power plant in Uttar Pradesh generated 2,165 million units at 96%.The Butibori power plant in Maharashtra generated 1,032 million units at availability of 97%, the company said in a statement. The rest of generation was contributed by the 40 MW Dhursar Solar PV plant in Rajasthan, a 45 MW wind capacity in Maharashtra, and a 100 MW concentrated solar power project in Rajasthan.Total expenses in the quarter rose about 18.2% to Rs1,891.23 crore from Rs1,600.24 crore a year earlier.ALSO READ: SC grants relief to discoms over payment of dues to Reliance Group’s Sasan PowerReliance Power operates nearly 6,000 MW of power capacity across its projects based on coal, gas, hydro and renewable energy.Reliance Power shares closed up 0.55% at Rs46.05 on the BSE on Wednesday. The results were announced after market hours.Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.",2017-02-08,"Reliance Power’s net sales rose 14.2% to Rs2,456.31 crore in the December quarter from Rs2,150.49 crore a year earlier",0.68,20:02,Reliance Power profit rises 14.4% to Rs275.70 crore +0,"New Delhi: Homegrown pharma major Cipla Ltd on Wednesday reported 43.85% jump in consolidated net profit at Rs374.83 crore for the third quarter ended 31 December 2016. The company had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs260.57 crore in the same period last fiscal, Cipla said in a BSE filing.Net sales during the quarter under review stood at Rs3,550.02 crore as against Rs3,069.89 crore in the corresponding period last fiscal, up 15.63%. The company’s profit was boosted by other income of Rs153.49 crore during the quarter as compared to Rs67.53 crore in the third quarter last year. On plans to raise Rs4,000 crore via issue of securities in both domestic and global markets, Cipla said its Board of Directors at their meeting held on Wednesday has decided “to seek approval of the shareholders in future at an appropriate time depending upon the funding requirements and investment opportunities”. It also said that as part of a planned transition, company secretary, key managerial personnel and compliance officer Mital Sanghvi will relinquish his post and is moving into a senior business finance role within the company. Subsequently, Rajendra Chopra will be the new company secretary and key managerial personnel with effect from 9 February 2017, the company said.",2017-02-08,"Cipla’s net sales during the third quarter under review stood at Rs3,550.02 crore, up 15.63% from the corresponding period last fiscal",0.67,18:35,Cipla Q3 net profit jumps 43.85% to Rs374.83 crore +0,"Bengaluru: EBay Inc. on Wednesday forecast second-quarter profit that fell short of analysts’ estimates, as it spends heavily on revamping and marketing its e-commerce platform amid stiff competition from much larger rival Amazon.com Inc.Shares of the company fell 2.5% to $33 in trading after the bell. San Jose, California-based eBay has been making changes to its platform to lure more shoppers as well as better compete with Amazon. That has meant a shift away from online auctions towards fixed-price sales and product landing pages, which are easier to navigate than the dozens of listings sellers would generate for a single good.EBay has also increased its marketing spending, running a rare TV campaign ahead of last year’s holiday shopping period.Sales and marketing costs climbed 4.5% to $562 million in the first quarter ended 31 March, while product development expenses jumped 16.3% to $278 million. The company’s profit in the second quarter would be affected by “increased investment to drive improved user experiences and to market our brand,” eBay’s finance chief Scott Schenkel said on a call with analysts.EBay said it expects second-quarter adjusted profit of 43 to 45 cents per share. Analysts on average were expecting a profit of 47 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The company, however, stuck to its earlier forecast for full-year adjusted profit of $1.98 to $2.03 per share, expecting more growth in the second half of 2017.The first quarter “showed some early indication that their efforts are beginning to bear fruit,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Aaron Turner, citing more active buyers coming to the site. “We’re still waiting to see” the outcome, he added.EBay said gross merchandise volume—the total value of all goods sold on its websites—rose 2.4% to $20.95 billion in the first quarter. But the result fell short of analysts’ average estimate of $21.06 billion, according to research firm FactSet StreetAccount.The company’s net income rose to $1.04 billion, or 94 cents per share in the quarter, from $482 million, or 41 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, the company earned 49 cents per share, beating analysts’ average expectation of 48 cents per share.Revenue rose 3.7% to $2.22 billion. Analysts on average had expected $2.21 billion. Reuters",2017-04-20,"EBay’s Q2 profit forecast fell short of analysts’ estimates, as it spends heavily on revamping and marketing its e-commerce platform amid stiff competition from Amazon",0.97,11:19,EBay Q2 profit forecast falls short of estimates +0,"
Mumbai: New RBI guidelines on standard asset provisioning and disclosure of details regarding non-performing assets (NPAs) may create difficulties for Indian banks, thanks to additional provisioning requirements, analysts estimate. Public sector banks are likely to see a 5-15% impact on their earnings going ahead, while private sector lenders would see their earnings hurt by 1-2% due to the new norms, Credit Suisse said in a report on Wednesday. Prior to this advisory, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) required banks to set aside 0.4% as provision against standard assets. The RBI on Tuesday had advised banks to consider setting aside higher provisions even for good loans in stressed sectors.According to Credit Suisse analysts, the hit on profitability has been calculated on a 50 basis points (bps) increase in provisioning owing to the RBI guidelines. The central bank specifically red-flagged the telecom industry, and asked bank boards to review their exposure to the sector by 30 June and consider making provisions at higher rates “so that necessary resilience is built in the balance sheets should the stress reflect on the quality of exposure to the sector at a future date”. According to data available with the RBI, bank exposure to the telecom sector was Rs82,200 crore at the end of February.In a report that Nomura released on Wednesday, analysts note that the risk on the telecom sector is likely to be limited owing to the expected consolidation, with the merger of Vodafone Group Plc and Idea Cellular Ltd. Weaker companies like GTL Infrastructure Ltd have already been classified as non-performing assets. In the case of Reliance Communications Ltd, most of the debt is from foreign banks which limits the impact on Indian banks, while in case of Aircel, even though the research firm sees risk, it is not big enough to change much for the sector. “This, in our view, would lead to faster recognition of future asset quality issues and will help avoid the cliff effect of large and lumpy provisions,” Kotak Institutional Equities Research said in a report on Wednesday.“This approach is closer to Ind-AS (to be applicable from April 2018 CHK onwards) which requires a dynamic approach to provisioning based on expected credit losses, instead of the current system based on days-past-due,” the Kotak report said.In addition to these norms, the regulator has also asked banks to disclose any major divergence in reporting of NPAs, when compared with what it had asked banks to do under the supervisory processes. In situations like the asset quality review (AQR), the central bank had asked lenders to classify certain accounts as NPAs even though the banks had classified them as standard.These norms have already started having an impact on bank results for the quarter ended 31 March. Private sector lenders IndusInd Bank and Yes Bank both reported increased provisions owing to the RBI directions on NPA disclosure.",2017-04-20,Credit Suisse report says PSU banks are likely to see a 5-15% and private banks 1-2% impact on quarterly results due to new RBI rules on bad loans and provisions,-0.42,04:40,"New RBI rules on provisioning, bad loans seen taking a toll on banks" +0,"Bengaluru: Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd, which runs the Café Coffee Day (CCD) chain, on Wednesday said net profit in the December quarter jumped 146% to Rs12.34 crore from the same period a year ago. Revenue rose 13% to Rs763.32 crore during the same period.Sales from its coffee and related businesses segment rose 12.54% to Rs415.33 crore. The company’s outlet count rose to 1,654 from 1,586, while its vending machine count rose to 40,013 from 33,742 during the period.Coffee Day, which went public in October 2015, recorded same-store-sales growth of 6.08% in the December quarter and an average sales per day (ASPD) of Rs14,815.“Specifically on demonetization, we did see some impact in our cafe sales in the first and second week post the announcement of demonetization but subsequently our sales recovered with the ASPD approaching the Rs15,000 mark,” V.G. Siddhartha, chairman and managing director, Coffee Day Enterprises said in a filing with the BSE.“Our mobile app downloads stood at 18.46 lakh as at December 2016 vs. 7.78 lakh as at September 2016. We are seeing a significant increase in the number of transactions through non-cash means (digital wallet, credit cards etc) at our cafes. We are working towards making significant improvements in the app to enhance the consumer experience. Our Freshly Made food category, ice cream range and recently launched Magical Brews are being well received by our customers and are being rolled out across our network in a phased manner,” he added.Coffee Day’s shares gained 1.81% to Rs202.95 per share on the BSE, while the Sensex gained 0.08% to 28,356.89 points on Wednesday afternoon.",2017-02-08,"Sales from Coffee Day Enterprises’s coffee and related businesses segment rose 12.54% to Rs415.33 crore in December quarter, revenue rose 13% to Rs763.32 crore ",0.69,16:59,Coffee Day Enterprises Q3 net profit jumps 146% to Rs12.34 crore +0,"New Delhi: State-owned power producer NTPC Ltd on Wednesday reported a 7.5% fall in net profit in the December quarter to Rs2,469 crore from the same period a year ago on account of higher fuel and finance costs and tax liability relating to previous accounting periods.NTPC informed stock exchanges that total income rose 11% to Rs19,396 crore on improved gross power generation and higher capacity utilisation of plants, in spite of adding more generation capacity. The company declared an interim dividend of Rs2.61 per equity share for the current fiscal. NTPC’s profit from ordinary activities before finance costs and exceptional items rose 9.4% to Rs4,016 crores. The company reported a tax liability of Rs613 crore for the quarter, up from Rs121.3 crore for the same period a year ago. Fuel cost went up 14% in the quarter from a year ago, while finance cost rose 7.9%.NTPC produced 61.4 billion units of electricity in the December quarter, a tad higher than what it did a year ago. NTPC Group’s installed generation capacity stood at 48,028 MW as on 31 December 2016, compared to 45,548 MW a year ago.",2017-02-08,"NTPC’s total income in third quarter rose 11% to Rs19,396 crore on improved gross power generation and higher capacity utilisation of plants",0.5,17:31,"NTPC Q3 net profit falls 7.5% to Rs2,469 crore" +0,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters",2017-04-22,"Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",1.0,10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +0,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",2017-04-20,Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,0.49,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +0,"New Delhi: Network18 Media and Investments Ltd, the media company controlled by Reliance Industries Ltd, on Wednesday said its consolidated loss widened to Rs33.3 crore in the March quarter, from Rs25 crore in the year-ago period. The company, which has interests in television, films and online retailing, generated revenue of Rs3,471.1 crore, up 5% from Rs3,321 crore last year. For the full year to 31 March, the company swung to a loss of Rs233.5 crore from a profit of Rs25.4 crore in the previous year. A decline in advertising spending following demonetization of high-value currency notes, operating losses from new initiatives in regional and digital broadcasting, and losses in the digital commerce businesses contributed to the overall net loss.“The media industry is still facing impact of deferment of advertising spends that kicked in from November-December 2016 on likely slowdown in consumer spending. Further, the revival of advertising spends has been witnessed at a much faster clip for national channels, while regional markets are still recovering with a lag,” Network18 said in a statement. Revenue from TV18 Broadcast Ltd, a unit of Network18 that operates news channels CNN-News18 and CNBC TV18, rose 7% in the year to Rs2,677 crore from Rs2,494.8 crore in the previous year. Net profit declined 90% to Rs19.1 crore. Network18 also runs digital news websites moneycontrol.com, news18.com and firstpost.com as well as the movie and events ticketing website BookMyShow.“The digital space in India continues to become more and more vibrant, as bottlenecks around connectivity and cost reduce substantially. We see the emergence of new formats and services, and rapidly evolving business models and aim to be at the forefront of this change. Our strength in linear media provides us the edge, helping us leapfrog in our aspiration to be a channel-agnostic provider of top-drawer content,” said Adil Zainulbhai, chairman of Network18.",2017-04-19,"For the full year to 31 March, Network18 swung to a loss of Rs233.5 crore from a profit of Rs25.4 crore in the previous year",-0.03,21:08,Network18’s net loss widens to Rs33.3 crore in March quarter +0,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",2017-04-20,Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,0.25,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +0,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.",2017-05-04,"DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",0.59,23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +0,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",2017-04-21,Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,0.37,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +0,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",0.61,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",2017-04-21,India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,-0.24,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +0,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.",2017-05-04,"When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",0.25,23:18,How to start an analytics journey +0,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",2017-04-21,Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,0.41,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +0,"Washington: Unfazed by the possible changes to the H1B visa regime, chief executive officer (CEO) of India’s IT major TCS, Rajesh Gopinathan has said the current discourse on the issue in the US is driven by emotions rather than economy and the best way to tackle it is through greater engagement. Gopinathan favoured a policy of engagement with various stake holders on the issue of H1B visas in the US. He noted that the discourse is currently driven by emotions rather than economy. “The best way to tackle that is greater engagement. Because the way, sometimes, companies like us get characterised is very different from the reality of what we bring to the table,” Gopinathan, who is in his mid-40s, said. “Some of these engagements actually help get that message out also. People will understand us better for who we are, and I think engagement, communication and collaboration is the best way to deal with the political lack of understanding which comes. Democracy ought to deal with the emotional response that you see and you have to get over it and engage positively,” Gopinathan said. He said the US has been a “very welcoming market” for the IT major and has provided it with a fair, open and competitive environment. “All said and done, the US has been a very welcoming market for us. So you keep aside the immediate issues, it’s been a market that has been fair, it has been an open, competitive environment,” Gopinathan told PTI, exuding confidence that TCS would be able to successfully compete in any environment. Gopinathan said TCS has competed and has won against the best in the country. “We have competed and we have won against the global best in this country, on equal footing. So, it has been a market that has helped us grow in confidence as we have gone,” he said but repeatedly refrained from having any complaint from the present system or the possibility of a new executive order that would adversely have an impact on his company’s performance due to any action by the Trump Administration on H1B visas. US President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order that would tighten the process of issuing the H1B visas and seek a review of the system for creating an “entirely new structure” for awarding these visas. Gopinathan was appointed as the new CEO of TCS this January after his predecessor N. Chandrasekaran was elevated to the post of chairman of Tata Sons. Responding to questions on a potential executive order or legislations being talked about by lawmakers, Gopinathan asserted that there is no law currently in the US that is discriminatory. “There are many that are being discussed, which if they were to get passed, in their extreme form would be discriminatory. So we should actually give credence to the system here, that is, as I said, it is fair. It has been fair in the past, there is no reason for us to assume that it will not be fair in the future. So, let’s deal with what’s on the ground and let’s go step by step,” he said. “More importantly, we have very active STEM education engagement in the US. We work with colleges, high school students, we reach out, we have touched close to 20,000 plus students already, and significantly we are accelerate that into what we call Ignite My Future Campaign. We just target to touch one million students all in the next five years,” he said. Noting that the technology market is actually under supplied, he said the sheer demand of technical skills far outstrips the supply. “What we’ve been successful in India is to actually increase the world supply, often generating graduates way beyond what the governing systems actually provided. So we capitalised the emergence of a private sector education complex that served to provide us the talent required for our growth,” he said. PTI",2017-04-18,"The current discourse on the H1B visa issue in the US is driven by emotions rather than economy and the best way to tackle it is through greater engagement, says Gopinathan",0.68,18:08,TCS unperturbed by possible changes to H1B visa regime: CEO Rajesh Gopinathan +0,"New York/San Francisco: Toshiba Corp. temporarily cancelled all meetings and decisions related to the sale of its memory chip business to address concerns raised by an industry partner, people familiar with the matter said.Toshiba is trying to sell the business to raise much-needed cash, and the company has been narrowing down the field of interested buyers. That hit a snag after joint-venture partner Western Digital Corp., based in San Jose, California, said a sale may violate the companies’ contract. Toshiba’s spokeswoman Kaori Hiraki denied the sale process has been put on hold.Western Digital chief executive officer (CEO) Steve Milligan wrote a letter to Toshiba’s board members on 9 April advising them that they should negotiate exclusively with his company before any sale. He also argued that the rumored bidders were unsuitable and the reported prices offered were above the fair and supportable value of the chip business, according to a person familiar with the process, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.Toshiba and Western Digital are joint owners of certain chip business facilities. Shares of Toshiba fell as much as 8.1% in Tokyo on Friday, while Western Digital was little changed at the close in New York.Western Digital’s contentions raise another potential roadblock in the troubled process. The Japanese company needs to shore up finances hurt by losses from its Westinghouse nuclear business and has warned that its very survival is at risk. Analysts cautioned that Western Digital does have legal rights that will bear on the sale process.‘Consent to approve’“We believe that WDC has rights surrounding the JV including the consent to approve/disapprove of any transaction involving the joint venture,” Amit Daryanani, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a research note. “WDC has the legal wherewithal to veto or approve a winning bid.”Toshiba disagrees with Western Digital’s assertion that a sale would violate the agreement between the two companies, Toshiba executives said when contacted by Bloomberg News.Last year Western Digital, one of the largest makers of computer hard drives, made a $15.8 billion bet on technology that’s making its core business obsolete, with its purchase of SanDisk Corp. SanDisk was a manufacturing partner of Toshiba, a role that Western Digital has assumed.That purchase piled debt onto its balance sheet and may restrict its ability to match some of the bids that other companies reportedly made for Toshiba’s chip unit. In January, Western Digital said it had cash and cash equivalents of $5.2 billion. The company said in January it had “liquidity available” totaling $6.2 billion. In December, Western Digital reported net debt of $8.9 billion.Toshiba has narrowed the original group of contenders for the chip business after a first round of bidding. Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. has indicated its willingness to pay as much as 3 trillion yen ($27 billion), Bloomberg has reported.Toshiba’s board is trying to balance the need for a quick sale with concerns that such a deal would mark the end of Japan’s chance of restoring its once-leading role in the $300 billion chip industry and potentially aid China’s push to enter that important market, Bloomberg News has reported.Milligan’s letter, which was earlier reported by the Nikkei Asian Review, cautioned in particular against accepting a bid from Broadcom Ltd, a company that has led the wave of consolidation in the chip industry over the past two years. Bloomberg",2017-04-18,"Toshiba is trying to sell the business to raise much-needed cash, and the company has been narrowing down the field of interested buyers",0.04,19:25,Toshiba said to put chip sale process on hold for now +0,"New Delhi: Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN), a global digital marketing major headquartered in London, UK, has acquired Indian marketing services group SVG Media Pvt. Ltd in an all-cash deal, the two companies announced Tuesday.While both firms declined to comment on the deal size, two people privy to the development said it was in the range $100-120 million. Smile Group owns majority stake in SVG Media, which counts Xplorer Capital as an institutional backer.SVG Media was founded in 2006 as a business owned by Smile Group, that runs a slew of e-commerce and internet businesses. SVG Media has four business units, namely DGM (focussed on banking, financial service and e-commerce clients), Komli (premium digital marketing through Facebook and Twitter), SeventyNine (mobile-focussed advertising platform) and Tyroo (ad-tech platform similar to InMobi), together reaching over 150 million unique viewers in India. It has offices in Gurgaon, Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru.As part of the deal, Smile Group, promoted by media entrepreneurs Manish Vij and Harish Bahl, has sold DGM, Komli and SeventyNine (under SVG Media) to DAN. Tyroo, which is retained, is transferred to a separate legal entity and will continue to be owned by Smile Group.SVG Media had acquired Komli Media and SeventyNine in August 2015 and December 2014, respectively, and DGM in 2010.As per the deal, DAN will take control of the offices and about 280 specialists housed in the three units. Anurag Gupta, the chief executive officer of DAN, will take over as CEO of SVG Media replacing Bahl and Vij, the outgoing chairman and CEO, respectively. Gupta will report to Ashish Bhasin, chairman and CEO of DAN South Asia.Business vertical heads Chirag Shah and Deven Dharamdasani from SeventyNine, Akshay Mathur from Komli and Ashwani Mehta will join the board at SVG Media.According to Vij, SVG Media, including all its business, generated operating profit of Rs14 crore on revenue of Rs200 crore in the year ending March 2016. Post the acquisition, Smile Group will focus on growing Tyroo and continue to invest in and incubate media start-ups, he added.This marks the second successful exit by Vij and Bahl in the digital media space, after having sold ad firm Quasar Media to WPP Digital in 2007. Separately, Letsbuy, an electronics retail venture e-commerce platform setup by Vij, was sold to Flipkart for $25 million in 2012.“At Smile we are proud to have continuously built successful JV (joint venture) partnerships or exits with large global firms as Airbnb, Yahoo, WPP Digital, Scan Group-Africa etc. SVG’s market leadership and exit to DAN is another feather in the cap for Smile,” Smile Group’s Bahl said.For DAN this comes as their 10th acquisition in India since 2012, according to data shared by the company. Some of these include Fractal Ink Design Studio, Happy Creative, WATConsult, Webchutney and Taproot. Just recently, it closed the acquisition of Grant Group, a 59-year old family run advertising services company in Sir Lanka, Mint reported in March.“India is a significant market with rapid growth potential in its mobile and performance marketing business, and Dentsu Aegis Network India has a strong track record in the search and performance space to deliver this,” DAN’s Bhasin said in a statement.DAN was formed in 2012 through the acquisition of Japanese advertising giant Dentsu by British media buying Aegis Media in 2012.Part of Dentsu Inc., DAN is made up of 10 global network brands: Carat, Dentsu, Dentsu media, iProspect, Isobar, mcgarrybowen, Merkle, MKTG, Posterscope and Vizeum. Headquartered in London, it operates in 145 countries worldwide with more than 38,000 dedicated specialists.",2017-04-18,"Dentsu Aegis Network, a global digital marketing firm, acquires Indian marketing services group SVG Media in an all-cash deal",0.25,12:19,Dentsu Aegis acquires SVG Media in all-cash deal +0,"Mumbai: Future Retail Ltd, India’s biggest department store chain that gained from the government’s surprise demonetisation move, still has room to extend the rally that’s more than doubled its market value this year.The shares of the food-to-fashion retailer are set to rally 22% in the next 12 months, according to the average analyst price target compiled by Bloomberg. The stock has surged 128% since 1 January, beating returns from rivals such as billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla-controlled Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd and Tata group’s Trent Ltd.A shortage of cash hit purchases of soaps to cars after Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November junked high-value currency bills, driving shoppers to large-format stores like Future Retail that accept credit cards. Sales may jump 25% this year as the company adds to its chain of 1,000-plus stores, India’s biggest, group chief executive officer Kishore Biyani said in an interview.“Demonetisation was one big tailwind in recent months and the single goods-and-services tax will be the next big push,” said Himanshu Nayyar, Mumbai-based analyst at Systematix Shares & Stocks Ltd, referring to the sales tax regime that will help retailers buy materials seamlessly from across states after it is rolled out from 1 July. His one-year price target of Rs345 is 18% higher than Monday’s close.Investors are warming up to India’s brick-and-mortar retailers at a time when their online rivals face an intense discount war and eroding valuations. Shares of billionaire Radhakishan Damani-owned Avenue Supermarts Ltd, which sells staples at knockdown rates, have more than doubled from their IPO price in March. The stock hasn’t been added to a popular index yet because of its short trading history. Trent, which sells branded clothes, has advanced 32% since 1 January. Aditya Birla Fashion has climbed 26%.Credit card spends at Future Retail’s Big Bazaar and Easy Day stores, which stock food and household items, saw non-cash billings surge 86% in the November-March period, the company said. The surprise currency recall was announced on the night of 8 November.Turnaround“Demonetization has in fact helped us clock more revenue,” Biyani said by phone. “We’re also looking to add 2 million square feet this financial year” that began April 1, he said.Future Retail swung to a profit in the nine months ended December, reporting a net income of Rs245 crore versus a loss of Rs89.8 crore in the year earlier period. Revenue jumped almost fourfold to Rs12,600 crore, according to its website. The turnaround isn’t just because of Modi’s currency policy change.In recent years, the company has exited non-core businesses and hived off its supply chain infrastructure to a group firm as part of efforts to lower debt. At the same time, it bought smaller chains, including a dairy products retailer Heritage Foods (India) Ltd, to expand in the convenience stores segment. This area is expected grow 43% annually in the next five years, according to Mumbai-based Antique Stock Broking Ltd.Earnings outlookFuture Retail’s after-tax profit could swell to Rs895 crore by March 2020, compared with an estimated 3.3 billion in 2017, driven by a 31% yearly growth in revenue from convenience stores in the period and a decline in inventory levels, Antique’s analyst Abhijeet Kundu wrote in a March report. An expected return on equity of 20% for 2018 is higher than the global mean of 15.8%, he said. Antique has a price target of Rs387.“What’s left in Future Retail is very scalable, asset-light and has been delivering growth in the past three quarters,” Systematix’s Nayyar said. “Heritage, Nilgiris, Easyday are high potential convenience formats. These could be the big story contributing to the company’s bottomline in the future.” Bloomberg",2017-04-18,"Future Retail shares are set to rally 22% in the next 12 months. The stock has surged 128% since 1 January, beating returns from rivals ",0.48,14:43,Future Retail gains as Kishore Biyani rides demonetisation +0,"New Delhi: South Korean consumer electronics giant LG is looking at making India its export hub, banking on good ties between the two countries at a time when its overseas shipments from China are declining. According to LG Electronics India Managing Director Ki Wan Kim, one of the main reasons for the company to look at making India an export hub is due to tension prevailing between South Korea and China. LG, which has two manufacturing units in India, exports to the Middle East and countries in the eastern coast of African continent. Around 10% of sales of the company’s Indian arm—LG Electronics India (LGEI), are currently from exports. Last year, LGEI had sales of Rs22,000 crore. “On the other hand ties between South Korea and India have improved. All Korean (companies) have started to see India as a strategically important manufacturing base not only for India but for other areas,” Wan said. When asked if LG is scouting for more global markets for exports from India, he replied in the affirmative saying it is looking for countries where there is little or no manufacturing. Earlier, LG used to serve such markets from China but “it is declining gradually”, Wan added. “Already we are exporting from Noida and Pune to Middle East mainly in Saudi and Iran and African countries on (the eastern coast of the continent),” he said. Another major factor for seeing India as a major hub for exports is that the country is becoming more competitive economically and there will be secured and transparent taxation regime with the expected implementation of goods and services tax (GST). “India is becoming more competitive economically. With GST coming up, its secured and transparent taxation regime along with a stable political system would help in project as a bigger manufacturing hub,” Wan added. LG can increase its manufacturing capacity whenever required, he said. He said the company, which is celebrating its 20 years of operations in India this year, has witnessed very high growth rate in the last couple of years. India is among the top five global markets for LG in consumer durables category with the USA, Korea, Brazil and Russia. Reflecting on the company’s two decades of journey in India, Wan said: “It is an achievement in itself. We have seen many brands come and go in India. Not only have we sustained but we have become number one .” On LG’s success in India, he said: “We have been able to serve the needs of different consumers here. India is not one country as far as consumer requirements are concerned.” The demand from consumers from South India is different from those of the North or the East, he said, adding, “therefore we have a strong local R&D team, which helps in identifying the specific needs of consumers so that we can deliver it to them.”",2017-04-18,LG Electronics India MD Ki Wan Kim says one of the main reasons for the company to explore making India an export hub is due to tension prevailing between South Korea and China,-0.31,17:36,"LG plans to make India export hub amid Korea, China tensions" +0,"
Mumbai-based construction company Capacit’e Infraprojects Ltd on Monday filed its draft prospectus with the market regulator for an initial public offering (IPO) to raise up to Rs400 crore. The company will use the proceeds for working capital requirements, purchase of capital assets and general corporate purposes.Capacit’e Infraprojects undertakes construction of residential, commercial and institutional buildings, primarily in the Mumbai metropolitan region, the National Capital Region and Bengaluru. The company had an order book of over Rs4,000 crore as of 31 January, comprising 51 ongoing projects. Last month, it received orders worth Rs1,500 crore from leading real estate developers such as the Oberoi, Wadhwa, Rustomjee and Kalpataru groups in Mumbai, Emaar in Gurgaon and Ozone in Bengaluru.The company’s consolidated revenue grew from Rs214 crore in 2013-14 to Rs853 crore in 2015-16 and Rs847 crore for the nine-month period ended 31 December, 2016.Axis Capital Ltd, IIFL Holdings Ltd and Vivro Financial Services Pvt. Ltd are the book running lead managers.According to a quarterly report by EY, India emerged as one of the most active regional markets for IPOs with 26 such offerings in the first three months of 2017. Delhi-based education services provider CL Educate Ltd, Shankara Building Products and Avenue Supermarts Ltd, the owner of D-Mart supermarket chain, were some companies that raised money through IPOs in the first quarter of 2017.",2017-04-18,"Capacit’e Infraprojects to use IPO proceeds for working capital requirements, purchase of capital assets and general corporate purposes",0.26,04:32,Capacit’e Infraprojects files for Rs400 crore IPO +0,"New Delhi: State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday unveiled its new brand identity, designed to position the bank as technology savvy, modern and ready to meet financial needs of all.In recent years, SBI has accelerated its efforts towards developing digital products and services, SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said in a statement. “Also along with the merger...we felt the need to position SBI as a contemporary brand, ready to connect with a diverse audience in a world that is rapidly going digital,” she said. While the legendary SBI monogram has been the de-facto symbol of SBI, combining it with the abbreviated SBI word mark is pivotal to the new identity, it said.It makes the brand more concise, modern and approachable, infusing new energy, while retaining its core values, it added.“The monogram has been refined for greater clarity and ease of use. The iconic SBI Blue has been refreshed, and the family of colours expanded for scale of usage and approachability. The overall visual language has been designed to ensure consistency and recall across all touch-points,” it said. Beginning this month, SBI merged six lenders catapulting the country’s largest lender to among the top 50 banks in the world. State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur (SBBJ), State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH), State Bank of Mysore (SBM), State Bank of Patiala (SBP) and State Bank of Travancore (SBT), besides Bharatiya Mahila Bank (BMB), merged with SBI with effect from 1 April.",2017-04-05,"While the legendary SBI monogram has been the de-facto symbol of SBI, combining it with the abbreviated SBI word mark is pivotal to the new identity",0.24,22:52,SBI unveils new branding after merger of 6 entities +0,"
The board of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has cleared a proposal to introduce banknotes of Rs 200 denomination, two people aware of the development said. The decision was taken at the RBI board meeting in March, these people said. They didn’t want to be identified as they aren’t authorized to speak to the media.The process of printing the new Rs 200 notes is likely to begin after June, once the government officially approves this new denomination, said one of the two people cited earlier.An RBI spokesperson declined to comment.Also read: Govt asks companies to disclose details about scrapped notesThe move to introduce lower denomination notes comes against the backdrop of the government’s move to rework the currency mix.On 8 November, it announced the withdrawal of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, amounting to around 86% of currency in circulation of Rs 17.9 trillion. Since then, RBI has replaced these with the new Rs 2,000 and redesigned Rs 500 bank notes. As on 24 March, currency in circulation was Rs 13.12 trillion, still around 27% off pre-demonetization levels. The government is encouraging digital payments and may not increase currency in circulation to the pre-demonetization level.On 13 March, RBI lifted all cash withdrawal caps. ATM operators, however, say that there is a paucity of lower denomination banknotes.So far, the central bank has not revealed how many of the old currency notes it has got back from the public. The window for Indians who were out of the country between 8 November and 30 December ended on Friday. The RBI board has 14 members. Apart from governor Urjit Patel and four deputy governors, the board also has economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das and financial services secretary Anjuly Chib Duggal.",2017-04-05,"RBI is likely to start the process of printing the new Rs 200 notes after June, only after the government officially approves this new denomination, says an official ",0.38,20:59,RBI clears proposal to introduce Rs 200 notes +0,"New Delhi: The Monetary Policy Committee, headed by RBI governor Urjit Patel, began its 2-day meeting on Wednesday amid experts saying that the central bank is likely to hold the rate on Thursday while unveiling the first bi-monthly review of 2017-18 in view of hardening inflation.Rising interest rate in the US provides sufficient indication that benchmark policy rate of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is not going to go down but may increase in the future depending on domestic and external factors, experts said.They were of the view however that RBI could announce some measures including standing deposit facility (SDF) to absorb additional liquidity in the system following demonetisation, announced on 8 November 2016. According to various informal estimates about Rs14 lakh crore has come back into the banking system. HDFC Bank chief economist Abheek Barua said RBI is likely to keep the repo rate unchanged in its upcoming monetary policy review. “In our view, the main focus of the central bank is likely to be on liquidity absorption in order to signal a neutral policy approach and for gaining additional headroom to intervene in the currency market,” he said.This will be the fourth bi-monthly policy based on the recommendations of the 6-member MPC. The government nominees on the Committee are Chetan Ghate, professor at the Indian Statistical Institute; Pami Dua, director, Delhi School of Economics and Ravindra H Dholakia, professor at IIM-Ahmedabad, while RBI nominees are the governor, deputy governor in-charge of monetary policy Viral A Acharya and executive director.“I think that RBI will hold on to the interest rate in the upcoming policy,” Kotak Mahindra Bank vice chairman Uday Kotak told PTI. Going forward, he said, the tinkering could be plus or minus 0.25% depending on the evolving condition. According to the head of another private sector lender, the central bank may not change rates on 6 April. In the last policy review on 8 February, RBI had kept key interest rate on hold at 6.25%.Patel had said he would wait for more clarity on the inflation trend and impact of demonetisation on growth before making change in the key policy rate.Wholesale inflation soared to a 39-month high of 6.55% in February while retail inflation inched up to 3.65% due to rise in food and fuel prices, leading to speculation that RBI will keep interest rate unchanged again in its April policy.“Although the CPI inflation is likely to significantly undershoot the March 2017 target, we do not expect a repo rate cut in the upcoming policy review in April 2017, with the Monetary Policy Committee firmly focused on the medium term target of 4%,” rating agency Icra’s managing director Naresh Takkar said.Crisil said that sharper-than-expected fall in inflation over the past few months has already started correcting as remonetisation gains currency and food price pressures could build anew if El Nino disrupts the south-west monsoon this year.“To boot, core inflation, which has been sticky, could edge up if domestic demand. Given the predicament, we foresee CPI inflation averaging 5% in fiscal 2018, 0.3% higher than in fiscal 2017,” it said.Monetary policy might have to clearly articulate the glide path to the 4% CPI target in the medium term, it said. Also, while fiscal policy and structural reforms, will be as crucial to quelling incipient inflation, it will take time for the benefits to work through an enduringly lower inflation,” it said.Apart from the challenge of getting inflation down to 4%, which was flagged by the RBI Governor at the last review, one of the biggest factors influencing the analysts seems to be the shift in the policy stance to neutral.“The RBI surprised with a shift to a neutral stance in February. Rates will remain on hold at April’s review,” analysts at Singaporean lender DBS said.In Patel’s first policy review as RBI governor in October, which was also the maiden review of the MPC, the repo rate was reduced by 0.25% to 6.25%. Since then, the repo rate has been retained at 6.25%. However, RBI has cut repo by 1.75% since January 2015.",2017-04-05,Monetary Policy Committee begins its 2-day meeting amid experts saying that RBI is likely to hold rate while unveiling the first bi-monthly review of 2017-18 in view of hardening inflation,0.25,20:54,"Monetary Policy Committee meet begins, RBI likely to hold policy rate" +0,"
Private equity (PE) investors, who are struggling to sell their investments in India’s food and beverages (F&B) companies, have seen their exit plans thwarted again because of a ban on liquor sales near highways. The Supreme Court’s ban on liquor sales within 500 metres of highways has hit PE investors who have failed to sell their F&B sector investments in the past couple of years. According to Grant Thornton data, PE investments in F&B fell 82% to $29 million (nine deals) in 2016 from $159 million (19 deals) in the previous year.“PE investors need to extend the maximum possible support to companies at this point in time as the alcohol ban is a black swan event completely out of the control of the industry. Interim results will be impacted, but investors will do well to work on strategizing with company managements to ensure minimal disruption,” said Ritesh Chandra, executive director, head-consumer, FIG and business services group at Avendus Capital Pvt. Ltd. Several India-focused PE funds have been looking to exit their four-to-five-year-old investments in F&B, but have been unable to find a buyer for their assets.New Silk Route Partners LLC (NSR), an Asia-focused PE firm, has been planning an exit from Moshe’s Fine Foods Pvt. Ltd. NSR had been in talks with several buyers since November 2015, Mint reported in May last year. NSR acquired a majority stake in Moshe’s in September 2013. Its holding in Moshe is 58% and the remaining stake is held by its founder Moshe Shek, an Indian entrepreneur. The company runs a chain of restaurants and cafes that specialize in Mediterranean cuisine under the brand name Cafe Moshe’s.NSR’s other portfolio companies in the F&B segment in India—Bengaluru-based Vasudev Adiga’s Fast Food Ltd—is also in trouble. Following a dispute with NSR, promoter K.N. Vasudeva Adiga approached the Company Law Board, which appointed an administrator in 2015 to run the food chain.PE firm Everstone Group has also been looking to sell its fine-dining business platform Pan India Foods Solutions Pvt. Ltd, also known as Blue Foods, Mint reported in May last year. Pan India Foods’ loss have doubled to Rs38.8 crore in 2014-15 from Rs19.8 crore in 2011-12, according to Registrar of Companies (RoC) data. Set up in September 2000, Pan India Food Solutions (Blue Foods) runs F&B operations through its brands Spaghetti Kitchen, Copper Chimney, Gelato Italiano, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Bombay Blue, Noodle Bar, Food Courts, Food Talk and Spoon.The performance of PE-backed listed firms has not been different. Shares of Speciality Restaurants which operates Mainland China, Oh! Calcutta, Sigree and Sigree Global Grill, Haka, Machaan and Flame & Grill brands, fell about 40% as on 13 April since its listing at a price of Rs150 in May 2012.SAIF Partners, investors in Speciality Restaurants Ltd, sold a 2% stake this month and another 2% last month. SAIF India IV FII Holdings Ltd held 8.26% in Speciality Restaurants for the quarter ended 31 December 2016. Spokespersons for Everstone and SAIF Partners declined to answer queries for this story.“It is a fact that many QSRs (quick service restaurants) and fine dining restaurants struggle after a few years as their USP or their value proposition to the customer wears off. This is more in the case of fine dining,” said Dhanraj Bhagat, partner, consulting firm Grant Thornton India LLP. So there should be a constant endeavour on the part of the promoters and the PEs to continuously innovate to ensure that customer interest is retained. There are recent government regulations like liquor ban and service charge issues which have acted as a dampener on the restaurant business, Bhagat added.However, there are some investment bankers who are optimistic about the deal flow in F&B sector. “The liquor ban definitely has affected a number of players and large F&B companies would each have one or two outlets affected by this ban. PE funds looking to invest in these companies may adjust valuation to the extent revenues/profits are likely to be affected but they may not choose to disengage from these conversations as the bigger picture would still be intact,” said Siddharth Bafna, partner and head, corporate finance at Lodha & Co., a Mumbai-based boutique investment bank.",2017-04-18,Supreme Court’s ban on liquor sales within 500m of highways has hit PE investors who have failed to sell their food and beverages investments in the past couple of years,-0.07,04:32,Supreme Court’s liquor ban hits F&B exit plans for PE investors +0,"Bhubaneswar: India on Saturday made a formal launch of Bharat Stage-IV (BS-IV) grade fuel across the country to keep carbon emission in check and set a target of ushering in BS-VI fuel by April 2020. The launch came days after the Supreme Court banned sale and registration of BS-III vehicles from 1 April. Union petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan formally launched the BS-IV grade transportation fuel in Bhubaneswar on the occasion of Utkal Diwas, the state foundation day.Pradhan symbolically commenced sale of the eco-friendly and low-emission fuel from 12 different locations across the country through live video links. The cities were Varanasi, Vijayawada, Durgapur, Gorakhpur, Imphal, Bhopal, Ranchi, Madurai, Nagpur, Patna, Guwahati and Shillong. “Today, we begin a new era of clean transportation fuel that will benefit 1.25 billion citizens of our country by substantially reducing pollution levels everywhere,” Pradhan said while complimenting oil marketing companies for working in unison to set up refining infrastructure and logistics in a record time for BS-IV grade fuel. The oil marketing companies (OMCs) are incurring an expenditure of Rs90,000 crore for phase-wise upgradation of the fuel quality. “Migration to BS-IV fuels shows India’s resolve to cut down emissions. The next step is to usher in BS-VI fuels by April 1, 2020, to be at par with global standards,” the oil minister said. Though India is not a major polluting country, “we shall stand by the Prime Minister’s commitment at COP-21 in Paris that India will substantially reduce carbon emissions and greenhouse gas emissions in coming years”.",2017-04-01,The launch of BS-IV fuel comes days after the Supreme Court banned sale and registration of BS-III vehicles from 1 April,0.31,21:50,India formally launches BS-IV fuel to make environmental statement +0,"Bengaluru: Royal Dutch Shell Plc plans to double the capacity of its liquefied natural gas import facility at Hazira on India’s west coast to 10 million tonnes a year, a top company executive said on Friday.Shell Gas B.V, a unit of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, owns a 74% stake in Hazira LNG Ltd, while Total Gaz Electricite France, a unit of France’s Total SA, holds the rest.“We’ve done all the work, now it’s sort of taking a look at when is the right timing in terms of demand that’s available,” Nitin Prasad, chairman of Shell Companies in India, told Reuters, without giving a timeline for the expansion.A government panel said in a report in April 2015 that Hazira LNG will look to expand the capacity of its LNG terminal in the western state of Gujarat by 50% to 7.5 million tonnes per annum in the fiscal year to March 2017. Shell on Friday opened a new technology centre in Bengaluru, the capital of the southern state Karnataka. The technology hub, Shell’s third in the world, is aimed at expanding the company’s research and development activities in Asia.India aims to raise the share of natural gas in its energy mix to 15% in the next three years from about 6.5% at present, as it attempts to achieve energy security while keeping pollution levels down. India’s gas imports in April 2016-February 2017 rose 16.4% to 22.53 billion cubic metres, according to government data. Reuters",2017-04-01,Shell’s India head Nitin Prasad says the firm plans to double the capacity of its liquefied natural gas import facility at Hazira to 10 million tonnes a year,0.41,11:15,Shell plans to double Hazira LNG plant capacity: India head +0,"New Delhi: The European Investment Bank (EIB) has okayed Rs1,400 crore (€200 million) loan to State Bank of India to fund solar power projects. The long-term loan will support total investment of €650 million in five different large-scale photo-voltaic solar power projects, EIB said in a statement. This will contribute to India’s National Solar mission and reduce dependence on fossil fuel power generation. Four solar power projects at a generation capacity of 530 MWac have already been identified under this funding, it said.“The new cooperation between the State Bank of India and the European Investment Bank will scale up investment in large scale solar power generation across India,” said B Sriram, managing director, State Bank of India. Also Read: Ex-servicemen will require Aadhaar to avail pension benefits: GovtClose cooperation between technical and financial teams from both institutions will ensure that world class projects are supported, he said.“This new project reflects the shared commitment of India and the European Union to tackle climate change and implement the Paris Climate Agreement,” said Andrew McDowell, vice president of the European Investment Bank.The 20 -year long-term EIB loan will support individual projects. Projects in Tamil Nadu and Telangana are among those to be funded under this agreement.This funding will be in addition to financing from Indian banks and project promoters. One of the largest lenders in renewable energy investment, EIB has financed projects of €1.7 billion (about Rs11,900 crore) in India since 1993.Owned by the 28 member states of the European Union, it is the world’s largest international public bank.",2017-04-01,"The SBI gets Rs1,400 crore long-term loan from European Investment Bank to fund five different solar projects in Tamil Nadu and Telangana",0.24,10:32,"SBI gets Rs1,400 cr loan from European Investment Bank to fund solar projects" +0,"
New Delhi: The Union cabinet on Friday gave a five-year extension to 25 large power projects to ink long-term power purchase deals and avail the promised customs and excise duty benefits on equipment procured under the Mega Power Policy of 2009.An official statement issued after the cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the extension of incentives to ink deals would increase power availability and ensure that consumers did not have to pay more. The statement said projects will get tax breaks on a pro rata basis against the quantum of power purchase deals they sign with utilities.The 25 projects were given provisional mega power project status in 2011 and had five years to sign power sale deals, which they failed to do. Now, they have another five years to do so. Former power secretary Anil Razdan said supporting these projects is necessary in view of the expected power demand increase on account of the Make in India drive, rural electrification and the shift to electricity from fossil fuels for transportation and cooking. The move will provide about Rs10,000 crore of benefits to the 25 projects with about 32,000 megawatts (MW) in capacity and help ease the stress some of them pose to the banking sector. Only 11,000 MW in capacity has been commissioned, with the remaining in various stages of implementation. The total cost of these projects is estimated to be about Rs1.5 trillion.GMR Chhattisgarh Energy Ltd, Monnet Power Corp. Ltd, Lanco Power Ltd, Essar Power Jharkhand Ltd, Jindal India Thermal Power Ltd, Hinduja National Power Corp. Ltd, IL&FS Tamil Nadu Power Co. Ltd and Torrent Energy Ltd are among companies that are eligible for the benefits.Further, in a bid to promote organic farming among farmers and augment their incomes, the cabinet approved unrestricted export of organic farm produce. It also enhanced the ceiling on export of organic pulses from 10,000 tonnes a year currently to 50,000 tonnes.In a move to boost indigenous production of urea, the cabinet cleared an amendment to the New Urea Policy, 2015 which will enable companies to produce beyond the re-assessed capacity. The move is expected to boost local production of the plant nutrient, the statement said.The cabinet also approved a new air services agreement between India and Serbia.In another decision, it approved extension of grant-in-aid support to the network of 12 Agro Economic Research Centres and three agro economic research units for another year (2017-18). Further, to eradicate child labour, the cabinet approved ratification of the Minimum Age Convention, 1973 and Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 of the International Labour Organization (ILO). The cabinet also cleared an understanding between the forum of state electricity regulators and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners on large-scale integration of clean energy into the electricity grid.",2017-04-01,"Extension of incentives to ink deals would increase power availability and ensure consumers do not have to pay more, says government statement",0.63,10:32,Govt gives 25 mega power producers extra time for tax breaks +0,"New Delhi: Indian state refiners will cut oil imports from Iran in 2017/18 by a fifth, as New Delhi takes a more assertive stance over an impasse on a giant gas field that it wants awarded to an Indian consortium, sources familiar with the matter said.India, Iran’s biggest oil buyer after China, was among a handful of countries that continued to deal with the Persian Gulf nation despite Western sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear programme.However, previously close ties have been strained since the lifting of some sanctions last year as Iran adopts a bolder approach in trying to get the best deal for its oil and gas.Unhappy with Tehran, India’s oil ministry has asked state refiners to cut imports of Iranian oil.“We are cutting gradually, and we will cut more if there is no progress in the matter of the award of Farzad B gas field to our company,” one of the Indian sources said.Indian refiners told a National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) representative about their plans to cut oil imports by a fifth to 190,000 barrels per day (bpd) from 240,000 bpd, officials present at the meeting said.Indian Oil Corp and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Corp will reduce imports by 20,000 bpd each to about 80,000 bpd. Bharat Petroleum Corp and Hindustan Petroleum Corp will together cut imports by about 10,000 bpd to roughly 30,000 bpd, they said.In turn, NIOC threatened to cut the discount it offers to Indian buyers on freight from 80 percent to about 60 percent, the officials added.No comment was available from the Indian companies or NIOC.Cutting imports from Iran amid an OPEC-led supply cut aimed at propping up the market exposes India’s refiners to the risk of struggling to find reasonably priced alternatives.“We expect that the market is currently undersupplied and that the draws in inventory are coming,” U.S. investment bank Jefferies said in a note to clients this week, adding it expected crude prices of around $60 a barrel by the fourth quarter.Despite this, Indian oil industrials said they saw no major impact from cutting Iranian imports, mainly due to their specific requirements.“Their main requirement is lighter oil, and light oil will remain in oversupply despite OPEC cuts, as OPEC cuts are mainly medium heavy sour,” said Ehsan ul Haq of KBC Energy Economics.Prices of light crude have fallen recently, thanks largely to soaring output in the United States, which is not involved in the production cuts led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.From April last year to February 2017, India imported 542,400 bpd from Iran, compared to 225,522 bpd a year earlier. Average oil volumes supplied by Iran over this period were the highest on record.INDIA’S GAS PLANAt the heart of the spat is that a group of Indian oil companies headed by Oil and Natural Gas Corp wants to develop Iran’s Farzad B gas field.Iran has yet to hand out a concession that would allow its development.ONGC Videsh has submitted a $3 billion development plan to Iranian authorities to develop the offshore field estimated to hold reserves of 12.5 trillion cubic feet, with a lifetime of 30 years.Under sanctions, Iran was banned from the global financial system, preventing the field’s development.India was one of a few countries still supplying Iran with goods, devising a complex payment mechanism to help Tehran access non-sanctioned items including medicines.As new options have opened up for Tehran since the lifting of sanctions, Iran may now be awaiting better bids for Farzad B.“They (Tehran) are playing hardball ... We don’t see any forward movement on that (Farzad B)... So we have reduced (crude) imports,” the Indian official said.(Editing by Dale Hudson)",2017-04-01,"Unhappy with Tehran, India’s oil ministry has asked state refiners to cut imports of Iranian oil gradually, before cutting more if there is no progress on award of Farzad B gas field ",-0.28,01:32,India to cut Iranian oil purchases in row over gas field +0,"
Mumbai: Tata Steel Ltd on Tuesday posted its first profit in five quarters as a strong performance by its Indian business, a rebound in demand and higher pricing helped counter weak sales in Europe.The steel maker reported a consolidated net profit of Rs231.90 crore in the quarter to 31 December, compared with a net loss of Rs2,747.72 crore a year ago. Revenue rose 14% to Rs29,391.60 crore from Rs25,766.89 crore a year earlier.Fifteen analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected Tata Steel to report a consolidated net profit of Rs130 crore; two analysts had expected revenue of Rs29,436 crore.Global steel mills have seen profits jump after prices of the alloy advanced because of government stimulus in China, the world’s biggest consumer. At the same time, a ramp-up in capacity in India saw volumes increase, boosting sales of local mills.At Tata Steel, India business revenue rose 39% to Rs14,106.04 crore in the quarter to December. Revenue at Tata Steel Europe fell 6.3% to Rs12,537.08 crore.Over the past two years, Tata Steel has cut jobs and shuttered some of its plants in Europe, blaming competition from cheap Chinese imports, a strong pound and high costs.Total costs in the quarter rose 3.9% to Rs27,232.08 crore. Finance costs alone rose 40.5% to Rs1,387.40 crore.The company said that its steel deliveries in the December quarter stood at 6.11 million tonnes. As of 31 December, Tata Steel’s net debt stood at Rs76,680 crore.In India, Tata Steel said its deliveries rose 27% year-on-year, at a time when the domestic markets contracted by 2%. Its automotive sales grew by 20% year-on-year, sales in the industrial products, projects and exports vertical rose 47% while those in branded products grew 13%, Tata Steel said in a statement.ALSO READ | Tata Steel to seek board nod to raise Kalinganagar plant capacity to 8 million tonnes“While the broader market was affected by lower rural sales and adverse consumer sentiments, we were able to increase overall volumes by 14% sequentially and register strong growth across all our target customer segments. Further, our focus on cost improvement initiatives and our integrated operations helped us to contain the impact of rising raw material prices,” said T.V. Narendran, managing director, Tata Steel India and South East Asia.The third-quarter performance was primarily driven by healthy domestic price realizations, which increased by about Rs3,500 per tonne on a quarter-on-quarter basis, ICICIdirect.com Research said in a note to clients.“Tata Steel’s sales volume from the Indian operations came in at 3 million tonnes (mt), higher than our estimate of 2.7 mt, while the sales volume from the European operations came in at 2.4 mt, higher than our estimate of 2.3 mt,” said the note.In December, subsidiary Tata Steel UK reached an agreement with trade unions to replace its defined benefit pension scheme British Steel Pension Scheme (BSPS) with a defined contribution plan.ALSO READ | Tata Steel aims 20% revenue from service, solutions business“The strategic initiatives in the UK on the pensions continue to be an important priority for the company and we welcome the Union’s recommendation to its members to support the ballot process that is currently on to close the BSPS to future accruals,” said Koushik Chatterjee, group executive director (finance and corporate).In a separate BSE filing on Tuesday, Tata Steel said it had elected N. Chandrasekaran as chairman of its board and appointed Peter Blauwhoff as an additional independent director effective immediately. Chandrasekaran, who was appointed as a member of the steel maker’s board on 13 January, is chief executive and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and is the chairman designate of Tata Sons Ltd, the group holding company, where he will replace the ousted Cyrus Mistry.",2017-02-08,"Tata Steel’s net profit was Rs230 crore in the December quarter from a loss of Rs2,750 crore in the corresponding period of last year",0.76,02:03,Tata Steel registers first profit in 5 quarters +0,"Mumbai: United Bank of India on Friday said it registered a net profit of Rs64.10 crore in the December quarter against Rs17 crore a year ago, thanks to higher income and a substantial tax credit.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 68.45% to Rs608.09 crore in from Rs360.98 crore last year. Other income more than doubled to Rs814.08 crore from Rs357.21 crore. The bank also reported a tax credit of Rs122.49 crore.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) at United Bank fell 2.59% to Rs10,845.31 crore at the end of the December quarter from Rs11,134.47 crore in the September quarter. As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were 15.98% at the end of the December quarter compared with 16.26% in the previous quarter and 9.57% a year ago.Provisions against bad loans and contingencies tripled to Rs1,380.85 crore in the third quarter from Rs401.03 crore the preceding quarter. Net NPAs rose to 10.62% in the December quarter compared with 11.19% in the previous quarter and 5.91% in the same quarter last year.United Bank closed 14.02% higher at Rs28.05 on the BSE, while the benchmark Sensex lost 0.35% to 28340.28 points.",2017-02-08,"United Bank of India’s net interest income, or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 68.45% to Rs608.09 crore in from Rs360.98 crore last year",1.0,01:52,United Bank of India posts net profit of Rs64.10 crore in Q3 +0,"Petrol prices have been cut by Rs3.77 per litre and diesel prices by Rs 2.91 per litre from midnight tonight. State-owned oil retailers Indian Oil Corp., Bharat Petroleum Corp. and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. cut fuel price sharply, passing on to consumers benefits of the softening global prices and of the strengthening rupee against the dollar. A statement from Indian Oil Corp. said that with effect from 1st April, petrol price has been cut by Rs 3.77 a litre and diesel price by Rs 2.91 a litre, excluding state levies. “The current level of international product prices of petrol and diesel and rupee-dollar exchange rate warrant decrease in selling price of petrol and diesel, the impact of which is being passed on to the consumers with this price revision. The movement of prices in the international oil market and currency exchange rate shall continue to be monitored closely and developing trends of the market will be reflected in future price changes,” the statement said.",2017-04-01,"State-owned oil retailers have cut petrol and diesel price, passing on to consumers benefits of softening global oil prices and of the strengthening rupee against the dollar ",0.54,01:24,"Petrol price cut by Rs3.77 per litre, diesel price by Rs 2.91, as rupee strengthens " +0,"Bengaluru: Watches and accessories maker Titan Co. Ltd on Tuesday reported a 13.08% rise in net profit to Rs255.75 crore in the December quarter on strong festive and wedding season sales. Revenue rose 14.38% to Rs3,925.95 crore during the period.Both net profit and revenue beat estimates of Rs244.20 crore and Rs3,675.10 crore, respectively, in a Bloomberg analysts’ survey.Sales of watches, jewellery, eye-wear and other businesses, including precision engineering and accessories, rose from a year ago.Revenue from Titan’s jewellery business, run mainly under the Tanishq brand, grew 15.41% from a year ago to Rs3,255.00 crore. Sales from this segment typically accounts for a major portion of overall revenue. Its watches segment revenue grew 5.05% to Rs508.26 crore.“Despite initial headwinds on account of demonetization, the company clocked a growth of over 14% and a PBT (profit before tax) growth of 21%. The festival season was very good for both our jewellery and watches business. Our effort continues, therefore, to be one of generating demand, through new product introductions and network expansion, while retaining our focus on cost control,” managing director Bhaskar Bhat said.Early last month, Titan had warned in a stock exchange filing that the third quarter that had kicked off on a high note due to the festive season, was dented somewhat by demonetization. Titan also said sales had recovered in the modern and dedicated retail channels and that the only cause for worry was sales of watches through trade or multi-brand retail outlet channels.The company has since repeatedly said it expects demonetization to give its jewellery business a boost as customers migrate from the large informal space, which most consumers traditionally tap for their jewellery purchase, to the organized segment of the market.Titan’s shares closed up 0.52% at Rs393.4 a share on BSE on Tuesday.The company started the process of merging its Gold Plus brand with the larger Tanishq during the quarter and estimates that the merger will be completed in 5-6 months. It launched the Favre-Leuba watch brand in a few stores in India and is planning to launch it in Taiwan. Favre-Leuba watches are currently sold in India, UAE and Japan.“Jewellery has been exceptionally good with 20% top line and 15% same-store growth. After a long time we are seeing 15% same-store growth and it was aided by a lot of work we’ve done in the jewellery business, especially on new consumer launches and consumer schemes. Studded (jewellery) ratio was lower. Coin sales have grown by 40%,” Bhat said on a call with analysts.“Our online brand CaratLane has had a good quarter, after two not-so-good quarters, despite demonetisation. Watch division after a long time has shown retail growth after long. It is the trade (channel) where the effect of demonetization was more severe. The launch of the Sonata ACT watch, a smartwatch basically for women’s safety has been received very well and has brought excitement back into the trade,” Bhat added.Company executives said they have withdrawn helmets under its Fastrack youth accessories brand. Titan had launched Fastrack helmets in 2013.",2017-02-08,"Titan reported a 13.08% rise in net profit to Rs255.75 crore in the December quarter with revenue rising 14.38% to Rs3,925.95 crore during the period",1.0,01:24,"Titan Q3 profit rises 13.08% on strong festive, wedding season sales" +0,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.",2017-04-20,"Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",0.65,23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +0,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",0.35,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",0.13,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.",2017-04-22,"A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",0.04,19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +0,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.",2017-04-21,"Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",-0.15,20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +0,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",0.25,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",0.6,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +0,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",2017-04-22,Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,-0.12,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +0,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",2017-04-21,Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,0.24,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,0.52,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.",2017-04-21,"The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",0.76,19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +0,"
Harry Banga always thought he would retire from a career in trading commodities when he turned 60. Much to his own relief, however, things didn’t go according to plan or he would have been at a loss for things to do. He tells me he has no hobbies.
Banga, now 66, is immersed at work when we meet. His office is where he is happiest. It probably helps that it has a breathtaking view of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, dotted with ships.
The Amritsar-born, Hong Kong-based Harindarpal Banga—“Harry” to everyone who knows him—is the chairman and chief executive officer of The Caravel Group. “It’s a start-up,” Banga chuckles. But one with grey-haired managers, an experienced team, and a billion-dollar balance sheet. “We created something new,” Banga demurs. “That’s what a start-up is.”
A diversified global conglomerate, Caravel was founded in 2013 by Banga and his two sons, Guneet (37) and Angad (33). The Bangas own all of it. He says his sons, who were working elsewhere, forced him to start his own venture, promising they would join him if he did. Though both have leadership roles within Caravel, Guneet, who is the executive director, is currently on a sabbatical, working on philanthropic projects in Thailand. Angad, the group’s chief operating officer, plays an active role in the day-to-day operations and heads the asset manage-ment division.
Harry Banga made a name and fortune for himself over two decades at Noble Group, a commodity trading company based in Hong Kong. As group vice-chairman, he was widely credited with turning the company into one of Asia’s biggest business successes.
He had joined Noble in 1989 to head its new shipping division. It was the perfect match: Noble could trade commodities and transport raw materials from suppliers to buyers. The timing was fortuitous. China’s economy was regaining momentum and the government was spending liberally on domestic infrastructure projects. It had a voracious appetite for raw materials. Banga quickly realized the impact an emerging China would have on the world stage, so that’s where he focused his attention.
“I pretty much lived there, not in five-star hotels but in dirty, filthy, smelly guest houses,” he says, remembering the years he spent travelling to remote corners of China. “And the food was terrible.” It was rough, but he persisted, even picking up Mandarin during those years of travel and establishing key contacts within China.
“For an Indian national to be so respected, to have such ‘guanxi’(relationships) within China, is very rare,” says Sam Chambers, editorial director of Asia Shipping Media, which controls global maritime news portal Splash.
Banga left Noble in 2010. He doesn’t say much about why he stepped down, except that the way Noble was growing (“too fast”) and diversifying (“becoming asset heavy”) didn’t match his sensibilities. He continued with them as vice-chairman emeritus till their 2013 annual general meeting to enable a smooth transition.
His exit was well timed. Noble has been plagued by accounting problems, several high-level departures, and a downturn in the commodity market. The company is nowhere near the darling of the stock market it once was.
Rich with experience and cash from selling his stake in Noble, Banga set up Caravel. It is named after a small, nimble, 15th century sailing ship developed by the Spanish and Portuguese to explore uncharted waters. The business has three verticals: logistics, which includes maritime services such as ship management, commodities trading, and asset management. Asset management was introduced to attract Angad, who has a background in private equity.
In a little over three years, Caravel has put Banga back on the list of Hong Kong’s 50 Richest People, with a fortune of $1.02 billion (around Rs6,800 crore), according to Forbes magazine. Caravel, which posted a revenue of $80 million in its first year of operation, estimates a jump to $1.8 billion last year. Banga looks embarrassed when I talk to him about his wealth. “What means more to me is when they compare Caravel to companies that have been around for 50 or 80 years,” he says, adding, “At this age, if I have more than three drinks, the doctor’s bill is bigger than the drinks bill, so where will you spend the money?”
Later, I understand where the money goes—well, some of it at least. “I don’t fly commercial, I have my own plane,” Banga says in a matter-of-fact tone. “Sometimes I say, why should I go in my own plane? I worry about my carbon footprint. But Angad says, Dad, just enjoy your life.”
As we speak in his office, I can’t help but notice that the view makes a perfect backdrop to Banga’s story. He began his life on the seas. He was not really interested in an engineering or medical degree, the traditional career path for most Indian men with his kind of family background at the time, and a chance meeting with a family friend who worked for the Indian Merchant Navy piqued his interest. Growing up in landlocked Punjab, Banga had never seen the sea. Without telling his father, he applied for a position with the Indian merchant navy. An exam and an interview later, he was accepted as a cadet.
Banga loved his life as a seafarer. “It was the lure of seeing the world. You went to a port and stayed there for months. I loved it. Seeing new places, meeting new people. It was amazing.”
He went on to become a master mariner (a qualification that allows you to become the captain of a ship) and at 28, the youngest captain in the navy.
It was during his time on the sea that the young Sikh cut his hair. It was impractical, with all that travel and being on a ship, he says. Banga’s father didn’t allow him into the house for three years. “Three years,” he emphasizes. Even after they made their peace, Banga had to grow a beard and put on a turban before going to meet his father.
I meet Banga for a second time at a gurdwara in Hong Kong on a chilly Saturday morning. He is there with his family to attend an akhand path (continuous recitation of religious hymns). “I believe in god and god for me is Sikhism,” Banga says. “Being Sikh defines who they are, it’s a big part of their identity,” Angad says of his parents. I learn that Banga has donated $1.2 million to the gurdwara for a new building and is closely involved in the design as well.
I watch Banga mingle easily with others from the local Indian community. He’s a slight man with a towering personality, the recipient of the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman (the highest award given to overseas Indians) conferred by the then president, Pratibha Patil, in 2011.
Over the years, he has also developed a fiercely loyal inner circle of colleagues. The senior management at Caravel came with him from Noble. His secretary has been working with him for 30 years; the head of iron ore, for 25 years; and the head of his China unit, for 20 years. Perhaps his most endearing quality is his friendly disposition. He’s affable. Every morning, he walks the floor of his office at 10.30 and greets people personally. He has done this for 20 years. He has a monthly list of birthdays on his desk and doesn’t miss wishing an employee.
“It’s a we and us culture, never you, never me. At our Monday morning meetings, there’s no finger-pointing. If someone did something that cost the company, it’s we made a loss, never you made a loss,” says Angad. He credits his father’s leadership style—based on developing trust—for creating a family-like atmosphere in the office.
For Banga, nothing in the world is more important than family. I understand that within minutes of meeting him. He talks often of his father, a former civil servant, now 95 and ailing. Banga returns to New Delhi frequently to visit him. His wife of 37 years, Indra, goes through the day’s schedule with him before he comes to office. She has chosen all the art that is displayed in the office. His daughter-in-law Dana (Angad’s wife) works at the Caravel Foundation with Indra.
The family gets together for Sunday-night dinners. It’s not just a tradition, but one that is “sacred”, Angad says. If anyone can’t make it, there had better be a very good reason for it. It doesn’t matter that they have seen each other in office every day, all week.
Sometimes, he’s kind of old fashioned, laughs Angad. “There’s so much pressure on my wife and I to have children. He’s like, all my friends have grandchildren, I am the only one who doesn’t!”
Speaking about the next generation (and a potential third), I ask Banga what he would like his legacy to be. He seems puzzled. I haven’t really thought about it, he responds. I rephrase the question. How would he like to be remembered? Banga pauses. Finally, he says, “I think I would just want someone to say, I miss him having a drink with me.”
In case you are wondering, that would be single malt whisky.",2017-03-11,"The master mariner, who founded a start-up after two decades at one of Asia’s biggest commodity trading firms, on Chinese hotels, Sunday dinners and god",0.39,00:00,Harry Banga: The commodities captain +0,"New York: American International Group Inc. chief executive officer (CEO) Peter Hancock is stepping down after posting four losses in six quarters, results that hurt investors including activists Carl Icahn and John Paulson.Hancock, 58, will remain CEO until a successor is named, the New York-based insurer said on Thursday in a statement. The company’s board said it will conduct a comprehensive search for a new leader, after meeting on Wednesday as part of an annual review into the firm’s performance.“Without wholehearted shareholder support for my continued leadership, a protracted period of uncertainty could undermine the progress we have made and damage the interests of our policyholders, employees, regulators, debtholders and shareholders,” Hancock said in the statement.ALSO READ: GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s pay falls 35% to $21.3 million amid weak oil marketAIG shares rose 1.7% to $64.50 at 8:41 am in early trading in New York. The stock declined 2.9% this year through Wednesday, while the S&P 500 Index rallied 5.6%. Icahn applauded the board’s decision in a Twitter post on Thursday.‘Significant positive’The move is a “significant positive,” Meyer Shields, an analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said in a note to clients. “Of course, there aren’t too many candidates with the skills needed to turn around this troubled global company, but several successful turn-arounds” have occurred in the industry.Hancock’s successor will be the seventh CEO of AIG since 2005. The company’s complexity bedeviled one leader after another as they struggled to manage a global insurer that was built through decades of acquisitions by former leader Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, and then shrunk through dozens of asset sales after a near collapse during the financial crisis. Doug Steenland, the insurer’s chairman, thanked Hancock for his work in helping repay a bailout that swelled to $182.3 billion.Hancock “tackled the company’s most complex issues, including the repayment of AIG’s obligations to the US Treasury in full and with a profit, and is leaving AIG as a strong, focused and profitable insurance company,” Steenland said in the statement.ALSO READ: Viacom said in talks with former Fox executive to lead ParamountIcahn announced his stake in AIG in October 2015, faulting Hancock for failing to meet return targets and pushing the insurer to split into smaller companies, saying it was too big to manage. He and Paulson won board representation in February of 2016. Paulson’s hedge fund has since been selling some of its stock.Management turnoverIcahn lauded Hancock when the CEO reached a deal in August to sell a mortgage guarantor to Arch Capital Group Ltd for $3.4 billion. Hancock has been exiting assets around the world to shrink the insurer, striking reinsurance deals to limit volatility and reducing headcount, partially to reduce costs. The CEO reshaped AIG management, replacing executives including longtime chief financial officer David Herzog and Seraina Maag, who oversaw regional operations.Still, ratings firm A.M. Best has been reviewing AIG’s financial strength score after the latest losses prompted Hancock to pay about $10 billion to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. to assume risks on insurance contracts that were initiated by his company. The CEO has said that a downgrade could jeopardize relationships with some customers.“This was the board reacting to the poor news from the fourth-quarter results,” Paul Newsome, an analyst at Sandler O’Neill & Partners, said by phone. “The broader question is how is the management team totally going to change?” he said. “I suspect that the strategy will change, we just don’t know how yet.”AIG has endured more than a decade of management turmoil. Greenberg stepped down as CEO in 2005 amid regulatory probes and was replaced by Martin Sullivan, who was ousted in 2008 after he underestimated the risk of a housing market collapse. Robert Willumstad held the post for just months until the insurer’s bailout, ceding the job to Robert Liddy who lasted less than a year in what he called “the most stimulating job in America.”The late Robert Benmosche ran AIG for more than five years, starting in 2009. He brought on Hancock, a former J.P. Morgan & Co. executive, in 2010 and assigned him the next year to run property-casualty insurance, the company’s biggest business. They repaid the government rescue in 2012. Bloomberg",2017-03-09,Peter Hancock’s successor will be the seventh CEO of AIG since 2005 as the company’s complexity bedeviled one leader after another as they struggled to manage the global insurer ,-0.56,22:10,AIG CEO Peter Hancock to quit as swelling losses hurt investors +0,"New Delhi: In a surprise move, Reliance Capital’s long serving CEO Sam Ghosh will leave the company on 31 March, after spending nine years at the financial services arm of Anil Ambani-led business conglomerate. Ghosh had joined the company in April 2008 as group chief executive officer of Reliance Capital, while he was elevated to the board in May 2015. The company, which is present across insurance, mutual fund and a host of other financial services sectors, said in a regulatory filing that Ghosh will be completing his term of office on 31 March 2017, and the appointment of a new CEO will be announced in due course.“During this entire period (of nine years), Ghosh has served Reliance Capital with great passion and commitment, and contributed towards building up a strong portfolio of businesses across asset management, life and general insurance, commercial and housing finance, broking and distribution among others,” the company said. It also said that Reliance Capital is on track to complete its transition towards becoming a CIC (Core Investment Company) by end of 31 March, as per RBI guidelines. All operating businesses will be housed in wholly or majority owned subsidiaries, each led by the respective CEOs of those businesses and their respective full-fledged independent organisations. Ghosh, a Chartered Accountant from England, has been instrumental in several deals and alliances signed by Reliance Capital during his tenure. He played a key role in expansion of core businesses as also in divestment of non-core assets to beef up its resources. Besides, he was said to be deeply involved in mentoring of Anil Ambani’s elder son Anmol, who joined Reliance Capital board last year after two years of training at the company. Welcoming him on the board, Ghosh had said at that time, “Anmol has been a fast learner, active participant in all reviews and displayed sharp business acumen in various decision-making processes,”. Before joining Reliance Capital, he was the Regional CEO of Middle East and India Sub Continent region of Allianz, a German insurance company. He has also served as CEO of Bajaj Allianz’s India operations. Prior to that he was involved in setting up operations for Allianz in South East Asia. He spent ten years in Australia in various capacities with Allianz from CFO to managing subsidiary companies as well as operations in the Pacific Rim. The company did not disclose any particular reason for his departure, while immediately it could not be ascertained where he is headed to. “The Board of Directors of Reliance Capital and all its people thank Ghosh for his service, and wish him the very best in his future endeavours,” the company said. (Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.)",2017-03-10,"Sam Ghosh had joined the company in April 2008 as group CEO of Reliance Capital, while he was elevated to the board in May 2015",0.2,20:25,Reliance Capital’s CEO Sam Ghosh to leave company after 9-year stint +0,"New York: General Electric Co. chief executive officer (CEO) Jeffrey Immelt’s compensation fell 35% to $21.3 million last year, as an oil and gas slump suppressed demand for industrial equipment and the company’s shares underperformed the market.Immelt, 61, received a $3.8 million salary last year, unchanged from 2015, according to a proxy statement from the Boston-based company Wednesday. His $5.94 million in cash awards, $2.14 million in stock options and $4.67 million in restricted and performance-linked shares were all down from the prior year.The weak oil and gas market, coupled with slow demand for locomotives, weighed on growth efforts last year after a sweeping transformation that tilted the company from finance and strengthened its manufacturing operations. GE returned 4.6% in 2016 including dividends, compared with 12% for the S&P 500 Index. The shares have continued to trail the index this year.ALSO READ | Jeff Immelt is the source of strategy around digital: GE’s William Ruh“Normally, we expect our diversified model to shrug off headwinds in one market and continue to achieve our goals,” Immelt wrote in a letter to shareholders dated 24 February. “In 2016, we simply couldn’t outrun pressure in the resource markets. Consequently, our compensation plans only paid out at 80% of target. This gives us more motivation for 2017.”GE in October struck a deal to combine its oil and gas unit with Baker Hughes Inc., creating the world’s second-largest oilfield service provider and equipment maker. GE, which also makes jet engines and power-generation equipment, recently announced the acquisition of a turbine-blade manufacturer and majority stakes in two 3-D printer companies.ALSO READ | GE boss Jeffrey Immelt sees new era of globalization as protectionism growsImmelt’s cash awards are split between an annual bonus tied to financial and strategic goals, and a three-year plan that’s linked to metrics including operating cash flow, return on total capital compared to peers and money returned to investors through dividends and share repurchases. The $5.94 million combined payout is less than half of the $13 million he received for 2015.The accounting value of the CEO’s pension has fluctuated in recent years due to actuarial changes, resulting in big swings in his reported compensation. Immelt, who’s been at GE since 1982 and became CEO in 2001, had amassed $81.7 million in pension benefits at the end of 2016.Vice-chairman John Rice got a $15.2 million package in 2016 and chief financial officer (CFO) Jeff Bornstein received $9.91 million. Bloomberg",2017-03-09,"GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s $5.94 million in cash awards, $2.14 million in stock options and $4.67 million in restricted and performance-linked shares were all down from the prior year",-0.08,19:44,GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s pay falls 35% to $21.3 million amid weak oil market +0,"
Geneva: Carlos Ghosn, 62, is the global auto industry’s most charismatic and, some would say, best performing chief executive officer (CEO). He is also the chairman and CEO of French auto maker Renault SA, chairman of Japan’s Nissan Motor Co. Ltd, and chairman of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. He has turned around the fortunes of the first, rescued the second from near oblivion, and now wants to do the same with the third.
ALSO READ | India is a big market for any carmaker: Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn
On 23 February, Nissan announced Ghosn would step down as CEO, and focus on managing the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi alliance. On the sidelines of the Geneva Motor Show, Ghosn spoke to Autocar India on the alliance, his plans for Mitsubishi in India, and how he took inspiration from Tata Motors Ltd’s Nano. Edited excerpts:
You have kind of relinquished your position as CEO in Nissan and are going to be focusing on the alliance specific to Mitsubishi. In India, Mitsubishi’s problem was no scale, no investment and no appropriate product. Suddenly these problems matter no more because of the alliance. Will it be logical to assume that with the alliance there’s a big market out there for Mitsubishi to tap? Without any doubt because, in India, the most important step and our key for success—not sufficient but necessary—is the product. If you don’t have the product, you better not try your chance in India. It takes a lot of time to find a product. I think, with the A-platform (the second of the so-called common module family, or CMF, jointly developed by Renault and Nissan, a sort of modular manufacturing system for cars), particularly with the Kwid and all the products that are going to follow that, we think we have found our entry level (car) in the Indian market. But this platform is an alliance platform. Today, you are having a Renault product, tomorrow you are going to have a Nissan product. This platform will be open to Mitsubishi.
So Mitsubishi could use it and you could go all the way up and bring the Lancer back for example? Yes, but Mitsubishi has so many opportunities to grow that the management of Mitsubishi is going to have to prioritize what they are going to do first, second and third. So I cannot tell you in what time frame this will happen, but without any doubt, this is a very big market for (the) future for any carmaker and for Mitsubishi in particular.
So what you are confirming is that it’s not a question of if but a question of when Mitsubishi will come to India with all guns blazing? We are not limited to the short term; it is going to obviously mean mid- or long-term. Everybody expects India to be in the top 3-4 markets in the future. So you can expect that what happened in China, where all the carmakers are present, is also going to happen in India, with (the) exception that the Indian market is very tough for the foreign carmaker because of the specificity of the product and market.
Do you think you have an edge with Kwid? It is doing well and has already got a lot of things like design and the touch-screen and a lot of things.Yes, we do; and we are improving and we are listening to what the customers are saying in India. Not only to improve our offer for the Kwid in India but also to improve our offer for the Kwid outside India because you know a version of the Kwid is going to be launched in Brazil as a second step of the A platform. So, for the Indian market, this is very important because it is very competitive, and if you are going to make it in India, you are going to make it in many emerging markets, and that’s why for us, testing and being successful in India and having a very strong acceptance of the product, a very competitive product in India, is a guarantee that these are going to do well in other markets.
Are you making money in India? Is this the tipping point?We are starting to make money now after selling 100,000 Kwids. We struggled at the beginning because it was the new plant and a new car, so when you have so much innovation accommodated, you struggle with profitability. When you are going to a new emerging market with a new product, you have to be patient for your returns.
In future, is the CMF-B (for cars slightly larger than those on the CMF-A platform) also expected?Obviously, the volume you expect from a car based on that platform is not going to be very big, so it can be an additional product but you can’t have a strategy on this platform.
So is there a lesson learnt by Nissan on the performance of its V platform (cars such as the Sunny and Micra that did not do well in India)? That you fundamentally cannot bring a European platform into India because the cost is too high and the customers may not pay for it? You can bring copy and paste platform and product but that has to be a niche product. Don’t expect big volume coming out of it. If you want big volume in India and contribute to the core market, you will have to really tailor it, even the platform.
On Renault’s strategy, you are selling around 10,000 vehicles every month and are the No.1 European carmaker in India. You’ve even rattled Suzuki. So, that is saying something. What is the aim? Were you expecting this level of success?I think this is all due to the attractiveness of the product. I think we have some improvement that we can make in terms of competitiveness of our plant because the plants are filled, then we have much better industrial performance, but we are not there. We will have a lot of improvement that we can make into this plant. Yes, after we have seen that the CMF-A and the CMF-A+ platforms are really adequately addressing the needs of the Indian market, we should be much more ambitions, in terms of contribution.
You previously mentioned Tata Motors’ Nano is really an inspiration for the Kwid. What are your thoughts on that and Ratan Tata’s vision for the Nano. When Ratan came with the Nano, I congratulated him and he said I was the only one who congratulated him because a lot of people said it’s a bad idea. No, it’s a good idea. We came with the Kwid at the end of the day and the Kwid was inspired by the Nano.",2017-03-09,"Renault-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn on his plans for the Mitsubishi acquisition, that brand’s future in India and how he took inspiration from Tata Nano",0.51,04:32,"Renault making money in India now after selling 100,000 Kwids: Carlos Ghosn" +0,"New Delhi: Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo Ltd on Monday opposed the sale of an 80% stake in Religare Health Insurance Co. Ltd by Singh brothers—Malvinder and Shivender—to a group of investors led by private equity firm True North.Daiichi Sankyo told the Delhi high court that the sale violated a previous order which required them to take court permission to part with unencumbered assets.“We have been taken for a ride. They (Singh brothers) are going against the assurance given by them to the court that they would not alienate unencumbered assets. Their assets should be attached to prevent such a situation,” said Daiichi’s counsel C.A. Sundaram.The Singh brothers have been repeatedly asked by the Delhi high court to disclose the value of the unencumbered shareholding they in have in various entities. The brothers in 2008 sold Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd to Daiichi Sankyo, which has since sold the company to Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.On 20 March, the court permitted Daiichi to inspect documents submitted by the Singhs including copies of several affidavits by the brothers and the reports of the chartered accountants of RHC Holding Pvt. Ltd, a firm in which the Singhs have significant shareholding, and its subsidiary companies. Subsequently, Daiichi sought the appointment of a third-party auditor to assist in the inspection process.The case relates to enforcement of an arbitral award in proceedings initiated by Daiichi Sankyo against the Singh brothers in relation to its 2008 purchase of a majority stake in Ranbaxy.ALSO READ: Shivinder, Malvinder Singh want to sell some assets, but the timing isn’t rightIn 2008, the Singh brothers exited the pharmaceuticals business by selling their controlling stake in Ranbaxy Laboratories o Daiichi Sankyo Ltd for $4.6 billion. The original arbitral award came after the Japanese company alleged that the Singh brothers had concealed crucial information while selling Ranbaxy to it.In response, a Singapore tribunal had ordered the brothers to pay a sum of Rs. 2,562 crore. The Singh brothers are contesting this in the Delhi high court.The case will be heard next on 24 April.",2017-04-18,Daiichi Sankyo tells Delhi HC that Religare Health Insurance sale by the Singh brothers violates an earlier court order on selling of unencumbered assets,0.03,04:29,Daiichi Sankyo opposes Singh brothers’ bid to sell Religare Health Insurance +0,"
New Delhi: For a man considered to be the poster boy of the multiplex revolution in Indian cinema, Ajay Bijli is decidedly uncomfortable being photographed. He poses slightly self-consciously at his posh Gurugram office with the several chair designs the entertainment company is currently trying out to fit its auditorium and audience requirements. As he celebrates 20 years of running PVR Ltd, India’s largest movie theatre chain that operates 569 screens across 123 locations in 48 cities, his motto remains the same: the customer must never feel short-changed by the theatre operator. In an interview, the chairman and managing director of PVR talks about the multiplex chain’s evolution and why movie theatres in India should survive the advent of digital platforms. Edited excerpts:
How accepting are you of being tagged the pioneer of the multiplex revolution in India?I’m very uncomfortable with it. There were a lot of people trying to build a multiplex at that time and I could tell it was going to happen soon. I was just lucky to be the first one off the block. I found the property and was able to get a joint venture in place (between Bijli’s then single-screen owned Priya Exhibitors Pvt. Ltd and Australian mass media and entertainment company Village Roadshow Ltd). I was also very fortunate because PVR Anupam (the first multiplex theatre in India) was in south Delhi, a catchment that I understood very well and the Delhi government was very supportive in permitting me to convert a single-screen cinema into a four-plex. All the building by-laws were only written for single-screen cinemas but they allowed me to rewrite the cinematograph rules. So I was just fortunate, I never carry that (tag) because thinking about it means you’re looking back and I want to look ahead.
Why did you see multiplexes as an opportunity for India?I was running a single-screen theatre, Priya, and I could sense the volatility—without blockbusters, which you anyway couldn’t have all 52 weeks, the cinema used to run empty. Multiplexes were prevalent internationally and there were 4-5 films getting released every week. I was very keen that we should be able to give people the choice of all the movies that get released one week with good sound, projection and hospitality under one roof. But there were a couple of things bothering me; one, that ticket prices would be incrementally higher than what balcony tickets were at that time—we opened at Rs65-70 compared to Rs40-50. Secondly, two cinemas were still large, 300 seats each but the other two were 150 seats each and I didn’t know how people would take to the small screens. But God is kind, when we opened the doors, there were queues outside. It was quite exciting to see the experiment had worked.
Do you think the death of the single screen took something away from the movie-viewing experience?No. You have a lot of cinemas that offer a big-screen experience, our biggest auditoriums are 350-400 seaters. And now, compared to where people are watching films (hand-held devices), even the 200 seaters are big-screen experiences. I never differentiate between single screens and multiplex cinemas, I just think all cinemas have to be of a certain quality because people in India take their movie-going experience very seriously. You should have good sound and projection system and air-conditioning and then it’s a price-point adjustment that needs to be done because India is such a disparate market.
What have been the major changes in the film industry and exhibition market in 20 years?Content is improving a lot. You have films that can be played in fewer cinemas, say Pink, or Tanu Weds Manu Returns and the Salman, Aamir and Shah Rukh Khan-starrers that release in 4,000 screens. Consumers have changed, as have their tastes. English movies always used to do well but now they do much better and penetrate into smaller towns by getting dubbed. The big change is now there is real estate available to build world-class multiplexes. Tax regulations are a very big disappointment for me—nowhere across the world do cinema tickets get as heavily taxed as in India. Now we’re waiting for GST (goods and services tax); if it comes in at a palatable rate, it’ll be a big change.
There was a lot of talk of PVR being acquired by the Chinese group Wanda.I have no idea where that is coming from. I thought this Warburg Pincus deal would at least put those rumours to rest (In January this year, private equity firm Warburg Pincus bought a 14% stake in PVR for Rs820 crore).
How would you address the whole crisis of declining footfall and the advent of digital platforms in India?Actually, footfalls have not been declining. Theatres still represent 60-65% of revenues and any content maker would want to completely monetize the movie on the big screen. To that extent, cinemas have exclusivity for at least two to three months, depending on how big the movie is. Secondly, I believe people love going out and watching movies, it’s still a great social outing.Plus the budget of some films runs into some $100-150 million. How do you recover if you go straight to digital? There is commitment from studios internationally and even in India to make movies that are larger-than-life and meant to be seen on the big screen. Then there are efforts by the technology providers, so many movies are being made in IMAX and 3D. So if you look at all these things, I think we should survive. Currently, 66% of the revenue comes from theatricals, 22-23% is food and beverage, 10-12% is advertising and marketing.
What are your most important lessons in these 20 years?There are so many, you learn everyday. After diversifying into film production, I realized I’d rather do one thing but do a good job of it. I think integrity is very important, you’re running a listed company, you should be transparent. Every unit that you build should be profitable. Out of the 130 cinemas that we have, only three are Ebitda-negative, most make money (Ebitda is short for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, an indicator of operating profitability). There was a lot of talk in between about screens but I was fortunate I had Renuka Ramnath (earlier with ICICI Ventures) who invested in my company in 2003. She wasn’t looking at screens but at the returns on capital employed. The other lesson is you have to remain restless and keep improving. Twenty years have definitely taught me that all your stakeholders—employees, shareholders, investors, developers, film fraternity—are equally important and there’s no harm in being nice and cordial with people.
Have you responded to the Securities and Exchange Board of India show-cause notice? (In November 2016, the markets regulator had asked PVR to explain a profit-sharing deal struck with private equity investors that was not disclosed to its shareholders, alleging that its promoters had violated listing and disclosure regulations)I have and it’s being handled by my lawyers. I’ve been advised not to say anything and they will give you the correct answer. But my conscience is extremely clear.
Where does film exhibition in India stand at the moment?We’re really under-screened and need more cinemas in main cities as well as tier-two and tier-three towns. But there are other issues too. If taxes and rentals don’t get rationalized, it could be a problem of too many screens. In the US, they make money even at 15-20% occupancy. That’s because the tax is zero and the rental is not more than 10% of your total revenue. Here the rental is going up but you can’t blame the real estate developers because the supply is limited. I don’t think GST should be more than 18%, the real estate cost has to be controllable, developers and cinema exhibitors should be given incentives by the government the way we were given when the tax exemption was announced to build multiplexes.The volatility of content also has to get better, you can’t have too many flops and just one Dangal helping you out, there has to be a little more effort on the script and execution and knowing what the consumer wants. When a massive filmmaker delivers a flop with a big cast, it worries you because you’ve allocated so many screens and shows.",2017-03-09,"In an interview, PVR CEO Ajay Bijli talks about the multiplex chain’s evolution and why movie theatres in India should survive the advent of digital platforms",0.25,04:32,PVR’s Ajay Bijli: Nowhere do movie tickets get as heavily taxed as in India +0,"Mumbai: Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank, which is set to roll out a fully functional branch by the first half of this year, is relying on scale and brand name to lure customers. The payments bank is a 51:49 joint venture (JV) between Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd (ABNL) and telecom major Idea Cellular, respectively.The bank will start operations with over 1.5 lakh touch points, an in-inbuilt United Payment Interface (UPI) solution and will look at distributing loans of other financial institutions. According to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) norms, payment banks can accept deposits and open current and savings accounts, but are not permitted to lend or issue credit cards.“It is clearly a scale game unlike traditional banking. In traditional banking you can put up one branch and still do well. Here, it is scale since technology platform is the same which has to accommodate many transactions. So more the transactions you accommodate, more benefit you can give to the customers,” said Sudhakar Ramasubramanian, chief executive officer (designate), Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank. Unlike other companies like payments banks of Airtel and Jio, Idea is yet to announce a tie-up with any financial institution. It is currently exploring partnerships with institutions depending on the “intensity of transaction and size of population”. The Aditya Birla payments bank is, however, confident that with a network of 180 million telecom customers, its reach is unparalleled.According to Sudhakar, Idea has both online and offline scale. Out of its total customer base, 60-70 % have feature phones. Not everyone except State Bank of India has this customer base. “India Post has access to people, but does not have as many customers. We are the organisation where we have done the Know Your Customer (KYC) and two million retailers is the network which we have. Also 15% of India is our existing customer base and 200 million of 8 billion is like 3% of the world’s population,” added Sudhakar. Also Read: Aditya Birla Group gets RBI licence to start payments bankAditya Birla Idea Payments bank is one among seven companies to get a final approval from the banking regulator. Airtel Payments Bank Ltd was the first payments bank to start operations in January followed by India Post. FINO PayTech, Jio Payments Bank, PayTM and National Securities Depository Ltd are the other companies who have received the final licence for payments banks.“Aditya Birla will ultimately convert lot of their conglomerate business into e-commerce on retail side. They will leverage the ecosystem that they have across various businesses and do payments through its bank,” said Abizer Diwanji, partner and head-financial services at EY.Having had the first mover advantage, the Airtel Payments Bank has already added more than 1 million customers since its launch in November. The bank offers a rate of interest of 7.25% on its savings account compared to 3-4% offered by conventional banks. However, Sudhakar is not quite sure if this model is sustainable.“It is simple logic. Money can be invested in government securities… Company that has big credit rating which is given lower interest rate and other company that has low credit rating that is giving higher interest rate. What is the trust level? Do you want same level of interest for different levels of bank,” he added.",2017-04-18,Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank is a 51:49 joint venture between Aditya Birla Nuvo and telecom major Idea Cellular,0.25,04:29,Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank to open first branch by first half of 2017 +0,"Washington: An influential group of nine Democratic Senators has urged President Donald Trump to not let a Canadian company use foreign made steel, in particular from India and Italy, in the trans-national multibillion controversial Keystone oil pipeline. “Your memorandum explicitly covers new and expanded pipeline projects so we were confused and disappointed to learn that the Keystone XL pipeline would not be required to use 100% American-made steel,” the nine Democratic Senators wrote in their joint letter to Trump, a copy of which was released to the press on Thursday.“Further, we are deeply concerned that by allowing this Canadian firm to use foreign steel from countries like India and Italy, which have a history of dumping steel products in the US market at unfair, illegal prices, you are establishing a precedent that will have the effect of costing US jobs and undermining the spirit of your Presidential Memorandum,” the Senators wrote.Led by Senators Chris Van Hollen and Tammy Duckworth the Democratic lawmakers urged Trump to protect American jobs by ensuring all new pipelines–if approved–are constructed and maintained with American made products and equipment. Other signatories to the letter are Cory A. Booker, Thomas R. Carper, Al Franken, Christopher S. Murphy, Debbie Stabenow, Joe Donnelly Claire McCaskill, Robert Menendez, and Gary C. Peters.“As champions of expanding Buy American requirements to make sure taxpayer-supported projects contract with American companies to the greatest extent possible, we were initially encouraged by this memorandum,” they said. “We were disappointed, however, when we learned that your administration would exempt the Keystone XL pipeline project from this Buy American policy,” the letter added.On 24 January, Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum to the secretary of commerce directing the secretary to “develop a plan under which all new pipelines, as well as retrofitted, repaired, or expanded pipelines, inside the borders of the US, including portions of pipelines, use materials and equipment produced in the US, to the maximum extent possible and to the extent permitted by law.”However, Trump has exempted Keystone pipeline from this. “We request that you reconsider your decision to allow a foreign company to use foreign steel in the Keystone XL pipeline and urge you to secure a firm commitment to source 100% American-made steel for this project,” the Senators wrote.“Doing so would be a strong statement of support for American manufacturers and the hard working women and men who fuel our national economy,” they said. The $8 billion pipeline that TransCanada wants to build would carry crude oil from Canada through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, where it would connect with an existing Keystone pipeline network that would take the oil to Texas Gulf Coast refineries. Several environmental groups filed lawsuits against the Trump administration on Thursday to challenge its decision to approve construction of controversial Keystone pipeline. The environmental groups contend in their lawsuit filed in Montana that the 2014 report on the project’s impact “downplays or ignores other significant environmental impacts of Keystone XL, including harms to land, air, water, and wildlife.”Former President Barack Obama, rejected the pipeline, saying it would lead to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and do nothing to reduce fuel prices for US motorists. The pipeline that was first proposed in 2008 has drawn strong opposition from environmental groups and some landowners who worry about potential contamination of ground and surface water.",2017-03-31,Nine Democratic Senators wrote to Donald Trump asking him to reconsider his decision to allow a foreign firm to use foreign steel in the Keystone pipeline,0.27,18:33,"Don’t use steel from India, Italy in Keystone XL pipeline, Senators tell Donald Trump" +0,"New Delhi: Lenders are planning to cut working capital finance to Rajasthan’s power distribution companies which have failed to meet the financial targets set under the Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY), a discom bailout package.Rajasthan’s state-owned utilities have not revised power tariffs as previously agreed, two bankers aware of the matter said.“The scheme was implemented with the promise that these distribution companies will revise their tariffs on time. However, that is not happening,” said the first of the two bankers quoted above, speaking on condition of anonymity.According to the banker, this has forced bankers to rethink their strategy on funding state government-owned utilities. Under UDAY, banks can fund up to 25% of a state’s //discom’s?// previous year revenues as working capital.“If there are no revisions in tariffs, the ability of the state electricity boards to generate necessary cash flows is limited. Unless this is taken care of, we have decided not to extend any working capital loans,” said the second banker quoted above, also speaking on condition of anonymity.A spokesperson at the central power ministry did not respond to an email sent on Friday. Sanjay Malhotra, power secretary in Rajasthan did not answer several calls made to him.Before the state electricity board (SEB) turnaround plan was implemented in November 2015, Rajasthan was the biggest defaulter with a total debt of over Rs 80,000 crore, of which short term liabilities were about Rs 50,000 crore.With UDAY, 75% of the debt as on 30 September 2015, was to be taken over by states, which could in turn issue long-term bonds to the banks with state guarantee. This took care of the majority of the debt pile at these state utilities; however, future funding was linked to performance.The first 14 states that signed up for UDAY were Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Bihar, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur and Andhra Pradesh.According to power ministry data, a total of 15 states (including Tamil Nadu) have so far issued bonds worth Rs 1.83 trillion under the UDAY scheme, which accounts for 63% of the total debt of all the utilities in these states. Rajasthan alone has issued bonds worth Rs 70,525 crore, the highest among all states.UDAY is not the first bailout plan for power distribution firms. This is the third such bailout for the Indian distribution sector in around 13 years; the first two failed to incentivize the states to act.“Under the government’s scheme of loans being converted to bonds, the SEBs were to make a lot of interest savings. However, for this to be useful, the tariffs have to change accordingly, so that cost can be reduced. In the absence of bank support, the states would have to borrow on their balance sheet, or the discoms will have to reach out to state-owned power finance agencies,” said Sabyasachi Majumdar, senior vice president, ICRA Ltd.",2017-03-31,"Rajasthan’s state-owned power discoms have not revised power tariffs as previously agreed, which can affect the bank funding they receive uder the UDAY scheme",-0.45,15:14,Banks may cut funding to Rajasthan discoms missing UDAY targets +0,"New Delhi/Moscow: The acquisition of Indian refiner Essar Oil by a consortium led by Russian oil company Rosneft is expected to be completed in the next few weeks, Essar said in written comments to Reuters on Friday. “The parties are working towards obtaining the requisite approvals to complete the transaction. We are hopeful that the deal will be completed in the upcoming few weeks,” Essar said. All the parties, which include Rosneft and commodities trader Trafigura along with Russian private investment group United Capital Partners, have previously said that the deal was expected to be completed within the first quarter. A Rosneft spokesman confirmed on Friday that the timing of the deal’s completion had moved. UCP declined to comment.",2017-03-31,"Essar says Rosneft , Trafigura are working towards obtaining the requisite approvals to complete the transaction in next few weeks",-0.0,17:38,"Rosneft-led deal to buy Essar delayed, seen closing in April" +0,"New Delhi: Natural gas price was on Saturday cut marginally to $2.48 per million British thermal unit (mmBtu), the fifth reduction in two years. Rate of natural gas produced from existing fields of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC) and Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has been cut to $2.48 per mmBtu for a six-month period from 1 April, from $2.5 per mmBtu currently. As per the new gas pricing formula approved by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in October 2014, gas prices are to be revised every six months. The reduction in natural gas prices would mean lower raw material cost for compressed natural gas (CNG) and piped natural gas (PNG), and that would translate into reduction in retail prices. It would also mean lower feedstock cost for power generation and manufacturing of fertilizers. Rates were last cut by 18% with effect from 1 October, 2016. That had followed a 20% reduction to $3.06 last April. The price of gas between 1 October, 2015 and 31 March, 2016 was $3.81 per mmBtu and $4.66 in prior six-month period. “The price of domestic natural gas for the period 1 April, 2017 to 31 October, 2017 is $2.48 per mmBtu on gross calorific value (GCV) basis,” said a notification issued by the oil ministry’s petroleum planning & analysis cell (PPAC). The reduction will hit producers like ONGC. Every dollar dip in gas price results in Rs4,000 crore hit in revenue of the public sector undertakings (PSUs) on an annual basis. Government however hiked the cap price based on alternate fuels for undeveloped gas finds in difficult areas like deep sea which are unviable to develop as per the existing pricing formula. The cap for 1 April, 2017 to 31 October, 2017 will be $5.56 per mmBtu, up from $5.3 per mmBtu, PPAC notification said. ONGC is the country’s biggest gas producer, accounting for some 60% of the 90 million standard cubic meters per day current output. All of its gas as well as that of Oil India Ltd and private sector RIL’s KG-D6 block are sold at the formula approved in October 2014. This formula, however, does not cover gas from fields like Panna/Mukta and Tapti in western offshore and Ravva in Bay of Bengal. The government had in October 2014 announced a new pricing formula that calculated local rates by using prevailing price in gas surplus nations like the US, Russia and Canada. As per the mechanism approved in October 2014, the price of domestically produced natural gas is to be revised every six months using weighted average or rates prevalent in gas-surplus economies of US/Mexico, Canada and Russia. Indian gas prices are calculated by taking weighted average price at Henry Hub of the US, National Balancing Point of the UK, rates in Alberta (Canada) and Russia with a lag of one quarter. So, the rate for April to October this year is based on average price at the international hubs during 1 January to 31 December, 2016.",2017-03-31,"Rate of natural gas produced from existing fields of ONGC and RIL has been cut to $2.48 per mmBtu for a six-month period from 1 April, from $2.5 per mmBtu currently",0.39,18:08,Natural gas price cut marginally to $2.48 mmBtu +0,"New Delhi: New Delhi Television (NDTV) Limited which runs news channels like NDTV India and NDTV 24x7, on Monday said that it is considering potential sale of certain strategic assets by one or more of its subsidiaries.In a filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange, the company said, “...board meeting of the company that is being convened to consider, inter alia, potential sale of certain strategic assets by certain material subsidiary(ies) of the company.” In the process, the trading window for dealing in the securities of the company will remain closed from 17 April 2017 till the conclusion of 48 hours from the date of the board meeting, the company added in the filing.Currently, NDTV operates news channels NDTV India and NDTV 24x7, business news channel NDTV Profit/NDTV Prime, lifestyle channel NDTV Good Times and e-commerce verticals in ethnic wear (IndianRoots.com), automobile (CarAndBike.com), gadgets (Gadgets360.com), health foods (SmartCooky.com) and wedding preparation (BandBaajaa.com) sectors.However, the company did not elaborate on the properties/ assets it is looking to sell. An e-mailed query to K. V. L. Narayan Rao, executive vice-chairperson at NDTV remained unanswered even as he was unavailable on the phone.Media experts, however, said it was difficult to predict the assets that the broadcaster may be looking to sell as they could be either in its e-commerce vertical or some of the TV channels in its broadcasting business.“The last few months have seen unprecedented consolidation in the media and entertainment space. Companies are increasingly exiting businesses they may not have the appetite to scale up. The idea is to focus on core businesses and upscale with efficiency rather than spread thin horizontally,” said Priyanka Chaudhary, regional media and entertainment spokesperson for Grant Thornton and a director at Grant Thornton India LLP.NDTV had reported a consolidated net loss of Rs18 crore in the quarter ended 31 December, up from Rs13 crore in the year-ago period, following a dip in advertising revenue due to demonetization of high value currency notes. NDTV’s television news business generated revenue of Rs108 crore, down from Rs130 crore in the same period last year. As per the data released by television viewership ratings agency Broadcast Audience Research Council (Barc) India last week, NDTV’s flagship English-language news channel NDTV 24x7 ranked third after Times Now and India Today television. The channel had garnered 3.28 lakh impressions",2017-04-18,"In a filing with the BSE, the NDTV said that the company is considering potential sale of certain strategic assets by certain material subsidiary",0.72,04:19,NDTV looks to sell assets +0,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).",2017-04-21,"Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",0.24,02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +0,"New York: In January, CJ Prober took on a challenge that has become frustratingly common in techdom: turning around a publicly traded hardware company whose products are no longer hits. Prober is GoPro Inc.’s new chief operating officer (COO), a position that had been vacant for about two years. His promotion followed a rocky 2016, during which the action-camera maker suffered production delays for one product, recalled another and abandoned efforts to turn itself into a media company. Sales tanked, GoPro cut its forecast, and investors bolted. The rout continued this week when the shares slid to a record low after Goldman Sachs became the second firm in two days to recommend selling the stock.Prober, who joined GoPro in 2014 after holding various positions at Electronic Arts, brings solid accomplishments to the new gig, having already rebuilt his employer’s engineering operations and improved clunky editing software. Even so, he’ll struggle to revitalize GoPro.The 15-year-old company is trying to grow beyond a niche market of action junkies keen to capture their exploits on video. Much like Fitbit trackers, many GoPro cameras are used a few times and then relegated to the junk drawer.ALSO READ | Make time travel with time-lapse video appsIn his first interview since becoming COO, Prober pledged to hold the line on costs, make the cameras easier to use and chase international growth. “From a product perspective we had an amazing 2016, but from a financial perspective we had a tough 2016,” he said. “So we’re rebuilding on that. There’s a lot of positive momentum behind the changes we’re making.”Like any consumer hardware company, GoPro must regularly upgrade existing products and create new ones to keep shoppers happy. Even big players like Apple, with a deep engineering bench and billions to spend on research and development, struggle to pull that off consistently. For small companies like GoPro, it’s even harder—especially when low-cost competitors from China quickly copy their best product features and the likes of Apple and Samsung keep improving their smartphone cameras.With sales slowing in 2015, chief executive officer (CEO) Nick Woodman bet on a new drone called Karma and a upgraded version of the popular Hero camera. Trying to rush the new products to market backfired.After the Karma debuted in September, a small number of consumers began complaining that the batteries were failing. Prober says vibrations from the drone’s motors were the culprit. The fix was simple enough. GroPro engineers placed springs inside the battery compartment to stabilize the power cells. But the company was forced to recall the drone, and it took months before the gadget was back in stores. Meanwhile, Chinese drone maker DJI used the time to further consolidate its domination of the market. ALSO READ | How to get the GoPro experienceThe new Hero5 was to be the first update to GoPro’s flagship line of cameras since 2014. It would be the easiest yet to use, feature a touch screen and let users upload content to the cloud. The Hero5 also would be waterproof, and Prober says that’s where the trouble began. Late in the process, GoPro discovered that pulling this off was harder than anticipated. As a result, the company had a shortage of devices until November. That meant GoPro missed sales during the crucial Christmas shopping and had to pull a number of planned marketing initiatives.Prober, who in early in his career worked as a management consultant at McKinsey, partly blames a siloed organization for the unforced errors. He says teams were isolated from one other and focused on a specific agenda rather than working together. Ultimately, he says, the company’s ambitious product pipeline overwhelmed a management team with too many layers and sign-offs.Prober vows to avoid future mishaps with a smaller, flatter organization. Late last year, the company shuttered its entertainment unit and eliminated 15% of its employees, a third of whom were vice-presidents or higher. “A lot of times when you reduce complexity in a business, it helps you make the jobs of teams better,” Prober says. “It’s less stuff to worry about, more clarity.” His mantra for 2017: “Do more with less.”Besides launching a new version of its Hero camera this year, GoPro is expanding its lineup of accessories, including a remote control called the Remo that lets users control the camera with voice commands, and the Karma grip, a handheld camera stabilizer. The aim of the accessories strategy is to make the cameras useful in as many settings as possible and attract new consumers to the GoPro ecosystem.Another big focus is making GoPro cameras easier to use. The gadgets have long been criticized for a clunky user-interface and editing tools. GoPro has tried to make the process of shooting and sharing videos easier, with new mobile and desktop editing products and its new cloud-connected cameras. But to capture users beyond its core base of action enthusiasts, GoPro needs to make that process even simpler.“They’re going to keep on fighting the battle of improving the software,” says Brad Erickson, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities. “I don’t fault GoPro. I think the amount of people in this world willing to sit and edit videos from a purpose-built camera is very low. We all have smartphones that have decently good editing apps.”International expansion is one of the few bright spots for GoPro. Though demand in the US has declined, sales in Asia doubled in the fourth quarter from a year earlier. The company plans to work with local companies to get bigger reach without spending a ton of marketing dollars. Just last month, GoPro partnered with Huawei Technologies Co. to integrate GoPro’s mobile editing app into Huawei’s new P10 smartphones. But GoPro faces stiff competition in places like China, where the market is flooded with cheaper options.Winning back Wall Street will take some doing. When Goldman Sachs analyst Simona Jankowski recommended selling the stock on Monday she warned clients that GoPro’s core market is largely saturated and that the company has failed to attract a more mainstream audience. In a note to clients she wrote: “We expect GoPro to continue to struggle fundamentally.” Bloomberg",2017-03-08,"With GoPro’s shares near record lows, chief operating officer CJ Prober pledges to do more with less and turn the page on product recalls",0.79,23:03,Can CJ Prober save GoPro? +0,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",2017-04-20,World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,0.57,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +0,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.",2017-04-21,"Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",1.0,01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +0,"
Mumbai: Magnus Ewerbring is the chief technology officer of Asia-Pacific group function technology at telecom and network equipment and services company Ericsson AB, where he is responsible for driving technology alignment as well as long-term technology strategies in the region. A PhD in electrical engineering from Cornell University, New York, Ewerbring will be speaking at EmTech India 2017, an emerging tech conference organized by Mint and MIT Technology Review. In an email interview, he talks about the status of 4G deployments, the impact of upcoming 5G technology and how telcos can face the challenges of burgeoning data traffic. Edited excerpts:
Have 4G deployments matured in India? Where does India stand when compared to other countries in this context?Only 40% of people in the world have data connection and the proportion in India is around 15%. It’s not as if India is lagging significantly behind in Internet coverage. If you take out the US, Japan, Korea and China, then the average will be less than 40% because China distorts the number. So, there’s a significant part of the world that is still to be covered by LTE (long-term evolution). Although a lot of innovation is happening on 5G, but even more innovation and R&D (research and development) investment goes into 4G as an industry today. What we and our other competitors are investing in is to prepare the LTE network for a smoother 5G migration. Because if you look at the 2G, 3G, 4G networks, they were overlay networks. But 5G will not be an overlay network. 5G will have to work with 4G. If you look at India, they need to make the LTE networks ready for 5G whenever it comes.ALSO READ | Potential for using Li-Fi in India is simply enormous: PureLifi’s Harald HaasPost the spectrum auctions in India last year, we have witnessed an upswing in terms of 4G deployments with enhanced focus on modernization and densification of the networks. According to the Ericsson Mobility Report, the population coverage of 4G LTE networks in India is expected to reach 45% by the end of 2021.
What will be the compelling reasons for consumers to move from 4G to 5G technology when it becomes available around 2020? How easy will it be for operators to recoup their 5G investments?Better network quality and a host of new use cases will be the drivers for 5G among consumers.5G can be used to offer fixed wireless broadband service, since you don’t have ubiquitous access to fibre connection in the country. However, even without 5G in India with 1GB/sec and LAA (license assisted access) where operators can use licensed and unlicensed combined, fixed wireless could be used in areas where there is no fibre. On the 5G devices front, CPE (customer premises equipment) will appear first, followed by tablets and the terminals.ALSO READ | Mobile technology will drive Internet of Things: Qualcomm’s Raj TalluriFor 5G to be possible, 4G has to attain a good level of maturity. Operators around the world—and in India as well—are looking at developing a strong LTE footprint in a bid to provide better coverage to the consumer. 5G will not be an overlay network, it will work in tandem with 4G. So, for operators to be relevant in 5G, they would need to have a very good quality 4G network. We are working for a seamless transition from 4G to 5G.
How will the emerging IoT (Internet of Things) ecosystem benefit from the deployment of 5G technology? To what extent will the success of IoT hinge on 5G?5G is the foundation for realizing the full potential of the networked society. Like the transitions to 2G and 3G, the move to 5G will add a new element—the industrial Internet. And, like the transition to 4G, it will be much higher performance than the previous generation. But it will be much more than that.With 5G, we will see connectivity-as-a-service based on network slicing. 5G will enable organizations to move into new markets and build new revenue streams with radically new business models and use cases, including IoT applications.ALSO READ | Putting your data in the cloud could actually be more secure: Raimund GenesThe new capabilities of 5G will span several dimensions, including tremendous flexibility, lower energy needs, greater capacity, bandwidth, security, reliability and data rates, as well as lower latency and device costs. Hence, IoT will only become mainstream on a 5G footprint, using network slicing.
Ericsson has predicted that there will be 7 billion mobile broadband subscriptions in 2021. How will telcos cope?High video traffic volumes require efficient network management and cost-efficient delivery. Here, video optimization is needed to meet high quality of experience demanded by consumers, especially considering the high traffic demands occurring at peaks. With the rising user expectations and the growing focus on videos, apps and social media, operators would be required to ensure that their networks remain a relevant and vital part of users’ everyday experience. Operators are looking at network optimization solutions to accommodate the growing amount of video. We have a suite of mobile broadband products for optimization and compression, which helps operators get best-in-class spectral efficiency that provides enhanced capacity in the network to handle a sudden surge in data with excellent user experience.
Companies like yours are betting on the development of smart cities in India. Other than providing telecom network equipment and smart meters, what are the other solutions that Ericsson is working on to take advantage of Digital India?We have end-to-end solutions for smart and sustainable cities. Globally, we are working with multiple cities across many countries to help them become not only smart but sustainable. In India, we have been innovating and coming up with solutions which could meet varied demands of various cities/villages in the country.For example, we recently implemented Ericsson Connected aquaponics at Mori Village in Andhra Pradesh. The solution enables substantial savings on production cost through optimized use of raw materials for maximum yield as well as recycling 70% of the water, and additional revenue through organic farming. Besides, we have even deployed Ericsson smart water grid management systems at Mori Village, which offers real- time information on the quality of water, flow of water and levels of water in the water tanks via a cloud-based application which is accessible to everyone in the hierarchy.",2017-03-08,"Ericsson’s Magnus Ewerbring on status of 4G technology, impact of upcoming 5G technology and how telecom firms can face challenges of data traffic",0.29,03:15,Ericsson’s Magnus Ewerbring: 5G tech will enable firms’ move into new markets +0,"The Indian market looks expensive at current levels, according to Sanjeev Prasad , senior executive director and co-head of Kotak Institutional Equities. In a telephone interview, Prasad said the best of India’s macroeconomic scenario was behind us, but earnings could see a significant improvement going ahead, due to a very low base for sectors like banking and commodities. Edited excerpts: How do you view the Indian market at this point of time, with benchmark indices at two-year highs? Do you think there is froth building up, or is there value in the market?It is not a cheap market. If we get 5-6% returns from here for the rest of 2017 for the frontline indices, we should be happy. The mid-cap and small-cap space, however, is very expensive. We may find one or two names here and there, but largely, they are pricey.Most parts of the market are quite fully valued. In some cases such as consumer staple and discretionary sectors, they are even discounting fiscal year 2019 earnings. There is value only in parts of the market.There is value in a few sectors such as corporate banks and IT service companies, assuming potential positive developments in those sectors. For example, the corporate-focused banking sector could see a re-rating if there is some resolution on the NPL (non-performing loans) problem. Similarly, IT stocks are inexpensive given the market’s concerns regarding immigration and taxation issues in the US. If these issues play out with limited impact for the IT companies, the sector could see a re-rating. What is your take on the pharmaceutical sector at this point of time?There is some value selectively in stocks such as Cipla Ltd, Aurobindo Pharma Ltd... Aurobindo is cheap at 13 times FY19 P/E (price-to-earnings ratio). Cipla is also at 16.5 times FY19 earnings. Even Lupin is not looking too bad at 17.5 times FY19 earnings. The issue with this sector at large is that there is a fair amount of uncertainty on the pricing environment in the US. The uncertain pricing environment stems not so much from regulatory-led pricing challenges as market-led pricing challenges.In many of the generic products or segments where these companies operate, they have started to see a lot more competition. Clearly, profitability which had been very high on these molecules has and will start coming down. At the same time, because of the US FDA-related issues, these companies have not been able to introduce new molecules in their ANDA (abbreviated new drug application) pipelines in the US market. The current portfolio has started to see price erosion, and introduction of new products has got delayed at the same time. When do we see a significant recovery in corporate earnings?The funny thing about India’s earnings is that when we look at the top 50-100 large cap names, a disproportionately high share comes from global sectors such as IT and pharma, global commodity sectors and regulated sectors such as power utilities. So, irrespective of level of activity in the domestic economy, the earnings numbers can move in a different fashion. That has exactly what has happened over the last two-three years. Since early 2015, we have seen a very big improvement in India’s macroeconomic parameters—Inflation came down significantly and current account deficit has also declined sharply. However, earnings growth between FY14 and FY16 has been flat, if you look at Nifty-50 companies. One of the reasons for this was the collapse of global commodity prices – oil and metals, which hurt the earnings of upstream oil companies and metal producers. Also, we saw a slowdown in earnings for IT companies, and we also had company-specific USFDA issues affecting the profits of the pharma companies.Lastly, while banking should have done better with the economy improving, we had the problems of bad loans in the banking sector, which relates to the rapid expansion in wholesale credit in the last economic cycle. That is the dichotomy of India’s economy and earnings.Going forward, I do not see much of improvement in India’s macroeconomic parameters from where we are. Inflation has bottomed out, and will go higher from here to about 4-5%. If you look at interest rates, they have bottomed out too. Current account deficit may gradually widen, but may still be manageable. However, we could potentially see a big jump in earnings numbers and the reason for that is the very low base for sectors such as the banking and commodities. We expect credit costs for the banks to decline from 2HFY18, which will result in higher profits of the corporate banks. Also, the improvement in global commodity prices and implementation of anti-dumping duties on steel will lead to a sharp increase in the profits of the upstream oil & gas companies and the metals sector in FY18.What is your take on GDP numbers that came out last week? The issue is that the proxies that are used to make these estimates are largely from the formal sectors. It is not very clear how much of the impact on the informal sectors is captured in this data. So, it is possible that once more data points come out, we will a have more informed view on the third-quarter GDP data and we may even see some downward revision to the current numbers. However, it appears that the impact of demonetisation is not as high as was originally feared by the market.In recent times, we have seen the Tata–Mistry spat and some issues also spiking up at Infosys Ltd between founders and the management. What impact do you think such instances can have on the reputation of Indian companies?I would not want to comment on specific companies, but I think as a general fact, there may be challenges when there is a generational change in a way. Most of the Indian companies have founder-promoters or very long-serving professional managers who play a huge role in building the company and more importantly, the culture of the firm. The firm gets largely identified with the founder-promoter or with the professional manager, and these individuals typically have a very dominant influence on their companies. Some of the companies have put in a proper succession plan while some others have been somewhat lagging on this aspect. I would think a proper succession plan under which the successor is identified early enough and works with the incumbent for a longish period will address the issue of any discontinuity and discord. Finally, the boards of companies have to play a far bigger role in ensuring a smooth transition of power.How viable is it to run the telecom business in India?I think the telecom business model has changed dramatically in that companies will have to offer much higher data capacity to the customers, which can meet all the telecom requirements of the customer. Companies will have to work out the ARPUs (average revenue per user) that can financially support a much higher capacity usage by customers. The traditional model of pricing every service individually to the customer is dead. What Reliance Jio is trying to do is to up the game in terms of offering a lot of capacity to customers at a competitive ARPU, which makes sense to it based on its business plan and strategy. There is a paradigm shift that is happening in the telecom sector in that it will entail much higher investment by the companies in data capacity.",2017-03-08,"Irrespective of the level of activity in the domestic economy, the earnings numbers can move in a different fashion, says Kotak Institutional Equities’s Sanjeev Prasad",0.59,07:57,"Indian market expensive currently, value in corporate banks, IT: Sanjeev Prasad" +0,"Los Angeles: Viacom Inc. is in talks with former 20th Century Fox studio chief Jim Gianopulos to run its Paramount Pictures unit and with Oscar-nominated producer Michael De Luca to become his second-in-command, people familiar with the situation said.Gianopulos is being considered to run the film and fledgling TV operations of the studio, which produced Mission: Impossible and Transformers, but no deal has been struck yet with either executive, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the negotiations are private. The talks could still fall apart, the people said.Paramount and Viacom declined to comment. Variety reported earlier that Paramount was homing in on hiring Gianopulos and De Luca.Viacom has been looking for new leaders to repair a studio coming off a disastrous year in which it lost money and finished last among its peers in box office market share. The company ousted Brad Grey last month, not long after he dismissed his top lieutenant, Rob Moore. The new hires are part of Viacom chief executive officer Bob Bakish’s plan to revamp the company’s flagging entertainment businesses.At an investor conference Tuesday, Bakish said that the company was “well along’’ in the hiring process at Paramount. The new management will need to rebuild the studio’s film slate for years to come. Besides long-in-the-works sequels and spinoffs this year and next for Mission: Impossible and Transformers, there is very little scheduled for release for 2019 and beyond, according to Box Office Mojo. The studio’s bombs over the past year included Monster Trucks and Ben-Hur.Bakish plans to devote about half of Paramount’s movie slate to projects based on TV series from cable networks like Nickelodeon and MTV. Stars of some of Viacom’s biggest shows, like comedians Amy Schumer and Jordan Peele, have gone off to make movies for other studios instead, to Bakish’s chagrin.Veteran film executive Gianopulos, 64, was one of the industry’s longest-running studio chiefs when he left 20th Century Fox last September. He’s known for rolling the dice on two films that today still rank as Hollywood’s biggest-ever movies: Titanic and Avatar. He spent 25 years at Fox, including 16 as chairman in charge of all film production, marketing and global distribution of film and TV content. He was replaced by Stacey Snider on 1 September.De Luca has been co-producing the hit Fifty Shades of Grey film franchise at Comcast Corp.’s Universal Pictures. He was previously head of production at Sony Corp.’s Columbia Pictures and at DreamWorks SKG and was chief operating officer at New Line Cinema, where he started his film career. He was nominated three times as a producer of the Oscar for best picture, for Captain Phillips, Moneyball and The Social Network. Bloomberg",2017-03-08,Viacom is in talks with former 20th Century Fox studio chief Jim Gianopulos to run its Paramount Pictures unit and with Michael De Luca to become his second-in-command,0.21,13:08,Viacom said in talks with former Fox executive to lead Paramount +0,"
Drug maker Lupin Ltd’s December quarter results are reason for optimism tinged with caution. Sales growth trends are looking good, especially in the crucial US market, which makes up 45% of formulation sales. Other markets did well and profitability is up too. President Donald Trump wants lower drug prices in the US. Billionaire investor Rakesh Jhunjunwala asked Lupin, on a conference call, how it could get affected. As of now, it’s not a worry was the company’s response. Lengthening drug approval times in the US are a more immediate worry. More competition in some key products is another concern for the drug maker.The real surprise in the company’s numbers was the sharp jump in profitability, with its Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) rising by 43.7% from a year ago. Its Ebitda margin rose by around three percentage points, with a similar gain sequentially.Healthy sales growth of 26.4% over a year ago meant that the drug maker’s operating costs were spread over a higher base. Growth was good across markets, with the US market growing by 57.6% and by 8.9% sequentially. Sales from products such as generic Glumetza, a diabetes drug, and ramp-up in sales of Methergine, a drug to treat postpartum haemorrhage, and sales from smaller products all contributed to growth. Lupin faced some competition in generic Fortamet, a drug to treat diabetes. Other regions did well too (see chart), with India growing despite demonetization and Lupin expects sales to revert to normal levels next quarter onwards.On a sequential basis, however, the company’s gross margin was a tad lower as sales increased by 4.6% but costs rose by 4.7%. Still, a slower increase in employee costs and a decline in margins boosted profitability. Also, research and development costs as a percentage of sales declined while favourable foreign exchange effects in the December quarter also helped.Lupin’s profit rose by 20.5%, as depreciation and interest costs rose sharply but other income increased as well. Net profit declined by 25.7% sequentially, chiefly due to a sharp increase in its tax incidence this quarter. Taxes can be lumpy across quarters. The company said it expects its effective tax rate to be at 28% and profitability to sustain at current levels.The company is expecting that US market growth will continue to benefit from an improving flow of launches, including from the Gavis acquisition. A ramp-up in sales in the controlled substances portfolio is also expected. More competition in generic Glumetza and Fortamet in fiscal year 2018 are risks that will play out. Lupin also has a large pipeline of products, and getting final approvals to launch should also be good for growth. Not getting them likewise will pull down growth. The company remains on the lookout for acquisitions, stating that it has cash to repay debt but wants to hold spare cash for any buyouts.Jhunjunwala, who holds a 1.8% stake in Lupin, asked the management about the risks of drug price controls in the US. The management said this will affect innovator firms and not generic companies. The new government’s emphasis on faster approvals may actually benefit generic companies, it said. But there is a risk. Any erosion in the value of the innovator drug’s market size reduces the potential market for a generic too.Lupin’s shares are down by a fifth from a year ago and trade at 20 times FY18 estimated earnings per share, based on the mean of estimates compiled by Reuters.",2017-02-10,"The real surprise in Lupin December quarter results was the sharp jump in profitability, with its Ebitda rising by 43.7% from a year ago",0.62,13:47,Lupin’s FY18 health chart flags risks to growth +0,"New Delhi: Energy explorer Cairn India Ltd on Thursday said profit after tax in the December quarter jumped nearly 15-fold to Rs604 crore on account of better price realisation and lower expenses, up from a restated profit of Rs41 crore a year ago.Crude oil price realisation jumped 31% to $46 a barrel, the company informed stock exchanges. The profit for the last comparable quarter was restated as required under the new accounting standards IndAS, which is based on fair valuation of assets and liabilities.Net revenue jumped 5% in the quarter under review to Rs2,149 crore from a year ago. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda), a measure of profitability, stood at Rs1,067 crore, 51% up from a year ago. During the quarter, Cairn produced 16.7 million barrels of oil equivalent across all its assets. “We have made use of the challenging oil price environment to achieve competitive returns even at Brent $40 a barrel for planned projects. We are in active discussions with world class oil field services companies to partner for the end to end outsourcing of certain projects,” the company stated, quoting acting chief executive officer Sudhir Mathur. The idea is to optimise cost and expedite project execution.Cairn said that its proposed merger with Vedanta Ltd. is expected to be completed in the first quarter of calendar year 2017 and the extension of its production sharing contract for the Barmer oilfield in Rajasthan was subjudice in the Delhi high court. The oil ministry is currently working on a new policy for extending the lease of 28 oil and gas blocks under terms that will let companies to invest more and add more revenue to the exchequer.",2017-02-09,"Cairn India Ltd’s net revenue jumped 5% in the December quarter under review to Rs2,149 crore from a year ago",0.69,20:51,Cairn India Q3 profit soars nearly 15-fold to Rs604 crore +0,"
ABB India Ltd has earned favour in the eyes of investors with the capital goods maker churning out a decent operating performance for the December quarter along with robust growth in new orders. The December quarter’s fresh order pool of Rs5,628 crore was a record 173% higher than a year ago. With this, ABB India’s order book at the end of 2016 is at a historic high of Rs11,841 crore. This leaves the company in a comfortable position with more than 12 months’ revenue visibility.Interestingly, the quarter’s revenue growth was just 2.7% year-on-year. What’s important, however, is that most of its business divisions have grown respectably from where they stood a year ago. The discrete automation and electrification products divisions’ revenue grew by about 9-10%, the power grids segment was flat and only that of the process automation division declined.Further, ABB India’s profit margin continued the upward trajectory of the last few quarters into the December quarter. The operating margin of 11.3% was about 50 basis points higher than a year back even as it shot past the Street expectation of 9.9%. Operating profit, therefore, expanded by 7.2% year-on-year, with discrete automation and electrification products being the best contributors of profit to the kitty.The better-than-expected performance also extended to ABB India’s net profit that jumped by 13.4% from the year-ago period.The company’s tightly managed costs and robust order book should see both revenue and profits trend higher from current levels. Of course, ABB India’s shares trade at expensive valuations of 49 times average estimated earnings for calendar year 2017. But then, the times are surely getting better for the company, what with its presence in power transmission, railways and Metros, besides other infra segments—all of which are northbound in the medium term. This gives ABB India an edge compared to some of its peers, who have a higher exposure to the private sector, which may take longer to look up.",2017-02-10,"The December quarter’s fresh order pool at ABB India of Rs5,628 crore was a record 173% higher than a year ago",0.41,08:28,ABB India’s surge in orders may underpin high valuations +0,"Mumbai: State-run Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) has posted a 47% jump in net profit for the third quarter of this fiscal on higher market sales and crude throughput. Net profit came in at Rs2,271.9 crore against Rs1,545.5 crore registered in the third quarter of last fiscal. A Bloomberg poll of 19 analysts had pegged the net profit at Rs2,212.7 crore. BPCL recorded sales of Rs64,095.65 crore, an increase of 20%, against Rs53,237 crore reported in the third quarter of last fiscal. A Bloomberg poll of 16 analysts estimated the sales figures to come in at Rs54,110.2 crore. ALSO READ: Oil companies’ merger can be challenging yet beneficial: FitchDuring the quarter, crude throughput in its refineries was higher at 6.78 MT against 5.87 MMT in the corresponding quarter previous fiscal. The company reported increase in market sales mainly in segments of liquefied petroleum gas (12.42%), petrol (8.9%), re-gasified liquefied natural gas (52.43%) and aviation fuel (22.76%).The average gross refining margin (GRM) during the quarter stood at $5.90 per barrel against $7.67 per barrel for the October-December 2015. Gross refining margin is what a refining company makes from turning every barrel of crude oil into fuel.ALSO READ: BPCL’s market value crosses Rs1 trillion-markBPCL’s stock ended at Rs725.25 on BSE, up 0.85% from the previous close while India’s benchmark Sensex rose 0.14% to 28,329.70 points.BPCL on 25 January, saw its market value cross Rs1 trillion-mark. It is the second oil marketing company after Indian Oil Corp. Ltd and 26th overall to cross the milestone.",2017-02-09,"BPCL recorded sales of Rs64,095.65 crore in the third quarter, an increase of 20%, against Rs53,237 crore last fiscal",0.75,21:44,"BPCL Q3 profit jumps 47% to Rs2,271.9 crore" +0,"Mumbai: Power and automation technology company ABB India Ltd on Thursday reported a higher-than-expected 13.4% rise in net profit for the fourth quarter ended 31 December, helped by better operational performance.ABB India reported a standalone net profit of Rs146.79 crore for the fourth quarter compared with Rs129.40 crore in the year-ago quarter. Net sales rose about 3.3% to Rs2,440.95 crore from Rs2,364 crore a year earlier, missing average analysts’ estimate. The company follows January-December fiscal year. Ten analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected ABB to report standalone net profit of Rs137.40 crore on net sales of Rs2,599.50 crore for the fourth quarter.For the full-year ended 31 December, ABB’s standalone net profit rose 25.5% to Rs37,625 crore and net sales were up 6.2% to Rs8,515.56 crore.The company said its full-year order book rose to Rs12,466 crore while orders received in the December quarter stood at Rs5,628 crore. It has an order backlog of Rs11,821 crore as on 31 December.The company has posted its biggest growth in orders in recent years, ABB India said in a statement. “The investments in power transmission based on cutting edge technology, renewables, increased spend in infrastructure and transportation provided ABB India ample opportunities,” it said.ABB shares closed 1.38% up at Rs1,225.00 on the BSE on Friday while the benchmark Sensex index was up 0.14% to 28,329.70.",2017-02-09,ABB India reported a standalone net profit of Rs146.79 crore for the fourth quarter compared with Rs129.40 crore in the year-ago period,0.9,15:41,"ABB India Q4 net profit up 13.4%, beats analysts’ estimates" +0,"Mumbai: Lupin Ltd reported a 20.7% year-on-year rise in consolidated net profit for the quarter ended December, beating market expectations, as sales in its biggest market, the US, increased significantly.The pharmaceutical major’s consolidated net profit was Rs633.11 crore during the quarter up from Rs524.56 crore a year ago. The company’s sales rose 31.5% to Rs4,404.94 crore from Rs3,350.33 crore in the same period last year.According to a Bloomberg poll of 25 analysts, Lupin’s net profit for the quarter was estimated to be Rs619.7 crore.Sales in North America soared 57.6% to Rs2,175.5 crore. The region accounted for 49% of the company’s total sales. US sales grew 53.4% to $316 million. The company received marketing approval for 11 generic drugs and launched four products in the US during the quarter. India sales were up 11.9% at Rs991.2 crore. Lupin’s sales in Japan, Latin America and Germany also grew on a year-on-year basis.The company’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda), an indicator of its operating performance, was up 44.6% at Rs1,319.4 crore.Even as operating performance was strong, growth in net profit was capped by a sharp jump in tax expense and interest costs. The company’s tax expense increased 60.1% to Rs409.5 crore, while interest cost jumped to Rs45.93 crore from Rs9.89 crore. At 3.04pm, Lupin Ltd was trading at Rs1,499.40 on the BSE, up 0.79% from its previous close, while India’s benchmark Sensex index fell 0.09% to 28,312.53 points.",2017-02-09,Lupin’s consolidated net profit was Rs633.11 crore during the third quarter up from Rs524.56 crore a year ago,0.91,16:47,"Lupin Q3 profit rises 20.7% to Rs633.11 crore, beats estimate" +0,"San Francisco: Twitter Inc. reported quarterly revenue that fell short of estimates after the struggling social-media company restructured its advertising sales force and pared staff. The shares tumbled.Fourth-quarter revenue was $717 million, missing the $740 million average analyst estimate, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Sales growth of 1% slowed dramatically in the period from the 48% gain a year earlier. Twitter added 2 million new users, bringing the total number of people who log in monthly to 319 million, the San Francisco-based company said Thursday in a statement. That was in line with analysts’ projections.Twitter has had trouble persuading advertisers to spend more money on its social-media platform as fewer people join. Pressure on the company mounted in the fourth quarter when its search for a potential buyer failed, forcing chief executive officer Jack Dorsey to focus on reaching profitability as an independent business. Twitter cut 9% of its staff, sold its Fabric developer business to Google and shut down its Vine short-video app. It also lost both its chief operating officer and chief technology officer, increasing the load on Dorsey, whose time is divided because of his other job—as CEO of Square Inc.“The fact that they’ve tolerated having a shared CEO is remarkable given the situation they’re in,” said Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group. “Unfortunately, it’s a situation of investor indifference—everyone is used to Twitter’s troubles by now.”ALSO READ | Twitter plans to hide abusive tweets, block repeat offendersTwitter fell as much as 10.2% to $16.81 before the start of trading in New York. The stock closed at $18.72 on Wednesday.Twitter’s profit excluding certain items was $119 million, or 16 cents a share, compared with the 12 cents per share analysts estimated on average. The company’s net loss widened to $167 million, or 23 cents a share. Twitter has said it is aiming for profitability this year.The company has been relying on live video partnerships, as well as video advertising, to jump-start user additions and revenue growth. With video, Twitter aims to appeal to a wider audience, including those people who may have decided its basic service—which lets anyone post 140-character updates to a feed that others can follow—wasn’t appealing. Meanwhile, to retain the users it does have, the company has made a push to address abuse and harassment on its service, which caused several high-profile departures from its social network last year.Video and curbs on abuse may not be enough to boost excitement about Twitter’s product, said James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co—even though the company is mentioned nearly daily in news reports about President Donald Trump.“It’s still in an identity crisis,” he said. “People that use Twitter get it, the world conceptually gets it, but your average potential user doesn’t.” Bloomberg",2017-02-09,Twitter shares fell as much as 10.2% to $16.81 before the start of trading in New York. The stock closed at $18.72 on Wednesday,0.5,19:43,Twitter shares drop as pace of growth slows to 1% +0,"Milan: Italian lender UniCredit fell to a heavy loss of €13.6 billion ($14.5 billion) in the fourth quarter as its new CEO moved to clean up the bank’s bad loan portfolio and fortify the bank’s financial health.Italy’s largest bank by assets, UniCredit said Thursday that it incurred €13.2 billion in one-off expenses, which included a previously announced €8.1-billion write-off on bad loans plus other charges including contributions to an Italian fund to save weaker banks.The loss was in line with analyst forecasts of €13.56 billion, as surveyed by data provider FactSet. The bank said that without the one-offs, the loss would have totaled €352 million, citing lower revenues.UniCredit said full-year losses totaled €11.8 billion, exceeding forecasts of €10.5 billion.",2017-02-09,"UniCredit said that it incurred €13.2 billion in one-off expenses, which included a previously announced €8.1-billion write-off on bad loans plus other charges",-0.89,20:45,Italy’s UniCredit bank posts massive $14.5 billion loss +0,"Mumbai: Bank of India swung to a surprise profit in the December quarter from a loss in the year earlier as asset quality improved.Net profit was Rs101.72 crore in the three months ended 31 December compared to a Rs1,505.58 crore loss in the year-ago period. The bank was expected to post a net loss of Rs11.19 crore, according to estimates of 14 Bloomberg analysts.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 5.7% to Rs2,862.61 crore in the December quarter from Rs2,708.04 crore last year.“Government has decided to infuse Rs1,784 crore as equity capital in our bank out of which Rs1,338 crore was received in September and balance amount Rs446 crore is expected to infuse this quarter… During this quarter we are planning to raise between Rs1,000-1,500 crore additional tier one capital and equal amount would be raised by way of tier two bonds,” said Melwyn Rego, managing director and chief executive of Bank of India.In the September quarter, the bank had sold its 18% stake in Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance to Life Insurance Corp. of India, earning Rs495 crore pre-tax profit.Other income increased 69% to Rs1,769.25 crore in the third quarter from Rs1,047.27 crore in the same period last year.Slippages for the December quarter stood at Rs3,210 crore whereas recovery stood at Rs3,700 crore.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) at Bank of India declined 0.92% to Rs51,781.06 crore at the end of the December quarter from Rs52,261.95 crore in the September quarter. As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were 13.38% at the end of the December quarter compared with 13.45% in the previous quarter and 9.18% a year ago.Provisions and contingencies increased marginally to Rs2,302.57 crore in the third quarter from Rs2,296.22 crore a quarter ago. Net NPAs rose to 7.09% in the December quarter compared with 7.56% in the previous quarter and 5.25% in the same quarter last year.",2017-02-09,"Bank of India’s net interest income rose 5.7% to Rs2,862.61 crore in the December quarter from Rs2,708.04 crore last year",0.89,20:32,Bank of India posts Rs101.72 crore profit in December quarter +0,"
Delhi: Cost-cutting efforts and lower raw material prices helped India’s largest two-wheeler company contain the impact of demonetization on its net profit, which declined 2.67% in the December quarter from a year ago, but beat analyst estimates handsomely.For the third quarter of 2016-17, Hero MotoCorp Ltd’s net profit declined from Rs793.23 crore in the year ago period to Rs772.05 crore. A Bloomberg poll of 28 analysts had projected a profit of Rs711.1 crore.Net sales declined to Rs6,898.64 crore from Rs7,807.77 crore and the company sold 1.4 million scooters and motorcycles in the quarter, down from 1.69 million a year ago. Hero’s chairman and managing director Pawan Munjal struck an optimistic note. “The industry did witness some negative sentiments during the October-December quarter, but with the agility shown by the government in bringing about a slew of measures to aid citizens at large, the market scenario has begun improving,” he said in a statement.Hero shares fell 1.07% to Rs3,223.80 on BSE. The benchmark Sensex declined 0.16% to 28,289.92 points. The earnings were announced after the end of trading on Wednesday. The company said that its ongoing margin rationalization programme and softening of material costs helped it post better numbers amid the circumstances.The results come on the back of a strong September quarter, when Hero posted its highest ever profit for a quarter at Rs1,004.22 crore with good rains in the monsoon season boosting consumer demand in the run up to the festive season.Hero’s numbers were subdued in the December quarter after the Narendra Modi-led government invalidated older high-value currency notes in early November. The move hit sales of scooters and motorcycles, some of which, especially in smaller towns and rural areas, are bought on cash. In December, sales of two-wheelers and three-wheelers saw the sharpest decline in monthly sales in 18 years. Sales of other products, including consumer packaged goods, were also hit. Rating agency Crisil expects the situation to return to normal by the end of the fourth quarter, although it says not all affected businesses will rebound equally. “The outlook for fiscal 2018 will be shaped by how long the cash crunch-led disruption lasts. In our base case, we have taken it as a 2-quarter phenomenon—Q3 and Q4 and normalization after that. In this scenario, growth will start approaching the 8% mark in the next fiscal if the monsoon is normal,” Crisil said in a 7 January report.The government says the impact of currency ban will not spill over to the next financial year.Munjal claimed the government’s move, along with measures unveiled in the Union budget, and the implementation of the goods and services tax from 1 July, would help the cause of long-term growth. “2017 may well turn out to be a turning point for the industry as well as the country’s economy.”",2017-02-09,Hero MotoCorp’s net profit in the December quarter declined to Rs772.05 crore from Rs793.23 crore in the year-ago period,1.0,04:53,"Hero MotoCorp’s Q3 profit declines, but exceeds estimates" +0,"
New Delhi: Air India chairman and managing director Ashwani Lohani, 59, took over the reins of the national carrier in August 2015. Since Lohani took over, Air India has seen improved industrial relations and continued expansion. In an interview, Lohani comments on the airline’s priorities in 2017. Edited excerpts:
What is Air India’s focus area this year?The key objective is expansion and consolidation. About 35 planes would come this year and we have to fly them. Of these, six will be long-haul planes which will go international with one return flight a day. We are participating aggressively in government’s regional connectivity scheme Udan. We have ordered 10 ATRs and we are ordering 10 more this year so our ATR fleet would become 30 by end of 2017. In the next two years, we are looking to add 20-25 planes so I will have a 50-plane airline in the country. Some more international connections are being planned—Washington, Scandinavian countries. Israel is under consideration. We will be increasing frequency to Australia on existing routes. Then we are working to improve our services still further. We will improve our food further, staff should become more aggressive—in marketing, we have become very aggressive. And we want to keep on earning higher operating profits. Air India has almost come on track, we just have to find a solution to the huge debt we have.
You have been very vocal on several issues including massive debt burden piled onto the airline?We have to run the organization openly. If you are working with honesty and commitment and not looking for a single illegal penny, then why should we not speak openly? I will. How do I compete with private carriers when our people are afraid of decision-making because of so many processes, while others can take decisions so quickly? The problems have to be accepted and brought in the public domain. The reasons have to be known—Rs50,000 crore debt and the fact that we are bound by a lot of rules and procedures.
There are things in the works to defuse debt issues?We have to do financial restructuring. It’s a question of life and death. We will also have to inject fresh blood.ALSO READ | Govt’s plan to list Air India is a chimera
But you have also moved a proposal to increase age limit from 58 to 60 in Air India?Yes, because till the time we induct new people—following the long approval and induction process laid down by the government—we need experienced people to work in several areas.
Does the lack of independent directors on the board of the airline for almost a year hamper decision-making as some board members becoming wary of decision-making?That’s something that the ministry is looking into. The decision for additional planes (major decision) was taken while they were there.
Even though there is no move towards Air India privatization, do you have a view on it? My job is to run the airline. Privatization is subject to the government view.
Banks led by State Bank of India seem to have said no to conversion of their debt to equity in Air India?There is nothing like they have said no to it. We are still talking to banks to convert some of the debt into equity; some way has to be found out. Discussions are going on. We want it to closed at the earliest but it’s not something in our hands.
Does it worry you that while you’re the biggest international airline out of India with a 17% share, your domestic market share has been shrinking?One thing I have to remember is that we are an international airline. That is our market. Domestic we went down because our capacity remained fixed, while others’ increased a lot. So our domestic market went down because of inaction on our part. And the second reality is that while private airlines can place a 300-400 plane order, we can’t do it. I will not be able to get it past the system. There would be bribery allegations. So, market share will fall; we won’t be able to stop unless I can also order planes, run it like an owner, which I am not. So, we have to brand Air India more and more as an international airline. And we have to tap the untapped tier-2 and tier-3 cities where there is little competition.
Does IndiGo’s 40% market share in the domestic market impact you, your pricing?It’s not very good for the ordinary passengers for somebody to have such a large market share. It will almost become monopolistic if it crosses 50%.
You have been benevolent in giving staff access—everyone from the top to the bottom can meet and seek help. Has that really helped the airline?The staff are more aggressive, more responsive. We are supporting our staff. It is highly beneficial for the airline. The chairman of the company has to be attached to the ground. Those days are gone when we can run it like a maharaja. Air India chairman cannot be like a maharaja. I have to know what’s happening on the ground, I have to know my staff, I have to know my territory. If you are not involved, you will make wrong decisions, wrong assessments and you will always have an HR (human resources) issue. That’s why we never blame our staff; it’s our systems, our processes, our past that has to be blamed. In any airline, the number one focus has to be HR, the number two focus has to be HR and the number three focus has to be HR, then comes the rest. If staff is happy, we will serve the passenger well, the cleaner we will keep the planes.
You had plans to have an alliance with the Railways?We did try but it did not work out. The plan was to have (the) wait list passengers of the Railways come to us so we could fly them last minute. It would have worked very well.
One hears how in the past some private airlines would often complain to the aviation ministry when Air India dropped fares and then Air India had to back off and keep fares up. How has it been for you when it comes to similar interference?Yes, but in this government, one thing is very clear—there is no interference, there are no dalals (middlemen), there is no expectation to do anything wrong. So, we have absolutely no issue on this regard. We are running Air India—besides the bottleneck of processes that comes with being a government organization— impeccably.
Do you expect to get a big chunk of the Rs500 crore subsidy the government is giving to all those planning to fly regional routes. In RCS (regional connectivity scheme) you can’t really fly big planes and people don’t have small planes . So, we have the first mover advantage. We will be able to connect 40-50 cities within the next 18 months. My thinking is that a lot of places, routes will be viable on their own—like Delhi-Kanpur we have started, it’s doing well. Then let’s say Lucknow-Dehradun we are planning, it will work on its own. In some places, it will not work on its own. So, it will be a blend of both. We have not worked out how much subsidy we will be able to get.
There were plans to bring a strategic investor for Air India’s Nagpur aircraft maintenance facility?There is no demand. That we have given up. We will run it ourselves. You will see a total turnround of Alliance Air in 2017-18. I expect it to be a profitable airline. So, our Alliance Air will become profitable, Air India Air Transport Services Ltd (ground handling subsidiary) is profitable, Air India Express is profitable. Air India Engineering and Air India will take time.
You were initially very unhappy with Air India’s Star Alliance relationship?Star Alliance is necessary. Now that our airline is becoming alright, it will get substantial advantage from Star Alliance. We will maintain the Star relationship.
Qatar wants to set up an airline in India. What’s your stand?We don’t have any position. We are basically running our own airline. It’s for the government to decide, there is no airline’s role there.
But in the past, you have opposed such moves, even written to aviation ministry against giving any bilateral rights to Qatar?The call has to be taken by the ministry. Air India has no locus standi in the matter. We will not oppose it, we will leave it to the government.
In the end, what more can a consumer look forward from the airline this year?Good food, good cabin and WiFi should start soon in domestic flights from around June this year.",2017-03-20,"In an interview, Air India boss Ashwani Lohani talked about the Udan scheme for regional aviation, competition from IndiGo, privatization and debt issues",0.05,08:11,Air India won’t oppose Qatar Airways bid to set up airline in India: Ashwani Lohani +0,"
Bengaluru: Almost 400 feet from the ground, businessman Vijay Mallya’s mansion in the sky in Bengaluru is getting ready. The mansion-style penthouse is mounted on a giant cantilever slab on the top of Kingfisher Towers—residences at UB City, which is being built on a 4.5-acre land parcel that once housed his ancestral home.Sprawled over 40,000 sq. ft across two levels (34th and 35th) with a helipad on the top, the penthouse is surrounded by an open deck that offers a 360-degree viewing platform. There’s an infinity pool to boot. The penthouse is part of a skyscraper, but it is as exclusive as a private villa with its two elevators; it shares nothing with the rest of the residences.The $20-million (that’s the rough value of the penthouse) question: will Mallya, a fugitive from justice who left for the UK in March 2016 as lenders and investigating agencies closed in on him, ever get to live in his white house in the sky?The skyscraper, which will be the fanciest address in the city once ready, is being developed as an extension of UB City, the luxury retail and office space built under a joint development agreement between United Breweries Holdings Ltd (UBHL) and Prestige Estates Projects Ltd. UBHL owns 55% and the developer 45%. Prestige Estates, which is also constructing the building, has 42 apartments—8,000 sq. ft each with four bedrooms and five car parks—of which it has sold 34 and kept the remaining eight to sell once the building is fully done. The last sale was for around Rs.25 crore.UBHL, which has the penthouse and 39 of the apartments, sold and issued allotment letters for seven, for a little over Rs150 crore, according to the company’s 2016 annual report. The sales were probably completed in 2012 and 2013. Since 2014, UBHL has been barred from selling the flats.Prestige has sold some of the apartments as shells while some of them have their interiors designed by its interior design firm Morph Design Co. “It was a challenge to construct the mansion on a huge cantilever at that height, but we have ensured we build it exactly the way it was conceived. It’s a complex structure and the finishing work is going on,” said Prestige Estates’ chairman Irfan Razack. “We will finish the project as per contract and hand it over,” Razack said.In January, the debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru ruled in favour of State Bank of India (SBI) and allowed it to start the process of recovering the Rs6,203.35 crore it is owed by Mallya’s companies. Mallya, chairman of UBHL, and his companies Kingfisher Airlines, UBHL and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money which, along with interest, adds up to more than Rs9,000 crore. In its application, Kingfisher Towers is listed under other known assets of UBHL, which means it (the apartments owned by the firm) can be sold by the recovery officer to pay the dues of the bank. In September 2016, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) attached Rs6,630 crore worth of properties belonging to Mallya in the ongoing money laundering probe that included flats in Kingfisher Tower, Bangalore (Rs565 crore), along with the Mandwa Farm House, Alibaug (Rs25 crore), and shares of UBHL and United Spirits Ltd.Indeed, it isn’t inconceivable that the penthouse could soon be up for sale. “Only the external structure of the penthouse is being constructed. The interiors will remain pending since there isn’t any clarity on the matter on who the claimant is,” said a person familiar with the development who didn’t want to be named. When contacted, a UB spokesperson declined to comment. While the developer Prestige is gearing up to finish the project and hand over the homes to the respective buyers by this year-end, uncertainty clouds the fate of UBHL’s share of apartments and, of course, Mallya’s mansion.“Under the money laundering Act, an order of conviction will result in confiscation of property by the government,” said S.S. Naganand, senior counsel appearing for the lenders consortium.“If money laundering is not proven, the debt remains and what will happen to this property is they (banks) will try to recover dues. There will be an attempt to sell off and recover dues and any sale proceedings will be realized and appropriated towards his dues. If after this anything remains, it will be given to him,” Naganand added. Mallya would have liked to keep the penthouse.“The mansion is what Mallya always wanted. His family home on the same plot of land was like a British colonial bungalow and he wanted to replicate that (in the penthouse),” said a prominent architect, who didn’t want to be named.",2017-03-20,It isn’t inconceivable that the mansion-style penthouse in Bengaluru could soon be up for sale to recover dues that Vijay Mallya owes to banks,0.55,17:11,Vijay Mallya’s $20 million ‘sky mansion’ in Bengaluru is almost ready. But will he get to live in it? +0,"New Delhi: Snapdeal, run by Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd, has named Jason Kothari as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Freecharge, the e-commerce marketplace said on Monday. It has also committed to invest $20 million in the payments services arm.Kothari, the former CEO of Housing.com, joined Snapdeal as its chief strategy and business officer in January, following the merger of SoftBank-backed Locon Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which runs Housing.com, with PropTiger (Elara Technologies Pte. Ltd).Kothari will continue in his role at Snapdeal and will take up the additional charge at Freecharge, Snapdeal said. He is also accorded a seat in the board of directors of Freecharge.Kothai’s appointment was anticipated after former Freecharge CEO Govind Rajan resigned last month. Kothari had stepped in to manage the operations at the wallets firm, as part of his larger responsibility to oversee operations at Snapdeal’s portfolio companies.“We remain committed to the success and vision of Freecharge. Jason is a strong, strategic and versatile business leader and entrepreneur who has already been the CEO of two successful companies. We are delighted to announce his leadership role at Freecharge,” Snapdeal CEO Kunal Bahl said in a statement.Kothari, who led Housing.com as CEO from August 2015 to January 2017, was earlier the CEO and vice-chairman of US-based entertainment company Valiant Entertainment. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.“The digital payments space in India is forecasted to be over $1 trillion by 2025. I’m excited to join the talented team at Freecharge at such a high-growth and dynamic time in the industry and expect Freecharge to continue to play a key role in this digital payments revolution,” Kothari said in a statement.Freecharge, which was acquired by Snapdeal at a valuation of around $450 million, is one of leading wallet firms in the country alongside Paytm and Mobikwik. It was founded by Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon in 2010.The announcement comes at a time when parent Snapdeal is pitching to investors for a fresh funding round.Mint reported in January that Snapdeal, which posted Rs3,316 crore in losses on sales of Rs1,457 crore in the fiscal ending March 2016, was in talks with SoftBank Group Corp. to raise funds at a valuation of $3-4 billion, significantly lower than the $6.5 billion peak it touched in its previous round. It had also held talks with strategic and financial investors to part-sell Freecharge, but the deal did not go through over an expectation mismatch in valuations, Mint reported.",2017-03-20,Jason Kothari will continue in his role as chief strategy and business officer at Snapdeal and will take up the additional charge at Freecharge,0.24,14:41,"Snapdeal to invest $20 million in Freecharge, names Jason Kothari as CEO" +0,"Hong Kong: Arundhati Bhattacharya is the first woman to head State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender.In 2016, she was listed as the 25th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.Bhattacharya was one of the key business leaders tasked with the implementation of the demonetisation exercise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Her role was significant as she heads a state-owned financial services company with assets worth $460 billion, and more than 14,000 branches spread across the country.“The job to remonetize India has been an enormous task,” explains Bhattacharya. “Nowhere has an economy taken out 86% of its currency in circulation. And, specifically, not an economy of 1.3 billion people which is as cash-intense as India is. Coupled with the fact that we, in the banking system, did it without any notice and preparatory time. We were just pushed off the deep end and expected to swim. And, I can say with some pride, that we did it, and did it very well.”Speaking at the Asia Society in Hong Kong this month on the opportunities and challenges in India, Bhattacharya noted that there had been a lot of concern that India’s third-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) numbers would take a beating because of demonetisation. But this has not come to pass.“Despite demonetisation, India’s GDP growth is 7%. India is on track,” she says, with some degree of satisfaction.The five state election results in India this week has also doubly endorsed this view of the SBI chairman.“Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned the narrative around on demonetisation very quickly by promoting the move as one way of ending systemic corruption in the country. Where his critics assailed him and questioned the economic logic behind the move, he managed to convince the people that, for the first time, someone was targeting the corrupt and rich sections of the nation,” she explains.Bhattacharya claims that India is on the right track today because it has a stable and trusted political leadership that has effectively put into action its vision for a corruption-free digital economy that a majority of the nation buys into.“Had it not been for the groundswell of support by the people of India, we would not have seen such a huge exercise of demonetisation bounce off without a single riot or a single law and order issue.”The 60-year old Bhattacharya was born in a well-educated Bengali family.She was raised in Bhilai by Prodyut Kumar Mukherjee, who was working with the Bhilai Steel Plant as an engineer, and Kalyani Mukherjee, who was a homeopathic doctor.With a degree in English literature, Bhattacharya was determined to pursue the path of journalism; but as it happens often, life took her on a detour.In 1977, she decided to sit for the SBI probationary officers exam and nailed it. She entered the banking sector and has not looked back since. Bhattacharya has become a role model for women in India today.She credits her husband, Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur professor and engineer Pritimoy Bhattacharya, and her extended family, which stepped in to help raise her daughter, Sukrita, who was born in 1995.Bhattacharya says she was also guided along the way by her mentor and former chairman of SBI, M.S. Verma, who advised her “to never give up” even when the going gets rough. She made this her mantra.Today, Bhattacharya has become the first chairperson, in the 210-year long history of SBI, to get an extension after the retirement age of 60.“I know Miss Indra Nooyi, the head of PepsiCo, has been credited with saying ‘you can’t have it all’. But, I think, that depends on what your definition of ‘all’ is. If you can define it in a way that is practical and pragmatic then it is possible to have it ‘all.’” The SBI chairperson says many women regularly fall off the workforce ladder because they think they will not be able to properly take care of the responsibilities of the family and the workplace.“Women being women, they are very sincere, committed and honest in what they do. If they feel they are short changing some segment of their responsibility, they have a tendency of holding themselves back. What I would like to tell them is that it is not necessarily true that you will short-change one or the other.”She often gives this analogy that when one is driving in a tunnel on a dark night on a highway and can only see up to the point where the headlights go; beyond that, your vision sees sheer darkness.“But, what lies ahead is a matter of your belief,” she explains. “Most of the time, women believe that what lies ahead is a precipice. Whereas, if you continue to drive, and stay on the path, the road will open up in front of you, and you will reach your destination. You don’t need to turn around and abandon the journey.”Bhattacharya’s journey has been defined by hard work, optimism, and steely persistence. It has led her to be at the forefront of India’s economic successes in the past few decades. In her own modest way, she has also helped shape it.Looking at the future, the SBI chairperson believes that one of the critical ways that India’s growth will leapfrog will be when “we get eight to ten really good chief ministers”.In her view, this trend has already taken hold as most chief ministers today realize that if they don’t bring about development in their state, they are not going to last long.“Earlier, the idea was to keep people poor, keep people illiterate, pay them just before the election, and you’ll get the votes,” she explains.“Now they have realized that the people are taking the payment from every party, and then simply electing who they want. And who they want to elect are the candidates and party that delivers maximum growth and good governance.”A lesson that was clearly on display this week in the results of the Indian state elections.Edited excerpts from an interview:
Do you think India is set to become a digital economy in the near future or is this still a distant dream?India is definitely set to leapfrog using digital in a manner that is not used anywhere in the world. Today, for instance, India has the largest biometric database in the world. So, out of 1.3 billion people, 1.1 billion people have what is called an Aadhaar number, a unique identification number, given on the basis of 10 fingerprints and retina scans. So, there’s no way of mistaking one person for the other. The government has now asked this number to be linked to each person’s bank account. Very soon, we will have a system where Indian citizens will be able to operate their bank account using only the unique identification number.They don’t need a card, or a signature, or anything else, just their unique identification number will suffice. This is unprecedented in India and elsewhere.Second, the country has recently also created what is called a UPI, or Unified Payment Interface. It is a payment system that allows money transfer between any two bank accounts by using a smartphone. UPI allows a customer to pay directly from a bank account to different merchants, both online and offline, without the hassle of typing credit card details, IFSC (Indian Financial System Code), or net banking/wallet passwords. These huge digital innovations are a sure indicator that India is well on its way to becoming a 21st-century digital economy.
Has demonetisation worked to achieve the goal of a digital India?Yes, I think one of the biggest benefits of this exercise has been the boost given to the digital economy. The fact that UPI has come in very quickly is indicative of this trend. Necessity is the mother of invention. Because there was a necessity to create such a payment system, it’s already a reality.
In what way has demonetisation helped with accounting for black money and reducing corruption in your view?Because of demonetisation, there is much more focus today on the shell companies that were used to channel black money. And the government has already indicated that they will look at closing down those companies. This is important because these shell companies have been there for the past 100 years! But nobody had really done anything about closing them down and closing that loophole. Money that was in the cupboards is now in the banking system. The government, thus, has a much better handle on where the revenues are, and how they can be included in the tax net.
While foreign investment into India has grown significantly in the past three years, what are the remaining barriers to foreign direct investment (FDI)?One, is, of course, the ease of doing business itself. India has to continue to become much more transparent so that if a foreign investor makes an application, they should have clarity, and be able to predict ahead of time if and when they are going to get approval. Second, the time it takes to get these approvals needs to be reduced. Third, a single window clearance is necessary, and, fourth, a better centre-state coordination. This is already underway. Finally, more predictability on government policies will help in boosting foreign investment so that the investor’s risk is properly balanced.The government is trying to make these models more robust by giving the kind of assurances that were earlier not available.",2017-03-18,"‘Stay on the chosen path, don’t abandon the journey’ is SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya’s advice to women in the workforce",0.03,00:43,Arundhati Bhattacharya: Women can have it all +0,"Mumbai: A magisterial court in Mumbai issued Friday a non-bailable arrest warrant and an extradition order against businessman Vijay Mallya in a service tax default case.The court also issued a non-bailable warrant against Sanjay Agarwal, former chief executive of Mallya-owned, and now grounded, Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.“The Esplanade metropolitan magistrate’s court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya, to be executed through the Ministry of External Affairs, and also an extradition order,” said service tax department counsel Advait Sethna. Mallya owes over Rs100 crore to the department as of now, he added. India has an extradition treaty with the UK (where Mallya is believed to be staying) and therefore the court’s order can be executed by the concerned authorities, the lawyer said. The service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore in 2011-12. The airline collected service tax from passengers but did not deposit it with the department, it said. “Mallya and Kingfisher CEO Sanjay Agarwal admitted the demand, but the company did not pay up the dues,” said Sethna. The department then moved the court for issuance of an non-bailable warrant and an extradition order. In April 2016, a special court for Prevention of Money Laundering Act cases too had issued an arrest warrant against Mallya, while in January this year a CBI court issued an non-bailable warrant against the beleaguered liquor baron in an IDBI loan default case.",2017-03-17,The service tax dept’s non-bailable arrest warrant and extradition order pertains to unpaid dues of the grounded Kingfisher Airlines,-0.17,22:26,"Vijay Mallya served non-bailable warrant, extradition order in service tax default case" +0,"
If Amit Agarwal, 42, had decided to pursue his initial ambition of becoming a primary-school teacher and starting his own school, the landscape of India’s booming e-commerce business may have looked a little different.
For it’s possible that Flipkart, the Indian e-commerce juggernaut, would have continued to enjoy a monopoly over India’s $15 billion (around Rs98,000 crore) e-commerce market. The Tiger Global Management-fuelled funding frenzy that gripped India’s nascent start-up ecosystem during 2014 and the better part of 2015 may have lasted longer and Indian “unicorn” start-ups with frothy valuations may have never witnessed a reckoning.
Instead, India’s consumer Internet business witnessed the staggering rise of Amazon, and a chain of events that led to a correction in the valuations of Internet businesses in the country.
Spearheading Amazon’s multi-billion-dollar bet on India was Agarwal, who has been with the company for 18 years, having joined the Internet behemoth after a friend at Stanford prodded him to.
“Teaching was always the career (I had) in mind. I landed up here by accident,” says Agarwal, country manager at Amazon India, who has just got promoted to global senior vice-president.
Agarwal joined Amazon in 1999 in Seattle, at a time when it was only selling books. Since then he has been part of almost every single large bet that the retailer has made—starting from Amazon’s core online marketplace business to Amazon Web Services (AWS, the company’s cloud-computing business), to Amazon’s march into India.
Even by Amazon’s exacting benchmarks, Agarwal’s career trajectory stands out—he is one of the youngest members of Amazon chief executive officer (CEO) Jeff Bezos’ core team of top executives and insiders believe he is being groomed for a bigger role.
I’m meeting Agarwal early evening on a weekday at the five-star Sheraton Grand, which overlooks Amazon’s India headquarters in a towering skyscraper in west Bengaluru. Dressed in a fitted mauve shirt, dark blue jeans and casual Italian leather shoes, he appears media-savvy and articulate.
As we order green tea, Agarwal tells me how he came to join Amazon. “When I was at Stanford (studying computer science), pretty much every adviser that you wanted to work with was working with a start-up.” Google started in a basement; you could see Yahoo and other start-ups on campus. So it seemed logical to join one of these places, he says.
Agarwal hails from Mumbai, where his father worked as a chemical engineer. He cracked the Joint Entrance Exam and had the option of going to the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, which was close to his house. He chose IIT, Kanpur, instead. Stanford and Amazon followed.
It was during his early days at Amazon that Agarwal met his future wife, an architect. They married in 2003, shortly before Agarwal returned to India to head the AWS team. The couple have an 11-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son.
Before joining Amazon, Agarwal had dabbled in a couple of early-stage technology ventures—starting off at Cambridge Technology Partners in Silicon Valley and moving to Informatica (also in the valley) a few months later. But he began to grow restless “sitting in a corner, writing codes”. Amazon had approached him a couple of times, and when it did so again, Agarwal decided it was time to move.
Unusually, he says his love for mountaineering made the decision easier. “It was a phase of my life when I wanted to be in the outdoors and I wanted to hike, so I thought Seattle was a good place. So, I was like, if Amazon is going to pay me to get to Seattle, let me join the company. That’s how I landed up at Amazon,” says Agarwal.
He started working at Amazon as a programmer in a team that would eventually roll out Amazon’s now famous online marketplace.
As fate would have it, his first proper face-to-face meeting with Bezos happened within a year of his joining the company. “I had an idea and I don’t know why, but I sent an email to Jeff, saying I wanted to discuss it with him,” says Agarwal. Bezos replied immediately, saying, “Come down in 15 minutes and tell me what the idea is.”
It was about creating an online rental marketplace. “Now I would think differently about that idea—but the fact that he was so supportive and humble about it was very touching,” says Agarwal.
He worked in the marketplace team for five years before moving on to Amazon’s highest-margin business till date, AWS. In 2004, Agarwal shifted to India to lead what was one of AWS’ first teams, technically starting Amazon’s journey in the country.
The project, shrouded in secrecy, was code-named “Subway”—a reference to the fact that it was a payments system that allowed machines to pay each other, a core part of billing at AWS. Three years later, he moved back to Seattle as technical adviser to Bezos, when Kindle was being launched.
His biggest role till date, however, has been to lead Amazon’s push into India, which is expected to become a $50 billion e-commerce market over the next five years.
When Amazon first launched operations here in June 2013, not many expected it to pose a serious challenge to Flipkart. Even smaller rival Snapdeal was gaining investor traction. To put it simply, many expected Amazon to meet the same fate it had in China, where it came off second-best to Alibaba.
How wrong the critics would prove to be.
In July 2014, a day after Flipkart announced that it had raised $1 billion, Bezos committed to investing $2 billion in the India business.
Amazon grew at a faster pace during the last quarter of 2015 than it had in all of 2014. Sales at Flipkart began stagnating—for at least six months since November 2015, its monthly sales remained flat. In fact, Amazon briefly overtook Flipkart’s monthly sales on a stand-alone basis in mid-2016—Flipkart did about Rs2,100 crore in monthly sales in both July and August, while Amazon’s numbers were just a little over Rs2,100 crore, driven by strategically timed discounts and a sale event.
Under Agarwal, Amazon launched initiatives such as Chai Cart, deploying three-wheeled mobile carts to navigate a city, serve tea, water and lemon juice to small business owners and teach them about selling online; introduced cash on delivery; and began Project Udaan, which aims to teach offline shoppers how to shop online through Internet-equipped physical stores.
“If you had told me that this is where we would be in three-and-a-half years, I think we would have had people laugh at us. It’s unbelievable for anybody out there,” says Agarwal.
Fortunes change quickly in the e-commerce business, however. Amazon has continued to grow strongly over the past year, but Flipkart too has witnessed an upswing in fortunes over the last six months, reclaiming its pole position during the Diwali festive season sale when it pulled in monthly sales of Rs5,000 crore, about 10% higher than Amazon’s numbers in October.
“Each quarter is like a year,” agrees Agarwal.
It’s almost 7pm, and Agarwal is restless. His day starts early—he wakes up by 5.30am to go for a run. “I try to spend whatever time is left with family. My office knows that when it’s 6pm, it’s hard to hold me back,” he says.
I try to prod him into talking about Amazon’s intense, even public, rivalry with Flipkart. After the Diwali sale in October, Flipkart’s then CEO Binny Bansal had said the American retailer had inflated sales by including low-priced items such as hing (asafoetida) and churan (digestive powder). A couple of days later, Agarwal responded, saying Amazon had accomplished in three years what Flipkart hadn’t, though it had launched earlier and acquired companies such as Myntra and Jabong.
“I’m a runner. When you run (a marathon), you don’t check after 10m and see if you’re ahead. If you do, then it’s going to be a very long race for you because you might trip,” says Agarwal. “You can’t get satisfied or depressed with a relative metric.”
I ask him if he ever regrets not becoming a schoolteacher.
“You’re saying this as if I’m about to retire. We’ll get to it (teaching). Let’s make India big and then we’ll get to it,” he quips.",2017-03-18,The newly promoted global senior vice-president on the challenges of staying at the top of the game and his dream of becoming a schoolteacher,1.0,00:34,Amit Agarwal: Making Amazon amazing +0,"
Mumbai: Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in India rose to a record $69.75 billion across 1,195 transactions in 2016, fuelled by a wave of consolidation across sectors. Consolidation as a driver for M&A activity is expected to continue in the near- to mid-term as available dry powder, both foreign and domestic, steadily accumulates. Barclays Capital was at the forefront of some of the largest deals in India last year.In an interview, Pramod Kumar, Barclays India managing director and co-head of banking, talks about the various factors that are likely to drive M&A deals in the coming quarters. Edited excerpts:
Going ahead, what are the trends you are observing that will drive M&A activity in India?I think what we will see, and what has been evident from the activity in the past year as well, is the continued consolidation and rationalization of businesses. This will lead to some of the existing players selling off parts of their businesses or monetizing them at attractive valuations. We will see that accentuated in a large way by strong private equity interest in these businesses and the willingness and ability (of private equity funds) to own these businesses with large stakes.These are businesses which are fundamentally not bad, but which have been either under-invested in or haven’t got the attention they deserve and can show significant improvement. There are several instances of that if you look back at the past 12-24 months.For example, Crompton Greaves’s consumer business falling out of leverage issues that the group was facing. We have seen several other industrial assets being divested, a lot of cement assets get sold, primarily a result of leverage issues that the owners have faced.More corporates are taking a view around rationalization of their businesses. All that has led to M&A activity.
What is the level of interest you are seeing from strategics, especially foreign strategics?Surprisingly, in all of this, we may not have seen a large amount of foreign strategic action yet, with the exception of a few such as American Towers, Yokohama and Fosun. This is something that will change going forward. I am hoping that you will see more interest from them, and that would be primarily on account of them becoming more and more comfortable about India. It has certainly improved from what you saw say two years ago or going back to the previous government’s last two years. But I think more can happen.
Any particular sectors where strategic interest is higher?There is interest in financial services, there is interest in renewables, interest in some areas of industrials; even in health-care services, we are seeing some conversations.
In private equity, the general feeling is that the interest is more around buyouts. How do you think PE activity will pan out this year?Private equity feels more comfortable, and increasingly so now, of being able to own the business and then control it, change management, bring about improvements, etc., which wasn’t the case a few years ago.In a way, they have also felt that owning a minority stake in an environment where there is no huge earnings growth, their ability to really do much with the business is limited and I would say that in many situations a lack of trust factor is also playing. Some of the experiences of private equity with the existing promoters hasn’t really been great, so they would prefer to have a larger stake and then the ability to bring about improvement where they can.
What impact will some of the geopolitical situations such as Trump coming to power in US and all the noise around changes in policies for sectors like IT and pharma, have on deal making in these sectors?For pharma, the US is still the largest market. Several Indian firms will continue to look to consolidate their positions in the US. So I don’t rule out activity on that front, though it may be a little more cautious around what policy changes the Trump government implements. There will be some bit of caution.As far as M&A is concerned, tech companies were not doing very big acquisitions. Pharma in the US will be more cautious until they get clarity around the policies.
We saw several overseas bond issuances and refinancing activity last year. How is that market looking like in 2017?The markets are quite liquid. Everyone’s counting on two rate hikes this year in the US. So, people are certainly taking advantage of the high amount of liquidity that is there in the market and that the credit spreads have compressed. People do see this as an opportunity where they can refinance their existing debt and term out the maturity.Interestingly, we also have some other companies which are looking to access the bond market to replace their rupee funding—we have seen Renew Power do such a bond and earlier Greenko had done that.The driver there is again strong liquidity in the market, ability to get good pricing, coupled with the fact there is a huge growth opportunity here in the renewables space, and that this frees up their bank lines, allowing them to go and borrow incrementally from the banks to grow their portfolio.",2017-03-15,Barclays India managing director Pramod Kumar on the various factors that are likely to drive M&A deals in the coming quarters,1.0,03:48,M&A interest may grow as buyers get more confident about India: Barclays India MD +0,"New Delhi: Design and lifestyle brand Good Earth, also one of India’s top décor labels, has completed 21 years in India. Simran Lal, daughter of Anita Lal who founded the brand in 1996, is the chief executive officer at Good Earth and clearly loves what she does. Both the mother and daughter are hands on and deeply involved with the product design at Good Earth. In the last 15 years, the company’s turnover has gone from Rs5 crore in 2001 to over Rs150 crore in 2016, with its clothing brand Sustain being the big money spinner in terms of volumes. Lal, who was a speaker at the LyFe Symposium, a two-day luxury conference in New Delhi, spoke to Mint about changing consumption trends in India, her one-year old clothing sub-brand Nicobar and being a second generation woman entrepreneur. Dressed in her own label, not surprisingly, Lal admitted that she isn’t a big shopper. Luxury for Lal is spending time with her children and talking walks in Delhi’s Humayun’s Tomb. Her company now has 700 employees and at Good Earth, she says, it’s always brand first and revenue later.Edited Excerpts:So far in your journey, what are some of the surprising consumption trends that have emerged from India. What is India really buying from Good Earth?When we launched (21 years ago), we were possibly ahead of time, pioneering in our space, like there was craft but not in the way that we wanted to put it out there. We wanted to celebrate colour, celebrate Indian motifs and heritage. Today, we don’t have to educate the consumer that much, we take that for granted actually. So, that’s the difference, the Indian consumer, in all, is very confident with being Indian. And that’s the big difference, it was really very different 21 years ago. This shift has happened over the last 10 years, organically. I think shifts like these happen when the economy of the country is performing better, there is a sense of hope. I think these are things which are important, it’s not just about our brand. Good Earth helps as a small catalyst in shaping that culture, where the Indian consumer feels a sense of pride and confidence in celebrating Indian clothes, here and internationally.In your session you said that Good Earth stands for passion, tradition and women. What is it like to be a second generation woman entrepreneur in present times?It’s fabulous, I think we are very lucky. I think it’s become much easier to be a woman entrepreneur today. I can speak for myself, I feel like I have had it relatively easy (compared to my mother) but it’s because our organisation is very welcoming of women. And because it’s a design-led organisation, somehow it’s more acceptable when women are leaders compared to say in other fields like technology. Our CFO, head of operations, head of finance are all women. So overall, I do see more women in the work space across fields. They are more successful case studies today than there have been before.Last month, the legal notice sent to Fabindia rekindled the debate on the authenticity of khadi. As an invested stakeholder, what is your take on it?I think for me, it’s about the bigger picture and what’s important is that khadi is being treated with so much respect now. And while it’s important to know, is it real khadi or not? It’s a good debate to have, it’s crucial to understand there is a handloom version, there is a non-handloom version and mixed fabrics like khadi cotton etc. As important as those technicalities and semantics are, I think it’s really important and a bigger thing to ask what has it done? People are proud to start wearing khadi, using khadi products. Earlier, it was for the politicians, today it is pop culture. So, I look at this debate slightly differently.Your company’s revenue grew from Rs5 crore to Rs150 crore in 15 years. Where is the growth coming from and what’s been the money spinner?Our clothes (label)—Sustain—gave us a big boost. We started with clothes in 2010 seven years ago. It’s 100% craft led, it is about sustaining the craftsmen’s tradition. The sales for our brand really picked up because of a couple of reasons. One, there was a need gap in terms of design and detail that we filled, that resonated with people. They loved it, it was comfortable. And it brought us volumes as compared to our home decor segment. For instance, how many dinner sets can one buy? But clothes women can’t get enough of.Tell us about the consumer response to your new sub-brand Nicobar?Me and my husband started Nicobar, under the big Good Earth family and umbrella, but it exists as its own brand now. It has a distinct design language of its own. We wanted to make Nicobar accessible in terms of price points because with Good Earth, we can’t do that, it is a luxury brand and is viewed as aspirational by many Indian consumers. With Nicobar, we have just turned one, and the response so far has been fantastic.",2017-03-14,"Simran Lal speaks about changing consumption trends in India, her one-year old clothing sub-brand Nicobar and being a second-generation woman entrepreneur ",0.74,12:08,"Consumers are now confident with being Indian, says Simran Lal" +0,"San Francisco: Tom Moore, a satellite veteran brought in to lead Google’s Project Loon unit, has stepped down after about six months. Alastair Westgarth, head of wireless antenna company Quintel, is taking the spot.The transition is the latest turn in the company’s ambitious attempt to create a communications service with balloons floating in the stratosphere. X, the research division of Google parent Alphabet Inc., recruited Moore in August after the unit’s earlier leader, Mike Cassidy, stepped down. Moore started in mid-September. “Alastair’s vision for Project Loon aligns with X’s philosophy of approaching huge problems, at scale, to improve the lives of millions or billions of people,” a spokeswoman for X said. Moore will stay on at X in an advisory role, she added.At the time, Moore’s hiring was positioned as a key part of turning Loon into a proper business. Giving Google’s experimental projects more independence and paths to revenue was a key rationale behind the creation of Alphabet in 2015. “Tom’s valuable industry experience will help launch us into the commercial stage,” Astro Teller, the head of X, said when Moore joined. ALSO READ: Alphabet leads investment in UK payments startup CurrencycloudUnlike Cassidy, who primarily worked as an internet entrepreneur before running Loon, Moore had specific industry expertise. He created a satellite-based broadband service provider called WildBlue Communications Inc., which was acquired by satellite company ViaSat Inc., where Moore served as senior vice president. Over the past year, a string of executives have departed Alphabet’s divisions outside the main Google internet business. Those who have left include Tony Fadell, who ran Nest, and Craig Barratt, who ran Access, the division that oversaw Google Fiber. Moore declined to comment through an X spokeswoman.X began testing Loon balloons in 2013, working with wireless operators like Vodafone NZ in New Zealand and Telefonica in South America. Loon announced partnerships with three Indonesian carriers in late 2015, but has not updated the status of those deals.Last month, X invited reporters to its headquarters to demonstrate the latest advancement of Loon. Its engineers had deployed machine learning to improve flight patterns for the balloon, limiting the numbers needed to provide internet coverage. Originally, the project was conceived to create a global network, blanketing the globe with the massive balloons. The tweak meant Loon could reach commercial service sooner, executives said.Moore did not attend the session. Teller told reporters that Moore was travelling. Bloomberg",2017-03-11,"Tom Moore, a satellite veteran recruited in August, is being replaced by Alastair Westgarth",-0.08,11:42,Google’s Project Loon loses CEO after about six months +0,"New York: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. reduced chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein’s annual compensation 27%, awarding him $22 million for 2016 after eliminating a long-term incentive award.Blankfein, 62, received $16 million in performance shares and a $4 million cash bonus, in addition to his $2 million salary, the New York-based firm said Friday in its annual proxy filing. Unlike past years, all of the CEO’s equity-based awards were linked to performance.Goldman Sachs redesigned its compensation structure for 2016 after investors told the company that the long-term incentive part of the package was overly complex. The bank also changed the performance-based awards to reflect the bank’s relative performance.Blankfein received $30 million for 2015, including a $7 million long-term incentive award that pays out over eight years. Gary Cohn, Goldman Sachs’s president before leaving to become President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, received $20 million for 2016, as did chief financial officer Harvey Schwartz.Performance sharesThe bank increased the share of Blankfein’s compensation that’s tied to performance to 80% of his variable pay by linking all of his stock awards to absolute and relative return on equity, compared with eight other global banks. In prior years, a portion of the shares had been tied only to a requirement that he remain in the job.The change also was made for Schwartz, 53. The awards will pay out half in cash and half in stock. In prior years, the performance-based awards were paid out solely in cash.Proxy adviser Glass Lewis & Co. raised concerns about the long-term incentive plan in a report last year, calling it “troubling both in its design and lack of transparent disclosure” and that it could “generate excessive payouts.”Goldman Sachs received about two-thirds support from shareholders for its 2015 executive compensation decisions, the lowest result since the bank introduced annual advisory votes on pay in 2009. In response, the bank sought feedback from investors holding about 40% of its stock. Bloomberg",2017-03-17,Goldman Sachs increased the share of Blankfein’s compensation that’s tied to performance to 80% of his variable pay by linking all of his stock awards to return on equity,0.22,21:44,Goldman Sachs cuts Lloyd Blankfein’s pay 27% to $22 million for 2016 +0,"San Francisco/New York: In the sixth grade, Austin Russell turned a Nintendo gaming handset into a cell phone. At 15, he built a holographic keyboard. By 17, he’d filed for a patent. Now at 22, he’s running a start-up at the heart of Silicon Valley’s latest technology mania.As founder and chief executive officer of Luminar Technologies Inc., Russell and his team are building lidar, a hyper-accurate laser sensing technology crucial for self-driving cars. Google parent Alphabet Inc. is suing Uber Technologies Inc. for allegedly stealing lidar designs, while start-ups Velodyne Lidar Inc. and Quanergy Systems Inc. have raised at least $150 million apiece from giants like Ford Motor Co., Baidu Inc., Daimler AG and Samsung Electronics Co.Russell has raised a similar amount, according to people familiar with Luminar’s finances. The company, founded in 2012, had sought a valuation above $1 billion when it was raising money last year, one of the people said. It’s unclear who invested—Luminar is in “stealth” mode, meaning it hasn’t announced itself to the world yet. A spokeswoman declined to comment, as did Russell’s father Michael, a commercial real estate veteran who serves as chief financial officer. A message sent to Austin Russell through his LinkedIn profile was answered by his assistant, who declined to comment.Also read: How Anthony Levandowski went from Google star to foe at UberPeter Thiel awarded Russell a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship when he was 17, letting him quit Stanford University. The billionaire venture capitalist is a regular visitor to a sprawling Portola Valley ranch, 40 miles south of San Francisco, where Luminar tinkers and tests lidar systems while employees and guests crash on the couch, according to someone who has been there. Car companies, including BMW AG and General Motors Co., have also dropped by.When it was occupied by a previous tenant, the five-acre space was featured in a TechCrunch video showing a pool, trampoline, room for more than 20 people to live, and space for the world’s largest organ. The property, with sweeping views of San Francisco Bay, was listed a few years ago for $22,000 a month.That a relatively unknown college dropout of barely drinking age can raise millions of dollars shows the appetite for lidar. “It’s a gold rush and we’re selling pickaxes,” said Velodyne President Mike Jellen, who graduated college years before Russell was born. Several car companies want autonomous vehicles on the road by 2020 or 2021, which means they’re starting to order lots of lidar systems. Velodyne expects to ship 12,000 units this year, 80,000 in 2018 and 1.7 million by 2022.Luminar’s rise also says a lot about Silicon Valley’s past and present. It’s still the place where prodigies can find generous backers for audacious plans. The ideas used to be mobile apps or web software. Now, it’s increasingly technology that interacts with the physical world—cars, robots, drones and software for automation. Russell is part of this new era.In January, in the up-scale Nob Hill section of San Francisco, a gangling Russell attended a party for 1517 Fund, a VC firm partly backed by Thiel. Towering above the crowd, he lingered in the corner near the entrance, speaking in a booming voice, and avoiding eye contact with a reporter. He was mostly immersed in his phone, which he showed occasionally to a small group gathered close to him, while more than 100 up-and-coming entrepreneurs and older mentor types chomped pizza and sipped beer.Some of Luminar’s money has been used to buy a small fleet of Tesla Model S electric cars, which it uses for testing, said one of the people who has visited. It’s also funding research and development to solve challenges that have plagued the nascent lidar market.A top-of-the-range lidar from Velodyne sells for more than $50,000. It offers cheaper lidar, which generates lower-definition 3-D images, for about $8,000, while Quanergy has a product that sells for some $4,000. Autonomous cars often require two or more lidar sensors, so having a capable system can get expensive.Russell is trying to develop a lidar priced significantly less than $1,000, according to people with knowledge of Luminar’s planning. Quanergy aims to have one that sells below $100 in three to four years.Whereas radar uses radio waves to detect objects, lidar uses laser beams, helping it produce more accurate 3-D images. It’s an essential ingredient for autonomous driving because it generates a real-time image of passing and surrounding objects and helps a vehicle accurately locate itself. Satellite navigation systems are only accurate to within about 16 feet—not enough for a driverless future.In a recent demonstration, the images generated by Luminar’s lidar system were higher-definition than those produced by competing equipment made by Velodyne or Quanergy, according to someone who saw the equipment first-hand, but was not allowed to discuss it publicly. Another version generated even sharper images, but the information was processed with a slight delay—because of a lack of computing power to crunch all the data rather than a problem with the core technology, the person said.Luminar may have bigger plans. A trademark filing from 30 June described a “vehicle collision avoidance system” with ultrasound sensors and radar apparatus, not just the optical technology used in lidar. In recent weeks, it posted 19 jobs online, seeking engineers, attorneys, a “Fiber Laser Production Manager” and a vehicle integration specialist.Russell has the ability and drive to make Luminar successful—as long as he focuses his prodigious brain, according to Tony Jordan, his physics teacher at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, about 50 miles south of Los Angeles.“The kid’s mind is so broad that he literally always had 50 ideas going at one time,” Jordan said. “My only thought was if he ever slows down enough to see one idea all the way to completion.”ALSO READ: Uber’s self-driving unit quietly bought firm with tech at heart of Alphabet lawsuitRussell showed early promise, working as a consultant software engineer at age 10, according to a 2014 interview posted on YouTube. A year later, when his parents refused to buy him a mobile phone, he hacked a Nintendo DS portable gaming console into a handset. In 2013, he filed a patent for a “three-dimensional imager and projection device.”His parents’ garage in Newport Beach, California, was the hub for his early inventions, said Jordan. “They had a hard time ever parking their cars in the garage because he had absconded with the Ping-Pong table and made that his lab table,” said Jordan, “That’s where some of his best thinking was done.” (He’s a fan of the sport too, attending the launch of a SPiN Ping-Pong social club in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood last year).A 15-year-old Russell came to a school staff meeting one morning to demonstrate a system that beamed a holographic keyboard onto a table top and typed words. “That blew most people’s minds,” Jordan said. Other early inventions included a laser that could detect whether a mole was cancerous, and a theoretical framework to charge electrical devices by beaming energy down from satellites.In June 2013, the Orange County Register named the then 17-year-old Russell a top graduate, noting his interest in photonics—the use of electromagnetic energy—and his plans to attend Stanford that fall. “You should push yourself to the limit at least, ultimately,” Russell told the newspaper. “That’s what you have to do if you want to make an impact on the world.”In 2014, Russell led Luminar in a digital health care competition sponsored by Qualcomm Inc. In a video about their entry, the young, mop-haired CEO described his lidar system and another technology called a “real-time hyperspectral camera system” that measures the molecular structure of objects well beyond what a human eye can see. Such cameras cost tens of thousands of dollars and were the size of a small fridge at the time. Russell said Luminar had built one as small as “a few pennies.”He exhibited a competitive streak in high school, where he led a robotics team to the national championships, Jordan recalled.Also read: Google and Uber are fighting over lidar technology. What is it?“You’ve never seen someone more upset when they lost, or the robot went down, or the person handling the robot mishandled one of the feats that they had to do to win,” said Jordan. “I really enjoyed watching someone who was usually so cool and so on nine different planes that you were never sure he was with you, he also had this single-minded focus and competitiveness.”Russell will need those qualities because the window to make the most of the lidar business may be closing quickly. Current systems are too expensive for production cars, yet bringing prices below $100 may make it hard to generate significant profit.“It’s going to go the same way as radar has and become commoditized,” said Sebastian Thrun, CEO of online learning specialist Udacity Inc. and the former head of Google’s driverless car project. “Radar used to be $60,000 apiece and now it’s like $80 apiece. There’s no reason lidar can’t cost $80 apiece.”BloombergMark Bergen also contributed to this story. ",2017-04-01,"Luminar Technologies founder Austin Russell and his team are building lidar, a hyper-accurate laser sensing technology crucial for self-driving cars",0.09,20:50,Austin Russell: The 22 year-old at the wheel of the self-driving car craze +0,"London: Apple has given Imagination Tech notice that it will stop using its graphics technology in iPhones and other products in up to two years’ time, dealing a major blow to the British company.Imagination said Apple, its biggest customer, had not presented any evidence to substantiate its assertion that it will no longer require Imagination’s technology, without violating Imagination’s patents, intellectual property and confidential information.It said on Monday that Apple’s notification had triggered talks on alternative commercial arrangements for the current licence and royalty agreement. Reuters",2017-04-03,Apple has given Imagination Tech notice that it will stop using its graphics technology in iPhones and other products in up to two years’ time,-0.24,12:22,Apple sparks row with pledge to drop Imagination Tech graphics +0,"
Infosys Ltd’s promoters continue to be unhappy with some decisions made by the board of India’s second largest software services company. A majority of the promoters did not vote for a resolution seeking a salary increase for chief operating officer U.B. Pravin Rao. According to filings by Infosys with stock exchanges, only 24% of promoter votes were cast in favour of the resolution seeking a 35% rise in Rao’s compensation to Rs12.5 crore. The remaining abstained. This mirrored the promoters voting 12 months ago on a resolution seeking a two-year extension and a revised compensation of $11 million for chief executive Vishal Sikka. The latest show of promoter disenchantment, according to people familiar with the development, suggests that the truce reached between the founders and the company’s board after an open confrontation in February may only have resulted in an uneasy and temporary calm.The resolution was one of three Infosys sought to pass through electronic voting or postal ballots by 31 March. The remaining two resolutions—an amendment to its articles of association allowing Infosys to consider a share buyback, and the appointment of D.N. Prahlad as independent director—received overwhelming approval from promoters and other shareholders. Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy clarified that the decision of some of the founders not to vote in favour of the proposed salary increase for Rao was because of their belief in compassionate capitalism. “This abstention has nothing to do with Pravin,” Murthy said in an emailed response to a questionnaire from Mint. “I have lots of affection for Pravin. Let me state you the facts. I believe in striving towards reducing differences in compensation and equity in a corporation. I have always felt that every senior management person of an Indian corporation has to show self-restraint in his or her compensation and perquisites. This is necessary if we have to make compassionate capitalism acceptable to a majority of Indians who are poor. Without compassionate capitalism, this country cannot create jobs and solve the problem of poverty. Further, giving nearly 60% to 70% increase in compensation for a top level person (even including performance-based variable pay) when the compensation for most of the employees in the company was increased by just 6% to 8% is, in my opinion, not proper.”“Finally, given the current poor governance standards at Infosys, let us also remember that these targets for variable pay may not be adhered to if the board wants to favour a top management person,” said Murthy. Also read | Questioning the Infosys shareholdersStill, the proposal to increase Rao’s salary found majority shareholder support as 75% of institutional investors voted in favour of the proposal, even though 67% of non-institutional investors voted against it. Institutional investors, which include foreign institutional investors and insurance companies, hold 59% of shares in Infosys while non-institutional investors, which include retail shareholders, hold 28.1%. Five of the seven original co-founders, Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, S.D. Shibulal, Kris Gopalakrishnan and K. Dinesh are categorized as promoters of the company, and the founders together hold a 12.75% stake. None of the founders are on the board of Infosys. “No previous resolution in the history of the company has received such a low approval,” said Murthy. In April last year, Nilekani and Sudha Murty, Narayana Murthy’s wife and chairperson of the Infosys Foundation in India, approved Sikka’s reappointment until 2021 and a higher salary, as other founders abstained. A similar voting result this time suggests that both Nilekani and Sudha Murty voted in favour of Rao, too. Gopalakrishnan declined to offer a comment while emails sent to Nilekani and other founders went unanswered. An Infosys spokesperson declined to comment on how the five promoters voted. “More than 50% of the public and small institutions voting against the increase in COO’s salary is unprecedented and as far as I recall never happened in the history of Infosys,” said Venkatraman Balakrishnan, a former chief financial officer at Infosys. “It is clearly a vote of no-confidence on the practices followed by the current board to excessively compensate senior management without any direct linkage to shareholder wealth creation. The board should listen to the founders, increase transparency, improve corporate governance, restructure the board and lastly, announce a large buyback to protect shareholders’ interests.”",2017-04-03,Most of Infosys’s promoters did not vote for resolution seeking a salary hike for chief operating officer Pravin Rao,0.25,16:53,"Infosys promoters, board at odds over Pravin Rao’s salary hike" +0,"
Digital-native innovators, armed with radical business models, have relentlessly raised consumers’ expectations. Such companies—including the quintessential Apple, Uber, Netflix, Amazon and Google—deliver a simple, yet intuitive experience, real-time information, and personalized advice for customers.
Traditional incumbents know that to stay competitive, they must “get on the digital train”—speedily developing new tech-based offerings and adopting digital business approaches. Many understand the need to execute competitive strategies faster through rapid experimentation and prototyping, invest in innovation including reworking business models, and remove complex processes and structures so employees can collaborate to put customers first.
Yet, only a few incumbents have met the speed imperative. Instead, they have made digital a storefront add-on to their business, or have done only the bare minimum to connect with customers digitally.
What explains their hesitations?
Many have overly complex IT systems, misaligned talent, siloed functions that discourage collaboration, and management that squelches innovation.
Incumbents’ failure to act has cost them—and the toll will only get heavier, if companies do not address the situation soon. The reason: Tailwinds shaping previous decades are losing momentum. For instance, growth in the number of internet users and the number of smartphones shipped has slowed since 2015, along with GDP and population growth in many countries. Consequently, companies can no longer count on an ever-expanding customer base. Perhaps reflecting these developments, 2016 was the first year that non-technology incumbents dominated the $1 billion-plus acquisition market, as CB Insights noted.
These trends are not universal. In India, for example, the number of internet users is expanding, while most markets face an overall slowdown or contraction (see chart).
Speed+scale+value: Getting the what right
BCG analysis of 1,000-plus businesses undergoing digital transformation shows that to succeed today, companies must master two imperatives in addition to speed:
• Scale: Companies must replicate success from new digital introductions across their business. For instance, an apparel retailer draws on digital capabilities to initiate “ship from store” and “collect from store” service for customers in several stores. Dedicated processes support the service. To get the most from the service, the company must implement it across all its stores.
•Value: Businesses must use digital to create new forms of value for customers and themselves. For customers, value comes from combining information sources. To illustrate, at a train station, an app notifies you that your train will be late—and that a nearby coffee shop has a special offer. Businesses that provide the best value to customers will capture their time, attention and money. Companies can also use data gathered from customers to develop new products and craft effective advertising campaigns.
To meet the scale and value-focus imperatives, companies need to look beyond now-mature technologies such as the almost clichéd SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud computing) and embrace a new wave of technologies.
Consider AI. Thanks to new kinds of data now accessible, AI applications today include natural language processing and speech recognition, pattern recognition and real-world mobility, predictive maintenance, and advanced analytics. Companies are leveraging such applications to transform processes like hiring talent, enhancing customers’ experiences and empowering their sales force.
For instance, a financial services firm uses machine learning software and a private cloud network to review commercial-loan agreements—which used to consume hundreds of thousands of hours of work annually by lawyers and loan officers. Results have included fewer loan-servicing mistakes, most of which had previously stemmed from human error.
AI has been around for a while, but multiple uses of the technology are now surfacing. Today, there is a sharp distinction between robotics and various AI types, including deep learning. The same pattern of exponential advancement characterizing other technologies is now happening with AI.
Augmented reality (AR) also offers potential, as a home furnishings brand discovered. The company had launched a B2C (business-to-consumer) solution featuring high-quality digital photography, to help shoppers choose products online and minimize the need for “tactile”. But B2B (business-to-business) is the core of its business, so the company then introduced a “store salesman” app. It shipped iPads to its retailers to help sales reps select from among 20,000 SKUs (stock keeping units) for their end customers. To further enhance the experience, the company also introduced AR in select exclusive brand outlets, so potential buyers can easily visualize their chosen fabrics in room layouts or furniture coverings. These efforts have already begun improving the company’s growth in India and its export market.
Only by augmenting speed with scalability and value can digital solutions like those described above deliver sustainable competitive advantages—including the ability to respond to ever-changing customer requirements, achieve cost-saving efficiencies, and attract and retain top talent.
But excelling simultaneously at speed, scale and value is tricky. To do so, companies must get the “how” right: creating a digital workforce to support the digital technologies they adopt.
Digital technology+digital work workforce: Getting the ‘how’ right?Given the enhanced pace of technology change, companies need to back the technologies they adopt with an agile, test-and-learn digital workforce. A digital workforce comprises people who can systematically craft solutions to dynamic business challenges, show early minimum viable products to internal and external customers, and use feedback to refine them.This requires employees with relevant technical expertise who also operate comfortably amid uncertainty and change. And they need leaders who can elicit promising ideas from anywhere in the organization while uniting them behind solutions in development. In short, companies must put technical know-how front and centre. In previous decades, technical prowess was the coin of the realm. Then technology costs declined with commercialization, and companies began outsourcing and offshoring technical work. Commoditization resulted. The mantra became, “Technology is easy; success is all about change management.”We disagree. While effective change management matters, success still hinges tightly on technology. Those who understand technology create more valuable digital solutions that deliver a sharper competitive edge. Companies must therefore make technology a key element in their business transformation. That means hiring the best talent, designing the right incentives for them, and giving them the autonomy and challenging work they demand. To further equip technical talent for success, companies can merge their traditional “business requirements” and “IT development” silos into a unified set of activities focused on product development and engineering—and organizing these workers in a new way. The traditional pyramid shape, containing numerous management layers, should give way to a diamond shape, characterized by many senior engineers, fewer juniors and even fewer managers. A product development/engineering group structured in this agile way will churn out releases much faster than one built on the pyramid model. Other business functions (sales, marketing, supply chain, back office) will also show improved speed and adaptability. Result: Traditional incumbents will score as much success as their “new- age” rivals.Mastering the “what” and “how” of succeeding in today’s digital age takes courage and commitment. But companies cannot afford to shy away from this work. Those that embrace it will stand the best chance of pulling ahead of rivals in the future—and staying ahead.Ralf Dreischmeier is a senior partner and global leader of the technology advantage practice at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) London, Marc Schuuring is a partner and managing director at BCG Amsterdam, Rajiv Gupta is a partner and leads the technology advantage practice at BCG New Delhi, and Shrikant Patil is a project leader at BCG Mumbai.",2017-04-01,Firms that speedily develop new tech-based offerings and adopt digital business approaches stand the best chance of pulling ahead of rivals in the future—and staying ahead,0.64,18:14,The next wave of digital +0,"Tokyo: Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Google have joined bidding for Toshiba’s NAND flash memory unit, vying with others for the Japanese firm’s prized semiconductor operation, the Yomiuri Shimbun daily reported on Saturday.Toshiba shareholders on Thursday agreed to split off its NAND flash memory business, paving the way for a sale to raise at least $9 billion to cover US nuclear unit charges that threaten the conglomerate’s future.The Yomiuri newspaper said bidding prices from Apple, Amazon or Google, owned by Alphabet Inc, were not known.The Nikkei business daily reported on Friday that US private equity firm Silver Lake Partners and US chipmaker Broadcom Ltd have offered Toshiba about ¥2 trillion ($18 billion) for the unit.About 10 potential bidders are interested in buying a stake in the microchip operation, a source with knowledge of the planned sale told Reuters earlier.Suitors include Western Digital Corp, which operates a chip plant with Toshiba in Japan, Micron Technology Inc , South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc and financial investors.Toshiba officials were not immediately available for comment. Reuters",2017-04-01,"Apple, Amazon and Google have joined bidding for Toshiba’s NAND flash memory unit, vying with others for the Japanese firm’s prized semiconductor operation",0.91,11:03,"Apple, Amazon, Google join bidding for Toshiba chip unit: report" +0,"
Mumbai: For information technology (IT) and pharmaceutical companies that earn much of their revenue in dollars, the strengthening rupee threatens to be an additional headache on top of existing ones on visas, outsourcing, pricing and regulatory issues in the US.The rupee on Wednesday touched 64.9137 to the dollar, a level last seen on 23 October 2015. For export-oriented companies, such as those in the information technology and pharmaceutical sector, a stronger rupee means lower earnings in local currency terms.While its near-term impact is sentimentally negative, analysts say they would wait to see if the rupee’s strength is here to stay.The Indian rupee: Flirting with overvaluation“While the frenetic legislative bill filings related to visa reform seems to have cooled off, investors also await cues as to whether this headline risk is impacting client decision making and deal flow—a concern highlighted in certain quarters,” Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd said in a note on Thursday.Continued foreign investments in the local equity and bond markets have buoyed the rupee. So far this year, the BSE IT index and BSE healthcare index have risen 2.18% and 3.77%, respectively, underperforming the benchmark 30-share Sensex, which has gained 11.35% in the same period.Around 48 of the 56 IT companies and 46 of the 67 healthcare companies in the respective sectoral indices have underperformed the benchmark Sensex so far this year. A stronger rupee is luring foreign funds to Indian bondsThe underperformance has sustained for a while. In 2016, while the BSE IT and BSE healthcare indices lost 8% and 12.9% respectively, Sensex gained nearly 2%.“Recent sharp INR strength is also beginning to emerge as an irritant and needs to be monitored especially in the context of traditional margin levers having limited force going forward,” Emkay Global analysts Manik Taneja and Ruchi Burde said in the note on Thursday.The latest round of regulatory troubles of Divi’s Laboratories Ltd and Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd indicate Indian drugmakers also face a long and uphill struggle to meet quality standards set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the US, which is the world’s largest drug market, Mint had reported on 22 March.“Rupee has gained because all EM (emerging market) currencies, with the exception of China have rallied. It is more to do with broader emerging market currencies rally. Whether it is here to stay, it is difficult to say for now,” said Vaibhav Sanghavi, co-chief executive officer of Avendus Capital Public Markets Alternative Strategies Llp, a hedge fund.“However, the development is not exciting for IT and pharma sectors, which are already reeling under pressure,” added Sanghavi.Apart from persisting regulatory hurdles, pharmaceutical companies are also taking a beating due to pricing pressures in the US.The issue gains prominence because of the magnitude of the impact it could have on thee revenue of these companies. For most leading pharmaceutical companies, the US market accounts for at least half of their revenues.",2017-03-31,"A strengthening rupee against the dollar has emerged as a fresh headache for IT and pharma firms battling H1B visa, outsourcing and regulatory issues in the US",0.53,17:26,"Strengthening rupee adds to IT, pharma companies’ woes" +0,"San Francisco: Twitter on Thursday began rolling out changes to let people pack more into tweets, subtracting from the character count names of those being replied to in posts. The latest software modification at the one-to-many messaging service comes about a year after Twitter set out to relax a 140-character limit set due to mobile phone text messaging constraints in place when Twitter launched in 2006.Twitter first announced plans to relax the limit a year ago, as part of an effort to bring in more members and make the platform easier to use. “Remember how we told you we were working on ways to let you to express more with 140 characters?” Twitter product manager Sasank Reddy said in an online post.“Now, when you reply to someone or a group, those @usernames won’t count toward your tweet’s 140 characters.”Providing more room in tweets is seen as a way to encourage more use and sharing of pictures, videos and links. The move is part of a push by Twitter to increase its user base and engagement, which have sputtered to the chagrin of investors.“Our work isn’t finished,” Reddy said.“We’ll continue to think about how we can improve conversations and make Twitter easier to use.”Twitter faces competition from Facebook and Instagram, and a trend of people opting to share content in video or picture formats instead of text.",2017-03-31,The move is part of a push by Twitter to increase its user base and engagement,0.57,10:34,Twitter makes room for more characters in tweets +0,"Bangalore: A feature film about the difficulties facing an Indian temporary work-visa holder waiting for permanent residency will be screened in 25 US cinemas on Friday, with backing from Silicon Valley investors, fuelling an already heated immigration debate.The film, “For Here or To Go?” was written and produced by San Francisco-based Rishi Bhilawadikar, 33, one of the estimated million-plus H1B visa holders in the country. The title is a play on the ubiquitous question at coffee shops and fast-food outlets that often flummoxes new arrivals.The movie is being shown on the eve of the annual lottery for the three-year visas, which are awarded to foreign workers in specialty occupations ranging from software engineers to fashion models. President Donald Trump is trying to tighten the immigration system and his administration’s efforts to monitor H1B visas were revealed in a leaked executive order. Applications flood in on the 1 April opening date for the 65,000 annual quota of H1B visas. Tens of thousands of additional visas are granted for special cases such as advanced degree holders. Employers can sponsor H1B holders to apply for a Green Card that gives the right to permanent residence, but the approvals process is backlogged and caps on country of birth mean that applicants from nations like India and China may wait a decade or more. “A person with my level of skills from Sri Lanka would get a Green Card in six months whereas I could be waiting 15 years,” said Bhilawadikar, who helps improve customer interaction and e-commerce as a user experience designer for Gap Inc.VC fundingFunded by investors including venture capitalist Brad Feld of Foundry Group, the movie tells the story of Vivek Pandit, a Silicon Valley-based software professional, and his friends, who struggle to navigate the US immigration system. As a “temp worker,” Pandit is unable to make long-term life decisions like founding a company, buying a home or starting a family.Also Read: PPF, Kisan Vikas Patra, Sukanya Samriddhi interest rates slashed by 1%“It’s the untold story of hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants who drive a nice-enough car but avoid buying expensive furniture for fear of having to leave it all behind,” said Bhilawadikar. “I set about making this film to humanize my story and the story of a million others like me.”There could be up to 2 million Indian workers in the Green Card backlog, according to David Bier, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute think-tank. Advocates of immigration often cite H1B success stories like Sundar Pichai of Google and Satya Nadella of Microsoft. But the work visas are controversial and critics say companies that use them the most — information technology services companies with the bulk of their operations in India — are hurting American workers by undercutting salaries and taking away jobs.Workers who want to gain permanent residence are treated like indentured labor, said Vivek Wadhwa, Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering. If they change jobs or take a promotion, they lose their turn in line, so they end up doing menial jobs during the most productive years of their lives, he said.“I call this one of Silicon Valley’s darkest secrets,” said Wadhwa, who is also a director of research at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering.The movie was first shown in the US at the Cinequest Film Festival in California in February 2015 and has been screened at festivals in Melbourne, Toronto and Mumbai. It has also had a special screening at Rayburn House, a congressional office building for the US House of Representatives on Capitol Hill, according to Bhilawadikar.Bhilawadikar, who came to the US as a 22-year-old computer engineer to get a master’s degree from Indiana University, has been on a skilled-worker visa for 11 years — those accepted into the Green Card queue can extend their H1B visa while waiting for approval. He says he could be 40 by the time he gets his Green Card. Bloomberg",2017-03-31,Rishi Bhilawadikar’s film ‘For Here or To Go?’ depicts about the difficulties facing an Indian H1B visa holder waiting for permanent residency in the US,0.1,15:04,"Ahead of H1B lottery, Silicon Valley’s ‘darkest’ immigration secret hits cinemas" +0,"Meet the 10 winners of the Mint-MIT Technology Review competition for innovators below the age of 35 from across India in different cutting-edge domains. The winners were selected after a rigorous judging process. The innovators were felicitated on 9 and 10 March at EmTech 2017, the second edition of the emerging technology conference organized in Delhi by Mint and MIT Technology Review.Akash DongreOrganization: Indus OSDesignation: Co-founder and chief product officerInnovation: A multilingual operating system available on over 50 mobile devicesEducation: BTech in mechanical engineering from IIT BombayAkash Dongre—along with co-founders Rakesh Deshmukh and Sudhir Bangarambandi—has always believed that “Indian problems require indigenous solutions”. No wonder their eponymous innovation, touted as the “world’s first regional operating system”, is blazing a trail in the Indian smartphone ecosystem. “In our short journey, beginning in 2015, we have already partnered with five domestic smartphone brands (Micromax, Intex, Karbonn, Celkon and Swipe) and built a user base of more than six million, which is consistently growing at a rate of 500,000 OS activations per month,” says Dongre. Indus OS, which is available in 12 Indian regional languages, boasts innovative features such as Indus Swipe (translation from English to a regional language and vice versa with just a swipe), Indus Keyboard (with built-in word and matra (a unit of metrical quantity in Indian languages) prediction) and Indus Reader (which can convert an English text into audio in eight regional languages). Besides, there’s a marketplace called App Bazaar, where over 50,000 apps are available in local languages.Dongre recalls one of his foreign trips when his lack of understanding of the local language made him feel handicapped: “Everything around me was in a language I did not understand.” Dongre also realized how digitally less connected the Indian heartland is and how alien English is to a lot of Indians. “After spending some more time to understand the Indian digital landscape and brainstorming with my team, we decided to start building an ecosystem for Indian consumers.” The team built Indus OS on three core pillars: simplicity, innovation and localization. “At the heart of our story lies the desire to equip anyone who is using a smartphone with a holistic ecosystem of their choice,” says Dongre.Indus OS, which introduced Indus OS 2.0 in July 2016, will introduce Indus OS 3.0 in 2017. “In 2017, we intend to continue to work with the Government of India and app developers alike to build a smartphone ecosystem of choice for the emerging markets population,” Dongre says.Ankit JhanwarOrganization: Pluss Advanced TechnologiesDesignation: Vice-president, corporate planning and strategyInnovation: A packaging box for vaccine transportation that uses phase change materials and a unique design for precise temperature controlEducation: BTech in polymer science and technology from IIT Roorkee; certificate in entrepreneurship, management and global leadership from London School of Economics and Political ScienceAn optimist by nature, Ankit Jhanwar was not put off by the disinterest displayed by some packaging companies in developing a temperature-controlled shipping solution using phase change materials (PCMs)—a domain in which his company, Pluss Advanced Technologies, had been working since 2005. Such a temperature-controlled solution could prove very useful in cutting down the 30% wastage of vaccines in the existing cold chain system in the country. So what Pluss did was develop a complete shipping solution using its own proprietary PCMs, which could not only provide better temperature control but also address the challenging Indian ambient conditions of 40°C. “A range of products were planned to address the gaps at each leg of the supply chain right from manufacturer to the depot to the distributor to chemist and finally to the patient,” says Jhanwar.The shipping solution that he developed was branded Celsure—which uses the PCM technology to provide precise temperature control. “It is the only shipping solution which provides temperature control for more than 72 hours even at ambient temperature of 40°C,” he says. Thanks to this innovation, all the current pharmaceutical shipments which happen by air can now be done by road using Celsure—something that can lead to huge savings in freight cost, thereby making it possible to lower the prices of medicines.According to Jhanwar, Celsure also addresses the unique challenge of shipping from a hot environment (say, India) to a cold environment (like Europe) or vice versa. What’s more, the solution has brought in simplicity in the packaging, removing human errors. Jhanwar says that it’s available in sizes as small as one vial to as large as 10,000 vials and can provide temperature control for as low as 2 hours to as high as 120 hours. Pluss has a goal of reducing medicine wastage due to ineffective cold chain to as low as 0.1% in the next three-five years. The firm is constantly working on scaling up and commercializing the innovation. Celsure was launched in April 2016 with only one variant; eight more variants have been added within a year. Logistics firms such as Blue Dart and DHL have adopted Celsure as one of their preferred modes of shipping temperature-sensitive pharma products. Successful trials have also been run with various pharmaceutical firms. Besides commercializing it in India, Pluss plans to go global with the launch in Singapore and the Middle East in 2018 and in the US and Europe in 2019. “We are also keen on tie-ups with the government, World Health Organization (WHO), Unicef and other related organizations for last-mile delivery of vaccines. Customized products are being planned to address the last mile challenges,” says Jhanwar. Anusha RammohanOrganization: General Electric Global ResearchDesignation: Lead engineerInnovation: Flow analytics for multi-phase flow metering in oil and gas industryEducation: BE (Hons.) in electronics and instrumentation from BITS-Pilani; MS in electrical engineering from Arizona State University, USAnusha Rammohan believes that the intersection of the digital and physical worlds is the ideal space for disruptive innovations. And that’s exactly what attracted her to the esoteric domain of flow analytics for multi-phase flow metering in the oil and gas industry.As the lead engineer at GE Global Research’s John F Welch Technology Center in Bengaluru, Anusha got the opportunity to combine physical sensors with advanced analytics to develop a solution capable of radically transforming the processes of the entire industry. “As the global energy demand continues to increase, there is an urgent need in the oil and gas industry to be more efficient with resources, people and investments to reduce the cost of producing oil while doing so safely with reduced environmental impact,” says Rammohan. Her innovation addresses this need by combining sensor and device data in the field using intelligent analytics to provide accurate and reliable information in real time about oil production. For instance, she says, timely information about well and field level production of oil, water and gas allows operators to make critical decisions related to optimizing pumps, allocating resources and energy to each well, shutting down or stimulating wells, and preventing leakage and blockage of pipes, etc. By transforming data into actionable insights, her analytics solution enables increased oil recovery, reduced human intervention and improved resource planning.Not merely restricting her innovation to a single industry, the next stop for Anusha is to extend it to applications in industries such as aviation, power and transportation. The applications include performance optimization of assets, health monitoring of safety-critical components and their increased reliability and reduced downtime—all of which can significantly improve productivity and bring down costs. Rammohan has been granted patents related to her work in image mapping, sensor positioning and flow measurement; she has filed for more. She dreams of a world powered by analytics and technologies such as artificial intelligence—one in which “autonomous decision making” would greatly reduce the ambiguity, uncertainty and human subjectivity that are currently proving to be bottlenecks in all industries.
Kshitij Marwah
Organization: Tesseract Imaging
Designation: Founder
Innovation: Virtual reality (VR) camera to create and share high resolution VR/holographic content; holographic augmented reality headset
Education: MTech in computer science from IIT Delhi; MS in media arts and sciences from MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts, US
Kshitij Marwah says virtual reality and augmented reality (VR and AR) are the new mediums for human beings to tell their stories in a much more “experiential and immersive manner”. It marks a natural progression, as he says: “From the spoken word to the written word, from photos to videos—we have always found new ways and tools to tell our stories.”The power of his belief in VR and AR, backed by the rigour of his technical education (never mind that he dropped out of his PhD at MIT Media Lab), led Marwah to his innovations: Quark VR camera and the Holoboard AR viewing headset. Says he, “The Quark VR camera will democratize mixed reality content creation and the Holoboard AR headset will allow for its viewing in a truly immersive and unique manner.”Marwah has a simple way of explaining his innovation. “Imagine the next time when you are watching a cricket match in your house. Rather than sitting in front of your television, with our Quark camera streaming the match live in VR and the Holoboard headset, you can feel as if you are sitting right in the stadium but in the comfort of your couch,” he says.His current company, Tesseract Imaging (in Norse mythology, Tesseract is said to be a cosmic cube of immense power; in geometry, the tesseract is a four-dimensional hypercube), was spun out of MIT Media Lab’s India arm, a unit that Marwah had co-founded to promote and spread inter-disciplinary learning among students in India. He is credited with growing the Lab initiative from a platform of 50 students to 500 students selected from hundreds of thousands of applicants across the country. He headed the India arm of the Lab from 2012 to 2015.Marwah believes that the innovations coming out of Tesseract will revolutionize “the way we capture, consume and see content and media”. On the anvil are plans to begin shipping the Quark VR cameras in mid-2017 and Holoboard AR headsets by the end of the year. “With our technology, we believe we can make sure that our society can capture, share and consume their daily experiences and share stories across generations with an experience that is immersive and powerful.”Nishant KumarOrganization: Embryyo Technologies Pvt. LtdDesignation: Founder and CEOInnovation: Sensor and mobile app-based drug adherence monitoring system for tuberculosisEducation: Dual degree in mechanical engineering from IIT Bombay Nishant Kumar, the founder and chief exec of Embryyo Technologies, a medical technology and research start-up incubated at Pune’s Venture Centre, was troubled by the way tuberculosis (TB) treatment was left midway by a large number of patients in India. There wasn’t an effective way of ensuring patients stayed the course. “This was because the TB medication involves a drug regimen of about 6 months where the patient is required to take a total of about 400 pills,” he says. There are several reasons why treatment is left incomplete, including side effects, forgetfulness, poor counselling and duration of the regimen. The enormity of the problem—as many as 2.5 million people in India were affected by TB in 2015 as per a World Health Organization report—inspired Kumar to do something about it. He visited the local district level hospitals and direct observation treatment (DOT) centres to interact with the clinicians, healthcare workers and patients, which helped him in “collecting more insights” and further strengthened his resolve to address this problem. He says that it demanded an easy-to-use, affordable solution which could fit seamlessly in an already established public health infrastructure in the country. The result was BoxRx, an electronic medical event monitoring system that has currently been piloted for drug adherence monitoring in TB patients. According to Kumar, most people with TB are cured by a strictly followed, six-month drug regimen but any interruption to it can cause drug resistance.That is where the innovation behind BoxRx comes in handy. The solution comprises a specially designed electronic pill box which carries the TB blister pack as prescribed by the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP). A tearable paper with conductive ink tracks printed corresponding to each pill is placed beneath the blister pack before closing the box. Whenever a pill is removed from the blister pack, the conductive track gets broken and this activity is logged and transmitted from an in-built Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) circuit to a central server in the form of an SMS. The server processes the information in the SMS and updates the mobile application of the doctor/health worker assigned to that particular patient.To scale up the innovation, Kumar plans to work very closely with the national and international organizations that are leading the TB control programmes. Also on the cards is large-scale manufacturing and on-field implementation of the innovation so that it reaches the maximum number of patients. Kumar envisions a society that is centred on harmonious and sustainable co-existence. “I believe that good health is the primary signature of prosperity for an individual, a family, a nation and the world at large,” he says.Pankaj AgarwalDesignation: Creative leaderOrganization: Samsung ElectronicsInnovation: A button-type device that connects to toys and a mobile app to enable intuitive interactions for kidsEducation: BTech in electrical engineering from IIT Kanpur; MS from Seoul National University; MBA from Harvard Business SchoolWhenever Pankaj Agarwal saw his son Anant play alone with his toy blocks, a question often nagged him: “Why does he have to play alone? Is there something I can do to make play-at-home social and interactive for him?” He was also inspired to change the status quo when he looked at the many expensive toys gathering dust around his house. Agarwal thought of the millions of middle-class homes that just couldn’t afford all those high-tech toys with pricey tags.So he added a simple and interactive, yet relatively inexpensive, tag of his own: TagPlus. The innovation comprises a button-type smart tag, a smart app (for phones/tablets), and, above all, content created and shared in the cloud by kids as young as 7-year-olds. A key benefit of TagPlus is that it can increase the repeat play value of toys. An important feature of the innovation, says Agarwal, is that there is no set-up required. “No device pairing, no logins, no passwords!” When kids buy toys that have this smart tag, they can start playing on the TagPlus platform immediately after unwrapping it. Kids can “click”, “long press”, “shake” and “bump” their smart tags and the smart app will respond accordingly. A “click” on the smart tag activates the TagPlus app on a nearby digital device to show toy-related content. A “long press” action will bring on a social media interface where kids can easily upload their creations and also see the creations of other kids playing with the same toy. “Think of this as a ‘mini Facebook for kids’,” says Agarwal. A “shake” action on the smart tag will help kids find and connect with children playing with an identical toy who could be anywhere in the world. Also, when kids “bump” two tags from two different toys, the connected app shows multiple ways in which the toys can be combined to create something entirely new. Agarwal and his other TagPlus team members at Samsung believe that this patent-pending technology platform has the potential to make kids’ playing experiences more serendipitous, socially engaging and creative “by seamlessly bridging their virtual and physical play environments”. Agarwal and his colleagues did multiple pilot tests of TagPlus in South Korea and they are also in discussion with many toy makers to adopt the platform. “The response has been very positive,” he says. Agarwal plans to continue his innovative work in the creative domain and believes that “members of our society should be educated and imbibe a culture of creativity”.Prasant MisraDesignation: ScientistOrganization: TCS Research and Innovation, Tata Consultancy Services LtdInnovation: Auditory sensing for micro unmanned aerial vehicles Education: PhD in computer science and engineering from the University of New South Wales, Sydney; postdoctoral fellowship from the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, StockholmPrasant Misra has been focusing his research efforts around building “spatially intelligent systems”. His current work pertains to the auditory sensing technology for micro unmanned aerial vehicles (MUAVs, more popularly known as drones). It’s like “growing the ears” for intelligent things, as he puts it. “It is part of a grand vision to equip this category of flying robots with a sensory gamut that is on par with humans,” he says. This will not only enable such “things” to derive better spatial intelligence, but also drive cognition to a better level of autonomy by combining auditory sensing with vision.There are, however, fundamental challenges in developing such robust auditory capabilities, especially in capturing the spatial dimensions of a sound scene and analysing its acoustic signature. “The signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio is extremely low due to the presence of (near-field) wideband acoustic interference (i.e., self-noise) from the MUAVs’ spinning rotors and motors, which is both strong and non-stationary,” he explains. Theoretically speaking, building an acoustic array with a large number of acoustic elements can overcome such high levels of noise, but the space, payload and energy limitations of an MUAV come in the way of meeting such exhaustive system requirements and computational needs.Misra is now investigating both lightweight acoustic sensing system design, and low-power (but efficient) computation paradigms to overcome this challenge. The initial results, he says, are quite promising.The impact of the work Misra is doing is far-reaching. It will not only force us to rethink the current model of aerial sensing (which is primarily vision dominated), but will also open up newer applications and usage scenarios for the betterment of society. It is now quite common to talk of aerial drones, especially tiny ones with multiple rotors that can hover mid-air, in applications ranging from e-commerce deliveries and inspection of industrial machinery to wildlife monitoring and search-and-rescue operations. Nevertheless, their sensing technology is predominately vision-centric. “While the advantages are clearly obvious in visual inspection and monitoring applications, on the flip side, they become unusable in camera-obstructed or low-light conditions, or in scenarios that offer non-visual clues such as those based on sound. In fact, these conditions are a norm in high-stress environments (dense canopy or fog, structures on fire, underground mines, etc.),” he says.Misra is working towards taking the MUAV technology from its existing level to “cognitive autonomous systems”. He believes that as spatial intelligence and cognitive technology mature, the lines between machines and humans would blur, enabling both to live together in the same society as companions. In the future, cognitive aerial drones will take up roles such as aerial cars and taxis, pick up and escort agents, search and rescue bots, and ears and eyes for the disabled. In short: anything you want them to be.Sandeep Senan Designation: Founder and directorOrganization: Evobi Automations Pvt. Ltd (Bibox Labs)Innovation: A toolkit-based approach to learning so that kids can learn through experiments by making things like a robotic toy or a fire alarmEducation: BE in computer science from Visvesvaraya Technological University, Karnataka; MBA in international business from Edith Cowan University, AustraliaWhen it comes to innovation and creativity, Sandeep Senan is as excited as the young kids he wants to empower with the innovative tools at his disposal. His innovation, Bibox (short for Brain-in-a-box), is like an “electronic brain which can be instructed by a kid using a graphical software, which can run on a tablet or smartphone or PC or even with cards”, he says. Senan is of the view that the realm of innovation must be extended to children rather than remain mostly confined to the adult world. There’s a need for a huge change in the way children are taught and allowed to be creative, he feels.“The task of making adults creative is a humongous task, but if we think about kids, they are naturally curious and thus it’s easy to instill an innovative thinking process in them,” says Senan. So when he discovered that there was a lack of tools and curricula designed for instilling the habit of innovation in kids, he decided to do something about it.“The innovation Bibox was originated out of that need to give kids the tools to change the world and thus the confidence to keep innovating and make it a habit so that when they become adults, they can go out and make large-scale impact because the thinking is ingrained into their minds,” he says.Bibox doesn’t have a definite shape or size but is basically a set of tools—processors, switches, sensors, battery and software, among others—using which children in different age groups can try their hand at innovation. This “brain”, says Senan, can be connected to a variety of accessories, including toys, lights and TV sets, and children can come up with stuff like walking robotic dogs, automatic TV and even connected health products using the Internet of Things.“Because Bibox responds to kids’ logic in the physical world, they can see what the logic means and correct themselves when required—making the learning experience truly experiential,” he says. Besides providing them such toolkits, Senan’s organization also provides them some structured mentoring to enable them to use their creative freedom and confidence to innovate more and more in any field they choose to be in. “We are just getting the process started a little early,” he says. Through Bibox Labs, he has enrolled more than 25,000 students in over 100 schools in India.To take his innovative ways to a much larger base of students, Senan and his team are digitizing the process of mentoring the kids to be innovators. Once this is in place, he says, any student anywhere in the world would be able to go through the same process that Bibox Labs follows in its affiliate schools. They also plan to partner with private firms, non-governmental organizations and various government bodies to scale up the programme.Subham Banerjee Designation: Young scientistOrganization: Centre for Biodesign and Diagnostic, Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, department of biotechnologyInnovation: Transdermal patch against neurotoxin poisoningEducation: Master of pharmacy from West Bengal University of Technology; PhD in pharmacy from Birla Institute of Technology, MesraSoldiers fighting in hostile territories often have to shield themselves against harmful or poisonous gases and chemical substances. One often hears of deadly strikes such as the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system (1995), the nerve gas attack in Syria (2013) or the recent attack in Iraq by Islamic State militants in which they set fire to a sulphur mine, spreading sulphur dioxide plumes.Subham Banerjee’s innovation concerns protecting people against neurotoxic poisoning resulting from such attacks. “The exposure of humans to neurotoxins is a major risk factor in severe mortality in chemical or biological warfare situations, as neurotoxins are one of the most potent toxins,” he says. His innovation, a transdermal patch that can provide protection against neurotoxin poisoning, comprises an inert adhesive matrix system with active pharmaceutical ingredients. The patch can be applied to intact or even burnt or blistered skin. It works by releasing a combination drug (eserine and pralidoxime chloride) through the skin in what is called a “controlled or sustained release” mechanism.According to Banerjee, the new patch has “an excellent safety profile”, can be “self-administered”, and has positive environmental as well as economic impact. “Apart from conventional dosage forms, no novel sustained release prophylactic transdermal patches are currently available in the market,” he says. Which is why this innovation has huge socio-economic benefits and the potential to achieve product dominance in the market.In order to sustain this project and take it to the next level of successful commercialization, however, Banerjee says that some studies have to be carried out. For one, process parameters have to be optimized to scale up the capability of manufacturing these patches in bulk quantities. Also, a preclinical toxicity study in rodents needs to be done, followed by a full-fledged pilot for the bioavailability study in human subjects as per the guidelines of the Drug Controller General of India.Banerjee believes that this innovation has the potential to make an “extra value-addition” to the existing measures for biological warfare protection available with India’s Armed Forces.Vinay Kumar Designation: Co-founder, director and CEOOrganization: PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. LtdInnovation: A single device that can diagnose multiple parameters related to diabetes managementEducation: MTech in microelectronics and VLSI design and MSc in electronic science from Kurukshetra University; PhD from Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science BangaloreAt age 14, when Vinay Kumar was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, his doctor told him he would have to take insulin injections. The look of disappointment on his face prompted the physician to lie that it was only for 10 days that injections were needed. Later on, when Kumar realized that he was stuck with the needle for a lifetime, he became determined to put the hurt and discomfort behind and do something about it. Over the years, diabetes took a bigger and bigger toll on his body, with episodes of hypoglycemia (abnormally low level of sugar in the blood) and even fainting—but all this only strengthened his resolve.In addition to struggling with a debilitating condition like millions in the world do, Kumar constantly thought about how a diabetic can manage his condition better and, at the same time, persisted with his studies. “These two aspects of my life merged when I decided to pursue a PhD at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc Bangalore),” he says. Besides working on novel ways to diagnose diseases and acquiring multiple patents, he also co-founded (along with Navakanta Bhat and Gautam Sharma) PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. Ltd, a start-up incubated at IISc that is focused on medical device research and development.Kumar’s innovation is a hand-held point-of-care device which, as a single unit, can measure eight different parameters related to diabetes management and early detection of its complications. “With a tiny drop of finger-pricked blood samples, patients can test HbA1c (which gives 90 days blood glucose control profile), glycated albumin (which gives 15 days blood glucose control profile) and instant blood glucose as well,” he says. The device can detect very early damage in the kidney by measuring the microalbuminuria, creatinine and ACR (albumin to creatinine ratio) in the urine samples. Apart from these, he adds, it can measure the haemoglobin level for anaemia and chronic kidney disease. “The device can measure serum albumin, an important blood marker for kidney and liver. So the single device can take care of full diabetes glycaemic management and early detection of complications such as diabetic nephropathy,” explains Kumar.The road ahead for PathShodh is well-defined. “The device is ready and regress clinical validation for most of the tests has been completed on real patient samples in collaboration with major pathology labs and hospitals in Bangalore. We also have the manufacturing line setup at IISc to manufacture the disposable test strips for these different tests,” says Kumar. The commercial launch of the device can happen any time now. That would certainly move the needle in a positive direction for PathShodh’s mission of making healthcare diagnostics affordable and available to all.",2017-03-31,Meet the 10 winners of the Mint-MIT Technology Review competition for innovators below the age of 35 from across India in different cutting-edge domains,0.49,17:26,EmTech 2017: Innovators under 35 +0,"Kenosha, Wisconsin: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered federal agencies to look at tightening the H1B visa programme used to bring high-skilled foreign workers to the US, as he tries to carry out his campaign pledges to put “America First”.The move is a deterrent to Indian IT companies which send hundreds of software engineers to the US on H1B visas. Trump signed an executive order on enforcing and reviewing the H1B visa, popular in the IT industry, on a visit to the headquarters of Snap-On Inc. a tool manufacturer in Kenosha, Wisconsin.In the document, known to the White House as the “Buy American and Hire American” order, Trump also seeks changes in government procurement that would boost purchases of American products in federal contracts, with one aim being to help US steelmakers.The moves show Trump once again using his power to issue executive orders to try to fulfil promises he made last year in his election campaign, in this case to reform US immigration policies and encourage purchases of American products. Senior officials gave few details on implementation of the order but Trump aides have expressed concern that most H1B visas are awarded for lower-paid jobs at outsourcing firms, many based in India, which they say takes work away from Americans. They seek a more merit-based way to give the visas to highly skilled workers. “Right now, widespread abuse in our immigration system is allowing American workers of all backgrounds to be replaced by workers brought in from other countries,” Trump said.As he nears the 100-day benchmark of his presidency, Trump still has no major legislative achievements. With his attempts to overhaul healthcare and tax law not bearing fruit so far in a Congress controlled by his fellow Republicans, Trump has leaned heavily on executive orders to seek changes to the US economy.The venue for Trump’s visit on Tuesday is a nod to his voter base in the manufacturing centres of the American heartland. Wisconsin unexpectedly voted for the Republican last year, partly due to his promises to bring back industrial jobs. H1B visas are intended for foreign nationals in occupations that generally require higher education, including science, engineering or computer programming. The government uses a lottery to award 65,000 visas every year and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.Critics say the lottery benefits outsourcing firms that flood the system with mass applications for visas for lower-paid information technology workers. “Right now H1B visas are awarded in a totally random lottery and that’s wrong. Instead, they should be given to the most skilled and highest paid applicants and they should never, ever be used to replace Americans,” Trump said. Reuters",2017-04-19,Donald Trump orders a look at tightening regulations on H1 B visa used by Indian IT companies to bring high-skilled foreign workers to the US,0.23,13:19,Donald Trump signs H1B visa order to tighten rules on foreign workers +0,"The chief executive officer (CEO) of United Airlines says no one will be fired over the dragging of a man off a plane—including himself.CEO Oscar Munoz said on Tuesday that he takes full responsibility “for making this right”, and he promised more details later this month after United finishes a review of its policies on overbooked flights.Company executives said it’s too soon to know if the incident is hurting ticket sales.United has been pummeled on social media — #BoycottUnited is a popular hashtag — and late-night television. Through Tuesday afternoon, its shares had fallen 4.3% since Flight 3411, wiping out nearly $1 billion in market value, although several other airline stocks declined in the same period.After the market closed Monday, United reported a $96 million first-quarter profit, down 69% from a year earlier largely because of higher costs for fuel, labor and maintenance. The revenue picture was looking better — evidence was growing that after two years of falling average fares, United will be able to push prices higher this year.On a conference call to discuss those results, Munoz started by apologizing again for the 9 April scene on a United Express plane at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. David Dao, a 69-year-old Kentucky physician, was bloodied and dragged off the plane by Chicago airport officers who had been summoned by United employees when Dao wouldn’t give up his seat. The three officers have all been suspended.Munoz and other executives vowed to treat customers with dignity, and said that what happened to Dao will never happen again.Munoz’s early statements on the incident were widely criticized. He initially supported employees and blamed Dao, calling him “disruptive and belligerent.” On Tuesday, he was asked if the company ever considered firing anyone, including management.“I’m sure there was lots of conjecture about me personally,” said Munoz. He noted that the board of United Continental Holdings Inc. has supported him.“It was a system failure across various areas,” Munoz continued. “There was never a consideration for firing an employee.”Dao’s lawyers have taken steps that foreshadow a lawsuit against the airline and the city of Chicago, which operates O’Hare Airport.United announced two rule changes last week, including saying that it will no longer call police to remove passengers from overbooked planes. It is not clear whether United oversold Flight 3411, but the flight became overbooked when four Republic Airline employees showed up after passengers had boarded and demanded seats so they could commute to their next assignment, a United Express flight the next morning.Some politicians and consumer advocates have called for a ban on overselling flights. Munoz declined to address that or other possible changes until the airline finishes a review by 30 April.Even in normal times, airlines closely—even daily—scrutinize numbers such as advance sales and occupancy levels on planes. Yet United officials said they couldn’t measure whether the dragging has affected their business.“It’s really too early for us to tell anything about bookings and in particular last week because it was the week before Easter, that’s normally a very low booking period,” said United President Scott Kirby. He said that United’s forecast for the April-through-June quarter has not changed.Limited competition at many major airports could blunt any nascent boycott of United. Wall Street analysts have been mostly silent about the Dao incident, perhaps believing that it won’t have a noticeable impact on United profits. They did not ask United management any questions about it on Tuesday’s call.Barclays analyst Brandon Oglenski told Munoz that “accidents happen... hopefully, we can put this behind us.” Back in December, the analyst had called United Continental the “most compelling stock” in the airline sector. The consensus estimate of 17 analysts surveyed by FactSet for United’s full-year earnings has risen by 3 cents a share since the Dao incident.Munoz said he has received “a lot of support” from United’s high-end customers, although “obviously a lot of people have ideas and thoughts about how we can make things better.”",2017-04-19,CEO Oscar Munoz promises more details later this month after United finishes a review of its policies on overbooked flights,0.12,11:53,United CEO Oscar Munoz says no one will be fired for dragging incident +0,"
Mumbai: IT services firm Zensar Technologies said on Thursday that it has acquired US-based supply chain management firm Keystone Solutions for an undisclosed amount. Zensar will retain Keystone’s brand and team of around 220 people.Keystone Solutions, based in Atlanta, Georgia, in the US, offers solutions to digitally manage orders and warehousing for large retail firms. It “will augment Zensar’s existing retail management portfolio”, Zensar Technologies CEO Sandeep Kishore said in a phone interview. Retail brings in about one-fourth of Zensar’s total business, and with the Keystone acquisition, this will increase to 27%, Kishore said. Zensar reported revenues of Rs700.9 crore in the December quarter, up 4% from a year ago.Keystone’s revenue in 2016 was $12.7 million and its technology will be also used to provide back-end management to Zensar’s manufacturing clients who make up 50% of its business, added Kishore.This is Zensar’s second acquisition in five months. In November, the firm bought UK-based user design firm Foolproof for its front end user experience design. Analysts said that the acquisition will help make Zensar a complete digital retail solutions provider. “Retail business constitutes 25% of revenue for Zensar”, an analyst with a brokerage firm said, requesting anonymity. “Foolproof gave them the UX (user experience) design and digital commerce front end. Now with the Keystone acquisition, they have the technology piece for the back-end management. With this, they are present across the value chain of retail businesses.”Zensar has been on an acquisition and investment spree to reorient its business from a provider of traditional IT services to a firm focused on digital services.“Zensar has been focusing on investments in organic business growth”, the analyst said. “Under Sandeep Kishore, the company has been taking a more strategic view and investments. “Zensar Technologies’ stock rose 2.4% to Rs922.05 on BSE, on a day the Sensex gained 0.39% to 29,647.42 points.",2017-03-31,Zensar will retain Keystone’s brand and team of around 220 people,0.42,04:41,Zensar Technologies acquires retail tech firm Keystone Solutions +0,"New Delhi: Konoike Transport of Japan has formed a joint venture called Trac1 Logistics with India’s Associated Container Terminals Ltd to run private container trains in India. Konoike is the first Japanese company to enter the private container trains business in India. Associated Container chairman R.R. Joshi said the company is set up with an investment of around Rs100 crore, which will initially run four trains between Faridabad and Gujarat. Trac1 Logistics is the 17th firm licensed by Indian Railways to run private container trains.",2017-04-19,Konoike Transport formed a joint venture called Trac1 Logistics with Associated Container Terminals to run private container trains in India,0.0,00:21,"Japan’s Konoike Transport, Associated Container Terminals form JV" +0,"
India-focused Lighthouse Funds is readying to raise its third and largest private equity (PE) fund, a top executive said.“Following the success of our last two funds, we are looking to raise $200 million for our third fund,” said Mukund Krishnaswami, founding partner of Lighthouse.Set up by Krishnaswami and Sean Novak, Lighthouse typically invests in the range of $5-20 million per transaction in consumer-facing firms. The fund inducted Sachin Bhartiya as a partner in 2007.Lighthouse Funds currently has a corpus of approximately $235 million. The PE fund has raised two funds of $100 million and $135 million. It has invested in 17 companies since it raised its first fund in 2009.“From the first fund we have made 11 investments and exited six, and have made one partial exit in a company called XSEED Education. At the time of investment, XSEED, which developed specialized academic programmes for its member schools, had close to 50,000 students enrolled and will end this academic year with approximately 1.6 million students,” Krishnaswami said.In the past year, Lighthouse exited its 2010 investment in agro-chemicals formulation firm Dhanuka Agritech Ltd, and its investment in premium biscuit maker Unibic Foods, in which it sold its stake to Peepul Capital for an undisclosed sum.Early this year, Lighthouse also sold its stake in Kolkata-based diagnostic chain, Suraksha Diagnostics, the details of which weren’t made public.“We exited Suraksha at a range of exit multiples between 2.5x-7x on invested capital… Overall, Lighthouse has returned 1.7x of invested capital, with four assets still to exit,” Krishnaswami said.Lighthouse closed its second fund in 2015 at $135 million, receiving a $42 million investment commitment from the US government’s development finance institution Overseas Private Investment Corporation. From the second fund, Lighthouse has made six investments till date.In March, the PE fund picked up a stake in Delhi-based non-banking financial company Capital Trust Ltd. It invested in Indian ethnic apparel and home accessories brand Fabindia in the previous month.The fund’s other notable investments include leading snack foods firm Bikaji Foods International and personal care brand Kama Ayurveda.To help its portfolio firms scale up, the PE fund has created an operating executive council, comprising a team of industry veterans including Ravi Chaturvedi, a former global president of Procter and Gamble Co. He works directly with the companies in Lighthouse’s portfolio.According to the India private equity 2017 report by Bain India, capital-raising is expected to be top priority for funds in 2017. However, investors surveyed also believe that the fund-raising environment will get more challenging this year. “A majority of funds reported greater participation from LPs (limited partners) in the form of passive co-investment rights in their current portfolio. Funds expect LPs to play a more active role in 2017 and will likely offer more co-investment opportunities,” the report said.India continued to be an attractive destination for investments. Fund allocations to India in 2016 increased by 8% over the previous year. The PE firms in the country were sitting on a dry powder of $9 billion, which was similar to 2015, reaffirming the potential for investments in the Indian market.",2017-04-19,Lighthouse Funds currently has a corpus of approximately $235 million,0.25,05:18,"Lighthouse Funds plans $200 million third fund, its largest so far " +0,"New Delhi/Singapore: Want to buy a stake in an aircraft-carrier builder? How about a fighter-jet maker?India is about to start an $11 billion sale of government assets, including holdings in the shipyard and factories that supply India’s military, offering investors a share of some of the region’s more profitable manufacturers that are benefiting from soaring defence spending.India is the world’s largest arms importer and Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to change that while at the same time raising money to reduce the fiscal deficit. Among the biggest stakes to be sold are in Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., or HAL, which is trying to build a domestic fighter, and Cochin Shipyard Ltd., currently building India’s first home-made aircraft carrier. The shipbuilder has seen profit almost double in the last five years, while earnings at most big global shipyards have slumped.As India builds its status in the region, “it will find it even more essential that it becomes self-sufficient in designing and manufacturing high-tech weapon systems,” said Deepak Sinha, a consultant with the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation. Non-state investors can help make the arms-makers more efficient and focused, he said.Modi has pledged to spend $250 billion by 2025 on weapons and military equipment for a nation that has territorial disputes with Pakistan and China. India makes about 70% of its defence purchases abroad and has topped the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s list of the largest defence importers for the last seven years.Economic growth in Asia in the past decade is spurring countries like India, China and Indonesia to upgrade their armed forces in the face of geopolitical tensions. That’s pushed Asia-Pacific to the forefront of the growth in defence spending. The region’s military outlay rose 5.4% to around $436 billion in 2015, compared with a 1.7% increase in Europe and a drop across Africa and the Americas, according to SIPRI, although spending, as a percentage of GDP, has been in line with economic growth in these countries.India is also asking private equity funds to invest in profitable state-controlled companies such as helicopter maker Pawan Hans Ltd. and BEML Ltd., which makes military and mining vehicles and rail cars.Modi’s administration has budgeted for a 35% increase in earnings from asset sales in the current year, taking advantage of a stock market that just had its best three months since 2014. Modi has pledged to shrink Asia’s widest budget deficit to 3.2% of GDP in the year starting this month, from an estimated 3.5%.“The timing seems good as the market has started making new highs,” said Deepak Mohoni, founder of market strategy firm Trendwatch India Pvt., who coined the term “Sensex” for the Mumbai stock exchange index. “Funds will pick them up.”India has met or beaten its so-called annual disinvestment target only five times since 1998.India has traditionally relied on Russian weapons, with Sukhoi and MiG fighters forming the backbone of its air strike capability. It has recently moved towards buying defence equipment from the US. HAL has been developing the Tejas home-made fighter jet for more than three decades, but it has yet to produce a version that plays a major role in the air force. The aircraft carrier that Cochin Shipyard is building for the Indian Navy forms a “significant part” of the company’s current order book, according to regulatory filings. The nation’s only existing carrier in service is a former Soviet vessel that was decommissioned by the Russians in 1996 and refitted for India a decade later.Cochin Shipyard filed regulatory papers for an IPO last month. HAL would be ready by July or August, according to Chairman T Suvarna Raju. Finance ministry spokesman D.S. Malik declined to comment.India opened its defence manufacturing to private companies 15 years ago, but a lack of infrastructure for niche military manufacturing and a government preference for imported products mean the sector effectively remains a monopoly of state-run firms. Modi raised the cap on foreign ownership of defence contractors to 49%, from 26%, after he took power in 2014 with special dispensation for full ownership if the deal would bring India advanced military technology.“It’s long been the aim of successive Indian governments to raise a self-sufficient, globally competitive indigenous defence industry,” said Shashank Joshi, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. The increased cap on foreign stakes in private Indian defence firms should help bring the private and state-run Indian firms and foreign technology closer together, he said.The Indian government aims to raise another Rs47,000 crore selling stakes in companies in the year ending March 2019, and Rs40,000 crore the following year. Bloomberg",2017-04-19,"India is about to start an $11 billion sale of government assets, including holdings in the Cochin Shipyard and factories that supply India’s military",0.34,10:10,Cochin Shipyard leads sale of stakes in Indian arms spree +0,"
New Delhi: More Indians living in the US want a job back home after Donald Trump became the president of the world’s largest economy. The number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has gone up more than 10-fold between December and March, according to an analysis by consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Pvt. Ltd, shared exclusively with Mint .There were approximately 600 US-based Indians seeking jobs in India in December 2016. By the end of March 2017, the number had gone up to approximately 7,000, Deloitte analysis said.ALSO READ: Donald Trump orders review of H-1B visa norms, in deterrent to Indian IT companiesThis data comes amid a crackdown by the Trump administration on job visas for skilled workers, including software engineers from India. US Citizenship and Immigration Services said employers seeking H-1B work visas—a non-immigrant visa allowing American firms to employ foreign workers—for 2018 declined for the first time in five years.The surge in the number of applicants has been triggered by Trump’s vows to protect jobs for locals. A Bloomberg report on Tuesday said Trump will take aim at information technology outsourcing companies when he orders a review of H-1B visa programmes to favour more skilled and highly paid applicants. The report also cited companies such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. and Mphasis Corp. as examples of outsourcing firms that would likely have fewer visas approved once the changes are adopted. The H-1B work visa programme channels thousands of foreign workers to the US technology industry.“While US companies will find some tech talent in the US, the numbers might be less than what are required to meet their needs. Add to that, the wages they need to pay to US employees will be much higher than what they pay to H-1B visa holders,” said C.K. Guruprasad, a consultant with executive search firm Spencer Stuart.On Tuesday, Australia abolished the 457 visa programme used by over 95,000 temporary foreign workers, the majority of them Indians, to tackle unemployment.Experts see global in-house centres (GICs) as a viable option for companies to not only retain Indian talent but also address the anticipated shortage in the required volume of workers in the US.According to Parag Saigaonkar, Principal at consulting firm Deloitte in India, while the initial thrust of GICs was on moving job roles from a high-cost to low-cost centre to get a competitive edge, companies are now looking at non-linear values that GICs can add to the business—new things that Indian GICs can produce—and supporting the parent organization.“With the seemingly shifting dynamics towards options between outsourcing and local hiring, companies with GICs in India could move Indian talent from the US to India and also hire locals into the GICs and thus sidestep the restrictions of outsourcing to third party companies,” Guruprasad said.According to K.S.Viswanathan, vice-president for industry initiatives at lobby group Nasscom, while the purpose of GICs so far has revolved around cost and skills arbitration advantages and talent consideration, it is now expected to change.“We are seeing a lot of companies looking at building newer competencies around newer technologies like machine learning, AI, automation, UI/UX, product management, DevOps etc,” said Anand Subramaniam, engagement manager and delivery head (GIC Accelerator Platform), Zinnov, a consulting firm.On an average, GICs add 50,000 to 70,000 people in India every year and due to the volume requirements, this number is expected to go up, according to Nasscom. According to the lobby group, there are over 1,000 GICs in India. Of these, around 67% of them are of US origin. Around 65% of the total workforce of 750,000 employed by these GICs are for US origin companies.",2017-04-19,The number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has surged 10-fold since December as Donald Trump moved to tighten US visa policy,-0.17,11:07,"As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come back" +0,"Mumbai: Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd on Tuesday said it has combined the sales and marketing functions of the automotive division, re-designating Veejay Nakra as the senior vice-president sales and marketing, with effect from 1 May 2017. Nakra will take over from Vivek Nayer, who has now moved to a strategic role at the group level within the organisation. The move is aimed at reducing complexity and simplifying the organisational structure. “The long term strategy for our automotive sector is one of simplicity,” said Rajan Wadhera, president – Automotive Sector at the firm. This is a process under which Mahindra will strive to provide best products and services while keeping the systems and processes simple and lucid. A mechanical engineer and an MBA in marketing, Nakra started his career with Mahindra in 1994. Over the decades, he has held a range of positions in sales and customer care, corporate planning, project development, new product implementation and establishing and heading businesses in new geographies. With marketing added to his portfolio Nakra would also be responsible for planning Mahindra’s future product pipeline, gathering consumer insights and creating and managing the portfolio of both personal and commercial brands.",2017-04-18,"Mahindra & Mahindra re-designates Veejay Nakra as the senior vice president sales and marketing, with effect from 1 May 2017 ",0.22,19:37,Mahindra consolidates sales and marketing functions +0,"Mumbai: Improved profitability is likely to lower the funding of corporate dividends by external borrowings. According to an India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) report released on Tuesday, the debt component of dividend funding is likely to reduce to around Rs5,800 crore each year during fiscal 2017-18 from an average of Rs9,000 crore in 2014-16. The rating agency said that debt-funded dividends (DFDs) as a proportion of the total dividends paid between 2017-18 may reduce to 13% from an average of 22% in 2010-16. “This is under the assumption that debt reduction remains minimal and continues to get refinanced,” the report said. ALSO READ: Geopolitical tension weighs on markets, earnings keyHowever, Ind-Ra added that DFDs in auto, telecom, infrastructure, power and real estate sectors is estimated to increase to 77% by 2018 from 42% during 2010-16. Improved profitability of the metals and mining sector may lead to a significant decline in DFDs to 1.4% by fiscal 2018 from 44% in 2016.",2017-04-18,"The debt component of corporate dividend funding is likely to fall to around Rs5,800 crore each year during fiscal 2017-18 from an average of Rs9,000 crore in 2014-16, said India Ratings report",-0.03,20:27,Funding of corporate dividends by external borrowings may fall in FY17: India Ratings +0,"New Delhi: Over 2,000 fresh accounts were opened in a Bareilly branch of State Bank of India (SBI) post- demonetisation till 31 December to allegedly channelise black money in which at least Rs8 crore were deposited in old notes, a CBI probe has found. The CBI has now registered an FIR against unknown bank officials and unknown persons for criminal conspiracy, cheating and corruption. Based on source information, the CBI had carried out a surprise check in the Civil Lines branch of SBI in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly on 2 January. During the operation, the CBI detected that a huge amount of cash was deposited in the bank after 8 November last year, when the notes ban was announced, in newly-opened accounts and the dormant accounts which had been activated. Also Read: Large banksThe CBI had found that 2,441 new accounts were opened by bank officials between 8 November and 31 December. Out of these accounts, 667 were savings accounts, 53 were current, 94 were Jan Dhan accounts, 50 PPF, 1,518 FD, 13 festival accounts, two senior citizen accounts and one government account.The probe found that there were 794 instances at the bank when cash of over Rs1 lakh and more was deposited. In certain cases huge cash deposits were also made but the sources refused to disclose the amount. These accounts were opened by bank officials allegedly in connivance with private persons which enabled deposits of huge cash and currency conversion without keeping proper records.“It is observed that 267 dormant accounts have been activated after declaration of demonetisation by the bank officials in connivance with private persons in order to facilitate the deposit of old currency notes,” the FIR said. It said in order to cover up the alleged misdeeds of the officials, complete teller reports, details of receipt of old currency notes and its exchange with new currency notes was not maintained by them, though it was the responsibility of the concerned branch to maintain the teller reports. The CBI alleged that vault register and other records maintained by cash department of the branch containing details of inward and outward movement of notes was made “casually” and a lot of alterations were made in a number of pages. “By the acts of commission and omission, the bank officials in connivance with private persons have conspired to defeat the purpose of demonetisation and facilitated exchange of black money and deposit of bank accounts without maintaining proper records,” it alleged.",2017-04-09,"Out of these SBI accounts, 667 were savings accounts, 53 were current, 94 were Jan Dhan accounts, 50 PPF, 1,518 FD, 13 festival accounts, two senior citizen accounts and one government account",0.13,13:44,"SBI branch opened 2,000 accounts to channelise black money" +0,"
Motilal Oswal Real Estate, the real estate-focused investment arm of Motilal Oswal Private Equity Advisors Pvt. Ltd, plans to invest around Rs800 crore this fiscal year and will raise a new fund once it closes the current one, said a top executive. The firm is currently raising capital for India Realty Excellence Fund III (IREF-III), a Rs1,250 crore fund, of which it has raised Rs940 crore so far, and plans to close it in the next three months or so, after some delay caused by demonetization last November. Motilal Oswal has so far deployed Rs450 crore from the money it has raised, far below the Rs600-700 crore it had planned to invest last year. “Fundraising was impacted by demonetization temporarily and took longer than we anticipated but it is back to normal now,” said Sharad Mittal, director and head, real estate investment, Motilal Oswal Real Estate.IREF-III is a residential-focused fund that also selectively invests in commercial office projects, in deals that are typically in the Rs80-100 crore range. It undertakes structured equity and mezzanine investments and focuses on mid-income residential projects with some amount of approval certainty. Mittal said investments slowed during the November-January period because most developers did not want to launch or undertake new projects, and there was no early-stage money to give. Plans are on to launch a fund later this year, once the current fund is fully deployed. The new fund will be larger—around Rs1,500 crore in size—and will do structured equity deals.From the current fund, Motilal Oswal has invested Rs90 crore across three commercial office projects of Phoenix Infratech Pvt. Ltd in Hyderabad, Rs130 crore in Mumbai-based Rajesh Lifespaces’ residential project and around Rs90 crore in ATS Infrastructure Ltd’s residential and office projects in Noida, among others.“It is getting difficult to underwrite deals in Mumbai from the cost structure perspective. We like investing in the price bracket of Rs4,000-6,000 a sq. ft in tier I cities, except Mumbai where we look at around Rs14,000 a sq. ft for decent margins and good demand. Investing in NCR (National Capital Region) is a big challenge, where finding good developer partners is tough,” Mittal said. Going forward, it plans to do more deals in Hyderabad and strike deals with existing partners and add a few new partners. Four years into the slowdown, real estate funds that invest in residential projects have slowed investments as property prices remain stagnant, sales tepid and the same set of projects come up for multiple rounds of refinancing.“Demonetization caused a short-term blip but both fundraising and deployment of capital have been challenging for real estate funds for a while now. While fundraising has slowed down considerably due to uncertainty in the property market here, deployment has also been a challenge due to the lack of good quality deals, weak project cash flows and stretched balance sheets of developers,” said Rajeev Bairathi, executive director and head of capital markets, Knight Frank India.",2017-04-19,"Motilal Oswal Real Estate is currently raising capital for IREF-III, a Rs1,250 crore fund",0.2,00:15,Motilal Oswal Real Estate to invest Rs800 crore in current fiscal +0,"New Delhi: Tata Housing on Tuesday announced plans to expand to the African property market and will invest Rs1,000 crore to develop two projects in Kenya and Tanzania. The real estate arm of the Tata group plans to raise $200 million through private equity to fund the overseas operations. It recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Housing Bank and a private real estate firm to develop more than 4.5 million square feet of mixed use townships in Kenya and Tanzania. The two mixed use development projects are expected to be launched by January 2018 in a price range of $75,000 – 1,00,000 per unit, catering to the mid-income segment. “The investment in both projects is expected to be more than Rs1,000 crores across both the phases over the next 3-4 years,” the company said in a statement. “Our early success in Sri Lanka and the Maldives gave us the impetus to further expand our international footprint. Starting with Kenya and Tanzania, we will cater to the mid-income segments and fulfil their demand for superior quality housing,” said Tata Housing MD & CEO Brotin Banerjee. With 60% of the urban population living in informal housing, there is consistent growth in demand for housing across both Kenya and Tanzania. Tata Housing has recently handed over the government housing project to the government of Maldives and launched two high-end projects at Odeon and Nadhee in the capital city, Male.",2017-04-18,Tata Housing plans to raise $200 million through private equity to fund the overseas operations in Kenya and Tanzania,0.23,21:04,"Tata Housing to invest Rs1,000 crore on projects in Africa" +0,"New Delhi: No deadline has been set for introduction of Sharia or interest-free banking in India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said. Islamic or Sharia banking is a finance system based on the principles of not charging interest, which is prohibited under Islam. The RBI had earlier proposed opening of “Islamic window” in conventional banks for gradual introduction of Sharia-compliant banking. Responding to an RTI application, the RBI said it has not taken any step to introduce Islamic window in banks for gradual introduction of Sharia-compliant interest-free banking in India. “RBI has not set any deadline for introduction of interest-free banking,” the central bank said in response to the RTI query filed by PTI. However, on the instruction of the central government, an inter-departmental group (IDG) set up in RBI has examined the legal, technical and regulatory issues for introducing interest-free banking in India and has submitted its report to the government, it said. The RBI had in February last year sent a copy of the IDG to the finance ministry.“In our considered opinion, given the complexities of Islamic finance and various regulatory and supervisory challenges involved in the matter and also due to the fact that Indian banks have no experience in this field, Islamic banking may be introduced in India in a gradual manner,” the central bank had told the ministry in a letter. In late 2008, a committee on Financial Sector Reforms, headed by former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, had stressed on the need for a closer look at the issue of interest-free banking in the country. “Certain faiths prohibit the use of financial instruments that pay interest. The non-availability of interest-free banking products results in some Indians, including those in the economically disadvantaged strata of society, not being able to access banking products and services due to reasons of faith,” the committee had said. PTI",2017-04-09,The RBI said it has not taken any step to introduce Islamic window in banks for gradual introduction of Sharia-compliant interest-free banking in India,-0.51,10:08,No deadline for introduction of Sharia banking in India: RBI +0,"
Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday released a discussion paper seeking comments on a new category of banks—wholesale and long-term finance banks that will fund large projects. The regulator has been trying to bring in new types of lenders into the banking system in an effort to introduce new ideas and develop niches to ensure that more segments are covered. In 2015, RBI allowed 11 payments banks and 10 small-finance banks.According to the discussion paper, these wholesale and long-term finance banks will focus primarily on lending to the infrastructure sector and small, medium and corporate businesses. They will also securitize assets for banks and financial institutions which do priority-sector lending. RBI’s proposal comes at the time when the banking sector is saddled with stressed assets worth Rs7 trillion, overall credit growth is languishing at around 4.5% and bank credit to industry is shrinking at a rate of 5% year-on-year. “Due to asset quality impacts on banks’ balance sheets, there is an overall declining trend in bank credit, primarily towards services sector, industrial segments, and small and medium enterprises,” the paper said.The paper said loans to the infrastructure sector, at the end of the December quarter in FY15, accounted for 13% of non-performing assets in the banking sector. “The concept of differentiated banking is very welcome. However, to put small and medium enterprises and infrastructure portfolios together, perhaps, is not a bright idea,” said Ashvin Parekh, managing partner, Ashvin Parekh Advisory Services Llp. “The existing and established universal banks may not necessarily take the reform with excitement. They are presently evolving approaches to ensure payment banks do not run away with their fee income or customer base,” he added.Since wholesale and long-term finance banks will not acquire savings deposits, they will focus on corporate bonds, credit derivatives, warehouse receipts and take-out financing, as sources of funds, the paper said. They may also offer services related to equity or debt investments, and foreign exchange trade finance to their clients, similar in nature to investment banks. Term deposits above Rs10 crore might be considered for these banks with restrictions on premature withdrawals, the paper said.Since these banks will have large credit exposure, a minimum equity capital of Rs1,000 crore might be required, according to the discussion paper.For universal banks, the minimum equity capital stands at Rs500 crore while for differentiated banks such as payments banks and small finance banks, it is Rs100 crore.The regulator has asked for comments to be sent in by 19 May.",2017-04-07,RBI has released a discussion paper on a proposal to set up ‘differentiated banks’ in the form of wholesale and long-term finance banks to fund large projects,0.24,23:07,"RBI paper seeks views on wholesale, long-term finance banks" +0,"Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has strongly defended its monetary policy committee’s (MPC) unanimous voting record by arguing that this was the norm across many countries. One constant criticism that the MPC has had to face was that all members were reading from the same page and there was no dissenting voice. Thursday’s monetary policy review was the fourth under the new framework where rate decisions are decided by a committee; it was also the fourth straight instance of unanimous voting.That, critics said, defeated the reason why India moved to the MPC framework in the first place: to encourage diverse views and debates over the setting of policy rates through a voting structure. Even the minutes of the MPC members are mere statements justifying their position, revealing very little about the debate that could have taken place. While the minutes of the April meeting are awaited, a look at the last MPC meeting held in February shows that two out of six members did not share their view on the change in RBI’s stance from being accommodative to neutral.However, RBI believes that it might be too early for such criticism. In the Monetary Policy Report, the bi-annual in-depth study of inflation and growth by RBI, the central bank said that rate committees in the UK, Sweden, Thailand, Czech Republic and Hungary have seen full consensus decisions between October 2016 and February 2017.However, others such as US Federal Reserve Open market Committee (FOMC) and Bank of England’s MPC have seen many differences while setting policy. But these differences were over the size of the change in policy rate and not the overarching policy stance, said the report.According to the RBI, typically divergences stem from MPC members’ policy preferences—the relative weight on price stability and output stabilization and also their assessment of expected economic conditions, and the evolution of inflation and output gaps.Going by this trend, one could argue that RBI is simply trying to align itself with global central banking standards which follow “material differences in views but marginal differences in votes”.This is not the first time that the RBI has compared its MPC functioning with other similar panels around the world. In October 2016, RBI had done a survey of 15 countries on the number of MPC meetings and the press conferences that usually follow these meetings, explaining the rationale behind the decision.“A survey of country practices suggests a central tendency among major central banks to hold four press conferences a year, although the number of MPC meetings may be higher,” the statement had said.",2017-04-08,RBI strongly defends monetary policy committee’s unanimous voting record by arguing that this was the norm across many countries,-0.25,01:04,RBI defends monetary policy committee’s unanimous voting record +0,"New Delhi: A parliamentary panel has asked the labour ministry to conduct special inspection or audit of private Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) trusts that have been found to be investing their workers’ retirement savings in own firms through mutual funds. The private trusts, regulated by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organization (EPFO), maintain Provident Fund (PF) accounts and retirement savings and are required to invest these funds as per the investment pattern approved by the government. These trusts are called exempted establishments because they do not deposit EPF contributions of their employees with the EPFO. “Investing in own business is improper and is being done to serve their own interest,” the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour said in its report tabled in Parliament on 7 April . The panel further said, “There is need to have special inspection or audit of all such companies and the EPFO should take early action on the requisite process for restricting investment through this route and take immediate corrective steps and re-divert such investments in other... instruments.” It further observed: “From the list of 317 such firms, on whose board of trustees surcharge was levied (for deviating from the investment pattern), most of the establishments were closed against which the cancellation orders were issued... such futile exercise needs to be tackled with regular physical inspection.” As per the EPF scheme, the violation of not sticking to the investment template is only limited to three instances, and beyond that, the exemption granted to the firm can be cancelled. The panel suggested that the exemption given to these private EPF trusts should be reviewed after a prescribed period so that the EPFO is aware of the exact financial status of the firms, which will help in protecting the interest of employees. Also Read: Govt may hike salary threshold to Rs21,000 for mandatory PF coverageIt also suggested that it should be made mandatory to check the demat account of these trusts to verify the pattern of investments as well as the returns received by these trusts during the compliance audit. The panel noted that as on December 31, 2016, the total corpus of these trusts was around Rs2.57 lakh crore, including the unclaimed EPF amount of Rs5,475 crore. It also called for a suitable amendment in the scheme without delay so that not just the name of the worker for whom unclaimed amount is available gets reflected in the annual account statement of the PF fund, but the funds get transferred to the EPFO after a specified period. It also asked the ministry to explore the possibility of depositing the unclaimed amount so revived in the special reserve fund (SRF).",2017-04-09,"The private trusts, regulated by the EPFO, maintain Provident Fund accounts and retirement savings and are required to invest these funds as per the investment pattern approved by the government",1.0,12:29,Conduct special audit of PF trusts: parliamentary panel to labour ministry +0,"New Delhi: Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), the welfare scheme brought by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government akin to the previous regime’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, promising energy security to the poor, has covered more than 2 crore households within 11 months of launch. The scheme, which offers liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) connections to women below poverty line without upfront charges, exceeded its target for the 2016-17 fiscal of 1.5 crore connections in eight months since its launch last May and is gathering pace as access to clean energy has been set as a priority in the hydrocarbon sector.The budget for the scheme was revised to Rs2,500 crore for the first year, up from Rs2,000 crore earmarked originally.The scheme aimed at giving rural folks relief from smoke in the kitchen and the ailments it brings, bolstered Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) pro-poor pitch in the recent assembly polls including in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state accounting for about 30% of the Ujjwala beneficiaries.BJP created history by winning 312 of the 403 assembly seats in UP, while the Samajwadi Party (SP) was reduced to just 47 seats. SP leaders concede that the Ujjwala scheme may have had a part to play in BJP’s victory.“Even though the SP government had also launched many welfare schemes like the Samajwadi Pension Yojana, the Ujjwala Yojana resonated well with people as the Central government was quick in distributing cylinders to the beneficiaries and the people had the product in front of them in no time,” said an SP leader from Lucknow, on the condition of anonymity.Besides UP, the other major beneficiaries include Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar. Priority is given to states where LPG penetration is below the national average of 61% of households.An oil ministry statement said that in FY17, three fuel retailers Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd have issued a total 3.25 crore new connections, the highest number of connections given in any year ever, including the connections under the Ujjwala scheme.As a result, LPG coverage in the country has jumped to 72.8% with 19.88 crore active consumers as on 1 April. Universalization of clean cooking fuel is being supported by oil companies by setting up more LPG production and bottling units, transportation facilities and recruiting more dealers across the country.“Our first year target for the scheme launched last May was 1.5 crore, which we managed to achieve by December. It is a phenomenal social transformation programme. By providing access to clean energy, we are also preventing people from using firewood which pollutes the air and leads to ailments. It also frees up time for women, a part of which could be used for productive purposes like starting a cottage industry,” said B. Ashok, chairman, IOC, the largest refiner. Expanding LPG use and the government’s rural lighting programme also help in reducing the requirement of kerosene, a part of the supply of which through state-level public distribution channel is believed to be diverted for adulteration of diesel.",2017-04-04,The Ujjwala scheme exceeded its target for the 2016-17 fiscal of 1.5 crore connections in eight months since its launch last May,0.25,23:44,"Ujjwala scheme exceeds target, covers over 2 crore households in first year " +0,"Mumbai: Payment delays by distribution companies (discoms) to wind and solar projects in India is hurting project costs for companies and posing a challenge to the sector’s growth plans, Mercom Capital Group said in a report on Tuesday.Payment delays by discoms to these projects is hurting their liquidity and payment to lenders. Discoms in Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Jharkhand have so far found it difficult to pay renewable energy producers on time due to their own weak financial health, according to the report.Discoms in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have delayed payments to generators of wind and solar power by as much as 8-10 months, putting their cash flows under tremendous pressure and sending negative signals for developers and investors, Mint had reported in October 2016. Tariffs, both in wind and solar, have come down significantly in the past year. Average solar tariffs in India have fallen by about 73% since 2010, almost in line with Chinese spot module prices.In February, solar tariffs fell to a record low of a levelized tariff (the value financially equivalent to different annual tariffs over the period of the power purchase agreement) of Rs3.30 per unit in a reverse auction at the Rewa solar park. Similarly, wind tariffs fell to Rs3.46 a unit in a recent auction held by the Solar Energy Corp. of India.“With these extremely low tariffs, developers are looking at best-case scenarios with margins for error nearly non-existent. Payment delays are adding to project costs as banks charge higher interest rates due to projects being built in high-risk states known for payment issues, stymying investment into the sector,” the report said.Payment issues persist in some states despite progress of the government’s Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY) scheme, where 25 states and one Union territory have joined the program, the report said.Of the Rs488 billion discom debt, about Rs239 billion loan amount was repaid till the third quarter of FY17 under the UDAY scheme and another Rs90 billion was repaid by Tamil Nadu recently—resulting in 65% of discom debt being repaid, Edelweiss Securities analysts Kunal Shah, Nilesh Parikh and Prakhar Agarwal wrote in a 30 March report.",2017-04-04,"Payment delays by discoms to wind and solar projects is hurting their liquidity and payment to lenders, says Mercom Capital report",-0.71,12:41,Payment delays pose risk to wind and solar projects: Mercom Capital report +0,"
The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) monetary policy committee (MPC) on Thursday decided to raise the reverse repo rate, at which it drains excess liquidity from the banking system, by 25 basis points, reflecting its steadfast pursuit of inflation management.The unanimous decision by the six-member committee to raise the rate to 6% is largely to ensure that banking system liquidity is consistent with the neutral monetary policy stance RBI adopted in February. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.RBI reiterated that it would use the many tools at its disposal, such as cash management bills and market stabilization bonds, to ensure that liquidity is brought close to a neutral (neither surplus nor deficit) level. It also said another tool, the so-called Standing Deposit Facility, under which banks can park their funds with RBI without receiving bonds as a collateral, was being examined by the government. Average surplus liquidity in the banking system was Rs4.4 trillion in March as the invalidation of high-value currency notes in November led to a flood of deposits, prompting economists to express concern that this would fuel inflation in the days ahead.“When it comes to inflation, the MPC is choosing to be conservative,” said Gaurav Kapur, chief economist at IndusInd Bank. “It has reiterated 4% inflation in the medium term as a core objective. Raising the reverse repo rate is a step towards ensuring that the liquidity management is in line with the neutral stance.”While the committee noted that risks to inflation are “evenly balanced” currently, it also listed several threats. The main upside risks come from the uncertainty surrounding the monsoon, the implementation of the house rent allowance component of the seventh pay commission award and one-off effects from the goods and services tax. “The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers,” said the monetary policy statement. Wholesale inflation soared to a 39-month high of 6.55% while retail inflation too inched up to 3.65% in February, signalling that inflation continues to be a concern for the regulator. Many economists expect no further rate cuts this financial year. “The policy has highlighted the upside risks to inflation despite the fact that global risks have subsided. This means the central bank is keeping a close watch on domestic risks. We are therefore looking at a prolonged pause before any action is taken this year,” said Upasna Bhardwaj, senior economist at Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. In a separate report , RBI’s staff economists have projected 4.9% consumer price inflation in the quarter ending March 2018 and 4.6% in the three months ending March 2019, both higher than its medium-term target. Two other facts highlight this risk. One, household inflation expectations continue to rise. The March round of RBI’s survey of urban households showed an increase of 20-50 basis points in inflation expectations over the December round, when they had declined. Two, the central bank has projected gross value added growth of 7.4% for the current financial year and 8.1% for fiscal 2018-19. “The output gap (the gap between potential output and what the economy is actually producing) is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory,” the policy statement said. What does this mean for lending rates? RBI has kept the repo rate, at which it infuses liquidity into the banking system, unchanged, while it has reduced the marginal standing facility rate (at which banks borrow from RBI beyond what is allowed under the repo window) by 25 basis points to 6.5%. “Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates,” the statement said.",2017-04-07,"RBI’s monetary policy committee raised the reverse repo rate to 6%, largely to ensure that banking system liquidity is consistent with the neutral stance adopted in February",-0.0,02:27,RBI targets excess liquidity in continuing focus on inflation +0,"Mumbai: GMR Infrastructure Ltd on Monday said its unit GMR Energy Ltd has tied up with Malaysia’s TNB Repair and Maintenance Sdn Bhd (TNB Remaco) to set up an operations and maintenance (O&M) joint venture for the power sector.TNB Remaco, a specialist in power plant repair and maintenance, is a unit of Malaysia’s largest electricity utility Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB). GMR Energy had in May 2016 agreed to sell a 30% stake in its “select portfolio” of assets to Tenaga Nasional Bhd for $300 million (around Rs2,000 crore). The O&M JV between GMR Energy and TNB Remaco will provide operation and maintenance services, performance improvement services, testing and diagnostic services, repair and refurbishment services for power plants in India, GMR Infrastructure said in a statement.The JV plans to set up a refurbishment facility in India in what is TNB Remaco’s first investment outside Malaysia.GMR Energy and TNB Remaco will “identify business opportunities in the high-potential Indian market and provide operation and maintenance services to the power plants,” the statement said.Tenaga Nasional, one of the largest power companies in Southeast Asia, has a presence across the power generation, transmission and distribution segments. It has a total installed power capacity of 10,818 megawatts (MW) and controls 50% of the Malaysian grid’s generation capacity.GMR Energy has power capacity of over 4,600MW across coal, gas and renewable energy-based projects.“This (venture) would provide a renewed impetus to our energy portfolio and strengthen our relationship with our strategic foreign partner Tenaga Nasional Bhd,” G.B.S. Raju, chairman, GMR Energy said in a statement.",2017-04-03,"The JV between GMR Energy and TNB Remaco will provide operation and maintenance services, testing and diagnostic services among others for power plants in India",0.65,20:08,GMR Energy forms JV with investor TNB Remaco +0,"Doha: Qatar Petroleum plans to start a new development in the offshore North Field, ending a 12-year ban on new projects that allowed the company to assess how its current rate of extraction affects the giant reservoir it shares with Iran.The patch, in the southern section of the field, will have a capacity of 2 billion cubic feet per day, or 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent, and should start production in five to seven years, chief executive officer Saad Sherida Al Kaabi told reporters Monday at Qatar Petroleum’s headquarters in Doha.Boosting natural gas production at home and searching for similar assets abroad signals Qatar Petroleum’s confidence in the longevity of gas demand, and its ability to remain a low-cost supplier in a market that has slumped amid a glut driven by output from US shale and Australia. “Global demand for gas is expected to rise,” Al Kaabi said. “There are no analysts who can say when demand for gas will wane. For oil, there are people who see peak demand in 2030, others in 2042, but for gas, demand is constantly growing.”Qatar Petroleum’s decision is a sign that it wants to increase its LNG market share, Giles Farrer, research director, global LNG, at Wood Mackenzie Ltd, said in an email. It’s “also a threat to other developers of new capacity worldwide, as Qatar can add new capacity at a lower cost than anybody else.”The North Field, and the connected South Pars in Iran, is the world’s biggest reservoir of non-associated gas. Qatar Petroleum was quicker to exploit it, becoming the world’s top exporter of liquefied natural gas and, thanks to a boost in condensate output, the fourth biggest energy company in terms of oil and gas production. Iran is catching up, extracting gas from its portion mainly for domestic consumption and to re-inject into oil fields to boost crude production.By ending the moratorium and earmarking new volumes for exports, QP is giving itself the fuel necessary to reclaim the top spot among LNG exporters it will relinquish to Australia in 2019, if it wants it. Al Kaabi said the company hasn’t decided if exports will be in the form of LNG, or other products. If it goes for the super-chilled fuel, the new production can be converted to 15.3 million tonnes of LNG a year. Qatar currently produces about 77 million tonnes annually.“We will remain the dominant force for LNG in the world for a very long time, and this basically solidifies that position,” Al Kaabi said. Bloomberg",2017-04-03,"Qatar Petroleum’s project in North Field will have a capacity of 2 billion cubic feet per day, or 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent, and should start production in five to seven years",0.28,20:50,Qatar to drill in biggest gas field after 12-year freeze +0,"New Delhi: India will power close to 900 remote villages in Arunachal Pradesh bordering China using advanced off-grid renewable energy kits that will bring electricity to about 16,000 households, power minister Piyush Goyal said here. The government will later this week invite price bids from companies for the project which also involves installing more than 4,000 off-grid street lights. The falling cost of renewable energy makes this a better power supply option in far flung areas than laying transmission lines for grid connected power which could be time consuming. Energy efficient bulbs, fans and battery back up for eight hours are part of the package. Small off-grid solar power systems for individual consumers and micro-grids supplying solar power with a few commercial enterprises as anchor customers are gaining currency as the preferred way of lighting remote villages in India. This complements the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojna, a village electrification programme announced by Prime Minister Modi for powering 18,452 villages by 1 May 2018. So far, 13,002 villages have been electrified under this scheme since its launch in 2015. The adoption of off-grid power supply systems is improving as many private project developers get low cost international finance for tapping the rising rural power demand in India. The power minister said that the central government will make sure that state distribution utilities comply with their obligation to meet a part of the power demand with renewable energy. One way could be to disallow defaulting utilities from buying power from exchanges, said the minister.Goyal said the central government will seek to bring more transparency in the electricity sector by creating a national power portal which will have links to all the existing applications giving realtime data in the power sector. Besides, states will be urged to disclose the merit order of their power purchase--the ranking of various power sources available at a particular time and the energy cost--to bring more transparency in how states procure power starting with the lowest cost supply. “We will urge states at the next power ministers’ conference to disclose details of the merit order, the power they purchase and the price, in the proposed portal,” said Goyal.",2017-04-04,"Government to power close to 900 remote villages in Arunachal Pradesh using advanced off-grid renewable energy kits that will bring electricity to about 16,000 households",0.48,00:54,Solar power to light up remote Arunachal Pradesh villages +0,"London: Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp. and venture capitalists at Allotrope Partners set up a facility to finance energy access projects in Indonesia, India and East Africa.The Microgrid Investment Accelerator, or MIA, will seek to mobilize $50 million from 2018 to 2020, according to an emailed statement. It will tap grants and loans from foundations and development banks to attract private capital into projects that help to transmit renewable energy over small electricity networks.“MIA will test the commercial opportunity for microgrids and demonstrate how concessionary finance can unlock progressively larger proportions of private capital as risks are discovered, priced, and mitigated,” chief executive officer Alexia Kelly said.A microgrid is a miniature power system that operates independently of a national grid. The International Energy Agency estimates that more than 1.2 billion people don’t have access to electricity, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia. As renewable energy technologies such as solar panels become cheaper, microgrids have emerged as an option to more people.Helping provide energy access is a method to tie corporate social responsibility together with business development at companies peddling electronic services and devices. Providing power to people off the grid could eventually open up large new markets for computers and social networks.MIA has signed up more than a dozen implementing partners and observers. It will start to request plans for pilot projects from in the third quarter this year and expects to begin disbursing funds in 2018.“The Microgrid Investment Accelerator will not only be a powerful tool in driving much-needed capital into projects, but will also help to bring down costs, build a stronger ecosystem, and catalyze innovation,” said Microsoft’s Kevin Connolly, the director of energy affordable energy access initiatives at the software company. Bloomberg",2017-04-04,"Facebook, Microsoft and venture capitalists at Allotrope Partners set up the Microgrid Investment Accelerator which will seek to mobilize $50 million from 2018 to 2020",0.84,09:03,"Facebook, Microsoft helping to finance clean power microgrids" +0,"New Delhi: Replacing the traditional way of making payments through plastic cards with a unique digital identifier for processing mobile and online payments could go a long way in protecting digital transactions, T.R. Ramachandran, group country manager, Visa India, and South Asia, said in an interview. Edited excerpts: What is the Visa Token Service (VTS)?Visa token service is the underlying foundation for most of the new stuff that is going to happen in the payments space. It will be as important as the magnetic stripe was 25 years ago or chip technology was 10 years ago. It effectively converts your 16 digit personal account number (PAN) into a digital token. So when something is being transmitted, the PAN credentials are not transmitted but a digital token that is native to your device.This will protect data but more importantly it will devalue the data. Even if the information falls into the wrong hands, it will be useless as you cannot decrypt it.Will this help in preventing the recent data breaches that the Indian banking system saw?It will go a long way in avoiding that. The beauty is that it can be hacked but what will you get when you hack it? It devalues the entire data.It strengthens and augments the security layer especially when customers’ credentials pass from one form factor to another or when they use more than one device.Most of the devices are going to be connected devices in the world. The fundamental foundation for all these connected devices to have invisible convenient payments will be something like VTS. It is safer than the magnetic stripes.How do you see this technology growing vis a vis cards?In a country like India, both will grow hand in hand.Everyone has a payment credential. The challenge is how to make it ubiquitous---increasing the acceptance points and how do you make sure that it is being used in non-discretionary categories.In India, digital penetration among discretionary categories is pretty high. Whether it is restaurant or hotel bills, shopping or movies, air and train bookings, it is about 50-60% digitized. But when you talk about non-discretionary spending---buying rice and atta (flour), (paying) dentist bills, chemists or transport (except rail), digital spends are still less than 10%.So any form factor that allows this share to increase to 20-30%, they will all coexist for some time. Then the market will settle and then probably it will become completely mobile or something else happens. We don’t know what will happen.Samsung Pay is the first in the country to use this technology, what next?It can be used anywhere related to mobile payments. For example, in the US, each bank has their HCE or Host Card Emulation wallet which is like Samsung Pay but is used by them to store only their card details and make payments, most of this ride on VTS. In the US, Apple Pay also rides on VTS. India’s acceptance infrastructure is still not ready for digital payments, do you agree?Yes, absolutely. I think India needs a lot more digital acceptance points but I would say that we have seen arguably more progress in the last five months than in the last five years put together. The number of terminals in the market was around 1.6 million till 7 November 2016 and from 8 November (the date of demonetisation) to March, there has been around 800,000 new terminals installed and by June there will be a million more.",2017-03-23,Visa India boss T.R. Ramachandran says the visa token service is the underlying foundation for most of the new stuff going to happen in the digital payments space,0.63,06:27,Visa token service will protect and devalue data: T.R. Ramachandran +0,"New Delhi: India is the 12th country where Samsung launched its digital payment solution Samsung Pay on Wednesday. The launch is expected to give Samsung the first-mover advantage in the world’s second-largest smartphone market where the South Korean handset maker has been the leader for quite a few years. ALSO READ | What is Samsung Pay?Asim Warsi, senior vice president (mobile business), Samsung India Electronics Pvt. Ltd, spoke about the handset maker’s latest bet, and how the Indian unit worked for about a year to customise Samsung Pay for the Indian market by including transactions through debit cards and mobile wallets for the first time. Edited excerpts:Samsung Pay was first launched in Korea in July 2015. Despite India being one of the key markets for Samsung, why did you not launch it earlier?In the last few months, we noticed a particular change in trend for digital and mobile based payments in the country. We tried to understand the reason for new preference and got trends of other nations as well. We focused mainly on the barriers which were holding back people from going digital. We picked up the key themes centric to the Indian consumers — technical issues, security concerns and the lack of acceptability presence, and then integrated mobile wallets, UPI (Unified Payments Interface) and debit cards to Samsung Pay. The idea was to make in India for Indian consumers.For a service like Samsung Pay, you need to have regulatory approvals. Samsung, as a provider of the technology platform, does not need any approval. The issuers and payment gateways got the required approvals from Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The regulator works with them, not us. Some of the banks and payment gateways have launched Samsung Pay in other countries as well so they were familiar with the regulatory requirements such as the tech standards and the use cases.So, what are the customizations that you have made to Samsung Pay just for Indian market?In the last 10 months, or so, we have stretched much beyond credit cards; we have built the app around debit cards, wallets and UPI. These are not incorporated globally.What about net banking?Presently, it is not there in the first phase of the launch. However, we do have online payment service (or net banking transactions) in Korea and might later consider it for India as well.Mobile wallets require credit cards or debit cards or net banking to load money in it. What is the reason you added wallets to Samsung pay?It’s about what the consumer prefers. If you look at the rapid digital adoption, there is credit/debit cards on one side and there is wallets on the other and in the most recent times UPI; all these are on mediocre rise. In fact while these are anyways doing well, we know some recent policy changes which have only further fuelled in this direction. India is the second-largest mobile wallet transacting economy so it makes a central use case to integrate wallets with our platform.Are payments using quick response (QR) codes possible on Samsung Pay?Closed loop wallets have their own QR and since Paytm is the first wallet to be integrated with the platform so payments using its QR code is possible.Will BharatQR also work?BharatQR is a very recent development and if in future it becomes a popular means of payments we will definitely look at it.Do we see Samsung Pay integrating face recognition and iris recognition features for Indian users in the near future?I would say India is the market for all new technology. As a smart phone and technology manufacturer every time we have got new technology, India has been the fastest in terms of adoption.What about services? Will there be over-the-top services such as utility bill payments that you would include?That may be a possibility. In Korea, Samsung Pay can be used to take out cash from ATMs. So, if Indian consumers demand any particular service, we can look at incorporating that.Samsung Pay will be available on your top-end devices. Why did you leave the mass market smartphones?This is the first step of the full-scale launch. We will keep observing and keep our hands and eyes open to expanding our devices and offerings from Samsung. As of now, only eight devices will be supporting the app. To get Samsung Pay on the mass market smartphones, there may be a need for customization of the firmware.How many users are you targeting in the first year?We have not tied ourselves down to any numeric goal; our entire effort so far has been to get the service right. Our sense is that we have got a whole new payment platform with us and the adoption will be good. The numbers will aid device sales especially for those customers who were at a cusp of not having this device but wanting to use this kind of service will upgrade.So, you hope to get the first mover advantage, and want Apple users to shift who have been waiting for Apple Pay?I would not comment on any other handset company. It is our belief that more consumers use mobile payment applications on any device, the better it is for the economy and the country of course but also better for the consumers to get into digital payments. Once they start getting accustomed to different apps and passwords, only then will they realize that Samsung Pay actually puts all of it into a unified platform with greater ease and security.",2017-03-23,Senior VP Asim Warsi on how Samsung Pay was customized for Indian users by including transactions via debit cards and mobile wallets for the first time,0.09,05:24,Idea behind Samsung Pay was to Make in India for Indians: Asim Warsi +0,"Beijing: The chief scientist helping drive Baidu Inc.’s push into artificial intelligence (AI) is quitting the Chinese search giant, putting at risk its efforts to put AI at the center of a business revival.Andrew Ng, a Stanford University academic who worked on deep learning at Alphabet Inc. before joining Baidu in 2014, said he’s leaving the business next month. Ng doesn’t plan to join another technology company and will seek to bring AI into sectors such as healthcare and education around the world.The departure comes at a crucial point for the Beijing-based company as it attempts to revive its fortunes by embracing machine intelligence across all of its business units. His decision to leave comes after Qi Lu was hired in January as Baidu’s group president and chief operating officer (COO) with a mandate to reshape the business, whose online-ad business is under threat from rivals including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd. Prior to joining, Lu was an executive at Microsoft Corp. leading efforts to develop artificial intelligence.ALSO READ | Baidu fires head of group-buying arm citing ethics violations“It’s all very amicable,” Ng said, adding that he’d discussed the move with Baidu’s co-founder Robin Li for several months. “I’m very confident the team will thrive. In China Baidu is so far ahead and AI is not easy.”Ng doesn’t expect his departure will derail or slow down Baidu’s AI efforts, pointing out that he’s still chief scientist until the handover at the end of April. Ng oversaw the growth of Baidu’s research team to 1,300 people scattered across research labs in Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Sunnyvale, California, a group that will increase by several hundred more this year, he has said. Of the over 20 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) Baidu has spent on research and development over the past two and a half years, most has been on AI, according to Li.But Ng was a founding father of deep learning—a stream of AI recently popularized by tech giants around the world—and the public face of Baidu’s AI efforts.ALSO READ | China’s Baidu plans a spin-off of robot cars“With him there, investors and analysts got more confidence about Baidu’s AI investments since he was quite well-known in the field and at Google before,” said Marie Sun, an analyst with Morningstar Investment Services. “If there’s no other well-known person from his field replacing his role, I think it could be negative news to the market.”A co-founder of web-learning firm Coursera Inc., Ng said he will reduce the amount of time he spends in China, as his wife is based in the US. Ng said he’s been looking at the health-care sector and is keen to help develop AI, for example, that can act as assistants for doctors or create customized pathways for education.While Baidu hasn’t named a replacement for Ng as chief scientist, other executives are taking on some of his responsibilities. Yuanqing Lin, the head of the company’s Institute of Deep Learning, will run Baidu Research’s labs both in China and the US with machine translation expert Wang Haifeng to become the new head of Baidu’s AI Group. The search provider will continue its AI efforts, employing its user data to build products that take advantage of the technology.Baidu’s revenue growth slowed to 6% last year, after several years of growth ranging from 35% to 55%. The search business, which fueled Baidu’s 70.6 billion yuan in 2016 sales, is under siege from local rivals: Alibaba has taken the lead in digital advertising, according to consultancy EMarketer Inc. Bloomberg",2017-03-22,Baidu chief scientist AndrewNg doesn’t plan to join another technology company and will seek to bring artificial intelligence into sectors such as healthcare and education,1.0,19:23,Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng to depart in setback for artificial intelligence push +0,"
New Delhi: With rapid urbanization, Coca-Cola India sees a big opportunity for its products in small towns. With a clutch of new product launches, Venkatesh Kini, president of India and South West Asia for the soft drinks maker, spoke about the company’s expansion in the non-carbonated drinks category, goods and services tax (GST) and the problems it faced in Tamil Nadu. Edited excerpts from an interview:
Which summer products have you launched?We just launched Aquarius which is one of my favourite products in the portfolio. I do a lot of running. It’s great for replenishing. It’s actually a brand that originated in Spain and Japan and now sold in other parts of the world. We have also expanded Minute Maid in multiple flavours and introduced the coconut water Zico.
This is the first year when you have launched multiple products in the non-carbonated products segment. Is the consumer turning away from carbonated beverages?To be honest, the pace of launch of beverages has increased. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that the speed at which the government approvals come now is much faster. Earlier it was a very complex system. But the new government has done a great job revamping the FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) and the way it works. It’s a much more progressive dispensation. Earlier it used to take two years to get an approval for a product launch. Now it takes a few months.
But are consumers going for non-carbonated drinks? The reality is globally we have announced our intent to become a total beverage company. It’s also recognising that consumers have multiple needs through the day—from juice to soft drinks to coffee. We have actually got the widest range of beverages worldwide. In India, we first had to build both the front-end capability and the backend manufacturing capabilities. We have put up five new factories in the last five years and multiple new lines in existing factories and most of them to produce juices and still beverages. With the infrastructure ready now, we are able to accelerate the pace of launches. So one is where the consumer is going, second is where our infrastructure capability is and the third is the regulatory environment that’s enabling and supporting that.
Do you expect revenue from non-carbonated drinks to exceed that from carbonated drinks?If that’s where consumer goes, we will be perfectly happy with it. If consumers vote with their wallets for products like Aquarius, then that is what we will sell and expand. And if they vote for juices, then we will sell that. So we are going to follow the consumers as opposed to saying that we want to sell one product or the other. Today we are not making a choice for consumers. There is place for all of these products but personally speaking, there’s nothing to beat a chilled refreshing Coke, Thums Up or Sprite on a hot day but that doesn’t mean there is no role for everything else . If there is a big role for carbonated drinks then there is an equally big role, if not bigger, for a variety of non-carbonated drinks. Today, about 35-40% of our business is from non-carbonated portfolio.
So you are building a non-fizzy drinks portfolio.What percentage of our business do you think comes from brand Coca-Cola today? Less than 10%. We have a diverse portfolio in India. Sprite is our largest brand. It is lime and lemon, no artificial flavours.
But it’s still sugar.We have a Sprite zero also if sugar is a concern. Though I want to point out that the amount of sugar in our beverages is not as high as you may think. A can of 180ml ThumsUp has less than 80 calories. You get more calories than that from most packaged foods. Our all beverages put together make for about 1% of total sugar consumption in India. So sugar from our beverages is not really a major concern in consumer’s mind.
Are you happy with the 15% cap on soft drinks in GST?GST is the best thing that could happen to the country in terms of reforms. As far the beverage industry is concerned, what we are looking forward to from the government is a taxation policy and GST which makes it a level-playing field based on the content of the product. So the higher the sugar content, the higher the tax rate and the lower the sugar content, lower the tax rate. This is what we would hope and expect from the government. So, the cess of 15% on top of 28% will be applied to certain products. And products with lower sugar or zero sugar should be at a lower rate.
Which market are you betting on urban or rural?Rural has always been growing faster for many years. The last two years, in 2014 and 2015, we saw a dip in rural demand because of poor monsoon. Last year, the monsoon was good but demonetization effect outweighed the monsoon effect. We are optimistic that rural demand will pick up now.The big growth that we see is in small towns or the mid-tier markets, which are neither rural nor metro. Those towns are showing tremendous growth potential. As urbanization in India continues to accelerate, the biggest beneficiaries will be tier-II towns. As metros are becoming more expensive to live in and crowded, and as states invest more in their development, there’s a lot of other urban centres that are beginning to pick up in terms of growth. There’s a steady stream of people moving into urban areas and that is consistent with the global trend. World over, urbanization is a trend and even in India, it is a natural trend. Also, the quality of life for new urbanites is improving a lot in the tier-II towns.
What is the progress in Tamil Nadu where foreign soft drinks brands have been boycotted by traders?The concerns in the minds of traders in Tamil Nadu regarding their state and the issues they face are genuine. Unfortunately they associated those concerns with our industry. We engaged with them and tried to understand why they have concerns with our industry. I think it’s not enough just to be a good corporate citizen. You need to get far more involved with the local issues faced by local communities. We have invested significant amount in water projects across the country and even in Tamil Nadu we buy 50,000 tonnes of mangoes from Tamilian farmers. There’s a lot of things that we do. We have not done a good job of communicating that with the stakeholders. And when we engaged and started communicating that look this is what we are and this is the role we play, the dialogue started and it is actually a positive dialogue.I won’t say that the issue is completely resolved but there is a much better appreciation of the role we play in the local economy. Ninety-five per cent of what we produce in India is made in India.
How big is the India market for you?India is the sixth largest market for Coca-Cola globally in volume terms. Ten years ago, it was No. 19. Our aim is to make India one of the biggest markets over the next decade. Our declared vision is for it to be among the top 5 by 2020. We think we’ll beat that and want to be more aggressive going forward. India has the potential to be the growth engine of the global economy and all industries will benefit from that.",2017-03-22,"Coca-Cola India and South West Asia president Venkatesh Kini on the company’s expansion in non-carbonated drinks, GST and problems in Tamil Nadu",0.05,13:03,Non-fizzy drinks make up 35-45% of Coca-Cola’s business: Venkatesh Kini +0,"New Delhi: Private sector lender Axis Bank on Wednesday said its managing director and chief executive officer Shikha Sharma is not resigning. “...The news appearing in section of social media stating the impending resignation of the MD and CEO of the bank, which please note is false, speculative and is being circulated with the mala fide intention of misleading the investors and the general public,” Axis Bank said in a clarification to the BSE. Axis Bank has been under pressure over a sharp fall in third quarter profits along with Income Tax Department raids on some of its branches post-demonetisation. There is also a buzz about the bank’s merger with Kotak Mahindra Bank. Axis Bank had reported 73% decline in net profit to Rs580 crore for the October-December quarter on account of rise in bad loans. Shares of Axis Bank were trading 2.07% higher at Rs498.10 on BSE.",2017-03-22,Axis Bank says the matter of CEO resignation is speculative and being circulated with the mala fide intention of misleading the investors and the general public,-0.51,11:49,Axis Bank dismisses CEO resignation buzz +0,"India’s economy is set to grow at 7.4% in the current fiscal year 2017-18 against 7.1% in the previous year, on the back of pick-up in consumption demand and higher public investment, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Thursday.In its latest Asian Development Outlook (ADO) 2017 report, ADB said while the recent gross domestic product (GDP) data for 2016-17 did not fully capture the effects of demonetisation, the slowdown did reflect a continued slump in investment. “Dragging on growth were excess production capacity, problems that past overinvestment left on corporate balance sheets, and new bank lending inhibited by too many stressed assets. Moderately higher growth is projected as consumption picks up and government initiatives boost private investment,” it said.“An array of important economic reforms has propelled India’s economic success in recent years. A continued commitment to reform—especially in the banking sector—will help India maintain its status as the world’s fastest growing major economy,” Yasuyuki Sawada, ADB’s chief economist, said.The ADO expects consumption to pick up as more new bank notes are put in circulation after the shock withdrawal of high-value currencies on 8 November and as planned salary and pension hike for state employees are implemented. “The public sector will remain the main driver of investment as banks continue to wind down balance sheets constrained by high levels of stressed assets. Exports are forecast to grow by 6% in the coming year,” it said.Among potential risks for the Indian economy, the assessment notes risks from higher oil prices as Indian imports nearly 80% of it fossil fuel needs. “A rapid increase in the price of oil could undermine the country’s fiscal position, stoke inflation and swell the current account deficit,” it warned.ADB projected inflation to accelerate to 5.2% in 2017-18 and 5.4% in 2018-19 as the global economy recovers and commodity prices rebound.The report estimates of a $1 increase in oil prices raises the import bill by nearly $2 billion. In 2016-17, rising oil prices resulted in a 37.6% increase in India’s import bill. To mitigate India’s vulnerability to oil price swings, the government has proposed reducing dependence on imported oil by 10% over the next five years through more efficient domestic production and increased private investment into the sector, the report noted.",2017-04-07,"Indian economy is set to grow at 7.4% in 2017-18 on the back of pick-up in consumption demand and higher public investment, says ADB",0.16,02:01,Indian economy to grow at 7.4% in FY18: ADB +0,"
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) plans to allow market participants to substitute collateral under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) window to give them more flexibility and improve the liquidity of these instruments.This facility will be available from 17 April, the regulator said on its website. Under the repo window, banks have to place government bonds as collateral to borrow from the central bank. Separately, the regulator said that it will continue using methods such as open market operations, cash management bills, treasury bills and variable rate repo and reverse repo securities to drain excess liquidity from the system. It also laid out several other regulatory proposals for the banking and financial system. For one, the regulator plans to introduce a new and improved prompt corrective action (PCA) framework for banks with weak balance sheets. Typically, when a bank breaches the lower limit of its capital base during any quarter, along with a build-up of large amount of bad loans and fall in return on assets, RBI initiates this action to limit the bank’s lending activities and help it fix its affairs. Banks under PCA would be required to conform to mandatory and discretionary actions that the central bank would decide. RBI said the revised framework would be issued by mid-April 2017. Speaking on the asset quality problems in Indian banking after RBI’s monetary policy announcement, deputy governor S.S. Mundra said the regulator, and banks in general, are cognizant of the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all approach while attempting resolution of stressed loans. Mundra said that the regulator is considering new measures to deal with bad loans while also tweaking existing stress resolution tools if necessary.The Rs7 trillion bad loan problem in the Indian banking sector is led by public sector banks, which are struggling with recovery and resolution of stress on their books.RBI has also decided to increase the entry barrier for asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) by mandating a net owned funds base of Rs100 crore compared with Rs2 crore earlier. Detailed guidelines in this matter would be released later this month, the regulator has said. Separately, the regulator is also planning on allowing banks to invest in Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs). RBI has also decided to not activate the countercyclical capital buffer as of now, which would have forced banks to set aside a certain portion of their capital as a buffer for difficult times.The central bank plans to introduce steps to improve the national electronic funds transfer (NEFT) infrastructure, rationalize the merchant discount rate (MDR) and issue renewed guidelines on the issuance and operation of prepaid payments instruments (PPIs), it said.RBI said that it is initiating a pilot project on financial literacy at the block level to explore innovative and participatory approaches to financial literacy. A pilot project will be commissioned in nine states across 80 blocks by non-government organizations (NGOs) in collaboration with the sponsor banks. The sponsor banks will enter into contracts with the identified NGOs by 30 June. Thereafter, the NGOs will start operating the centre for financial literacy within three months of entering into contracts with banks.",2017-04-07,"RBI also said that it will continue using methods such as open market operations, cash management bills and treasury bills to drain excess liquidity from the system",0.12,01:32,RBI to allow banks to substitute collateral under LAF window +0,"
Mumbai: The listing of Avenues Supermarts Ltd, the parent of retailer D-Mart, lived up to its hype, adding to the Midas-like reputation of its founder Radhakishan Damani. Its shares opened 102% higher than the issue price, before closing the day at Rs640.75 apiece, up 114.3%. At the end of trading, D-Mart became India’s most valuable listed retailer and helped the Damani family barrel past Anil Ambani, Ajay Piramal and Adi Godrej in the country’s billionaire rankings.
The effect of the stellar listing was such that other stocks where Damani has significant holdings (either through investment firms or his brother Gopikishan Damani) also rose on a day when the broader market closed 0.11% down.For instance, shares of VST Industries, where Damani owns 25.95% through his firm Bright Star Investments Pvt. Ltd, jumped as high as 9.9% on Tuesday before closing 3.8% higher. Apart from VST, Damani owns stakes of at least 1% in 16 other firms across sectors such as cements, television and logistics.Avenue Supermarts listing: Lessons for retailers from stellar market debutOn Monday, Forbes had calculated the Damani family’s net worth at $2.3 billion. At Tuesday’s closing prices, the family’s 82% stake in D-Mart alone is worth Rs32,871.75 crore, or $5.03 billion. Its stake in other listed entities is worth another Rs3,000 crore, besides a property portfolio that includes the 156-room Radisson Blu Resort in Alibag, according to Forbes.Investors started betting on VST Industries on expectations that Damani’s magic will work on it, said Prakash Diwan, a director at Altamount Capital Management Pvt Ltd. “However, Damani is just a stakeholder in VST Industries whereas he is a promoter of D-Mart. He is a non-operational investor and not running business of VST Industries. That’s the difference,” warned Diwan.The Damani effect had shown up in the demand for the D-Mart stock when it had opened for subscription. The initial public offer was subscribed 103 times when it opened earlier this month. Damani, considered to be the mentor to billionaire stock market investor Rakesh Jhujhunwala, is known to look at fundamentals and have the patience to see his investments through. “The shares were in high demand as it was a (Radhakishan) Damani stock and a profitable retail, which led to huge oversubscription,” said independent market analyst Ambareesh Baliga. “The company’s model is superb, and the best amongst other retailers, and they stuck to their model through the year.”ALSO READ | Irrational exuberance in D-Mart sharesD-Mart’s success has lessons, not only for rivals in the brick-and-mortar space, but also for e-commerce companies, which are struggling to make profits, said experts.The firm has been focused on what it wants, and its expansion has been measured. In the first nine years of its existence, till 2010, it had just 25 D-Mart stores. Only after perfecting its business model did the company re-expand to around 118 stores—this too, largely in Western India. The company intends to spend the proceeds from the IPO to repay debt of Rs1,080 crore, fund new stores to the tune of Rs366.6 crore, and on general corporate expenses. Its numbers are good because the retailer does the small things repeatedly and consistently, chief executive officer Neville Noronha has said in the past.D-Mart has been choosy about the products it stocks; it doesn’t have the widest product assortment. It eschews discounts, the bane of both brick-and-mortar retailers and e-commerce marketplaces. It does not intend to follow a discount model in the future either, its prospectus said.“D-Mart’s big strength is its product assortment, competitive pricing and a well-managed supply chain which ensures the product is always available on the shelf,” said Rajat Wahi, partner and head of consumer, retail and agri sectors at KPMG in India.The D-Mart listing on Tuesday hit other listed retailers. Shares of rival V-Mart fell 11% while those of Shoppers Stop and Future Retail were down 2-3%.That said, with its 114% rise, the stock is trading at a rich 80 times its estimated earnings for fiscal 2017.“The stock definitely looks expensive right now. But then, it is the story of new India, and the potential for growth is limitless,” said Raamdeo Agrawal, joint managing director of Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd.",2017-03-22,The stellar rise in share prices of D-Mart parent Avenue Supermarts also boosts other holdings of Radhakishan Damani such as VST Industries,1.0,02:45,"D-Mart listing bolsters Radhakishan Damani’s wealth, reputation" +0,"
Private sector lender DCB Bank Ltd is looking to raise as much as Rs400 crore through a qualified institutional placement (QIP) in the later half of the current quarter, said two people aware of the development. QIP is a capital-raising tool through which listed companies can sell shares, fully and partly convertible debentures, or any securities other than warrants that are convertible into equity shares to qualified institutional buyers.“DCB Bank has started meeting investment banks for its proposed QIP and they are expected to hire at least a couple of banks to manage the QIP soon. The bank’s management is keen on tapping the market before the end of this quarter,” said one of the two people cited above, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity as the talks are private. The DCB stock has surged since the start of 2017 and this will allow the bank to raise capital at an attractive valuation, the person added.DCB Bank’s stock has risen by 57% to Rs169.75 year to date. The bank reported a 25% profit growth to Rs51 crore in the third quarter of 2016-17. Net interest income grew 31% to Rs209 crore. In its board meeting on 7 March, directors of the private sector lender approved a resolution to raise as much as Rs400 crore through a QIP. The bank is currently in the process of seeking an approval for the same from its shareholders through a postal ballot. Emails sent to DCB Bank on Wednesday were not answered.DCB Bank last raised capital through a QIP in 2014, when it raised almost Rs250 crore. DCB Bank’s plans come at a time when QIP issues have seen a revival after a lacklustre 2016. Seven companies have raised Rs9,108 crore through QIPs so far this year, according to data from primary market tracker Prime Database. The quantum of capital raised through QIPs in the first three months of the year is already almost twice as much as that raised in the whole of last year. In 2016, 16 companies raised Rs4,712 crore, data shows. “The stock market has performed well since the start of the year, rising by more than 10% so far. That movement in the market has resulted in investors again looking at QIP issuances. There is also a lot of liquidity available with domestic investors such as mutual funds,” said the second person cited above, also requesting anonymity. Since the start of the calendar year, the benchmark Sensex has gained 12.5% to 29,927.34 points, as of closing on 6 April. The increased QIP activity in 2017 has been boosted by large issuances such as those of private sector lender Yes Bank Ltd and Hindalco Industries Ltd. Yes Bank raised Rs4,907 crore through its QIP in March. In April, Hindalco raised close to Rs3,300 crore. Other companies that have raised funds through the QIP route this year include auto parts maker Minda Industries Ltd, state-owned lender United Bank of India, Sagar Cements Ltd and Mercator Ltd.",2017-04-07,DCB Bank is currently in the process of seeking an approval for the QIP from its shareholders through a postal ballot,0.49,02:08,DCB Bank looks to raise Rs400 crore via QIP +0,"
New Delhi: India added a record 5,400 megawatts (MW) of wind power in 2016-17, exceeding its 4,000MW target.“This year’s achievement surpassed the previous higher capacity addition of 3,423MW achieved in the previous year,” the ministry of new renewable energy said a statement on Sunday.Of about 50,018MW of installed renewable power across the country, over 55% is wind power. In India, which is the biggest greenhouse gas emitter after the US and China, renewable energy currently accounts for about 16% of the total installed capacity of 315,426MW.During 2016-17, the leading states in the wind power capacity addition were Andhra Pradesh at 2,190MW, followed by Gujarat at 1,275MW and Karnataka at 882MW.In addition, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Telangana and Kerala reported 357MW, 288MW, 262MW, 118MW, 23MW and 8MW wind power capacity addition respectively during the same period.At the Paris Climate Summit in December, India promised to achieve 175GW of renewable energy capacity by 2022. This includes 60GW from wind power, 100GW from solar power, 10GW from biomass and 5GW from small hydro projects. It also promised to achieve 40% of its electricity generation capacity from non-fossil fuel based energy resources by 2030.In the last couple of years, India has not only seen record low tariffs for solar power but wind power too has seen a significant drop in tariffs. In February, solar power tariffs hit a record low of Rs2.97 per kilowatt hour (kWh)and wind power tariff reached Rs3.46 kWh.Even though wind leads India’s renewable power sector, it has huge growth potential. According to government estimates, the onshore wind power potential alone is about 302GW. But there are several problems plaguing the sector.For instance, the government has been concerned about squatters blocking good wind potential sites, inordinate delays in signing of power purchase agreements, timely payments and distribution firms shying away from procuring electricity generated from wind energy projects. In January, the ministry held a meeting with the states to sort out these issues.The ministry has also taken several other policy initiatives, including introducing bidding in the wind energy sector and drafting a wind-solar hybrid policy.It has also come out with a ‘National Offshore Wind Energy Policy’, aiming to harness wind power along India’s 7,600 km coastline. Preliminary estimates show the Gujarat coastline has the potential to generate around 106,000MW of offshore wind energy and Tamil Nadu about 60,000MW.",2017-04-03,"Of about 50,018MW of installed renewable power across the country, over 55% is wind power",0.23,10:44,"India adds record 5,400MW wind power in 2016-17" +0,"Tel Aviv: Italy, Israel, Greece and Cyprus pledged on Monday to move ahead with the world’s longest undersea gas pipeline from the eastern Mediterranean to southern Europe, with support from the European Union.If carried out as planned, the long-discussed $6.2 billion (€5.8 billion) pipeline will take gas from Israel and Cyprus’s recently discovered offshore gas reserves to Europe, potentially reducing European dependence on Russian energy at a time of ongoing tensions.In a joint news conference in Israel’s commercial capital Tel Aviv, energy ministers from the four nations and the EU’s Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Canete pledged their commitment to the project.Feasibility studies had been completed, they said, adding that they hope to develop a full plan for development by the end of the year. They said construction of the pipeline would not begin for several years and it would likely go online in 2025.“This is going to be the longest and deepest sub-sea gas pipeline in the world,” said Israeli energy minister Yuval Steinitz.ALSO READ: Philip Hammond, Mark Carney seek a passage to India in the wake of BrexitGas prices have fallen, however, and the pipeline’s financial feasibility is based on expectations they will rise again, Elio Ruggeri, head of IGI Poseidon—one of the companies developing the plan—told AFP.Both Israel and Cyprus have started to extract gas from their offshore fields in recent years, with far larger projects expected to come online in the future. Officials have sought to market that gas to Europe as an alternative to dependence on Russian imports.Canete admitted it would help limit reliance on the Nord Stream pipeline via Russia, which he said “adds nothing to the security of supply”. “Cyprus and Israel are very reliable suppliers,” he said. “We highly value gas supply from the region as a vital source of our gas supply that can make a valuable contribution to our strategy to diversify sources, routes and suppliers.“This is a pipe that unites and will have the full support of all the members of the European Union.”The four ministers agreed to meet every six months over the coming years. Italy’s minister of economic development Carlo Calenda said a reliable and affordable gas supply was a “crucial challenge” for the country, making the pipeline a “top priority”.“We need to foresee the phasing out of coal and carbon in electricity production and therefore gas supply is fundamental for us,” Calenda said. Amit Mor, head of the Israeli consultancy EcoEnergy, said while the ministers’ commitment was positive, that did not guarantee the project would go ahead.“At this stage this is still a pipe dream but it is important to realise that international trade projects sometimes take decades to develop,” he told AFP. “A depth of three kilometres would be unprecedented,” he added, saying high infrastructure costs would mean that producing gas at a price to rival that of Russia would be “very challenging”.",2017-04-03,The $6.2 billion undersea gas pipeline will take gas from Israel and Cyprus’s recently discovered offshore gas reserves to Europe,0.24,18:39,"EU nations, Israel eye longest undersea gas pipeline" +0,"Digital transactions reached a peak in terms of overall value during March, according to provisional data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The volume of digital transactions also rose in March and was the second highest in a month since the government announced demonetization of high value currency notes in November last year, according to the RBI data released late on Wednesday.Transactions worth about Rs149.52 lakh crore (Rs149.5 trillion) were conducted through digital modes such as credit/debit cards, unified payments interface (UPI), unstructured supplementary service data (USSD), prepaid payment instruments (PPIs) and mobile banking in March. ALSO READ: Ban on cash transaction above Rs2 lakh not applicable for bank, post office withdrawalsDigital transactions worth Rs104.05 lakh crore (Rs104.1 trillion) were recorded in December, the month during which the impact of demonetization was the strongest.Data has been collated until 2 April.Usage of PPIs such as mobile wallets and UPI also peaked in March. The volume of PPI transactions in March was 90 million as compared with 87.8 million in December. The volume of UPI transactions recorded in March was 6.2 million as compared with 2 million in December and 4.2 million in January.UPI transaction volumes rose about 214% in March, from December, according to the data.ALSO READ: How to turn your investments and payments digital Transactions through UPI received a major stimulus from the government after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) app on 30 December. The latest payment mechanism based on UPI is UPI@PoS — or, point-of-sale (PoS) machines that are configured to enable payments without swiping cards.Debit and credit card usage at PoS machines rose by 6.29% in March to 225.7 million transactions from 212.3 million in the previous month. Transactions had declined by 14.6% in January from December and 20% in February from January.Mobile banking transactions increased by 7.68% in March to 60.5 million from 56.2 million in the previous month. They had declined by 7.61% in January from December and 13.42 % in February from January.Meanwhile, transactions through USSD fell by 6.03% in March compared with February.Payments using National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) and Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) rose by around 26% and 66.23%, respectively, in March from February.ALSO READ: RBI governor Urjit Patel says farm loan waiver a ‘moral hazard’“Most of the B2B payments are done during March; corporations are trying to make collections which come mostly through NEFT/RTGS. In case of surge in retail payments, especially the UPI, the government’s effort to popularize it has a major role to play,” said Dewang Neralla, chief executive of Atom Technologies Ltd, a payment services provider. A whole new range of apps based on UPI is being launched, Neralla added.“Now, people do not see any reason to hoard cash at home, instead they prefer to deposit it in bank accounts and make payments through digital modes,” he added.According to a recent research report by the State Bank of India (SBI), the cash withdrawals have not picked up even though the limits on withdrawals were removed from 13 March. The report suggested this may be the result of the move towards digital payments.",2017-04-07,"Digital transactions volume also rose in March and was the second highest in a month since the announcement of demonetization, shows the RBI data",0.24,00:07,Digital transactions peaked at Rs149.5 trillion in March: RBI data +0,"New Delhi: Aviation turbine fuel (ATF) price has been cut by over 5%, reversing a two-month rising trend, while rates of subsidised LPG were hiked by Rs5.57 per cylinder. Also, the rate of non-subsidised cooking gas (LPG) has been cut by Rs14.50 per cylinder in line with international trends. Price of jet fuel or ATF was cut by Rs2,811.38 per kilolitre, or 5.1%, to Rs51,428 per kl with effect from 1 April , oil companies said. The reduction comes on the back of a marginal hike of Rs214 kl effected on 1 March and a 3% increase on 1 February.Simultaneously, price of non-subsidised LPG, bought by those who have either given up their subsidies or exhausted the quota of 12 bottles of 14.2-kg in a year at below market price, was cut to Rs723 per 14.2-kg cylinder from Rs737.50. The reduction comes on back of a steep Rs86 per cylinder hike in rates from 1 March .That was the steepest hike in recent times and came on the back of Rs66.5 per cylinder increase effected from 1 February. Rates had been on the upswing since October, 2016. A non-subsidised LPG cylinder was priced at Rs466.50 in Delhi in September and had risen by Rs271 per bottle or 58% in six instalments. Oil firms, however, raised price of subsidised cooking gas by Rs5.57 to Rs440.5 per 14.2-kg cylinder. This hike came as the state-owned oil firms on previous two occasions—1 February and 1 March —did not effect any significant raise in prices in view of assembly elections in states like Uttar Pradesh. Prior to that, they had raised rates by nearly Rs2 per cylinder for eight months in line with government decision to cut subsidises through calibrated increases every month. Oil firms revise rates of ATF and cooking gas on 1st of every month based on oil price and foreign exchange rate in the preceding month.",2017-04-02,Price of subsidised cooking gas raised by Rs5.57 to Rs440.5 per 14.2-kg cylinder,-0.44,13:19,"Subsidised LPG cylinder price hiked by Rs5.57, ATF cut by 5%" +0,"Atrauli: A dusty plastic sheet covers a large diesel generator in a corner of a petrol station in Atrauli, a village in Uttar Pradesh, a modest but telling sign of progress.The gas station used to shut at 7pm every day because the lights would often go off, and there was no way to know when they would come back on, said Sudhakar Singh, the manager. “The main power supply was very irregular, and operating the generator was expensive, so we could not afford to stay open beyond 7pm,” Singh told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, as motorbikes and trucks lined up for petrol and diesel.Last year, the pump got a connection to a solar mini-grid, a local power network not connected to the national grid, which guarantees six hours of electricity every day. The pump has since stayed open all night. “Now, our expenses are lower and we earn more because we can stay open all night. We have not used the generator once since we got the ... connection,” said Singh.Power paradoxAtrauli’s electricity revolution is a symbol of the energy paradox dogging India, one of the world’s fastest growing economies, where power cuts are rampant and per capita electricity consumption is about a third the global average.Fast-dropping costs for solar power, combined with plenty of sun and a huge need for electricity in a country where about 300 million people—a quarter of the population—are still without it means solar energy has huge potential in India.Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pledge to supply power to every citizen by 2019 and a surge in solar production, reaching remote villages remains a challenge, with distribution losses as high as 30% on antiquated lines, low tariffs and limited use.Most of those without electricity live in the 99% of villages the government deems to be electrified because at least 10% of households and public places have electricity. But at least half the electrified households do not get at least six hours of electricity a day.“While the grid has expanded and we generate enough power, distribution companies are not in a position to take that power, and are not interested in going into rural areas,” said Aruna Kumarankandath at the Centre for Science and Environment. “When the supply is so unreliable, people use it sparingly, making it an unattractive proposition to invest in,” said Kumarankandath, a renewable energy researcher.Lights, fans, actionThe situation is particularly dire in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state where only 37% of households are electrified, compared with 67% nationwide.Help has come from private mini-grids like the one in Atrauli operated by OMC Power, a company with 67 grids in the state. Renewable energy is key to India’s electrification plan, and mini-grids with a capacity of 10 to 500 kilowatts (KW) are playing an increasingly important role.“Mini-grids use the potential of untapped renewable energy and manage demand efficiently by generating power at the source of consumption,” said Kumarankandath.A base home package from OMC Power costs Rs110 a month and comes with a switchboard with an LED bulb and a socket for charging a mobile phone. Additional lights, fans and even a television can be added.A 50 KW solar grid with battery storage and a distribution reach of 5km can power small businesses, schools, two telecom towers and over 500 homes, said Sarraju N. Rao, chief technology officer at OMC Power. “There is enough demand in rural areas. If the supply is reliable and good, people are willing to pay more,” he said.Local jobsUttar Pradesh is the only state with a policy for mini-grids. It aims to power nearly 20 million households, about a tenth of its population. The state offers a 30% subsidy for these grids, which may also be powered by wind, biomass or water, and must guarantee at least eight hours of electricity to homes, and six hours for commercial needs.Importantly, the policy offers exit options when the areas have adequate grid supply: either the distribution company can receive energy from the mini-grids at an agreed tariff, or the project may be transferred to the distribution company.India’s ministry for renewable energy released a national draft policy for mini- and micro-grids last June.It aims to deploy at least 10,000 renewable energy projects in the next five years in “unserved and underserved parts of the country”, with an average capacity of 50 KW per project.The ambitious targets come at a time when renewable energy is at a turning point in India, as generating electricity from renewables costs nearly the same as from conventional sources.Coal still provides the lion’s share of energy, but as a signatory to the Paris Agreement on climate change, India is committed to ensuring at least 40% of its electricity will come from non-fossil-fuel sources by 2030.A 10-year blueprint predicts 57% of India’s electricity capacity will come from non-fossil sources by 2027. Solar energy is a particular focus and will contribute 100 gigawatts (GW) of the renewable energy capacity target of 175 GW by 2022.“Renewable energy-based mini-grids will boost small businesses, create local jobs and build economies. This will improve living standards in villages,” said Kumarankandath. “That in turn will ensure women’s empowerment, better health and education. There cannot be a better development agenda for the country,” she said.In Atrauli, OMC’s mini-grid is just off the main road, next to the telecom tower it also helps to power. OMC has 280 customers in Atrauli, 60% of them commercial, Rao said. One of OMC’s first customers in the village was Anita, a widowed mother of two, who didn’t have an electricity connection and used kerosene lamps for lighting in her shack. From one base package of a single light, Anita now has three lights, one each in her room, her son’s room and the kitchen. “Earlier, the children would have to go search for a light to study by. But now they study at home, and I can do housework even at night,” she said. “I would like to add a fan next.” Thomson Reuters Foundation",2017-04-03,"Renewable energy is key to India’s electrification plan, and mini-grids with a capacity of 10 to 500 KW are playing an increasingly important role",0.17,09:38,"In energy starved Indian villages, solar mini-grids light the way" +0,"Mumbai: The government on Tuesday announced Madhabi Puri Buch as new whole time member of Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). This appointment also marks a departure from the regular practise of hiring Sebi board members, who typically were men coming from the public sector. This is the first time that a women and a person from private sector has been chosen for a key post with the market regulator. Buch, who is currently serving at the New Development Bank in Shanghai has been appointed for a period of three years, the department of personnel and training (DoPT) said in a notification. She has been appointed at a salary of Rs375,000 per month. While, under the corporate governance standards issued in 2015, Sebi had mandated one women to be a part of the board of a listed company, the same did not happen at the board of the regulator. Till now, the highest post occupied by women at the market regulator was the position of executive director. “Sebi or its board does not appoint its own board members, the board members of Sebi are appointed by the government,” former Sebi chairman, U.K. Sinha had said in an industry event in October. “But we have already taken up with the government that we must have at least one woman member on Sebi board although there is no such legal requirement. The Sebi Act does not prescribe it but as a good measure we have asked the government to do it,” he added.So far, members and chairman at Sebi were mainly appointed from public sector, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Administrative Services (IAS). Buch, a management graduate from Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad in a career spanning over 20 years has served at various roles in private banks. She started her career with ICICI Bank and went on to become the managing director and chief executive officer at ICICI Securities Ltd from February 2009 to May 2011. In 2011, she left for Singapore were she joined Greater Pacific Capital LLP. Buch is also founder-director of Agora Advisory Pvt Ltd.",2017-03-21,"Madhabi Puri Buch has been appointed as new whole time member of Sebi for a period of three years, says the department of personnel and training",0.22,21:46,Madhabi Puri Buch appointed as Sebi whole time member +0,"New York: India is home to world’s fourth highest number of billionaires with Reliance Industries chief Mukesh Ambani leading the club of more than 100 super-rich Indians, according to a new list released by Forbes magazine. The Forbes list of the ‘World’s Billionaires’ 2017 consists of 2,043 of the richest people in the world who have a combined net worth of $7.67 trillion, a record 18% increase over the past year. The list has been topped by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for the fourth year in a row. He has been the richest person in the world for 18 out of the past 23 years. Gates has a fortune of $86 billion, up from $75 billion last year, followed by Berkshire Hathaway chief Warren Buffet with a new worth of $75.6 billion. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos added $27.6 billion to his fortune; now worth $72.8 billion, moving into the top three in the world for the first time, up from number five a year ago. US President Donald Trump is ranked 544th on the list with his net worth of $3.5 billion. India is home to 101 billionaires, the first time it has more than 100 super rich individuals. The US continues to have more billionaires than any other nation, with a record 565, up from 540 a year ago. China is catching up with 319, Germany has the third most with 114 and India has the fourth highest number of billionaires. Also Read| Patanjali’s Acharya Balkrishna enters Forbes rich list; Flipkart’s Bansals outThere are nearly 20 people of Indian-origin who have made fortunes in various nations across the world, led by UK-based Hinduja brothers ranked 64th with $15.4 billion net worth, Indian-born tycoon Pallonji Mistry, who controls the 152-year-old Mumbai-headquartered engineering giant Shapoorji Pallonji Group at the 77th spot with $14.3 billion net worth and petrochemicals major Indorama co-founder Sri Prakash Lohia at the 288th spot with $ 5.4 billion net worth. Mistry’s younger son Cyrus is embroiled in a legal battle with the Tata Group after he was suddenly ousted as chairman of Tata Sons, a position he had held since 2012.Ambani, 59, leads the pack of Indian billionaires, coming in at the 33rd position with a net worth of $23.2 billion. Forbes said the “oil and gas tycoon” sparked a price war in India’s hyper-competitive telecom market with the launch of 4G phone service Jio last September. His younger brother Anil is ranked 745th with a net worth of $2.7 billion. The younger Ambani sibling “orchestrated the merger of his Reliance Communication’s telecom business with that of rival Aircel, controlled by Malaysian billionaire Ananda Krishnan. The combine, which awaits regulatory approvals, will be the country’s fourth-largest mobile phone operator,” Forbes said. Next on the list of Indian billionaires is ArcelorMittal Next on the list of Indian billionaires is ArcelorMittal chairman and CEO Lakshmi Mittal on the 56th spot with a net worth of $16.4 billion. Forbes said the Indian steel baron regains his status as the world’s second richest Indian on an uptick in steel prices and demand. “The world’s biggest steelmaker also got a reprieve from import tariffs on steel imposed by the US and Europe and a one-time $832 million saving from a new labour contract signed last year with its US workers,” it added. The list includes only four women billionaires from India, led by Savitri Jindal and her family at the 303rd position with a net worth of $5.2 billion.Also Read| How much the richest 1% earn and spend“After declining last year, the fortune of steel and power clan, whose matriarch Savitri Jindal chairs the OP Jindal Group, rose as steel prices recovered,” Forbes said. Smita Crishna-Godrej from the Godrej clan is ranked 814th followed by Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (973) and Leena Tewari (1030), chair of USV India which specialises in diabetic and cardiovascular drugs. Also making the list is Wipro chairman Azim Premji (72), Adani group founder Gautam Adani (250), Bajaj Group chair Rahul Bajaj (544), investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala (939), Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy (1161), chairman emeritus of Dabur Vivek Chand Burman (1290), Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani (1290), Wockhardt chair Habil Khorakiwala (1567), Mahindra group chief Anand Mahindra (1567), property tycoons Niranjan and Surendra Hiranandani (tied at 1678) and Yes Bank head Rana Kapoor (1795).Founder of mobile wallet Paytm Vijay Shekhar Sharma is ranked 1567 with his net worth of $ 1.3 billion. Forbes said Paytm was “one of the biggest beneficiaries of the government’s decision to demonetise 86% of India’s rupees and move to a cashless economy”, notching up 200 million registered users and five million transactions daily. Making his debut on the list at 814th spot is Acharya Balkrishna, friend of yoga guru Baba Ramdev, who holds 97% stake in the fast-growing consumer goods firm Patanjali Ayurveda. His net worth is $2.5 billion.Forbes said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg moved up to number five for the first time, after his fortune rose $11.4 billion in 12 months. Meanwhile Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico, once the world’s richest man, fell to number six, the first time he’s been out of the top five in a dozen years. There were 195 newcomers.China had the most new ten-figure fortunes with 76. The US was second with 25. The list has 56 billionaires under age 40, down from 66 last year, after some aged out and others dropped below the $1-billion mark. Seventy-eight people fell off the list, including 33 from China, 7 Americans and 9 who are still super wealthy but share their wealth among extended family members and therefore are not eligible for these ranks. PTI",2017-03-21,"As per the Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires, Mukesh Ambani is again the richest Indian. The list consists of 2,043 of the richest people in the world ",0.64,10:49,Forbes list: Mukesh Ambani ahead of other 100 Indian billionaires +0,"
New Delhi: As firms across the world go digital, job cuts are inevitable. How can employees ensure their job is secure? Jean-Marc Laouchez, global managing director (solutions) of US-based consulting firm Korn Ferry Hay Group Solutions, says employees will have to invest in gaining digital proficiency just as they would in learning a new language. Edited excerpts from an email interview:
Companies across sectors are trying to go digital. Do Indian firms have the know-how?Yes, most traditional organizations around the world are going digital. Some were born digital, others are just starting the journey. India Inc. is on the same continuum as elsewhere, with some Indian companies shaping the digital world while others “react” to digitization and focus on low-hanging fruits, such as e-commerce, automation or cost cuts.
Does digitization necessarily mean extensive job cuts?Korn Ferry research has identified five impacts of digitization with various degrees of risk and value creation: cost reduction, customer/employees experience, product/technology innovation, employees empowerment and networks activation, and new business models. The less digitally mature organizations see digitization as an extension of their current business: how to be more efficient and enhance clients’ and employees’ experience. More digitally mature organizations leverage their assets to develop new technologies, fundamentally rethink their relationships with clients and employees (e.g., active networks), and build disruptive business models. The development of Amazon.com from a low cost online bookstore to an open digital Web, logistics and retail marketplace illustrates these different stages, and how they radically impact the value of the company.
How can companies cut costs by destroying minimum jobs?Recruit or develop leaders with the mindset and skills to digitalize for higher value creation. Beyond the expected understanding of digital economics and business models, these digital leaders should have the influence and courage—risk-taking is a distinctive trait of successful digital leaders—to: •Invest in re-schooling /re-skilling their employees (e.g., assessment of potential, continuous development, emotional support),•Empower their front-line talent to identify and execute new solutions and businesses,•Enter into innovative and fair work and pay incentive arrangements (e.g., structured contingent workforce, individualized pay strategies).
Should companies have a re-skilling budget? What is the best way to estimate the cost?Yes. Even if the company is only looking for labour cost reduction, a number of employees with valuable “legacy” knowledge will have to be trained for the digital era. Korn Ferry is reinventing Hay Group Job Grading—an industry standard work measurement system—to better quantify the intangible (e.g., digital) value of work (e.g., know-how, problem solving, agility, relations, experience) beyond the tangible job accountability. The investment in re-skilling—or lack of—should be assessed against this additional intangible value. As an example, the “value of an employee” who is able to fully harness years of customers’ insight or specialized expertise in a digital context is often a “multiple of the value of a new employee” who has digital training but less relevant business experience. It is important to note that companies will often get into creative arrangements to reskill employees (e.g., provide an education account as a benefit). Increasingly, the employees themselves will have to anticipate and invest in their own digital proficiency, as they would do for learning a new language.
India is among the countries to jump onto the digital bandwagon. What can we learn from the Western countries?I am not sure that India is lagging behind other countries in terms of corporate digitization. I understand that Internet penetration is lower than in many countries. But India Inc., in a number of sectors (e.g., technology firms, BPO), is probably ahead. As per Rebuilt to Last—The Journey to Digital Sustainability—a recent Korn Ferry research white paper with some learning based on the analysis of our proprietary databases and on our observation of best practices, the best digital performers implement disruptive business models or new digital practices by developing five critical capabilities:•Discipline and focus•Agility—Agile leaders and organization is a must•Connectivity—both internal and external•Openness and transparency—probably one of the most difficult capabilities to develop as it challenges traditional command-and-control cultures •Empowerment and alignment
Which sectors will see job cuts due to digitization?On the short term, the sectors with repetitive physical work (e.g., manufacturing with robotization—already a mature trend) and repetitive intellectual work (e.g., services and decisions that can be performed through data and algorithms, with limited need for human experience and judgement). Digitization will also create new industries and jobs, providing attractive opportunities for the “reskilled digital worker”.
Most companies appoint marketing heads for digital initiatives, as you mentioned. Is that the right way to drive digital growth?Companies need leaders that will inspire and drive the digital transformation of their organizations. IT or marketing heads bring a lot of the capabilities required for such transformation. Strategy professionals, CFOs, COOs, HR professionals or front-line sales and delivery talent can also lead and bring new perspectives to create and execute digital businesses or activate digital partnerships and networks.Having the right leader is key, but the enabling ecosystem (like focused structure, digital learning culture, speed to market, analytics, partnerships) is as important, as legacy practices and infrastructure often inhibit digitization.",2017-03-21,"Even if the company is only looking for labour cost reduction, a number of employees with valuable ‘legacy’ knowledge will have to be trained for the digital era, says Jean-Marc Laouchez",0.51,03:18,Employees have to invest in their own digital proficiency: Jean-Marc Laouchez +0,"Mumbai: Tata Power Co Ltd on Friday posted a 38.3% rise in consolidated net profit for the quarter ended 31 December, helped in part by a lower tax rate and expenses, and higher other income.Consolidated net profit rose to Rs599.20 crore in the third quarter from Rs433.25 crore a year earlier, the power producer said in a statement. Net sales fell about 8.7% to Rs6677.89 crore from Rs7312.88 crore a year earlier.Twelve analysts polled by Bloomberg expected a consolidated net profit of Rs375 crore, while 13 analysts expected net sales of Rs7672 crore.Tata Power said revenue in its largest power business rose 1.4% to Rs6,254.85 crore from Rs6,166.09 crore a year earlier. Other business revenue rose 32% to Rs807.51 crore from Rs611.78 crore a year earlier.Total expenses fell marginally to Rs5,812.69 crore from Rs5,841.16 crore a year earlier.Together with its subsidiaries, Tata Power generated 13022 million units of power from all its plants.In a separate filing, Tata Power said it appointed N. Chandrasekaran chairman and additional director effective 11 February.Chandrasekaran is chairman designate of Tata Sons Ltd and currently the chief executive and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services.",2017-02-10,Tata Power’s consolidated net profit of rose to Rs599.20 crore in the third quarter from Rs433.25 crore a year earlier,0.88,23:42,Tata Power net profit jumps 38.3% in Q3 +0,"New Delhi: State-owned gas utility Gail India Ltd on Friday reported a 46% rise in its third quarter net profit on back of turnaround in petrochemical business. Net profit of Rs983 crore in the October-December quarter of the current fiscal was higher than Rs676 crore in the same period of 2015-16, Gail said in a statement. The rise in net profit was “buoyed by a turnaround in petrochemicals segment and increase in profitability of liquid hydrocarbons segment”, Gail said. The company also registered growth in physical performance in all segments—petrochemical sales were up by 8%, liquid hydrocarbon by 4% and natural gas marketing and transmission volumes were up by 3% and 2%, respectively. During April-December period of 2016-17, Gail’s net profit was up 133% to Rs3,243 crore.",2017-02-10,Gail India reported a 46% rise in its third quarter net profit at Rs983 crore on back of turnaround in petrochemical business,0.9,23:42,Gail Q3 profit up 46% at Rs983 crore +0,"New York: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates once again topped the Forbes magazine list of the world’s richest billionaires, while US President Donald Trump slipped more than 200 spots, the magazine said on Monday.Gates, whose wealth is estimated at $86 billion, led the list for the fourth straight year.He was followed by Berkshire Hathaway chief Warren Buffett among the top 10 billionaires, a group heavily dominated by Americans, many of whom work in the technology sector. Buffett’s wealth was estimated at $75.6 billion.Others in the top 10 included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at number three, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg at number five and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison at number seven.The global billionaire population jumped 13% from last year to 2,043, the biggest annual increase in the 31 years since the magazine began compiling the list, Forbes said.The US led countries with the most billionaires with 565, a product of the swelling value of the American stock market since Trump’s November 2016 election.China was second with 319 billionaires, and Germany was third with 114.Trump himself slipped 220 spots on the list to number 544 with an estimated $3.5 billion. Forbes attributed Trump’s drop to sluggishness in the Manhattan real estate market which is responsible for a disproportionate amount of his wealth.“Forty percent of Donald Trump’s fortune is tied up in Trump Tower and eight buildings within one mile of it,” Forbes said. “Lately, the neighbourhood has been struggling (relatively speaking).”Among others in the Forbes top 10, Amancio Ortega of Spanish apparel chain Zara was fourth, Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim was sixth, the Koch brothers, Charles and David, were eighth and ninth and former New York City mayor and Bloomberg News founder Michael Bloomberg was 10th.This year it took at least $3.7 billion in wealth to make it onto the list, but only in a tie for 501th place, a group that included Hollywood director Steven Spielberg.",2017-03-21,Donald Trump slipped to the 544th rank on the Forbes rich list with an estimated fortune of $3.5 billion as Bill Gates remained the world’s richest man ,1.0,03:28,Donald Trump slips 220 places in Forbes rich list as Bill Gates tops rankings again +0,"
A few quarters ago, a press conference on the financial results of State Bank of India (SBI) paused comically after a chunk of plaster fell on the stage from above. Smirks in the audience indicated they had taken this as a metaphor for the deteriorating bad loan situation. Stretching that metaphor, can we say SBI’s book is on the mend like the auditorium—the venue for that conference—that is under renovation now?On the face of it, the numbers for the third quarter resemble a chess board as for every positive metric, there is a negative one. The largest lender’s slippages remained around Rs10,000 crore, unlike many of its peers, which showed a decrease. But upgrades surged, indicating stress has eased. Note that this improvement is despite the demonetisation blow to the asset side. Of course, the bad loan ratios, both gross and net, rose simply because of the measly 4.2% loan growth.But for ugly bad loan ratios, two heartening numbers are the sequential reduction in stressed assets ratio (which is gross bad loans plus restructured standard assets) to 9.54% and a fall in credit costs to 1.92%. Further, more than 70% of slippages are from the watchlist that SBI put out in March, which means the lender has got its diagnosis right on toxic assets. The list itself is down 31% to Rs17,992 crore, which represents just 2.66% of the total corporate loan book.The management’s outlook for its asset book is anything but sanguine and the stock movement this year suggests even investors have not abandoned caution. SBI shares have risen 12% this year; but so have the benchmark indices. Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairman of the bank, hopes loan disbursals will grow 6.5% in 2016-17. The loan growth for FY18 is pegged at 11% and that, too, on the base effect, given this year’s limited growth.Bhattacharya also pointed out that demonetisation has set the bank back by a quarter in mending its bad loans. Its mid-corporate and small and micro enterprise customers were the worst hit by the currency withdrawal, and bad loan ratios rose sharply. Moreover, as Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd points out, SBI used the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) special dispensation to classify loans worth Rs2,000 crore as standard in the wake of demonetisation.Ignore the one-time relief and SBI’s already formidable stock of bad loans at Rs1.08 trillion would have increased further. The bank highlighted that fresh loans disbursed by it are to corporate entities having a rating above ‘A’ and that a slow but sure pick-up in economic activity would eventually translate into higher credit growth. But for FY17, asset quality will look nasty, and the only saviour for the stock is that it currently trades at 1.27 times the estimated book value of FY18 earnings, which is cheap.",2017-02-11,"But for ugly bad loan ratios, two heartening numbers at SBI are the sequential reduction in stressed assets ratio to 9.54% and a fall in credit costs to 1.92%",-0.15,02:32,December quarter results indicate SBI limping back to normalcy +0,"Mumbai: Bank of Baroda (BOB) Ltd on Friday reported a net profit for the December quarter helped by an increase in net interest income and other income.Net profit for the third quarter stood at Rs252.67 crore compared with a loss of Rs3,342.04 crore a year earlier. According to estimates of 20 Bloomberg analysts, BOB was expected to post a net profit of Rs636.50 crore.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 15.85% to Rs3,134.36 crore in the December quarter from Rs2,705.34 crore last year.Other income increased by 60% to Rs1,774.96 crore in the third quarter from Rs1,112.91 crore in the same period last year.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) at BOB decreased marginally to Rs42,642.40 crore at the end of the December quarter from Rs42,949.25 crore in the September quarter. As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were 11.40% at the end of the December quarter compared with 11.35% in the previous quarter and 9.68% a year ago.Provisions and contingencies increased 15.79% to Rs2,079.50 crore in the third quarter from Rs1,795.84 crore from the previous quarter. Net NPAs rose to 5.43% in the December quarter, compared with 5.46% in the previous quarter and 5.67% a year earlier.The results were announced after market close.On Friday, BoB shares closed up 2% at Rs188.05 on the BSE, while India’s benchmark Sensex Index rose 0.02% to closed at 28334.25 points.",2017-02-10,"Bank of Baroda’s net profit for the third quarter stood at Rs252.67 crore compared with a loss of Rs3,342.04 crore a year earlier",0.76,22:18,Bank of Baroda reports a net profit of Rs253 crore in Q3 +0,"Mumbai: Wind turbine maker Suzlon Energy Ltd on Friday reported a profit for the quarter ended 31 December, compared with a year-earlier loss.Consolidated net profit was Rs274.34 crore compared with a net loss of Rs121.84 crore in the year-ago period.Revenue rose about 57℅ to Rs3,311.38 crore from Rs1,884.64 crore a year earlier.Revenue in its largest wind turbine generator business rose to Rs2,837.59 crore from Rs1,436.07 crore a year earlier. Revenue in the foundry and forging business rose and in the operation and maintenance (O&M) business fell.“Wind energy in India delivered highest installation of over 3,400 MW (megawatt) in FY16 and is expected to grow beyond that in FY17,” the company said in a statement.Suzlon’s consolidated net term debt (excluding foreign currency convertible bonds) stood at Rs6,538 crore while its order book stood at 1,231MW, valued at Rs7,523 crore.Suzlon said during the quarter it reached 10,000 MW of installed capacity, making it the largest renewable energy company in India.“The domestic market is likely to grow in size, mainly due to the State Feed in Tariff (FIT) programs, Inter State Transmission System (ISTS) with non-windy states, and the demand to meet the Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPO). The competitive bidding process held recently will drive volume growth in the industry,” said J.P. Chalasani, group CEO, Suzlon.",2017-02-10,Suzlon’s consolidated net profit was Rs274.34 crore compared with a net loss of Rs121.84 crore in the year-ago period,0.74,23:13,Suzlon posts net profit of Rs274.34 crore in third quarter +0,"New Delhi: Broadcaster New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV) on Friday said consolidated net loss widened to Rs18 crore in the quarter ended 31 December from Rs13 crore in the year-ago period, primarily due to a dip in TV advertising revenue following demonetisation.The company, which operates NDTV 24X7, NDTV Prime, NDTV India and NDTV Good Times channels, reported a drop in revenue to Rs133 crore in the quarter from Rs150 crore a year ago.The company’s television news business generated revenue of Rs108 crore, down from Rs130 crore in the same period last year.The company led by Prannoy Roy said it had initiated steps to rationalize costs and increase productivity with the aim of improving overall efficiency of operations.The company said its flagship website ndtv.com crossed over 90 million monthly unique visitors in the December quarter.",2017-02-10,NDTV’s consolidated net loss widened to Rs18 crore in the quarter ended 31 December from Rs13 crore in the year-ago period,-0.29,23:06,NDTV net loss widens due to impact of demonetisation +0,"New Delhi: Reliance Capital on Friday reported a consolidated net profit of Rs209 crore for the third quarter of the current fiscal, a drop of 11% from the year-ago period, as it made provisions to beef up reserves in general insurance business. However, the company’s total income increased to Rs 3,964 crore in the October-December quarter of the current fiscal, from Rs2,353 crore in the year-ago period, Reliance Capital said in a statement. The firm has set aside Rs43 crore for Reliance General Insurance. Excluding this amount, Reliance Capital’s third quarter profit rose 8% to Rs252 crore. As on 31 December 2016, the company’s net worth stood at Rs16,149 crore, a surge of 10% from the same period last fiscal. Reliance Mutual Fund’s profit before tax stood at Rs152 crore in the third quarter of the current fiscal, a growth of 8% from year-ago period. Reliance Commercial Finance reported a 2% growth in profit before tax at Rs80 crore, while the profit before tax of Reliance Home Finance too climbed 3% to Rs35 crore and Reliance General Insurance registered an increase of 20% in its profit to Rs18 crore. The company’s broking and distribution business profit stood at Rs14 crore in the October-December quarter, 2016-17 as against marginal profits in the corresponding previous period. Reliance Capital, a part of the Reliance Group, is one of country’s leading private sector financial services companies. The Group has a presence across financial services, telecom, energy, power, infrastructure and defence. Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.",2017-02-10,"Reliance Capital reported a consolidated net profit of Rs209 crore for the third quarter of the current fiscal, a drop of 11% from the year-ago period",0.79,23:41,Reliance Capital Q3 profit drops 11% to Rs209 crore +0,"New Delhi: Pharmaceuticals firm Alkem Laboratories on Friday reported 24.89% increase in consolidated net profit at Rs233.4 crore for the third quarter ended 31 December 2016.The company had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs186.89 crore in the same quarter last fiscal, Alkem Laboratories said in a BSE filing.Total income from operations during the period under review stood at Rs 1,481.92 crore as against Rs1,287.84 crore in the same quarter last fiscal, up 15%. Total expenses during the third quarter were higher at Rs1,240.17 crore as against Rs 1,074.74% in the year ago period.Shares of Alkem Laboratories were trading at Rs1,811 apiece in the afternoon trade, up 0.03% from the previous close on the BSE.",2017-02-10,"Alkem Laboratories total income from operations during third quarter stood at Rs 1,481.92 crore as against Rs1,287.84 crore in the same quarter last fiscal, up 15%",0.64,14:53,Alkem Laboratories Q3 profit rises 24.89% at Rs233 crore +0,"New Delhi: Shares of Steel authority of India Limited (Sail) tumbled 6% on Friday after the company reported a standalone net loss of Rs794.8 crore for the third quarter ended 31 December 2016. The stock tanked 5.99% to end at Rs61.95 on BSE. During the day, it plunged 6.60% to Rs61.55. On NSE, it lost 6% to settle at Rs61.90. Even though the company’s net loss narrowed in the quarter ended December, it failed to lift investors sentiment. On the volume front, 14.36 lakh shares of the company were traded on BSE and over one crore shares changed hands at NSE during the day. India’s largest steelmaker Sail’s standalone net loss narrowed to Rs794.8 crore for the quarter ended 31 December 2016, helped by higher gross sales. The company’s standalone net loss in the corresponding quarter of previous fiscal stood at Rs1,481 crore, Steel Authority of India Ltd (Sail) said in a BSE filing on Thursday. Sail’s gross sales on standalone basis in the October-December quarter was at Rs12,490 crore, registering an increase of 25.8% from year-ago period.",2017-02-10,Steel Authority of India’s (Sail) shares fell 6% after it reported a net loss of Rs794.8 crore for the third quarter ended 31 December ,0.09,16:54,SAIL shares tank 6% after Q3 earnings +0,"London: ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steelmaker, reported a 20% increase in annual profit on rising steel and iron ore prices, and forecast higher demand this year.The company decided not to reinstate its dividend and stopped providing earnings guidance.Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) rose to $6.26 billion last year, the Luxembourg-based company said in a statement Friday. The figure beat the $6.14 billion average of 18 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Ebitda in the fourth quarter was $1.66 billion, 51% higher than a year ago.Steelmakers’ earnings have been bolstered by a rally in prices as Chinese stimulus stabilized the economy and policy makers around the world pledged to back growth. European steel prices surged 82% last year, while benchmark rates for iron ore and coking coal, which ArcelorMittal also mines, almost doubled and tripled, respectively.ArcelorMittal has also benefited from increased efforts to protect US and European markets from record Chinese exports that producers have argued are at unfairly low prices. The company estimates that global steel consumption will rise 0.5% to 1.5% this year.The company decided not to reinstate its dividend, preferring instead to pay down debt in an effort to return to an investment-grade credit rating. Net debt decreased by $4.6 billion to $11.1 billion at year-end, the company said.“EBITDA was comfortably in excess of initial expectations and, furthermore, we have delivered on our commitment to prioritize debt reduction, significantly strengthening our balance sheet and ending the year with the lowest level of net debt since the creation of the company,” chief executive officer Lakshmi Mittal said in the statement.The shares settled at 7.518 euros on Thursday and have more than tripled in the past year. Bloomberg",2017-02-10,ArcelorMittal decided not to reinstate its dividend and stopped providing earnings guidance,0.55,13:58,"ArcelorMittal profit jumps 20% as steel, iron prices rally" +0,"San Francisco: Apple Inc’s decision to stop licensing graphics chips from Imagination Technologies Group Plc is the clearest example yet of the iPhone maker’s determination to take greater control of the core technologies in its products—both to guard its hefty margins and to position it for future innovations, especially in so-called augmented reality.The strategy, analysts say, has already reduced Apple’s dependence on critical outside suppliers like ARM Holdings Plc, now owned by SoftBank Group Corp. Apple once relied heavily on ARM to design the main processor for the iPhone, but it now licenses only the basic ARM architecture and designs most of the chip itself.More recently, when Apple bought the headphone company Beats Electronics, part of a $3 billion deal in 2014, it ripped out the existing, off-the-shelf communications chips and replaced them with its own custom-designed W1 Bluetooth chip.“Apple clearly got rid of all the conventional suppliers and replaced about five chips with one,” said Jim Morrison, vice president of TechInsights, a firm that examines the chips inside electronics devices. “Today we do much more in-house development of fundamental technologies than we used to,” Apple chief financial officer Luca Maestri said at a February conference. “Think of the work we do on processors or sensors. We can push the envelope on innovation. We have better control over timing, over cost and over quality.”Most vendors of consumer electronics products rely on outside suppliers for chip design and development, primarily because it is extremely expensive. That has created huge opportunities for companies like ARM, Qualcomm Inc. and Nvidia Corp, which have developed core technologies for processing, communications and graphics that are used by scores of vendors.Now, though, Apple is so big that it can economically create its own designs, or license small pieces of others’ work and build on it. As with ARM and Qualcomm, the actual manufacturing of the chips is still contracted out to a semiconductor foundry, such as those run by Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd.Move fast, save money Bringing more of the design work in-house cuts complexity, people familiar with the processes say. Instead of managing one or more design teams and then a fabricator, Apple has only to manage the fabricator.It may also help the company move faster—and save money—as it focuses on new technologies such as virtual and augmented reality. Apple CEO Tim Cook has indicated that Apple plans to integrate augmented reality into its products, which makes 3-D sensors and graphics chips like Imagination’s especially important.Even before formally cutting off Imagination, Apple had given hints that it was preparing to design its own graphics processors. Specifically, it introduced a piece of its own code called Metal for app developers. App developers use Metal to make their apps talk to the graphics chip on the iPhone.By putting a piece of Apple-designed code between app developers and the phone’s chip, Apple has made it possible to swap out the chip without interrupting how the developers work. That could also make it easier to bridge the gap for developers between the graphics chips on Apple’s phones and its desktop computers, which currently require some separate coding.“By promoting Metal instead of relying on other existing standards, Apple is not only able to control what graphics chip functionality is exposed at its own pace, but also blur the line for developers between coding for desktop and mobile GPUs,” said Pius Uzamere, the founder of a virtual reality startup called Ether.Taking control of the iPhone’s chips can also help Apple keep costs down, which is especially important as it gears up for a feature-laden new iPhone this fall. Timothy Arcuri of Cowen & Co said in a research note that he thinks the curved screens expected on the new phone could add as much as $50 in cost, for example. Shebly Seyrafi, an analyst at FBN Securities, estimates that the average price of an iPhone increased only 1% to $695 last quarter, while costs increased 8% to $420, resulting in an iPhone gross margin of 39.6%. That is down from the 44% average gross margin for iPhones in 2015, according to Seyrafi’s estimates.Apple spends only $75 million a year on licensing fees for Imagination’s chips. But licensing fees to chip designers, taken together, are a significant cost for the iPhone. Apple recently sued Qualcomm for $1 billion over licensing terms for its communications chips—which Apple would have trouble designing in-house because of patent issues. Reuters",2017-04-05,Apple’s decision to stop licensing graphics chips from Imagination Technologies is the clearest example yet of its determination to take greater control of core technologies,0.48,10:07,"Apple aims for more control, less cost as it accelerates in chip design" +0,"
San Francisco: A former Google engineer at the centre of a fight over self-driving car technology made more than $120 million, according to a legal filing on Monday, highlighting the intense competition among tech companies and carmakers for talent in the nascent sector.The autonomous vehicle unit, now called Waymo, claimed in an arbitration demand against the former employee, Anthony Levandowski, that he breached his contract by recruiting from its ranks for his rival company, Otto,—while collecting more than $120 million in incentive payments from the search giant.Waymo and Levandowski’s current employer Uber Technologies Inc. are locked in a contentious legal battle over autonomous vehicle technology. The ride-hailing company is trying to persuade a court that Waymo’s February lawsuit should be resolved in private arbitration. Waymo had earlier filed an arbitration action against Levandowski.Google’s self-driving car project had initially structured its compensation to create specific incentives for the robotics engineers working on the futuristic technology. As the project progressed and evolved into a potential business capable of upending transportation, several early team members got huge payments, as Bloomberg News earlier reported.Uber and Waymo representatives declined to comment on Monday, and Levandowski didn’t respond to a request for comment.Google also alleged that, in addition to Otto, Levandowski helped found two other companies developing laser-based sensor technology that ran afoul of his non-compete agreement with the search giant. Odin Wave LLC and Tyto Lidar LLC were merged by February 2014 and Levandowski had been involved in Odin Wave since at least the previous year, when he was also developing competing technology for Google, according to the legal filing.Google at one stage investigated acquiring the merged company, which was run under the Tyto moniker, and Levandowski took part in that process without disclosing any role at the company, Google said. By May 2016, Tyto had been folded into Otto.",2017-04-05,"Waymo claimed in an arbitration demand against Anthony Levandowski that he breached his contract by recruiting from its ranks for his rival company, Otto",0.16,01:11,Former Google self-driving car engineer made over $120 million +0,"
Infosys Ltd’s chief executive officer (CEO) Vishal Sikka is assured of $10 million in annual compensation, irrespective of the company’s performance, because a clause in his employment contract makes him eligible to earn at least 90% of his total $11 million salary.
Infosys doesn’t deny the existence of the clause, although it doesn’t explain how this fits in with the company’s disclosure to BSE on 24 February last year that Sikka’s compensation could fall to $3 million in 2016-17 if Infosys’s growth fails to meet the internal targets set by the board.
Of Sikka’s $11 million compensation, $8 million is variable pay, the component based on Infosys’s performance. Infosys has not disclosed the annual targets upon completion of which Sikka stands to get full variable salary.
Also read: Infosys compensation row: Of executives, programmers and fairness
According to his employment contract, Sikka, if need be, can use a so-called “good reason” clause to terminate his existing employment agreement with Infosys, if his annual compensation of $11 million falls by more than 10%.
Effectively, what this means is that Infosys is beholden to pay him at least $10 million if it wants to retain him as CEO.
To be sure, he can choose not to use the clause—which means he can, if he wants to, accept a $3 million salary—but the existence of this clause does put him on a strong footing.
“Good reason”, in the employment contract, is defined as “Executive’s resignation within 30 days... following the occurrence of one or more of the following, without executive’s express written consent: a material reduction (with 10% reduction deemed to be material) in executive’s aggregate target compensation comprised of base pay, target variable pay and target value of stock compensation (except, where there is a substantially similar reduction applicable to senior executives generally, provided that such reduction does not exceed 10%).”
Also read: Forget compassionate capitalism, just some fairness will do
Infosys filed a copy of this employment agreement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on 18 May last year. By then, shareholders had already given their nod to Sikka’s higher compensation, making at least one proxy advisory firm question whether “Infosys deliberately did not share complete information”.
“In light of the fact that there is asymmetry of information in the information provided in the notice that was sent to Indian shareholders when an approval was sought and in the SEC disclosure, this is bad corporate governance,” said Shriram Subramanian, founder and managing director of proxy firm InGovern Research.
An Infosys spokesperson said the clause was also part of an earlier agreement with Sikka that was filed with the SEC on 20 May 2015.
“Your interpretation of the clause in the CEO’s contract is completely wrong,” the spokesperson said in response to emailed queries from Mint if Sikka’s minimum salary is $10 million on account of the “good reason” clause. The spokesperson refused to elaborate.
“We have publicly addressed questions on the CEO’s contract and we stand by that,” the spokesperson said. The spokesperson maintained that Sikka’s salary was variable. “As stated before, the nominations and remuneration committee (NRC) will evaluate the CEO’s variable compensation at the end of the fiscal year based on the company’s performance. Dr. Sikka’s compensation is linked to the company’s aspirational goal to achieve $20 billion in revenues by March 2021,” the spokesperson added.
A lack of clarity on Sikka’s $11 million salary was one reason for the souring of the relationship between the founder-promoters, led by N.R. Narayana Murthy, and the company’s board, Mint reported on 10 February.
A majority of the promoters also did not vote for a resolution seeking a salary increase for chief operating officer U.B. Pravin Rao. According to filings by Infosys with stock exchanges, only 24% of promoter votes were cast in favour of the resolution seeking a 35% raise in Rao’s compensation to Rs12.5 crore. The remaining abstained.
On Sunday, in response to a questionnaire from Mint, Murthy said that the promoters believe the pay increase was “not proper” as the increase is a lot higher than what was awarded to rank-and-file employees. “Every senior management person of an Indian corporation has to show self-restraint in his or her compensation. This is necessary if we have to make compassionate capitalism acceptable to a majority of Indians who are poor,” said Murthy in an email. Infosys, in its defence on Monday, said that the increase in salary to its senior leaders is in line with global standards, and followed a comprehensive survey of best practices and benchmarked senior management compensation with key Indian and global companies.",2017-04-05,A clause in Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka’s contract lets him terminate his employment if his annual compensation falls by more than 10%,0.25,14:56,Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka guaranteed 90% of $11 million salary +0,"Bangalore: Xiaomi Corp. says it’s misunderstood. Once compared with Apple Inc. for its sleek smartphones and charismatic leadership, the Chinese start-up is seeking an image makeover as it tries to recover from a sales-growth slide.And the brand its billionaire co-founder Lei Jun wants to be compared with: Costco Wholesale Corp., the Issaquah, Washington-based warehouse retailer that sells everything from wine and diamond rings to bulging boxes of cereal and fruit at knockdown prices. Xiaomi’s revenue will probably reach $15 billion this year as the Beijing-based maker of products ranging from pens and air purifiers to TVs and smartphones adopts a new business model and fine-tunes operations, Lei, 47, said in a recent interview.“We are not Apple,” Lei, clad in a black polo shirt and blue jeans, said at Xiaomi’s Bengaluru office in India, its biggest overseas market. “We have the same value system as Costco. We want users to enjoy better products at an affordable price.”While Apple commands premium prices and enjoys the highest margins in the brutally competitive $425 billion global smartphone industry, Costco sells merchandise at razor-thin profits while fuelling earnings from its 35 million annual memberships. As Xiaomi embraces a new strategy to fuel growth, Lei’s goal is to pull in more revenue from apps and services, which delivered $1 billion in sales from 10 million-plus monthly active users last year.It’s a far different strategy than the one it used to claim the top spot among China’s smartphone makers and a valuation of $45 billion that made it, briefly, the most valuable startup in the world. Instead of the online flash sales and inexpensively-sourced components that it used to disrupt the mobile industry, Lei wants to bring internet-inspired efficiency to offline commerce. He’s also turning to India to revive Xiaomi’s fortunes as China grows more competitive.‘Make history’Here, 20-something workers in denim jeans and T-shirts huddle in groups or sit behind shiny white desks separated by foot-high red, yellow and green partitions. Exposed-brick support columns and tube lights suspended below bare pipes and air-conditioning ducts make the office feel more like it’s inside a Brooklyn loft than an industrial park.Dozens of circular mobiles swing from the lights, with phrases encouraging staff to “Let’s make history together.” A scattering of motivational cartoons sketched on whiteboards promote Xiaomi’s aims and achievements. Now six years old, Xiaomi’s meteoric rise has been usurped in recent quarters by competitors replicating— and succeeding at—the very model that enabled it to vault ahead of Apple and Samsung Electronics Co. in its home market.The risk for Xiaomi in India is that it will go the same way as China: toppled by rival brands such as Oppo, Huawei and Vivo.Tarun Pathak, associate director at Counterpoint Research, said Xiaomi is taking a risky approach. The company’s rivals have been able to sell the same number of phones in India, even though their products cost as much as three times more. As Xiaomi seeks to expand sales volumes, it will have to sell more of its high-end models. “Their margins are thin and when they go offline, their expenses will shoot up,” he said.Modi meetingDuring his third visit to India—a week-long trip that included a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi—Lei summoned a town hall-style staff meeting to rally a team he praised for making Xiaomi the No. 1 online-selling smartphone company in the country the past two quarters. Their goal now, he said, was to cement that position in the next three to five years.In India, “incomes are low and everyone wants good products,” Lei said in a glass-walled conference room, flanked by several of his top executives. Lei is trying to reignite the buzz in the offline or “new retail” market, he said. “Everyone realizes the online market is very limited.”In China, Xiaomi accounts for only a 10th of total smartphone sales, Lei estimates, leaving bigger opportunities in the traditional bricks-and-mortar approach. Lei aims to have 1,000 so-called MiHome retail stores with sales topping $10 billion annually in next three years, he said. MiHome stores will offer just two dozen Xiaomi products, according to Lei. Pointing to a single line of $1 apiece writing pens, two types of air purifiers, and three kinds of smartphones, he says he envisages selling no more than 100 product types in coming years, versus the hundreds, or even thousands of stock-keeping units maintained by some manufacturers.New beginning?“Our toughest times have passed starting this year, and our main strategy now is to bring the internet way of thinking to offline in China,” Lei said. The plan is to integrate multiple links in offline commerce and avoid the bottlenecks that can occur as products move along the supply chain through manufacturing and repair to logistics and sales.But even the “new retail” strategy risks being copied. Lei spoke publicly about it one morning and the head of an e-retailing behemoth used the same term hours later, he said. Competitors have in the past paid the ultimate price of copying Xiaomi’s approach, Lei said, declining to give names. “One company lost $1 billion last year, maybe even more,” he said. “Game over.”Microsoft rivalLei’s ideas were shaped by past ventures. He previously ran Kingsoft Corp., a software maker that competes with Microsoft Corp.’s enterprise software sales in China, and his e-commerce company Joyo.com was acquired by Amazon.com Inc. and renamed Amazon China. Lei is convinced his retail plan will revive the growth prospects that helped earn Xiaomi its lofty valuation.Sales began to stagnate in 2015 and shipments plummeted in China last year, with the company refusing to release 2016 numbers. In January, former international head Hugo Barra left for Facebook Inc., raising questions about Xiaomi’s ability to navigate its way through what Lei had described as “unforgettable” challenges.In India last week, Lei insisted that revenue never slowed during the past two years, and that “Xiaomi has resumed rapid growth.” Suggestions that the company’s value had sunk to $4 billion “hurt us a lot,” he said, refusing to be drawn into a discussion on its current value.“It was never as bad as it was made out to be,” he said. “Our investors are not worried. I have explained to them clearly. And to our users, we say, ‘It takes 10 to 15 years. We need time. Trust Mr. Lei.’”Enough cashThere is no pressure on cash flow and no need to raise funds, he said, adding: “We have more than enough cash.” Lei declined to comment on whether Xiaomi has any immediate plan for an initial public offering. Right now, he’s focusing on India, including the potential to open physical stores in the nation with the world’s largest youth population.Xiaomi is planning a third factory in India, where Lei says he’s prepared to take more risks, including doubling investments to $1 billion over the next few years.“In the next two years, we want more and more influence in India,” Lei said. How he will do that plays on his mind constantly he says, as he reaches for a black backpack and fishes for one of 10 phones inside.“I keep thinking about how to perfect my products,” Lei says, clutching a phone with a metallic, pale blue finish. “For instance, how come Indians don’t like this ‘Tiffany blue’ colored phone?”That’s just one of many things that perplexes Lei about the India market. But he’s determined to figure it out: “This is what keeps me awake at night.” Bloomberg",2017-04-05,"Once compared with Apple for its sleek smartphones and charismatic leadership, Xiaomi is seeking an image makeover as it tries to recover from a sales growth slide",0.66,09:34,"Forget Apple, Xiaomi CEO now wants to be more like Costco" +0,"New Delhi: Handset maker Motorola on Tuesday launched the fifth generation of its best-selling Moto G series —- Moto G5 — in the Indian market for Rs11,999.The company had launched the higher-end Moto G5 Plus last month in India. The Moto G5 — which will be available on Amazon.in — features a full metal design, faster processor and better camera functionality. The device will compete with handsets from Xiaomi, Micromax as well as those from the stable of its parent Lenovo.“Moto G is our biggest franchise and the fastest selling as well. We had launched the Moto G5 Plus a few weeks back and now we are bringing the Moto G5. India is an important market and we want to offer the best from our portfolio to consumers here,” Motorola Mobility India managing director Sudhin Mathur told reporters in New Delhi. Over 6 million units of the Moto G (first four generations) have been sold in India so far. The Android Nougat-based Moto G5 features a 5-inch display, 1.4Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon octa-core processor, 3GB RAM, internal storage of 16GB (expandable up to 128GB), 13MP rear and 5MP front cameras and 2,800 mAh battery. At the end of 2016, Lenovo and Motorola had 8.9% share of the Indian smartphone market, as per research firm IDC.The Indian smartphone market has seen a significant shift in the last few quarters with homegrown brands being pushed out of the top five positions by Chinese firms like Lenovo, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo.",2017-04-04,"Android Nougat-based Moto G5 features a 5-inch display, 1.4Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon octa-core processor, 3GB RAM, internal storage of 16GB (expandable up to 128GB)",0.24,18:58,"Motorola launches Moto G5 in India for Rs11,999" +0,"San Francisco: Cohesity Inc., a startup that specializes in data storage, landed funding that valued the company at more than $500 million, according to a person familiar with the matter, giving it fresh resources to bolster growth.GV—the venture capital arm of Google parent Alphabet Inc.—and Sequoia Capital co-led an investment round of more than $90 million. That’s the third major funding round for Cohesity, bringing the total investments in the company to more than $160 million. The new infusion will help the startup expand internationally while also improving its lineup with more engineers, according to Mohit Aron, chief executive officer and founder.Cohesity is expanding its reach to attract more businesses looking for new ways to handle the growing reams of data being produced every day. While the company doesn’t disclose sales, the startup said it has been roughly doubling the number of customers every quarter. Its products became publicly available in late 2015.Cohesity is targeting the “secondary” part of the storage industry that takes care of data that needs to be available for projects that might include analytics—but not necessarily at the highest speeds. This storage, which also aims to reduce complexity, is offered via gear that looks like flat boxes and includes computing and networking capabilities, often referred to as hyperconverged products. The startup also has agreements to let its technology work with major cloud providers Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. “There’s a lot of market demand,” said Bill Coughran, a partner at Sequoia Capital and a Cohesity board member.GV participated in an earlier funding round and Sequoia co-led Cohesity’s initial funding. New participants included Cisco Systems Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and Foundation Capital. Among the other investors are Accel, Battery Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures.Aron declined to comment on the funding round’s valuation. He founded Cohesity in 2013 and previously was a co-founder of Nutanix Inc., another storage company, which went public last year and now has valuation of about $2.6 billion. He said the funding announced Tuesday will help the startup as it attracts corporate customers, which include Shutterstock and Ultimate Software.“We’re seeing this big uptake,” Aron said. The funding “means that I can kind of press on the gas a little bit.” Bloomberg",2017-04-04,"This is the third major funding round for Cohesity, bringing the total investments in the company to more than $160 million",0.61,20:59,Storage startup Cohesity Inc. said to attract valuation of over $500 million +0,"
Early in the morning of Monday, 3 April, serendipity sat me next to N.R. Narayana Murthy on a long transcontinental flight leaving Bengaluru. As the flight attendants handed out newspapers for the passengers to read while on the journey, I couldn’t help but notice that Murthy had made front-page news, this time for questioning the extent of the raise given to an executive at Infosys Ltd, the company that he founded over three decades ago along with a few of his junior colleagues. I turned to him and we began a conversation. I shall not focus here on the specific comments about Infosys, but there were several parts of the conversation that covered Murthy’s philosophy around topics that I have written about in this column before, and which provide insights into the character of the man. Unsurprisingly, we spoke of the social issues being caused by the changes in the way corporations recruit and retain talent. We spoke of organizations such as TopCoder, now part of an Indian IT services firm after the acquisition of its parent by Wipro. TopCoder is a marketplace for computer programmers, who can get compensated for their work through this marketplace without ever having to be an employee of a services firm. It is like a taxi aggregator among programming firms. I have written in this column before about how marketplaces like these can eventually change the construct of the employer-employee contract now prevalent among many firms and have also mused about whether unionization may be around the corner at some Indian IT services firms as the employer-employee relationship construct begins to disintegrate.Murthy explained that there are circumstances where unions can play a pivotal role in ensuring equity. He said the fact that unions look out for employees’ welfare is inescapable, and proffered the example of the US. According to him, when unionization covered 35% of the American workforce, American labour was better looked after. Now that this figure has slipped to around 15%, the poor have become poorer as corporations and their leaders have followed an Ayn-Rand-esque view of “rational self-interest” and social Darwinism. Pushing crumbs off one’s table and trusting that the aspiring classes in society will have enough is a sure recipe in fomenting labour class unrest, as the recent Brexit and US presidential elections have shown. Murthy’s opinion is that such unrest is also lying dormant and is barely beneath the surface in India, and that leaders of India’s capitalist revolution cannot afford to blithely ignore this.Also read | Infosys strongly defends COO pay hike criticized by Narayana MurthyWe also spoke of the fledgling experiments with universal basic income (UBI) that have begun to pop up in various corners of the earth. UBI is essentially a dole paid out to every citizen, whether they are out of work or not, in a nod to the fact that relentless mechanization and automation will take away many people’s livelihoods in the near- to medium-term future. While classical economics tells us that disruptive changes in labour mechanics such as offshoring and automation only cause a temporary loss in jobs before there is a “job shift” when people start to work in other fields of endeavour so that they may earn a living, the short-term pain caused by the original job displacement is undeniable. UBI is a well-meaning attempt to alleviate some of that pain. It comes with the same plethora of problems around unemployment doles, but Murthy’s view was that societies have a responsibility to their underprivileged or displaced populaces and that he would welcome higher taxes on the IT industry that are meant to go directly to those whose jobs IT displaces. He said that the only society that is stable is one that is seen to be moving, however haltingly, towards an atmosphere of equity and fairness among all its members.Leaders in the IT industry need to be seen as fair by the people under their command. Giving raises at the top that are 10 or even 20 times the rate of the raises being given at the bottom runs the risk of creating an impression that those at the top are greedy opportunists most interested in snatching what they can while the going is good. I have been part of a company where the boss raised his own salary by over 250%, leaving others in his second line like me to explain to the rest of the workforce that they had to make do with a 2% increase. The rationale for the anaemic salary increase for everyone but the boss was that the firm had not reached its (internally set) earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, targets. As an aside, I am sure the boss’s new salary contributed to the company repeating this miss in the next year. That year, even though my own compensation increase was also in the low single digits, I felt great discomfiture at having to justify and explain the boss’s salary increase, which the board had seen right to give him since “he could easily get another job in the industry paying just as much”. To paraphrase the Bard of Avon, all the mouthwash in India has not cured me of the ensuing halitosis from those conversations.Recalling a time when the industry finally saw the light and banded together in the common interest to fight high levels of attrition when companies were blithely poaching talent from one another, I asked Murthy whether Nasscom or some such industry body could now be entrusted with this looming question of “fairness”. He was unequivocal that an ombudsman is needed. Maybe it is time we allow ourselves to be policed.Siddharth Pai is a world-renowned technology consultant who has led over $20 billion in complex, first-of-a-kind outsourcing transactions.",2017-04-04,"In IT firms such as Infosys, giving raises at the top many times the rate of the raises at the bottom risks creating an impression that those at the top are greedy opportunists ",0.55,01:26,"Infosys compensation row: Of executives, programmers and fairness" +0,"London: Shares in Imagination Tech crashed more than 70% on Monday after the British company said its biggest customer, Apple, would stop using its graphics technology in iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches.Imagination said Apple, which accounts for about half its revenue, had notified the British firm it was developing its own graphics chips and would no longer use Imagination’s processing designs in 15 months to two years time.Shares in Imagination, in which Apple holds an 8% stake, plunged to 76 pence, their lowest level since 2009 and about a 10th of their record of 734 pence hit in 2012.“The biggest risk to Imagination’s business model was realised this morning,” analysts at Investec said. “The loss of this revenue stream will have a material impact on the financials of the company.”ALSO READ | Apple sparks row with pledge to drop Imagination Tech graphicsImagination’s shares were trading down 61% at 105 pence by 0915 GMT, giving the company a market value of £298 million ($372 million), or £463 million less than it was worth on Friday. The technology company has licensed its processing designs to Apple from the time of the iPod and receives a small royalty on every graphics chip used in a device.Imagination, however, said it doubted Apple could go it alone without violating Imagination’s patents, intellectual property and confidential information, and analysts said legal battles could lie ahead.“This evidence has been requested by Imagination but Apple has declined to provide it,” said the British company, which was founded in 1985 and listed in 1994.Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Imagination’s shares rose sharply between 2009 and 2012 as sales of smartphones boomed and Apple and Intel bought stakes. The company was valued at more than €2 billion ($2.5 billion) in April 2012.It struggled, however, to reduce its reliance on Apple, and has faced increased competition from the likes of chipmaker Qualcomm and British rival ARM, which developed its own graphics to complement its core processor blueprints.Imagination says it has 50% of the high-end smartphone market, but only 7% of mid-tier devices, where it has been trying to regain market share, including in phones made by Chinese manufacturers.It said that Apple’s notification had triggered talks on alternative commercial arrangements for the current license and royalty agreement.Analysts said there could be room for a compromise, and it could be a bargaining move by Apple to reduce royalties.Apple paid Imagination licence fees and royalties totalling £60.7 million for the year to end-April 2016, half of its total revenue, and is expected to pay about £65 million for this year, Imagination said.Most of its costs are incurred designing new technology years ahead of when it appears in devices, and it said there were minimal direct costs associated with the Apple revenue. Reuters",2017-04-03,Imagination Tech’s shares crashed more than 70% after Apple said it would stop using its graphics technology ,0.2,19:42,Imagination Tech shares plunge as Apple abandons the firm +0,"US President Donald Trump and members of Congress from both parties have vowed to overhaul the visa programmes used by corporations to bring overseas workers to the US. That’s left companies that rely on such workers and those that source them bracing for change. A first step came at the end of March, when the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) department issued guidelines making it harder for companies to bring foreign technology workers to the US using the H-1B visa programme.What’s the H-1B programme do?It allows companies to recruit 85,000 employees from abroad each year for specialty positions in fields including technology, science, medicine, architecture—even fashion modelling. It took less than a week for applicants to exhaust that allotment in 2016, and technology companies including Facebook Inc., Google Inc., Intel Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. have sought to increase the number available. People from India receive more H-1B vis’s than any other nationality.What changes were made? For H-1B visas given out in the 2017 lottery beginning 3 April, the government now requires additional information for entry-level computer programmers, to prove the jobs are complicated and require advanced knowledge and experience. Computer programmers made up about 12% of all H-1B applications certified by the department of labour in 2015. Also Read: H-1B visas to become harder to get as Donald Trump starts crackdownIn March, the immigration department suspended a program that expedited visa processing for certain skilled workers who paid extra, which some analysts saw as a first step to dismantling the H-1B program altogether.Which other programs are under scrutiny?Apart from the best-known H-1B visa, companies use a variety of visas to bring in workers from abroad, including the B-1 for temporary business visitors and the L-1 for managers, executives and specialized workers of international companies.Why does the US have these programmes?They were designed to allow US companies to hire temporary workers from other countries when they couldn’t find qualified people domestically. These temporary visas were established under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. The programs have morphed over the years, and many of the visas now go to companies that pay foreign workers less than their American counterparts would receive. The total number of visas issued for temporary employment-based admission to the US grew to more than 1 million in 2014 from just over 400,000 in 1994, according to the Congressional Research Service. Those numbers included some unskilled and low-skilled workers, plus accompanying family members.Do the programmes need reform?It’s pretty clear the H-1B program and others have been used in ways that contradict their original intent. There have been allegations of abuse and at least one big settlement: In 2013, a Bangalore-based outsourcing company, Infosys Ltd., agreed to pay a record fine of $34 million to settle US allegations that it sent employees to the US with B-1 visitor visas to sidestep the caps on H-1Bs.What does Trump propose?During his presidential campaign, he said the H-1B program is a “cheap labour program” that takes jobs from Americans. He hasn’t yet detailed his ideas as president, but based on a draft executive order, his administration may push companies to try hiring American workers before turning to foreign ones—a step that isn’t necessary now. He’s also asked that the programmes prioritize giving visas to the most highly paid workers from abroad. Who gets priority now?Currently, H-1B visas are allocated by random lottery, with no priority given to companies that pay workers more. The biggest recipients of the visas are outsourcing companies, including India’s Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Wipro Ltd. and Infosys. They pay workers in the programme an average of about $65,000 a year, while Apple Inc., Google and Microsoft Corp. pay their H-1B employees more than $100,000.Can Trump act on his own?An executive order can begin the reform process, but Trump lacks the broad powers of Congress. For example, he can’t change the number of H-1B visas that are given out each year, but he probably can change the way they’re allocated. So he could order that priority be given to higher-paid workers.What might Congress do?Congress has tried many times in the past decade to change the work visa programmes, with limited effect. Bills offered in the House by two California lawmakers, Republican Darrell Issa and Democrat Zoe Lofgren, aim to do so by raising the wages for some H-1B workers.Also Read: H1B visa: Computer programmer won’t qualify as specialty occupation , says USIn Lofgren’s proposal, companies that are the heaviest users of the programme would have to pay salaries of at least $130,000, up from the current $60,000, or attest that they are not displacing American workers and making a good faith effort to recruit US workers if they pay less than that. The legislative push has spooked India’s tech companies, weighing on their stocks. There’s also a bipartisan proposal in the Senate, long pushed by Republican Chuck Grassley and Democrat Richard Durbin, that would forbid replacing US workers with H-1B hires and prioritize visa applications from people who earned degrees at American colleges.Will Silicon Valley be hurt by the changes?It depends on the details, of course, but the US tech industry may well come out on top. Because so many H-1B visas go to outsourcing firms, American employers like Apple, Google, Microsoft Corp. and Facebook haven’t been able to get as many as they would like. They could be benefit if outsourcers face more restrictions. Bloomberg",2017-04-04,The USCIS has issued guidelines making it harder for companies to bring foreign tech workers to the US using the H-1B visa programme. Here are the implications of the guidelines,0.23,16:15,H1-B visa: What the USCIS guidelines mean for tech workers and companies +0,"
Mumbai: Mobile payments services provider Mswipe Technologies Pvt. Ltd has initiated talks to raise as much as $40 million (around Rs250 crore) in a new round of funding, two people aware of the development said.The firm which provides merchants with mobile point of sale (PoS) terminals to enable digital transactions, has appointed investment bank Avendus Capital to help it raise funds, said one of the two people cited above, seeking anonymity as the talks are private.“The firm recently mandated Avendus to run the fundraising process and has initiated conversations with investors for the same. It is looking raise $30-40 million in this new round. Funds will be used majorly to enrol larger number of merchants for its PoS devices,” he said.The fundraising comes at a time when the number of cashless transactions in the country has increased after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the withdrawal of Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes on 8 November. These two currency notes formed the bulk of the currency bills in circulation in the country. Credit and debit card transactions at PoS terminals saw a 106% year-on-year growth in December, according to Reserve Bank of India data.“Demonetisation has been a shot in the arm for payments firms. Mswipe’s business was growing strongly before demonetization, but post November, the numbers have seen a sharp increase, which will make the company more attractive to investors,” said the second person cited above, also requesting anonymity.Emails sent on Friday to Mswipe were not answered. A spokesperson for Avendus Capital declined to comment on the development.The last fund-raising at Mswipe was in July 2015, when it raised Rs160 crore in a Series C round from new investors such as Falcon Edge Capital, Ola Cabs and Meru Capital. Existing investors Matrix Partners India, Axis Bank Ltd and DSG Consumer Partners also participated in the round.Mswipe was founded in 2012 by Manish Patel, a doctor by education, who previously co-founded an alcoholic beverages distribution firm called Milestone Merchandise. Mswipe provides a mobile payment solution with a card reader, which can be attached to any mobile phone’s audio (headset) jack. The firm also provides similar card payment solutions for smartphones.It works closely with smaller banks such as Corporation Bank, RBL Bank Ltd, Shamrao Vithal Co-operative Bank Ltd and large banks such as Axis Bank Ltd.It is also present in West Asia, the US and South-East Asia through partnerships. Its clients include small and medium enterprises.In the payments services market, Mswipe competes with companies such as Ezetap and Paynear.In August 2015, Ezetap raised Rs150 crore from Social+Capital, Helion Advisors and Berggruen Holdings, Horizons Ventures and the Capricorn Investment Group.In December 2015, Paynear raised Rs16 crore from a high net-worth individual investor.The latest round of funding could additionally see existing investor Axis Bank Ltd make an exit from the company. On 15 November, Mint reported that the private sector lender was exploring the sale of its entire stake of approximately 8% in Mswipe. Axis Bank first invested in the company in early 2013.",2017-04-10,"Mswipe, the maker of mobile PoS devices to enable digital transactions, has appointed investment bank Avendus Capital to help it raise funds",0.44,21:22,Mswipe in talks to raise up to $40 million +0,"New York: An investigation into sales practices at Wells Fargo released on Monday has blamed the bank’s top management for creating an “aggressive sales culture” that led to a scandal involving millions of unauthorized accounts being opened.The bank’s board of directors also clawed back another $75 million in pay from two former executives, CEO John Stumpf and community bank executive Carrie Tolstedt.Wells’ board said both executives dragged their feet for years regarding problems at the second-largest US bank and were ultimately unwilling to accept criticism that the bank’s sales-focused business model was failing.The 110-page report has been in the works since September, when Wells acknowledged that its employees opened up to 2 million checking and credit card accounts without customers’ authorization. Trying to meet unrealistic sales goals, Wells employees even created phony email addresses to sign customers up for online banking services.“(Wells’ management) created pressure on employees to sell unwanted or unneeded products to customers and, in some cases, to open unauthorized accounts,” the board said in its report.Many current and former employees have talked of intense and constant pressure from managers to sell and open accounts, and some said it pushed them into unethical behaviour. The report backs up those employees’ accounts.The bank has already paid $185 million in fines to federal and local authorities and settled a $110 million class-action lawsuit. The scandal also resulted in the abrupt retirement last October of longtime CEO John Stumpf, not long after he underwent blistering questioning from congressional panels. The bank remains under investigation in several states, as well as by the Securities and Exchange Commission, for its practices.The board’s report recommended that Stumpf and Tolstedt have additional compensation clawed back for their negligence and poor management. Tolstedt will lose $47.3 million in stock options, on top of $19 million the board had already clawed back. Stumpf will lose an additional $28 million in compensation, on top of the $41 million the board already clawed back. Along with the millions clawed back from other executives earlier this year, the roughly $180 million in clawbacks are among the largest in corporate history.The board found that, when presented with the growing problems in Wells’ community banking division, senior management was unwilling to hear criticism or consider changes in behaviour. The board particularly faulted Tolstedt, calling her “insular and defensive” and unable to accept scrutiny from inside or outside her organization.The board also found that Tolstedt actively worked to downplay any problems in her division. In a report made in October 2015, nearly three years after a Los Angeles Times investigation uncovered the scandal, Tolstedt “minimized and understated problems at the community bank.”Tolstedt declined to be interviewed for the investigation, the board said, on advice from her lawyers. Stumpf also received his share of criticism. In its report, the board found that Stumpf was also unwilling to change Wells’ business model when problems arose.“His reaction invariably was that a few bad employees were causing issues ... he was too late and too slow to call for inspection or critical challenge to (Wells’) basic business model,” the board said.Stumpf, however, did not seem to express regret for how he handled those initial weeks after the bank was fined, including where he initially levied most of the blame on low-level employees for the sales practices problems instead of management, said Stuart Baskin, lawyer with Shearman & Sterling, the firm that the board hired to investigate the sales scandalThe investigation found that Wells’ corporate structure was also to blame. Under Stumpf, Wells operated in a decentralized fashion, with executives of each of the businesses running their divisions almost like separate companies.While there is nothing wrong with operating a large company like Wells in a decentralized fashion, the board said, the structure backfired in this case by allowing Tolstedt and other executives to hide the problems in their organization from senior management and the board of directors.When the scandal broke, Wells said it had fired roughly 5,300 employees as a result of the sales practices, the vast majority of them rank-and-file employees. But when that figure was announced it was the first time that the board of directors had heard the sales practices problems were of such a large size and scope. According to the report, as recently as May 2015, senior management told the board that only 230 employees had been fired for sales practices violations.Wells has instituted several corporate and business changes since the problems became known nationwide. Wells has changed its sales practices, and called tens of millions of customers to check on whether they truly opened the accounts in question.The company also split the roles of chairman and CEO. Tim Sloan, Wells’ former president and chief operating officer, took over as CEO. Stephen Sanger, who had been the lead director on Wells’ board since 2012, became the company’s independent chairman.Sanger has shown little in the way of mercy to management responsible for Wells’ unethical sales practices. Under his chairmanship, Sanger clawed back tens of millions of dollars in stock awards and compensation due to Stumpf and Tolstedt. In January, the board took the unusual action of publicly firing four executives whom the board said had major roles in the bank’s sales practices at the centre of the scandal. It also cut bonuses to other major executives, including Sloan.However, the board’s report concluded that Sloan had little direct involvement in the questionable sales practices.",2017-04-10,An investigation at Wells Fargo has blamed the bank’s top management for creating an ‘aggressive sales culture’ that led to millions of unauthorized accounts being opened,-0.16,20:50,Wells Fargo claws back $75 million from top executives in sales scandal +0,"New Delhi: Essar Group said on Monday that it had entered into a definitive agreement to sell its business process outsourcing (BPO) unit Aegis Ltd to private equity (PE) firm Capital Square Partners.“This transaction is in line with our strategy of incubating, building and operating world-class businesses, and being open to monetizing them at a premium value when the market conditions are favourable,” Uday Gujadhar, director at AGC Holdings Ltd Mauritius, a holding company of Aegis, said in a statement.Capital Square Partners has deep domain expertise and understanding of South-East Asia to ensure that the company continues to grow, Gujadhar added.Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Net proceeds of the sale will be used to retire Essar Group’s debt, the company said. The transaction is expected to close in the current quarter, subject to receipt of regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions Financial.Aegis has clients in multiple sectors such as telecom, technology, media, banking, financial services and insurance, travel and logistics, retail and e-commerce.The company employs 40,000 people across 47 offices worldwide, offering services including lifecycle management, technology services, back-office services and social media analytics. Its annual revenue is around $400 million.Essar’s advisors in the transaction included Axis Capital as financial advisor, and Platinum Partners and Sidley Austin as legal advisors. Shearman & Sterling and Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas acted as legal advisors for Capital Square Partners.Capital Square Partners has in the past invested in technology services and BPO sectors, including its acquisition of Minacs Ltd in early 2014; Minacs was subsequently acquired by Synnex Corp. in 2016 and merged with Cocentrix.The Aegis sale comes close on the heels of Essar Group selling Essar Oil Ltd in a $13 billion transaction with Rosneft PJSC, Russia’s biggest listed oil producer, and a consortium of Trafigura and United Capital Partners. The deal marked the biggest foreign direct investment in India till date.The transaction was a fallout of debt-related stress in the Essar Group, which at the time of Essar Oil’s sale in October had debt of Rs.1.3 trillion, according to an estimate by Kotak Institutional Equities.",2017-04-03,The Aegis sale marks Ruias-led Essar’s complete exit from BPO business,0.16,18:39,Essar sells Aegis BPO to Capital Square Partners +0,"Frankfurt am Main: The European Central Bank judged Monday that it had a successful 2016, arguing in its annual report that it had warded off deflation and nurtured economic recovery in the eurozone.“Though the year began shrouded in economic uncertainty, it ended with the economy on its firmest footing since the crisis,” President Mario Draghi wrote in a foreword.In March last year, the ECB had responded to alarmingly low inflation by boosting its massive bond-buying scheme, lowering interest rates and extending cheap loans to banks.The ECB’s moves were designed to pump in cash through the financial system and into the real economy, making it easier for businesses and households to borrow for spending and investment, thus powering growth and ratcheting up inflation towards the ECB’s target of just below 2%.By December, the eurozone economy looked healthy enough for the Frankfurt institution to scale back its bond-buying from the €80 billion ($85 billion) per month set in March to its previous level of €60 billion.“This reflected the success of our actions earlier in the year: growing confidence in the euro area economy and disappearing deflation risks,” Draghi judged.ALSO READ: What we learned about Brexit from EU president Donald TuskBut the central bank sees its task as far from done.The 19-nation eurozone faces political risks at home from elections in France and Germany, while weak global growth and political uncertainty sap overseas demand for the region’s products.Meanwhile, though inflation briefly spiked past its target in February thanks to higher oil prices, it fell back in March and is far from the “self-sustaining” level the ECB strives to reach as growth in prices and wages remains sluggish.For now, Draghi and his colleagues in the bank’s governing council believe that economic recovery is still dependent on their massive support.The report repeats familiar calls on governments to step up reforms, especially loosening labour laws, and to redirect spending to more growth-friendly areas.And it takes aim at the European Commission, arguing that “a more forceful application of the fiscal rules would have been welcome” in cases such as Brussels’ decision not to fine Spain and Portugal for exceeding deficit targets.With Brexit one of the major risks to the eurozone economy in the near future, the ECB reiterated that preserving the integrity of the EU’s single market and the “homogeneity of rules and their enforcement” are “imperative” as London’s and Brussels’ negotiators settle in for two years of wrangling. AFP",2017-04-10,The European Central Bank’s (ECB) annual report argues that it warded off deflation and nurtured economic recovery in the eurozone in 2016,-0.08,20:59,ECB boss Mario Draghi judges 2016 as best year since European debt crisis +0,"New Delhi: Nearly four crore members of retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) will soon be able to settle their claims like employees’ provident fund (EPF) withdrawal through mobile application UMANG. “The EPFO is developing online claims settlement process by receiving application online,” labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha. The minister also said, “The application will be integrated with Unified Mobile App for new-age governance, (UMANG) App, to receive the claims online. However, the timeframe to roll out the same has not been finalised.” The EPFO receives close to 1 crore applications manually for settlement of EPF withdrawals, pension fixation or getting group insurance benefit by the deceased. A senior official said over 110 regional offices of the EPFO out of 123 field formations have already been connected with the central server. The official explained that it is a technical requirement for connecting all regional offices with the central server for rolling out the facility. ALSO READ: EPFO asks banks to treat banking correspondents as staff, extend benefitsEarlier in February this year, EPFO central provident fund commissioner had said, “The process of connecting all field offices with a central server is going on. We may introduce the facility for online submission of all types of applications and claims like EPF withdrawal and pension settlement by May this year.” The EPFO has an ambitious plan to settle the claims within a few hours after filing of the application. For instance, it has plans to settle the EPF withdrawal claim within three hours of the filing. As per the scheme, the EPFO is required to settle all claims within 20 days from filing of the application for settlement of pension or EPF withdrawal. The minister also told the House that the EPFO has engaged the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, as its technical consultant to upgrade its technology and the body is installing latest equipment at its three central data centres in Delhi, Gurugram and Secunderabad. An official spoke of the requirement of seeding Aadhaar and bank accounts with the Universal (PF) Account Number (UAN) for settling EPFO claim online. In a separate reply to the House, the minister said that out of the 3.76 crore contributing members as on March 31, 2016, as many as 1.68 crore have linked their Aadhaar numbers with UAN. The EPFO has already made it mandatory to provide bank account numbers with IFSC codes and Aadhaar of subscribers.",2017-04-10,Labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya says EPFO is developing online claims settlement process by receiving applications online which will be integrated with the UMANG App ,0.24,16:46,EPF claims can be settled through mobile phone soon: Bandaru Dattatreya +0,"
Fulfilling his poll promise, chief minister Yogi Adityanath has announced a farm loan waiver scheme in Uttar Pradesh. The scheme will cover small and marginal farmers with debts of up to Rs1 lakh and is expected to cost the state government Rs36,359 crore. How effective can the scheme be in tackling farmers’ woes in India’s largest state?
Including only small and marginal farmers in the loan waiver scheme is an attempt to ensure that only the most vulnerable benefit from this expensive move. However, there are two factors which undermine the progressive intent behind such policies. The poorest farmers often rely on non-institutional sources of credit due to lack of credit-worthiness and related factors. Even if the government wanted to, it cannot provide relief to those who have taken loans from non-institutional sources as anybody could queue up for relief due to the absence of a verifiable paper trail. Also, as is the case with any loan waiver, those who paid back their loans despite facing hardships would end up as losers.
The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to issue Kisan Rahat (farmers’ relief) bonds to pay for this move. Although the details of these arrangements are awaited, it would put significant pressure on the state government’s finances throughout its term, and probably even after that.
ALSO READ | The politics and economics of farm loan waivers
Assuming an interest rate of 6.5-7.5%, the bonds would cost anywhere between Rs2,363.2 crore and Rs2,726.8 crore in annual interest payouts. According to the latest Reserve Bank of India study of state budgets, Uttar Pradesh’s capital expenditure on agriculture and allied activities and rural development (economic services category) in 2015-16 was Rs6,221.2 crore.
The report also shows that the share of agriculture and rural development in development expenditure (capital) in Uttar Pradesh has been less than the national average. An additional squeeze on the state budget due to the farm loan waiver could widen this gap.
As pressure on land increases in India, the only way to keep the rural economy afloat is to promote crop yield growth and diversification away from cultivation activities. For both these goals, public sector investment is of immense importance, as it complements rather than crowds out private investment.
Uttar Pradesh fares badly in terms of share of income from non-cultivation activities and share of investment in total agricultural income, according to the latest farm situation assessment survey of the National Sample Survey Office conducted in 2013.
This is a reflection of a stagnant and bearish farm economy, which is more vulnerable to exogenous shocks such as a crash in prices or monsoon failure. It is unlikely that farm-loan waivers would help Uttar Pradesh’s farmers in meeting these long-term challenges. What Uttar Pradesh, and the rest of the country, needs is smart public investments that help raise farm and rural incomes sustainably.
Data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy shows net irrigated area in Uttar Pradesh has come down from 14.49 million hectares in 2000-01 to 13.43 million hectares in 2010-11. However, the ratio of net irrigated area using tube wells has increased from less than two-thirds to a little less than three-fourths of the total irrigated area. The proliferation of tube wells, if left unchecked, will deplete groundwater resources drastically, and seriously jeopardize sustainability of farming. This is not a problem unique to Uttar Pradesh but, as in most other parts of the country, very little has been done to stem the depletion of groundwater resources.
None of this is to deny the widespread agrarian distress in India, which has become systemic in nature. Farm loan waivers, like the one announced in Uttar Pradesh, would provide limited relief where none was available. However, it is also a fact that farm loan waivers are at best a palliative for India’s crisis-ridden agrarian economy.
A 2014 World Bank study on the farm loan waiver announced in 2008 by the United Progressive Alliance government found that the scheme had no significant effect on productivity and investment in agriculture, and, in fact, worsened loan allocation in districts with greater exposure to the debt waiver.
Unless farmers are given the right incentives to shift to more remunerative and sustainable farming and non-farming options, Indian agriculture will not be able to overcome its current crisis.
In recent years, the livestock sector has emerged as an important source of non-farm income in many parts of the country. Uttar Pradesh has emerged as the biggest exporter of buffalo meat in recent years but that sector is unlikely to grow in an environment of irrational hysteria around cattle protection.
The Uttar Pradesh government’s policy of providing palliatives such as loan waivers on the one hand, and its disruption of the cattle economy on the other, suggests that despite an overwhelming majority in the state assembly, the government is more interested in populism than radical reforms to boost farming and rural livelihoods in the state.",2017-04-10,The farm loan waiver announced by CM Yogi Adityanath is at best a palliative that is unlikely to address the challenges faced by Uttar Pradesh’s rural economy,0.51,20:41,Uttar Pradesh’s farm loan waiver: Neither egalitarian nor productive +0,"Mumbai: RBL Bank Ltd, formerly known as Ratnakar Bank, on Monday entered the list of India’s 10 most valuable banks.With a market capitalisation of Rs22,043.18 crore, the bank has replaced IDFC Bank Ltd in the elite club. IDFC Bank has a market value of Rs20,530 crore, according to Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) data.HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s most profitable bank, is the most valuable bank in India with a market cap of Rs3.68 trillion, followed by state-run State Bank of India (Rs2.34 trillion) and ICICI Bank Ltd (Rs1.62 trillion). Kotak Mahindra Bank is No.4, followed by Axis Bank Ltd, IndusInd Bank Ltd, Yes Bank Ltd, Bank of Baroda and Punjab National Bank.RBL Bank’s stock closed at a fresh record high of Rs587.50 on the BSE, up 5.52% from its previous close.The bank listed on 31 August at a premium of 33% to its issue price. The Rs1,211 crore initial public offering received a demand for over 69 times the shares on offer. Since then, it has surged over 161.1% and so far this year it has gained 75.22%.“Given the robust loan growth trajectory and well maintained asset quality coupled with healthy margins, improving cost-income ratio gives a positive outlook for the bank,” said Praveen I., research analyst with Cholamandalam Securities.The bank reported a net profit of Rs128.69 crore in the December quarter, up 58.8% from Rs81.05 crore a year ago. Gross non-performing assets were 1.06% from 1.08% in the same quarter last year. As of December 2016, total advances were Rs26,773 crore, up 46% from a year ago, while deposits surged 44% to Rs30,005 crore. RBL Bank has 215 branches and 374 ATMs across 16 states and Union territories.Among the analysts covering RBL Bank’s stock, 11 have a “buy” rating and two have a “hold” rating and no one has a “sell” rating, according to Bloomberg data.IDFC Bank Ltd closed at Rs60.40 on the BSE, unchanged from its previous close, while India’s benchmark Sensex index fell 0.44% to closed at 29,575.74 points.",2017-04-10,"With a market capitalisation of Rs22,043.18 crore, RBL Bank has replaced IDFC Bank to enter the most valuable banks’ list",1.0,17:31,RBL Bank now among India’s 10 most valuable banks +0,"
India’s retirement fund manager has asked banks to treat banking correspondents (BCs) as their employees and extend all benefits due to them, three people familiar with the matter said, a move that could hurt lenders.BCs are individuals authorized by banks to act as their representatives in places where they are not physically present. The central analysis and intelligence unit of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation, EPFO, in February wrote to banks and corporate BCs in this respect. “The central government is serious about increasing the social security net for all kinds of workers,” said a senior EPFO official, seeking anonymity. “If construction workers can be brought under provident fund benefit, why can’t BCs of banks?”Typically, banks follow a three-tier structure with banks at the apex level, corporate BCs as intermediary, and individual agents providing service to customers at the third level. In some cases, banks engage with agents directly. This model enables a bank to expand reach and offer banking services at a low cost, as setting up a physical branch may not be viable in all cases. According to latest data with the Banking Correspondent Federation of India (BCFI), there are 70 corporate BCs and 285,000 individual agents working for banks. BCFI is an association representing all banking correspondents.Bringing individual BCs under the ambit of the Employees‟ Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952, will make them eligible for benefits including minimum wage, gratuity, bonus and leave entitlements, besides provident fund. “Currently, BCs get paid a minimum remuneration of Rs5,000 in addition to a commission amount which is dependent on the number of transactions,” said Anand Shrivastav, chairman, Banking Correspondent Federation of India. “With BCs coming under EPFO, a minimum wage will be fixed as per the Minimum Wages Act for skilled workers at Rs12,000. Other additional benefits including PF will be over and above this,” Shrivastav said.The Indian Banks Association (IBA) and BCFI have since written to the Prime Minister’s Office, labour ministry, finance ministry and the Reserve Bank of India, arguing why this move will make the banking correspondents model an unviable business.“EPF & MP Act 1952 is not applicable to BCs as well as corporate BCs as they are independent entrepreneurs with an agreement to operate BC services,” BCFI wrote to the Prime Minister on 31 March.“Bringing BCs under the ambit of EPFO will, inter alia, make them as de jure employees of banks/corporate BCs and raise other problems for the banks/corporate BCs and government as well,” the BCFI letter noted. The content of the IBA letter, according to an IBA official who did not want to be named, was similar.The Reserve Bank of (RBI) India too has written to the labour ministry to exempt BCs appointed by banks from provident fund coverage, said one of the three people cited earlier.In January 2006, RBI permitted banks to engage BCs as intermediaries for providing financial and banking services. Initially, only individuals were allowed to act as BCs, which was later expanded to include for-profit companies to provide door-step delivery of services. Currently, 126,000 of the total 285,000 BCs are engaged only for activities under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) programme. According to recent Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) data, public sector banks engage nearly 79,826 active BCs for opening accounts, cash withdrawal through Rupay cards and Aadhaar authentication, while regional rural banks engage 29,807 BCs. Private sector banks engage only 2987 BCs.Any change in regulation to bring BCs under EPFO will therefore severely affect the profitability of government-owned banks, the person mentioned above argued. Viability of the BC model has also been a challenge due to the high transaction cost for banks and customers. According to the BCFI report, BCs receive only 0.5% of the transaction value for providing services under PMJDY, where as banks receive 1%.",2017-04-10,Banking correspondents are individuals authorized by banks to act as their representatives in places where they are not physically present,0.97,15:31,"EPFO asks banks to treat banking correspondents as staff, extend benefits" +0,"New Delhi: The finance ministry has asked the heads of public sector banks (PSBs) to finalise the modalities for timely implementation of the next pay revision from November. There are 21 public sector banks, post merger of six lenders with State Bank of India (SBI), in the country. They together employ about 8 lakh people. In a communication to CEOs and MDs of the state-owned banks, the ministry advised them to initiate the steps for smooth conclusion of next wage revision of the employee within the time-frame. “However, it is seen that several banks are yet to proceed in the matter,” it said, requesting the PSBs to “look into the matter and conclude the next wage revision prior to the effective date of 1 November 2017”. The wage revision of public sector bank employees takes place every five year. The last revision was effected in November 2012. In the last wage negotiation between PSU banks employee unions and bank management, Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) had settled at 15% hike. Recently, Banks Board Bureau chief Vinod Rai had made a case that the compensation package across the board of public sector banks needs to be improved.“Maybe, we are not able to do much with the fixed part of compensation package but (with) variable part we are hopeful that in the next financial year (2017-18), we will be able to introduce a far more attractive package which do have bonuses, ESOPs and other performance linked incentives as part of the package,” he had said. Rai has also suggested that managing directors of the public sector banks should be appointed for minimum 6 years.",2017-04-09,"In a communication to CEOs and MDs of the state-owned banks, the finance ministry advised them to initiate the steps for smooth conclusion of next wage revision",0.24,14:57,Govt asks public sector banks to finalise next wage revision before 1 November +0,"London/New York: Barclays PLC chief executive officer Jes Staley will be reprimanded and the bank will cut his pay as regulators begin to investigate how he tried to unmask a whistleblower last year.The UK Financial Conduct Authority is investigating both Staley’s individual conduct relating to the complaint and the bank’s responsibilities and controls in connection with whistleblowing, the bank said in a statement on Monday. Staley has admitted his error and formally apologized to the board, Barclays said.Staley tried to unmask a tipster who alerted the bank to a personal matter involving a senior executive, the bank said, confirming what a person with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg. An investigation by law firm Simmons & Simmons LLP concluded that Staley “honestly, but mistakenly” believed that it was permissible to identify the author of the letter. The case is also under scrutiny by the Department of Financial Services in New York, the person said.“I have apologized to the Barclays board and accepted its conclusion that my personal actions in this matter were errors on my part,” Staley said in the statement. “I will also accept whatever sanction it deems appropriate. I will cooperate fully with the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulatory Authority, which are now both examining this matter.”Stock slipsBarclays shares dropped as much as 1.2% in London trading and were down 0.4% at 214.6 pence as of 8:05 am. The stock has fallen about 4.1%this year, giving the company a market value of £36 billion.Barclays has made excellent progress under Staley and his removal at this stage would hurt the bank’s prospects for further improvement, Shore Capital analyst Gary Greenwood wrote in a note to investors. Given the bank’s history of regulatory misdemeanours, the latest investigation is a “very significant embarrassment” for the board as it tries to rebuild Barclays’s reputation, he said.Staley has revamped his management team and refocused on the bank’s priority markets since he assumed leadership of Barclays in late 2015. He also rebuffed calls to spin off or radically shrink the investment bank, instead opting to speed up business sales and sell down the firm’s African banking stake.Bank turnaroundThe CEO has slashed about 6,000 jobs in the last six months and cut dividends after fourth-quarter profit fell. The Barclays’s chief ascended to the top job after more than three decades at JPMorgan Chase & Co.The attempt to identify the whistleblower came to the attention of the Barclays board early this year after an employee raised concerns. The board notified the FCA and the PRA and other authorities.“The board has concluded that Jes Staley, group chief executive officer, honestly, but mistakenly, believed that it was permissible to identify the author of the letter and has accepted his explanation that he was trying to protect a colleague who had experienced personal difficulties in the past from what he believed to be an unfair attack, and has accepted his apology,” Chairman John McFarlane said in the statement.US law enforcementStaley requested that the bank’s Group Information Security team identify the author and the team asked for and received assistance from US law enforcement agencies, according to the statement. The attempt to identify the author wasn’t successful, the bank said.Barclays has taken a more aggressive posture toward government allegations than some of its rivals. While other lenders settled similar claims, Barclays balked at paying the amount the government sought to resolve allegations that it deceived investors who purchased $31 billion of mortgage-backed securities a decade ago, before the housing bubble popped. The bank is now defending a lawsuit brought by the US justice department in December over the matter.The bank has called those allegations “disconnected from the facts.”If found to have violated whistleblower laws, Barclays could face penalties from regulators.In an unrelated matter, Barclays has been accused of unfairly dismissing an employee who levied a complaint. Richard Boath, who was Barclays’s chairman of financial institutions, said in a UK lawsuit that he was interviewed by the Serious Fraud Office in 2014 as part of its investigation into the bank’s £7 billion fund-raising at the height of the financial crisis. Boath said he was dismissed from the bank in 2016 as a “direct result” of the SFO giving a transcript of the interview to the bank, his lawyer, Jonathan Cohen, said to an employment tribunal last year. Barclays declined to comment at the time. Bloomberg",2017-04-10,"Barclays could face penalties from regulators, if it is found to have violated whistleblower laws",0.31,14:34,"Barclays CEO Jes Staley faces probe, bonus cut over whistleblower " +0,"New Delhi: The monetary policy committee of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is expected to cut policy rates by 25 basis points (bps) in August on weak growth and benign inflation, says a Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofAML) report.“We estimate that old series GDP growth, at 4.5-5%, well below our estimated 7% potential/trend. Not surprisingly, core CPI inflation has slipped to 4.2% from 4.8% in October. It is statistically difficult to work out potential growth in the new GDP series without past data,” BofAML said in a research note.Moreover, all related metrics—industrial production, credit growth, earnings—are running well below their medium—term averages. “We continue to expect the RBI MPC to cut policy rates 25 bps on 3 August on weak growth, benign inflation and the need to recoup forex reserves by attracting FPI equity flows by supporting growth,” it said.At the 6 April policy review meet, the RBI kept repurchase or repo rate—at which it lends to banks—unchanged at 6.25% but increased reverse repo rate to 6% from 5.75%. RBI said given the upside risks to inflation and excess liquidity in the system, the repo rate has been retained at 6.25%. According to the global brokerage firm lending rate cuts are the key indicator for recovery. “As lending rates come off, they will revive demand, close the output gap, exhaust capacity and spur investment,” it said. “We expect bank lending rates to come off by 50-75 bps in the April-September, ‘slack’ industrial season, with RBI governor Urjit Patel stressing the need for lower borrowing costs again,” the report noted. PTI",2017-04-10,"The RBI’s monetary policy committee is expected to cut policy rates by 25 bps in August on weak growth and benign inflation, says a Bank of America Merrill Lynch report",-0.36,14:08,RBI may go for 25 bps rate cut in August: BofAML report +0,"New Delhi: Several companies, including the Tatas, Godrej, Adani and Patanjali, have shown interest in buying embattled Sahara group’s 30 properties estimated to be worth about Rs7,400 crore. The properties, mostly land parcels being auctioned by real estate consultant Knight Frank India, have also generated interest from several real estate developers including Omaxe and Eldeco, as also from high net worth individuals (HNIs) and at least one public sector firm, Indian Oil, people familiar with the process said.Besides, Chennai-based Apollo Hospital has shown interest in acquiring Sahara Hospital in Lucknow. These people, however, said that the sale process and the valuation could get impacted due to a hurry in getting the deals closed within a short time because of an urgency on part of Sahara to get the money and deposit the same with the regulator Securities and exchange Board of India (Sebi) as per Supreme Court directions. All prospective buyers are asking for 2-3 months for due diligence, which is considered to be the normal period in high-value real estate transactions, these people added. When contacted, a Sahara group spokesperson declined to disclose the names of prospective buyers, saying “deals are in process and will materialise soon”. He also said the details have been submitted to the Supreme Court. ALSO READ: Supreme Court orders Aamby Valley auction, summons Subrata RoyGodrej Properties’ executive chairman Pirojsha Godrej said, “We are looking at part of one of the Pune land parcels for which Knight Frank is running the bidding process. It is still at a preliminary stage.” Omaxe’s CMD Rohtas Goel also confirmed that his company was interested in some properties. “As a prudent business organisation, we always keep exploring growth opportunities,” he said. Eldeco’s managing director Pankaj Bajaj said they are interested in some properties but would not be like to share the exact details at this stage. An Apollo Hospitals spokesperson said, “The Apollo has submitted an expression of interest for Sahara Hospital and (we) are conducting our evaluation and due diligence process.” Tata Housing declined to comment, while there were no replies to specific queries made to Adani Group and Patanjali. “The advertisement got an overwhelming response. Over 250 expressions of interest (EOIs) have been received. EOIs have been received for all sites with majority of sites having multiple EOIs,” Knight Frank India said in response to queries from PTI. “Process is an intense process that constitutes due diligence, site inspections, financial bids (pricing to be on as-is-where-is-whatever-it-is basis) and shall culminate on finalisation of successful bidder. Due diligence and site inspections are either completed or underway in most cases. We expect to receive the final bids shortly,” it added. People familair with the matter said there were a large number of individuals as also some educational institutions who have submitted expressions of interest for the properties. The shortlisted entities are now being asked to submit their financial bids. The group is expecting to get the first instalment from the sale of these properties by June 17 and get all the money, estimated at around Rs7,400 crore, in three months. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court also directed the sale of Sahara group’s Aamby Valley township in Lonavala, which the group estimates to be worth over Rs1 lakh crore and fears that a hurried sale will favour only those wanting to “grab Aamby Valley cheaper”. The Sahara spokesperson said the group had committed to deposit the directed amount of Rs10,500 crore by July-August 2017, including Rs7,400 crore from sale of the 30 properties being auctioned and payments from other deals, but the court declined and asked for the Aamby Valley auction which will take much longer. “We committed around Rs 1,500 crore from overseas hotels, expected to reach India within 45 days. Also we informed about Vasai land where we are going to get around Rs 800 crore (and) also around Rs 800 crore from Ghaziabad,” he added. On February 28, the Supreme Court had allowed Sahara to sell certain properties after market regulator Sebi found it difficult to auction them even with the help of specialised agencies. Sahara sought six months’ time for the sale, but the court asked them to complete the sale in six weeks weeks for properties worth about Rs 5,092 crore. Sahara subsequently appointed Knight Frank for carrying out the sale process and advertisements were issued in newspapers twice to invite prospective buyers. Knight Frank was asked to complete the sale by April 13 to meet the Supreme Court deadline, but it was found to be difficult because of the time demanded by the prospective buyers for going through various stages of such high value transactions to ensure optimal value realisation. People familiar with the matter said that Indian Oil, which was interested in one property in Bihar, sought extension of time for submitting bid on the grounds that the project called for approvals and reports from various departments and agencies. Apollo also sought extension of time for carrying out the due diligence, inspections and evaluation of the property. Replying to specific queries, the Sahara group spokesperson said, “We twice advertised in various newspapers all over the country for selling around 30 properties. In response, we have received 163 Expressions from 59 prospective buyers and the deals are in process and will materialise soon.” Asked about the details of the prospective buyers, the spokesperson said, “We have submitted the details to the Court. It will not be possible to comment on each prospective buyer and share details of the buyers and the deals at this level as it might not be conducive when the deals are in process.” In reply to another query on the due diligence process and whether the court direction to close the deal faster and submit money could affect the sale and the valuation, he said the real estate deals undergo multiple processes. “The said deals are under various stages. The buyers have asked for 2-3 months for completing due diligence and other processes, which is the industry-accepted minimum required time for such deals, even if all processes are expedited. “On February 28, 2017, the Court ordered to sell 14 properties and to deposit the total sale proceeds of Rs 5,090 crore by April 17, meaning in 46 days we had to sell and get the money. “On April 17, we also presented to the Court our commitment of getting first instalments out of all sales by June 17, and in three months we said we shall get all the money which is around Rs 7,400 crore,” he said. On the ordered sale of Aamby Valley, the group said, “The court’s insistence to sell Aamby Valley whose value is more than Rs 1 lakh crore will only be a big favour to those one- two corporates who want to grab it cheaper”. The 30 advertised properties are located across India -- including in Delhi, Pune, Indore, Lucknow, Coimbatore, Chandigarh, Bhopal, Guna, Kolkata, Haridwar, Aligarh, Bareilly, Dewas, Faridabad, Guwahati, Gwalior, Jhansi, Kanpur, Kurukshetra, Noida/Greater Noida, Patna and Porbandar. Sahara lawyer Gautam Awasthy separately said the group has deposited around Rs 12,000 crore in last four years, which comes to an average of Rs 250 crore per month deposited in the SEBI-Sahara account. The interest component takes the deposited amount to close to Rs 15,000 crore. This account was created for the money Sahara group was asked to deposit with the regulator for further refund to the bondholders from which the group had raised money, though the conglomerate claims to have already refunded more than 93 per cent money directly to the investors. Awasthy further said, “By any Indian corporate standard, Rs 250 crore every month for 48 months is a huge amount and Sahara could have been appreciated for obedience of the Honourable Court’s order. “The most commendable point is that Sahara could pay Rs 250 crore every month on an average after Sahara having already repaid more than 93 per cent of its liability of OFCD of the two companies -- Sahara India Real Estate Corporation Limited and Sahara Housing Investment Corporation Limited. “Meaning more than Rs 22,000 crore of liability Sahara has already been paid and this Rs 12,000 crore is in addition, that is duplication of payment.” Sahara has filed a defamation case in a Patna court against Mint’s editor and some reporters over the newspaper’s coverage of the company’s dispute with the Securities and Exchange Board of India. Mint is contesting the case.",2017-04-19,"Several companies including Tatas, Godrej, Adani and Patanjali, have shown interest in buying Sahara group’s 30 properties estimated to be worth Rs7,400 crore",1.0,21:48,"Tata, Godrej, Adani show interest in buying Sahara properties: report" +0,"Mumbai: The National Aviators Guild (NAG), a union of Jet Airways pilots of Indian nationality, have alleged that some of the expat pilots have been making disparaging, inappropriate and racist comments against the pilots of Indian nationality and the carrier has been giving the local pilots a “step-motherly treatment”. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the NAG demanded swift action by the management. On its part, the Naresh Goyal- promoted airline maintained it has a strict code of conduct for all its employees. “The Jet Airways management is expected to respond swiftly and ought to disallow training and flying of these expat pilots and ought to issue a diktat to said expat pilots to apologise or else leave forthwith,” the statement said.The carrier has around 60 expat commanders, who mainly operate its Boeing 737 and ATR fleet. On 15 April, NAG issued a directive to all its members not to fly with the foreign pilots from 1 May.Stressing on the need for collective action, the guild said the airline’s reputation cannot be “tarnished by racist and hateful comments made by certain misguided foreign nationals.”In an email response, a Jet Airways spokesperson said the carrier is “an equal opportunities employer and endeavours to employ the best human capital irrespective of race, gender, caste, creed or religion.” He further added that all its employees, regardless of nationality, are governed by a strict and common code of conduct. “As part of its open door policy, the airline encourages all employee groups to engage in consultative processes and arrive at amicable solutions,” he said.",2017-04-20,Jet Airways Indian pilots union alleged that some of the expat pilots make disparaging and racist comments and the airline has been giving local pilots a ‘step-motherly treatment’,-0.96,00:25,Jet Airways Indian pilots allege expat pilots make racist comments +0,"
New Delhi: Nissan Motor Co. plans to work with “government bodies” and “private sector firms” to see if there is a market for its electric car Leaf in India, a top executive at the Indian unit of the Japanese auto maker said.“We will start a pilot project involving the Nissan Leaf this year, which will help us in assessing the viability of electric vehicles (EV),” Guillaume Sicard, president, Nissan India operations, added.Sicard claimed that Leaf is the world’s best-selling all-electric vehicle, with over 250,000 units sold so far. In India, the pilot runs are scheduled for later this year with the objective of testing the car’s (and especially its battery’s) performance in Indian roads and weather conditions, said a person familiar with the developments.ALSO READ: Transport ministry sweetens bid conditions for hiring electric carsThis person added that Nissan may seek incentives to promote sales of the car and then look for ways to localise it. The idea is to stimulate demand and then assess whether the car can be assembled, or parts made for it, locally.Local assembly of such vehicles will be a shot in the arm for the Indian government, which has plans to have an all electric fleet by 2030. Transport minister Nitin Gadkari wooed Tesla Inc. to manufacture EVs, but the Palo Alto-based company has been cool to India’s offer of land near a major port to facilitate exports, and other incentives.Sicard of Nissan did not comment on localization. “Through our experience as pioneers in developing EVs in markets around the world, we have learned that government support for infrastructure and supporting demand for EVs is crucial,” he added.ALSO READ: Government eyes leasing of electric vehicles in clean energy pushAccording to a government official familiar with Nissan’s plans, the Japanese company’s biggest concern is the functionality of its battery in Indian conditions.“How will it function in a city like Delhi, where temperature shoots up during summer?” the official asked, speaking on condition of anonymity.Deepesh Rathore, co-founder of London-based Emerging Markets Automotive Advisors, said Nissan should rather look at forming a consortium, and then approach the government to create the infrastructure for electric cars.ALSO READ: Mahindra, SsangYong working on an electric SUV, launch likely in 3 years“Incentives can come in at a later stage. Today, people don’t even consider buying an electric car because we don’t see a charging station anywhere,” Rathore added. Spokesmen for the department of heavy industries, and the ministry of new and renewable energy did not respond to emails.",2017-04-19,"Nissan India boss Guillaume Sicard says will start a pilot project for Nissan Leaf in 2017, which will help assessing the viability of electric cars in the country",0.45,18:44,"Nissan explores Leaf electric car for India, pilot runs later this year" +0,"New Delhi: Honda Motor Co. Ltd on Tuesday launched the 25th anniversary edition of the Honda Fireblade superbike in India with prices starting at Rs17.61 lakh, ex-showroom Delhi.The 2017 Honda CBR 1000RR, popularly known as the Honda Fireblade, will be imported as completely built unit (CBU) in India and will be available at Honda’s exclusive Wing World outlets located in Mumbai and Delhi.Bookings for the superbike also commenced Wednesday.The Honda Fireblade will be available in two variants—CBR 1000RR Fireblade and CBR 1000RR Fireblade SP, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI) said in a statement.The Fireblade, will be “the most powerful, faster and lighter CBR 1000RR from Honda’s stable and we are very excited to add another chapter to the success story with its introduction in India,” HMSI senior vice-president (sales and marketing) Yadvinder Singh Guleria said.",2017-04-19,"The 2017 Honda CBR 1000RR, or the Honda Fireblade, will be imported as CBU units Wing World outlets located in Mumbai and Delhi",0.36,22:32,2017 Honda CBR 1000RR Fireblade launched in India at Rs17.61 lakh +0,"Dubai: Emirates will cut flights to five of US cities as demand deteriorated after US restrictions on travel and on-board electronics affecting Middle East carriers and passengers.The world’s biggest international airline will reduce capacity to Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale in the coming weeks, the Dubai-based company said in a statement. Emirates will re-deploy the capacity to serve demand on other routes across its global network.“The recent actions taken by the US government relating to the issuance of entry visas, heightened security vetting and restrictions on electronic devices in aircraft cabins, have had a direct impact on consumer interest and demand for air travel into the US,” the company said in the statement. “Over the past three months, we have seen a significant deterioration in the booking profiles on all our US routes, across all travel segments.”The move could be seen as a victory for moves by President Donald Trump’s administration to tighten travel policies. Emirates and other state-owned Gulf carriers have been a frequent target of US rivals who accuse them of competing unfairly by taking government subsidies. Emirates’ Dubai hub was one of the 10 airports impacted by a ban on electronics in carry-on luggage on US flights. Services to Seattle, Boston and Los Angeles will drop to daily from twice daily, while Fort Lauderdale and Orlando will get five flights a week, compared with daily services now. The changes will be phased in starting on 1 May.Emirates, which serves 12 US cities as part of its network of more than 150 destinations worldwide, will “closely monitor” the situation with the “view to reinstate and grow” its US operations as soon as viable, it said. Bloomberg",2017-04-19,"Emirates will reduce capacity to Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale in the coming weeks",-0.15,22:57,Emirates trims US flights after Trump administration curbs +0,"
Enthused by the market potential for electric vehicles (EV) in India, state-owned Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd (PGCIL), the power transmission utility responsible for establishing green energy transmission corridors, is considering setting up charging stations for EVs.The public sector unit is also exploring commercially viable energy storage solutions such as batteries that would help with grid stability—the balance between production and consumption.“We are working on developing an EV business. The idea is to store the surplus electricity generated by solar in these batteries. We are exploring setting up charging infrastructure which will help the national grid,” said a senior Power Grid executive, requesting anonymity.“The next big play is EV and storage. Our role is to be of a catalyst. We are exploring entering the EV charging business,” the executive added.Power Grid’s proposed electric vehicle programme would help with grid balancing, besides complementing the government’s push for solar power, which is generated during the day and can be stored in EV batteries.Power Grid is the third state-owned utility eyeing the EV business after NTPC Ltd and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (Bhel). NTPC has been working to help create demand for the electricity generated by its plants, Mint reported in March. (bit.ly/2mrPfsO) Bhel, India’s largest power generation equipment maker, wants to manufacture electric vehicles such as buses, cars, two-wheelers and boats. (bit.ly/2kPf03a)“We are looking at three different battery technologies—advanced lead acid, lithium ion and flow ion and how they behave in the Indian conditions along with being economical. We are technology agnostic. It can be another business area,” added the Power Grid executive quoted above.India plans to generate 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 100GW is to come from solar power projects. With storage being the next frontier for India’s clean energy push from sources such as solar, the batteries in EVs offer a solution.A PGCIL spokesperson confirmed the development and said, “We are exploring the possibilities.”With 134,750 circuit kilometres and 217 substations, Power Grid caters to national grid’s inter-regional electricity transmission capacity of 75,000MW. Power Grid also owns and operates around 36,500km of telecom network. The PSU has gross fixed assets of Rs1,65,757 crore and posted a net profit of Rs5,604 crore for the first nine months of the current financial year.Piyush Goyal, India’s power, coal, mines and new and renewable energy minister, said on Monday that battery storage efforts are being helped through the government’s EV policy.Experts believe EVs are a good business opportunity. “Electric vehicles, or clean transportation, is the need of the hour in the polluted Indian cities,” said Reji Kumar Pillai, president and chief executive officer of India Smart Grid Forum, a public-private partnership of the power ministry.Pillai said large fleets of EVs connected to the electric grid can be aggregated as virtual power plants for managing supply-demand imbalances on the grid. “Another very interesting option is the secondary use of retired batteries from electric vehicles for building GW scale energy storage to support the grid with increasing share of renewable,” Pillai said.Any shift to electric vehicles will help reduce pollution and fuel imports. India’s energy import bill is expected to double from around $150 billion to $300 billion by 2030. The government has been trying to push sales of electric vehicles and has set an ambitious target of selling six million by 2020.",2017-04-06,"Power Grid, responsible for establishing green energy transmission corridors, is considering setting up charging stations for electic vehicles",0.85,01:51,Power Grid eyes electric vehicle play +0,"New Delhi: Indian Railways could draw up to 25% of its power needs from renewables and would need an investment of $3.6 billion to meet the 5GW target of solar energy by 2025, according to a study released on Wednesday.The Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) study, funded by UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), identifies key policy and regulatory challenges that developers face while supporting the Railways’ renewable energy push.A potential 5GW target provides a unique opportunity for solar developers, with an estimated 1.1GW coming from rooftop and 3.9GW from utility scale projects. The Indian Railways is a guaranteed consumer and has a growing electricity demand, which should mitigate any perceived counter-party risks for project developers or investors.“We want Indian Railways to become a green engine of growth. Decarbonisation is extremely important for Railways. We have set up a target of electrifying the entire network of Indian Railways in next 10 years with at least 90% of track electrification in next five years,” said railway minister Suresh Prabhu. “We are looking to add 1,000MW of solar and 200MW of wind energy out of which 36MW has already been commissioned,” he said.Based on railway operations and land availability, 12 states have been identified across India, wherein rooftop and utility scale projects could be taken up to meet the 5GW target for solar.The study ranks these 12 states in terms of the ease of doing business for developers, and finds that Madhya Pradesh ranks the highest for utility-scale projects, while Karnataka ranks highest in the case of rooftop projects. Minister of state (IC) for power, coal, new and renewable energy, and mines Piyush Goyal said, “Railways have come out with a commendable plan called Mission 41K where they are looking at a saving of Rs41,000 crore through the electrification of railway lines.”“The decision to domestically source equipment is another positive move from Railways and will largely benefit the domestic industry,” said Goyal.The Indian Railways announced its 1GW solar target in 2015 and had achieved about 37MW of wind and 16MW of solar across railway operations until March 2017. The Railways has also tendered close to 255MW of rooftop solar projects, of which 80MW had already been awarded. In addition, the Railways is in the process of tendering about 250MW of land-based solar projects, of which 50MW have been awarded.Arunabha Ghosh, CEO, CEEW, said, “Indian Railways’ ambitious renewable energy push will not only lower energy bills for the Railways but will also advance India’s climate goals and serve as a role model for low-carbon public transportation across the world.”“The Railway Board needs to pursue stronger collaboration with state governments and electricity regulators to establish a robust ecosystem for ensuring developer and investor confidence in its renewable project,” he added.",2017-04-06,"Railways could draw up to 25% of its power needs from renewables and would need an investment of $3.6 billion to meet the 5GW target of solar energy by 2025, a CEEW study says",0.38,00:37,Railways could draw 25% of electric power through renewables: study +0,"New Delhi: Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, is interested in picking a stake in India’s biggest oil refinery being planned to be set up in Maharashtra at a cost of Rs1.8 trillion. State-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) together plan to set up a 60-million tonnes a year oil refinery on west coast to meet the rising fuel needs of the country. “Saudi Aramco and Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (Adnoc) are talking to us for investments in the Indian oil sector,” Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said at the Global Natural Resources Conclave.Later talking to reporters, he said Aramco is interested in picking a stake in the west coast refinery while Adnoc is keen on petrochemical projects. “Aramco is talking of stake in the refinery,” he said. He, however, did not go into how much stake the Saudi national oil company will pick. “Let’s see,” is all he said. IOC holds a 50% stake in the project while BPCL and HPCL have 25% each. The 60-mt a year refinery will be set up in two phases, along with a mega petrochemical complex. The phase-1 capacity will be 40 mt together with an aromatic complex, naphtha cracker unit and a polymer complex. This will cost Rs1.2-1.5 lakh crore and will come up in 5-6 years from the date of land acquisition. The mega complex will require 12,000-15,000 acres and land on the Maharashtra coast has been identified, he said. The second phase, involving a 20 mt refinery, will cost Rs 50,000-60,000 crore. IOC has been looking at the west coast for a refinery as the company found it tough to cater to requirements in West and South with its refineries mostly in the North. HPCL and BPCL too have been looking at a bigger refinery because of constraints they face at their Mumbai units. The mega west coast refinery will produce petrol, diesel, LPG, ATF (aviation turbine fuel) and feedstock for petrochemical plants in plastic, chemical and textile industries in Maharashtra. A top official at one of the state refiners said the project will be funded with 60% debt and 40% equity.The three refiners will chip in Rs72,000 crore in equity. Fifteen mt a year is the biggest refinery any public sector unit has set up at one stage. IOC recently started its 15 mt unit at Paradip in Odisha. Reliance Industries holds the distinction of building the biggest refinery in India till now. It built its first refinery at Jamnagar in Gujarat with a capacity of 27 mt, which was subsequently expanded to 33 mt.It built another unit adjacent to it for exports, with a capacity of 29 mt. The refinery being planned by the state-owned firms will be bigger than that. The phase-1 itself will be bigger than any one single unit. India has a refining capacity of 232.06 mt, which exceeded the demand of 183.5 mt in 2015-16. According to the International Energy Agency (EA), this demand is expected to reach 458 mt by 2040.",2017-04-06,"Saudi Aramco shows interest in buying a stake in west coast refinery project, wherein Indian Oil holds a 50% stake, while BPCL and HPCL have 25% each ",0.79,17:10,"Saudi Aramco keen to take stake in west coast refinery, says oil minister" +0,"New Delhi: Electronics giant Samsung on Wednesday unveiled its latest flagship smartphone, Galaxy S8, that will be available in India for Rs57,900 onwards. The handset will be available in two versions - Galaxy S 8 and Galaxy S8 Plus (Rs64,900). The devices will be available at select retail outlets and online exclusively on Samsung Shop and Flipkart from 5 May. Pre-booking for the phones begins on Wednesday. These two premium devices will compete head-on with Apple’s iPhone as well as products from the stables of Sony, LG and Asus. “These two devices are among the most awaited smartphones and are already receiving great response worldwide. These push the boundaries of traditional smartphones with their design, technology and services,” Samsung India senior vice-president, mobile business, Asim Warsi said. Coupled with Samsung DeX, users can transform their smartphone into a full desktop-like experience, he added. Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus buyers will also get a double data offer from Reliance Jio. On a monthly recharge of Rs309, users will get 448 GB of 4G data over 8 months. The response to Galaxy S8 will be crucial for Samsung following reports last year of its big-ticket flagship, Galaxy Note 7, catching fire. The entire episode cost Samsung billions of dollars in losses. ALSO READ : Xiaomi prepares comeback with Mi6 marquee phone to rival Samsung, AppleSamsung is the world’s largest smartphone maker with 21.2% market share in 2016. In India too, it led the market with 24.8% share at the end of the December 2016 quarter, as per research firm IDC. The company has said the pre-orders for Galaxy S8 have exceeded those of its predecessor—S7; a sign that consumers remain unfazed by what has been described as one of the world’s worst product safety failures. As per reports, one million pre-orders have been booked in South Korea alone, where the device goes on sale from 21 April. It will also go on sale in the US and Canada on the same day. Analysts are of the view that Galaxy S8 could play a major role in the comeback of Samsung in the premium high-end smartphone market. In India, Samsung has 10 handsets in its portfolio, priced above Rs25,000. This includes the two new devices, Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, Galaxy C9 Pro, Galaxy C7 Pro, Galaxy A series (A5 and A7) 2017, Galaxy A9 Pro and Galaxy Note 5. The S8 will have a 5.8-inch display with no physical phone button, rather an invisible home button, while the S8 Plus will have a 6.2-inch screen. The S8 features a 1.9GHz octa-core Samsung Exynos 8895 processor paired with 4GB of RAM. It will be available with 64GB storage on board along with 256GB expandable memory. It also features a 12MP rear and 8MP front camera, 3,000 mAh battery. The S8+ has a 3,500 mAh battery. Samsung has done away with the physical home button and replaced it with a touch sensitive button underneath the screen. Both the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus will come with an AI-based voice assistant, Bixby, that is similar to Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri. These devices also have integrated Iris scanner, fingerprint scanner, Samsung Knox and Samsung Pay. Samsung Pay - a payment platform -now works with Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI Cards, Citibank and Standard Chartered Bank in India.",2017-04-19,Samsun Galaxy S8 will be available at select retail outlets and online exclusively on Samsung Shop and Flipkart from 5 May,-0.06,18:34,"Samsung unveils Galaxy S8 priced up to Rs64,900" +0,"New Delhi: ReNew Power Ventures Pvt. Ltd on Wednesday said it has doubled its power generation capacity in a single year to cross 2,000 Megawatt (MW).In 2016-17, the renewable energy firm made investments of about Rs6,700 crore (approximately US $1 billion) to add 430 MW of solar and 626 MW of wind capacity.“In April 2016, we were the first company in India to achieve 1 GW of commissioned renewable energy capacity. The doubling of our capacity to 2 GW within a year by March 2017 is a result of great teamwork coupled with our commitment to contributing approximately 10% to the government of India’s renewables target,” chairman and CEO Sumant Sinha said in a statement. ALSO READ: India’s solar power sector is getting commoditized: First Solar“This milestone acquires special significance due to several reasons–our growth is organic, the capacity has doubled on a significant base of 1 GW, and we are committed to delivering high quality projects to add value for all our stakeholders,” Sinha added.ReNew Power is among one of India’s largest renewable energy companies. Over the last six years, the company has increased its capacity from 200 MW in 2011-2012 to 2,000 MW on 31 March 2017.The Indian government has set a target of 175 GW of renewable power by 2022 which includes 100 GW of solar power and 60 GW of wind power.",2017-04-05,"ReNew Power made investments of about Rs6,700 crore in 2016-17 to add 430 MW of solar and 626 MW of wind capacity",0.24,23:06,ReNew Power doubles capacity to 2 GW in a year +0,"New Delhi: Coal India Ltd is actively looking to acquire coking coal assets in Australia, a senior company official told Reuters, as the country looks to beef up its foreign coal assets.The state-controlled company, which in January also listed the United States, Columbia, Canada and Indonesia as target destinations for investment, is currently zeroing in on Australia and South Africa, the Coal India official said.The world’s top coal miner is looking at investing in coking coal assets in Australia “a little more actively,” the official said.India’s coal minister Piyush Goyal said in February the company planned to acquire coking coal assets abroad as India lacked technology to economically develop local reserves, and that a rise in coking coal prices was encouraging for foreign acquisitions.Coal India has also asked Mozambique if it can explore for coal in a new area, after surrendering two mining licenses in the African country, the official said. The coal miner was one of 59 companies excluded by Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, from its portfolio in March, as the company derived most of its income from thermal coal.When asked about the impact on the company, the official said the company was not short of investments and that institutional and foreign investors were looking at investing in Coal India. Reuters",2017-04-05,Coal India is actively looking to acquire coking coal assets in Australia as the country looks to beef up its foreign coal assets,0.98,21:34,Coal India actively looking to invest in coal assets in Australia +0,"Mumbai: Royal Dutch Shell, is planning to expand its gas marketing business in India, said Shaleen Sharma, the company’s head of upstream development in India. Sharma, who spoke on the sidelines of an energy conference in Mumbai, said the downstream segment is the most attractive one currently in the gas market and the company plans to supply natural gas directly to buyers including power plants, fertilizer and petrochemical units and city gas distributors.“Indian LNG market is in good shape. That is the future. There are some new initiatives going on to see how we can access new downstream markets,” said Sharma, adding that Shell has set up a team in Singapore to boost the India gas market. Shell operates Hazira LNG Ltd, a five million tonnes per annum liquefied natural gas (LNG) import facility at Hazira, Gujarat. The company plans to double the capacity to 10 million tonnes a year, Reuters had reported on 31 March. ALSO READ: Shell plans to double Hazira LNG plant capacity: India headShell Gas B.V., a Royal Dutch Shell Plc unit, owns a 74% stake in the terminal while Total Gaz Electricite France, a unit of Total SA, holds the balance.Sharma also said that the company has dissolved the joint venture for an LNG terminal that it was planning with its consortium partners at Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh. “That was a joint venture with a number of companies including Gail. But we very recently expressed that we cannot carry on with that. This is due to lack of a secure market. We need some surety on the off-take. The joint venture agreement is no longer there,” added Sharma. The A.P Gas Distribution Corporation Limited (APGDC), Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) and Shell and Engie Global LNG had in September 2015 signed two joint venture agreements for the establishment of an LNG Floating Storage and Re-gasification Unit (FSRU) at Kakinada deepwater port.",2017-04-05,"Shell India plans to supply natural gas directly to buyers including power plants, fertilizer and petrochemical units and city gas distributors",1.0,22:46,Shell India to expand natural gas marketing business +0,"Beijing: Xiaomi Corp. is trying to get back in the game. The Chinese electronics maker unveiled a new flagship smartphone, days after Samsung’s Galaxy S8 hit stores, hoping to regain lost ground even as Apple prepares to introduce its most anticipated device in years.Xiaomi took the wraps off the Mi6 at a college gymnasium on the outskirts of Beijing on Wednesday. The phone sports flourishes now familiar to users of premium devices including the S8—curved glass, virtually non-existent bezels, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor and 6 gigabytes of memory. It also features dual cameras on the back. In a nod to Apple Inc.’s latest iPhone, Xiaomi also dropped the headphone jack. The Mi6 goes on sale 28 April, starting at 2,499 yuan ($363).The company has moved away from its roots as an online purveyor of cheap devices, since local rivals—from Oppo to Huawei Technologies Co.—began to dominate the Chinese market with higher-end gadgets. Co-founder Lei Jun is going after his rivals not just with increasingly tricked-out phones, but also by adopting the nationwide store networks that super-charged the Oppo and Vivo brands. The company remains on track to open 1,000 stores within three years across China, and expects to chalk up 70 billion yuan of sales through that physical network in five years.ALSO READ: Review: Xiaomi Redmi 4A is a budget smartphone that comes close to being the best“Xiaomi has faced some growth pressure over the past years because of our online-only model,” Lei told his launch audience. “I’m excited to say we’ve made a breakthrough.”The billionaire co-founder is overhauling his company’s approach to regain its perch atop the world’s largest smartphone arena—it was ranked No. 5 in China in 2016 according to researcher IDC (International Data Corporation). Since becoming the country’s largest start-up in 2014 with a valuation of $45 billion, the company began to slide the next year when it missed shipments targets. While taking a pounding at home, Xiaomi began to expand globally. Lei said the brand is now No. 2 in India, behind only Samsung Electronics Co. It’s also begun to deepen research into areas as diverse as artificial intelligence and online finance. It applied for 7,071 patents last year, and total patents will ‘soon’ exceed 10,000,” Lei said.For now, the company still gets much of its revenue from its home market. In January, former international head Hugo Barra left and then joined Facebook Inc., raising questions about Xiaomi’s ability to navigate its way through what Lei had described as “unforgettable” challenges. Bloomberg",2017-04-19,"Xiaomis’ new flagship model Mi6 goes on sale 28 April, starting at $363",0.25,17:46,"Xiaomi prepares comeback with Mi6 marquee phone to rival Samsung, Apple" +0,"New Delhi: The PSU disinvestment for the current fiscal year took off on Thursday, with 5% stake sale in National Aluminium Company Limited (Nalco), which could fetch about Rs640 crore to the exchequer. Of its total holding of 74.58% in Nalco, the government is selling 5% or over 9.66 crore shares at a floor price of Rs67. The floor price is at a discount of 8.78% over the previous closing of Rs73.45. The two-day offer for sale (OFS) began on the bourses on Wednesday with over 7.73 crore shares being sold to institutional investors. Over 1.93 crore have been reserved for retail investors who will also be offered additional discount over the issue price.Retail investors are defined as individual ones who place bids for sales of total value of not more than Rs 2 lakh in aggregate. The Nalco shares fell 7.76% to close at Rs67.75 on the BSE. The share sale on Wednesday will continue till close of the market.In the secondary market, the Nalco scrip was trading at Rs67.95, down 7.49%, on the BSE at 3,10pm. Nalco is the first disinvestment of the current fiscal, which began on 1 April For this fiscal, the government has set a target of Rs46,500 crore through minority stake sale and Rs15,000 crore from strategic disinvestment. In 2016-17, the government had raised over Rs 46,247 crore from disinvestment.",2017-04-19,"Of the total holding of 74.58% in Nalco, the government is selling 5% or over 9.66 crore shares at a floor price of Rs67",0.65,15:45,Nalco shares fall over 7% amid OFS +0,"Mumbai: Everstone-backed IndoStar Capital Finance Ltd on Wednesday said R. Sridhar will join them as executive vice-chairman and chief executive officer, taking over from Vimal Bhandari who has led the firm since 2011, according to a company statement.Bhandari will remain on IndoStar’s board and stay as a shareholder. Sridhar, who has been associated with the Sriram Group since 1985, will be investing a significant amount of his own capital in IndoStar.Sridhar will oversee IndoStar’s growth across its lending businesses, including corporate lending, small and medium enterprise (SME) lending, a 100%-owned housing finance subsidiary, IndoStar Home Finance Pvt. Ltd, and other asset financing businesses.“I am excited to lead IndoStar Capital at this phase of its journey. The strong sponsorship of Everstone and other shareholders, combined with a well-capitalised balance sheet and a highly profitable business provide an excellent base for the next level of growth,” said Sridhar.At the end of March, the company had a net worth of Rs1,542 crore.",2017-04-19,IndoStar Capital says R. Sridhar will taking over from Vimal Bhandari who has led the firm since 2011,0.54,13:57,"R. Sridhar to join IndoStar Capital as CEO, executive vice-chairman" +0,"Mumbai: Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd (JISL) on Wednesday said it has agreed to acquire 80% stake in two entities in the US with an investment of $48 million. JISL will acquire the two micro-irrigation companies through its multi-generation wholly-owned subsidiary in US, it said in a BSE filing. The two micro-irrigation dealers, Agri-Valley Irrigation Inc. (AVI) and Irrigation Design and Construction Inc. (IDC), have entered into an agreement with JISL to merge ownership of their businesses into a newly-formed distribution company, JISL said. This new organisation will provide a platform to help growers implement irrigation technology. AVI and IDC have been long-tenured stable companies with operations in the US. “We have invested $48 million for this acquisition. The transaction gives us the capability to provide focused, end-to-end project solutions, consistent with our global solutions and capabilities. With the newly-formed company, we’ll be able to deliver agriculture technology and irrigation solutions from our recent investments,” Jain Irrigation Systems CEO Anil Jain said. No government or regulatory approvals are required to complete the transaction, the BSE filing said. The transaction is expected to be completed in the next few weeks.",2017-04-19,"Jain Irrigation will acquire two micro-irrigation companies through its wholly-owned subsidiary in US, it said in a BSE filing",0.23,16:34,Jain Irrigation buys two US firms for $48 million +0,"New Delhi: India will use domestic coal for its proposed 4,000 megawatt power project in Tamil Nadu, instead of importing it, coal minister Piyush Goyal said on Wednesday, as the south Asian nation seeks to cut its overseas purchases.He said the state power minister has agreed for use of domestic coal for the project. Reuters",2017-04-05,"India to use domestic coal for its proposed 4,000 MW power project in Tamil Nadu, instead of importing it, says coal minister Piyush Goyal ",0.0,12:54,"India turns to local coal for planned 4,000 MW power project in Tamil Nadu " +0,"
Ten years after Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) entered fuel retailing in South Africa, the wheel has turned full circle.India’s largest private sector company bought a 76% stake in fuel retailer Gulf Africa Petroleum Corp. (Gapco) in August 2007 and hoped to expand its footprint further in the continent. At a time when RIL was struggling with its fuel retailing in India, the move helped RIL deploy its expertise in fuel retailing overseas and find a market for its products outside India.That affair lasted a decade, almost.Last June, RIL announced its intention to sell Gapco to France’s Total SA. On 29 March, the Indian company said it has obtained all approvals to complete the sale of its Gapco stake. “RIL was happy with Gapco’s performance. Though it was not as huge as its India operations, for 10 years, Gapco did provide RIL with a reason to keep operating in the fuel retail segment. RIL had plans to expand in the neighbouring markets in Africa too,” said a person familiar with the decision to sell Gapco, on condition of anonymity.With subsidiaries in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda engaged in petroleum products import, trading and marketing among others, Gapco’s revenue for 2015-16 stood at Rs11,723 crore, according to RIL’s annual report for the year. Currently, Gapco operates 104 fuel retail outlets in the East African region — 65 in Tanzania; 30 in Uganda and nine in Kenya. So, why has RIL dropped a subsidiary that seemed to be doing well? The first person cited above and another close to the company said, after India allowed market pricing of fuel, RIL’s fuel retailing business has recovered and the company wants to put all its energy into expanding in India, the world’s third-largest crude oil consumer. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), India beat Japan as the world’s third-largest crude oil consumer in 2016. India will also become the world’s third-largest-refiner in 2022, surpassing Russia. “RIL has always been bullish on the India market. And its management now wants to focus on India. Gapco happened when India operations were down. Then, RIL had decided to put its management bandwidth to use in Gapco. With all international petroleum retailers eyeing the India market, it makes sense to divest in Africa and focus back home,” said the second person familiar with RIL’s move. RIL did not reply to an email sent on Friday. RIL’s interest in the Indian fuel retailing segment was rekindled in October 2014 when the government freed diesel prices. Petrol was deregulated in June 2010. Like state-owned oil marketing companies, for RIL too, diesel has been the key product, bringing in the maximum volume. Diesel deregulation meant a revival of its fuel outlets. RIL’s Diesel sales accounted for 14.3% of the total diesel sales in the country, while its petrol sales accounted for 7.2% of total petrol sales in the country in 2005-06, RIL’s fuel retailing heydays.Since 2008, when crude oil prices rose to $150 a barrel, diesel retail was the monopoly of Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL), which managed to sell fuel below cost with government support, something not available for RIL. In May 2008, RIL closed its fuel pumps. The company, which at one point explored tying up with oil marketing companies to stay afloat, abandoned the plans after fuel price deregulation. RIL, which had a 12% market share in fuel retailing in 2005, slipped to less than 0.5% in 2014. Since then, it has clawed back to around 3-4%. RIL had spent Rs5,000 crore in setting up 1,470 retail outlets, of which around 1,151 were operational till the third quarter of 2016-17. The company planned to reopen all its fuel retail outlets by the fourth quarter of 2016-17. Last fiscal, RIL also began reporting its fuel retailing figures. Its retail outlets, which are company-owned and company-operated, are now included in its organized retail business.",2017-04-05,"After India allowed market pricing of fuel, RIL’s fuel retailing business has recovered and the company wants to put all its energy into expanding at home",0.33,08:15,What next for Reliance Industries after Gapco sale? +0,"Mumbai: India’s ailing power distribution companies (discoms) have narrowed their losses and improved their operations because of Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY), a government bailout package, analysts said.Improvement in operations of certain discoms is already visible via reduction in AT&C (aggregate technical and commercial) losses, power purchase cost, narrowing gap between cost and revenue and interest cost savings, Edelweiss Securities analysts Kunal Shah, Nilesh Parikh and Prakhar Agarwal said in a 30 March report.Out of the Rs48,800 crore discom debt, about Rs23,900 crore was repaid till the third quarter of FY17 under UDAY and another Rs9,000 crore was repaid by Tamil Nadu recently, resulting in 65% of discom debt being repaid, the analysts wrote in the report. In the 18 months since its inception, the scheme has been “undeniably successful” in achieving its objective of restoring financial health of discoms by transferring almost 75% of their debt to the state governments and reducing their interest cost burden on the remaining 25% debt, consultant Bridge To India said in a note on Monday.“Discom financials were in a spectacular mess back in 2015 with aggregate debt of Rs4.3 trillion and annual losses of Rs60,000 crore at the end of March 2015. Out of the total debt of Rs3.8 trillion attributable to the 26 UDAY states and union territories, 61% has been already transferred to state governments and/or refinanced in the form of state government guaranteed bonds,” Bridge to India said in the note. “Another 10% is expected to be similarly restructured shortly. These measures alone are expected to reduce annual aggregate interest cost burden by Rs16,000 crore ($2.4 billion) (down 65%).”With improved cash flows, the power sector may witness revival in demand by the discoms, but incremental benefits could accrue over the next two-three years, Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd said in a 3 April note.“The determined efforts by few states to improve its operational and collection efficiency in order to bring down losses and improve its financial health are showing results with majority of the states (barring Rajasthan) have managed to bring down AT&C losses over FY16,” the Emkay note said.Karnataka, Haryana and Rajasthan have shown remarkable improvement in their operations as they have managed to magnify the benefit of interest cost reduction by sharp operational improvement, ICICI Securities analysts Prakash Gaurav Goel and Apoorva Bahadur wrote in a 28 March report.So far, 25 states and one Union territory have joined UDAY, with West Bengal and Odisha yet to join. State discoms had collectively borrowed more than Rs4 trillion till the end of March 2015. The government in 2015 launched UDAY for operational and financial turnaround of power discoms.",2017-04-05,"UDAY scheme has helped transfer almost 75% of discoms’ debt to state governments and reduce interest cost burden on the remaining 25% debt, says an analyst",0.41,08:16,Discoms starting to show improvement under UDAY: analysts +0,"Mumbai: The overseas arm of India’s biggest oil and gas explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC) intends to spend more than $3 billion on Iran’s Farzad-B natural gas block.ONGC Videsh Ltd last month submitted a revised plan to the Iranian government for the block, which the company will be able to develop within five years, managing director N.K. Verma told reporters in Mumbai on Tuesday. The Indian oil company is now waiting for feedback from Tehran, Verma said.India has been weighing investments in Iran worth up to $20 billion. In addition to oil and gas exploration, the South Asian nation has considered petrochemical plants, gas-processing facilities and port expansions, including the industrial hub of Chabahar, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said last year during a visit to Tehran.Iran is seeking foreign investment to revive its oil, gas and petrochemical industries since international sanctions on its economy were removed last year. Output from Farzad-B could range from 1 billion to 1.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, Verma said.Parent company Oil & Natural Gas Corp., which is up 34% in the past year, rose 0.4% to settle at Rs185.80 on Monday. Markets were closed on Tuesday for a public holiday. Bloomberg",2017-04-05,ONGC Videsh expects to produce between 1 billion and 1.6 billion cubic feet per day of gas in five years from the start of development of Farzad B gas block ,-0.43,01:47,ONGC Videsh to spend over $3 billion on Iran gas block +0,"San Francisco: First fact-checking came to Facebook Inc. Now it’s coming to Google. The world’s largest search engine is rolling out a new feature that places “Fact Check” tags on snippets of articles in its News results. The Alphabet Inc. unit had already run limited tests. On Friday, it extended the capability to every listing in its News pages and massive search catalog. This is the latest sign Google is responding to mounting pressure to police content it hosts online after criticism the company, and other internet firms, help spread misinformation.Google isn’t entirely giving up its usual hands-off approach: The company is letting others do the fact-checking. The approach is meant to legitimize or question claims online, Google said in a blog post. Checked search results list the name of the person or group making the assertion and the determination of the fact-checker. Although Google is working with established fact-checking organizations, like PolitiFact and Snopes, it’s also opening up the system to publishers including The Washington Post and The New York Times. In theory, media organizations could use the new feature to fact-check each other. Or publishers could give different verdicts on the veracity of the same article. “These fact checks are not Google’s and are presented so people can make more informed judgments,” Google said. “Even though differing conclusions may be presented, we think it’s still helpful for people to understand the degree of consensus around a particular claim and have clear information on which sources agree.”While any publisher can apply to add fact-check labels to content, Google search algorithms will determine whether they appear in results, a spokeswoman said.The company plans to reserve the label for search results about addressable public claims of fact, rather than opinion. Publishers can write the labels that appear next to results. Examples include “True,” “Mostly False,” or “Pants on Fire!” (a favourite of PolitiFact). Outcry over the influence of misinformation, or “fake news,” began after the US Presidential election. Facebook, a leading driver of online traffic to publishers in the US, took the brunt of criticism. On Thursday, the company introduced new features in its flagship social network designed to show users how to detect false news. (Listen to Bloomberg’s Decrypted podcast on how fake news blew up into a political crisis for Facebook.)But Google has not been immune to scrutiny. Critics have pointed to several instances of inaccurate and misleading articles surfacing in search results. Such examples are particularly stark when Google delivers what it finds in the form of tiny snippets, a priority for the company in recent years.“From our perspective, there should just be no situation where fake news gets distributed, so we are all for doing better here,” Google chief executive officer Sundar Pichai told BBC News shortly after the US election.Google is not paying publications or fact-checking organizations. A spokeswoman for Google said articles that used the new fact-check label would not be ranked differently in search results. Bloomberg",2017-04-07,Google is rolling out a new feature that places ‘Fact Check’ tags on snippets of articles in its News results,-0.71,14:00,Google brings fake news fact-checking to search results +0,"San Francisco: Alphabet Inc.’s Access division, which houses its broadband service Google Fiber, has removed two prominent executives from its ranks, the latest sign of the business pulling back from ambitious, expensive goals.Milo Medin, a vice president at Access, and Dennis Kish, a wireless infrastructure veteran who was president of Google Fiber, are leaving the division but staying at the Alphabet holding company. Gregory McCray, who was appointed head of Access in February, told staff about the management changes at a Thursday meeting. An Access spokesman confirmed the changes, but declined to comment further.Kish joined Google Fiber in 2014 from Qualcomm Inc. and worked closely with fellow transplant Craig Barratt, who previously led the Access group. Barratt suddenly exited in October, when Alphabet also announced it was halting Google Fiber expansions in eight major urban markets and laying off around 10% of its staff.The Access division has continued to shrink. About 600 employees are currently being reassigned to the Google internet business and other Alphabet divisions, according to sources familiar with the plans.A Google veteran since 2010, Medin was a chief advocate for the company’s high-speed Fiber service in Washington. He has also been leading some of Alphabet’s more experimental efforts to tap wireless spectrum for better internet delivery. It’s unclear if that effort will move to another part of Alphabet.Also Read: Donald Trump hails ‘friendship’ with China’s Xi Jinping on 1st day of summitOn Thursday, Medin was named as a member of the Federal Communications Commission’s new Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee.Medin and Kish didn’t respond to emailed requests for comment.Under Barratt, Alphabet pushed to bring Fiber to more than a dozen US cities. It hit some hurdles, including increased competition and legal challenges from telecommunications firms. Google Fiber also grew into one of the costliest efforts for the company, outside of the dominant Google internet business.After halting its expansion, some analysts praised Alphabet for implementing cost-cutting measures. Last month, Google Fiber cancelled some planned installations in Kansas City, its first market. Bloomberg",2017-04-07,"Alphabet ’s Access division has removed two prominent executives from its ranks, the latest sign of the business pulling back from ambitious, expensive goals",0.76,09:48,Alphabet moves 2 top Google Fiber executives off project +0,"San Francisco: President Donald Trump wants to know who’s behind the rogue federal employee Twitter accounts slamming his administration’s policies. Twitter Inc.’s suing to keep him from finding out.Twitter alleges that the Trump administration’s subpoena for information to identify the users behind accounts critical of the president would violate their constitutional rights to free-speech. The social media giant contends users are entitled to their anonymity unless they’ve violated a law that would warrant unmasking and the government has failed to make such a case.The Trump administration’s sensitivity to criticism on the so-called ALT Twitter feeds that mimic those of federal agencies began with the president’s 20 January inauguration. When the official Twitter account of the National Park Service re-tweeted an image comparing that day’s crowd size to the larger one at president Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, Trump personally called the acting park service director to complain, according to a Washington Post report cited in the complaint.An official park service apology on Twitter for the unflattering comparison spawned the activation of the “rogue” alternative accounts.Trump, who frequently uses Twitter to lambaste public officials and private citizens alike, embraced the site as a tool for political warfare during his campaign. As president, Trump continues to deploy tweets, sometimes in the early morning hours, to attack political foes, judges and media outlets.Twitter said in its lawsuit on Thursday that handles such as @ALT_USCIS, @alt_labor and @BadlandsNPS are among a “new and innovative class” of users who provide views that are “often vigorously opposed” to the actions of the administration. The government issued an administrative summons to Twitter on 14 March demanding that the company turn over records to identify the user or users behind @ALT_USCIS, according to the complaint.Jenny Burke, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, declined to comment on the lawsuit against that agency and US Customs and Border Protection. Some Trump supporters have complained that a so-called deep state of Obama holdovers is embedded throughout the federal bureaucracy and is trying to undercut the president.Travel banSome of the alternative accounts are the work of people claiming to be current or former federal employees seeking to challenge the views of the government. @ALT_USCIS has been critical of the new administration’s immigration policies, including the president’s travel bans and executive order to build a wall along the US border with Mexico.Two days before Twitter received the summons, @ALT_USCIS tweeted about the department’s “waste, inefficiency and poor management” as it attempted to create an automated system to process immigration applications, according to the complaint. A US Customs and Border Protection agent faxed a summons to Twitter demanding disclosure of the account holder under a US customs statute for the examination of books and witnesses.Twitter is required to produce all records related to the account to comply with an ongoing investigation to “ascertain the correctness of entries,” according to a copy of the summons included in the lawsuit. In the summons, the government threatened legal action if Twitter didn’t comply by 13 March, which was the day before the company got the subpoena.Suing ObamaTwitter has historically been willing to go to court to protect user data—a position that has sometimes led to its service being temporarily blocked in other countries. The company releases a global transparency report for its users, where it details how many data requests came from each government and whether they were fulfilled. It sued the Obama administration after being blocked from disclosing exactly how many times the US government made surveillance requests.The company has disclosed the identities of criminal suspects. In March, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested a man accused of sending a link on Twitter that included a flashing light intended to trigger an epileptic seizure, which it did, according the New York Times. In that case according to the Times, Twitter disclosed information that led to the arrest of man in Salisbury, Maryland.In Thursday’s lawsuit, Twitter contends the government failed to demonstrate that the rogue users have committed a crime that would prompt the release of their personal information. The statute cited by government to demand the data, Twitter claims, covers only a narrow class of records related to importing merchandise. @ALT_USCIS doesn’t import merchandise into the US, according to the complaint.‘Chilling effect’“Permitting CBP to pierce the pseudonym of the @ALT_USCIS account would have a grave chilling effect on the speech of that account in particular and on the many alternative agency accounts that have been created to voice their dissent to government policies,” according to the filing.Attorneys for Twitter claim the US Supreme Court has long recognized that “anonymity is often essential to fostering” political speech, especially when the speaker could “face retaliation or retribution” for his or her comments. Bloomberg",2017-04-07,Twitter alleges that the Trump administration’s subpoena for information to identify users behind accounts critical of the president will violate their constitutional rights to free speech,-0.4,08:34,Donald Trump sued by Twitter over bid to unmask @alt-agency handle +0,"Digital adoption in India has been growing rapidlyRecent disruptions in the telecom space have given a strong impetus to digital adoption in India, accelerating the rate by at least a few years. While the total number of mobile Internet users is expected to grow to almost 650 million by 2020, users with high-speed Internet access is expected to be around 550 million. This can prove to be a huge boost for the Internet economy. Data consumption is set to expand to around 7-10 GB per month per user by 2020 from the current 700 MB per month per user.Three key forces are coming together to unlock the latent digital demand By 2020, 4G-enabled devices are expected to grow six-fold to 550 million devices, constituting about 70% of devices in use. At the same time, reliable high-speed data is becoming both ubiquitous as well as affordable (data rates have reduced to less than one-third in just 4-5 months). The proliferation of digital content is also driving consumption. Mobile Internet users are expected to nearly double from 391 million today to 650 million by 2020 while data consumption per user is estimated to grow 10-14 times to reach 7-10 GB/month.India’s Internet economy expected to double to become $250 billion by 2020The Internet economy in India is becoming a major contributor to GDP, and is expected to grow to about 7.5% of the country’s GDP by 2020 from 5% now. E-commerce and financial services are projected to lead the growth. For instance, share of digital payment transactions could increase to 30-40% of all transactions by 2020 from 13% in 2015.TiE and BCG will launch The $250B Digital Volcano report on India’s Internet economy in 2020, at TiE’s India Internet Day 2017 on 7 April in New Delhi.",2017-04-07,"India’s Internet industry is expected to double by 2020 from today’s $125 billion, growing to 7.5% of GDP",0.32,10:48,India’s Internet industry to double by 2020: report +0,"Sydney: Australia’s consumer watchdog has sued Apple Inc. alleging it used a software update to disable iPhones which had cracked screens fixed by third parties.The US technology giant “bricked”—or disabled with a software update—hundreds of smartphones and tablet devices, and then refused to unlock them on the grounds that customers had the devices serviced by non-Apple repairers, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said in a court filing.“Consumer guarantee rights under the Australian Consumer Law exist independently of any manufacturer’s warranty and are not extinguished simply because a consumer has goods repaired by a third party,” ACCC chairman Rod Sims said in a statement.An Apple spokeswoman did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.The regulator said that between September 2014 and February 2016, Apple customers who downloaded software updates then connected their devices to their computers received a message saying the device “could not be restored and the device had stopped functioning”.Customers then asked Apple to fix their devices, only to be told by the company that “no Apple entity ... was required to, or would, provide a remedy” for free, the documents added.Apple engaged in “misleading or deceptive conduct and made false or misleading representations to consumers” about its software updates and customers’ rights to have their products repaired by the company, the commission said.As well as fines, the ACCC said it was seeking injunctions, declarations, compliance programme orders, corrective notices, and costs.The lawsuit was filed late on Wednesday, a week after the consumer watchdog granted Apple a win by denying Australia’s banks the right to introduce a mobile payment system to rival its Apple Wallet. Reuters",2017-04-06,Australian regulator says Apple alleging it used a software update to disable iPhones which had cracked screens fixed by third parties,0.35,14:10,Australian regulator sues Apple alleging iPhone ‘bricking’ +0,"
Mumbai: Girish Chaturvedi, group vice-president of digital marketing firm Netcore Solutions, firmly believes that mobile phones are the best medium to target audiences on a large scale. So when the ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship needed a plan to reach the unemployed and school/college dropouts for its flagship programme, a skills training and certification initiative termed Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), Chaturvedi’s team at Netcore Solutions decided that mobile messaging would be the best channel. Netcore Solutions got involved in this campaign when it was brought in as a technology partner by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), who took this initiative to help the PMKVY. Netcore Solutions was a finalist in the government and citizen engagement category at the mBillionth 2016 awards, organized by the Digital Empowerment Foundation.The PMKVY initiative aims to impart vocational training and certify skilled persons to enhance employability and help grassroots entrepreneurs raise funds via formal channels. Marketing skills training at traditional formats, such as kiosks and fairs, are less effective at reaching bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers, and also cannot be scaled up to reach millions of India’s unemployed youths. Radio and cinema are also not effective at reaching the poor who may lack access to such media. But mobile phones have a wide reach. “We decided to use an SMS campaign to generate interest in PMKVY,” Chaturvedi explains.A month ahead of the PMKVY’s launch on 15 July 2015, Netcore Solutions’s team launched a pilot campaign in Bihar, sending out bulk SMSes in partnership with Airtel. Using keywords such as ‘sarkari’, ‘naukri’, and ‘muft’, they sent the message out that individuals looking for skills training and certification should give a missed call to a designated number. Those who did, received an automated voice call that recorded the caller’s age, gender, location, employment status, and according to the location, directed them to the nearest skills training centre for counselling and enrolment. “Though our campaign initially reached only Airtel customers, the missed call number became very popular and within a week we had Idea and Vodafone customers calling in,” Chaturvedi says.What were the key takeaways from the pilot programme? “For location profiling, we initially used to ask for the caller’s STD code, but were surprised to learn that people were more aware of their pincode than the STD code. So we changed this input variable. We were able to enrol 25,000 people for skills training in less than a month, meaning one out of eight people we targeted ended up enrolling,” he says.The campaign tied up with all the major telecom companies such as Bharti Airtel Ltd, Vodafone India Ltd and Idea Cellular, who offered their services for free. In total, 440 million text messages were sent out, while 16 million missed calls were received. The campaign received responses from 7.5 million people, of which 2.73 million profiles were compiled. What explains the wide gap between the responses received and actual enrolment? Chaturvedi is not sure, but he thinks it may have to do with poor mobile literacy. “Several times, the callers entered invalid responses, and we were thus unable to record their profiles or could only capture the data partially,” he explains.Netcore Solutions’s campaign was aided by its partnership with the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), while in Bihar they tied up with a skills training company called Centum. Netcore Solutions has also recommended setting up online portal for PMKVY, not unlike online marketplaces for job searching. “We created an online platform for NSDC (National Skill Development Corporation), so that different training companies could access job-seeker data classified according to various districts, constituencies and states. However, the NSDC has not yet implemented our suggestion. Such a platform has the potential to act as a marketplace whereby employers can look for skilled workers. Moreover, such a platform could also be used for real-time monitoring of the tasks being carried out at the 230 training centres across India,” Chaturvedi adds.Chaturvedi points out that the biggest learning was an assessment of the extent of mobile literacy in the country. Actual enrolment fell far short of the missed calls received due to callers entering invalid responses. While Netcore Solutions’s campaign has won it several awards, Chaturvedi clarifies that the company is not involved with the second chapter of PMKVY that is expected to run until 2020. Mint has a strategic partnership with Digital Empowerment Foundation, which hosts the Manthan and mBillionth awards.",2017-04-06,Netcore Solutions’s project sends SMSes to spread word about the centre’s skilling initiative and direct applicants to the nearest training centres,0.65,01:41,Leveraging mobile phones to boost skilling initiative +0,"New Delhi: IT industry body Nasscom on Tuesday said the US’ latest memo on H1B visas would have “little impact” on Indian IT firms as they have already started applying for visas for higher-level specialised professionals this year. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has recently come out with a policy memorandum saying companies applying for visas must provide “evidence to establish that the particular position is one in a specialty occupation”. The new H1B guideline rescinds a memorandum issued in December, 2000. Seeking to play down the impact on outsourcing companies, Nasscom said the memorandum “reinforces existing practice by adjudicators and clarifies requirements for certain computer professionals”. ALSO READ | H1-B visa: What the USCIS guidelines mean for tech workers and companies“The clarifying guidance should have little impact on Nasscom members as this has been the adjudicatory practice for years and also as several of our member executives have noted recently, they are applying for visas for higher level professionals this year,” Nasscom said in a statement. Nasscom counts IT outsourcing firms like TCS, Infosys, Wipro as well as American firms like Cognizant, Microsoft, and IBM as members. It added that the demand for additional evidence showing that the said job is complex/specialised and requires professional degrees mentioned in the memo has been the de facto requirement for years. India accounts for a significant portion of the H1B visas, which are non-immigrant visas used by American firms to employ foreign workers that require specific expertise. USCIS—a government agency that oversees lawful immigration to the US—has emphasised that the H1B visa programme should help US companies recruit highly-skilled foreign nationals when there is a shortage of qualified workers in the country. ALSO READ | H-1B visas to become harder to get as Donald Trump starts crackdownUSCIS issues about 65,000 H1B visas in general category and another 20,000 for those applicants having higher education (Masters and above) from US universities in the field of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Nasscom said the H1B visa system exists specifically because of the “persistent shortage” of highly-skilled domestic IT talent in the US. The US accounts for over 60% of the export revenues of the Indian IT industry. “Nasscom member companies have and will continue to provide skilled talent and solutions to fill that gap and keep US companies competitive globally,” it added.ALSO READ | H1B visa: Computer programmer won’t qualify as specialty occupation , says USHowever, industry watchers believe that coupled with immigration pushbacks being seen in other geographies like the UK and Singapore, the overall impact would make movement of labour difficult and operation costlier in the short term. During his election campaign, US President Donald Trump had promised stricter immigration laws and protection of local jobs. An US legislation (Lofgren Bill) was introduced that proposed doubling of the minimum wages of H1B visa holders to $130,000. Indian firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro—on their part—have been reducing their dependence on H1B visas, ramping up local hiring to meet requirement.",2017-04-05,Nasscom says the latest H1B visa memorandum from the USCIS reinforces existing practices by adjudicators and clarifies requirements for certain computer professionals,0.47,19:01,Nasscom says USCIS H1B visa memo to have little impact on Indian IT firms +0,"New Delhi: Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India Pvt Ltd (HMSI), the local two-wheeler unit of the Japanese automaker, has appointed Minoru Kato as president and chief executive officer, the company said in a statement on Monday.Kato, who replaces Keita Muramatsu from 1 April, has 29 years of experience working at Honda Motor Co. He has expertise in production control, motorcycle planning, and sales across Europe, Japan, and South-East Asia. He started his career in Honda Japan in 1988 in the production control division of automobile operations at the Saitama plant. Kato has served as CEO of Honda Vietnam Co. Ltd since 1 April, 2014.Muramatsu, who led Honda’s Indian two-wheeler operations for six years, will now become executive vice president at American Honda Motor Co Inc. Under his leadership, India became the number one contributor to Honda’s two-wheeler sales globally for the first time in 2016. Under Muramatsu, HMSI doubled its market share from 13% to 27% and rose from fourth position to becoming the second largest two-wheeler company in India in six years.",2017-03-27,"Minoru Kato, who replaces Keita Muramatsu as HMSI’s CEO from 1 April, has 29 years of experience working at Honda Motor s",0.09,19:21,Honda Motorcycle names Minoru Kato as India President and CEO +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank managing director Aditya Puri’s name has featured in the list of world’s 30 best CEOs, published by American financial magazine Barron’s. “Puri, 66, has transformed HDFC Bank from a start-up into one of the world’s highest-quality banks, generating eye-popping returns by maintaining lending standards while expanding beyond corporate loans into a full-service retail bank,” Barron’s said. According to the magazine, a 2014 trip to Silicon Valley made Puri a digital evangelist. In hallmark style, the banker swiftly set out to remake India’s second-largest private-sector bank into the digital spot for anything money-related, it said.“That’s proving to be a bigger competitive advantage than even he imagined, as India’s surprise demonetisation in November, which voided 86% of the country’s cash, catapulted demand for digital payments,” Barron’s said.",2017-03-27,"Aditya Puri has transformed HDFC Bank from a start-up into one of the world’s highest-quality banks, generating eye-popping returns, says ‘Barron’s’",0.85,22:48,HDFC Bank MD Aditya Puri features in Barron’s 30 best CEOs list +0,"New Delhi: IT industry body Nasscom on Wednesday appointed Quatrro CMD Raman Roy its chairman for 2017-18. It has also named Rishad Premji, Wipro chief strategy officer and son of technology czar Azim Premji, as the vice chairman. Roy, who served as the vice chairman in the previous fiscal, will take on the new role from 6 April. He takes over the mantle from C P Gurnani, managing director and CEO of Tech Mahindra. “Nasscom is playing a critical role in evangelising the digital opportunity for the sector and I would like to support the industry in facilitating the skilling and reskilling effort of the industry through disruptive models,” Roy said.He added that building India’s innovation edge is another key priority and the industry body plans to scale up start-ups and centre of excellence initiatives to the next level. The announcement comes at a time when the over $140 billion Indian IT industry faces a number of headwinds like growing protectionism from various countries and business shifts towards digital. R Chandrashekhar, president of Nasscom, said: “A new-age leader like Rishad, with his vast exposure, will bring fresh ideas to the table, helping the industry tap new domains and opportunities globally.” Roy, along with Rishad and Chandrashekhar, will lead Nasscom to carry out its diverse array of priorities. The leadership team will also work towards further strengthening various sector councils and focus on enhanced member outreach and involvement.",2017-04-05,"Quatrro CMD Raman Roy will take over as the Nasscom chairman while Rishad Premji, Wipro chief strategy officer and son of Azim Premji, will step in as vice chairman ",0.25,18:02,"Nasscom appoints Raman Roy as chairman, Rishad Premji vice chairman" +0,"
Mpower, a Mumbai-based mental healthcare initiative by Neerja Birla, wife of Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla, has grown bigger in its second year. It now has a diagnostics centre providing physiological and psychiatric services. In November, Birla also launched the MPower Foundation under the aegis of the corporate social responsibility initiative of Idea Cellular Ltd, an Aditya Birla Group company, to reach out to the economically challenged and create awareness.Ahead of their annual awareness-building cycling event, Ride to Mpower (15km and 35km), Birla talks about the challenges and expansion plans. Edited excerpts:
What are the plans for Mpower?The expansion plans include opening three-four more centres (of which two would be in Mumbai) in the coming year, whereas with the foundation we will reach out to schools, colleges and corporates.
The centre is located at Khareghat Colony, Hughes Road, which is one of the most privileged neighbourhoods in Mumbai. Is that by design?Mental health has an impact on a large part of the urban population. Yes, (at our centre) we are reaching out to a certain section of society. It is well known that a lot of high achievers have mental-health concerns. We are trying to create dialogue around this subject to normalize it.
Are schools and colleges open to discussions on mental health?We have reached out to 100-120 schools in Mumbai since the foundation started. Everybody knows that this is a serious topic. Look at the statistics. The incidence of suicides is highest in the age group of 15-29. The sad part is that schools are just not open to talk about it. Only four schools have allowed our team to reach out to parents. Our programme encompasses reaching out to students, teachers and parents—all key stakeholders. For teachers, we look at how to identify a child going through an issue, how to deal with it. For parents, we discuss how to deal with issues at home and how to identify (problems), and for the students, it is about making them aware of the symptoms. We are really struggling as there are very few takers, and this even as we offer the first workshop, which is an introduction to mental healthcare, free. The response has been really appalling.
Why do you think the schools are so unreceptive?Like I said earlier: It is about bringing about a cultural shift in perception. Mental health or mental well-being is always on the back-burner, something that is not important.Ride to Mpower, the second edition of the cyclathon, will be held on Sunday. Registration is open today, 11am-8pm, at the High Street Phoenix mall, Mumbai. For more details, visit Mpowerminds.com.",2017-03-24,"Neerja Birla, founder of Mpower, talks about the need for a change in the perception of mental health",0.23,19:36,Neerja Birla: Mental health is always on the back-burner +0,"7What is it? Number of people killed in a gun-battle in Kashmir on Sunday.Why is it important? The violence in the state, rekindled in 2016, continues with four terrorists killed in the fight. With two Indian soldiers dead, J&K security forces’ death toll increased. Avalanches had claimed lives earlier this year, which succeeds a year with the highest death count of 82 among the forces since 2008.Tell me more: A civilian was also killed and three soldiers injured in the incident. In civilian deaths, three road-workers had been killed by militants last month.Rs 385.6 croreWhat is it? The first-ever loss reported by India’s third-largest telecom player, Idea Cellular in the third quarter financial year 2017 (Q3 FY17).Why is it important? While it was expected Idea would report a loss, the amount was more than the forecast. A quarter of free voice and data promotional offers by Reliance Jio has dented financial performance of all the three (including Airtel and Vodafone) major players, with the smallest, Idea, being hit the hardest. Tell me more: Idea says the sector can hope to recover only when Jio starts charging for its pan-India mobile services. Idea’s income fell from a profit of Rs 764.2 crore in Q3 FY16 and Rs 90 crore in Q2 FY17. The operator waited for the official confirmation of a merger with Vodafone India before sharing its financial results this quarter.$200 millionWhat is it? The amount Oil and Natural Gas Corporation’s (ONGC) overseas arm, ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), is said to have overpaid in acquiring Videocon Group’s 10% stake for $2.5 billion, in a large natural gasfield in Africa’s Mozambique in 2013.Why is it important? If proved, this could mean a big lapse in judgement for the public sector company and India’s largest oil and gas explorer by revenue. What was allegedly on the market for $2.3 billion, was acquired for $2.475 billion by it, and since has faced a writedown in asset value as crude energy prices fell. The payment to Videocon is now being investigated by the oil ministry.Tell me more: OVL later bought stake in the same area from another energy player, the US Anadarko Corp, for $2.64 billion in 2014 that the latter calculated was a gain of over 62% of the purchase price. 310 milesWhat is it? The distance travelled by a North Korean intermediate-range ballistic missile before it landed in the Sea of Japan on Sunday.Why is it important? By testing the missile, North Korea has violated United Nation’s restrictions, even as many observers commented that it was to provoke Donald Trump, the newly elected president of United States, a long time ally of Japan. Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe, who is on a visit to US, and was with Trump, called it “absolutely intolerable.”Tell me more: Just a day before the launch, Trump and Abe had urged North Korea not to test ballistic missiles and to drop its nuclear programme. It comes about two weeks ahead of the largest ever joint military exercise between the US and South Korea.43,512What is it? The number of housing units sold in the quarter ended December 2016 in top nine cities in India, according to a report by PropTiger.Why is it important? The sales are down 20% from the previous quarter, one of the expected impacts of demonetisation, which took away 96% of currency in circulation. The monthly average sales during November and December when demonetisation was in full flow, dropped by 40% and 49% respectively, PropTiger said in a report. Tell me more: Gurgaon, Noida and Ahmedabad saw 30-40% decline in sales, while Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai saw 20% drop in sales. howindialives.com is a search engine for public data",2017-02-13,"In other news, ONGC Videsh Ltd is said to have overpaid $200 million in acquiring Videocon group’s 10% stake for $2.5 billion in a large natural gasfield in Mozambique, Africa, in 2013",0.09,11:05,"News in Numbers: Idea posted Rs385.6 crore loss in Q3, thanks to Reliance Jio" +0,"Mumbai: Allahabad Bank on Monday reported a net profit in the December quarter as compared with a loss in the year-ago period, owing to lower provisions against bad loans and higher other income.The state-owned lender reported a net profit of Rs75.26 crore in the third quarter as compared with a loss of Rs486.14 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the difference between interest earned on loans and that spent on deposits, fell 16.44% on a year-on-year basis to Rs1,183.31 crore. Other income, though, rose by 77% from a year-ago period to Rs729.87 crore.The bank made provisions worth Rs795.82 crore against bad loans in the third quarter, down 50% from Rs1,593.57 crore made during the same quarter a year ago. In October-December FY16, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had conducted a asset quality review (AQR), where the regulator asked banks to classify a large number of stressed accounts as non-performing and make higher provisions against them.The bank’s asset quality condition stabilized as gross non-performing assets (NPA) came down slightly on a quarter-on-quarter basis. As on 31 December, Allahabad Bank reported gross NPA worth Rs19,091.89 crore, down marginally from Rs19,094.53 crore in the quarter ended 30 September.As a ratio of gross advances, the bank’s gross NPAs were at 12.51% at the end of the third quarter, as compared with 12.28% in the second quarter. The lender reported a net NPA ratio of 8.65% in the October-December period as compared with 8.59% as on 30 September.At 3:17pm, Allahabad Bank stock was trading at Rs73.05 on the BSE—down 1.15% from its previous close.",2017-02-13,Allahabad Bank’s third-quarter profit rises on lower provisions against bad loans and higher other income,0.03,15:26,Allahabad Bank Q3 net profit at Rs75.26 crore +0,"New Delhi: Japanese auto firm Toyota Motor Corp. on Friday announced the launch of its luxury brand Lexus in India with three models—the ES 300h hybrid sedan, the RX Luxury hybrid sports utility vehicle (SUV)and the RX F Sport hybrid SUV—priced between Rs55.27 lakh and Rs1.09 crore (ex-showroom, Delhi). It also showcased the LX450d SUV and fifth-generation Lexus LS sedan but did not reveal their prices. In an interview, Yoshihiro Sawa, president, Lexus International said that he wants the brand to be seen differently from German brands BMW AG, Audi and Mercedes-Benz. Edited excerpts:What took you so long to come to India?Lexus is a young brand compared to European brands like Mercedes, which has an over 100-year history. In order to make Lexus competitive, we decided to be different from them. We started with the Lexus brand in 1998 in the US. In the beginning it was very successful there but not in other nations. So, after we introduced the Lexus brand in Japan, Europe and China, in the first decade, people’s expectations were not so good. Sometimes people said Lexus is a boring brand. It is fantastic but it becomes boring. That was the perception about Lexus. So, three years ago, we decided to change the Lexus brand in order to become more aggressive. Earlier, we were very focused on the US market. Now, it is time to think about other key markets.What you are essentially saying is that you have made the brand appealing to younger customers. Do you think you will find enough such buyers in India?We can’t just start thinking about sales volumes because we have just started with four dealerships. It is very difficult to expect big numbers. So, we will focus on the Lexus brand positioning in India. This is our aim.The age group that you plan to target prefers an Audi or a BMW...We don’t follow our competitors even though they are successful. We decided to be unique. Even though in India, many young people appreciate a BMW or an Audi, we don’t fear that because though the percentage may be small, people do love the Lexus. In the US, we enjoy a big share. In Europe, our share is very small. So, Europe is a kingdom for BMW, Audi and Mercedes. In order to survive in India, we have to be very unique.How would you differentiate yourself?Most important thing is to be completely different from the Germans, which is visible in our design. Because people first look at the appearance and then they see the interiors. So, they judge on that basis.Do you think Lexus has brand recall in India?No, I don’t think so. We have just started.Jeep has also entered India and there is a recall value associated with the brand. You don’t seem to have that.You have to understand that our history goes back 20 years while Jeep is more than that. Also, people see a lot of Jeeps in the movies and on websites. We, on the other hand, started lifestyle activities only 3-4 years ago. So, we have to continue doing such activities to build a history.",2017-03-25,"The most important thing is to be completely different from the Germans—Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, says President Yoshihiro Sawa on Lexus India launch day",0.38,01:06,Lexus has to be very unique to survive in India: President Yoshihiro Sawa +0,"
New Delhi: Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd won’t mind losing money on its electric vehicles (EVs) business till such time as the EV game picks up, Pawan Goenka, managing director of the firm, said. M&M is pursuing its electric dream on two fronts, he explained, with the first being mass market and the second, luxury under the Pininfarina brand, which will largely be modelled on the lines of Tesla Inc. Edited excerpts from an interview:
You have big plans for electric vehicles...Yes. If you put bits and pieces of what we have been talking about together, we will be playing at two ends. One end, we hope, will become mass market once the floodgates open.
Do you think there will be more subsidies?I don’t think so. Subsidy also becomes a drain on the exchequer. Subsidy has to be such that it makes the offering viable for consumers. Consumers will not buy just because it is an electric vehicle. They will buy because it makes sense to the wallet. Today, we are just short of that. Another Rs40,000-50,000 difference will get us there. If the pressure is on us to bridge that gap by working on reduction of costs and we are not making money otherwise, that pressure is much higher than if you start making money. So, it is okay for us to be under some pressure to reduce the price of electric vehicles but not to the extent that we give up. I am on the side that says let me work on filling the gap.ALSO READ | Mahindra pitches Verito sedan as a successor to the AmbassadorBut what needs to be done first is push volumes. Without volumes, I cannot fill the gap. What the government needs to do is not (think) how do you incentivize the financial part of it, but how do you create a condition for more volumes. In places like Delhi, it is very easy where they can say that in peak time, you cannot ply small commercial vehicles, except if it is electric. I don’t need anything else. Then the volume will come.
And, what are your plans for the higher end?Pininfarina started as a dream but we still have to worry about financial viability. Unlike many other electric car companies which are supported by investors who are looking to make it big in the future, we will have to ensure that it makes prudent business sense. The company that has made electric vehicles respectable is Tesla. Before Tesla, electric cars were seen as something that got you from point A to point B uncomfortably. Tesla made them a matter of pride. So, that’s the difference that they have made, but at a cost. They are not making money. We would like electric vehicles to become a matter of pride not because they are electric but because they are great cars. That’s what Tesla has done. Pininfarina is the brand that we have and with Indian expertise in electric, it becomes a natural way for us.ALSO READ | Mahindra to build a sub-4 metre SUV targeted at the global market
Two-wheelers have not really done well for you. It has not worked out in the manner that we wanted it to. But we have sort of completely changed the direction in the two-wheeler business. There are three businesses that were not making money for us—two-wheelers, trucks and electric vehicles. EVs are a long-term bet and we will continue to remain in the game till there is a game remaining. Frankly, it is one business where if we can make a difference, we don’t mind losing money. In CVs (commercial vehicles), we are over the hump. Next year becomes very important with BS IV coming in. Two-wheelers was the only area where we did not see a possibility of a quick turnaround.
Mahindra announced that it will create a manufacturing base outside India. Is that on?What we said is that we need to be expanding outside India as every global company has significant manufacturing capabilities outside India, and we don’t. In the tractor business, we do, but in automotive we do not and, therefore, we are looking for a second home market, which will become an export base for us... We are in the process of deciding what that would be.ALSO READ | Mahindra to set up another base outside India: MD Pawan Goenka
Are there any specific geographies that you are looking at?We are looking at the Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) region. Basically, there are four clusters of markets for our kind of vehicles—Latin America, African nations, Asean and China. Volume is in Asean. So, that’s what we are looking at.
Are you considering acquisitions?If an opportunity comes up, we will do what makes more business sense. Today, in the auto industry, there is an abundance of capacity. Therefore, it is possible for us to find a brownfield plant where we can invest some money to do what we want to do. So, that would make more financial sense than to taking the greenfield route.How do you plan to synergize your two-wheeler business with PMTC (Peugeot Motorcycles) and BSA?There are a lot of back-end synergies in terms of sourcing from India. More or less, PMTC is a stand-alone business. What is CLPL?It is Classic Legend Pvt. Ltd. That is the name of the company that will make BSA and Jawa bikes. That is the company that we have set up.",2017-03-24,"MD Pawan Goenka says Mahindra is pursuing its electric cars dream on two fronts—mass market and luxury under Pininfarina, largely modelled on the lines of Tesla",0.37,20:03,Mahindra seeks to make luxury electric cars under Pininfarina brand +0,"New Delhi: Videocon Industries Ltd on Saturday reported a standalone net loss of Rs509.7 crore for the fourth quarter ended December. The company had reported a net loss of Rs84.42 crore in the same period a year ago, Videocon Industries said in a BSE filing. The company’s total income on a standalone basis during the quarter declined to Rs2,097.7 crore as against Rs3,357.5 crore in the year-ago period.The company follows January-December fiscal year.",2017-02-11,"Videocon Industries fourth quarter total income on a standalone basis declined to Rs2,097.7 crore as against Rs3,357.5 crore",-0.46,23:04,Videocon Industries Q4 loss widens to Rs509.7 crore +0,"New Delhi: Stating that a stable import policy has helped in the sales of exclusive super sports cars in India, Lamborghini expects the category to clock double digit growth this year. The Italian luxury carmaker, which had earlier this month launched Huracan Spyder convertible with rear-wheel drive in India priced at Rs3.45 crore, has also lined up two more product launches for this year, including the new Avendator. It is gearing up to cash in on the emergence of a new breed of customers—first generation entrepreneurs; those from tier II and III cities and women buyers. “I expect that in 2017, the segment should continue with the double digit growth that it had last year,” Lamborghini India head Sharad Agarwal said. He said since 2011 the exclusive super sports car segment, which includes those with import price of Rs2.25 crore upwards such as Mercedes AMG GTS, Audi R8 and Ferrari was declining. In 2015, the segment saw a marginal growth which was followed “up by a good double digits growth” last year, with industry estimate putting the total number of cars sold to around 70 units. Explaining reasons behind the growth, Agarwal said: “A lot of it has to do with the stability in policies because between 2011 and 2015 there were lot of changes in the import duties and structures, which were always creating disruptions in the market.” “Now things are stabilised. Once things get stabilised, the market starts growing. It is more about consistency and stability.” Commenting about the company’s sales last year, he said: “We had a healthy double digit growth in 2016. The segment in India is still evolving and what is important for us is the trend.” There were more first generation entrepreneurs buying Lamborghini cars. Also, more people from tier II and III cities also bought these cars, Agarwal said. “We also had the first woman buyer of a Lamborghini in India in 2016 and post that we sold more to women in this country,” he added. On how the emergence of new set of buyers has helped, Agarwal said: “In previous years if sales were coming from these segments, say around 12-15%, it is now moving to 20-25%. This segment is growing much faster, primarily the growth is coming from these segments.” These are trends which define how the segment will grow in future, he added. With the overall economy and sentiment upbeat in India, Agarwal said the conversion cycles of potential customers are becoming shorter. “Earlier customers were taking pretty long time to decide on the final purchase. The cycles are getting shorter by about 25% if I have to compare with previous years,” he said.",2017-02-12,The Italian luxury carmaker Lamborghini is gearing up to cash in on the emergence of a new breed of customers,1.0,13:20,Super sports cars sales growth to continue in 2017: Lamborghini +0,"New Delhi: Madhukar Kamath, group chief executive and managing director, DDB Mudra Group, has announced his retirement from the advertising agency. He also announced a new leadership team that includes Vineet Gupta (currently chief digital officer, DDB Mudra Group) who will take over as the group chief executive and Aditya Kanthy (chief strategy officer) who will be appointed as managing director. Effective 1 July, Gupta and Kanthy will formally take over their new roles while Kamath will continue to work closely with them as executive chairman of the group till December.“My life has been at Mudra and I have committed to finish all the assignments ensuring successful transition. I have always been a firm believer in empowering young talent and seeing them deliver beyond expectations. Vineet and Aditya have exemplified this in their respective careers so far. As a team, they bring together the best of business, technology, strategy and an appreciation of creativity,” said Kamath who has spent the last 25 years at the DDB Mudra Group.He said there are no immediate plans for any entrepreneurial venture. “My immediate plan is to learn and experience and travel all the 29 Indian states.” Speaking on his new role, Gupta said, “My aim is to utilize the current strengths of the Group and position it well enough to leverage the future. We will be utilizing our strengths of huge talent pool and diverse business to align our businesses so that people in the agency can do future-ready works for clients. The idea is to build an organization that is relevant in a digital world.” Gupta was a part of the founding team at 22feet Tribal, a digital marketing firm acquired by the DDB Mudra Group. Post the acquisition, he continued to lead 22feet Tribal as its managing director. He has also worked with Café Coffee Day, Microsoft and Star TV earlier. Aditya Kanthy, meanwhile, has spent 14 years at DDB Mudra Group creating strategies for brands such as Emirates, Future Group, Johnson&Johnson, Nestle, Twitter and Volkswagen, among others. DDB Mudra Group is a part of the Omnicom Group operating out of 15 cities. It offers services in the fields of advertising, media planning and buying, digital and data-driven marketing, technology, OOH, Retail Design among others.",2017-03-24,Vineet Gupta will take over as the group chief executive of DDB Mudra Group and Aditya Kanthy will be appointed as the group’s managing director,0.25,18:33,Madhukar Kamath announces retirement from DDB Mudra Group +0,"
Mumbai: The pace of deterioration in asset quality of Indian banks slowed in the December quarter after four straight quarters of sharp increases in bad loans, although analysts say banks’ asset quality may worsen before it gets better.Thirty-nine of the 41 listed banks have reported earnings for the December quarter, posting a 59% rise in aggregate gross non-performing assets (NPAs) to Rs6.81 trillion from a year earlier, according to data compiled by Mint. The latest quarterly numbers are still 4.12% higher than those reported in the preceding September quarter.While the slowing pace of asset quality deterioration may have come as a respite for Indian banks, their troubles are far from over. The Reserve Bank of India’s March deadline for banks is about a month away, and any unrecognized bad loans are likely to crimp banks’ lending ability further. With high provisions to cover bad loans and limited capital, weaker banks have slowed or stopped making new loans.“It will not be surprising if reported NPAs go further up in the coming quarter,” said Karthik Srinivasan, senior vice-president at rating agency Icra. “Resolution is taking time because of large NPAs which are causing the bulk of the problems.” While the scale of the bad-loan problem is much bigger for state-run banks, gross NPAs at public sector banks grew at a slower pace in the December quarter than those lenders that are outside government control. Public sector banks’ gross NPAs rose 2.76% to Rs5.95 trillion in the December quarter from the preceding three months. In comparison, bad loans at private sector lenders gained 14.5% to Rs85,904.94 crore at the end of December.“Growth in incremental slippages has come down substantially but overall asset quality has not changed between September and December quarters. Currently, the major problem is in large accounts; in the first or second quarter of the coming financial year, we may see resolution on that,” said an analyst from Reliance Securities.“Whenever resolution comes, slippages will be very high in that quarter as banks need to take a deep haircut. Results for the banks in the coming fourth quarter will be much lower than the last quarters. The major change for banks in the last two quarters was treasury profits,” the analyst said, requesting anonymity.The central bank’s asset quality review in September 2015 forced banks to report previously unrecognized stressed assets as bad loans. The deadline for the clean-up has been set at March this year. Twenty-eight of the 39 banks that have reported earnings have also seen gross NPAs rise from the preceding September quarter, according to the data compiled by Mint.Indian Overseas Bank’s asset quality was the worst among Indian banks in the December quarter. It reported a gross NPA ratio of 22.42%, compared with 21.77% in the September quarter. Other public sector banks that saw a jump in gross NPAs include UCO Bank, where gross NPAs rose to 17.18% in the December quarter from 16.51% at the end of the September quarter. At United Bank of India, the gross NPA ratio improved to 15.98% from 16.26%.Among private sector banks, Jammu and Kashmir Bank had the highest gross NPA ratio at 11.84% in the third quarter, against 11.33% a quarter ago. “Gross NPA numbers will go up in the coming quarter partly driven by the last bit of clean-up exercise due to the FY17 deadline approaching. There is room for rate cuts if a large part of deposits are retained. If large lenders reduce rates, others will follow,” said Saswata Guha, director, Fitch Ratings.After demonetization, many banks saw a surge in their deposit base, followed by a drop in the marginal cost of lending rate (MCLR). State Bank of India cut its MCLR by 90 basis points in January, the steepest in several years. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.sahib.s@livemint.com",2017-02-13,"39 of the 41 listed banks have reported earnings for the December quarter, posting a 59% rise in bad loans or NPAs to Rs6.81 trillion from a year earlier",-0.16,03:49,Pace of decline in banks’ asset quality slows in December quarter +0,"
Mumbai: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has charged 20 entities and some of their officials for cheating state-owned commodities trading firms PEC Ltd and MMTC Ltd in connection with the Rs5,600 crore payments fraud that surfaced in 2013 at the National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL).The entities include NSEL, its parent Financial Technologies India Ltd (FTIL), PD Agro Processors Ltd, Dunar Foods Ltd and Mohan India Ltd. CBI, in a chargesheet filed with a special court in Mumbai in December, accused Jignesh Shah, former chairman of FTIL, of cheating and criminal conspiracy, and breaching the prevention of corruption act. Mint has a copy of this chargesheet. Shah and FTIL, now known as 63 Moons Technologies Ltd, denied these charges. Hearing in this case is scheduled on 3 May. The December chargesheet made CBI the third agency to file a chargesheet in the NSEL case. The Economic Offences Wing of Mumbai police filed a chargesheet in 2014, and the Enforcement Directorate in 2015.According to the 150-page chargesheet, CBI has found a fund trail that led to losses of Rs120 crore for PEC and Rs105 crore for MMTC. CBI had first registered a first information report in the case in February 2014, alleging that a “conspiracy was hatched” by the accused to cheat PEC and siphon off its funds by floating “accommodative and fraudulent paired contracts”. Paired contracts entail investors, through brokers, buying a spot contract and selling a futures one for the same commodity, and pocketing the difference. Paired contracts violate the Forward Contracts Regulation Act (FCRA) as they are financial transactions. NSEL was allowed to deal only in spot delivery contracts to be exempt from FCRA. In the chargesheet, CBI has alleged that FTIL was the major beneficiary of the revenue earned by NSEL and that paired contracts were the major source of income for the commodities bourse.“All the minutes of the board meetings of NSEL were vetted and approved by FTIL before issuance,” said the CBI chargesheet.In an emailed response sent on 10 March through its lawyers, FTIL said that it is yet to receive a copy of the chargesheet.“However, assuming your information is correct, our client strongly denies such charges, which have no legal or factual basis. Our client is confident to come out clean through the judicial process,” said Manik Joshi from Crawford Bayley and Co, the lawyers representing FTIL, in an emailed response.The email added that NSEL was a separate company with its own board of directors. It said NSEL became a “material subsidiary” of 63 Moons only from April 2011. “The duly approved board minutes of any such material subsidiaries for all listed companies for compliance purpose are required to be placed on a ‘post-facto’ - ‘for your information’ basis before the board of the parent company. In any event, none of these board minutes of NSEL raised any red flags,” the email said.FTIL also said that it did not derive any benefits as NSEL never declared any dividends or issued bonus shares.The CBI chargesheet highlighted that FTIL received a sum of Rs90.69 crore from NSEL as software maintenance charges during 2011-13. The specific allegations against Shah pertain to his presence in board meetings where launch of contracts was approved. The CBI also alleged that Shah was also named as a key management personnel (KMP) of NSEL during 2008-12 when the concept of paired contracts was introduced. The chargesheet said that Shah had also made a presentation to the Forward Markets Commission (FMC) and consumer affairs ministry on adequacy of stocks a mere 20 days before the settlement crisis erupted. The mail from FTIL lawyers said that Shah was never a KMP at NSEL and he had just delivered the presentation that was prepared by NSEL executives.“Shah has informed that he has never met or interacted with any officials of PEC or MMTC, therefore the question of connivance does not arise. Shah was non-executive vice-chairman of NSEL. He never received any compensation nor any salary and not even the sitting fees from NSEL,” the mail said.To be sure, CBI also mentions that Shah was briefed by Anjani Sinha, former CEO of NSEL, before the presentation was made. According to CBI, Sinha was responsible for creating paired contracts—a “financing mechanism”. Sinha also devised a system which encouraged parties to engage in financial transactions without underlying stocks.“He was the sole approving authority for all the limits granted to the defaulters PD Agro Processors and Mohan India and others who subsequently siphoned off the huge public money without having sufficient collateral/ commodities,” CBI said in the charge sheet.Sinha did not respond to an email sent to him by Mint.A spokesperson for Mohan India and its group companies Tavishi and Brinda told Mint that the companies never interacted with the government entities directly.“Interactions were limited to NSEL only. We are ready to refund the dues of investors by selling assets which are not attached by enforcement agencies and some assets that are being released by the income tax department,” said the spokesperson. PD Agro and PEC did not respond to emails sent to them.",2017-03-24,"CBI has charged 20 entities, including Jignesh Shah’s FTIL, for cheating state-owned firms PEC and MMTC in connection with the NSEL payments scam",-1.0,08:16,"NSEL scam: Jignesh Shah accused of cheating, criminal conspiracy" +0,"
When Falguni Nayar walks into a brightly lit Nykaa store in Mumbai’s Infiniti Mall, where I’m waiting to interview her, I scan her face quickly for make-up. After all, that’s why we are meeting—to talk beauty. Clearly, I am less subtle than I think. “I love make-up but I don’t have time to put it on any more!” she laughs loudly. The 54-year-old founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Nykaa, a Rs280 crore cosmetics and wellness retailer, is simply wearing a nude lipstick and kajal.
Founded in April 2012, Nykaa started as a multi-brand online beauty retailer but has since extended its presence through a mobile app and brick-and-mortar stores. Think of it as India’s Sephora (the French multi-brand cosmetics retailer). At present, Nykaa has four stores, one each in Delhi and Bengaluru and two in Mumbai. To go pan-India, it plans to open one store every month from next year.
Nykaa is a young company but Nayar herself has been a force in the Indian business world for more than two decades. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, she spent the bulk of her career—over 18 years—at Kotak Mahindra Capital Co. When she left in 2012, she was the managing director and head of its institutional equities business. But, Nayar says, “I have always been an entrepreneur first.”
Nayar was born and raised in Mumbai, where her father ran a small bearings company, assisted by her mother. The household chatter revolved around investments, the stock market and trade. “Plus, I’m Gujarati,” she deadpans. Entrepreneurship is in
her blood.
Straight out of business school, Nayar started her career as a management consultant. Her husband Sanjay Nayar, whom she met at business school, took a job in finance. He is now the CEO of global investment firm KKR India. Nayar says taking the professional route was easier since it allowed both of them to have transferable jobs.
But the entrepreneurial bug kept gnawing at her.
A few years ago, when her children (twins Anchit and Adwaita) left to study in US colleges, Nayar found herself with time on her hands. “Once I turned 50, I thought I would become complacent,” she said. It was very hard to quit the job at Kotak, “where everything was going right”, but with the self-imposed deadline of 50 looming, Nayar did just that.
Later, as we settle down for coffee at a Starbucks outlet, Nayar—dressed in a grey sari with gold accents (saris are a weakness) and delicate diamond earrings (another weakness)—relaxes into a corner couch and I start getting a sense of what drives her. “I’m an adventurer,” she says. “I was never a good swimmer but I would always be the first to jump in. The thought, what if I break a leg?, doesn’t occur to me.”
So when all the naysayers (and there were plenty) said India wasn’t ready for an e-tailer selling, of all things, beauty products, Nayar chose not to see the risks. Instinctively, she knew what women wanted. And she knew the number of Indians shopping online was about to explode.
According to management consultancy Technopak, though e-tailing currently accounts for only 1.5% of the overall retail market in India, it is growing at breakneck speed and will make up over 5% of Indian retail by 2021.
“Full marks to her for getting the retail story of India right,” says Ankur Bisen, senior vice-president, retail, consumer products and e-tailing division of Technopak. The principles of retail are simple, he says: Curate your products and know your products. And Nykaa appears to have done both really well.
Nykaa sells more than 35,000 products from 650 brands, both international and Indian, luxury and mass, and is constantly adding new labels to its stock. Last year, it brought global premium brand Estée Lauder on board, making MAC cosmetics available online in India for the first time. “It took a call on the personal care category and went deep into it. It didn’t get distracted. That’s how a retailer succeeds,” says Bisen.
Two years ago, Nayar introduced her own brand—and it has gone on to become a best-seller.
The company’s revenue has grown 350% in the last two years. In 2016, it raised a total of Rs104 crore from investors and the company hopes to break even by the end of this summer. An initial public offering is planned for 2020.
According to the company, it receives 15,000 orders a day, mostly from consumers between the ages of 22 and 35, who have disposable income and an interest in good grooming. Another attraction is the content—online make-up tutorials and product reviews are a great draw. But let’s face it, the main reason for shopping at Nykaa is accessibility.
“There was a time when women would come down to Delhi from Punjab just for a beauty shopping trip. Or they would ask a cousin to bring back a particular lipstick from a trip abroad. Now they can just order it online,” says Vasudha Rai, a former beauty director at Harper’s Bazaar, now a blogger at Vbeauty.co and columnist with The Hindu.
For those who know her, Nayar is a role model. For those who don’t, hers is an inspiring story. She’s a woman with a formidable career path and a closely knit, supportive family. It leads me to the inevitable question: Does she believe in the philosophy that a woman must “lean in” to be successful?
“Yes,” she replies. “I don’t think there is any glass ceiling. Women need to commit,” says Nayar.
Aware of the push and pull of family life many working women face, she
says there’s no race. “If you need to
take a few years off, you can come back. But when you come back, you need to be committed because you reap what you sow.”
Her daughter Adwaita, 26, recalls the early years of elementary school and says it wasn’t always easy to have a working mum. “I missed her! I would call her non-stop and disturb her in meetings,” she says.
As Adwaita grew older, she understood the choices her mother had made. “Today she’s my most important source of inspiration. She never really dwelt on whether one part of her life was being underserved and in the end it definitely all balanced out,” she says. Adwaita, who helped her mother launch Nykaa, is going to resume work there after she graduates from Harvard Business School this summer.
“Enough” and “done” aren’t words in Nayar’s business vocabulary, says Pratima Bhatia, a brand consultant who has worked with Nykaa, adding, “She never stops, even when she has exceeded expectations.” Once Nykaa had established itself as a multi-brand beauty retailer, Nayar decided to tweak the business model by introducing her own brand, Nykaa, in 2015. First up was a line of nail enamels. The range has since expanded to include kajals, lipsticks, body mists and lotions, among other items.
“It was a response to gaps in the market,” she explains. The beauty salon she frequented did not stock the popular OPI nail-polish range she liked. “They would have four colours of one brand, some from another. The whole experience was terrible,” she says. Research showed that part of the problem was with Indian import regulations, which made registering new colours a lengthy and tedious process. Nayar realized a domestic manufacturer didn’t need to go through that process, so if she made nail enamels, she could get them to the market quickly.
The strategy worked. Nykaa’s own nail colours sell 8-10 times more than the next best-selling nail brand on its website. According to Rai, it’s because of a “combination of good rates and cool colours”.
As we stand in front of a kaleidoscopic display of 120 nail colours at a Nykaa store, I’m drawn to a neon-green one. It’s called Key-Lime Slush. A coral-colour one is named Cherry Pop. I ask Nayar if she chooses the names. Yes, she says, it’s fun.
She shows me the top-selling nail enamel. It’s a charcoal-grey one called Squid Ink Mousse, which retails for Rs199.
And no, she doesn’t have Squid Ink Mousse at home. She prefers floral shades.
All of a sudden, Nayar pauses. She’s found a bottle of ink-blue nail varnish. The Nykaa branding in black is indistinguishable against the dark background. I can see it bothers her. She immediately asks a sales associate to notify someone in her office to fix it. “Retail is all about the detail,” she says, and when you are Nayar, every detail is a big deal.
Before we part, I ask her one last question: Why did she name the company Nykaa? “Because nayika means you are the actress of your life,” she says, smiling. I have no doubt Nayar is relishing her current role.",2017-03-24,"The banker-turned-businesswoman and Nykaa CEO on nail enamels, taking risks, and how she built a Rs280 crore cosmetics and wellness company",0.94,18:23,Falguni Nayar: The beauty entrepreneur +0,"New Delhi: With 65 public sector undertakings (PSUs) failing to appoint at least one woman director, the government has asked Registrars of Companies (ROC) to take up the matter with the ministries concerned and initiate penal action against 1,355 private listed firms in default.A Securities Exchange Board of India (Sebi) directive and the Companies Act, 2013, mandate all listed firms to have at least one woman director on their boards from April 1, 2015. These rules are aimed at ensuring gender diversity in boardrooms. A total of 1,355 private listed companies are without a woman director while 292 unlisted firms have not appointed any woman on their boards, minister of state for corporate affairs Arjun Ram Meghwal said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha. The minister said the Registrars of Companies (RoC) have been directed to take up the matter with the ministries concerned in the case of PSUs. They have been asked to initiate appropriate penal action in case of other firms. According to Meghwal, 4,558 listed companies, 1,009 unlisted ones and 134 PSUs have representation of women at the board level.",2017-03-24,"Government has asked Registrars of Companies to initiate penal action against 1,355 private listed firms for failing to appoint women directors",-0.54,16:32,"No woman director at 65 PSUs, govt asks RoC to act against companies" +0,"
Matthieu Riou is founder and chief technology officer of BlockCypher Inc., a company that enables blockchain applications to be built easily and reliably. Riou is also a member and former vice-president at Apache Software Foundation, and has founded and mentored several open source projects. In an email interview, Riou—who was a speaker at the two-day SingularityU India Summit (held on 7-8 April in association with INK, which hosts events like INKtalks, a platform for the exchange of cutting-edge ideas and inspiring stories)—shared his thoughts on cryptocurrencies and blockchains. Edited excerpts:
You describe BlockCypher as a cloud-optimized blockchain platform powering cryptocurrency applications reliably and at scale. How does it work?Regardless of the protocol (e.g. Ethereum, bitcoin, etc.), all blockchains use what is called a reference client which is used to interact within the peer-to-peer network. Such a blockchain client is designed for individual or desktop use. None of the clients are designed for enterprise use. Developers quickly find how hard it is to start running their own blockchain infrastructure. And it becomes even harder when they try to move into production. ALSO READ : Blockchain is second only to artificial intelligence: Brock PierceTo enable scalable, enterprise-ready applications, BlockCypher broke down all the individual parts of the blockchain client architecture and rebuilt an infrastructure that is modular. BlockCypher is completely blockchain agnostic. As a result, developers find it much easier to build applications across multiple blockchains. Hundreds of developers have used BlockCypher, resulting in thousands of transaction per hour and over two million API (application programming interface) calls per day. To support this continued volume, BlockCypher continuously refines and improves its APIs, adding new services for Ethereum and analytics.
Do you believe that this will solve issues regarding the scalability and security of cryptocurriencies like bitcoin?Cryptocurrencies are actually very secure but the price to pay for it is scalability. As they evolve in an open environment, where anyone can run the software on their laptop, they have to apply very conservative limits on the amount of data and bandwidth required. These limits are not representative of what the technology can do, but more of the surrounding environment.ALSO READ : Bitcoin’s existential crisisBlockCypher can’t change these limits as they’re embedded in the protocol. However we still help in multiple ways. As a “supernode” on the network, we pool resources together and allow many companies to benefit from our very high-performance infrastructure. We power private or permissioned blockchains that do not have to abide by the limits of open chains, and can therefore scale to much higher capacities.
More than bitcoin, it is the underlying technology—blockchain—that is showing much more promise. Besides firms, governments too are warming up to the potential of this technology across sectors. What, in your opinion, is the future of blockchain?I can’t predict the future of the blockchain as a technology, the same way that 50 years ago no one thought that so many people would have a phone in their pocket that could connect them to the rest of the world through a wide variety of apps. But what I can say is that the blockchain is going to permeate our lives in a very similar way.
Give us an example of how blockchain is promising to change the payments’ world.One of our customers, BitPesa, is located in sub-Saharan Africa. About 75% of the population does not have a bank account. Many use mobile apps in lieu of traditional bank accounts. For Africans, transferring cash through a bank or a money transfer operator like Western Union or MoneyGram can be costly. While there is much opportunity in Africa, it can be difficult for companies outside of Africa to work with people and businesses across the continent. BitPesa sought to reduce the costs and wait times for Africans to receive payments by using the blockchain. By quickly, safely and cheaply making a market between African and global currencies, BitPesa provides an alternative to inefficient banking channels. Thanks to the time and cost savings of using the blockchain and our services, BitPesa has gone from prototype to live product in six markets—in only two years.
Blockchain technology is now being powered by artificial intelligence too. What other trends do you see?Smart contracts, or the possibility to capture contracts of law in software code on a blockchain, may have very far-reaching consequences. They can automate how we deal with our legal system, reduce bureaucracy and corruption, and even improve democracy and voting. I think there’s also a real opportunity in bringing the price of banking down dramatically, allowing everyone to benefit.",2017-04-11,"Matthieu Riou, founder and chief technology officer of BlockCypher Inc., shared his thoughts on cryptocurrencies and blockchains",0.42,21:13,Blockchain is going to permeate our lives: Matthieu Riou +0,"New Delhi: Banks are more likely to look at credit card holders in a favourable light after a report said India has the highest percentage of consumers who make payments in excess of the minimum amount due on their credit card bills each month.India has around 92% of credit card holders that often pay more than their minimum due on their revolving debts each month as compared to 89% in the US, 88% in Canada and Hong Kong, 52% in Colombia and 44% in South Africa, TransUnion CIBIL, a credit information agency said in its research report.“Leveraging trended data and the insights derived from it could also significantly help Indian credit institutions better identify borrower risk trends across portfolios and ultimately create greater access to credit for consumers. This can only happen when financial institutions utilize trended data in real time,” said Harshala Chandorkar, chief operating officer of TransUnion CIBIL.TransUnion CIBIL said the findings are based on a survey across eight metro cities in India. The research findings indicate a higher usage of credit cards in Delhi, Ahmedabad, Pune and Mumbai as compared to Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad. Delhi has the optimal utilization of credit cards across all possible usage points, said the report.The agency surveyed 1,100 consumers in India, 92% of whom indicated that they more often make payments in excess than their minimum due on their credit card bills each month. Yet a significant number (33%) are uncertain about the importance or benefits of paying more than the minimum amount due on their credit card bills.In Colombia, 56% are uncertain about the benefits of paying more than the minimum amount due on their credit card bills as compared to 41% in Hong Kong, 39% in Canada, 25% in the US and 21% in South Africa.",2017-04-11,"In India around 92% of credit card holders often pay more than their minimum due on their revolving debt each month, TransUnion CIBIL survey shows",0.67,21:15,Indians top credit card holders who pay in excess of minimum due amount: CIBIL +0,"
Mumbai: Brock Pierce, founder and managing partner of Blockchain Capital and chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, is a venture capitalist and entrepreneur. Pierce pioneered the market for digital currency in games and has raised more than $200 million for companies he founded. A faculty at the Singularity University, Pierce is also the founder of IMI Exchange (the world’s leading digital currency marketplace for games), ZAM (one of the world’s largest media properties for gamers) and IGE (the pioneer of digital currency in online games). In an email interview, Pierce—who was a speaker at the two-day SingularityU India Summit ((held on 7-8 April in association with INK, which hosts events like INKtalks, a platform for the exchange of cutting-edge ideas and inspiring stories)—spoke, among other things, on why companies would want to invest in blockchains. Edited excerpts:
Many governments including India remain non-committal and neutral to bitcoin. Is it that governments fear that a cyrptocurrency could destabilize a highly regulated banking system?Bitcoin is still very early in its development so I would expect governments to be non-committal.
We have had instances of the bitcoin ecosystem being compromised—the Mt. Gox episode being a case in point. What are the measures that stakeholders need to put in place to make bitcoin secure?The bitcoin/blockchain protocol has never been compromised. Businesses building applications on top of it run the risk of making mistakes.
More than bitcoin, it is the underlying technology—blockchain—that is showing much more promise. Besides companies, governments too are warming up to the potential of this technology across sectors. What, in your opinion, is the future of blockchain?The blockchain is going to change everything more than the internet has. It’s the second most important technology, second only to artificial intelligence (AI).ALSO READ : Bitcoin’s existential crisis
How do you plan to use blockchain in the venture capital sector?We intend to disrupt and democratize the venture capital industry by doing the following: by creating the first liquid venture fund, allowing access to a broader group of investors, investing in the new economy of start-ups doing ICOs (initial coin offerings) and showing these start-ups how to do it compliantly.
Through Blockchain Capital, you also believe that you are “democratizing” access to an asset class traditionally only available to elite institutional investors…Historically venture capital funds have only allowed elite investors in. Our ICO is going to allow small investors from all over the world to participate.
Bitcoin and blockchain start-ups face competition from big firms like Accenture, IBM and Microsoft in this space. Your thoughts.These large incumbents are generally working with many of our start-ups so we are pleased to have them working in the space.
Do you have plans to invest in Indian bitcoin and blockchain companies too?Blockchain Capital has a global investment mandate so it is very possible that we make an investment in India at some point.",2017-04-11,"Brock Pierce, founder and managing partner of Blockchain Capital and chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, on why companies would want to invest in blockchains",0.76,21:12,Blockchain is second only to artificial intelligence: Brock Pierce +0,"
Mumbai: If Radhakishan Damani passed by you in the corridor, perhaps you wouldn’t notice. And if you buttonholed him, he would probably listen to you rather than talk. The grocery billionaire in white wears his wealth and wisdom lightly.Damani’s Avenue Supermarts Ltd, which runs D-Mart, India’s most profitable retail chain, doubled its investors’ wealth on Tuesday, when its stock debuted on the stock exchanges at a nearly 115% premium to its issue price. His family’s stake in the firm is now valued at over $5 billion, but the media-shy magnate who started a ball bearings business before becoming an ace stock and property picker and founding D-Mart, remains as low-profile as ever.D-Mart listing bolsters Radhakishan Damani’s wealth, reputationDamani, 61, attended a bachelor’s degree programme in commerce at the University of Mumbai (then Bombay University) but did not continue after his first year examination. So, the next time someone lectures on the value of a college degree, ask them to google Damani.On Monday, a day before Avenue went public, Forbes had pegged Damani’s net worth at $2.3 billion. At Wednesday’s closing prices, the family’s 82.43% stake in D-Mart alone is worth Rs32,903.12 crore, or nearly $5.03 billion.Damani holds stakes in a range of companies such as tobacco firm VST Industries Ltd, logistics provider Blue Dart Express Ltd and cement maker India Cements Ltd. He also holds an impressive portfolio of real estate, including the Radisson Blu Resort in Alibag close to Mumbai. All these investments add up to more than Rs3,000 crore or nearly half a billion US dollars.“He did not come from a very well-educated family, and himself was not that educated as well, but he could still build the empire,” said a person close to Damani.ALSO READ | Irrational exuberance in D-Mart shares“People shouldn’t give up. You have a great idea. Education is not necessary to make it big,” this person added on condition of anonymity.After dabbling in the family business of ball bearings, he entered stock trading and registered as a stock broker in 1992. In 1999, in his 40s, Damani diversified into retail, according to the final offer documents of the Avenue Supermarts share sale.Damani has three daughters, and one of them, Manjri Chandak, is a director at Avenue Supermarts. His brother Gopikishan Damani and his wife are also promoters of Avenue Supermarts.“He spoke less and listened more. One thing very striking about him was he was never flashy. He was extremely down-to-earth,” said Kisan R. Choksey, chairman of Kisan Ratilal Choksey Shares and Securities Pvt. Ltd, who has known Damani since the early 1990s when brokers haggled in a trading ring on the floor of Bombay Stock Exchange, now known as BSE Ltd.Damani was an investor as well as a trader, according to people who have known him for long. “There were many of us, including Mr Damani and Rakesh Jhunjhunwala,” said Choksey.People vouch by his quiet nature.“He is extremely low profile and very quiet. Chances are that if he passes by, you might not notice him except for his specific white-and-white attire,” said Alok Churiwala, managing director of Churiwala Securities.“The earliest memory I have of the gentleman is when I had just joined the trade in 1988-89, while there used to be very hectic activity and cacophony. Here was this gentleman who was totally unfazed, very calm and very collected; that set him apart,” recalls Churiwala.According to Churiwala, the ability to see beyond numbers is what distinguishes him as one of India’s biggest stock pickers.Deena Mehta, managing director at Asit C. Mehta Investment Intermediates, also recalls him as the “man in the trading ring with a poker face, and one could not make out any of his trades from his expressions.”“He was an extremely good listener,” said Mehta.“He also went out of the way to help out people. I remember one time when Videocon shares were continuously hitting lower circuits. He helped a lot of brokers by taking positions, and helping brokers square off their positions,” recalls Mehta.“He has two nicknames “white-and-white” and “silent operator”. This sums him up in a fairly good manner,” said Arun Kejriwal, director of Kejriwal Research and Financial Services Pvt. Ltd. “He is very approachable but refrains from giving tips. He will prefer silence over giving wrong advice,” added Kejriwal.“He is a large-hearted guy who has given his friends and associates—which are a considerable number—D-Mart shares at par a couple of years ago,” added Kejriwal.For now, Avenue Supermarts’ market capitalization stands at Rs39,916.44 crore, more than the aggregate of all of its key listed rivals including Future Retail Ltd, Shoppers’ Stop Ltd and Trent Ltd, which total to Rs36,631.79 crore. But the man who made it possible, as always, stays in the back room.",2017-03-23,"Radhakishan Damani, who started a ball bearings business before becoming an ace investor and founding D-Mart, remains as low-profile as ever",0.25,12:24,Radhakishan Damani quiet as ever after stellar D-Mart listing +0,"India is considering turning to the private sector to help plug a chronic shortage of capital for infrastructure projects.The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is proposing Asia’s third-largest economy offer licences to private companies to set up infrastructure banks. That could help finance $1.5 trillion in roads, ports, power and other projects over the next 10 years and bridge a gap that ratings agency Standard & Poor’s says is shaving off almost 5% of the country’s gross domestic product.“Specialized banks could cater to the wholesale and long-term financing needs of the growing economy and possibly fill the gap in long-term financing,” the RBI said in a discussion paper released from Mumbai on 7 April.With commercial banks saddled with huge non-performing loans and credit growth languishing at decade lows, lenders have been reticent to invest in projects that involve a long waiting period before returns kick in. That bodes ill for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government which is trying to spark investment, including clearing a backlog of billions of dollars of stalled projects.Governments around the world are searching for ways to finance public projects. State-backed lending, led by the China Development Bank, drove infrastructure construction in China last year along with funds raised by local governments through bond sales. Canada is hoping to attract pension funds and global money managers to a new infrastructure bank it plans to set up this year with C$35 billion ($26 billion) in funding, and US President Donald Trump has promised $1 trillion in spending.India appears to be considering a different approach. According to the RBI’s paper, the banks would source their funds from wholesale and long-term deposits, bond issuance, borrowing and asset securitization, rather than retail deposits. The paper doesn’t mention whether the central bank or government would back the new banks.India has used government-owned financial institutions to fund long-term projects in the past. The Industrial Finance Corp. of India was set up in 1948, a year after the country won independence from the British, while the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India—parent company of ICICI Bank Ltd, and Industrial Development Bank of India—parent of IDBI Bank Ltd—were set up in 1955 and 1964 respectively. Over a period of time, they transformed themselves into banks, often leaving a void for infrastructure financing.‘Vertical depth’In recent years, the RBI has been letting businesses enter niche banking areas, with companies like Bharti Airtel Ltd allowed to set up electronic payment banks and others let into micro financing.Credit Suisse Group AG analysts expect companies like SREI Infrastructure Finance Ltd, Power Finance Corp., Rural Electrification Corp., to apply for infrastructure-bank licenses. “In the near term, this may be a drag for new banks, but they should benefit in the medium term as they scale-up current deposits and fee streams,” Credit Suisse said in a note.While large industrial houses wouldn’t be allowed to take more than a 10% stake in these banks, individuals with a decade of experience in banking and finance can tie up with business groups to apply for a license. The infrastructure banks would be exempted from opening branches in rural and semi-urban areas and wouldn’t be forced to lend to the agriculture sector.“The idea is to increase vertical depth and specialized institutional capabilities to take informed decisions as and when a particular sector is getting technically complex,” New Delhi-based Vinayak Chatterjee, chairman and co-founder of infrastructure advisory firm Feedback Infrastructure Services Pvt. Ltd, said. Bloomberg",2017-04-11,"Specialized banks could cater to the wholesale and long-term financing needs of the growing economy , the RBI said in a discussion paper ",0.33,17:01,RBI mulls bank licences to private firms to fund $1.5 trillion infrastructure gap +0,"
Mumbai:
Auto maker Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) Ltd on Friday announced a 33.29% increase in its profit after tax for the quarter ended December, riding on a 20.3% rise in farm equipment sales, including the high-margin tractors business. M&M saw profits rise to Rs1,112.27 crore, from Rs834.47 crore the year before. The company’s third quarter revenues increased 1.47% to Rs11,777.98 crore. This, despite a 7% decline in revenue from the automotive segment—its largest line of business—to Rs7,453.08 crore. This includes utility and commercial vehicle sales. “Demonetization affected rural and semi-urban spending but we still saw only a single-digit drop in revenue,” V.S. Parthasarathy, chief financial officer, M&M, said at a press conference. The automaker saw an 8.3% decline in vehicles sold in the domestic market year-on-year to 112,852 units and an 11.7% decline in utility vehicles sold, at 51,772 vehicles. The drop in farm produce prices affected rural incomes, which in turn hurt M&M’s sales, Parthasarthy said.According to the company’s numbers, staples like onions, potatoes and tomatoes saw a 20-60% drop in prices during the quarter, severely restricting rural households’ purchasing power along with the cash crunch that demonetization brought in. “Overall, the results were weaker than our estimates”, Nitesh Sharma of Philip Capital India said. “We saw that 7-8% decline in the automotive segment. We believe that net-net, the positive gains from the farm equipment division will be negated by the loss of market share in the automotive segment. We continue to believe that this has largely been due to a weaker product pipeline, especially in the SUV (sports utility vehicle) segment, as compared to competition.”However, the company’s sales of farm equipment, of which tractors is the largest business, grew 21% in volume (consolidated results), helping keep margins up. “We saw a phenomenal 60% growth in volume in October and actually saw negative growth in the November-December period,” Parthasarathy said. “This has given us a 44% market share, which is the highest ever.”“Although tractor sales grew in this quarter, the pace of growth has declined substantially,” Sharma said. The company sold 72,363 tractors, up 20.8% year-on-year.M&M also registered a Rs363.78 crore exceptional net profit from the sale of “investment in subsidiary companies and a joint venture”, as per the company’s statement.",2017-02-11,"Mahindra saw a 7% decline in the company’s revenue from the automotive segment—its largest line of business—to Rs7,453.08 crore",0.44,13:05,"Mahindra Q3 profit rises 33% to Rs1,112 crore" +0,"New Delhi: Mumbai-based telecom service provider Idea Cellular Ltd on Saturday said it has registered first quarterly loss due to increased rivalry in the sector that impacted its revenues.Idea reported a net loss of Rs384 crore during the quarter ended 31 December as against a net profit of Rs660 crore in the year-ago period. Revenues declined 3.7% to Rs8,661 crore. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) declined 24.4% to Rs2,165.5 crore.“The unprecedented disruption in the Indian mobile industry, primarily due to free voice, mobile data promotions, and the lure by the new entrant in the sector has adversely impacted performance,” an Idea spokesperson said, adding that revenue KPIs and financial parameters for all mobile operators have sharply declined, and for the first time in its history the flourishing Indian wireless sector is trending towards an annual revenue decline of 3 to 5% in FY2017 (vs FY16). “The sector can expect to recover revenues only once the new operator starts charging for its pan India mobile services. Please review Idea’s performance in the light of these happenings,” the spokesperson said.To be sure, Idea and Vodafone India are in merger talks. The proposed merger will create the nation’s largest telecom firm with combined revenue of Rs78,000 crore and a 43% share of the market hitherto dominated by Bharti Airtel Ltd, which reported annual revenue of Rs50,008 crore from local telecom operations in the last financial year.Also read: Kumar Mangalam Birla may head telco created by Vodafone-Idea mergerThe consolidation has been triggered by the entry of Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, in which parent Reliance Industries Ltd has invested a staggering $25 billion.Since the launch of its services in September, Jio has offered free voice and data and signed up more than 72 million users, forcing rivals, including Vodafone India and Idea, to slash tariffs in response.",2017-02-11,Idea Cellular posts its first quarterly loss due to increased rivalry in the telecom sector after Reliance Jio’s entry,-0.11,19:59,Idea Cellular posts Q3 loss of Rs384 crore as Reliance Jio disrupts sector +0,"New Delhi: Realty firm Parsvnath Developers Ltd on Saturday reported a net loss of Rs15.06 crore during the third quarter of this fiscal on lower sales. Its net loss stood at Rs3.93 crore in the year-ago period, the company said in a regulatory filing. Income from operations fell to Rs55.15 crore during the December quarter from Rs67.83 crore in the year-ago period.“Focusing on the strategy of execution of the projects, the company offered approximately 200 units in the quarter,” the company’s chairman Pradeep Jain said. The government’s initiative of granting infrastructure status to the affordable housing segment in the Union Budget 2017-18 would be helpful in lowering the cost of funds for the developers.“This will certainly boost developers to come up with more affordable housing projects and make Housing for All a reality,” he added. Jain said the infra status along with other policy reforms like real estate regulatory law and demonetisation would bring transparency in the system and reinstate the trust of the end users in credible real estate developers.",2017-02-11,Parsvnath Developers’ third quarter income from operations fell to Rs55.15 crore during from Rs67.83 crore in the year-ago period,-0.12,18:52,Parsvnath Developers Q3 loss at Rs15 crore +0,"New Delhi: The world’s largest coal miner Coal India Ltd (CIL) on Saturday reported a 22% decline in consolidated net profit at Rs2,884.4 crore for the third quarter ended December.Net profit came in at Rs3,718 crore in the same quarter of the previous fiscal, Coal India said in a regulatory filing. However, the company’s total income rose to Rs21,531.2 crore in the quarter from Rs20,928.4 crore in the year-ago period. Net sales during the quarter rose to Rs19,704 crore compared to Rs18,971.5 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal. At the same time, total expenses also increased to Rs17,260 crore as compared Rs15,407.5 crore. On a standalone basis, the company has posted a loss of Rs39 crore as compared to a profit of Rs672.6 crore in the year-ago period. Total income declined to Rs257.1 crore in the quarter from Rs880 crore.",2017-02-11,"Coal India’s third quarter total income rises to Rs21,531.2 crore from Rs20,928.4 crore in the year-ago period",0.64,20:40,"Coal India Q3 profit falls 22% to Rs2,884 crore" +0,"
Mumbai: Diversified conglomerate ITC Ltd is looking to capture 18-20% of India’s juice market through its brand B Natural by focusing on regional flavours and offering premium versions of juices available in the market, a senior company official said.“The challenge for us is looking at local Indian fruits and making it more accessible to the rest of the country,” said Hemant Malik, head of the ITC Foods Division. The company, which acquired B Natural in 2014 from South Indian firm Balan Natural Food, is looking to launch at least two variants by October this year, including Bel (Wood Apple) and Falsa (Grewia asiatica berry), Malik said.B Natural has branded itself as a 100% fruit juice brand that can be part of a healthy diet and also offers regional flavours in addition to common juices such as orange and mixed fruit. The marketing plank is similar to what other rapidly growing niche brands such as Raw Pressery and Paper Boat have been offering to their largely urban consumers.ITC has been positioning B Natural at a premium to the largest competitors in India’s Rs2,500 crore juice market, PepsiCo (Tropicana) and Dabur (Real).“Most (1 litre tetra pack) juices are (priced) at Rs140-145. The juice market has nectars priced at Rs99, and they have stayed at that price now for the last couple of years,” Malik said. Nectars are fruit-based juices that contain other ingredients such as sugars.“For the longest time, there was a mindset of ‘should we cross the Rs99 mark?’,” he said. “If you have a distinctive proposition, then it can be done.”While B Natural’s 1 litre tetra packs start from Rs84-99, its pomegranate juice debuted at Rs 199 a litre. B Natural is also available in 200ml tetra packs starting at Rs20. ITC says it has kept its juices priced such to target both the mass and premium segments.“We believe growth in the juice market will come from the number of consumers growing and as people who are already consuming will consume more,” Malik said.An analyst said that although the juice market in India is ripe for more competition, ITC may have to focus more on mass categories.“ITC is present in FMCG segment at a niche level with all their premium products,” the analyst from an equities brokerage firm said, requesting anonymity. “In every category they are in premium segments. They need to start targeting the lower mid-segment.”Dabur’s Real currently controls over 50% of India’s juice market share, while PepsiCo’s Tropicana has 28%, according to data from AC Nielsen from January 2017.Now, Malik says ITC is looking to ramp up B Natural’s production while it also expands its distribution network.“Today our manufacturing is in Bangalore, and we are soon going to run short (of capacity),” Malik said. “Our next factory is already under construction in Kapurthala in Punjab. It will be ready in April 2018, in time for the new summer season.”ITC has added around 60,000 retailers in its distribution network for B Natural.“Penetration of juice is much lower in the south and we don’t understand why,” Malik said. “Fresh fruit consumption is a lot higher in south India than here in (north) India. I would say a lot more growth (in distribution) is in the south region right now.”",2017-04-20,ITC Foods Division boss Hemant Malik says will focus on regional flavours and push premium products through B Natural to gain in the juice market,0.96,08:47,ITC aims to capture 18-20% of India’s juice market through B Natural +0,"$1.4 billionWhat is it? The amount e-commerce firm Flipkart raised from eBay, Microsoft and Tencent.Why is it important? It’s the biggest amount raised in a single funding round by an Indian start-up. It came at a pre-money valuation of $10.2 billion, signalling the confidence investors have showed in the company that saw a series of markdowns in the last couple of years. The funding—and acquisition of eBay India, that was a part of the deal—will strengthen Flipkart as it fights its aggressive and better endowed competitor Amazon.Tell me more: There have also been talks that Snapdeal, the third largest e-commerce firm in the country, will be merged with Flipkart, along with additional funding from SoftBank. 21%What is it? The share of the Europe, Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA) region in global IPOs (initial public offerings) in the first three months of 2017.Why is it important? India with 26 IPOs accounted for nearly 34% of the region’s activity that ranked it second to Asia-Pacific in IPO numbers. EMEIA ranked third with 15% share in global proceeds, behind Asia-Pacific and the Americas. Tell me more: The EMEIA region had 77 IPOs, raising $5.2 billion in all in January-March 2017.2.5 millionWhat is it? The number of point-of-sale (PoS) machines at merchant establishments/shops. Why is it important? PoS machine availability in India trails that of BRIC nations such as Brazil and China where per capita PoS availability for swiping plastic money is higher. Demonetisation had brought the scarcity into focus as people had to do less cash transactions. The numbers inched from 1.5 million swipe machines in October 2016 to 1.7 million in December, 2.2 million in February 2017, to over 2.5 million now. SBI has led with installation of 124,000 machines.Tell me more:The count, shared by a National Payments Corp. of India official, is a little less than Niti Aayog’s estimate of 2.8 million PoS machines in February. 17 daysWhat is it? The time the UK-to-China freight train would take to reach its destination in Zhejiang, travelling along the ancient ‘Silk Road’ route. Why is it important? The time taken by the train between the two countries, spanning a route along seven other countries, is still half the duration at sea. It is also cheaper than sending goods by air. While the train brought household items, clothes and consumer fashion goods from China, it is transporting soft drinks, baby products and pharmaceuticals on its maiden return journey.Tell me more: Chinese premier Xi Jinping’s 2013 “One Belt, One Road” policy to revive land routes for trading with the West has made London the 15th European city with a direct rail connection. $50.9 billionWhat is it? Tesla’s market cap at the end of trading on MondayWhy is it important? It is now the most valued car company in the US, beating General Motors, the 108-year-old giant, by $64 million. Tesla’s position is seen more as a reflection of investors’ faith in Elon Musk’s vision for the future of electric cars, than the present financials of the companies. GM earned $9 billion in 2016 and Tesla lost $674 million. GM sold nearly 10 million vehicles, and Tesla sold 80,000 globally.Tell me more: Toyota, with its $172 billion market cap, is the biggest carmaker by market value at present. Volkswagen, with a sale of 10.31 million vehicles in 2016, is the largest carmaker by sales volume, closely followed by Toyota. howindialives.com is a search engine for public data.",2017-04-11,"In other news, e-commerce firm Flipkart raises $1.4 billion funding from eBay, Microsoft and Tencent",0.24,15:37,"News in numbers: Over 2.5 mn PoS machines at shops now, says NPCI" +0,"
Mumbai: As bank deposit rates fell and stock markets rose, mutual funds in 2016-17 received the highest net inflows in at least 11 years, led by income and liquid schemes.Net inflows in the fiscal year ended March rose 155.66% from a year before to Rs3.43 trillion, the highest since at least 2005-06 when the equity market was gaining traction, data from the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) showed. Data prior to 2005-06 was not available.India’s benchmark index Sensex rose 16.88% during the financial year, and was the third best-performer among its Asian peers. The index has delivered a compounded annual return of 13.48% from 2005-06 to 2016-17.ALSO READ | Smart strategies to invest in debt and equity mutual funds“A rise in systematic investment plans (SIPs) is the most important factor contributing to the rise in inflows into mutual funds. Investors are also more aware and disciplined in investing from a long-term perspective,” said Gopal Agrawal, chief investment officer (equities) at Tata Asset Management.Mutual fund SIPs allow investors to regularly invest small amounts that go into equities instead of making lump sum investments at various points of time. Such investments are mostly made on a monthly or quarterly basis, although it is possible to make them even every week.Income and liquid schemes received maximum net inflows during the period, AMFI data showed. Net inflows in income schemes rose more than seven-fold to Rs1.2 trillion, while that in liquid funds grew more than four times to Rs95,826 crore.“Income and liquid schemes have surged and such rise is triggered due to low interest rates from bank deposits,” said Raghvendra Nath, managing director of Ladderup Wealth Management Pvt. Ltd. He pointed out that in the last three to four years, average returns from corporate debt is in the range of 9-9.5%.ALSO READ | Choosing mutual funds is getting complicatedNath added that currently, bank fixed deposits return 3.5-4%, which is below inflation rates.Vidya Bala, head of mutual fund research at Fundsindia.com, agreed.“For the liquid schemes, it is largely the institutional flows. It is mainly meant for parking institutional money,” said Bala.“People have flocked to income funds after the drop in fixed deposit (FD) rates. A number of investors have switched to debt funds from FDs, and that trend will continue for a while,” said Bala, adding that many of these were first-time mutual fund investors who prefer this option to traditional bank FDs.“The more conservative investors would prefer income funds to equity-oriented funds,” added Bala.ALSO READ | A long-term view on mutual fundsNet inflows into equity schemes in 2016-17 dropped 4.94% to Rs70,367 crore from a year before. However, interest in equity funds is growing, say asset managers, pointing to the near-92% rise in inflows since 2005-06.“Investors are aware that the Indian economy is on a strong footing. Relative attractiveness of equities as an asset class has increased as other alternatives cease to be as attractive as before,” said Agrawal of Tata Asset Management, pointing to the decline in the rates of bank deposits.“The long-term outlook on the economy and the markets looks positive,” added Agrawal.Nath of Ladderup said the outlook for equity inflows was positive and he expects a deluge of inflows into the asset class over time.",2017-04-11,"Net inflows in FY17 rose 155.66% from a year before to Rs3.43 trillion, the highest since at least 2005-06 when the equity market was gaining traction, AMFI data showed",0.46,02:57,Net inflows into mutual funds in FY17 highest in at least 11 years +0,"
If you trade in bitcoins, or even are a bitcoin enthusiast, it’s unlikely that you would have missed the raging debate around the cryptocurrency. Known as the bitcoin “fork”, the controversy potentially threatens to split the bitcoin currency, whose price is currently around $1,200, into two.For the uninitiated, there are two factions at the heart of the debate, which is primarily about how to scale up the bitcoin to handle more transactions. The two current camps are: Bitcoin Unlimited and Segregated Witness (SegWit). Bitcoin Unlimited aims to remove the block size limit altogether, thereby allowing the miners to reach a consensus on their own. SegWit offers a moderate increase of the block size to up to 4 megabytes (MB), moving some non-critical data out of the blocks.The reason: Bitcoin currently has a 1MB block size limit. This implies that, on average, a network bitcoin can only process 1MB of transaction data every 10 minutes—about seven transactions per second as compared to the thousands of transactions per second that credit card firm Visa can process. The problem first surfaced around 2014-15, and bitcoin users are now increasingly experiencing long wait times as the mempool, or the buffer of yet-unconfirmed transactions, is showing more spikes.ALSO READ : Blockchain is second only to artificial intelligence: Brock PierceBrock Pierce, founder and managing partner at Blockchain Capital and chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, believes that bitcoin has the “high class” problem of experiencing rapid growth. “Users and entrepreneurs building new business models off the blockchain means that there are competing interests on how best to scale the network. Linux, also an open source software project, had similar growing pains. It is possible that Bitcoin will fork at some point. The question is whether or not it’ll be a contentious fork. This process is a good thing in the long term, though potentially disruptive in the short term,” he said.Pointing out that “there have been multiple attempts to alter bitcoin away from the core developers that have created bitcoin as we know it today (Bitcoin Classic etc.)”, Pierce said, “To date, caution regarding a contentious hard fork has prevailed and bitcoin has thrived. If it (the split) were to happen, we may see two currencies, though I suspect one would be the dominant currency/chain.”Earlier attempts at fixing this problem comprised the BIP 100 and BIP 101 proposals—BIP stands for bitcoin improvement proposal. They were introduced in 2015 by Bitcoin Core developers Jeff Garzik and Gavin Andresen, respectively. BIP 100 was about making miners decide the block size limit while BIP 101 was a one-time increase from 1MB to 8MB. Both are known as hard-fork solutions, which means that had they been implemented, older versions of bitcoin software would become incompatible with the new network.According to Cointelegraph.com, the abolition of the block size limit proposed by Bitcoin Unlimited could lead to an “uncontrolled Blockchain bloat”. Currently, the size of the entire blockchain exceeds 100 gigabytes. ALSO READ : Blockchain is going to permeate our lives: Matthieu RiouIf the block size limit is increased, the blockchain could grow to several petabytes, if not more, which “would lead to increased centralization of Bitcoin; only big companies would be able to afford the storage space, computing power and bandwidth necessary to process such huge amounts of data, phasing small-scale node operators out of the network. That runs contrary to the very idea of Bitcoin as the money governed by each of its users”, the article in Cointelegraph.com explains. Similar with SegWit, where the limit will be reached again, and the capacity will have to be increased.At a roundtable held in February 2016 in Hong Kong, representatives of Bitcoin Core, the authors of SegWit, and several major mining companies agreed to move forward with “a safe hard-fork based on the improvements in SegWit”, proposing an increase in the block size limit to 2MB “with the total size no more than 4MB” but the bitcoin community refused to adopt it, and the stalemate continues.Benson Samuel, co-founder and chief technology officer and co-founder of Secure Bitcoin Traders Pvt. Ltd that runs trading platform Coinsecure.in, says while Indian users have been concerned about the fork, “there is far less discussion in the community in India compared to outside. Since a huge number of users in India store their funds on exchanges and Web wallets, they expect to have a more seamless experience as the service operators themselves should be able to take care of some of the steps involved in the fork. The chances are slim for a majority to vote into a hard fork like Bitcoin Unlimited at this moment, however soft forks like Segregated Witness seem a lot more practical to implement on a decentralized distributed network,” he adds.The bitcoin code was first released on 9 January 2009, by a person who assumed the name, Satoshi Nakamoto. Ever since, the digital currency has been adopted for everything from international money transfers to online narco-trafficking. If you have installed a bitcoin wallet on your computer or mobile phone, it will generate your first bitcoin address and you can create more whenever you need one. You can disclose your addresses to your friends so that they can pay you or vice versa. Bitcoin users can buy and sell the currency among themselves. A shared public ledger called the “block chain” contains every transaction ever processed, allowing a user’s computer to verify the validity of each transaction of this virtual currency. The authenticity of each transaction is protected by a digital signature corresponding to the sender’s address, allowing users to have full control over sending bitcoins from their own bitcoin addresses. Hence, the digital money is also known as a “cryptocurrency”. Anyone can process transactions using the computing power of specialized hardware and earn a reward in bitcoins for this service—a process known as mining. Japan may soon become the first country to recognize bitcoins as legal tender. Some countries such as China could go a step further to issue their own version of the digital currency. In India, the Reserve Bank of India has not declared bitcoin illegal but simply cautioned users, holders and traders of virtual currencies, about the potential financial, operational, legal and security-related risks that they are exposing themselves to.On 27 February, bitcoin start-ups Zebpay, Unocoin, Coinsecure and SearchTrade jointly launched the Digital Asset and Blockchain Foundation of India (DABFI) for the “orderly and transparent growth of virtual currency market”. DABFI will lay down self-regulatory regimes for trading of bitcoins and other blockchain-based digital assets.",2017-04-11,Bitcoin Unlimited and Segregated Witness are locked in row over how to scale up bitcoin to handle more transactions which may split the cryptocurrency,-0.38,01:38,Bitcoin’s existential crisis +0,"New Delhi: Rural Electrification Corp. (REC), a state-owned backer of India’s power sector, plans to lend billions of rupees to clean-energy projects and equipment makers this fiscal year as part of an expanded push into renewables that will also see it issue green bonds overseas.The non-banking financial company is aiming to triple its clean-energy lending and is expecting to set aside nearly Rs10,000 crore ($1.5 billion) for renewable energy in the financial year ending 31 March, chairman P.V. Ramesh said in an interview.“We’re not only financing projects but also evacuation infrastructure and have been talking with manufacturers of equipment like wind turbines, solar panels and storage batteries,” Ramesh said in an interview in New Delhi where the lender, which has a loan book of Rs2 trillion, is based.REC’s renewables strategy underscores a push by companies associated with conventional power to shift resources toward clean energy. The move, which supports Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s climate goals, also comes as some coal-fired electricity generators struggle to service debts.The lender could issue clean-energy bonds outside India by the end of June, Ramesh said.Lending shift“We are also looking at mobilizing resources from raising green bonds in Europe and social impact bonds in Scandinavia,” he said.Tesla Inc., the maker of electric vehicles, is another company that REC would be interested in backing should it decide to establish a presence in India, Ramesh added. Tesla founder Elon Musk tweeted in February that the company may enter the Indian market this summer.With demand from equipment manufacturers largely unknown at the moment, lending to the sector would be separate from what REC wants to set aside for renewable projects, Ramesh said.The shift in lending at REC takes place against a backdrop of an expansion in clean energy led by Modi and his promise to install 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable capacity by 2022.Between April 2016 to February, India added 8 GW of new renewable energy, reaching total installed capacity of 51 GW, according to government data. Meanwhile, thermal capacity grew by 8 GW in the same period, 36% lower than the previous year.Saddled with power plants running under their maximum capacity, India’s thermal-energy producers like NTPC Ltd and RattanIndia Power Ltd have been considering setting up solar-power projects on land initially intended for coal-fired facilities.REC, which has traditionally financed large-sized power and related infrastructure projects, is customizing products to suit the needs of clean-energy projects, which are often small compared with conventional plants and much quicker to set up, Ramesh said.“We’re customizing products for each project so it’s tailor-made for each of them because not everyone wants a standard product,” Ramesh said, adding that his company needs to be agile in the new market because the days of lending a billion dollars to a single big project are nearing an end.REC has been appointed by India’s government as the central agency responsible for implementing two nationwide power reform projects aimed at increasing electricity coverage in rural areas through the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana and the financial turnaround of state-owned power retailers through the Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojna (UDAY). Bloomberg",2017-04-20,"Rural Electrification Corp. (REC) is aiming to triple its clean-energy lending and is expecting to set aside nearly Rs10,000 for renewable energy in this fiscal",0.38,08:34,"Rural Electrification eyes Rs10,000 crore renewables lending push" +0,"
New Delhi: Legal changes to enable housing development in airport land are in the works, the chairman of India’s state-run airport development authority said. Currently, airport housing in India is permitted only for airport employees.The Airports Authority of India (AAI), which operates 125 airports, has a land bank of 55,800 acres, which has so far been used only for aviation and passenger-related activities.That will change soon.“We want to make it market-driven,” AAI chairman Guruprasad Mohapatra said in an interview.The Union aviation ministry will soon move a cabinet note to amend the law governing AAI to permit use of airport land for housing and other areas which are currently not allowed, Mohapatra added. “Housing is an attractive thing to develop in and around airports. Currently, you can’t develop housing as part of the land restriction,” he said.As cities have grown, Mohapatra said, they have reached the fringes of airports, which were once far from the city centres. “Urban housing is now a requirement. Housing close to the airport receives the most premium—you see advertisements saying 20km from the airport and so on.”Mohapatra said prime housing may not be required in very small towns, but in places where land is very expensive, there could be very strong demand.Once the legal changes are through, airports could also use the available land to build malls and convention centres, among others.Like mass housing, airports are currently not allowed to build convention halls, Mohaptra said. ""That probably is a requirement in many cities now. India is hosting many conventions now,” he said, adding AAI would survey each city and based on the demand, decide what would fetch the best price for its land, which will be leased out accordingly.The change will also benefit airports that have been leased out to private operators like the ones in Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad.AAI has identified city-side development of airports at Lucknow, Raipur, Tirupati, Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Varanasi, Kolkata and Amritsar in a phased manner, junior aviation minister Jayant Sinha told Parliament on 16 March.Finance minister Arun Jaitley announced in the Union budget earlier this year that rules would be amended to “enable effective monetization of land assets” for AAI and the resources raised from the land would be used for upgrading airports.Airports typically earn revenue from aeronautical activities such as navigation charges from airlines and non-aeronautical charges like car parking and hotels. Globally, non-aeronautical revenue makes up 40-45% of the total mix while in India this figure is only 25%.To be sure, living near an airport will come with its own set of challenges. To start with, housing will have to be made sound-proof, said a former AAI board member, asking not to be named.Airport housing will also have height restrictions to avoid interference with flight paths. They will also have to be far from the runway and 45m above a defined level of the airport, which will allow 4-5 floors to be built, former AAI board member said.AAI will also have to consider other questions.“Will it be for the rich or middle classes or the poor? Will AAI provide for all the services and utilities and do maintenance or some other party? Will AAI sell the land also or only the houses? Can they (houses) be freely traded by their owners?,” the former AAI board member asked, adding, “Importantly, AAI must make sure that they have excellent planning inputs so that all the land required for serving future growth of aviation demands is protected, and then and only then, the ‘excess land’ put to non-aviation use.”",2017-04-20,"Airports Authority of India chairman Guruprasad Mohapatra wants airport land to be market-driven, hence the plan for residential projects",0.51,08:34,AAI working on plan to allow housing projects on airport land +0,"
Mumbai: Dell Technologies, the company that was formed when Dell Inc. acquired EMC Corp. for $67 billion, remains bullish on its “long-term” growth prospects in India, which is the company’s third-largest market.“I think we are on track to hit the $3 billion revenue mark in this country in a couple of years,” Thomas Sweet, executive vice-president and chief financial officer (CFO), Dell Inc., said in an interview last week.Explaining why he is bullish on the Indian market, Sweet reasoned that the country now had “a government that is pro-growth, pro-development, and which is also pro-technology in helping to enable that growth and the government’s mission”. Further, he claimed that the Dell-EMC combine in India is growing faster than the domestic IT market growth. According to Nasscom’s Strategic Review 2017 report, in FY2017, India’s domestic IT-BPM (information technology-business process management) market is likely to grow 8.5% year on year to reach $38 billion (excluding e-commerce).To accelerate the pace of growth globally, Dell rolled out a distribution, or the so-called channel strategy in February. According to Sweet, half of the company’s revenue is routed through its distributors and his company hopes to increase their output with the recent reorganization it initiated to bring together the distribution partners of the erstwhile Dell and EMC companies.What the company did two months back, according to Sweet, was to merge the EMC and Dell sales forces (which existed as separate entities before the merger) into two units. One is an enterprise sales unit that would now focus on the top 3,000 customers, and the second is a commercial sales organization that will focus on an estimated 500,000 clients. Sweet said he is “pretty pleased” with how the combined sales units have shaped up so far.The company also plans to sharpen its focus on its digital transformation push. Dell Technologies breaks up digital transformation into three parts, according to Sweet: IT transformation-how IT can support what the business needs; security transformation-how a company can tackle multiple threats; and workforce transformation-how an organization makes its employees more productive in a mobile environment.In the past couple of years, most large technology solution providers such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE), International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Accenture Plc., Oracle Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others have been competing fiercely for the increasingly lucrative digital transformation pie. According to research firm International Data Corp. (IDC) forecasts, global spending on digital transformation technologies is projected to be more than $1.2 trillion in 2017—an increase of 17.8% over 2016.“There is clearly a greater focus among our customers on digital, but most of them are currently focused on IT transformation,” said Sweet. According to him, companies are looking to modernize their IT infrastructure to support cloud-native applications. In cloud computing, companies can consume IT services and only pay for the applications or infrastructure they use rather than buy the equipment upfront, thus reducing capital expenditure (capex).One change in the way technology adoption occurs in companies, according to Sweet, is the growing involvement of top management, especially when it comes to digital. “We are seeing more C-suite executives, particularly the chief executive officers (CEOs), chief operating officers (COOs) and CFOs, participating in the conversation on digital as, increasingly, they are seeking business solutions and business model evolution,” he said. The focus for CFOs, he said, continues to be on return on investment, even as most of them are also ready to bet on emerging technologies that are still not mature in order to future-proof their organizations.Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst of Greyhound Research, said that while the Dell-EMC combine has done a good job of “integrating the channel network” of both the organizations, managing the reskilling of the partners and introducing customised solutions tailored for specific industry segments may require an intensive focus, especially in the short term. “If they can manage this aspect well, they can have an edge in the digital transformation infrastructure market, where companies such as HPE and Lenovo have been showing renewed aggression of late,” he concluded.",2017-04-20,Dell Inc. CFO Thomas Sweet claims that the Dell-EMC combine in India is growing faster than the domestic IT market growth,1.0,08:34,Dell on track to hit the $3 billion revenue mark in India: CFO Thomas Sweet +0,"
New Delhi: He’s the son of a man who was a rebel in a rather conservative business family, became a charismatic sports entrepreneur and is now a fugitive. Ruchir Modi, 22, is the son of Lalit Modi—who is best known for conceptualizing the Indian Premier League (IPL), the T20 cricket tournament that changed the way the game was viewed and played in India. Lalit Modi moved to London in 2010, shortly after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) launched an investigation.Ruchir Modi was still in school then. In March 2016, soon after he graduated from Regents University, London, Ruchir was appointed director of the estimated $2.8-billion K.K. Modi group’s flagship tobacco business Godfrey Phillips India Ltd (GPI), holding company Modi Enterprises, networking marketing arm Modicare and restaurant business Peyotito in London. Ruchir is currently in India for a couple of reasons. He is in the race for the post of president of the Rajasthan Cricket Association (RCA). The election is on 26 April. This post was held by his father between 2005 and 2009 and again since 2014 to date.Secondly, he wants to expand GPI’s tobacco business in new markets such as Africa and enter new businesses, real estate development and micro-finance. The last is important because Modi says he is keen to build his own empire. Ruchir is currently better known as Lalit Modi’s son, K.K. Modi’s grandson, and for his flashy lifestyle. He drives a Ferrari when in London (cricket is written on its licence plate), and either an Aston Martin or a Mercedes Benz in Mumbai (where he is accompanied by bodyguards). He travels in private jets, has often been spotted in Page 3 parties, and puts it all out on Instagram. He became the president of the Alwar Cricket Association in August 2016. In the run-up to the RCA election later this month, Ruchir met the members and office-bearers of RCA, which has been facing a suspension from the Board of Control for Cricket in India as a punishment for electing Lalit Modi as its president, in Jaipur last month. “They haven’t met or spoken to Lalit Modi, so they needed someone to hear them out and understand their concerns. So, I went to hear them out and present my own vision,” he says.Ruchir is clearly interested in cricket, but some say he is just serving as a front for his father’s re-entry into Rajasthan and Indian cricket. “It is obvious that Lalit Modi wants to get back to cricket through a 22-year old with no prior experience (in this); he will be the guiding force behind his son’s strategy and process,” said a member of RCA on condition of anonymity.Ruchir, naturally, denies being a front. “I feel like I owe something to cricket in Rajasthan, it has suffered for the last four years. I believe cricket needs to be brought back to the state. My family owes that,” he says, adding that he speaks to his father at least 10 times a day over the phone. Not too many people buy that. “It is absolutely ridiculous that a 22-year-old without any prior experience is even being considered for a post like this. This is clearly the worst form of nepotism and should not be encouraged. Lalit Modi may be an excellent administrator but that doesn’t mean he can get away with using a proxy,” says Indranil Das Blah, chief operating officer at sports marketing agency Kwan Entertainment and Marketing Solutions.Still, to give Ruchir his due, he isn’t a novice at business. He has been involved with the K.K. Modi Group for years, and has plans for it. “We need to take the Modi Group to the next level. Everyone in Modi Group has built a brand, they have made a success story of something. I would like to create not just one brand but multiple brands, grow the existing portfolio, and make it one of the largest business houses in India through diversification, digitization, effective management and transparency in organization,” says Ruchir.He plans to start by monetizing the group’s existing real estate assets. “But we will not end there. We will look at mixed developments across multiple sectors in Mumbai and Thane for now. Most of our real estate assets (land) are held by family businesses. We will compete with the likes of Lodha group and Raheja group,” he adds. Through Modi Ventures, the investment arm of the group that he founded in 2015 while studying in Regents University, London, Ruchir also plans to enter micro-finance this year. He declined to provide more details on this business. He has also taken on the responsibility of expanding the group’s international businesses and taking its tobacco and tea products to international markets, including Africa. He will also work with his uncle Samir Modi on expanding the group’s chain of Twenty Four Seven Convenience Stores to at least 200 outlets within a year, from 50 currently. Ruchir wants GPI to be seen as more than just a tobacco company; it will be known for real estate, tobacco, consumer packaged goods, and retail, he adds. He works closely with grandfather and uncle but says his father is his “idol”. “All of my life, I have been very close to my father and learnt more from him than from school,” says Ruchir.“He is his father’s shadow,” adds an old-timer at the group on condition of anonymity. Vidhi Choudhary contributed to the story",2017-04-20,"Ruchir Modi is in the race for the post of president of Rajasthan Cricket Association (RCA), a post held by his father Lalit Modi since 2014",0.24,08:34,Lalit Modi’s son Ruchir Modi pads up for Rajasthan Cricket Association elections +0,"Mumbai: A cyber attack on Union Bank of India last July began after an employee opened an email attachment releasing malware that allowed hackers to steal the state-run bank’s data, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.The attempt closely resembled the cyber theft last year of more than $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank’s account at the New York Federal Reserve, the paper reported.The opening of the email attachment, which looked like it had come from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), initiated the malware that hackers used to steal Union Bank’s access codes for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a system that lenders use for international transactions.The codes were used to send transfer instructions for about $170 million to a Union Bank account at Citigroup Inc. in New York.Union Bank had traced the money trail and blocked the movement of funds.SWIFT late last year said that some banks using its system had been attacked after the Bangladesh heist, the Journal said, but did not specifically name Union Bank of India.Union Bank Chairman Arun Tiwari told the newspaper that SWIFT officials had been working with the bank since the day of the cyber attack. SWIFT declined to comment. Reuters",2017-04-10,Hackers initiated malware through an email attachment to steal Union Bank of India’s access codes for SWIFT to transfer funds to a bank account at Citigroup in New York,-0.49,23:00,Cyber attack on Union Bank of India similar to Bangladesh heist: Report +0,"New Delhi: Private sector lender HDFC Bank said it will raise Rs50,000 crore within a year by issuing debt instruments. The Bank proposes to raise funds by issuing perpetual debt instruments (part of additional tier I capital), tier II capital bonds and senior long-term infrastructure bonds up to a total amount of Rs50,000 crore, the bank said in a regulatory filing. Perpetual bonds carry no maturity date, so they may be treated as equity, not as debt. The bank did not mention what purpose it will utilise the funds to be raised. It said the money will be raised in the period of next 12 months through private placement mode. The board of directors of the bank would consider the proposal at its board meeting to be held on 21 April. HDFC Bank stock closed 0.36% down at Rs1,433.60 on BSE.",2017-04-10,"HDFC Bank proposes to raise funds by issuing perpetual debt instruments, tier II capital bonds and senior long-term infrastructure bonds up to a total amount of Rs 50,000 crore",-0.39,22:38,"HDFC Bank to raise Rs 50,000 crore in the next 12 months" +0,"Mumbai: State Bank of India’s net profit more than doubled in the December quarter from a year earlier, helped by a one-time gain from the sale of a stake in its life insurance venture, but improvement in asset quality fell short of the lender’s own expectations.India’s largest lender said Friday that net profit rose to Rs2,610 crore in the fiscal third quarter, up 134% from Rs1,115.34 crore a year ago. The profit was slightly higher than the estimate of Rs2,509.70 crore in a Bloomberg poll of 18 analysts.The profit increase was largely on account of a one-time gain of Rs1,755 crore from the sale of a 3.9% stake in SBI Life Insurance Co. Ltd.Provisions against bad loans dropped to Rs7,244.55 crore in the quarter from Rs7,644 crore a year ago and Rs7,669.66 crore in the July-September period. SBI also set aside in the quarter Rs1,400 crore against standard assets that are at risk of turning bad.Also Read| What to expect from SBI’s Q3 resultsAsset quality improved a shade with SBI recovering Rs3,994 crore of loans and upgrading Rs2,434 crore more. The improvement fell short of the bank’s own expectations—a fact chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya blamed on the 8 November invalidation of high-value currency notes, which made it tough for cash-dependent borrowers to repay debt. “We were very hopeful of seeing most of the resolutions come in during this quarter. However, demonetization has actually pushed this by another quarter,” Bhattacharya said.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rose marginally by 2.3% to Rs1.08 trillion at the end of the December quarter from Rs1.06 trillion in the September quarter. On a year-on-year basis, gross NPAs jumped 48.61% from Rs7,2791.73 crore. Gross NPAs made up 7.23% of total assets at the end of the December quarter compared to 7.14% in the previous quarter and 5.1% in the year-ago quarter.Loans worth Rs10,185 crore slipped into the NPA category, of which, Rs 10,069 crore were on the bank’s corporate loan book. Of the corporate loan slippages, 73%, or Rs 7,341 crore, were from the bank’s so-called watchlist. SBI pared its watchlist, which consists of loans at risk of turning bad, to Rs17,992 crore as of 31 December, from Rs25,951 crore in the September quarter.According to Bhattacharya, the bank’s numbers will start looking better in the next financial year, once demand for credit revives.SBI’s net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose by 7.7% to Rs1,4751.54 crore in the December quarter from Rs13,697.01 crore a year ago. Non-interest income, which includes fees, commissions and investment gains, rose 58.73% to Rs9,661.92 crore from Rs6,086.97 crore a year ago. The figure includes the one-time stake sale gain.“No major negatives in the SBI result, most developments have been in line with expectations,” said a banking analyst at a domestic securities house, requesting anonymity. “Owing to its position in the banking sector, whenever the asset quality cycle starts reversing and recoveries happen, the bank will benefit the most. As of now, the only concern is around containing fresh slippages, which the bank feels it can do. We maintain a BUY call on the SBI stock.”The government’s demonetization drive led to higher accumulation of low-cost deposits. Total deposits rose 22.1% from a year ago to Rs20.41 trillion while advances were up 4.1% to Rs14.48 trillion.On Friday, SBI shares rose 0.15% to Rs276.25 on BSE, on a day the benchmark Sensex barely budged at 28,334.25 points.",2017-02-11,"State Bank of India reported a net profit of Rs2,610 crore in the third quarter against Rs1115.34 crore a year ago",0.91,13:05,"SBI Q3 profit rises 134% to Rs2,610 crore " +0,"New Delhi: Within weeks of Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) upholding levy of retrospective tax, the income tax department has slapped a fresh demand note of Rs10,247 crore on British explorer Cairn Energy Plc. ITAT in its 9 March order held that Cairn Energy was liable to pay tax on the 2006 transfer of India assets to newly created Cairn India, prior to its listing. It, however, held that interest cannot be charged on it as the demand was raised using retrospective tax legislation. The income tax department had raised a tax demand of Rs10,247 crore and another Rs18,800 crore in interest for 10 years. “Following the ruling of the ITAT, an amended tax demand, received on March 31, 2017, noted that late payment interest would now be charged from February 2016, i.e. from 30 days following the date of the original 2016 final assessment order,” Cairn said in a notice to shareholders. Cairn said the decision of the ITAT is “potentially subject to appeal.” The company had on 24 January, 2014 received a draft assessment order for the alleged capital gains it made in 2006. The order restrained the company from selling the residual 9.8% stake it holds in Cairn India. Cairn Energy had in 2011 sold Cairn India to Vedanta. “Then, on February 4, 2016... a final assessment order in respect of the Indian fiscal year ended March 31 2007, (was) issued by the Indian income tax department (IITD) in the amount of Rs10,247 crore plus interest back dated to 2007 totalling Rs18,800 crore,” Cairn said. The final assessment order did not include any penalties which may also be applied to the final assessment (potentially up to 300% of any tax finally agreed). “The final assessment order was appealed to the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, Delhi which ruled on March 9, 2017 that tax in the amount of Rs10,247 crore remained payable but that the company could not be required to pay interest,” it said. This is because the tax demand was raised on the basis of a retrospective amendment done to the Income Tax Act in 2012 and Cairn could not have anticipated that payment of tax would be required. Stating that it strongly contests the final assessment order, Cairn said enforcement of any tax liability deemed due by the tax department will be limited to India assets, which had a value of about $750 million as of 31 December, 2016. These assets comprised principally Cairn’s residual shareholding in Cairn India. Cairn said it had on 11 March, 2015 filed a notice of dispute under The UK-India investment treaty in order to protect its legal position and shareholder interests. “The international arbitration proceedings formally commenced in January 2016 following the agreement between Cairn and the government of India on the appointment of a panel of three international arbitrators under the terms of the Treaty,” it said. “However, supported by detailed legal advice on the strength of the legal protections available to it under international law, Cairn strongly contests the actions of the IITD in these matters. “In addition to the resolution of the tax dispute, Cairn also seeks full recompense for the loss of value resulting from the restriction on its Cairn India shares,” the notice added.",2017-04-09,"Within weeks of tax tribunal upholding levy of retrospective tax, the income tax department has slapped a fresh demand note of Rs10,247 crore on Cairn Energy",0.91,18:26,"Cairn Energy gets fresh demand note of Rs10,247 crore from tax department" +0,"Mumbai: S. Chand and Co. Ltd, a publisher of educational books, on Wednesday announced that it will launch its initial public offering (IPO) on 26 April.The company has fixed a price band of Rs660-670 per share for its initial share sale. The offer will close on 28 April.Everstone Capital-backed S. Chand delivers content, solutions and services across the education lifecycle, serving the K-12, higher education and early learning segments.The firm has appointed investment banks JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd, Axis Capital Ltd and Credit Suisse Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd to manage the share sale.It had filed its draft IPO prospectus with markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on 16 December and received approval in early March.The IPO will see the company raise Rs325 crore in primary capital. Additionally, existing shareholders of the company, including Everstone Capital, will collectively sell around 6 million shares worth Rs403.5 crore, taking the total IPO size to Rs728.5 crore. Everstone holds 32.27% stake in the company.Out of the primary proceeds, the company will spend Rs255 crore to repay debt, said Samir Khurana, group head, strategy and investments at S. Chand.S. Chand is looking to repay loans availed by it and its subsidiary Eurasia Publishing House Pvt. Ltd, which were utilized towards funding the acquisition of Chhaya Prakashani Pvt. Ltd. The company will repay some loans availed by other subsidiaries such as New Saraswati House (India) Pvt. Ltd and Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd.In December 2016, S. Chand acquired 74% stake in Chhaya Prakashani adding four Chhaya brands to its portfolio.As of 31 December, the company offered 55 consumer brands across knowledge products and services including S. Chand, Vikas, Madhubun, Saraswati, Destination Success and Ignitor.Inorganic growth through acquisitions is a strategy that S. Chand has frequently preferred in the past too.In financial year 2012-13, S. Chand acquired Vikas Publishing to bolster its offering in Hindi titles, while in the financial year 2014-15, it acquired New Saraswati House.“We will continue to look to grow through the inorganic growth route in the future too. The company has spent close to Rs460 crore on acquisitions in the past,” said Khurana.Apart from the acquisitions, S. Chand has also invested around Rs33 crore to acquire minority shares in early-stage digital education companies, said Khurana. “We will continue to assess such investments in digital platforms,” he added.According to its red herring prospectus, S. Chand recorded consolidated revenue of Rs540.6 crore in 2015-16, against Rs478.5 crore in the previous year. In 2015-16, it reported a profit of Rs46.6 crore against Rs32.7 crore the previous year.The company’s consolidated revenue has grown at a CAGR of 33% over the past five financial years, from Rs174.6 crore in fiscal 2012 to Rs540.6 crore in fiscal 2016.According to Khurana, the company’s revenues are seasonal and almost 75% of it comes in the fourth quarter due to the large contribution of the K-12 business segment where sales of new books occur in the January-March quarter ahead of the start of the new academic year.So far this year, five firms have raised Rs4,185.91 crore through the IPO route, according to data from primary market tracker Prime Database. In 2016, 26 firms raised Rs26,493.8 crore through IPOs, data shows.",2017-04-20,"S Chand and Co, a publisher of educational books, has fixed a price band of Rs660-670 per share for its initial public offering (IPO)",0.39,07:54,S. Chand and Co to launch IPO on 26 April +0,"New Delhi: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has agreed to give a 20-year loan of $175 million to Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd to finance a proposed $450 million transmission project for transferring power from new solar power parks to the grid.The loan agreement was signed on Thursday, an official statement from the power ministry said. State-owned Power Grid will make an equity contribution of $135 million for the project.The new transmission lines will help in evacuating 2,500 megawatt (MW) of power from solar parks in Bhadla in Rajasthan and 700 MW from Banaskantha in Gujarat. The proposed transmission facility will also aid in increasing solar power generation by 4.2 gigawatt (GW) and cut carbon emissions by over 7 million tonnes every year, said the statement.The union cabinet had in February decided to double the solar park capacity in the country to 40,000 MW in three years. The plan is to add 50 new ultra-mega solar parks to the 34 under construction in 21 states.In addition to the ADB loan, Power Grid’s high voltage transmission project will include a $50 million co-financing facility from the Clean Technology Fund (CTF), which is a component of the climate investment funds aimed at helping developing countries to adopt low carbon technologies.The project will improve the capacity and efficiency of interstate transmission networks, particularly in transmitting the electricity generated from the new solar parks to the national grid, said the statement.",2017-04-07,Power Grid will use the funds from Asian Development Bank (ADB) to finance a proposed power transmission project connecting new solar power parks to the grid,0.23,22:37,ADB to lend $175 million to Power Grid for transmission project +0,"
Mumbai: Religare Enterprises Ltd on Sunday announced the sale of its 80% stake in Religare Health Insurance Co. Ltd (RHI) to a group of investors led by True North.In a statement, Religare Enterprises said it has entered into a definitive agreement with the investors for the sale, which values the insurance firm at Rs1,300 crore. The deal will fetch Religare approximately Rs1,040 crore.Apart from True North (earlier known as India Value Fund Advisors), other investors in the consortium are Aditya Parekh and Sameer Shroff-led private equity firm Faering Capital, and Gaurav Dalmia.The transaction is subject to necessary regulatory approvals. American investment bank J.P. Morgan acted as the exclusive financial adviser to Religare Enterprises.ALSO READ | Shivinder, Malvinder Singh want to sell some assets, but the timing isn’t rightReligare Health Insurance was launched in July 2012. The business reported a gross written premium of Rs503 crore in the year ended 31 March 2016. “We have been closely evaluating the health insurance space and have been impressed by the quality of RHI’s management team and business. We believe that RHI would be an excellent platform for building an enduring health insurance franchise in India,” Vikram Nirula, partner at True North said in the statement.True North has so far successfully launched five separate investment funds with a combined corpus of over $2 billion.The stake sale comes at a time when Religare’s promoters Malvinder and Shivinder Singh have been reported to be keen on divesting stakes in other businesses controlled by them.In January, Mint reported that the brothers were in talks with several global private equity funds such as TPG Capital, Bain Capital and KKR to sell a stake in their hospitals business—Fortis Healthcare Ltd. Discussions with Bain and TPG are currently only for a 26% stake in the company. On 5 January, Mint had reported on the talks between KKR and the Singh brothers for a majority stake in Fortis, alongside a structured equity deal in RHC Holding Pvt. Ltd (RHPL). RHPL is the holding firm for the Religare and Fortis brands.Singh brothers are also exploring debt financing options.In November, Mint reported that RHPL was in talks to refinance $300 million debt. RHPL is a closely held investment company owned by Singh brothers. As of 31 March 2016, RHPL had a total net worth of around Rs6,900 crore and a debt of Rs4,064 crore.The various stakes sale plans are, however, overshadowed by an ongoing legal battle with Japanese drug maker Daiichi Sankyo.The case relates to enforcement of an arbitral award in proceedings initiated by Daiichi Sankyo against the Singh brothers in relation to its 2008 purchase of a majority stake in Ranbaxy, then owned by the brothers. The arbitral award came after the Japanese company alleged that the Singh brothers had concealed crucial information while selling Ranbaxy to it for $4.6 billion in 2008.A Singapore tribunal has ordered the brothers to pay Rs2,562 crore, which they are contesting in the Delhi High Court.In March, the court directed Singh brothers to furnish, within a week, details of all of their unencumbered assets, in order to ensure the use of such assets to satisfy the arbitral award, at a later stage, if required, Mint reported on 7 March.",2017-04-10,"Religare Enterprises Ltd sale of its 80% stake in Religare Health Insurance to True North and other investors values the firm at Rs1,300 crore",1.0,21:33,"Religare sells 80% stake in health insurance arm to True North, others" +0,"
New Delhi: In deals potentially valued at around Rs12,000 crore, state-owned NLC India Ltd has shortlisted for acquisition GMR Group’s 1,370 megawatt (MW) coal power project in Chhattisgarh and Hyderabad-based Ind-Barath Power Infra Ltd’s 700MW plant in Odisha. NLC, earlier known as Neyveli Lignite Corp. Ltd, will shortly hire two consultants—one each from the public and private sectors to carry out the due diligence, said Sarat Acharya, chairman and managing director, NLC India on the sidelines of Global Natural Resources Conclave organized by Network18 and the Confederation of Indian Industry.The public sector unit plans to acquire 3,000MW of stressed power generation capacity, driven by its strategy of using the revenue generated from running such projects to finance capital expenditure. “Others had come as part of the process that we have been running for stressed power projects acquisition. We are also setting up a power generation capacity of 7,000MW, which will take around six years for commissioning. Acquiring such stressed projects will allow us to generate electricity and start cash flows,” Acharya added.Mint reported on 6 January about NLC being in talks with Ind-Barath to acquire its coal-fired power plant in Odisha.On 23 August, NLC India invited expressions of interest from firms owning coal- and lignite-based power plants of capacity of more than 2,00MW for possible acquisition.Across the country, thermal power projects totalling around 25,000MW are up for sale. Over the last few years, power companies have found it difficult to secure fuel supplies and buyers for the power they generate because debt-laden state electricity boards are unwilling to buy expensive power. Most power generators are weighed down by debt, forcing some of them to sell assets.NLC has already signed an agreement to acquire Damodar Valley Corp.’s (DVC) 1,200MW Raghunathpur project in West Bengal through a joint venture company (JVC) proposed to be formed with DVC, with an equity shareholding of 74:26 by NLC and DVC. However, the acquisition plans have been hanging fire due to opposition from the West Bengal government.While the Raghunathpur projects has got other clearances, we are still awaiting clearance from the West Bengal government, which has been stuck for six months, Acharya said.DVC, formed on the lines of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the US, is owned by the Union government and the state governments of West Bengal and Jharkhand. Experts believe consolidation is inevitable because power projects are stressed.“It is exciting to see power producers evaluating distressed assets and bringing forward their plans for capacity addition if the deal is priced right. It aligns to their competitive advantages like understanding of the region, availability of fuel source and capital, operational excellence and long-term sale of power. It also releases financial stress in the sector,” said Sambitosh Mohapatra, partner (energy) at PwC India.While a GMR spokesperson did not respond to queries emailed on Thursday evening, an Ind-Barath spokesperson confirmed the development and in a text message said, “Yes, NLC has shortlisted our Odisha plant and discussions are currently ongoing between the parties.”NLC India which has an installed power generation capacity of 4,301MW, also plans to set up 4,000MW of solar power projects and is in talks with states in order to draw up viable power purchase agreements for selling electricity to them.“We are developing a 630MW solar power plant in Tamil Nadu...We have a capital expenditure plan of Rs1,24,000 crore (Rs1.24 trillion) to meet our 2025 target. We are also looking at developing lithium ion batteries which is under consideration of our research wing,” Acharya said.A host of state-owned firms such as Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd, NTPC Ltd and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd are chalking out clean energy strategies, encouraged by the opportunities offered by India’s solar power ambitions. India plans to generate 175GW of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 100GW is to come from solar power projects with storage being seen as the next frontier in India’s clean energy push.",2017-04-10,"The shortlisted projects are GMR Group’s 1,370MW coal power project in Chhattisgarh and Hyderabad-based Ind-Barath Power’s 700MW plant in Odisha",0.24,04:34,"NLC shortlists GMR, Ind-Barath power projects for acquisition" +0,"
Mumbai: Private sector lenders Yes Bank Ltd and IndusInd Bank Ltd on Wednesday reported a sharp rise in their quarterly bad loan provisioning, eroding profits, after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) advised lenders to follow stricter standard asset provisioning and disclosure rules.The additional provisioning pertains to their exposure to the Jaiprakash Associates Ltd cement assets that are being purchased by UltraTech Cement Ltd, said three people aware of the matter. Other banks which have the same exposure are also likely to report a jump in their provisions in the March quarter. However, these provisions are likely to be written back as the UltraTech-Jaiprakash deal will be completed by the end of this quarter, they said. UltraTech has agreed to buy Jaiprakash Associates’ cement assets for Rs16,189 crore.ALSO READ: Yes Bank first casualty in RBI’s rule to pull out bad loan skeletonsYes Bank reported a doubling of gross non-performing assets (NPAs) to Rs2,018 crore in the March quarter, as it had to set aside an additional Rs228 crore to cover potential loan losses. Yes Bank’s gross NPAs were at 1.52% at the end of the March quarter and net NPAs were at 0.81%.“The increase in NPA and consequent provision is in conformity with the divergences observed by the RBI as per its compliance process” mentioned in the RBI circular on Tuesday, a Yes Bank statement said. According to the RBI circular, banks have to make disclosures if their asset classification and provisioning diverge from the central bank norms.“As of 31 March 2017, the impact of divergences overall is at Rs1,040 crore on which we have made 25% provisioning. This includes one borrower exposure of Rs911 crore towards a Delhi-based cement company. However, this is a performing asset which has been servicing interest regularly. We expect to recover the amount in the near term,” said Rana Kapoor, managing director and chief executive officer, Yes Bank.Despite the higher provisions, Yes Bank’s net profit for the quarter ended 31 March rose 30% to Rs914 crore from a year ago. Net interest income, or the income that a bank earns by giving loans, increased 32% to Rs1,639.70 crore. This comes on the heels of a strong loan book growth of 34.7% and deposit growth of 28% during the quarter.
“Yes Bank has negatively surprised by almost doubling on gross non-performing assets during Q4, which is likely to overshadow its strong operational performance and strong capital position. Thus, the sentiments are likely to turn weak in short term,” said Lalitabh Shrivastawa, associate vice-president, research, for banking, financial services and insurance, at Sharekhan.IndusInd Bank reported a 21% rise in net profit to Rs751 crore during the quarter, even as it saw its provisions double to Rs430 crore on account of RBI’s latest disclosure and provisioning norms. Gross NPAs rose 8.57% to Rs1,054.87 crore at the end of the March quarter from Rs971.62 crore in the preceding quarter. “We have provided Rs122 crore against a M&A (mergers and acquisitions) case in the cement sector on advice from the RBI. The repayment is due in June 2017, which we are sure is going to happen,” said Romesh Sobti, managing director and CEO, IndusInd Bank.Yes Bank shares edged down 0.03% and IndusInd Bank shares fell 0.63% on a day the BSE’s benchmark Sensex inched up 0.06% to 29,336.57 points.According to Sobti, the bank has closed its third three-year plan and is going to start on its fourth such plan, where it plans to double its presence as well as its profits by March 2020. The bank aims to have a microfinance portfolio of Rs10,000 crore and its rural finance business will contribute 10% of the overall earnings in this period.“Our plan has not taken into account any inorganic play during this period. We are, however, open to inorganic growth as well. We are looking at various opportunities including microfinance,” Sobti said.“IndusInd Bank results were largely in line, and would have been termed strong if not for the one-off provision impact of Rs122 crore on a standard asset exposure. The ability to outperform industry growth as well as maintain less than 1% gross NPA is commendable, and with its strong management and performance delivery, the bank should be attractive for long-term investors,” said Shrivastawa.",2017-04-20,Yes Bank and IndusInd Bank’s Q4 results showed surge in bad loans and provisions following RBI’s new asset quality rules and exposure to Jaiprakash Associates,0.14,04:40,"Yes Bank, IndusInd bad loan provisions rise on exposure to Jaiprakash Associates"
+0,"Apple Inc. is responsible for the health or mortal sickness of the cottage industry of companies that make parts for iPhones or assemble them. It turns out Apple can also be hurt by the interconnected supply chain. On tap starting this fall will be a shift from two new versions of the iPhone to three. The two expected in Apple’s typical September launch window will be updated versions of the iPhone 7 and its larger-screen sibling, the iPhone 7 Plus.The big deal for this year—the 10th anniversary of the iPhone—is a drastically different new phone with a more vibrant type of screen and extra real estate, thanks to slimmer frames around the edges. Wall Street has already grown excited that this reimagined iPhone will set off a rush of people splurging for a cool new iPhone with a big ticket price.Oh, but wait. Literally.The cool new iPhone may not be on sale in September because of hiccups in obtaining enough key components, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday. The most visible is a different type of screen—known as organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display—which allows for a thinner, sharper-looking screens without hogging too much battery life. It gives Apple the technology it needs to make a phone that is essentially all screen.Apple, at least initially, will be depending solely on the leading maker of OLED displays, Samsung Display Co. You know who already has a new smartphone with the same type of screen? That would be Samsung Electronics Ltd.Yes. Samsung is one of Apple’s most important suppliers and one of its most bitter rivals. Much has been written about the peril of suppliers relying on Apple for their livelihood. Well, there’s also a risk to Apple from depending on its suppliers.Samsung may not be doing this deliberately, but the smartphone-making part of Samsung apparently has a sufficient supply of OLED screens. Those parts are already rolling off factory assembly lines as the screens for Samsung’s new S8 line of smartphones which compete with the iPhone. The enemy-and-friend relationship between Apple and Samsung has been evident for years. Apple worked hard to wean itself off Samsung computer chips for its iPhones and iPads. Apple sued Samsung for copying key elements of the iPhone even as Apple continued to buy parts from Samsung.If the OLED iPhone model goes on sale in October or November, it won’t be a disaster for Apple. The company is no stranger to muddling through shortages of important iPhone components, and Apple CEO Tim Cook is a wizard of supply-chain management.But the experience is a salient reminder that in the smartphone industry, no company is an island. Not even Apple.",2017-04-20,It turns out Apple can also be hurt by the interconnected supply chain,-0.4,01:56,iPhone supply chain bites back at Apple
+0,"Singapore: While Syria makes only 0.04% of global petroleum supplies—less than Cuba, New Zealand or Pakistan—it calls one of the world’s biggest producing regions its neighbourhood.The nation borders Iraq, the second-biggest member in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, while other producing giants such as Saudi Arabia and Iran lie just beyond. The Turkish port of Ceyhan, from where shipments including those from Kurdistan are exported, is also close. Apart from its proximity to the Middle East nations, the ongoing conflict in Syria involves Russia and the US, two other major crude producers.Global oil prices jumped more than 2% on Friday on news the US launched a cruise missile attack against the nation, two days after Bashar al-Assad’s regime used poison gas to kill scores of civilians. The task of military planners was made riskier by the presence of Russian forces in Syria who support Assad’s regime in its battle against rebel groups, which include Islamic State and al-Qaeda fighters but also some backed by the US.“Given that two big producers—the US and Russia—are involved, potentially on opposite sides, geopolitical risk has certainly increased and this is getting reflected in prices,” said Tushar Tarun Bansal, director at industry consultant Ivy Global Energy. “If, after the initial strikes, there is no further action by the US, prices will slip back to where they were prior to the strike.”Syria produced about 35,000 barrels a day of oil and some other petroleum liquids in 2016, making it the 66th biggest producer, according to the US Energy Information Administration. While output averaged 400,000 barrels a day between 2008 and 2010, the combined disruptions from military conflict and economic sanctions on the nation have led to declines, the Energy Department’s statistical arm said on its website.Brent, the benchmark grade for more than half the world’s crude, gained as much as 2.2% to $56.08 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange on Friday. West Texas Intermediate futures, the US marker, advanced as much as 2.4% to $52.94 on the New York Mercantile Exchange and were at $52.30 at 2:32pm Singapore time.The gains may be short-lived, with factors such as US inventory and production levels as well as whether Opec’s production cuts with its partners will be extended influencing prices more in coming days, according to Ivy Global’s Bansal.“As long as the military action in Syria is well-contained (not spreading into Iraq), and Syria is no longer a significant oil producer, any big spikes in oil prices could prove temporary,” Gordon Kwan, a Hong-Kong based analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc., said in an emailed note Friday.Oil has struggled to extend a rally beyond $51 a barrel in the past week as concerns over record US inventories and rising American production countered optimism Opec’s production cuts will ease a global glut.“Opec is the wildcard, and the market is currently pricing an extension of the cuts,” said Ivy Global’s Bansal. “So, although it looks unlikely at this stage, in case Opec decides to not extend the cuts, we could see some severe price response.” Bloomberg",2017-04-07,"Apart from its proximity to the Middle East nations, the ongoing conflict in Syria involves Russia and the US, two other major crude producers",-1.0,14:15,Missiles hitting producer of 0.04% of global oil rocks crude
+0,"Mumbai: Airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru which are operating near full capacity and catering to nearly 55% of India’s air traffic will need to spend heavily on expansion through 2021, Crisil Ratings said. However, despite the expansion, their credit quality will remain healthy because of the strength of their business model backed by robust traffic growth and predictable cash flows under a regulated tariff framework, it said in a report. The agency estimates the four airports to invest a cumulative Rs27,000 crore over the next four years till 2021.Air passenger traffic in India grew 20% in fiscal 2017, sharply higher than the 9% average seen since 2011. Bengaluru and Hyderabad airports have clocked even faster growth rates of over 24%. Rising private consumption and healthy economic growth would continue to provide tailwind to traffic growth at airports, the rating agency said.Owing to surging footfalls and high capacity utilization of over 90%, the four airports would need to invest Rs27,000 crore for expansion, said Gurpreet Chhatwal, president, Crisil Ratings. “Yet, their credit quality will not suffer because of low implementation risk – such expansions are brownfield and modular in nature – and conducive tariff regulation,” he said.Tariffs such as passenger user fee levied by airports is calculated in blocks of five years (called ‘control periods’) based on a fixed return on capex and base traffic growth assumption. This not only compensates for the risks taken, but also provides for adjustment in user fee on account of any large variation in traffic, and/or capex plan in a control period. Regulations also have had a balanced approach. For instance, a ‘hybrid-till’ mechanism encourages airport developers to increase their non-aeronautical revenues through retail, advertising, and parking. At the same time, it also benefits passengers because the passenger user fee is subsidized by a portion of non-aeronautical revenue.As traffic increases rapidly, aeronautical revenue streams from passenger user fees and landing and parking charges would also increase in the ongoing control period. “While aeronautical revenues may moderate in the next control period due to adjustment in passenger user fee, increasing footfalls can offset this through higher non-aeronautical revenue; so it’s unlikely to curb the earnings’ momentum of these airports. The contribution from non-aeronautical revenue is expected to increase to 50% over the next four years from 35% now,” said Manish Gupta, director, Crisil Ratings.",2017-04-20,"Crisil Ratings estimates the four major airports to invest a cumulative Rs27,000 crore over the next four years till 2021",0.63,00:47,Heavy capital expenditure by major airports unlikely to impact credit quality: Crisil
+0,"Mumbai: India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp. expects its natural gas production to reach a 5-year high in the current fiscal year following the start in coming weeks of a long-delayed project in the Arabian Sea, two senior company executives said.State-owned ONGC, which accounts for about two-thirds of India’s total natural gas production, is likely to produce close to 25 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas in fiscal 2018, the executives told Reuters.The forecast compares with 23.5 bcm in the fiscal year to end March 2017, one of the executives said, representing expected growth of about 6%. The two asked not to be named as the figures have not been released by the company.Higher output from India’s top producer would help the country meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s target of reducing hydrocarbon imports by 10% by 2022. India currently imports 70-75% of its energy needs. While gas makes up only 8% of the total energy consumed, almost 40% of it is imported.India prices its gas almost 60% below imported natural gas, so more cheap domestic gas could also bring down the cost of running stranded power plants and ailing steel mills that account for the biggest chunk of India’s soured loans.“The Daman project is back on track ... The gas from the phase I of Daman will be out by April end or first week of May,” ONGC’s director - offshore, T.K. Sengupta, told media on Tuesday.The project should contribute almost 2 to 3 million metric standard cubic metres per day (mmscmd) of gas from May onward, he said.“ONGC is facing a natural decline of output from its fields so the net impact of additional production is not very high. Having said that, I think ONGC is on track to consistently report increases in production in the coming years,” said Dhaval Joshi, analyst with brokerage Emkay Global Financial Services.ONGC is banking on the Daman offshore project to increase its natural gas output, which has been largely stagnant over the past decade. The project hit delays last year after its contractor, Singapore-based Swiber Holdings, ran into financial difficulties.“We had handed over the Phase 1 work for the project to the sub-contractors who are now completing it for us. The project is eight months delayed,” Sengupta said earlier this week.Phase 2 will be completed by May 2018 when it will add another 3 mmscmd to the company’s production. It will eventually be ramped up to 8 mmscmd by 2020, he said. Reuters",2017-04-07,"ONGC, which accounts for about two-thirds of India’s total natural gas production, is likely to produce close to 25 billion cubic metres of gas in 2017-18",0.42,12:47,ONGC sees its gas output hitting 5-year high in 2017-18
+0,"
New Delhi: India will build a new 9 million tonne refinery in Rajasthan, auction more fields with oil and gas discoveries and has started talks with Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Saudi Aramco) for investments in India as part of efforts to improve energy security, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said.Addressing the global natural resources conclave organised by Network18 and industry chamber Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Pradhan assured industry executives that the government will not interfere in the marketing and pricing freedom of companies under the new licensing regime as the priority is to cut down import dependence in hydrocarbons by 10 percentage points by 2022. At present, 70-75% of the oil requirement is met through imports. The idea is to enhance the area under exploration as well as the capacity for refining crude, both domestic and imported.Saudi Aramco is being consulted for participation in a 60 million tonne mega refinery planned in Maharashtra. The proposed $30 billion project is being executed as a joint venture by India’s largest refiner Indian Oil Corp., Bharat Petroleum Corp. and Hindustan Petroleum Corp.For the new 9 million tonne refinery in Rajasthan, Hindustan Petroleum Corp. will partner with the state government under terms which are beneficial for both. Financial assessment of the project is over, explained Pradhan. India, which currently consumes 185 million tonnes of petroleum products on an annual basis, wants to augment supply of auto fuel, liquified petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking and petrochemicals for various downstream industries. State-owned fuel retailers increased the number of LPG connections in the coutnry from 140 million in 2014 to 200 million now. Vedanta Resources chairman Anil Agarwal, who was present on the occasion, said group company Cairn India Ltd, which is producing oil from Rajasthan, was working towards doubling its output. “We are working on augmenting output to 50% of the country’s total production,” Agarwal said, adding the group will bid for oil and gas fields with discoveries when auction is held.Pradhan said that simultaneously, the country’s fuel mix is being expanded with an emphasis on gas. The oil, power and railway ministries are working on importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) for long haul rail transportation, he said.India wants to add more sources of fuel supply as demand is projected to jump significantly. According to the International Energy Agency’s India Energy Outlook 2015, the country is set to contribute more than any other country to the rise in global energy demand over the next 25 years.The report said that India needs more than Rs9 trillion ($140 billion) in energy investment per year to 2040.",2017-04-07,"India will build a new 9 million tonne refinery in Rajasthan, auction more fields with oil and gas discoveries, says Dharmendra Pradhan",0.24,02:08,"Govt planning more refineries, higher LNG use: Dharmendra Pradhan" +0,"New Delhi: Capacity addition from renewable energy sources surpassed conventional sources for the first time in financial year 2017 as India added 12.5 gigawatt (GW) of renewable energy capacity compared to 10.2GW from conventional sources of fuel.“India added 12.5GW of renewable energy capacity during financial year 2017, surpassing capacity addition from conventional sources of fuel estimated at 10.2GW, in sync with global trends,” said a report by Elara Capital, which was released on Wednesday. Of the 10.2GW of capacity addition from conventional energy, 74% came from thermal, while the rest came from hydro and nuclear power projects. In financial year 2016, capacity addition from renewable energy was about 6.9GW, and from conventional sources about 23.3GW. ALSO READ : Railways could draw 25% of electric power through renewables: studyThe report is based on data from the Union power ministry and the ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE).The analysis said it signals a clear shift to renewable energy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious renewable energy target for India.Under the Paris Climate Agreement, the Central government has committed to install 175GW of renewable power by 2022 of which 100GW will be from solar power and 60GW from wind power. India had also promised to have about 40% of its power from renewable sources by 2030. India’s total installed capacity of power stations is about 315.4GW, according to government data. Of that, about 50GW is from renewable energy.The analysis highlighted that within renewable energy sources, solar exceeded wind for the first time.“During financial year 2017, solar capacity addition stood at 6.8GW... This is 26% higher than wind addition of 5.4GW,” it said. ALSO READ : Power Grid eyes electric vehicle playHowever, the analysis clarified that “in terms of targets, wind shines” and “solar disappoints”.“Wind addition of 5.4GW is well above industry estimates, 35% above MNRE target (of 4GW). But, solar addition was 43% below target of 12GW (7GW utility, 5GW rooftop). A significant part of the under-achievement was in solar rooftop additions,” the report added. India added a record 5,400 megawatts (MW) of wind power in 2016-17, exceeding its 4,000MW target.The report also stressed that the month of March signalled a clear shift to renewable energy. India added 7GW of renewable capacity in March compared to 4GW from conventional sources.",2017-04-07,India added 12.5 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity compared to 10.2 gigawatt from conventional sources of fuel in financial year 2017 ,0.66,02:09,Renewables surpass other energy sources in capacity addition in FY17 +0,"The ministry of power last week claimed that India had become an electricity exporter for the first time.“As per Central Electricity Authority (CEA), the designated authority of government of India for cross border trade of electricity, first time India has turned around from a net importer of electricity to net exporter of electricity,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that upcoming cross-border transmission lines with Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar will continue to increase sales.India exported around 5798 million units of electricity to Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar, which is 213 million units more than the import of 5,585 million units from Bhutan during the April-February period in fiscal year 2016-17. Exports to Nepal and Bangladesh increased 2.5 and 2.8 times, respectively, in the last three years.Also Read: India becomes net exporter of power for the first timeDoes India’s status as an electricity exporter mean that it has started producing surplus electricity? The reality is a large number of India’s households are still living without electricity. Available government data shows there is a discrepancy in the percentage of villages electrified as against the share of rural households electrified. The former set of figures is often cited to portray India’s electrification challenge as an already accomplished one.What explains the wide gap between the share of electrified households and villages? According to the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana website, a village is deemed electrified if basic infrastructure such as distribution transformer and distribution lines are provided in the inhabited locality as well as the Dalit Basti hamlet (where it exists), and electricity is provided in public places like schools, panchayat office and health centres. Here’s another interesting thing. For a village to be considered electrified, at least 10% of total households have to be electrified. But the actual supply of electricity is not mentioned in the definition of electrification.Such a definition means that village electrification numbers have little bearing on the supply of electricity in reality. Data from 2011 census shows that almost one-third of the households in the country were dependent on kerosene as a source of lighting, with the situation being worse for rural households. This is even as over 84% of villages had been electrified in 2011-12, as per data with the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).International comparison also underlines the fact that Indians consume much less electricity in comparison to their peers. The ratio of domestic and world electricity consumption (per capita) was broadly similar in India and China in 1990. Latest data shows that China has surpassed the global average in terms of power consumption, whereas India is still stuck at its pre-reform relative electricity consumption levels. In 1990, India reported 273 kilowatt hour (kWh) of electric power consumption, as against 511 kWh in China and 2,120 kWh in the world. In 2013, these figures were 765 kWh, 3762 kWh and 3104 kWh, respectively, as per World Bank data.India’s efforts to sell electricity to its eastern neighbours might bring strategic and diplomatic benefits and also open new frontiers for exploring electricity generation opportunities in the region. Such developments, however, should not make us oblivious to the fact that a large majority of Indians are still living in darkness in villages which have been declared electrified on paper.",2017-04-06,India’s per capita electricity consumption is one-fifth of the global average,0.56,17:55,The truth behind India’s electricity exporter status +0,"
Vedanta Resources Plc is firming up its clean energy plans for India, encouraged by the opportunities offered by the country’s growing green economy. As part of the strategy, the firm is looking at developing battery storage solutions, Ajay Kumar Dixit, chief executive officer, alumina and power business, Vedanta Ltd said on the sidelines of a conference on natural resources organised by Network 18 and the Confederation of Indian Industry. Vedanta Ltd, formerly known as Sesa Goa Ltd, is an Indian mining unit of London-based Vedanta Resources. Such storage solutions would help with grid balancing, besides complementing the government’s push for solar power, which is generated during the day and can be stored in batteries to be made available at night. India plans to generate 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 100GW is to come from solar projects. Dixit said the approach is to look at products from its mining operations to develop effective battery solutions.“Our innovation group is looking at it,” he said.Vedanta Resources’ business interests in India include oil and gas, power, iron ore, zinc, copper and aluminium production.Also, Vedanta Resources, which owns Cairn India Ltd, plans to set up solar power parks at its mining sites given the large tracts of land available for the purpose. Experts say India is not doing enough on developing storage solutions in the country.“China is spurring a huge domestic supply ecosystem for lithium-ion based batteries through demand creation and incentives,” consulting firm Bridge to India wrote in a 14 March note.“Unless India moves quickly and decisively, it runs a very real risk of missing the bus on domestic manufacturing for a very vital technology of future,” the note added.Other firms looking at developing battery storage solutions include Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd.In an 5 March interview, Vedanta Resources chairman Anil Agarwal said the firm will consider a “strategic investment” in the solar sector.“There has been a shift in the solar business. It used to be Rs6 per unit and now it has come down to below Rs2 per unit. That is definitely an advantage. So, we are studying it very seriously and will take the clean energy plans forward,” Agarwal said.India’s solar power sector in February witnessed a record low-winning bid of Rs2.97 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to build a 750 megawatt (MW) plant at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh. The Rewa bid translates to 5 cents per kWh and ranks India at the sixth position globally in terms of the lowest tariff bid awarded. This was due to payment guarantee, availability and price of land, and transmission modalities. With effective levelized tariff—the value financially equivalent to different annual tariffs over the 25 year period of the power purchase agreement—of around Rs3.30 per unit at Rewa, the solar power has become a competitive energy source vis-à-vis coal-fuelled conventional source of electricity due to the lower cost of raising finances, and solar module prices plunging. This assumes importance given that India receives solar radiation of 5 to 7 kWh per sq. m for 300-330 days in a year.Vedanta Resources also plans to spend $10 billion over the next three years across its businesses, of which $8 billion is earmarked for Indian operations.",2017-04-07,"As part of its renewable energy strategy, Vedanta Resources is looking at developing battery storage solutions in India",1.0,02:07,Vedanta firms up clean energy plans for India +0,"
Growing up in a coastal village in Goa can indelibly imprint the choices one makes. This is evident immediately; Kshama Fernandes, managing director and chief executive officer of non-banking financial company IFMR Capital, picks the Varqui Crab—layers of crab meat and tandoori shrimp in filo pastry—as an hors d’oeuvre for our lunch. We are at Varq, the Indian restaurant with its eclectic and often surprising preparations of familiar food, at the Taj Mahal Hotel on Delhi’s Mansingh Road. The seafood, she declares, is a “much fancier version” of the fare that was dished out to her during a childhood spent in Cansaulim in South Goa. “I would wake up in the morning, go for a run on the beach, and sometimes chat with the fisherfolk as they pulled in their morning catch—it seemed like a very beautiful world to me back then,” says Fernandes, 48. Her life is now far removed from the pastoral setting of a Goan village. But her work, which involves connecting non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and microfinance institutions (MFIs), also known as originators, to last-mile borrowers, who are excluded from the purview of mainstream finance, takes her back to the realm of those who live on the fringes of formal systems—the disenfranchised. “I’m familiar with the trenches,” she admits, “and the last 10 years or so of my journey at IFMR Capital have been about building a financial institution that is a bridge between mainstream capital markets and the excluded sectors.” IFMR Capital, which works in sectors like micro-finance, housing finance, small business loan finance and commercial vehicle finance, is an articulation of the idealism and business acumen of people like Bindu Ananth and Nachiket Mor, who left ICICI Bank to set up the IFMR Trust in 2007 in Chennai. In 2008, when IFMR Capital was set up as an institution that would link small financial companies that lent to the underserved, to mainstream markets, Fernandes, who was professor and head of finance at the Goa Institute of Management, joined it as the chief risk officer. “Those were the early days. IFMR Capital was built on the belief that at the grass roots there are many borrowers and enterprises worthy of credit. I often say that poor borrowers do not necessarily mean poor credit, but are classified as that, because we don’t know how to evaluate them. And in some sense I feel that if there isn’t much happening in the financial inclusion space, it’s because we haven’t found the ways to do it,” she says. Soup arrives at the table; Fernandes, predictably, has opted for the Lobster Rassa, a hearty shellfish broth. She speaks of Goa yet again, as her fount of perennial optimism in a life of constant movement and flux: “My transition from academia to risk officer and then from risk officer to CEO has been fascinating. Working as an academic and then translating that knowledge into a lot of what we do today came very naturally to me,” she says, adding, “What Goa gave me was the positivity, the innocence and the ability to have a wide-eyed look at life. Cynicism would not have helped.” It is that “wide-eyed” approach to capital markets that Fernandes also brought to her 2016 TEDxLeiden address in the Netherlands, interspersing it with stories of grit and resilience. There is, for instance, Anandi, who lives in a village in Odisha, and was denied a loan by a bank in the city—she had no bank account, no income statement and no credit record because nobody had ever lent to her. She was finally given a loan of Rs50,000 in 2012. She used the money to lease a pond outside her hut and breed fish. She sold the fish and repaid the loan six months later. She availed a second loan, leased two ponds, and transformed from a helpless housewife to an organic aquaculturalist.
Fernandes’ talk also mentioned other borrowers like Paramesan Gowda, a 48-year-old who runs a sandwich stall outside the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). Gowda too had no means to prove his creditworthiness, so before Essel Finance Business Loans, an NBFC, offered him a loan, the credit officer stood next to him for two days in a row and counted the number of sandwiches he delivered each day to all 24 floors of the BSE building. Based on this calculation, a balance sheet and profit and loss statement were created, and a two-year loan worth Rs30 lakh was sanctioned. He repaid the loan in 13 months. “Anandi and Paramesan are examples of what timely finance can do—it can give a person control over his or her life,” says Fernandes, as the main course arrives. We are having the pan-seared sea bass in a mango and coconut curry, with hints of basil and pine nuts. Her conversation veers to the past again. “Back then, there were no tarred roads in Cansaulim. Village roads led to the beach. The big trucks that would arrive to collect the fish and take it to the market couldn’t drive up to the beach. So the fisherfolk would carry baskets of fish to the trucks. As children, we would stand on the path from the beach to the trucks, and the fisherfolk would throw some fish in our direction,” she recalls. The memory makes her smile, but she is quick to swerve to the here and now, to IFMR Capital: “We’ve done Rs40,000 crore of financing since inception. That’s not a small number for the sectors we work with.” The selection of originators, or high-quality local institutions that empathize with the financial needs of people like Anandi and Gowda who find it hard to access traditional capital markets, is key to building a sustainable ecosystem of inclusion. Fernandes elaborates upon the guidelines that IFMR Capital adheres to when picking an originator. “If I were a capital market investor and wanted to invest in these originators, what are the things I would look at,” she asks rhetorically. She explains that good governance, transparency and robust management information systems (MIS) are key to forging an alliance with an originator. “Having high-quality auditors is also important, so one can make sure that the company is following best practices as far as reporting is concerned. A strong second line of command—ensuring that the company has more than one visionary to execute strategies—is also vital. Maintaining very good operating standards and risk management are crucial as well.” She says the financial feasibility of the company isn’t the only evidence of its worthiness. “If the guidelines I have discussed are met, eventually the financials add up,” she says, adding, “When one builds a financial institution, then one is building a lot of credibility—that is if one wants to be a financial institution that’s going to be around for a very long time.”
IFMR Capital’s efforts have enabled it to lend to around 110 originators and serve around 24 million end borrowers, in a market worth Rs14 trillion. It has also invented new structures such as multi-originator securitization (Mosec)—a pioneering product, not just in India but also in international markets, which brings together small originators to form a critical mass to draw an investor. Says Fernandes: “When we launched the multi-originator securitization in around 2009-10, we were dealing with a class of very small to mid-sized originators. But we knew that we could never take them to the capital markets because they were too small. A mutual fund may not be interested in a Rs1 crore deal, and won’t understand what a microfinance originator is, what a small business originator is, what an affordable housing finance originator is. So we did a few things. We put many small originators together to form a large portfolio, say Rs100 crore—something we could take to a capital markets investor.” It comes as no surprise that Fernandes won Accion’s Edward W Claugus Award in October, for her exceptional work in creating a financial ecosystem for the underserved. Accion is a global non-profit that has pioneered financial inclusion.
As the restaurant’s signature dessert—apple kheer—is placed before us (with additional helpings of jalebis wedged in a blob of rabri, and malpua stuffed with shredded carrot), Fernandes remarks that indulging in the sweets will mean “an extra hour at the gym”. She is as committed to fitness as she is to financial inclusion. And she constantly seeks the electrifying adventures of the grand outdoors. Last year, despite a tail-bone fracture that made it impossible for her to sit down, she embarked upon an almost 10-hour jeep ride in the mountains, from Shimla to the base camp at a small village called Janglik, for the trek across Buran Pass. She undertook a vertical descent from an altitude of 15,000ft across an ice wall and rock face, using rope, axe and microspikes. “If I didn’t climb mountains and cross oceans, I wouldn’t be as enthusiastic about my work as I am now,” she says, spooning up her dessert. She proves that prudent risk-taking can spur one towards the unexplored, both indoors as well as outdoors.",2017-03-31,"The MD and CEO of IFMR Capital on the challenges of financial inclusion, her childhood memories of a Goan village, and her love for adventure",1.0,16:31,Kshama Fernandes: Finding credit for the worthy +0,"London: British consumer goods maker Reckitt Benckiser Group cut chief executive Rakesh Kapoor’s 2016 pay by 39%, as it seeks to shore up investor confidence following a safety scandal in South Korea that hurt its performance.The maker of Durex condoms and Scholl footcare products said Kapoor, Britain’s third highest-paid CEO in 2015, would not receive an annual bonus for 2016, and that the share awards for his long-term incentive plan would be reduced by half.As a result, Kapoor will be paid £14 million ($17 million) for 2016, down from £23 million in 2015.The company also said it would strip out the impact of earnings growth from the impending takeover of Mead Johnson from calculations for Kapoor’s incentive plan for 2017.Reckitt Benckiser has been grappling with the fallout from a scandal related to a product safety issue that caused dozens of deadly lung injuries in South Korea. The South Korean government said in 2015 that 92 people were believed to have died from causes related to humidifier sterilizer products sold by several companies including Reckitt.In January, the former head of Reckitt’s business there was sentenced to seven years in prison. Reuters",2017-03-31,Reckitt Benckiser cuts CEO Rakesh Kapoor’s 2016 pay as it seeks to shore up investor confidence following a safety scandal in South Korea that hurt its performance,-0.45,15:05,Reckitt cuts CEO Rakesh Kapoor’s pay by 39% after safety scandal +0,"Mumbai: Despite government attempts to increase gender diversity in companies, number of women representation in boards is not very encouraging. According to a KPMG survey, proportion of women directors in NSE listed companies jumped 180% between 2013-2016 after the Companies Act, 2013. But there is very little to cheer about this hike, as the jump only translates to a 13.7% representation of women in 2016 from a meagre 4.9% in 2013.The Companies Act, 2013 and guidelines issued by Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) made it mandatory for all listed companies to have at least one woman on their boards—either as an executive or a non-executive director—before April 1, 2015.However, findings of the KPMG survey are not very reassuring. KPMG in India’s Board Leadership Centre and Women Corporate Directors India (WCD) conducted a survey in 2016 to assess the progress and challenges. The survey results showed that many companies are still lacking in gender diversity and there needs to be a change of mindset for it. “In order to achieve greater diversity there needs to be a change of mind sets, voluntary diversity targets, alignment between board composition and strategy, and looking beyond personal networks for director appointments,” it said.Also Read| Half of women on boards like quotas but male colleagues say no: reportThe worrisome factor is that the survey respondents feel the need to comply with the regulation has become a primary driver of gender diversity and it is stronger than the belief that it adds value or creates the brand image of a progressive organisation.Over 50% of the respondents indicate that companies are hiring women directors primarily to comply with the regulatory mandate. As much as 70% of the survey respondents indicate that the mandate has opened up board-level opportunities for women that were previously not considered for this role. On the flip side, 25% of the respondents indicate that it has only opened up opportunities for candidates in the promoter’s network.“Respondents largely agree that women improve board dynamics by creating a positive environment (68%) and are better at providing inputs and feedback in a constructive manner (51%)—traits that help in decision making at the board level. However, men and women respondents differ in their opinions on the other traits/advantages that women bring to the table,” KPMG survey said.As of 31 March 2016, 1,375 BSE-listed companies (of the total of 5,541 companies) and 191 NSE-listed companies (of the total 1,759 companies) were non-compliant with the regulations and fined by the respective stock exchanges.According to the survey, few factors preventing companies from appointing more women are listed as inadequate statutory quotas for fostering gender diversity, lack of adequate number of qualifies women to hold board positions, traditional stereotypes and lack of women friendly policies.However, there are few strong reasons for companies to have higher female representation. Research indicates that companies with gender balanced boards outperform companies with male dominated boards on various financial parameters.Also read| Women directors support quotas for board diversityA significant majority (68 %) of the respondents agree that women create a positive environment within the boardroom improving its culture and dynamics. While nearly half of the male respondents agree that women bring in a comparatively balanced view of risks as there is little agreement between them on other traits that women bring to the table.When it comes to parity in remuneration, the survey said compensation of board members are gender neutral, and both men and women receive the same package. However, a recent study reveals that the average compensation of women executive directors at 163 NSE listed companies is 20% less than their male counterparts. According to the study, this could be because more male executive directors are in revenue-generating roles while female directors are usually in support roles such as communication, corporate social responsibility, etc.“Male directors could also be more tenured than their female counterparts. Gender diversity was not as important for companies, as it is now, a decade ago. When women from this pool become executive directors, there might be some disparities in compensation,” it said.Recently, 65 public sector undertakings (PSUs) were found to be still lagging behind in appointing at least one woman director and it has come to that government has asked Registrars of Companies (RoC) to take up the matter with the ministries concerned and initiate penal action against the private listed firms in default.",2017-03-30,KPMG survey results showed that many companies are still lacking in gender diversity and there needs to be a change of mindset for it,-0.25,16:27,"Proportion of women directors up 180%, but gender diversity lags in India: Survey" +0,"
New Delhi: Companies can derive value from big data by effectively managing customer relationships and safeguarding their trust, said John Rose, senior partner and managing director, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), New York, at EmTech India 2017, a conference on emerging technologies organized by Mint and MIT Technology Review in New Delhi on 9-10 March.
Addressing the event, Rose said, “Half or more customers do not trust the companies or entities they bank or shop with, in the context of their personal data.”
Rose, who is the former global leader of technology, media and telecommunications practice at BCG and became a BCG Fellow in 2014, has been working on helping companies foster trust among their consumers in order to gain access to—and unlock value from—the ever-widening stream of complex, fast-moving Big Data that is generated online.
His presentation at EmTech focused on how customer trust matters in Big Data and how the misuse or perceived misuse of customer data can lead to financial and reputational damage for brands.
“Trust is not a generational issue; it is important for consumers of all ages,” said Rose.
According to a study he cited, the lack of alignment between companies and consumers about data privacy has real consequences. When consumers perceive data misuse—when they are unpleasantly surprised by the collection or new use of personal data—they either reduce their spending drastically or boycott a company’s products and services altogether, the study noted.
“There is around 33% drop in spending during the first year when US consumers perceive a data misuse. Out of the 33% customers, 18% totally stop spending whereas the remaining 15% reduce spending,” he cited from his findings.
Explaining the consumers’ perspective on privacy and data usage, Rose said, “Consumers take a wider and much less legalistic approach to these issues.”
“They want to be informed about how companies gather and safeguard data about them, and they want to understand the different ways in which companies use personal data. Additionally, they want that information delivered in clear language,” she added.",2017-03-30,"Companies can derive value from big data by effectively managing customer relationships and safeguarding their trust, says John Rose of the BCG",1.0,03:42,EmTech India: Unlocking value from Big Data +0,"
New Delhi: For the Mahindra Group, the key to digital transformation lies in the use of technology in moving away from legacy models to create new ones.“We have come a long way from the traditional legacy model of Mahindra or that of any established firm... Our current focus is directed towards expanding businesses into rural areas,” said Jaspreet Bindra, senior vice-president, digital transformation, Mahindra Group. Speaking at EmTech India 2017, the Mint-MIT Technology Review Conference on technology innovations, Bindra said digital transformation is not just about creating an app or a website but about creating business models and customer experiences. He further stressed on effective use of technology wherever it is appropriate to foster innovation. “We have used blockchain— one of the newest technologies—in our financial services sector and it has impacted our businesses positively,” Bindra added.As a $17-billion conglomerate with businesses in various sectors and geographies, he said it is the group’s belief that as each sector evolves due to innovation, the impact is felt on all businesses associated with it.Citing an example, he said there is a lot of innovation happening in the agriculture sector and a lot of data about weather conditions and crop patterns gets generated and captured by technology systems. “Therefore, how we target farmers is also changing in tune with the shifts in technology,” he added.The Mahindra Group is incubating start-ups in areas such as financial technology to facilitate digital transformation.",2017-03-30,"Speaking at EmTech India 2017, Jaspreet Bindra of Mahindra Group says group’s current focus is directed towards expanding businesses into rural areas ",0.51,03:48,Digital transformation is about creating business models: Jaspreet Bindra +0,"London: Jeff Bezos has leapt past Amancio Ortega and Warren Buffett to become the world’s second-richest person.Bezos, 53, added $1.5 billion to his fortune as Amazon.com Inc. rose $18.32 on Wednesday, the day after the e-commerce giant said it plans to buy Dubai-based online retailer Souq.com. Bezos has a net worth of $75.6 billion on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, $700 million more than Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s Buffett and $1.3 billion above Ortega, the founder of Inditex S.A. and Europe’s richest person.Amazon’s founder has added $10.2 billion this year to his wealth and $7 billion since the global equities rally began following the election of Donald Trump as US president on 8 Novemeber. The rise is the third biggest on the Bloomberg index in 2017, after Chinese parcel-delivery billionaire Wang Wei’s $18.4 billion gain and an $11.4 billion rise for Facebook Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg.Buffett, who’s added $1.7 billion in 2017, has shed $4.7 billion since his fortune peaked at $79.6 billion on 1 March. Ortega is up $2.1 billion year-to-date. Bezos remains $10.4 billion behind Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the world’s richest person with $86 billion. Bloomberg",2017-03-30,"Jeff Bezos has leapt past Amancio Ortega and Warren Buffett to become the world’s second-richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index",0.98,17:29,Jeff Bezos becomes world’s second richest person with Amazon share surge +0,"Mumbai: Brothers Shivinder Singh and Malvinder Singh are serial entrepreneurs known for pulling off one of the best-timed exits in the annals of Indian business. In 2008, they agreed to sell their family firm and India’s largest drugmaker, Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd, to Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo Co. for $4.6 billion—just months before the US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) banned imports at two of its Indian plants. That same year the US Department of Justice launched a probe, eventually resulting in a guilty plea by Ranbaxy and a $500 million fine for selling adulterated drugs. The Singh brothers were not named in the Ranbaxy probe.Now, the timing for the two brothers seems far less opportune. Rising debt has them looking to sell assets, according to people familiar with the matter. But at the same time, the latest turn in a long running legal brawl with Daiichi Sankyo means they can’t change the status of their holdings without first getting permission from the Delhi high court. Any deal agreements could be complicated by the court case, which resumes in New Delhi this week, the people said.In 2012, Daiichi filed a case with an International Court of Arbitration in Singapore accusing the Singhs of concealing and misrepresenting critical information about the US probes into Ranbaxy. In 2015, after years of regulatory scrutiny, Daiichi Sankyo sold its controlling stake in Ranbaxy to Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd for $4.1 billion. Last year the Singapore tribunal awarded Daiichi about $500 million in damages and interest, Daiichi said in a statement at the time.For their part, the Singhs say they were transparent about Ranbaxy’s regulatory problems at the time of the sale and are appealing the Singapore tribunal’s ruling, according to a spokesman. At the same time, they are also opposing Daiichi’s plea for enforcement of the award in the Delhi High Court.Daiichi Sankyo would not comment on pending or ongoing litigation, William Henning, a spokesman for the firm, said in an email.Net worthGiven the size of the Singapore tribunal’s award, the Singh brothers could face significant financial impact if they lose the legal battle. Their main holding company RHC Holding Pvt. Ltd reported a net worth of about $1 billion in a 2015 audit available on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs website. The tribunal also named their other listed holding firm, Oscar Investments Ltd, which has a market value of $64 million and in which the Singhs had a 71% holding as of March 2016.RHC had a $1.6 billion debt load after short-term borrowing increased 61% in the fiscal year ended March 2016, according to consolidated financial results available on the same regulatory website. The holding company had a loss of about $79 million that year, the results show.India Ratings and Research, a credit ratings firm, assigns RHC its third highest rating, indicating it’s a borrower with a low degree of risk. But that assessment was predicated on management’s plan to “significantly reduce debt” through restructuring and divestments, after a rise in loans to its subsidiary companies lead to an increase in borrowing, according to a report from last September.Fortis lossesA spokesman for RHC said the company, through its subsidiaries, associates and other group companies has sufficient resources and assets to meet any of its obligations if need be.RHC has not had any losses or seen substantial increases in borrowing, the spokesman said. The consolidated balance sheet does not represent the results of all the firms in the Singhs’ group of companies, though it does include results of Fortis Healthcare Ltd, RHC’s largest holding, and so gives a skewed picture of the Singhs’ finances, the spokesman, said in an email. He noted there has been no change to the company’s credit rating, which remains high.The last two years of losses on RHC’s consolidated balance sheet and the increase in short-term borrowing coincides with two years of losses at Fortis Healthcare, India’s second largest private hospital chain. Standalone results—which leave out Fortis Healthcare and a number of other companies included in the consolidated financial statements—show RHC posted a $6.3 million profit in the 2016 fiscal year, and total debt increased 23% to about $649 million.Any restructuring that occurs at the level of the Singh’s two largest operating companies, Fortis Healthcare and Religare Enterprises Ltd, won’t be impacted by the ongoing proceedings in the Delhi High Court because the court order is only directed at the holding companies, the spokesman said.Private equityIn recent months, the Singhs have entered talks with private equity giants KKR & Co., TPG and Bain Capital, along with Kuala Lumpur-based hospital operator IHH Healthcare Bhd, to explore an investment in Fortis Healthcare, people with knowledge of the matter said.The Singh brothers have also been in discussions to sell a stake in pathology-lab chain SRL Ltd, which is being spun off as a separate listed company, the people said. They are seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore, one of the people said. The brothers’ financial services conglomerate, Religare Enterprises, is separately negotiating the sale of a stake in Religare Health Insurance Co., as well as a controlling interest in small-business lender Religare Finvest Ltd, according to the people.Representatives for Religare Enterprises, Bain, KKR and TPG declined to comment. IHH said it’s “always looking at various value accretive opportunities”, in an emailed statement, declining to comment on any specific transactions. The Singhs’ holding company, RHC, is evaluating various options to maximize value and Fortis Healthcare has recently received board approval to fund raise as much as Rs5,000 crore, the spokesman said.RHC is set up as a financial institution designed to lend money to its subsidiary companies. Its strong credit rating is due to controlling stakes in Fortis Healthcare and Religare Enterprises, but the performances and credit profiles of its dozens of other ventures, ranging from charter flights to information technology to biofuels, are weak, according to India Ratings’ September report.The possible losses RHC could face from debt it has taken on to make equity investments in its group companies has risen to 141% of its own equity in the last two financial years, according to the report.“Beyond a certain number it may become difficult for the group to service all this debt,” said Ananda Bhoumik, chief analytical officer at India Ratings and Research. “It’s imperative that they try to reduce their leverage.”Drug salesRHC’s debt means the Singhs don’t have much choice but to drum up cash by selling off pieces of their best firms, according to Sweta Karia, an analyst who covers Fortis Healthcare’s stock at Batlivala & Karani Securities Private Ltd.Last week, the court demanded the brothers turn over an audited account of their assets to satisfy Daiichi there would be enough to cover the arbitration award should they lose. That document was submitted, but was sealed.“There is no way out but for this deal to go through,” Karia said of potential asset sales by the Singhs. Bloomberg",2017-03-29,"The latest turn in the legal case involving Daiichi Sankyo’s Ranbaxy buy prevents asset sale by the Singh brothers, Shivinder and Malvinder, to cut mounting debt",0.34,13:13,"Shivinder, Malvinder Singh want to sell some assets, but the timing isn’t right" +0,"London: Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc’s annual earnings fell less than expected as Europe’s biggest aircraft-engine maker deepened cost cuts and a late production surge at Airbus Group SE boosted revenue.Pretax profit fell 49% to £813 million ($1.02 billion) from £1.4 billion a year earlier, London-based Rolls-Royce said in a statement Tuesday. Analysts had forecast a figure of £685 million, the average of 11 estimates compiled by Bloomberg.Chief executive officer Warren East has eliminated hundreds of office jobs and shuffled senior management in a bid to make Rolls-Royce more responsive to changes such as the oil-price slump, which stifled demand for marine turbines. Earnings got a late boost as full-year deliveries of the Airbus A350, for which it is the sole engine supplier, surged to 49 from just 12 in the first half.“We have made operational progress and performed ahead of our expectations for the year as a whole,” East said in the statement. “While we have made good progress in our cost cutting and efficiency programs, more needs to be done to ensure we drive sustainable margin improvements.”Revenue increased 9% to £15 billion, Rolls said, while cash flow reached £100 million after the company had previously suggested that an outflow of minus £100 million to minus £300 million was likely.The CEO warned soon after taking charge at Rolls in 2015 that 2016 earnings would be hit by a 650 million-pound headwind stemming from the slump at its marine division, slowing regional- and corporate-jet demand, a drop in sales of the original Airbus A330 ahead of the introduction of a re-engined model, and reduced maintenance revenue from older wide-body jets.Rolls-Royce last month agreed to pay £671 million in fines to the US, UK and Brazilian fraud agencies to settle bribery charges. The company said at the time that early indications were that 2016 profit and cash had come in higher than forecast. Bloomberg",2017-02-14,"Pretax profit fell 49% to £813 million from £1.4 billion a year earlier, Rolls-Royce said in a statement ",0.98,13:45,"Rolls-Royce profit beats estimates on cost cuts, Airbus boost" +0,"
US President Donald Trump poses the biggest risk to emerging market capital flows, said Barry Eichengreen, the George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. In town to deliver Exim Bank’s commencement day lecture, Eichengreen said the impact of the Fed raising rates on emerging markets such as India has reduced considerably. Edited excerpts from an interview:
In the past few months, we have seen global risk aversion coming down and a lot of money flowing to emerging markets. What is the big risk to these flows?There is the (US President Donald) Trump risk. Trump can do something that can be disruptive to global trade flows and financial flows. On the trade policy front, he has a lot of freedom to work unilaterally. He doesn’t have to get Congress’s assent to invoke the Terms of Trade Adjustment Act, which is what Nixon used in 1971 to slap a 15% import surcharge. The US has special forces on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. (There) he can invoke the Trading with the Enemy Act, 1917.
Does the Trump risk overshadow everything else? I think the Trump risk definitely overshadows everything else. There could be an electoral surprise in Europe. I would regard that as a low-probability event because of the two-round presidential election in France, because of the fact that there is considerable support for two centrist candidates in Germany. We have learnt from Brexit and from Trump that low-probability events sometimes do happen. I worry less than I did about the economic and financial problems in China.Then there are geopolitical shocks. China is a proud country and it will respond (if Trump imposes import taxes). Then what happens to cooperation between US and China on North Korea? If they are fighting a trade war, can they peacefully coordinate, work on the North Korea problem? If they can’t, what happens to North Korea? That is a frightening prospect. Those are things that keep me awake.
Do you think the global recovery people are talking about is really strong? Is this the right time for the US Fed and other central banks to raise rates?I think it is the right time for the Federal Reserve to raise rates with the US economy growing at potential, with full employment and inflation at target, there is no reason to maintain rates at zero. The argument is different in Japan and Europe where growth has picked up but inflation has not. Those central banks will be slower to taper their quantitative easing, they will be slower to raise interest rates than the Fed.
What risks do these pose to emerging markets?In terms of risks to emerging markets, it really depends what emerging markets you are talking about. I think the risks have been reduced by the fact that the Fed has really learnt from its mistakes in 2013. When Ben Bernanke announced (the taper), markets were surprised. They kind of reacted with shock and that made life in emerging markets very hard for three months. This time, Fed has been announcing in advance what the path is. Turkey is very much No.1 on my list (in terms of negative impact). The politics there are quite turbulent as well.
How relevant is the issue of advanced economy-emerging markets coordination, especially for central banks in the background of capital flight risk?Sometimes, that coordination is critically important. In 2008, when the Federal Reserve extended a $40 billion swap line to Mexico, Brazil and South Korea, it famously didn’t extend it to India. That was an example of cooperation of the US central bank and a few of its friends but was not systematic or universal. To my mind, you not only need central bank coordination, you also need extended IMF facilities because relying on the Fed could mean relying on a whole set of personalities and I think emerging markets will feel safer and more secure if they can rely on the managing director of IMF.",2017-03-29,"The impact of the US Fed raising rates on emerging markets such as India has reduced considerably, says Barry Eichengreen",-0.14,00:23,Trump poses biggest risk to emerging market capital flows: Barry Eichengreen +0,"Mumbai: Textiles and financial services conglomerate Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd (ABNL) on Tuesday posted a 30.67% decline in standalone profits after tax year-on-year (y-o-y), as its revenues fell across all business segments, barring financial services.The company’s quarterly revenue fell 15.02% to Rs1,216.76 crore while profit after tax declined to Rs65.59 crore against Rs94.61 crore in the year-ago period. “Pass through of reduction in natural gas prices in the agri business, coupled with lower volumes in the textiles and the insulators businesses,” led to lower revenue y-o-y, the company said in a statement.ABNL’s biggest fall in revenue came from its agri-business (fertilizers, agro-chemicals, seeds) which dipped 18% to Rs565.81 crore year-on-year. “Demonetisation led to temporary liquidity shortage in the trade channel as well as downstream players in the textiles and agri value chain,” the company added in the statement. With the cash crunch leading to lower demands, the Ebitda margins of ABNL’s various subsidies in these businesses fell. Indian Rayon sold lower volumes and its Ebitda fell 18%, while Indo-Gulf Fertilizers and Jay Shree textiles saw a 19% and 74% decline in Ebitda, respectively. There was a small bump in the company’s total revenue worth Rs13.60 crore from the financial services business. This segment was reviewed separately for the first time under the new India AS accounting standards, the company said in a statement. This was the only business whose revenue grew this quarter, by 77% y-o-y. ABNL’s standalone debt fell 44% from the March 2016 quarter from the sale of the company’s 23% stake in Birla Sun Life Insurance, and the realization of a Rs115 crore subsidy in January this year. Its current standalone debt stands at Rs2,190 crore.ABNL also announced it has received approval from the stock exchanges and the Competition Commission of India to merge the company with Grasim Industries, an Aditya Birla group company that has interests in manufacturing of viscose staple fibre, sponge iron, and chemicals. Grasim also owns the subsidiary UltraTech Cement, listed on the BSE.The company is now waiting for permission from the National Company Law Tribunal. “The transaction is expected to be completed by the first half of fiscal 2017-18”, the company said in the statement. This merger was first announced in August last year, along with plans to de-merge and list the financial services business into a separate entity.Shares of ABNL were trading 0.78% higher at Rs1,458.30 at 2:39pm versus the BSE’s benchmark Sensex that was 0.05% lower.",2017-02-14,"Aditya Birla Nuvo’s biggest fall in revenue came from its agri-business—fertilizers, agro-chemicals, seeds—that dipped 18% to Rs565.81 crore year-on-year",0.6,15:29,Aditya Birla Nuvo Q3 standalone profit falls 31% +0,"
New Delhi: At Bain and Co., Raj Pherwani helps clients with sustained cost transformation and advises them on taking the company to the next level of effectiveness. San Francisco-based Pherwani, partner and global head of performance improvement practice at Bain, has expertise in leading transformation projects across sectors and is also the firm’s leader in the digital space. In an interview, he comments on sustained cost transformation, disruptive technologies, consolidation in the telecom industry and the future of conglomerates. Pherwani was on a two-week visit to India to meet top company leaders. Edited excerpts:
How do you help clients achieve their full potential?
What we have developed is a lot of experience over 40-plus years of being a company but the steps are roughly the same. The exact way in which it is conducted depends on the specific situation.
If you are really about getting to full potential, the starting point is always about trying to understand what is the mission, why are you trying to get there, why is your company uniquely suited to achieve that mission and then it’s an examination of the current status. Then one develops a strategic fact base to understand where things are, what’s going on today, the point of departure if you will.
Based on what we learn in the point of departure, we then prescribe the path forward. I’d say the best way to do it is what we call client-led, Bain-supported; so what we bring obviously is experience, tools, the ability to conduct rigorous analytics on the specific areas where things needs to be done, the experience in change management, setting up these programmes, etc. You have a sense of where you need to push and we will work collaboratively with the client to recommend an approach depending on what we have learnt. It could take a few months or years, setting up the initiatives, the initiative owners, what are their objectives, how are they tracked—all of that communicated to the organization and being very, very thoughtful about the change- management process.
Is performance improvement all about cutting costs and headcount? Does it always have to be the case?
I don’t think so. I like to think of it as are you utilizing your assets— both people and others in the best way and the reality for most of our programmes is not a cost-cutting exercise but about performance improvement, which is about improving productivity, improving the way you do things so it’s not purely about costs. In fact, I would say if you are just going to cut headcount, a lot of companies do it reasonably well on their own. They can get benchmarks on different functions by industry and find a way to improve it.
I think the big differentiator is the cost that is between functions, cross functional, the cost that you don’t recognize because you haven’t looked at it, so that’s where the process I described to you the strategic fact base can help you understand what are some of the root causes, why you are above cost in a certain metric. What I believe in is, it’s important to figure out the formula for sustained cost transformation.
Technology is disrupting industries and businesses across geographies. How do companies tackle this challenge both for themselves and their customers?
You have to address it—technology is a disruptor and can be a disruptor for the positive. In the short term, it is going to create some issues. Every process, every activity, evolution dictates that you are going to have to do it better over time; otherwise, you will not survive. That’s a fact. Most companies except for those that were born on the Web, are operating paper-based processes that were invented 50 years ago. Paper has been made electronic but the fundamental process has not been changed. Digital is allowing you to change the way you do things.
There is better collaboration, inputs are efficient, analytics are faster so you can do things that you could not do before; so are you going to ignore that and not adopt it? Sure, but it’s at your peril. The great companies will examine themselves and disrupt themselves rather be disrupted. Somebody’s going to do it to you so it’s better if you do it to yourself. I think everyone can agree with that.
What do you think about the Indian telecom scene with Reliance Jio crossing 100 million customers in 160 days?
We’ve looked at telecoms forever and there are some rules of thumb. It’s hard to sustain a market with six-seven competitors so it’s a natural law that over time, the markets will consolidate. Look at the US, for example when I started working at Bain in 1993, we had several players and today, you have AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, and there are talks of the last two merging.
Natural laws of evolution in business, particularly in telecom, suggest because it is a capital-intensive industry, so regardless of the country, capital expenditure is going to be on the high side.
Most countries have achieved full penetration if not more, and India is probably at that level. So it’s not surprising that you have a very aggressive deep-pocketed competitor like Jio disrupting the marketplace. We had that in the US with T-Mobile and lot of people wrote them off very early but they have done exceedingly well.
I think in the long term, the consumer will win. I think there will be three-four players in a country this size and none of them can take their foot off the pedal on operating as efficiently as possible.
What would be your management advice to Indian CEOs and CXOs?
I’ve had two meetings with CEOS and CXOs in Delhi and Mumbai, and I am impressed by the way Indian companies are operating. So, it is a great starting point, there is great talent in this country.
I would recommend that all companies owe it to their stakeholders including employees to be operating at the highest levels of efficiency. By the way, that means actually investing and getting to those levels of efficiency which means digital, thinking through your processes, constantly reinventing what you are doing, thinking about making your company better to work at and better to work with and if you do that, you will always be in a good position to out-invest your competitors and provide the best value proposition to your customers, therefore command the best prices in your business.
To make that happen, the leaders of these businesses need to have clarity of vision and need to communicate this, and maybe that’s something in India that may not have been done in the past, but I think today the leadership is thinking about it. Just because the CEO says it doesn’t mean that the person at the frontline gets it. As someone said, the corporate strategy and street-level strategy—the connection of that is so important. So what is said in the boardroom is getting translated to someone who is the front-line salesman or at the factory shop floor—this is super important. Last thing, a lot of companies are very, very diversified. I won’t be surprised if in the next five years, you can play every game, I would have loved to be on the Indian cricket team and win Wimbledon at the same time (I did neither), but companies will have to make choices.
I won’t be surprised if large groups separate out and figured out where they want to focus and divest. I have studied conglomerates for a long time and very, very few maybe, 10 across the globe, earn a value more than the sum of their parts. That’s my hypothesis, I may be off base.",2017-03-28,"Bain and Co. partner Raj Pherwani talks about sustained cost transformation, disruptive tech, consolidation in the telecom industry and future of conglomerates",0.61,11:45,"Performance improvement, not cost cutting, is the key: Bain’s Raj Pherwani" +0,"New Delhi: Hindalco Industries Ltd, India’s biggest aluminum producer, expects higher growth in the next fiscal year because of the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), and higher consumption of aluminum and copper because of a rise in budgetary allocation to the infrastructure sector.For Hindalco, the government’s focus on infrastructure and electricity sectors is a big positive, managing director Satish Pai said in an interview. Electricity, packaging, building and construction, automobile, defence, and transportation are the sectors the aluminium producer has identified as growth areas for consumption demand, he said.Hindalco Q3 results: Copper counters surge in aluminium profitsHindalco on Monday reported a net profit in the December quarter from a loss in the year-ago period, but missed analysts’ estimates. Standalone net profit in the third quarter stood at Rs320.56 crore compared to a loss of Rs32.75 crore a year earlier. Net sales rose 13.7% to Rs9,914.81 crore from Rs8,715.94 crore a year earlier because of a rise in average realization for both aluminium and copper, weaker rupee and higher aluminium volume, Hindalco said in a statement.Nineteen analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected Hindalco to report a standalone net profit of Rs396.4 crore while 18 analysts had expected sales of Rs9,400.7 crore.Aluminium business revenue rose about 8.6% to Rs4,916.92 crore while copper business revenue rose 19.3% to Rs5,000.42 crore.“Cost of production and the operations remain under control for us, which is the strongest point. Our cash part is looking good which is why we have paid now up to Rs1,000 crore of debt and we will finish paying Rs1,400 crore by March. Input costs have been good - while oil prices and coal prices of e-auction go up, on the other hand LME (London Metal Exchange) is also up. Overall, I think fourth quarter should be another good quarter,” Pai said.Hindalco, which has a target of doubling its downstream aluminium capacity in five years, is facing stiff competition from cheaper Chinese imports.The Aluminium Association of India has been lobbying the government for implementing a safeguard duty and minimum import price (MIP) in aluminium. “Process for MIP has been on... it takes time but we are hopeful that we are at end of the game,” Pai said.Hindalco already supplies aluminium for bus bodies and other auto extrusions and sees opportunity for growth in the high-speed trains and railways bodies. “It is a 100 tonnes a month business and we want to take it to 1,000 tonnes a month,” Pai said.Defence is another growth area the company is targeting, where a number of domestic firms are looking to start manufacturing in India.“This will be a big kicker for us,” Pai said.The company’s Hirakud smelter in Odisha, which is in the process of increasing capacity to 135 Kilo-Tonnes Per Annum has potential to be expanded in future, Pai said.“Our strategy in next five years is to get debt to Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) down; that’s the biggest focus. We want to bring cost under control and expand in downstream,” Pai said.Hindalco shares rose 1.65% to Rs185 on BSE on Monday, while the benchmark Sensex rose 0.06% to 28,351.62 points.",2017-02-14,Hindalco’s net profit in Q3 was Rs320.56 crore compared to a loss of Rs32.75 crore a year earlier,0.71,02:40,"Hindalco sees higher growth on GST, govt’s infrastructure spending push" +0,"
New Delhi: GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare Ltd, the maker of Horlicks and Boost health foods, on Monday reported 8.25% drop in third-quarter profit as the liquidity crunch following demonetisation hit wholesale trade.Net profit fell to Rs136.41 crore in the quarter ended 31 December from Rs148.68 crore a year earlier. Net sales from operations fell 12.68% to Rs921.64 in the quarter from Rs1,055.57 crore a year earlier.“The overall business environment during the quarter was challenging and uncertain due to demonetisation. This substantially impacted the cash dominated geographies, mainly the east and north, and channels—mainly wholesale and rural, resulting in lower consumption offtake and reduced trade pipelines,” said MD Manoj Kumar in a statement. The British company’s local unit said it had extended credit terms to help trade fight the liquidity crunch due to note ban announced 8 November.GSK Consumer Healthcare, citing market researcher Neilsen, said the marketshare of Horlicks increased marginally by 0.1% to 46.5% in value terms during the quarter from a year earlier. The company, however, is hopeful about the coming quarters. “Our outlook for the upcoming quarters remains positive. We are confident that with improved liquidity position and focus on high science, strong brands, innovation and sharp customer insights will help us to stay ahead in the category,” said Kumar.The company announced its results after market hours. Shares of GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare dropped 0.14% to Rs5,118 on Monday on BSE, while the benchmark Sensex rose 0.06% to 28,351.62 points.",2017-02-14,GSK’s net profit fell to Rs136.41 crore in the quarter ended 31 December from Rs148.68 crore a year earlier,0.29,01:38,GSK Q3 profit drops 8.25% due to note ban +0,"New Delhi: Auto component maker Motherson Sumi Systems Ltd (MSSL) on Monday reported a 28.24% increase in consolidated net profit at Rs547.32 crore in the third quarter ended December. The company had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs426.77 crore in the same period of last fiscal. Its total income from operations during the period under review stood at Rs10,796.9 crore as against Rs9,598.35 crore in the year-ago period, up 12.48%. MSSL chairman Vivek Chaand Sehgal said, “The company has shown exemplary growth in all areas and has achieved highest ever revenues and margins in a quarter. This is the reflection of hard work put in by all our teams from around the world.” Shares of MSSL were trading 2.63% down at Rs346.55 apiece on BSE.",2017-02-13,Motherson Sumi had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs426.77 crore in the same period of last fiscal,0.88,22:43,Motherson Sumi Q3 net profit rises 28.24% to Rs547.32 crore +0,"New Delhi: Piramal Enterprises Ltd on Monday reported a 31.66% rise in its consolidated net profit to Rs404.08 crore for the quarter ended 31 December 2016, on account of improved top-line performance. The company had posted a net profit after non-controlling interest and share of profit (loss) of associates and joint ventures of Rs306.91 crore for the corresponding period of the previous fiscal, Piramal Enterprises said in a BSE filing. Consolidated total income from operations also rose to Rs2,341.74 crore for the quarter under consideration as against Rs1,786.01 crore for the same period year ago. Piramal Enterprises chairman Ajay Piramal said, “In line with our strategic roadmap, this quarter witnessed new acquisitions, foray into new business segments and robust performance across existing businesses”. The company remains committed to overall business strategy of efficiently allocating capital towards growing both organically and inorganically..., he added. “Strong profitability was mainly on account of improved top-line performance, partly offset by increase in interest expense, depreciation and higher tax rate,” Piramal Enterprises said. The company’s global pharma business acquired a portfolio of intrathecal spasticity and pain management drugs from Mallinckrodt LLC in Jan 2017. It also acquired a portfolio of five injectable anaesthesia & pain management products from Janssen in October 2016, it added. The financial services business announced its plan to enter the retail housing finance, it added. Financial services business launched flexi lease rental discounting for completed commercial assets, the company said.",2017-02-13,"The company’s consolidated total income from operations rose to Rs2,341.74 crore for the quarter under consideration as against Rs1,786.01 crore for the same period year ago",0.69,22:36,Piramal Enterprises Q3 profit up 32% to Rs404.08 crore +0,"Mumbai: Muthoot Finance Ltd on Monday reported a 56% increase in its net profit for the December quarter.Net profit for the third quarter rose to Rs291 crore from Rs187 crore in the year ago period. Total income stood at Rs1,346 crore at the end of December quarter, an 18% increase over the year ago period.“Though disbursements got affected post demonetisation process announced by the government, we could limit its impact since our digital platforms were ready to manage online disbursements and repayments. We are expecting normalcy coming back during the fourth quarter as cash availability has significantly increased,” said M.G.George Muthoot, chairman, Muthoot Finance.ALSO READ: Muthoot HomeFin to raise Rs800 crore next fiscalRetail loan assets under management stood at Rs26,962 crore at the end of third quarter, witnessing an 8% increase over the previous year.",2017-02-13,"Muthoot Finance’s total income stood at Rs1,346 crore at the end of December quarter, an 18% increase over the year ago period",0.83,21:32,Muthoot Finance Q3 profit rises 56% to Rs291 crore +0,"Bengaluru: Biscuit maker Britannia Industries Ltd posted a 4.6% increase in third-quarter net profit to Rs220.39 crore from a year earlier, beating analyst estimates. Revenue rose 6.11% to Rs2,355.27 crore during the period, but fell short of the company’s own expectations, Britannia said in a filing with the BSE on Monday.The analysts had expected a net profit of Rs198.10 crore on revenue of Rs2,137.50 crore, according to a Bloomberg survey. “This quarter has been really tough considering the way things panned out on the economic front. The positive growth momentum witnessed in Q2, aided by good monsoon and flow through of 7th pay commission benefits was impacted with implementation of demonetisation in November,” Varun Berry, managing director, said in a statement.Like other consumer firms, the post-demonetisation liquidity crunch had hurt its consumers and channel partners, the company said, adding that it had attempted to tide over the situation by providing credit to some business partners and improving sales efficiency.“With these steps and increase in availability of cash in the economy, our revenues in December 2016 improved on a sequential basis but is still lower than what we would have expected it to be,” Berry said.Growth in the international business continued to be under pressure due to deteriorating geopolitical situation and currency fluctuations in geographies like Middle East and Africa, he added. Britannia, which had to deal with a high raw material inflation rate of more than 10% in the December quarter, said its cost efficiency program had helped mitigate the impact of higher raw material costs to a “certain extent.” It also “rationalized” advertising spends as no amount of stimulus would have helped the company boost growth after demonetisation.“We are actively working on opportunities in the biscuit business, adjacent macro snacking space and are also evaluating partnership opportunities to drive profitable growth for our company,” Berry added.In a separate filing, Britannia said it appointed YSP Thorat, retired chairman of National Bank For Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), and Ajay Shah as additional directors of the company effective 13 February.Britannia Industries Limited’s shares closed up at Rs3,273 on the BSE, up 1.15% from previous close while India’s benchmark Sensex Index was up 0.06% to 28,351.62 points.",2017-02-13,"Britannia’s revenue for the third quarter rose 6.11% to Rs2,355.27 crore during the period, but fell short of its own expectations",0.69,18:31,Britannia Q3 profit rises 4.6% to Rs220 crore +0,"New Delhi: GMR Infrastructure on Monday reported a standalone net loss of Rs381.93 crore for the quarter ended December 2016. The company posted a net profit of Rs40.01 crore in the corresponding quarter of the 2015-16, it said in a BSE filing. Its total income from operations declined to Rs216.25 crore during the quarter as against Rs294.48 crore in the year-ago period. ALSO READ: Britannia Q3 profit rises 4.6% to Rs220 croreIts total expenses rose to Rs103.52 crore during the quarter under review as against Rs36.29 crore in the corresponding quarter a year-ago. In a separate filing, the firm informed that Jayesh Desai has resigned from the position of director of the company with effect from 13 February. “The board at their meeting held on 13 February, 2017 took on record the resignation of Jayesh Desai and recorded its appreciation for the valuable services rendered by him during his tenure as a director of the company,” the statement said. GMR Group is a leading global infrastructure conglomerate with interests in the airport, energy, transportation and urban infrastructure. The shares of the company closed at Rs14.28 apiece on the BSE, down 2.86% from its previous close.",2017-02-13,GMR Infra’s total income from operations declined to Rs216.25 crore during the third quarter as against Rs294.48 crore in the year-ago period,-0.09,21:37,GMR Infra posts Rs382 crore loss in Q3 +0,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",2017-04-20,Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,0.49,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +0,"New Delhi: The government on Thursday raised over Rs1,200 crore through the sale of 9.2% stake in National Aluminium Company Ltd (Nalco) as both retail and institutional investors lapped up the shares offered to them. The first PSU disinvestment of the current fiscal, Nalco also saw the government exercising the option to retain excess subscription, called greenshoe option. The government had hit the market on Wednesday with 5% shares on offer, and exercised the greenshoe option after seeing investor demand on day one of the offer for sale. With bids, over 1.84 times the shares on offer, the subscription of institutional investors was valued at Rs954 crore. Retail investors on their part bid for 3.17 times the shares reserved for them valued at Rs250 crore. Together, the bids are valued at over Rs1,200 crore. Of its total holding of 74.58% in Nalco, the government has offloaded 9.2% at a floor price of Rs67. Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) secretary Neeraj Gupta said the government was confident of retail investor demand and hence had exercised the greenshoe option keeping in mind the last four disinvestments. “Today’s response validates our market assessment,” Gupta said. The OFS opened for retail investor subscription on Thursday and was lapped up 3.17 times. Retail are defined as individuals who place bids for sales of total value of not more than Rs2 lakh in aggregate and are offered 5% discount over the issue price. The Nalco stock closed at Rs68.10, up 0.52% over its previous close, on BSE. Nalco is the first disinvestment of the current fiscal, which started on 1 April. The government has set a target of Rs46,500 crore through minority stake sale and Rs15,000 crore from strategic disinvestment in 2017-18. In 2016-17, the government had raised over Rs46,247 crore from disinvestment.",2017-04-20,"Nalco raises over Rs1,200 crore through 9.2% stake sale; the offer for sale opened for retail investor subscription today and was lapped up 3.17 times",0.24,18:00,"Govt sells 9.2% stake in Nalco, raises Rs 1,200 crore" +0,"Los Angeles: Don’t worry about Fox. It’ll be okay without Bill O’Reilly.The country’s most-watched cable network is doing so well that the departure of the star of The O’Reilly Factor isn’t likely to be a huge financial blow. That’s even though the show was the biggest draw on Fox News, which has been 21st Century Fox’s most profitable channel, bringing in what one estimate puts at $200 million annually in advertising revenue.“The growth in the network is overwhelming any advertiser issues” that will crop up now that O’Reilly is out and Tucker Carlson is stepping into the prime-time slot, said Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research LLC who has a buy rating on the stock. O’Reilly took his leave Wednesday afternoon, and Fox shares fell 0.9% to $30.39 at the close in New York.Fox doesn’t break out how much any one channel or program contributes to the bottom line. S&P Global Inc.’s Kagan research unit estimates that Fox News was responsible for about one-fourth of the company’s 2016 operating income, which was $6.6 billion.O’Reilly’s exit will probably cost just a couple of percentage points in ad sales, before factoring in the network’s expected growth over the next year, Wieser said. “Investors wouldn’t really notice the impact.”That’s not to say there won’t be any painful ripples. The hard-charging host had been on the air since the 1996 birth of Fox News. O’Reilly was “a ratings machine,” said Vijay Jayant, an analyst at Evercore ISI, in a note to clients.Consistent messagingRecent history shows, though, that Fox News can handle it when individual personalities walk. There was little fallout in 2011 after Glenn Beck quit. His talk-show was replaced with the group-format The Five that has done so well it’s moving into a prime-time slot next week. (Beck weighed in on Twitter Wednesday, saying, “With Bill O’Reilly gone, it’s the Beginning of the End of Fox News as We Know It.”)After Megyn Kelly jumped to NBC in January, Carlson replaced her at 9 pm, and his ratings beat hers.“Fox News’s dominance stems from the consistency of its messaging and the loyalty of its broader audience more than from the success of star anchors,” said Jayant, who has an outperform rating on the stock.ALSO READ: Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai pull ‘O’Reilly’ ads on sexual harassment claimsDozens of advertisers pulled their spots from The O’Reilly Factor after the New York Times reported that Fox and the host had resolved sexual harassment allegations by paying his accusers $13 million. The report came just months after Fox News’ founder Roger Ailes resigned amid similar allegations.How valuable?Fox executive chairman Rupert Murdoch and his sons, chairman Lachlan Murdoch and chief executive officer (CEO) James Murdoch, convened on a call Wednesday morning where they decided O’Reilly’s fate, a person familiar with the situation said. The Murdochs were swayed by details that emerged during an internal investigation into the allegations by law firm Paul Weiss, the person said. O’Reilly issued a statement late Wednesday, saying, “It is tremendously disheartening that we part ways due to completely unfounded claims.”Estimates of how valuable The O’Reilly Factor was vary, with Pivotal saying the show’s annual ad sales were about $200 million and Evercore putting them at half that or less. Fox hasn’t disclosed what it paid the host, though the New York Observer has reported his 2016 compensation package was $18 million.By Jayant’s calculations, annual revenue and earnings growth will probably take a hit of less than half a percentage point as a result of O’Reilly’s leaving. He sees a decline of about 35% in ad revenue without O’Reilly, a similar level to the viewership gap between that show and the average Fox News primetime hour.ALSO READ: Fox News host Bill O’Reilly taking vacation amid sex harassment furoreIt’s unclear whether O’Reilly will be able to find a home with a competitor under the terms of his exit from Fox, but rival news organizations such as One America News Network and Newsmax said they’d be interested in talking with him about a new gig.“He was the heart and soul of Fox News. He had unparalleled and unchallenged talent that he demonstrated over many years. I think he will remain a hot commodity for years to come,” said Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy in an interview. “The problem that Bill O’Reilly is going to have is that there aren’t many conservative media outlets out there that carry as much heft.”Ruddy cautioned that if he talked to O’Reilly about a job, he’d need to review the allegations because they are serious.However difficult it might be for Fox to replace all the revenue O’Reilly generated, the uproar was a distraction for 21st Century Fox as it seeks regulatory clearance for its $14.6 billion acquisition of Sky Plc, the UK-based satellite-TV provider. That deal needs approval from the British regulator Ofcom, which will decide whether the takeover breaches British rules on media plurality and broadcasting standards, and whether Sky would continue to be a “fit and proper” holder of a broadcast license.The US civil rights group Color of Change has asked Ofcom to investigate Fox’s corporate practices before approving the Sky purchase, alleging “rampant racial discrimination and sexual harassment” at the company.“If you believe that the Sky transaction is a strategically good thing, then elements that put the transaction at risk are much more important than Bill O’Reilly,” said Pivotal’s Wieser. Fox has mitigated the damage but “this isn’t settled by any stretch. There are still issues to overcome here on that fit-and-proper test.” Bloomberg",2017-04-20,"Bill O’Reilly’s exit will probably cost just a couple of percentage points in ad sales, before factoring in Fox News’ expected growth over the next year",1.0,17:51,Bill O’Reilly’s exit looks like a non-factor for Fox News’ profit machine +0,"New Delhi: Reliance Defence and Engineering Ltd has secured nod from a consortium of lenders to exit its corporate debt restructuring (CDR) package. The consortium of lenders, led by IDBI Bank Ltd, has agreed to the exit plan of Reliance Defence, a subsidiary of Reliance Infrastructure, with a longer maturity period for loans worth about Rs6,800 crore, people aware of the matter said.The lenders have also given their go-ahead to implementation of refinancing scheme of Reliance Defence. Both the proposals were presented to the CDR Empowered Group’s (EG) meeting on 29 March and approved by the requisite majority of CDR lenders. Reliance Infrastructure refused to comment. IDBI has confirmed to the Ministry of Defence the approval granted by the EG to the CDR exit plan and refinancing scheme. According to the people quoted above, the confirmation from IDBI makes Reliance Defence eligible for participating in all future contracts of the Navy. Now, Reliance Defence and Larsen and Toubro Ltd are the only two private sector shipyards that will compete with government-owned shipyards for prestigious contracts for making submarines, landing platform dock (LPD) and corvette. As per the refinancing scheme approved by the Empowered Group, about Rs6,800 crore of Reliance Defence debt will be refinanced with maturity of about 20 years and lower interest rate. Exiting CDR is also expected to provide increased financial manoeuvring to the company. Reliance Infrastructure has increased its shareholding in Reliance Defence to nearly 31%. Reliance Defence’s current order stands at over Rs5,300 crore from the Navy, the Coast Guard and commercial vessels. Reliance Infrastructure had acquired Pipavav Defence and Offshore Engineering Co. Ltd in March 2015, which was later renamed as Reliance Defence and Engineering. Immediately after the acquisition, Reliance Group had announced its plans to exit CDR. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had also given its nod to Reliance Defence to exit the CDR package. The stock of Reliance Defence was trading at Rs66.10 on the BSE, up 3.44% from its previous close.Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.",2017-04-20,"A consortium of lenders, led by IDBI Bank, has agreed to Reliance Defence’s plan to exit CDR package, with a longer maturity period for loans worth Rs6,800 crore",1.0,18:52,Reliance Defence gets banks approval to exit CDR package +0,"New Delhi: Power Finance Corporation (PFC) on Monday reported an over 23% surge in standalone net profit to Rs1,949.91 crore for the third quarter ended 31 December. The company had posted a net profit of Rs1,582.32 crore for the corresponding quarter of last fiscal, PFC said in a BSE filing on Monday. According to the statement, total income has increased to Rs7,063.08 crore in the quarter under review, from Rs6,994.10 crore in the same period last fiscal. It also informed the BSE about the non-performing asset provision of Rs51.19 crore for the current quarter and Rs475.50 crore for the nine months ended on 31 December 2016. It also stated that the Gross NPA stood at Rs7,302.67 crore as on 31 December 2016, whereas it was Rs7,520.21 crore on 31 March 2016.",2017-02-13,"PFC posted a net profit of Rs1,582.32 crore for the corresponding quarter of last fiscal, the company said in a BSE filing on Monday",0.85,16:12,"Power Finance Corporation’s Q3 net profit jumps 23% to Rs1,949 crore" +0,"Zurich/ London: Nestle SA and Unilever reported sales that beat estimates as the European food giants pushed through cost increases to combat slowing purchases by pickier consumers opting for quality over quantity.KitKat maker Nestle said organic revenue rose 2.3% in the first quarter, compared with the 2% median estimate. Unilever’s sales growth of 2.9% exceeded analyst predictions of 1.9% as the Hellmann’s mayonnaise provider issued its first results announcement since rebuffing a takeover approach from Kraft Heinz Co.Improved pricing power at both companies provided an early sign of recovery for the food and beverage market after years of deflationary pressure in Europe, slowing sales in China and economic crises in Brazil and Russia. Higher commodity costs, inflation in Brazil and the fall in the pound since the UK’s vote to leave the European Union are contributing to the upward pressure.“Pricing was better than expected,” Jon Cox, an analyst at Kepler Cheuvreux, said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “Everybody has to increase prices, and generally that’ll be sticky.”Nestle and Unilever are joining apparel makers Burberry Group Plc and Ralph Lauren, which are trying to wean themselves off discounting, especially in the US Alcoholic beverage companies such as Diageo Plc are also trying to ride a trend of “premiumization” as consumers shift to fewer but more expensive purchases.Food companies are under pressure to lift costs in order to boost profit margins as potential predators like Kraft Heinz look for consolidation opportunities. The US company is backed by private equity firm 3G Capital Inc., known for its pursuit of aggressive profit targets.The challenge facing the industry is that some cost increases are provoking consumers to reduce purchases: Nestle said higher pricing weighed on shipments in Europe and also at its baby-food unit.Nestle’s quarterly revenue growth was the slowest this century, according to Andrew Wood, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. A later Easter in 2017 pushed chocolate orders into the second quarter from the first this year.Nestle shares rose as much as 1.1% in Zurich, while Unilever gained as much as 1.6% in Amsterdam.Unilever was more aggressive than Nestle in raising food prices in the quarter, with a 3.4% increase, led by more expensive versions of Magnum and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Nestle, which increased prices 1%, was prompted to raise the cost of Nescafe after robusta coffee futures have gained 38% in the past year. Each company’s increases were above analyst estimates.“We’re starting to see some inflationary pressures in the U.K. from the depreciation of the pound,” Unilever chief financial officer Graeme Pitkethly said in a phone interview, adding that the company’s competitors are also raising prices in the country.UK grocer Tesco Plc last year briefly removed some Unilever items from its online store after a dispute over pricing. Distiller Pernod Ricard SA in March lifted the cost of some spirits and wines in the U.K.Positive aspects of the period for Nestle, the maker of Lean Cuisine meals, included accelerating sales in Europe and Asia, Kepler’s Cox said. In contrast, growth slowed to a near halt in the Americas region, hurt by declines in US confectionery and pet care.Unilever cited gains in its home- and personal-care businesses, while sales were unchanged in the food division.The ice-cream unit was helped by new products such as chocolate-coated Magnum pints in a tub. The refreshment unit, which includes ice cream, increased prices by 5%.The Anglo-Dutch company didn’t provide any immediate update on plans to divest its spreads unit, which includes the Flora brand. After fending off Kraft Heinz in February, Chief Executive Officer Paul Polman said Unilever will deliver on promises to increase shareholder returns via buybacks and lift profitability goals.In a first move toward that, the company raised the quarterly dividend by 12% to 36 euro cents a share. Unilever said it’s on track for 2017 underlying sales growth of 3% to 5% and sees an improvement in underlying operating margin of at least 80 basis points. Bloomberg",2017-04-20,"Higher commodity costs, inflation in Brazil and the fall in the pound are contributing to the upward pressure for both Unilever and Nestle",0.4,17:40,"Unilever, Nestle price rises boost outlook as demand plunges " +0,"
Mumbai: As currency in the public hands continues to increase, a lot of new adopters of digital payment systems have returned to cash. Less than half the customers who chose digital payment options during demonetisation continue to use them, said a senior official at the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The total number of new digital payment users in banking went up from around 40 million to 100 million in the first two months after the government invalidated 86% of the country’s currency in circulation on 8 November. Now, three months after the exercise has ended, only 25 million have stuck around, according to Dilip Asbe, chief operating officer at NPCI.“So about 25-30 million new customers came in. Obviously more came in, but 25 million have stayed back. If you would look at regular payment system cycle standpoint, it would have taken a couple of years to reach that stage,” said Asbe, speaking at the launch of a unified payments interface (UPI)-based payments for merchants by digital transactions platform Benow. As on 7 April, currency in circulation stood at Rs13.6 trillion compared to Rs17.97 trillion on 4 November. It had dropped to a low of Rs8.98 trillion as on 6 January following the note ban.Throughout November and December, various digital payments modes such as national electronic funds transfer (NEFT), immediate payment service (IMPS), mobile banking, UPI and mobile wallets all saw a significant jump in the volume and value of transactions made.However, by February, as the cash started returning to the system, this momentum slowed and transactions started dipping. In March, RBI data showed a total of 893.9 million transactions; though this was an improvement from February figures, it was still below the 957.5 million peak reached in December. However, the value of these transactions reached Rs149 trillion—boosted partly by increased real-time gross settlement (RTGS) and NEFT transactions for advance tax payments—well above the previous peak of Rs104 trillion in December. NPCI, on its part, has been pushing new means of digital payment systems. In March, it introduced UPI for merchants as a means to increase the usage of such payments. In a tie up with Reliance Retail and Innoviti, NPCI allowed customers to pay using UPI applications of any bank by scanning a dynamic QR code on point of sale (PoS) terminals. At the time A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, had said that the payments system provider is looking to bring in more merchants on board. Separately, NPCI is in the process of adding more banks for the Bharat QR code, said Asbe. About 20 banks are currently on board with QR code, a new payments technology. Once this number reaches 30-35, more merchants are likely to be on board. “I think there is a separate MDR (merchant discount rate) which is being discussed right now, which I heard is closer to 25 basis points, very similar to debit card (transactions) below Rs2,000,” Asbe said while speaking about Aadhaar-based payments which are likely to be launched shortly. However, Asbe added that the MDR charge was still unclear.",2017-04-13,"As per Dilip Asbe of National Payments Corporation of India, new digital payment users went up to 100 million during demonetisation but only 25 million have stuck around",0.06,04:56,A lot of new adopters of digital payments have returned to cash: NPCI official +0,"
Bengaluru: Amazon India has received the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) approval to launch its own digital wallet in India, paving the way for the American online retail giant to gain a slice of India’s fast-growing digital payments business. Amazon India, which had applied for what is called a Prepaid Payment Instrument (PPI) licence nearly a year ago, will now look to take on established rivals such as Paytm and Freecharge as it prepares to launch a prepaid wallet service that will be broader in scope than its Pay Balance service and will not be restricted to Amazon-based transactions. In December, Amazon had launched its Pay Balance service in order to boost cashless transactions. While Pay Balance works in a similar manner to other mobile wallet services, it was restricted to transactions on Amazon. Amazon confirmed the development, but did not comment on the broader scope of what its wallet service could look like and whether it would cover areas such as bill payments. “We are pleased to receive our PPI licence from the RBI. Our focus is providing customers a convenient and trusted cashless payments experience. RBI is in the process of finalizing the guidelines for PPIs. We look forward to seeing a continuation of the low-limit wallet dispensation with simplified KYC (know-your-customer norms) and authentication. This will allow us to help customers adopt digital payments at scale and thereby contribute towards making India a less-cash economy,” said Sriram Jagannathan, vice-president of payments at Amazon India. Amazon’s new wallet service will look to address a vital problem in the world of payments — like other wallet services such as Paytm, it will help customers bypass the two-step authentication process for online payments using credit or debit cards and makes the process smoother for online shoppers, thus plugging a key gap in the payments process that reduces the risk of loss of business from online shoppers. In September, mobile payments start-up PhonePe Internet Pvt. Ltd, which is owned Flipkart (Amazon’s biggest rival in India), launched an app based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform, which was a key bet for Flipkart, given how payments are still largely an unsolved problem in both online and offline commerce. Amazon received the PPI licence in late-March. The development comes weeks after the RBI issued guidelines on issuance and operation of PPI licences, indicating potentially stricter norms for mobile wallet players as the central bank looks to ramp up focus on security and customer protection. RBI raised the minimum capital requirement for digital wallet operators by nearly five times and introduced a directive for full compliance with Know-Your-Customer (KYC) norms, among other new guidelines, causing an outcry among top digital payments firms. Following the guidelines, top leaders from the payments industry met RBI officials to discuss some of the clauses, including the KYC mandate, which they argued would act as a deterrent towards expanding the digital payments business. “We hope the government and RBI would continue to encourage multiple ways to shift consumers from cash behaviour by recognising the value of digital wallets, used especially for making small value payments to large merchants like e-commerce, government, IRCTC, utility or insurance companies,” said Amazon’s Jagannathan.",2017-04-13,"Amazon India has received RBI approval to launch its own digital wallet, paving the way for the online retailer to gain a slice of India’s fast-growing digital payments business",0.83,04:56,Amazon gets RBI nod for e-wallet in India +0,"New Delhi: The scrip of IT firm Nucleus Software Exports on Thursday surged nearly 5% after the company said its board will meet on 25 April to consider buyback of equity shares. Shares of the company jumped 4.57% to settle at Rs272.15 on BSE. During the day, they soared 7.47% to Rs 279.70. On NSE, the stock surged 4.33% to close at Rs 272.15. “...a meeting of the Board of Directors of the company will be held on April 25, 2017, to consider the proposal of buyback of fully paid up equity shares of the company, up to such amount of the aggregate of company’s paid up equity share capital and free reserves as the Board may decide,” Nucleus Software said in a regulatory filing. Share buyback typically improves earnings per share and is a mechanism to return surplus cash to shareholders, besides supporting the stock price during sluggish market.",2017-04-20,Nucleus Software shares jumped 4.57% to settle at Rs272.15 on BSE after the company said its board will meet on 25 April to consider buyback of shares,1.0,17:13,Nucleus Software shares jump nearly 5% on share buyback plan +0,"
Mumbai: Participatory notes (P-Notes), long vilified for the anonymous nature of their investors and suspected as a route for money laundering, are seeing rising interest among short-term foreign investors as the general anti-tax avoidance rule (GAAR) became applicable from 1 April.Foreign portfolio investors, especially those from countries which don’t have any tax treaties, typically route their investments though so-called special purpose vehicles in Mauritius and Singapore to save on taxes. Mauritius and Singapore have tax avoidance treaties with India. This is a favoured route, especially for hedge funds, while trading in futures and options or investing for the short term. Under GAAR, foreign investors would need to prove that such structures are not aimed at evading taxes. GAAR gives the tax department powers to scrutinize transactions structured in such a way as to deliberately avoid paying tax. Failure to show that a transaction was not structured to evade levies means investors will have to cough up 15% tax on equities and 30% on equity derivatives. Investing via P-Notes has a lower tax liability of 7.5-8%.“Many of the SPV (special purpose vehicle) structures coming from Mauritius and Singapore may not be able to pass the GAAR test. Those investors appear to be interested in accessing the Indian market through the P-Note route,” said Suresh Swamy, a partner at consulting firm PwC in India. Investment bankers, who are also P-notes issuers, are coming out with new products such as one which will allow foreign investors to set off losses against taxes. “Hedge funds are drawing comfort from the fact that the tax rules clearly provide that GAAR provisions do not apply to a person who has invested in ODI (off-shore derivative instruments)/ P-Notes. P-Note issuer should also not ordinarily face a challenge in meeting the GAAR threshold,” said Swamy.Data from the Securities and Exchange Board of India showed that as of February, about 6.6% of all foreign investments in India come through the offshore derivative instrument route. This has fallen from a peak of 55.7% in June 2007 as the capital markets regulator increased its scrutiny on these instruments and P-Notes became less lucrative owing to the renegotiated tax treaties with Mauritius and Singapore. “Structures could be scrutinized if they are designed to primarily avoid taxes. Choice of entity can however be driven by several non-tax considerations too,” said Richie Sancheti, head of investment funds practice at Nishith Desai Associates.“P-Notes respond to the need of investors who seek a streamlined basis for accessing several markets while dealing with very limited number of counterparties. In Indian context, if the participation is not intended to be deep but particular portfolio specific, it would be disproportionate to undergo tax and administrative compliances as a foreign portfolio investor,” he added.",2017-04-13,Participatory notes (P-Notes) are seeing rising interest among short-term foreign investors as general anti-tax avoidance rule (GAAR) became applicable from 1 April,0.06,04:56,P-Notes make a comeback under GAAR +0,"New Delhi: Retirement fund body EPFO has extended the deadline for submitting Aadhaar number to 30 April 2017 for its over four crore members. The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) had set 31 March 2017 as the deadline for submitting Aadhaar number earlier.EPFO has also extended the deadline for submitting digital life certificates for its over 50 lakh pensioners till 30 April to link pension accounts with Aadhaar. “We have extended the deadline for submission of Aadhaar by subscribers to 30 April 2017. Besides, pensioners can also submit their life certificates till 30 April,” EPFO’s Central Provident Fund Commissioner V P Joy told PTI.EPFO had extended the deadline several times in the past. It has also done away with the system of accepting life certificate manually through banks. Pensioners are required to provide life certificates digitally either through their mobile phones or at common service centres or bank branches providing such facility.The latest EPFO order provides that if a pensioner is not able to submit the life certificate in digital format, then the same can be submitted in physical form with valid reasons for not submitting it digitally. It also says that a pensioner would cease to receive payments from May if life certificate is not submitted by 30 April 2017.",2017-04-12,Retirement fund body EPFO has extended the deadline for submitting Aadhaar number to 30 April 2017 for its over four crore members,0.36,17:50,EPFO extends deadline for submitting Aadhaar to 30 April +0,"Mumbai: International Finance Corporation (IFC) Wednesday said it will lend $100 million to Federal Bank Ltd as long-term finance for its International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) branch in Gujarat’s Gift City. The funding is expected to help the bank’s clients in growing their business and supporting the Gift City initiative.Federal Bank’s IFSC unit which opened in November 2015 offers funded and non-funded facilities to overseas operations of Indian corporates, loans to overseas business ventures of non-resident Indians, trade finance solutions to Indian clients etc. It has crossed $200 million mark in total business. Kerala-based Federal Bank has 1,252 branches and 1,665 ATMs.On Wednesday, Federal Bank shares closed at Rs92.55, up 0.76% from its previous close on BSE, touching a high of Rs93.60 and a low of Rs90.75 a share during the day.The private sector lending arm of the World Bank, IFC has an active direct private equity-style investment practice, apart from lending to companies in India. It also has an active limited partner (LP), portfolio in India where it backs PE and venture capital funds focused on India.Other recent investments by IFC in the country include $20 million debt to RGVN Microfinance, $3 million to pi Ventures and up to $30.1 million to Mumbai-based ETC Agro Processing (India) Pvt Ltd, among others.",2017-04-12,International Finance Corp will lend $100 million to Federal Bank as long-term finance for its International Financial Services Centre branch in Gujarat’s Gift City,0.9,20:36,IFC to lend $100 million to Federal Bank for Gujarat’s Gift City branch +0,"New Delhi: No documentary proof is required for getting advance or withdrawal from General Provident Fund (GPF), the minister of state for personnel Jitendra Singh said on Wednesday in New Delhi.The government has simplified and liberalised the conditions for taking advance from the fund for education, illness and purchase of consumer durables with effect from 7 March 2017.“Conditions and procedures for withdrawal from the fund for the purpose of education, illness, housing, purchase of motor vehicles etc. have also been liberalised. “No documentary proof is required to be submitted now for advance and withdrawal applications. A simple declaration by the subscriber is sufficient,” the minister said in a written reply to Lok Sabha.A time limit for sanction and payment of advance or withdrawal has also been fixed, said Singh. He said there is no proposal under consideration of the government to increase/link the rate of interest on GPF at parity with that of Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF).“The interest rates on EPF are decided on the recommendations of the Central Board of Trustees taking into account the yearly income from the investment made by EPFO. The GPF interest rate is presently fixed at par with that of PPF interest rate,” said Singh.",2017-04-12,"MoS for personnel Jitendra Singh says the government has simplified the conditions for taking advance from GPF for education, illness and purchase of consumer durables",-0.32,16:43,"No documentary proof required for GPF advance, withdrawal: Government" +0,"New Delhi: SpiceJet Ltd will start offering streaming movies, cricket and other content on all its flights beginning later this year, becoming the first Indian low-fare airline to do so.All 49 SpiceJet planes will be fitted BoardConnect Portable from Lufthansa Systems, which will store and wirelessly stream pre-loaded content to passengers’ Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices. Full service airline like Jet Airways and Air India already offer in-flight streaming content on some of their flights. SpiceJet, which charges passengers for food, baggage and preferred seating, did not say if it will charge for the streaming video service. The service will also be used to sell products on the flight.“SpiceJet expects to be the first LCC (low-cost carrier) in India to provide this unique entertainment and shopping experience to its customers,” Ajay Singh, chairman and managing director, SpiceJet said in the statement.BoardConnect Portable includes a server and access points in a single device called the Mobile Streaming Unit (MSU). About the size of a conventional tablet, it can be mounted or removed without affecting other components in the aircraft, for example in the galley. An integrated modem allows rapid wireless updates of content while the aircraft is on the ground.In the past, airlines used to install in-flight entertainment systems connected with long wiring behind the back of each seat, which were expensive to maintain. SpiceJet controls a 13% market share compared with IndiGo’s nearly 40% market share. IndiGo, India’s largest airline flies 133 aircraft.SpiceJet shares were up 9.94% at Rs103.20 at 3pm at the Bombay Stock Exchange on Thursday, while the benchmark Sensex was trading 0.17% up at 29,385.23 points.",2017-04-20,"All 49 SpiceJet planes will be fitted BoardConnect Portable from Lufthansa Systems, which will store and wirelessly stream pre-loaded content to passengers’ Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices",0.21,15:38,SpiceJet to offer streaming in-flight content +0,"New Delhi: The government has formed a panel to study the existing framework for virtual currencies such as bitcoin.A finance ministry statement said Dinesh Sharma, special secretary in the economic affairs department will chair the nine-member inter-disciplinary committee. The committee has been tasked to submit its report within three months.Circulation of virtual currencies which are also known as digital/crypto Currencies has been a cause of concern, the statement said. “This has been expressed in various fora from time to time. Reserve Bank of India had also cautioned the users, holders and traders of virtual currencies (VCs), including bitcoins, about the potential financial, operational, legal, customer protection and security related risks that they are exposing themselves to vide its press releases dated 24 December, 2013 and February 1, 2017,” it added.The panel will also have representatives from department of economic affairs, department of financial services, department of revenue, home ministry, IT ministry, Reserve Bank of India, NITI Aayog and State Bank of India.The committee will take stock of the present status of virtual currencies both in India and globally, examine existing global regulatory and legal structures governing them, suggest measures on consumer protection, money laundering , etc; and examine any other relevant matter related to virtual currencies.",2017-04-12,"Dinesh Sharma, special secretary in the economic affairs department, will chair the nine-member committee to study framework on virtual currencies including bitcoins",0.32,16:49,Govt forms panel to study virtual currencies framework +0,"Singapore: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has created a loyalty program for online shoppers in Singapore that it may expand to other markets, teaming up with Uber Technologies Inc. and Netflix Inc. to lure customers.It’s the first time Uber and Netflix have jointly created an online rewards program, said Maximilian Bittner, chief executive officer of Lazada Group SA, the Singapore-based e-commerce operator Alibaba acquired for $1 billion in 2016. The trio’s LiveUp programme starts Thursday and links their services, from UberEats and Netflix to online grocer RedMart and Alibaba’s Taobao online marketplace.Consumers pay S$28 ($20) a year to get benefits such as six months of Netflix streaming, discounts on Uber rides and free delivery on Taobao or Lazada purchases. A mobile app will be rolled out in the second half of the year.“Singapore is the market on the cutting edge of validating what we think consumers might want, so we will focus on Singapore first,” said Bittner, who expects to add more partners. He drew a comparison with code-sharing among carriers, which gives consumers a range of benefits like flight redemptions.Alibaba and its US partners are betting on the growth of online retail in Singapore.The city-state’s internet retailing market, which accounted for just 0.9% of total retail there in 2003, went from 2.4% in 2013 to 4.8% in 2016, according to data compiled by Euromonitor.Faced with the prospect of Amazon making a big push into Southeast Asia, Lazada has been seeking ways to defend its slice of the region’s e-commerce market.Bittner and RedMart co-founder Vikram Rupani hatched the loyalty programme over breakfast on Christmas Eve before approaching Netflix and Uber to get involved. “Their decision to do it was very fast because they have the same goal,” Bittner said. Bloomberg",2017-04-20,"Alibaba customers need to pay only $20 to get benefits such as Netflix streaming, discounts on Uber rides and free delivery on Alibaba’s Taobao or Lazada purchases",0.59,13:33,"Alibaba’s Singapore unit enlists Uber, Netflix to lure customers" +0,"
Mumbai: Mortgage lender Dewan Housing Finance Corp. Ltd (DHFL) plans to sell a majority stake in its Aadhar Housing Finance Ltd unit, two people aware of the development said. Aadhar Housing Finance, which provides housing loans for low- and middle-income customers, had a loan book of Rs1,736 crore as of 31 March 2016. DHFL has hired investment bank Rothschild to find a buyer, one of the two persons said on condition of anonymity.International Finance Corp. (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, holds about a 20% stake in Aadhar Housing.“The process has been just launched and it is too early to talk about potential investors. But, there would be serious interest from private equity investors,” the second person said, also on condition of anonymity. It was too early to talk about valuation, but it could be anywhere between 1.5-3 times the loan book, he added.Established in 2011, Aadhar Housing has operations in 13 states including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar, which account for 72% of India’s population, according to the company website. It lends to those with income levels of between Rs60,000 and Rs6 lakh per annum. Home loans are capped at Rs25 lakh. In FY15, Aadhar Housing’s loan book stood at Rs933 crore.Aadhar disbursed Rs1,032 crore in the first nine months of FY17.An email, text messages and several calls made to a DHFL spokesperson did not elicit any response. An email sent to IFC also did not elicit any response. A Rothschild spokesperson declined to comment.Housing credit growth slowed to 16% from a year earlier, taking overall housing credit to Rs13.7 trillion in the year ended 31 March from Rs12.4 trillion in the previous year, according to a March report by rating agency ICRA Ltd.The affordable housing segment is likely to continue to grow at a faster pace than the industry average, supported by the government’s efforts to address supply, demand and affordability issues. Higher allocations by the government, providing infrastructure status to affordable housing projects and extension of the credit-linked subsidy scheme, which, coupled with the current low-to-moderate penetration levels, are likely to help growth in the affordable housing segment, the ICRA report added.With the prospects of the luxury real estate market remaining bleak, more builders are shifting their focus to the affordable housing sector in India, which may create increased revenue for housing finance firms in India. Besides, the government’s push for affordable housing also created a boom in this space. A new credit-linked subsidy scheme for the middle-income group with a budget of Rs1,000 crore has been launched by the Union government. As part of its vision of ‘Housing for All by 2020’, credit-linked subsidy scheme was launched under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana programme targeted at the middle-income group earning as much as Rs18 lakh a year.Against the backdrop of increased demand in affordable housing , a handful of leading home financiers are raising funds. Discussions are on with private equity (PE) investors to raise money to meet expansion plans.In February, Mumbai-based Home First Finance Co. India Pvt. Ltd said private equity firm True North was in advanced talks to acquire a majority stake in Home First Finance for around $100 million. Shubham Housing Development Finance Co. Pvt. Ltd is looking to raise around $100 million from PE funds, as the company looks to increase its loan portfolio and expand its network nationally, Mint reported last year.Aspire Home Finance Corp. Ltd, the mortgage lending unit of Motilal Oswal Group, is also in the market to raise funds.Expanding its presence in a segment that offers loans for low-cost houses, IFC announced its plan to invest in three housing finance firms—Aspire Home Finance, Micro Housing Finance Corp., and Aptus Value Housing Finance India Ltd—through non-convertible debentures.The US-based PE fund Carlyle had purchased New Silk Route-controlled financial services firm Destimoney in February 2015, which also resulted in an indirect acquisition of a 49% stake in PNB Housing Finance Ltd.",2017-04-20,Dewan Housing Finance has hired investment bank Rothschild to find a buyer for its 80% stake in Aadhar Housing Finance,0.25,08:47,Dewan Housing Finance may sell majority stake in Aadhar Housing Finance +0,"New Delhi/Mumbai: India’s newest petrochemicals maker is seeking to sell half its $4.6 billion facility to Saudi Arabian Oil Co., according to people with knowledge of the matter.Formal talks between ONGC Petro additions Ltd (OPaL). and the world’s biggest oil exporter, known as Saudi Aramco, will start soon, said the people, who asked not to be named as the information isn’t public. OPaL’s earlier talks with a unit of Kuwait Petroleum Corp. about investing in the project stalled last year, the people said.A spokesman for OPaL was unable to comment. Saudi Aramco and Kuwait Petroleum didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.The investment could help Saudi Aramco strengthen its hand in the world’s largest oil consuming region as it prepares for what may be the biggest-ever initial public offering. India’s per capita consumption of polymer products, which is about a third of the global average, is expected to expand as a growing middle class, increasing income levels and higher urbanization drive growth, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said last month while inaugurating OPaL’s plant.“India’s petrochemical business is booming and Aramco will definitely want to be a part of this growth,” said Vaibhav Chowdhry, an analyst at KR Choksey Shares & Securities Pvt. Ltd. The country’s petrochemical market is expected to grow as fast as 12% annually for next several years, he said.Oil & Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC), which owns the biggest stake in OPaL, entered into a preliminary cooperation agreement in January 2014 with Petrochemical Industries Co., a subsidiary of state-owned Kuwait Petroleum. Talks between OPaL and PIC about the Kuwaiti company investing in the Indian project stalled last year, according to the people. OPaL hosted a team from Saudi Aramco at its plant in Gujarat last month, they said.Rising incomeHigher demand for these products prompted billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd and the nation’s biggest refiner Indian Oil Corp. to expand their petrochemicals businesses. Reliance invested about $19 billion to double the capacity of its petrochemicals unit, while Indian Oil will spend $4.6 billion to add new facilities and expand existing units.Saudi Aramco, which is the biggest supplier of crude oil to India, has shown interest in a proposed 60 million tonnes-a-year refinery and petrochemicals project being planned by Indian state refiners on the nation’s west coast, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on 30 March.The Saudi oil major has already invested in integrated refining, chemicals, marketing and distribution companies in the region. Last month, it bought half of a Malaysian oil refinery and petrochemical plant and signed a deal to provide up to 70% of its crude requirements. Separately, the Saudi oil giant signed a $6 billion oil refinery deal with Indonesia’s PT Pertamina.Dahej plantOPaL’s Rs30,000-crore petrochemical project is a dual-feed cracker with a capacity to produce 1.1 million tonnes a year of ethylene and 400,000 tonnes of propylene, according to its website. The plant, located at the Dahej Special Economic Zone, started production last year and aims to capture 13% of India’s polymer sector by next year, according to its website.While investment in OPaL will allow Aramco to access India’s growing market, the Indian company will be able to use the Saudi company’s export channels to push products in the international market, two of the people said. ONGC has said it intends to hold 26%, with state utility GAIL India Ltd owning 15.5%, after half of OPaL is sold. Bloomberg",2017-04-20,"Formal talks between ONGC Petro additions Ltd (OPaL), and the world’s biggest oil exporter, Saudi Aramco, will start soon",0.56,08:56,India said to woo Aramco for 50% OPaL sale as Kuwait talks stall +0,"New Delhi: Public sector IDBI Bank said a section of employees who were to go on a one-day nationwide strike on Wednesday have called it off. “It is advised that proposed one-day nationwide strike on 12 April 2017 by united forum of IDBI officers and employees in support of their demands has been called off,” IDBI Bank said in a BSE filing. On Tuesday, the bank had informed about a day’s strike on 12 April 2017 to press their demand related with wage issues. The association had also written a letter to finance minister Arun Jaitley, seeking his intervention in the matter. “Yesterday there was a conciliation meeting in Mumbai held by the deputy chief labour commissioner and the management has been advised to finalise the wage revision settlement before May 8,” All India Bank Employees’ Association general secretary C. H. Venkatachalam said in a statement. In view of this, the strike to be observed on Wednesday has been deferred and the union has decided to attend bilateral talks to explore the possibility of settlement, he said. The bank’s stock was trading 0.99% lower at Rs75.30 apiece on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on Wednesday.",2017-04-12,IDBI Bank says union planning a nationwide strike on 12 April has decided to attend bilateral talks to explore the possibility of settlement on wage issue ,-0.2,14:54,"IDBI Bank union calls off strike, wage issues being discussed " +0,"New Delhi: The income tax department on Tuesday asked financial institutions (FIs) to get self-certification from account holders by 30 April to comply with FATCA provision and avoid blocking of accounts.“The account holders may be informed that, in case self-certifications are not provided till 30 April 2017, the accounts would be blocked, which would mean that the financial institution would prohibit the account holder from effecting any transaction with respect to such accounts,” the CBDT said in a statement.The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) also advised all financial institutions that all efforts should be made by them to obtain self-certification. India had entered into an agreement with the United States for implementation of the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) with effect from 31 August 2015. Under the Income Tax Rules, the financial institutions had to obtain self-certification from account holders by 31 August 2016, in respect of all individual and entity accounts opened from 1 July 2014- 31 August 2015. In view of the difficulties faced by stakeholders, the tax department had on 31 August 2016, indefinitely extended the deadline for complying with self-certification norms. In today’s statement, the CBDT said queries were received from the financial institutions regarding the revised time lines for completion of due diligence. It said if the account is blocked due to lack of self-certification, then the transactions by the account holder in such blocked accounts will be permitted once the self-certification is obtained and due diligence is completed. Under the FATCA provisions, financial institutions are required to obtain self-certification and documentation or else they were required to close the accounts and report the same if found to be a “reportable account” as per the prescribed due diligence procedure for a pre-existing account.FATCA allows automatic exchange of financial information between India and the US.",2017-04-12,Income tax department asks financial institutions to get self-certification from account holders by 30 April to comply with FATCA provision and avoid blocking of accounts,-0.32,15:32,CBDT asks financial institutions to get accounts self-certified by 30 April +0,"New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) “killed several birds with one stone” in its policy meet on 6 April by not sucking out excess liquidity with its permanent tool like open market operations (OMO) and cash reserve ratio (CRR) hike, an HSBC report says.According to the global financial services major, the RBI’s decision to narrow the policy rate corridor by raising the reverse repo rate and lowering the MSF (marginal standing facility) rate killed several birds with one stone. “The RBI seized the day on April 6 by not sucking out the excess liquidity via a permanent and blunt tool (like OMO sales or CRR hike). Instead, by outlining its inclination for ‘variable reverse repo auctions with a preference for longer term tenors’....,” HSBC said in a research note. “The RBI, in our view, had its ‘carpe diem’ moment... by not sucking out liquidity... Rather, it aims to mould it gently to give desirable behavioural change a fair shot,” the report added. The six-member monetary policy committee, headed by RBI governor Urjit Patel, on 6 April kept the repurchase or repo rate—at which it lends to banks—unchanged at 6.25% but increased reverse repo rate to 6% from 5.75%. The MSF, on the other hand, has been revised downwards by 0.25% to 6.5%. MSF is RBI’s overnight lending rate for banks against government securities. Following demonetisation, excess liquidity of around Rs4 trillion was sloshed around in the banking system and had distorted the short end of the yield curve, the report said.“Several short term money market rates such as the CBLO and the T-Bill rates had moved significantly below the repo rate. Pushing up the reverse repo rate is expected to raise these and bring back some normalcy,” HSBC added. There are, however, some risks associated with this move. The RBI has to be watchful of any inflationary pressures post a pick up in demand, and the central bank will also need to make sure that banks are not parking funds in unproductive or risky avenues, the note said.",2017-04-12,"RBI’s decision to narrow the policy rate corridor by raising the reverse repo rate and lowering the MSF rate killed several birds with one stone, says HSBC",-0.27,15:30,RBI had ‘carpe diem’ moment in last policy meet: HSBC +0,"Beijing: Alan Du, a venture capitalist and World Series of Poker veteran, was in his fifth day of matching wits against his stone-cold opponent— and his losses were piling up.His rival was literally inhuman. That’s because Du went up against “Lengpudashi” an updated version of the Libratus artificial intelligence program that achieved a major milestone by besting four of the world’s best poker pros in January. Housed within a super-computing centre near Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, its name, intended to resemble its English moniker, fittingly translates into “cold poker master.”Du and five team members played 36,000 hands against the machine over the course of five days. On Monday, at a resort conference centre on China’s Hainan island, the final point-based score was announced: the AI won by a landslide.Poker is a popular game among venture capitalists because “every hand you play is like a venture, trying to assess risk and ROI,” said Du, a seed investor who became the first mainland Chinese to win a WSOP gold bracelet in Las Vegas last year. “We held ourselves very well when playing against this world-class opponent.”Poker’s complex betting strategies and the element of bluffing make it particularly intriguing to AI researchers. A player also decides to bet, bluff or fold without ever seeing the opponent’s full hand—a different kind of challenge than games like chess or Go, in which all the pieces are clearly visible on a playing board.Du had tried to prevail where the pros had fallen short by employing an understanding of AI. Unlike the players in the January match-up who drew upon years of professional experience, Du’s Chinese team included engineers, computer scientists and investors, who attempted to apply their knowledge of machine intelligence and game theory to counter the machine’s moves. It wasn’t enough.The latest AI exhibition, organized by Sinovation Ventures and Hainan’s government, didn’t generate quite the same buzz as last year’s match-up between Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo and Korean master Lee Sedol in Seoul. Perhaps that’s because even casual observers are becoming accustomed to seeing AI software upstage humans. Google announced Monday its DeepMind AI software will take on top-ranked Chinese player Ke Jie in a rematch of man versus machine.Tuomas Sandholm, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon, has been honing the research underlying Libratus since 2004, honing its ability to make decisions in situations with imperfect information. The point of training AI to win at games like chess, Go, and poker isn’t for the sake of games themselves, but because controlled environments help computers hone strategic decision-making. Those reasoning skills can then be applied to real-world problems such as business, finance, and cybersecurity, he said.“People have a misunderstanding of what computers and people are each good at. People think that bluffing is very human—it turns out that’s not true,” said Noam Brown, Sandholm’s PhD student and a co-developer of Libratus. “A computer can learn from experience that if it has a weak hand and it bluffs, it can make more money.”The AI didn’t learn to bluff from mimicking successful human poker players, but from game theory. “Its strategies were computed from just the rules of the game,” not from analyzing historical data, Sandholm said.Venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee, founder of Sinovation and an event organizer, said the rapid acceleration of AI technology over the past five years wasn’t possible before the advent of big data analysis. His fund has invested $120 million in AI-related companies in China—including facial recognition and loan-application start-ups—and he plans to devote a significant chunk of the money he’s currently raising to other AI ventures.Also evident in the Hainan exhibition was the possibility of AI’s gradual democratization. Brown said the computing power on display over the competition could be had for under $20,000.“It’s surprisingly affordable,” he said. “Within 5 years, this could be running on smartphones.” Bloomberg",2017-04-11,The latest version of the Libratus artificial intelligence program achieved a major milestone by besting four of the world’s best poker pros in January,0.65,14:10,"Poker-playing engineers take on AI machine, get thrashed" +0,"
Bengaluru: Global information technology (IT) services spend in 2017 is projected to grow 2.3% to $917 billion, estimates Gartner Inc., lower than its earlier estimate of 4.2% and the 3.6% growth recorded in 2016, on account of protectionist policies, especially in the US.The lower IT services spend does not bode well for the country’s $150-billion software services sector which is already facing challenges posed by newer technologies, such as cloud computing and blockchain, making many companies alter the way they do business.Worldwide IT spend in 2017 is projected to grow 1.4% to $3.46 trillion, down from Gartner’s earlier forecast of 2.7% on account of the strength of the US dollar. Despite the revised guidance, overall IT spend globally will be 0.4% higher than last year. “The modest changes to the IT services forecast this quarter can be characterized as adjustments to particular geographies as a result of potential changes of direction anticipated regarding US policy—both foreign and domestic,” Gartner said in a press release on Monday.“The strong US dollar has cut $67 billion out of our 2017 IT spending forecast,” said John-David Lovelock, research vice-president at Gartner. “We expect these currency headwinds to be a drag on earnings of US-based multinational IT vendors through 2017.”The IT services market accounts for $21 billion of the $67 billion decline in Gartner’s latest estimate. Data centre systems, enterprise software and communication services are the three other segments that have now been estimated to grow at a slower pace than the earlier estimate, said Gartner. Personal computers, tablets and mobile phones, classified as devices, is the only segment which Gartner expects will grow at a faster pace. Since the start of the year, Indian IT firms have been rattled by some of the decisions made by the administration of President Donald Trump. In addition to some of the legislation aimed at changing the way America allows companies to bring in engineers from abroad, the new Trump administration has made two policy changes. In March, the US government did away with a provision that allowed fast-track processing of H-1B work visas. Earlier this month, the US put out a stricture asking companies when they bring in a foreign computer engineer under an H-1B visa to prove that the employee is performing a “speciality occupation”. Equity analysts said the protectionist measures could be worrisome for Indian IT firms. “This event shows that protectionist measures can be put in place even without passing new legislation and impact IT companies as early as in FY18,” Sagar Rastogi and Utsav Mehta, analysts at Ambit Capital, wrote in a 5 April note.In February this year, industry body Nasscom surprised many when it delayed giving a growth projection for 2017-18. Nasscom cited regulatory changes in the US and uncertain macroeconomic outlook as the reasons behind pushing back its annual growth estimates for the sector.",2017-04-11,"Gartner has lowered its growth estimates in global IT services spending due to US visa policy, automation and newer tech like cloud computing and blockchain",0.3,03:48,Gartner sees IT spending growing at a much lower 1.4% in 2017 +0,"Singapore: Aliza Knox helped Twitter Inc. and Google Inc. build Asian businesses from scratch. Now she plans to do the same for an Australian mobile advertising start-up whose backers include 21st Century Fox Inc. co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch.Knox quit as Twitter’s most senior Asian executive this month to join Unlockd, a company that offers users a discount on wireless bills, additional data or entertainment content if they agree to view ads when unlocking their device screens. As chief operating officer, the former Google executive will spearhead the start-up’s global expansion.The Melbourne-based firm, which got off the ground in 2014, joins a growing list of companies—from Amazon.com Inc. to startup Jana—targeting a global mobile advertising market that researcher eMarketer expects to reach $101 billion in 2016.“They are totally aggressive about the business and getting things done,” said Knox, who hails from the San Francisco Bay area and worked at Boston Consulting and Visa before joining Google, mostly in Singapore and Australia. “But they also have the humility that this is a competitive environment.”Unlockd now reaches about a million users through partnerships with carriers such as Boost Mobile, a subsidiary of Sprint Corp., Tesco Mobile Ltd in the UK and Digicel Group Ltd in the Caribbean. It works with advertisers including Uber, McDonald’s, British Airways and Doritos, and its content partners include Twitter, Yahoo and the Facebook Audience Network.The company is now in talks with carriers to expand into several new markets, including India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, company co-founder and chief executive officer Matt Berriman said. Unlockd may eventually set up a regional office in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, he added.“We expect at least two or three markets to be launched in the next six to nine months,” Berriman said in a phone interview. The company, which has raised about A$25 million ($19 million), plans to announce the closing of its Series B round in coming weeks, he added. New investors as well as existing backers joined the round, he said. Unlockd’s backers include Peter Gammell, former CEO of Seven Group Holdings.Berriman, 32, met Knox over drinks in December at a restaurant across from the Twitter building in San Francisco. They were introduced by a headhunter who thought Knox’s management experience could come in handy at Unlockd. What appealed to Knox about the Australian start-up were its strong growth potential and culture. “What I love doing and I have proven to be good at doing is taking companies from almost nothing to a really significant presence,” Knox said. “Unlockd has a tremendous growth potential.” Bloomberg",2017-04-11,Aliza Knox quit as Twitter’s most senior Asian executive this month to join Australian mobile advertising start-up Unlockd,0.39,08:39,Twitter’s former Asian chief joins mobile ad start-up Unlockd +0,"San Francisco/ Washington: Qualcomm Inc. accused Apple Inc. of lying to regulators to spur investigations of the chipmaker, and threatening it to cover up the use of inferior parts in some iPhones.The world’s largest maker of phone semiconductors responded to a January lawsuit from Apple with counterclaims for damages late Monday, alleging the iPhone maker breached contractual pledges, mischaracterized their agreements and misrepresented facts.“We were really stunned by some of the things that they included in their suit,” said Qualcomm’s General Counsel, Don Rosenberg. “This is our attempt to respond to some disturbing elements in their complaint.”At the heart of the worsening standoff is a commercial dispute over how much Qualcomm is entitled to charge phone makers to use its patented technology, whether or not they use its chips. The San Diego, California-based company gets the majority of its profit from licensing technology that covers the fundamentals of all modern mobile phone systems. Qualcomm shares are down 12% since Apple sued 20 January, wiping more than $10 billion off the chipmaker’s market value.Apple is alone among major handset makers in not paying Qualcomm directly and has instead paid through contract manufacturers in Asia who build the iPhone. It’s now meddling in the legal agreements Qualcomm has with those suppliers, including Foxconn Technology Co. as it pressures the chipmaker to cut a more favourable deal on licensing fees, Rosenberg said.According to Qualcomm, Apple is behind regulatory investigations of its business practices worldwide. Cupertino, California-based Apple has lobbied with “false and misleading statements to induce regulators to take action against us because it would be in their commercial interests,” Rosenberg said.In December South Korea’s antitrust regulator slapped a record 1.03 trillion won ($902 million) fine on Qualcomm for violating antitrust laws. Then, in January, the US Federal Trade Commission accused it in a lawsuit of forcing Apple to use its chips exclusively in return for lower licensing fees and unfairly cutting out competitors. It’s also facing investigations in Europe and Taiwan.Apple filed its antitrust complaint 20 January in Qualcomm’s hometown of San Diego, accusing the chipmaker of illegally trying to control the market for chips and improperly withholding more than $1 billion in “rebates” to punish the iPhone-maker for talking to Korean regulators.Apple sought to have its case joined with one filed by the US Federal Trade Commission in Northern California.The FTC has also accused Qualcomm of illegally maintaining a monopoly for semiconductors in mobile phones. Apple’s request was denied 5 April. Qualcomm is now trying to have the FTC case dismissed.In addition to the $1 billion in withheld fees, Apple is seeking billions more in compensation for what it calls past overcharges, and lower royalties going forward.Qualcomm says Apple has soured a decade worth of working together and has threatened Qualcomm, to try to prevent it from publicly speaking about the performance of the iPhone 7. Some models of that device rely on Intel Corp. modems for their connections to phone networks and, according to Qualcomm, aren’t as good as the ones that use its modems.“We didn’t ask for this fight. Apple is a customer,” said Rosenberg. “We, of course, would like to continue to and will continue to do business with Apple.”While Apple’s iPhone revolutionised the smartphone industry in 2007 with its sleek design and user-friendly apps, none of them would have worked without the foundational technology developed by Qualcomm and other companies, Rosenberg said.He said Qualcomm gets “a small fraction” of the price of an iPhone, and contrasted that with the more than $1 billion Apple sought from rival Samsung Electronics Co. over the use of patented features like a pinching motion to expand or contract images.Qualcomm said it’s been the biggest contributor to the standardized technology that forms the foundation of all modern telecommunications.All companies that developed the standards pledged to license patents on those standards on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.Regulators and courts worldwide have been struggling with how to interpret that pledge, including how to calculate royalties and what rights the patent owners retain when it comes to recalcitrant would-be licensees. Qualcomm is seeking court rulings that it complied with its obligations and that its agreements with contractors follow licensing commitments. It also wants the court to rule that it’s Apple who’s been in breach of contract and that it’s engaged in unfair competition. Bloomberg",2017-04-11,At the heart of the standoff between Apple and Qualcomm is a commercial dispute over how much the latter is entitled to charge phone makers to use its patented technology,-1.0,10:26,Qualcomm accuses Apple of lying to regulators and making threats +0,"San Francisco: Past cyber attacks on scores of organizations around the world were conducted with top-secret hacking tools that were exposed recently by the Web publisher Wikileaks, the security researcher Symantec Corp. said on Monday.That means the attacks were likely conducted by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The files posted by WikiLeaks appear to show internal CIA discussions of various tools for hacking into phones, computers and other electronic gear, along with programming code for some of them, and multiple people familiar with the matter have told Reuters that the documents came from the CIA or its contractors.Symantec said it had connected at least 40 attacks in 16 countries to the tools obtained by WikiLeaks, though it followed company policy by not formally blaming the CIA.The CIA has not confirmed the Wikileaks documents are genuine. But agency spokeswoman Heather Fritz Horniak said that any WikiLeaks disclosures aimed at damaging the intelligence community “not only jeopardize US personnel and operations, but also equip our adversaries with tools and information to do us harm. “It is important to note that CIA is legally prohibited from conducting electronic surveillance targeting individuals here at home, including our fellow Americans, and CIA does not do so,” Horniak said.She declined to comment on the specifics of Symantec’s research.The CIA tools described by Wikileaks do not involve mass surveillance, and all of the targets were government entities or had legitimate national security value for other reasons, Symantec researcher Eric Chien said ahead of Monday’s publication. In part because some of the targets are US allies in Europe, “there are organizations in there that people would be surprised were targets,” Chien said. Symantec said sectors targeted by operations employing the tools included financial, telecommunications, energy, aerospace, information technology, education, and natural resources.Besides Europe, countries were hit in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. One computer was infected in the US in what was likely an accident - the infection was removed within hours. All the programs were used to open back doors, collect and remove copies of files, rather than to destroy anything.The eavesdropping tools were created at least as far back as 2011 and possibly as long ago as 2007, Chien said. He said the WikiLeaks documents are so complete that they likely encompass the CIA’s entire hacking toolkit, including many taking advantage of previously unknown flaws. The CIA is best-known for its human intelligence sources and analysis, not vast electronic operations. For that reason, being forced to build new tools is a setback but not a catastrophe.It could lead to awkward conversations, however, as more allies realize the Americans were spying and confront them.Separately, a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers on Saturday released another batch of pilfered National Security Agency (NSA) hacking tools, along with a blog post criticizing President Donald Trump for attacking Syria and moving away from his conservative political base. It is unclear who is behind the Shadow Brokers or how the group obtained the files. Reuters",2017-04-10,"Symantec says it connected at least 40 attacks in 16 countries to the tools obtained by WikiLeaks, though it followed company policy by not formally blaming the CIA",-0.7,20:08,Symantec attributes 40 cyber attacks to CIA-linked hacking tools +0,"
I left India for America as a post-graduate student in the late 1980s. In those days, the issuance of an H-1B visa to employees of Indian firms to enter America to work without having first studied at an American university was unheard of.Most Indians went to America as students on what was called an F1 visa. The line outside the US Consulate in Madras would start to form around 2am; no appointments were given, and visa interviews were on a first-come, first-served basis.Many of these Indian students opted to stay back in the US; their US employers filed for H-1Bs on their behalf—employing them after they had finished Master’s or PhD courses from an American university.The flood of H-1B visa holders who came in directly from India without first getting an American degree started in earnest only in the mid 1990s.The American-schooled Indian F1 crowd sneered at these new arrivals, and derisively referred to them as “FOB” or “fresh off the boat” Indians.The H-1B holders came up with their own unkind epithet about their American-schooled Indian brethren, calling them “coconuts”. I trust that this insult will need no further explanation if I simply ask you to look at the different hues on the inside and the outside of a coconut.In those years, the main impediment to “fresh off the boat” Indian programmers was that many Americans would complain about their Eastern, non-linear way of thinking, and bemoan the lack of quality in their work.None doubted their individual competence and sheer brilliance at raw programming, but the quality of the finished product when stitched together was doubtful. This was in contrast to America’s almost Germanic obsession with process, which, luckily for us coconuts, we had imbibed during our periods of study at American universities.The Indian IT services industry quickly caught on to this, and set about transforming themselves with zeal. They entered the cocoon of Carnegie-Mellon University’s ‘SEI’ or Software Engineering Institute’s ‘CMM’ or Capability and Maturity Model as chrysalises and emerged with wings, stamped with a CMM Level 5 certification.Any organization that received this certification could claim to be the best in the world when it came to the quality of their software engineering processes—and if my memory serves me right, when I returned to India in 2002, there were over 60 CMM Level 5 certified organizations in India, compared with a low single-digit number in the West. The “low quality” objection from American companies simply disappeared. Urban legend has it that Jack Welch, when speaking of General Electric’s large scale move into India and its use of Indian outsourcers, remarked, “We came for the cost, but stayed for the quality.”This was all very well in the 1990s and the noughties—an age when processes around computer engineering had emerged from the Neanderthal world of computer assembly language and machine-level coding into a process famously called the “waterfall process” of computer programming—a logical, sequential method for designing and developing software, more suited to the world of Homo Sapiens-Sapiens.The waterfall method begins with gathering the user’s requirements for the programme, after which the process moves into system architecture and design before it is handed over to the programmers.The programmers then write the requisite computer code before handing it over to the testers, who test each unit of code, as well as the entire programme. The finished programme is then tested by users for acceptance before a final “regression” test checks how it will interact with other computer programmes already in use.Only after a programme has passed all stages of the cascades in this waterfall process is it finally released into an “always-on” environment. The quantity of computer code was simply measured in how many thousands of lines of coding instructions a computer programme contained, and the elegance of the waterfall process allowed for CMM to easily be the arbiter of quality in what was a logical sequence of events. There have been variations on the waterfall process in the past two decades. The mid 1990s saw a move to “object-oriented” programming, which was less tightly organized around logic, and more around actual actions, and computer code came to be measured in “function points” rather than in thousands of lines of code.Methods such as “Agile” and “Dev-Ops” have been all the rage recently. I shall not delve into a detailed explanation of each of these so as not to bore you, and because I don’t understand them fully. But, as computer programming moves from the world of Homo Sapiens-Sapiens into the Artificially Intelligent world of sapient machines which can program themselves, new methods of checking for the quality and integrity of computer coding capabilities are the need of the hour. The added dimension of the cyber-security of the code and the associated data only magnify this need.Unsurprisingly, an organization is now trying to take on this mantle. The Consortium for IT Software Quality, or CISQ, is a sponsored special interest group founded jointly by the SEI at Carnegie-Mellon University and the Object Management Group. CISQ is chartered to create international standards for measuring the size and structural quality of software after analysing the actual computer source code written for Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and “bot” programmes, rather than the various processes used to build these programmes, and regardless of whether the code is generated by a human or a computer.The executive director of CISQ, Bill Curtis, led the development of the CMM model while at the SEI, and the organization is now trying to build credence as an arbiter of software quality. Its heritage, and its pivot down to the source code level while ignoring the various programming processes, means that it has a high chance of success.Siddharth Pai is a world-renowned technology consultant who has led over $20 billion in complex, first-of-a-kind outsourcing transactions.",2017-04-11,"As computer programming moves into the Artificially Intelligent world, new methods of checking for the quality and integrity of computer coding capabilities are needed",0.59,00:53,Quality in the age of quantum computing +0,"Washington: The advance of technology is the biggest reason workers are earning a shrinking slice of the income pie, according to a new study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).Labour’s share of national income declined in 29 of the world’s 50 biggest economies between 1991 and 2014, the IMF said in a study released Monday.Analysis suggests “technology is the largest contributor to the change in labour shares in the large majority of countries,” it said.The second main component of income is capital. When wages grow more slowly than productivity, labour’s share of income falls as the owners of capital reap gains at a quicker pace. That often worsens income inequality because capital tends to be concentrated in the hands of a few, the IMF said in a blog accompanying the research.The IMF’s finding is significant because economists have been debating what’s to blame for decades of sluggish wage growth. President Donald Trump has blamed trade with countries such as China and Mexico for hurting American workers and hollowing out the nation’s manufacturing sector. The IMF study suggests technology is a bigger driver.About half the decline in national labour shares can be traced to the impact of technology, according to the study, which is part of the World Economic Outlook. The full outlook, including the fund’s forecasts for global growth, will be released 18 April in Washington.Workplace robotsThe study notes the rapid advance of information and communications technology has accelerated the automation of routine tasks, causing firms to substitute capital for workers.Global economic integration has also played a part in labour’s declining share of income, the IMF said. The impact of changes in policies and institutions appears to be limited, though it’s difficult to say how much of the slump has to do with the decline of labour unions, according to the fund.The IMF has warned before of the threat from the growing use of robots. A paper by fund economists in September drew on science fiction as well as economic analysis to show the likely “profound negative implications” for income distribution of increased automation. It even depicted an extreme scenario, or singularity, “in which capital takes over the entire economy to the exclusion of labour.” Bloomberg",2017-04-10,"Analysis suggests technology is the largest contributor to the change in workers’ income share in the large majority of countries, according to a new study by the IMF",0.29,20:18,"Technology hits workers’ income share more than trade, IMF says" +0,"New Delhi: India’s annual fuel demand is estimated to grow at 5.8% in the fiscal year 2017-18 higher than the previous year, government data showed on Tuesday, indicating improved industrial activity.Local fuel demand—a proxy for oil demand—in India rose about 5% in 2016-17 as economy slowed in the March quarter after government scraped old notes.Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November declared notes of Rs500 and Rs1,000 illegal tender, taking about 86% of total currency out of circulation, in a move that hit sales of cars and motorcycles.India is likely to consume 205.4 million tonnes of refined fuel in 2017/18, data posted on the website of the petroleum ministry’s Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell showed.“We expect slightly better than 5% growth in 2017/18, only risk is GST (goods and service tax) related. Implementation of GST could slow industrial activity in the small and medium industries and that could dampen diesel demand,” said K. Ravichandran, senior vice-president at ratings agency ICRA Ltd.From 1 July, New Delhi aims to roll out GST, one of the most significant reforms since India opened its economy in the early 1990s. The tax will harmonise a mosaic of state and central levies into a national sales tax.Diesel demand is estimated to grow 3.8% while that of petrol seen rising about 10% in this fiscal year, the data showed, reflecting robust demand for passenger vehicles.A gradual step up in gas demand and improved electricity supply could impact consumption of gasoil in the country. However, gasoil use is still expected to be higher than the last year driven by rising vehicle sales.India is promoting use of liquefied petroleum gas, used for cooking, to replace kerosene and that would raise sale of the cleaner fuel. Reuters",2017-04-11,Local fuel demand—a proxy for oil demand—in India rose about 5% in 2016-17 as economy slowed in the March quarter after demonetisation,0.1,22:31,India’s 2017-18 fuel demand seen up 5.8%: Govt +0,"Bengaluru: The Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) on Tuesday approved an 8% hike in tariff in 2017-18 for all categories of consumers in order to bridge a revenue gap for the previous fiscal, mitigate power purchase costs and an increase thermal power fuel costs. KERC cleared an 8% hike against a demand of 25% by electricity supply companies. Justifying the tariff hike, it said it was needed to cover the revenue gap of Rs2,616 crore. Karnataka has been forced to procure costlier short-term power due to reduced availability of cheaper hydel power owing to poor monsoon, the commission said.The new tariffs will come into effect retrospectively from 1 April.",2017-04-11,Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission cleared an 8% hike against a demand of 25% by power supply companies,-0.08,23:10,Karnataka hikes power tariffs by 8% +0,"London: Technology that uses flying drones to generate electricity from wind is getting a boost from the German utility E.ON, which is backing a test project that may show if it can help cut the costs of producing power offshore.The machines stay airborne like kites to tap the energy of high-altitude wind currents. The force of the wind would push forward the drones, which would tug at a cable anchored to drive a power turbine. The technology still is in its early stages, with a handful of pilot projects around the world, including one bought up by Alphabet Inc. in 2013.“E.ON has been looking into airborne wind technologies for five years, and we believe it has true game-changing potential,” said Frank Meyer, a senior vice-president at the utility. “It supports one of our overall targets to drive down the cost of renewable energy, and also allowing production of renewable energy at locations where it is currently not economically and technically feasible.”E.ON believes the industry could take off in the first half of the 2020s, according to spokesman Markus Nitschke. The company is planning to be an early adopter of the technology, he said by e-mail. Airborne energy is projected to be cheaper than the mainstream form of offshore wind power if it is commercialized, partly because it doesn’t use as much material.Costly foundationsFoundations and towers for traditional wind turbines make up about 30% of the capital required to install the equipment offshore, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Moving into deeper waters further off the coast will increase these costs, although the windier conditions may balance this out by driving the turbines more often.ALSO READ: Renewables surpass other energy sources in capacity addition in FY17The drones are also expected to have a higher capacity factor because they fly higher where the winds are stronger, meaning they would produce power more often, according to Udo Zillmann, head of the Airborne Wind Energy Industry Network.“Based on tests by E.ON, the capacity factor is about 70%,” Zillmann said. “Operating offshore wind parks are less than 50%. Based on that and the lower development costs, the end goal could be to halve the cost of offshore wind energy.”Dutch developerE.ON is working with Ampyx Power, a Dutch developer, on the project. E.ON will build and operate a demonstration site for airborne wind energy in northwestern Ireland, which Ampyx will use for its current trial and the next version of its machine, which it hopes will be commercialized. The company expects to start testing by mid-2018. E.ON wants multiple companies to use the site eventually.The German utility previously invested in another airborne wind energy developer known as Kite Power Systems, or KPS. Last December, the utility, Schlumberger Ltd. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s venture fund jointly put £5 million ($6.2 million) into the UK company.“While in principle we are technology-agnostic, we consider this cooperation with Ampyx Power a major step in our efforts to take a leading role in furthering the promising emerging airborne wind energy sector,” Meyer said. Bloomberg",2017-04-11,The German utility E.ON is backing a drone project in which the machines stay airborne like kites to tap the energy of high-altitude wind currents,0.56,16:55,Flying drones that generate power from wind get backing from German firm E.ON +0,"New Delhi: People in Himatnagar area in Gujarat get the most uninterrupted power supply in the country, while residents of Mankachar in Assam grapple with an average 188 instances of power cuts a month.According to Urban Jyoti Abhiyaan or Urja, the power ministry’s application tracking service delivery to consumers in towns across the country, Kerala, Maharashtra and Rajasthan top the list in supplying uninterrupted power, while Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Assam have a lot to catch up.The Urja application meant to bring transparency in the performance of utilities and states captures the stark contrast in how consumers are served in different parts of the country. Data up to the town level on parameters like the number of power cuts in a month, the duration, severity of power theft and pending consumer complaints and connection requests put pressure on states to improve service delivery at the last mile of the electricity value chain.In Maharashtra and Gujarat, power supply is disrupted for only up to three hours on an average in a month, while the average monthly power outage duration in Haryana is a crippling 48 hours. Data at town level is captured to compute the state average. Bhavnagar in Gujarat and Erandol, a town in Jalgaon district in Maharashtra, have the least power outages of 0.16 hours in a month, while it is 253 hours in Karimganj in Assam.Andhra Pradesh has reported the least amount of power theft, while it is the highest in Uttar Pradesh. There were no pending requests for power connection in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Sikkim and Tripura in March 2017, while 84% of requests were pending in Goa in the same month.Utility performance varies across states as power distribution is often influenced by political considerations that prevent tough reform measures relating to pricing and power theft which in turn affect utilities’ ability to invest further in technology to boost efficiency and service quality.Union power minister Piyush Goyal is set to launch a related application ‘Urja Mitra’ on Tuesday allowing utilities to inform consumers about power outages. A rural feeder monitoring scheme, also to be launched on Tuesday, will track the quality of power supply in rural areas.State-power utilities are at present going through a debt restructure and turnaround scheme which involves reducing power theft and eliminating the gap between their average cost of power supply and the average revenue realized. State governments, which took over three-fourths of the accumulated debt of distribution companies, are keeping a close watch on the performance milestones. According to Sambitosh Mohapatra, partner, energy utilities and mining, PwC India, as the demand for power picks up and the gap between cost of service to revenue realised is bridged, many utilities will become profitable in the next two-three years.",2017-04-11,"Government’s Urja app shows Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Assam lag in supplying uninterrupted power",0.2,13:00,"Kerala, Maharashtra, Rajasthan top list in providing uninterrupted power: Urja app" +0,"Seoul: Google Inc. has offered to invest at least 1 trillion won ($880.29 million) to help South Korea’s LG Display Co. Ltd boost output of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens for smartphones, the Electronic Times reported on Monday citing unnamed sources. The paper said Google offered the investment to secure a stable supply of flexible OLED screens for its next Pixel smartphones. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd’s flagship Galaxy smartphones use the bendable displays, while Apple Inc. is expected to start using them in at least some of its next iPhones. LG Display declined to comment, while Google could not be immediately reached for comment. Reuters",2017-04-10,"Google offered the investment to secure a stable supply of flexible OLED screens for its next Pixel smartphones, says a report by the paper",0.57,11:14,Google offers at least $880 million to LG Display for OLED investment: report +0,"
Mumbai: An infrastructure fund of Australia’s Macquarie Group Ltd has agreed to buy about 330 megawatts (MW) of operational solar assets from power producer Hindustan Powerprojects Pvt. Ltd for an enterprise value of $600 million, said two people familiar with the discussions. The deal, which will give Macquarie an entry into India’s renewable energy sector, is in an advanced stage of completion and an agreement has been signed, these people said, asking not to be named as the discussions are private. Macquarie Asia Infrastructure Fund (MAIF) will hold a 100% stake in these assets, which are spread across 18 special purpose vehicles, largely in the state of Gujarat, these people said. The projects have been operational since 2010 and have thus signed power purchase agreements at tariffs higher than the prevailing solar energy tariffs. The Macquarie Group declined to comment. A spokesman for Hindustan Powerprojects also declined comment. Of the $600 million deal value, $250 million is the equity value and about $350 million is the debt associated with the projects, one of the two people cited above said. Macquarie wants to create a renewable energy portfolio consisting of solar and wind projects in India and is simultaneously on the lookout for other assets, this person said. The deal comes at a time when merger and acquisition activity in the sector has heightened and several clean power producers are looking for growth capital. Hindustan Powerprojects, formerly Moser Baer Projects Pvt. Ltd, currently operates about 600MW of solar power capacity under subsidiary Hindustan Cleanenergy and led by its chairman Ratul Puri. The firm also operates a 1,200MW coal-fired plant in Madhya Pradesh, in which a Macquarie and State Bank of India fund have previously invested Rs580 crore. Mint had reported last month that Macquarie and Hindustan Powerprojects were in talks for the sale of about 320MW in solar assets. Delhi-based Hindustan Powerprojects, formed in 2008, was among the first firms to set up solar projects in India. It plans to reach 2 gigawatts (GW) in total solar capacity by 2017 end and has a target of hitting 7GW of total capacity by 2020 from coal, solar and hydel power sources. Macquarie is a leading owner and operator of infrastructure assets globally. Since starting its first infrastructure fund in India along with the State Bank of India in 2009, Macquarie has deployed about $2 billion in India’s infrastructure sector. It invested through Macquarie-SBI Infrastructure Fund and infrastructure trust SBI-Macquarie Infrastructure Trust till 2013. It has been investing from MAIF I since 2014. Private equity firm Blackstone Group Lp, which had invested about $300 million in Hindustan Powerprojects in August 2010 and holds more than 30% in the firm, may consider exiting its stake in 2017 through a public listing of the power firm, Mint had reported on 31 December 2015. In fiscal year 2017, India added 5,526MW of new solar capacity (up 83% from the previous year) and 5,400MW of new wind capacity (up 63%), according to consultancy Bridge Io India. “While these numbers are impressive, it is worth noting that the solar capacity addition including rooftop solar is almost 50% below the annual target of 12,000MW. In contrast, wind capacity addition was +35% over the 4,000MW target,” Bridge To India said in a note on Monday. India’s renewable energy market will need $200 billion in investments to reach its target of 100GW of solar energy and 60GW of wind energy by 2022. There is currently over 10GW of solar capacity and 32GW of wind capacity installed across the country.",2017-04-11,The acquisition of solar power assets of Hindustan Powerprojects gives Australia’s Macquarie Group an entry into India’s renewable energy sector,0.64,03:29,Macquarie to acquire solar power assets of Hindustan Powerprojects in $600 mn deal +0,"
New Delhi: The Automotive Research Association of India (Arai) has successfully tested lithium-ion batteries developed by the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre for use in two- and three-wheelers, a development that is expected to provide a fillip to India’s electric vehicles (EV) push.The government is now planning to transfer the technology to companies for commercial production of these batteries, and will also set up a central agency to lead the country’s EV programme. This was decided at a meeting chaired by road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday. India’s initiatives on solar energy and electric vehicles are closely linked. The country plans to generate 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 100GW is to come from solar power projects. With storage being the next frontier for India’s clean energy push, the batteries in EVs offer a potential solution.India’s EV programme would help with grid balancing, besides complementing the government’s push for solar power, which is generated during the day and can be stored in EV batteries. “The technology should be transferred to companies in the private or public sector or joint ventures for commercial production of batteries. Bhel (Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd) is interested, but more companies should be roped in,” a government official said, requesting anonymity.Bhel is exploring the feasibility of manufacturing cells and batteries with technology developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (Isro) for application in electric vehicles, as reported by Mint on 31 March. Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre is part of Isro.Enthused by the market potential for EVs in India, state-owned firms such as Bhel, Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd (PGCIL) and NTPC Ltd are looking at new businesses catering to the space. While Bhel, India’s largest power generation equipment maker, wants to manufacture electric vehicles such as buses, cars, two-wheelers and boats, PGCIL, the power transmission utility responsible for establishing green energy transmission corridors, is considering setting up charging stations for EVs.Also, Vedanta Resources Plc is firming up its clean energy plans for India, encouraged by the opportunities offered by the country’s growing green economy. As part of the strategy, the firm is looking at developing battery storage solutions. “The need for bringing all issues related to non-polluting vehicles under one agency was also pointed out. At present, there are multiple agencies involved,” added the official cited earlier.Experts say solar power and EVs are a great combination.“EV on a clean fuel source is a better option for India. It is very important to have an enabling provision and one agency to spearhead the programme. There should also be continuous innovation to bring the cost of battery down and enabling support for infrastructure such as charging stations. It should be available across the country within a definitive time frame in order for EVs to take off as a mass product,” said Abdul Majeed, partner and national auto practice leader, PricewaterhouseCoopers.Queries emailed to cabinet secretariat, ministries of road transport and highways, Isro and the department of space late on Sunday evening remained unanswered. Arai director Rashmi Urdhwareshe didn’t respond to phone calls or a text message.The Friday meeting was also attended by cabinet secretary P.K. Sinha, road transport and highways secretary Sanjay Mitra, secretary in department of space Alur Seelin Kiran Kumar, director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre K. Sivan and Arai’s Urdhwareshe.Any shift to electric vehicles will help reduce pollution and fuel imports. India’s energy import bill is expected to double from around $150 billion to $300 billion by 2030. The government has been trying to push sales of electric vehicles and has set an ambitious target of selling six million by 2020.",2017-04-11,The government is planning to transfer the battery technology to companies for commercial production,0.25,03:29,Batteries developed by Isro may be used in India’s electric vehicles +0,"Washington: A federal US agency responsible for processing of H 1B application for foreign IT professionals on Saturday said it has reached the congressionally mandated 65,000 visa cap for the 2018 fiscal year.“US Citizenship and Immigration Services has reached the congressionally mandated 65,000 visa H 1B cap for fiscal year 2018,” an official announcement said. Also Read: H1B visa: IT investors may as well say goodbye to recovery in FY18US Citizenship and Immigration Services has also received a sufficient number of H1B visa petitions to meet the 20,000 visa US advanced degree exemption, also known as the master’s cap, the statement said. However, unlike previous years, it did not say how it is going to determine the successful applications, which in the past had been through a computerized draw of lots.PTI",2017-04-08,"US Citizenship and Immigration Services responsible for processing of H1B application says it has reached the congressionally mandated 65,000 visa cap for the 2018 fiscal year",0.52,09:39,H1B visa application caps reached +0,"Delhi/Mumbai: Iran will cut some benefits to Indian state-run refiners on crude purchases after New Delhi decided to reduce the amount of oil it buys from the Persian Gulf nation, people with knowledge of the matter said.National Iranian Oil Co. will cut the credit period on crude oil sales to 60 days from 90 days for refiners such as Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd. and Indian Oil Corp., the people said, asking not be identified as the matter isn’t public yet. Iran will also reduce the discounts it offers on the shipping of crude to 60% from 80%, they added.The lower incentives will make Iranian purchases costlier and less competitive in a world awash with crude oil where rivals such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq are seeking to expand their market share. Iran’s crude sales to India more than doubled in 2016 after the lifting of sanctions over its nuclear program. India is Iran’s second biggest customer and the emerging center of global oil demand.India in turn, is using the supply glut to put pressure on Tehran for securing development rights to the Farzad-B gas field in the Persian Gulf, which was discovered by an Indian consortium led by ONGC Videsh Ltd. about a decade ago. Iran and India were aiming to conclude an agreement on developing the field by February. The South Asian nation, which stood by Iran during the sanctions, is seeking to invest as much as $20 billion in Iran’s energy industry and ports.Cutting purchasesIndian state-run refiners told Iran last month that they would cut oil purchases by 3 million tons during the financial year that started 1 April, the people said. MRPL and Indian Oil will reduce imports by 1 million tons each, while Hindustan Petroleum Corp. and Bharat Petroleum Corp. will cut purchases by about half a million tons each, according to the people.India’s overall oil imports from the Persian Gulf nation touched 19.8 million tons during April-December last year, compared with 12.7 million tons in the 2015-16 financial year, according to oil ministry data.Iran’s oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said “there are many other customers” if India decides to cut imports, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported on 5 April. Reuters earlier reported Indian state refiners will cut oil imports from Iran by a fifth.India’s oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said 6 April that it’s up to the state refiners to decide on Iran crude volumes.MRPL spokesman Prashanth Baliga couldn’t comment immediately, while an Indian Oil spokesman declined to comment. National Iranian Oil Co.’s public relations office in Tehran didn’t respond to an email and two calls seeking comment. Bloomberg",2017-04-10,"Iran may cut the credit period on crude oil sales to IOC, MRPL to 60 days from 90 and reduce the discounts on shipping of crude to 60% from 80%, people familiar with the matter said",-0.5,04:43,"Iran said to cut benefits on oil sales to India’s IOC, MRPL after reduced import" +0,"New Delhi: India’s fuel demand fell 0.6% in March compared with the same month last year.Consumption of fuel, a proxy for oil demand, totalled 17.36 million tonnes, data from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) of the oil ministry showed.Sales of gasoline, or petrol, were 2.95 higher from a year earlier at 2.11 million tonnes.Cooking gas or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) sales increased 1.9% to 1.89 million tonnes, while naphtha sales surged 1.8% to 1.15 million tonnes.Sales of bitumen, used for making roads, were 12.25 lower, while fuel oil use edged lower 23.45 in March.",2017-04-10,"Consumption of fuel, a proxy for oil demand, totalled 17.36 million tonnes, data from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) of the oil ministry showed",-0.32,12:32,India’s fuel demand fell 0.6% year-on-year in March +0,"
Mumbai: Finnish state-run utility Fortum Oyj’s India unit, which last year drove down solar power tariff to a new low, will set up at least 250 megawatts (MW) of solar capacity in the country every year, managing director Sanjay Aggarwal said.The local unit of Fortum will also enter the waste-to-energy sector and launch charging stations for electric vehicles to gain a larger hold in India’s renewable energy sector, Aggarwal said.Exactly a year ago, Fortum said it would invest €200-400 million (Rs1,500-3,000 crore) in India’s solar energy sector to set up some large-scale greenfield projects. The company will have about 200MW of solar energy capacity operational by August. It has a target of achieving 1GW of solar capacity in the next few years. The company plans to set up its solar projects across utility plants, business-to-business, and rooftop projects, Aggarwal said. “We will keep on bidding for new projects and our appetite would be to add about 250MW every year,” Aggarwal said. “In India, we are looking at four pillars: the first would remain solar, second would be the bio-ethanol plant, we want the third to be in waste to energy, and fourth, we want to launch charging stations for e-vehicles. But the engine of Fortum India will be solar.”The company’s bid for a solar project in a Rajasthan auction last year drove tariffs to a low of Rs4.34 per kilowatt-hour. Solar tariffs have this year fallen to a record-low of Rs3.30 a unit on a levelized basis—i.e., a value financially equivalent to the tariffs over the period of the power purchase agreement.The parent had last year bought a majority stake in a company called Chempolis Ltd, which has a memorandum of understanding with Numaligarh refinery for putting up a bioethanol plant. The plant would collect bamboo from across Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur and convert the cellulose to ethanol, which would then be blended with petroleum products. “There are no success stories in India so far in waste-to-energy, a bedrock of Fortum in the Nordics... We would like to position ourselves in the space and also use the dominant position in the Nordics with respect to charging stations for e-vehicles,” he said. Fortum opened its India office in September 2012 and acquired a 5MW solar power plant in Rajasthan in 2013. In 2015, its 10MW solar photovoltaic plant was commissioned under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission.In January 2016, Fortum won an auction for a 70MW project in Rajasthan and three months later won another for 100MW in Karnataka. By August, the company will have 200MW of operational solar power capacity in India, Aggarwal said.Aggarwal said his unit continues to look at merger and acquisition opportunities in renewables. Average solar tariffs in India have fallen by about 73% since 2010, almost in line with Chinese spot prices for solar power modules, which have also fallen by about 80% in the same period, Mercom Capital Group said in a report last month.Intense competition in reverse auctions for solar projects due to limited supply of projects has pushed companies to bid lower, sacrificing margins, in order to gain market share, the report said.",2017-04-10,"Apart from solar power, Fortum India will also enter the waste-to-energy sector and launch charging stations for electric vehicles, said MD Sanjay Aggarwal",0.24,04:35,Fortum India to add 250MW solar power capacity every year +0,"
Mumbai: Hyderabad-based renewable energy producer Mytrah Energy India Pvt. Ltd is in advanced talks to raise Rs1,800 crore in structured debt funding from Piramal Capital’s structured finance group (SFG), two people directly aware of the development said on condition of anonymity. According to them, the deal is at a term-sheet level and will be one of the largest structured debt investments by Piramal group till date.Mytrah plans to use the funds to refinance its debt and provide exits to some of its current investors such as IDFC Alternatives, AION Capital and Merrill Lynch International before its planned initial public offering (IPO). “The transaction will go towards refinancing the company’s debt in various special purpose vehicles (SPVs),” said the first of the two people cited above. “Apart from refinancing, the funds will also go towards funding projects at various stages of development,” the person added.Emails sent to Mytrah Energy and separate emails and text messages sent to Shirish Navlekar, joint managing director and chief financial officer at Mytrah Energy, went unanswered. Piramal declined to comment.Mytrah Energy is one of the largest private firms in the renewable energy sector—it operates about 920 megawatts (MW) of wind energy projects and recently won bids to develop about 500MW of solar energy capacity. At least two of Mytrah’s existing investors, which include AION Capital and IDFC Alternatives, are keen to exit before the IPO, said the second of the two persons cited above.In September, Mint reported that Mytrah Energy has hired investment banks Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd and IDFC Bank Ltd to start working on a public listing that could see the firm raise between $250 million and $300 million.IDFC Alternatives, the asset management arm of IDFC Ltd, invested Rs350 crore in Mytrah in 2011 while AION Capital, a special situations fund, along with Merrill Lynch International, invested Rs400 crore in 2015.According to disclosures made by Mytrah Energy, its finance cost increased by $16 million by end June 2016 to $42.16 million, largely due to a higher interest on newly commissioned operating assets. In a recent report, credit ratings agency India Ratings said Mytrah Energy has refinanced existing debt of 543MW of projects and in the process raised another Rs300 crore which was used to fund the promoter’s contribution requirements for capex. “By exploiting the tail period of these operational projects, the company has leveraged the balance sheet of the SPVs and raised additional debt. This has substantially increased the debt levels of the consolidated entity to about Rs6,200 crore from close to Rs5,200 crore at end-FY16,” the report said.Piramal Capital has been largely active in the mid-market space and the potential transaction marks a shift towards higher value deals. Mint reported in March that Piramal was in talks to invest up to Rs1,500 crore in Krishnapatnam Port Co. Ltd (KPCL) to enable the firm’s promoters to buy private equity fund 3i Group Plc. “With the number of funds active in the mid-market space going up significantly in the past one year, that’s one of the primary reasons why Piramal is now looking at deals of bigger size of more than Rs1,000 crore where the competition is less,” the first person said, adding: “Apart from KKR there aren’t too many funds who can routinely fund such large transactions.”Currently, Piramal Fund Management manages or advises funds over Rs8,000 crore on the equity side and Rs4,000 crore of gross disbursements on the debt side. This includes six domestic funds, one offshore fund and three third party mandates.",2017-04-11,"Mytrah Energy plans to use the funds to refinance its debt and provide exits to investors IDFC Alternatives, AION Capital and Merrill Lynch before its planned IPO",0.47,02:57,"Mytrah Energy in talks to raise Rs1,800 crore from Piramal Capital SFG" +0,"
Barring an unlikely extension of his tenure, these are U.K. Sinha’s last few weeks as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).Will he make them count?Mint reported earlier this week that the markets regulator is looking to increase its oversight of the boards of stock exchanges.This is reportedly in response to the findings that the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd’s (NSE) practices with regards to co-location services were unfair. Sebi has already done a fair bit to address this. It took an active interest in the appointment of independent directors on NSE’s board, according to Bloomberg Quint. And one version of the turn of events at NSE is that it was the presence of these new board members that led to the eventual exit of the exchange’s chief executive officer and its group operating officer. While all of this sounds good, the elephant in the room is the lack of penal action against the exchange.Note that two separate investigations have found that the NSE provided unfair access to some trading members. And worse still, all accounts suggest NSE attempted a cover-up, which is a far worse crime.NSE is going ahead with an initial public offering, or IPO, against the backdrop of a crisis of confidence and credibility.Will Sebi penalize the exchange?From the looks of it, this seems unlikely.But Sebi and Sinha must realize that this creates a huge moral hazard.If the regulator doesn’t take penal action against NSE, the message to the exchanges is that you can take such risks and get away without a penalty.In other words, the benefits from such practices will always outweigh the costs.The best way to avoid recurrences in future is to impose high penalties in such cases.Venkatesh Panchapagesan, adjunct professor, finance and control area, Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore, says: “As exchanges transition into listed entities, it is important for the regulator to ensure that regulatory lapses are dealt with punitively. Otherwise, the desire for profits will always trump the costs associated with regulatory oversight. Self-regulation will fail then.”To elaborate: while in theory Indian exchanges are expected to perform various regulatory roles, in practice these can be viewed as irritants—costs that eat into profits made by other divisions.While this is a challenge with all exchanges, the problems are pronounced for listed exchanges, where profits are in focus far more regularly. One way to deal with this is to carve out regulatory roles into a separate entity, as suggested in this column earlier.But as we await Sebi’s readiness to move in this area, the best alternative for now is to severely penalize any lapses that come to light. That way, the exchanges won’t dream about compromising on regulatory oversight of markets, trading members and listed companies.All of this is crucial because even a mere perception of unfairness in an exchange can lead to a loss of investor confidence and result in costs to the economy such as an increase in cost of capital. Some investors could well look at an episode such as this and decide to stay away from the Indian markets.On the other hand, if Sebi is seen as a proactive regulator, which doesn’t take regulatory lapses lightly, it will attract new investors to Indian shores.In short, there’s a whole lot at stake, and it’ll be a pity if the only thing that Sebi comes up in its board meeting on Saturday is to tinker with the boards of stock exchanges.At the least, it should make its findings against NSE public. J.R. Varma of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad says in a blog post that this is material information about the operation of one of India’s most critical financial market infrastructure institutions and must be disclosed.Another aspect that has become amply clear is that having caps on shareholding hasn’t helped in this case. It’s true that a dominant shareholder may run riot and it makes sense to avoid a repeat of the National Spot Exchange Ltd fiasco. But it’s also true that even a company executive with no shareholding can run riot by being overly profit- or market share-focused.In this backdrop, all that the narrow shareholding caps have done is thwart competition for entrenched exchanges. This, in turn, has led to hubris—NSE’s appointment of its group operating officer on a contractual basis being a prime example.Even now, market participants who are unnerved by the findings at NSE have no great options to move their business. Not too long ago, they had moved business from BSE to NSE because of concerns about the former’s governance.Sebi must realize that encouraging competition in the exchange space will entail tremendous benefits to the marketplace. Of course, this will have to go hand in hand with a robust oversight of the markets by the regulator. But this can has been kicked down the road for far too long. It is high time Sebi revisits shareholding caps for investors in stock exchanges.If it even allows companies to own a 26% stake, global exchanges such as CME Inc. and Intercontinental Exchange may find it attractive to enter the Indian markets, and it can lead to far better competition in the stock exchange space.Of course, to Sebi’s credit, the listing of exchanges will result in positive outcomes, including a greater scrutiny of exchange practices. A listed NSE would have witnessed a huge slump in value because of allegations of unfair access, and may have acted as a check on the management. Even so, Sebi has far better tools at its disposal to ensure good governance at exchanges. It must use them.",2017-02-10,Outgoing Sebi chairman U.K. Sinha should address the NSE algo trading case and avoid creating a moral hazard,0.4,11:44,Will U.K. Sinha exit Sebi with a bang? +0,"
A few quarters ago, a press conference on the financial results of State Bank of India (SBI) paused comically after a chunk of plaster fell on the stage from above. Smirks in the audience indicated they had taken this as a metaphor for the deteriorating bad loan situation. Stretching that metaphor, can we say SBI’s book is on the mend like the auditorium—the venue for that conference—that is under renovation now?On the face of it, the numbers for the third quarter resemble a chess board as for every positive metric, there is a negative one. The largest lender’s slippages remained around Rs10,000 crore, unlike many of its peers, which showed a decrease. But upgrades surged, indicating stress has eased. Note that this improvement is despite the demonetisation blow to the asset side. Of course, the bad loan ratios, both gross and net, rose simply because of the measly 4.2% loan growth.But for ugly bad loan ratios, two heartening numbers are the sequential reduction in stressed assets ratio (which is gross bad loans plus restructured standard assets) to 9.54% and a fall in credit costs to 1.92%. Further, more than 70% of slippages are from the watchlist that SBI put out in March, which means the lender has got its diagnosis right on toxic assets. The list itself is down 31% to Rs17,992 crore, which represents just 2.66% of the total corporate loan book.The management’s outlook for its asset book is anything but sanguine and the stock movement this year suggests even investors have not abandoned caution. SBI shares have risen 12% this year; but so have the benchmark indices. Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairman of the bank, hopes loan disbursals will grow 6.5% in 2016-17. The loan growth for FY18 is pegged at 11% and that, too, on the base effect, given this year’s limited growth.Bhattacharya also pointed out that demonetisation has set the bank back by a quarter in mending its bad loans. Its mid-corporate and small and micro enterprise customers were the worst hit by the currency withdrawal, and bad loan ratios rose sharply. Moreover, as Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd points out, SBI used the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) special dispensation to classify loans worth Rs2,000 crore as standard in the wake of demonetisation.Ignore the one-time relief and SBI’s already formidable stock of bad loans at Rs1.08 trillion would have increased further. The bank highlighted that fresh loans disbursed by it are to corporate entities having a rating above ‘A’ and that a slow but sure pick-up in economic activity would eventually translate into higher credit growth. But for FY17, asset quality will look nasty, and the only saviour for the stock is that it currently trades at 1.27 times the estimated book value of FY18 earnings, which is cheap.",2017-02-11,"But for ugly bad loan ratios, two heartening numbers at SBI are the sequential reduction in stressed assets ratio to 9.54% and a fall in credit costs to 1.92%",-0.15,02:32,December quarter results indicate SBI limping back to normalcy +0,"
There are many reasons for the Tata Motors Ltd stock to have a bumpy ride—they range from the Brexit effect to Cyrus Mistry’s exit and more recently, demonetization. And now, we have a deplorable set of numbers put forth by the company for the December quarter, which practically writes off the stock’s near-term prospects. Not surprisingly, the stock plunged by 4% and its DVR (differential voting rights) tanked even harder by 6% after the results were announced.
ALSO READ | Tata Motors Q3 profit plunges 96% on losses in India ops, lower JLR profitAlthough the consolidated net revenue at Rs66,855.1 crore was in tune with Street estimates, it was the operating performance that was the biggest let-down. It was harder to fathom because the UK subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover Ltd (JLR), which has been leading profits higher quarter after quarter, for the first time hugely failed investors.Consolidated operating margin fell by about 500 basis points to 7.6% from a year ago, mainly because JLR’s upward margin trajectory was punctured. It contracted from 14.4% to 9.3%—the first time to single digits since fiscal year 2010. The Tata Motors management in its media meet explained that runout in one of its premium models, significant marketing expenses, biennial salary negotiations and new model launches led to this margin drop. Add to this an unfavourable currency and product mix too.One wonders though, if its new product lines are yielding lower profit margins. Indeed, JLR sales have been maintained thanks to the expansion in US markets, even when China briefly wobbled and Europe was still inching up. But higher market penetration and share led to margin erosion during the quarter. The consequent weak operating profit trickled down to weaker net profit, almost half of that clocked a year back.The story was similar for the stand-alone company on home ground too. Demonetization impacted commercial vehicle sales, though its passenger cars fared better than the industry during the quarter. But again, it was the 345 basis points drop in operating margin to 1.5% that was a big let-down from the Street’s expectation of 4.2%. Net loss at Rs1,000 crore was more severe than that charted out by brokerage firms.Therefore, the consolidated net profit of Rs111.6 crore was a distant cry from the ambitious average expectation of Rs2,264.5 crore by 20 Bloomberg analysts.For now, it does not appear that the results disappointed on account of any one-off provisions or write-offs. Therefore, a bigger slide in the Tata Motors stock, which closed at Rs486.80 on Tuesday, may not be surprising. Certainly, brokerage firms will trim the earnings forecast for the near term.Yes, it cannot be ignored that JLR, the prized cash-cow of Tata Motors, is continuing to add sales volumes. What needs to be watched is whether growth will come at the cost of margins. If so, it will cap the earnings momentum leading to an erosion in valuation too.",2017-02-15,The deplorable set of numbers put forth by Tata Motors for the December quarter practically writes off the stock’s near-term prospects,0.29,07:57,"Tata Motors has a bumpy ride ahead, with JLR misfiring" +0,"
Shares of UPL Ltd, formerly United Phosphorus Ltd, gained 83% in the past one year as the company maintained the growth tempo despite the turbulence in its consumer markets. The December quarter (Q3) has been no different.Revenue and volume are up 18% from a year ago. As has been the case in recent quarters, Latin America led the growth with a 37% rise in revenue. What came as a surprise though is a strong 20% growth in the India business.A combination of dry spells, delayed crop seasons and demonetization-induced disruption to business has reduced growth expectations of agrochemical companies. Validating that view, Rallis India Ltd recently reported a subdued 8% growth for the December quarter despite a favourable base.UPL’s India business also has the benefit of a favourable base—revenue in Q3 last fiscal was down 17%. Even then, as one analyst with a domestic broking firm points out, the growth is stronger than expectations. “A crop shift in favour of pulses, soyabean, oilseeds and corn resulted in improved demand for herbicides, which helped drive the top line,” Sharekhan said in a note.In Latin America, the company benefited from better crop area and yield improvements in Brazil, a large market for UPL in terms of revenue. Its insecticide brands did well due to the high infestation of sucking insect in soybean. In North America, the business was flat as low incomes made farmers wary of investing in agriculture inputs. Business in Europe grew 8%. Its herbicides products did well, the company said in its results presentation.While revenue in the rest of the countries grew 2%, Latin America and India stood as major growth drivers for UPL. In a conference call with analysts, the management maintained a 12-15% revenue growth forecast and 60-100 basis points expansion in operating margin.Achieving the growth guidance may not look challenging, especially with revenue already rising 14% so far this fiscal.But the growth outlook in the current quarter is less sanguine. The major consumption phase is over in three key geographies-the US, Europe and India. “Management has also cautioned for a tougher operating environment during Q4 FY17 in North America, Europe and India,” Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd adds.This puts the growth burden on Latin America. Thankfully, the prospects in the region, especially Brazil, remain encouraging.Though the valuation at 16 times one-year-forward earnings estimates does not look expensive yet, two factors will play a crucial role in the continuing outperformance of the UPL stock.One is the maintenance of revenue growth momentum. The second is a recovery in the US and European farm sectors. These will ensure broad based growth and increase investors’ confidence in UPL’s 2017-18 prospects.",2017-01-30,"While revenue at UPL in the rest of the countries grew 2%, Latin America led the growth with a 37% rise in revenue",1.0,07:41,UPL’s India business surprises positively in December quarter +0,"
Tata Steel Ltd’s shares have doubled in value in the past year, thanks to an improvement in market conditions and prospects of a cut in exposure to the loss-making European business.
ALSO READ | Tata Steel registers first profit in 5 quartersThe company’s December quarter results may cause some more cheer among investors. Reported operating profit was far higher than Street expectations, thanks largely to an unusual jump in the profits of its India business.Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of the India business rose by as much as 70% quarter-on-quarter to Rs3,393 crore, thanks to both better volumes and realizations. But as pointed out in this column last month, the jump in sales last quarter could well be due to one-off factors, and the performance may not sustain going forward.ALSO READ | Why is India’s steel consumption rising?According to analysts, sales in the December quarter were aided by advance purchases ahead of an expected price hike in January, as well as some dealers stocking up using demonetized currency. If underlying steel demand hasn’t improved as much, the increase in inventory levels may well hurt going forward. As such, it makes sense to wait and watch for signs of improvement in underlying demand before jumping to conclusions just based on last quarter’s results.The European operations reported a sharp decline in profit as expected, thanks to higher raw material and energy costs as well as due to a planned yearly maintenance stop. In the near term, the profitability of the business depends on how prices of coking coal move.More importantly, though, investors will be keen to see a lasting solution to the European problem through an M&A (mergers and acquisitions) deal, such as the one being discussed with ThyssenKrupp AG. The latter has said that Tata Steel must fix its pension deficits before merger talks can be taken forward. If the deal doesn’t materialize, investors will be clearly disappointed. After all, one of the reasons the company’s shares have done well in the past year is because of prospects of cutting losses in Europe through M&A deals.The silver lining, of course, is that price realizations have improved, and the Indian business has been doing far better than it has done in years.",2017-02-08,"Tata Steel shares have done well in the past year is because of prospects of cutting losses in Europe through M&A deals, such as the one with Thyssenkrupp",0.85,03:06,There may be more to Tata Steel’s bumper profit than meets the eye +0,"
At a recent gathering of limited partners (LPs), one asked, “Can fund managers influence Indian promoters?’’ In a tone that oscillated between an unproven suspicion and an open secret, another quipped, “Some operating teams are a little more than window dressing for LPs.”In an industry where persistence in performance has fallen and available data is selective, this is not an easy question to answer. We got down to the business of comparing the performance of private equity (PE)-backed companies, and what we found may surprise you. PE advocates active governance. Empirical research demonstrates that ‘active ownership’ over strategy, executive appointments, operational improvement and acting early contribute to better returns. The converse holds true too—not acting, or doing so late, produces worse returns. Our survey of LPs and portfolio company CEOs shows investors get credit for selection, exercising controls over capital decisions and improving board efficiency. However, the operating team’s role varies widely. When it’s all about the numbers, PE delivers. Comparing PE-backed and non-PE backed company performance, PE outperforms on revenue and earnings growth. Simply put, they grow faster and deliver higher margins while doing so—this appears to be true from the first year through the fifth year of ownership (t=1 to 5). Although performance and relative outperformance diminish over time, the results are clear. So, what capabilities are being built here?• Willingness to engage in cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As): over 80% of PE-backed companies clinched their first cross-border deal after PE investment. Many portfolio companies see PE as a vehicle to make acquisitions.• Stronger export growth: At an average, PE-backed companies grow exports over 2x their non-PE backed counterparts in every sector, with the exception of pharma—where they grow exports in line with non-PE backed companies.• More jobs, better talent: PE-backed companies created more jobs. Indexed to 100 at the time of investment, over a five- year period, they grew jobs 1.5x versus 1.15x for non-PE backed companies of similar sectors and size. Clearly an outcome of higher revenue growth. Why does outperformance diminish over time? You can cut costs and introduce productivity initiatives to improve margins within 12-18 months. Quick improvements offer rapid top-line improvements. Yet, most short-term fixes, even if structural, offer short-lived advantages.Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) outperformance requires more frequent capital re-allocation. Companies often defer these strategic actions and investments, since they have a longer horizon to impact than most PE investors are willing to underwrite. There is clear evidence that with sufficient granularity in strategy, these investments pay off over time.Company outperformance needs to translate into returns for investors. This is a challenge. Where there is pricing discipline and early intervention, we are optimistic it will, especially as greater experience settles into PE teams in India. Vivek Pandit is a senior partner of McKinsey & Co. in India and is based in Mumbai. ",2017-02-06,"Comparing private equity-backed and non-private equity backed company performance, PE outperforms on revenue and earnings growth",0.79,01:25,Does private equity add value to companies they invest in? +0,"Sydney: Ensuring a smooth ride is all very well, but drivers need to be thinking about their destination if they hope to get anywhere. That’s a lesson Toyota Motor Corp. needs to learn before its rivals start to overtake.Shares of the world’s biggest carmaker fell the most in three months on Tuesday after third-quarter results released after the previous day’s close.The biggest worry in those numbers shouldn’t be the yen: While currency effects hacked 205 billion yen ($1.8 billion) off third-quarter operating profit, the sharp reversal in the Japanese currency after the US election means foreign exchange will provide all of the 150 billion-yen improvement in Toyota’s full-year forecast. The deeper problem for shareholders is Toyota’s curiously pessimistic assessment of the future.ALSO READ: Honda cites growing electric car demand for Hitachi ventureA look at the front page of Toyota’s investor presentation illustrates the problem:The cover stars are the latest iterations of the Toyota Camry—a vehicle first introduced in 1982—and the Camry Hybrid, a decade-old line based on the hybrid technology that Toyota first rolled out when the original Prius models went on sale 20 years ago. Even President Akio Toyoda couldn’t help making a joke out of calling the Camry “sexy” in a speech to the Detroit motor show last month.Compare this with Daimler AG, which led its investor presentation the previous week with an image of the Tron-styled grille of its EQ electric concept vehicle:If you think pretty pictures don’t give much useful information to investors, you might want to dig through the numbers, too.Toyota’s forecast research and development spending in the year through March is unchanged from the previous quarter at 1.07 trillion yen. With Daimler upgrading its own plans, that’s now just a sliver ahead of the average 8.1 billion euros ($8.8 billion) the German company has committed to spending this calendar year and next.There’s a very real chance that Daimler—which makes less than one passenger car for every four coming off Toyota’s production lines—could soon be spending more on developing the next generation of automobiles.The fall in the yen under Abenomics has helped turn Toyota’s slowing pace of R&D investment into an outright decline in dollar terms, but it’s not sufficient to explain the weakness. After all, 10 of Toyota’s 15 design and research centers are outside Japan. Among the 10 carmakers that turn out more than 3 million vehicles a year, its R&D as a percentage of sales is well below the average.ALSO READ: Toyota raises full-year profit outlook on weaker yen, cost cuttingThis spending matters because the radical technological advances that are starting to reshape the global car industry, from battery electric vehicles, to self-driving technology and shared ownership, threaten to leave behind any automakers that aren’t prepared for the way the world is changing.Toyota is still a mammoth innovator, just behind Apple Inc. as one of the top 10 R&D investors globally, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It’s got a $1 billion Google-style skunkworks to develop autonomous cars, the world’s best-selling new-energy vehicle in the form of the Prius, plus the Mirai hydrogen fuel-cell car.Still, its deals with oil companies to push hydrogen technology have a distinctly Betamax feel to them at a time when the rest of the industry is making leaps and bounds with battery electric technology.In 2015, Toyota was the only one of the world’s top five global automotive manufacturers not to also be one of the top 10 electric vehicle manufacturers. Just three months ago, it finally appeared to admit it had backed the wrong horse, conceding it may have to start mass production of battery electric vehicles after all. Perhaps the sort of visions of the future promulgated by Volkswagen AG, Daimler and Ford Motor Co. are unrealistic. If Toyota was intoxicated decades ago from the white heat of technology rather than making reliable, affordable and profitable cars, it would probably never have got where it is today. R&D is notorious for burning piles of money on moonshot projects that fail to produce any return on investment. Gadfly has often shared Toyota’s somewhat dubious view of those developments, particularly in car-sharing and autonomous vehicles—but guiding a business is a lot harder than writing opinion columns, and carries a lot more responsibility. Toyota needs to boost innovation, if only as an insurance policy. Too much skepticism about the future risks looking like insouciance. Bloomberg",2017-02-08,The radical technological advances that are reshaping the global car industry threaten to leave behind any automakers that are not prepared for the changes,-0.4,01:26,Toyota might be losing the future to bigger R&D spenders +0,"
The wait for ITC Ltd’s consumer business to become profitable has been a long one. While the business has grown in size, now at 18% of revenue, it continues to add new products in existing categories, enters new categories and invests behind them. That insatiable appetite to diversify revenue and grow scale indicates that profits will come later. This urge to diversify may now see it enter the healthcare sector.ITC said it plans to add healthcare to its objects clause, but did not mention other details.Could ITC be planning a full-fledged entry into the healthcare sector, either on its own or by acquiring an existing hospital chain?Cigarettes and healthcare may make strange bedfellows, but hospitality and hotels do make for a good combination.Also in common, unfortunately, is that setting up hospitals requires significant investments, especially if you have to add new ones, gestation periods are relatively long and the sector is becoming more competitive.ITC’s recurring cash flows from the cigarettes business give it the requisite financial muscle, but investors may fret if the investment requirements prove to be substantial.Coming to its results, demonetisation did see its cigarette sales growth slow down to 2.2% in the December quarter, compared with a growth of 7.1% in the September quarter.It said that tight liquidity conditions affected sales growth. As the cash crunch eases, its cigarettes business should come back to more normal growth rates. The changes in tax rates in the budget, final rates and cess under goods and services tax, if any, on cigarettes, are near-term policy triggers to watch for.Along with cigarettes, demonetisation did see its consumer business sales, too slow down to 3.4%. Hotels’ revenue growth was relatively better but paper saw a slight decline. Overall, net sales rose by 4.1% but a higher increase in material costs led to expenses rising by more than sales did. Its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) margin declined from over a year ago, as a result, but improved sequentially. Its profit after tax rose 5.7%. The cigarette segment’s margin declined and the consumer business turned in a loss of Rs19.7 crore.ITC did better than what the Street was expecting. It should do even better as business improves, post-demonetisation. Still, the share fell 2.8% on Friday which may be partly due to it having rallied sharply since end-December (it is up 14% since 26 December). The diversification into healthcare, too, may have dampened investor enthusiasm. News on the taxation front and its plans for healthcare will occupy centre stage for the moment.",2017-01-30,"The changes in tax rates in the budget, final rates and cess under goods and services tax, if any, on cigarettes, are near-term policy triggers to watch for",0.25,07:38,"Q3 results: ITC sticks to diversification strategy, eyes healthcare now" +0,"
The December quarter results of Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T), a proxy for the state of India’s investment demand, was disappointing. It was all the more so, as it had turned in a vibrant performance for the September quarter. What is likely to dampen investor sentiment is the management’s decision to lower growth guidance to 8-10% for the full year ending March, from the earlier forecast of 12-15%. And even that appears to be an uphill task for the juggernaut.The firm’s December quarter results surprised the Street negatively. Net revenue grew 1.4% to Rs26,287 crore from a year ago, which fell short of Bloomberg’s average estimate by a significant 11%. One could blame it on demonetisation, to some extent.The impact was felt the most in the infrastructure segment, which comprises over three-fourths of L&T’s revenue. The management said in its media release that clearance delays and the abrupt liquidity crunch at the customers’ end hindered work progress.Meanwhile, toll revenue was down, too. So were real estate sales. Yet, the segment’s revenue grew by 6%, with a robust contribution from its international projects.That’s not all. L&T’s power segment is battling a dwindling order book. Revenue fell by 23% year-on-year (y-o-y). Also, the other smaller engineering segments and information technology (IT) did little to enthuse investors.But L&T’s 9.6% operating margin matched investor expectation and was a neat 140 basis points (bps) higher than the year-ago period. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Stringent working capital management and cost-cutting exercises did the trick. In this respect, the infrastructure segment delivered a respectable 110 bps y-o-y rise, even as the hydrocarbons, heavy engineering and electrical and automation segments pulled up their socks.However, both operating profit and net profit fell short of the average brokerage estimates. Yet, the consolidated net profit was about 39% higher y-o-y at Rs972.5 crore, not a bad deal considering the macroeconomic challenges.The moot question is, will L&T meet its guided revenue and order inflow target?On the revenue front, the firm will have to ramp up execution in the fourth quarter to match even the watered down 10% growth in annual revenue. Thanks to customer delays after the currency ban, the work at many sites was almost at a standstill. These have to gain traction again. Meanwhile, segments such as IT could clock slower revenue growth.On order inflows, the challenge is no less. December-quarter order inflow was 10% lower, with a third coming in from overseas. Again, given its run-rate at the end of nine months, the firm has to clock at least Rs50-60,000 crore to meet the guided annual target. Not impossible, given that the fourth quarter is the “lumpiest” on order inflows, but a Herculean task, too.In fact, L&T’s results convey that all is not well in the economy.“Domestic growth appears to take a longer time as investment momentum is weak and the banking system is burdened with a debt overhang,” says the company's media release, adding that the challenging business conditions are likely to remain for a few more quarters.Infrastructure orders from the government are still delayed and private capex is yet to take off.L&T’s stock trades at Rs1,439 apiece, which discounts its one-year forward estimated earnings by a rich 21 times.In fact, since demonetisation, the stock, which has been a steady outperformer, has been volatile. Brokerages have trimmed both the expected earnings and valuations over the past few weeks. Only a fillip to revenue or order inflows can make this elephant dance.",2017-01-30,"What is likely to dampen investor sentiment is the management’s decision to lower growth guidance to 8-10% for the year to March, from the earlier forecast of 12-15%",-0.3,07:38,L&T results mirror the poor state of investment demand +0,"
In his 2013 book Zen Garden: Conversations With Pathmakers, Subroto Bagchi, co-founder of IT firm Mindtree, recalls being tipped off about Shombit Sengupta ahead of their first meeting in 1999. “I was told that if you did not have a budget of a crore as consulting fee, you didn’t go to Shombit. But wait a minute. There was another condition—he had to like you!” he writes about the man who, he says, taught him “more about brands...than anyone else in my entire career”.The trouble, though, is that Sengupta no longer wants to talk about brands. At 63, the founder and creative strategist of Shining Consulting, responsible for the consumer interface makeover of companies such as Unilever, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Rémy Martin, Johnson & Johnson, Wipro and Mahindra & Mahindra, would rather concentrate on his art. It’s the reason why, after 40-odd years in France, he now prefers to spend 60% of his time in India. In Bengaluru, to be precise, where, many years ago, he bought a dilapidated transformer factory in Whitefield and redesigned it into an abode like no other. It’s tempting to see the house, split into two wings, as a metaphor for Sengupta’s own life, divided between France and India, brand design and art.
The two parts of the house are connected by a labyrinthine corridor; the walls have Sengupta’s own exuberant artworks while the floor space resembles a fairground, installed with the most dazzling collection of colourful Indian kitsch: shiny lip balms, glittery balls, skeins of crinkled cotton, stacks of glass bangles. It’s all a bit overwhelming.Like the man himself. Kitted out in a sheep-print shirt, his shock of hair still more pepper than salt, Sengupta demands attention as he talks. His story is so fantastic, it’s hard to look away but it does not do to merely follow his words: He needs total engagement. He responds in kind, listening actively and often stepping outside himself to call you out. As he does when his wife Renee Jhala, managing director of Shining Consulting—they met while he was consulting with Wipro, where she was head of public relations—wafts by: “She is making me talk about the brands,” he mock-complains about me, but acknowledges in the next breath that the success that followed his disruptive approach to design and branding allowed him to reboot his life as a sexagenarian to focus on art.“I went into business (as a brand consultant) to earn money,” Sengupta says without preamble. “And I stuck around for 35 years. Art has always informed my work. But I never delivered something that only looked good; my work made businesses look good.”Aesthetics, one might think, was not supposed to be the strong suit of a boy born in a camp for East Pakistan refugees in Kanchrapara, West Bengal. But early on, Sengupta developed an appreciation of his surroundings. If the Bengali Bengal was defined by poverty, the Victorian Bengal was embodied in the British-built residence of his schoolteacher-mother’s friend. In Chandannagar, a row or a swim across the Hooghly, he encountered a third Bengal, a French Bengal. His father, a committed Communist and anti-British activist, had French sympathies—he was a fan of the Vincent van Gogh biopic Lust For Life, which portrayed the Dutch artist’s flowering in Paris—and subtly communicated to the young boy that an art education, to be worthwhile, had to be French.And so it was that at the age of 19, only half-done with his course at the Government College of Art and Craft in what was still Calcutta, Sengupta bought himself a ticket to Paris for Rs2,700, the sale proceeds of his mother’s gold bangles. “I could barely speak English, let alone French,” says Sengupta, his English still thickly accented by Bengali. “But I had a skill in art and I was determined to develop it.”
Though Sengupta went on to join École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, the national school of fine arts, and then studied design at École Supérieure d’Arts Graphiques Penninghen, formal degrees were not his forte. Perpetually short of funds and compelled to send money home, Sengupta took up any work he could find, from sweeping floors to assisting lithographers. “Intelligence or leadership are not qualities you learn in school. Apprenticeship is very important. I was always drawn to writers, advocates, psychologists, performing artistes—that was the way I nurtured myself, how I learnt to converge different elements when it came to branding and design as well.”A considerable part of Sengupta’s success as a brand guru championing a “consumer connect” must be laid at the door of this carefully cultivated understanding of multiple disciplines. “Art was the only way I could earn. Yves Brayer, a famous artist I met at the lithographer’s, encouraged me to consider design communication. So I studied graphic design, applied art, photography, typography. But once in the field, I found I was completely different from everybody. Because of my multiple interests, areas of expertise and a humanist outlook, I made for a grand solutions provider. I can diagnose an ailing business the way a good doctor diagnoses a patient.
“Also, my language was completely different,” Sengupta says. “So, if a chief executive officer came to me and said his product was ‘premium’, I would ask him, what’s premium about a consumer product? Affordability is a different issue but, by labelling yourself ‘premium’, you’re alienating a huge market.” His maverick approach included hanging out at a kirana, or neighbourhood grocery store, to figure out why large cooking-oil containers weren’t selling, and picking up the Britannia tag line Eat Healthy, Think Better from a Kolkata rickshaw-puller. Business magazines lavished pages on him, a colourful, plain-speaking break from the pinstriped politically correct. At its peak, the Shining client list read like the who’s who of the corporate world: Prominent among them were 3M, Dow Chemicals, Carrefour, Intermarché, Corning/Newell, Henkel, Nivea, L’Oréal, Pernod Ricard, Reckitt Benckiser, Galerie Lafayette-Monoprix, Total Petroleum internationally, and Reliance Retail, Madura Garments, Coffee Day, Jindal Steel & Power in India. Of late, Sengupta has consciously cut down consulting engagements to a few select clients, mostly in Europe. But, out of the corner of his eye, he continues to pick up on trends and behaviours in the market. Pet among his peeves are Indian businesses that aim to be conglomerates rather than single-domain enterprises. “I give them 15-20 years, they won’t last beyond that,” he says. “Before the Tatas launched the Nano, I had said it wouldn’t work—and it didn’t. When businesses believe in one thing, they can nurture people, build expertise. I hope the new generation will follow that path. Take Airtel. (Sunil Bharti Mittal) tried a couple of other things but his focus was one. Infosys, too, has focused on one domain. “As for the young people working on start-ups, I always tell them, don’t go for start-ups—shorthand for make money and go away—go for build-ups. All businesses have always been start-ups. All this new language is totally nonsense!”In the second hour of our conversation, we are sitting at a worktable in his sprawling, double-height studio, with its curving walls and natural light. All around us are works old and new: Some acrylic-on-canvas frames from Sengupta’s 2016 Night Spirit series, depicting the owl in various mythologies; a few of the tiled Désordre installation series—first made in 2008—which viewers are invited to scramble like a jigsaw puzzle; multiple large canvases featuring a woman and a horse that gallerist Vickram Sethi places in a metaphysical/sexual lineage dating back to the legend of Lady Godiva. He last showed at the Institute of Contemporary Indian Art, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai, in November; a couple of exhibitions are lined up in Europe later this year. For all the workload, art has always been a mainstay for Sengupta. “Art was the foundation of my work,” he says simply, when I ask him how he juggled the two (he was also a weekly columnist for The Indian Express between 2009-14, and is the author of the Jalebi trilogy, on managing businesses in India). “I don’t sleep for more than 4-5 hours a day. Only between 1978-84 did art take a back seat, because I was setting up Shining. But even then, my sketchbook never left my side.“Around 1994, I realized it was important for an artist to develop his own school of thought. That’s when I came up with the concept of Gesturism, basing it on a professor’s early appreciation of the kinetic energy in my works. My style changed completely after that. But Renee pointed out that my art was too Cartesian (after René Descartes, whose philosophy was the bedrock of continental rationalism), too European. I needed to re-root myself in India to define my identity, unite my French inspiration and sense of structure with the non-dogmatic, indisciplined way India uses colour. A third factor was my examination of the désordre—disorder in the French sense, related to physical objects—in India.”In a life so packed with activity, art and accolades, turning 60 was a milestone. “Renee pushed me to devote more time to art at that juncture,” says Sengupta. “Fine art is pre-civilizational; design is a post-industrialization phenomenon, aiming to satisfy a human need, stated or unstated. Art, on the other hand, is completely individual; it needs no other justification.” As we wind down our conversation, the canvases around us look on. Each of them bears the flamboyant Sen signature: The artist prefers to use a truncated version of the family name for his work. Interestingly, his son from his first marriage, too, shortened his name Saikat to Shoi. As Shoi Sen, marketing man-turned-lead guitarist for British band De Profundis, he opened for Iron Maiden in Bengaluru in 2009. Reinvention, it seems, is a family trait.",2017-04-07,"The maverick founder of Shining Consulting on connecting with the consumer, why he doesn’t believe in start-ups, and seeking reinvention at 63",0.25,18:03,Shombit Sengupta: The art brand +0,"Two sets of findings, related to societal trust levels, in a report released last week at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, should be a cause of grave concern to all of us. Part of a study released by communications group Edelman, the survey of more than 33,000 people in 28 countries including India, recorded the largest-ever drop of trust in business, government, the media, and non-government organisations (NGOs).Corporate chief executive officers (CEOs), whose credibility level dropped in each of the countries surveyed, were aggressively targeted with only 37% of people saying they trusted them.The 12-point drop from the previous year is the all-time low since the survey began in 2001. This isn’t the first time the corporate sector has been reminded of declining people’s trust. Last January, Young & Rubicam BrandAsset Valuator revealed that consumers’ trust in well-known brands continues to fall.ALSO READ | What global CEOs are watching for, according to a PwC surveyStrangely, you would think that CEOs reputation for trust would have taken a hit from the work of the media. But that institution didn’t fare too well either with 43% of the respondents expressing trust in the press, down from 48% the year before. So if people’s falling trust in company executives isn’t driven by the reports in traditional media, where is the angst coming from? Perhaps there’s a third force now that might be responsible for generating the ire and that’s the social media, the new watchdog for corporate wrongdoing.Edelman CEO Richard Edelman, speaking at the WE, linked this to the sky-high compensation levels of top CEOs as well as the fact that employees were disappointed their leaders were not helping them deal with automation and the changing business environment. These changes have led to a rash of lay-offs in recent times with companies as diverse as Oracle Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Microsoft Corp. trimming their work forces.ALSO READ | Of founders and CEOsIn India, close on the heels of the controversy last year when several well-funded start-ups rolled back offers made to fresh graduates from engineering schools, comes the news this year of large scale sackings. Just this week, Girnar Software Pvt. Ltd, which runs a series of auto portals including CarDekho and is funded by such heavyweights as CapitalG (formerly Google Capital), Sequoia Capital, Hillhouse Capital and Ratan Tata, announced that it was axing 136 people.Paradoxically, for all the efforts CEOs and top leaders make to build their image, it is the company’s rank and file that is viewed by the public as more trustworthy.Indeed, twice as many respondents would have employees rather than CEOs communicate financial earnings and operational performance.Why is trust important? Business analysts have frequently proved that there is a direct correlation between growth and trust.ALSO READ | Optimism reigns in India as CEOs, consumers look beyond ChinaAmerican behavioural economist and psychiatrist Richard L. Peterson and sports consultant Frank Murtha noted in 2008 after the financial crisis: “Trust is the oil in the engine of capitalism, without it, the engine seizes up. Confidence is like the gasoline, without it the machine won’t move.”Part of the reason for the increasing trust deficit is of course the overall culture of lower deference towards authority figures and institutions. But that isn’t all of it. In 2016, for instance, Volkswagen AG CEO Martin Winterkorn’s resigned following the emissions scandal, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes lost his job following a sexual harassment charge, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch became a public enemy when she trebled prices of life-saving injection EpiPen, and Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf came under fire for refusing to take personal responsibility when his bank was caught creating two million fake accounts. Closer home, Vijay Mallya took employees, shareholders and bankers for a right royal ride before flying to the UK as creditors closed in on him.The resulting trust deficit has had several disastrous consequences. Corporate loyalty is fast going the way of the dinosaur. As employees feel free to change jobs at will, this has led to mounting costs of hiring and training besides a struggle to build team spirit and group dynamics. Externally, there is a lower threshold level of tolerance for any slippage in corporate performance. One quarter of declining numbers and stakeholders start demanding changes either in terms of management or worse still, strategy.Corporate trust deficit is a two-way street. It indicates that employees, customers, and company watchers have problems believing what its top executives say. But equally it also indicates that the company itself is in some kind of trouble.Sundeep Khanna is a consulting editor at Mint and oversees the newsroom’s corporate coverage. The Corporate Outsider will look at current issues and trends in the corporate sector every week.Click here to read more from The Corporate Outsider.",2017-01-25,The resulting trust deficit has had several disastrous consequences ,0.46,07:48,The consequences of declining trust in CEOs +0,"New Delhi: Telecom major Bharti Airtel has terminated the services of its vice-president and head of alliances Pallab Mitra for alleged violation of code of conduct. “All employees are hereby advised that the company has terminated the services of Pallab Mitra, vice-president and head-alliance, with immediate effect for violation of the company’s code of conduct,” Airtel chief human resource officer B. Srikanth said in a communication to employees. Mitra could not be reached for his comments. Airtel spokesperson said: “The company’s code of conduct is of paramount importance and it follows a policy of zero tolerance in the event of any violation of the same.” ALSO READ: Leveraging mobile phones to boost skilling initiativeSrikanth said: “Please desist from dealing with this person, or in sharing any information whatsoever with him, verbally or in writing or through messaging.” Mitra has worked with Airtel for about 12 years with a gap of around five and half years in between. He started working with Airtel in 2001 as head of commerce for about 4 years. Mitra left the company in February 2010 to join Tata Teleservices. His second innings at Airtel started from September 2015 onwards after his one-and-half year stint with wi-fi firm Ozone Networks. Airtel learnt about the purported code of conduct violation by Mitra from a whistleblower after which it conducted a probe into the matter, the communication said. “...investigation, thereafter, substantiated the allegations,” Srikanth said.",2017-04-06,"Airtel learnt about the purported code of conduct violation by Pallab Mitra from a whistleblower after which it conducted a probe, says letter to employees",-0.88,21:44,Airtel fires vice-president Pallab Mitra for allegedly violating code of conduct +0,"Colorado Springs: Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos said on Wednesday he is selling about $1 billion worth of the internet retailer’s stock annually to fund his Blue Origin rocket company, which aims to launch paying passengers on 11-minute space rides starting next year.Blue Origin had hoped to begin test flights with company pilots and engineers in 2017, but that probably will not happen until next year, Bezos told reporters at the annual US Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.“My business model right now … for Blue Origin is I sell about $1 billion of Amazon stock a year and I use it to invest in Blue Origin,” said Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon.com Inc. and also the owner of The Washington Post newspaper.Ultimately, the plan is for Blue Origin to become a profitable, self-sustaining enterprise, with a long-term goal to cut the cost of space flight so that millions of people can live and work off Earth, Bezos said.Bezos is Amazon’s largest shareholder, with 80.9 million shares, according to Thomson Reuters data. At Wednesday’s closing share price of $909.28, Bezos would have to sell 1,099,771 shares to meet his pledge of selling $1 billion worth of Amazon stock. Bezos’ total Amazon holdings, representing a 16.95% stake in the company, are worth $73.54 billion at Wednesday’s closing price.For now, Kent, Washington-based Blue Origin is working toward far shorter hops—11 minute space rides that are not fast enough to put a spaceship into orbit around Earth.Blue Origin has not started selling tickets or set prices to ride aboard its six-passenger, gumdrop-shaped capsule, known as New Shepard.The reusable rocket and capsule is designed to carry passengers to an altitude of more than 100 miles (162km) above the planet so they can experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of Earth set against the blackness of space. Unmanned test flights have been underway since 2015. At the symposium, Bezos showed off a mockup of the passenger capsule, which sports six reclined seats, each with its own large window. Also on display was a scorched New Shepard booster rocket that was retired in October after five flights.Like fellow tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of SpaceX, Bezos says that reusability is the key to cutting the cost of space flight. Last week, SpaceX relaunched a rocket for an unprecedented second mission to put a spacecraft into orbit. “The engineering approach is a little different, but we’re very like-minded,” Bezos said of Musk.Blue Origin is developing a second launch system to carry satellites, and eventually people, into orbit, similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule.Development costs for that system, known as New Glenn, will be about $2.5 billion.There is no estimate yet for how much Bezos will invest overall on Blue Origin. But Bezos has indicated he will spend what it takes. “It’s a long road to get there and I’m happy to invest in it,” Bezos said. According to Forbes magazine, Bezos has a net worth of $78 billion. Reuters",2017-04-06,Jeff Bezos is selling about $1 billion worth of Amazon’s stock annually to fund his Blue Origin rocket company,0.53,09:35,Jeff Bezos is selling $1 billion of Amazon stock a year to fund rocket venture +0,"
Vedanta Resources Plc.’s founder and group chairman Anil Agarwal plans to leverage his association with Anglo American Plc. to persuade the British miner to set up businesses ranging from fertilizer production to diamond mining in India.Vedanta Resources also plans to spend $10 billion over the next three years across its businesses, of which $8 billion is earmarked for Indian operations, Agarwal said in an interview on the sidelines of the Global Natural Resources Conclave organized by Network18 and the Confederation of Indian Industry.In March, Agarwal announced the planned purchase of about 13% of Anglo American’s stock in an investment by his holding company Volcan Investments Ltd, making him the second-largest shareholder in the $26 billion company that counts diamond producer De Beers among its assets. “We are now looking at this work (the stake acquisition) that we have done as strategically being very important for India. We have focused on the fact that it (De Beers) is the largest global producer of diamonds and we (India) are the largest polisher of diamonds. We want all the diamonds to come to India. Secondly, India has enough diamond reserves. We will persuade them to produce diamonds in India,” said Agarwal.“We are a large shareholder in the company and they are also a friend of ours. So, we will speak with them. They are into fertilizers. They are also the largest coal producers. They also produce copper and magnesium. They are also the largest producers of platinum in the world. So, all of that can be done here,” Agarwal added.His plans come in the backdrop of the National Democratic Alliance government working on a new method of auctioning mining leases to match commodity price cycles and investor appetite.Agarwal’s stake purchase in Anglo American came after the company last year spurned his offer to merge part of his mining business.Agarwal didn’t rule out acquiring a controlling stake in the firm, one of the world’s top five mining groups alongside BHP Billiton Plc., Rio Tinto Plc., Vale SA and Glencore Plc. Its key assets include giant copper mines in Chile, iron ore operations in Brazil and South Africa and De Beers.The company is bullish on its capital expenditure plans.“We will invest $10 billion over the next three years. We will spend close to Rs60,000-70,000 crore, of which oil and gas will account for Rs15,000 crore. This will result in an increase in our capacity overall of 40-50%. Around 80% of these investments will be made in India,” Agarwal said.In 2011, Cairn Energy Plc. sold 58.5% of Cairn India Ltd to Vedanta Resources for $8.67 billion. Vedanta Resources has large debt obligations. According to data from S&P Global Ratings, Vedanta has bank loan maturities of $1 billion due in financial year 2018 and $500 million due in financial year 2019. That’s in addition to bond maturities of about $2 billion in financial year 2019. In January, Vedanta raised $1 billion by selling bonds to refinance its near-term debt obligations.In response to a query about how he plans to fund the capital expenditure, Agarwal said: “We have our internal accruals. We have also registered very good profits this year. We will redeploy this profit...We are very confident that we will invest this money. This will help in job creation and increase employment.”Vedanta’s business interests in India include oil and gas, power, iron ore, zinc, copper and aluminium production.",2017-04-06,"Vedanta also plans to spend $10 billion over the next three years across its businesses, of which $8 billion is earmarked for Indian operations, says Anil Agarwal",0.25,01:42,Anil Agarwal plans to bring Anglo American’s business to India +0,"
Anil Agarwal, group chairman, Vedanta Resources Plc has been in the news after announcing plans to buy around $2.4 billion of Anglo American Plc shares on the exchanges after his merger proposal was rebuffed last year.
In an interview on the sidelines of a conference on natural resources organised by Network 18 and Confederation of Indian Industry, Agarwal hinted at a larger play after acquiring around 13% of Anglo American’s stock, which will make him the second-largest shareholder after South Africa’s Public Investment Corp.
Agarwal also spoke about a pending tax dispute with the Indian government after the acquisition of Cairn India Ltd by London-listed Vedanta Resources, which included Rs10,200 crore as principal tax dues and the fallout of Donald Trump’s policies and Brexit on his areas of business. Edited excerpts:
How has your experience been with this government, given that Cairn Energy is still grappling with tax issues, with the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal passing an order for a payment of Rs10,247 crore as tax?The tax issue is not from this (National Democratic Alliance) government. It was imposed by the last (United Progressive Alliance) government. This government had stated during the time of elections that this was wrong and they will remove it. They are also trying their level best. They have been talking to us day and night. Till now, no solution has been found. Whenever we go outside, the most critical question that gets asked overseas is the issue of retrospective tax. Everyone feels that the last government did it and it can be done again. However, this government has repeatedly said, and everyone feels that this government is very stable, and it is very determined that it would not do anything like that. But till the time this issue is not resolved, it is very important to resolve it and the government is working in that direction. If they accelerate it a bit, it will become better.
According to you, where is the issue stuck?These are government policies. They will have to solve it in a simple way. Big things have been done. It has gone to the courts. For how long will it go on, no one knows. It will bring bad repute globally. I don’t have an idea but whenever I go, I get a sympathetic view (from the government).
What does the government tell you?They tell me that this thing which has been done is not a right thing. We are with this issue. We have waived off the interest and will do whatever which is required... No timeline has been committed.
What is your big play in Anglo American Plc? I am a Bihari, can’t speak much (laughs). The only thing ‘right now’ is that I am an investor.
You are saying ‘right now.’ What happens going forward?We are an investor right now. Can’t say anything beyond this.
You are not denying that you will buy more stake in Anglo-American?As of today, I can’t speak about more than what I have already said.
You have said that you will persuade Anglo American to bring their businesses to India. But since you have bought the stake on behalf of the holding company, which is Volcan, you will still do business with them. Or, will they operate independently?That we will see. Whatever works out keeping in mind the governance.
Will there be a separate entity?That, we will tell you later.
What are your green energy plans?We produce wind power... around 500MW. There has been a shift in the solar business. It used to be Rs6 per unit and now it has come down to below Rs2 per unit. That is definitely an advantage. So, we are studying it very seriously and will take the clean energy plans forward.We have two plans. We will produce a lot of gas in Rajasthan...We are already producing wind energy. And we are definitely looking into solar and how do we do a strategic investment in solar.But, we will not be producing solar cells. We will be producing solar power, which will be used for our own purpose because we consume over 10,000MW.
What is the update on Cairn India’s merger with Vedanta?It is almost done. I think it should be done in 2-4 days.
Any impact of Donald Trump’s policies and Brexit on your areas of business?From a business perspective, these are positive for us. England has its own orbit. In my opinion, England may fall behind in the race for a brief time but England will be very stable. I live there and I am very confident that England will prosper.Donald Trump’s economic policies are phenomenal. He himself is a businessman and the way he spoke about (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi’s efforts to reduce the involvement of bureaucracy and red tapism... He himself is doing that.
But, he is stuck in a logjam in the Republican controlled Congress...I agree but intentions are like this. I can’t comment on him. He is such a big man. I am a very optimistic person. I believe that he will correct himself. He has no other intention except to take his country forward.
We are talking about resurgence in resources. How do you see this playing out? What is your outlook?It is going to be long-term. India is just at the tip of the iceberg. If India does not improve its natural resources, it will be a complete dumping ground for the world to unload oil and gas, gold, silver, fertilizer and this has to change. India has every resource and human resource as well. So, this is a golden opportunity for the world to come and set up the plant. And this is the first time that I am seeing awareness in the government where they have started to believe that we have natural resources.",2017-04-06,"Vedanta’s Anil Agarwal on a pending tax dispute with India after the acquisition of Cairn India Ltd, and the fallout of Donald Trump’s policies and Brexit on his areas of business",0.05,01:47,Donald Trump’s economic policies are phenomenal: Anil Agarwal +0,"
Normalcy has returned to the currency system post demonetization and the pace of cash withdrawls has come down, said R. Gandhi who retired as deputy governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday and was in charge of the currency management division. Calling the note ban a well-thought-out and well-deliberated decision, he said the only thing he would do differently with the wisdom of hindsight was print more Rs500 notes. Edited excerpts from an interview:
What gave you the confidence to go ahead with demonetization?That decision was not taken on a single day. Initially, it was only a thought. A lot of discussions happened: Is it good or bad? If we have to do it, what (are the) ramifications? So it was not as if somebody decided and went about doing it overnight. Secondly, even if it were to be done, we were very clear that the final call will have to be taken by the government because it is a policy decision and not in RBI’s purview. If such a policy decision is taken, then how do we implement it? (What are the) backward linkages, forward linkages? All such debating, thinking and preparation gave us the confidence to go ahead.
Which decision came first? The decision to introduce Rs2,000 notes or the withdrawal of Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes?These two decisions were in parallel. The normal practice in currency management is to periodically have a plan. In 2014, we had come to a conclusion that we need higher denomination notes. So, on that basis, we had recommended Rs5,000 and Rs10,000 notes given the pace of inflation which we had and which we had projected. Currency is an area where nothing can be done overnight. Everything has a lot of backward linkages and requires lead time. Any decision that you take, to implement it, it will be about 8 months to a year. Then the government had its own public policy ideas about demonetization as a control on black money. So discussions were happening in parallel.
With the benefit of hindsight, would you say that you did not anticipate the complexities? There were 50 notifications in the first 30 days. Would you have done anything differently?I don’t think we didn’t plan well. We planned everything. Every reaction was fully foreseen. There was no nasty surprise for us. Everything had been well identified, and debated. Several instructions were given by us. But you need to analyse it differently. About 20 (notifications) were relaxing rules. These relaxations were also pre-planned. If at all, there were one or two without planning. The rest were planned. The remaining 30 were regulatory instructions to banks. That we could not have given upfront, it would have let the cat out of the bag. In hindsight, if there’s anything I would have done differently… may be the quantum of Rs500 notes production. We may have decided differently. That’s the only correction.
When did the consultations on the note ban begin?The consultations started in January. The introduction of Rs2,000 was a decision irrespective of demonetization.
Did the printing presses have enough capacity to support the withdrawal of 86% of currency in circulation?That was a big discussion. That is why the agreement on the Rs2,000 note (majority of notes printed initially were of this denomination). Because we wanted to have that much value in exchange (for old notes).
Did nobody in the RBI central board express any concern or dissent about this decision?Discussions were already on. In any policy decision there will be questions. Finally it was presented to the board. I wouldn’t say that there were no concerns or questions. But we could address them. The way we had prepared and the way we had planned, it was possible to be implemented. Yes, the inconvenience to the public was admitted. One-is-to-one (like-for-like) cash was definitely not going to be available.
The board was apprised only one day prior to the move?Yes. We could not inform the board much in advance.
Is there any target for remonetization? Currency in circulation can never be targeted. It is in the hands of the public. We manage it by creating enough stock. If public wants more, the draw will be much faster. If they want less, draw will be much lesser. Over a period it is not a constraint to supply whatever money the public demands. In a short period, there will be leads and lags. Now with 70%, we are seeing complete normalcy across the country. There is no trouble anywhere.
So, when will normalcy be restored or when will we go back to pre-demonetization levels?We have already reached that stage. As of now, 73-74% actual cash has come. The pace of remonetization has come down because there is no demand. The pace at which money is demanded by the public is seen by the speed at which they are withdrawing from the banking system. When the pace is slowing down, then we have met their demand. From January onwards, cash withdrawals are coming down and we are also looking at how much currency is coming back. For most of the small banks and private banks, deposits are more than withdrawals. They are in surplus. They don’t need to draw more money from RBI. They are able to recycle.
Why is it taking so long to tell the public about the quantum of currency that has come back? It’s the last and final word. The final count. RBI would like to have it really, fully done. Checking for counterfeit notes will take a lot of time. To verify 24 billion SBNs (specified bank notes) collected will take months.
Demonetization has led to a debate on RBI’s autonomy. Comments?RBI does not have the power to demonetize. The power is with the government only. That’s a government call. I don’t see it as a conflict on autonomy. It is an area where only they are authorized to take a decision. It’s a joint effort. Everyday there were consultations.
You have worked for 37 years. Over the years have you seen RBI’s autonomy eroding? Different types of activities have been assigned to RBI or removed from RBI. That is the evolution of RBI. I will not read too much into that. Regulating banking is different from regulating any other financial activity. Any other financial activity or real sector activity is based on risk capital. Banking is different. People’s money is entrusted with an institution. That’s not risk capital for the bank. The way banks have to be regulated is different, it cannot be equated (with other regulators). They are trying to equate it. That is a dangerous trend in my opinion. FSLRC (Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission) has openly recommended that we should encourage regulated entities to question the decisions of the regulator and they should not hesitate to drag them to court. I understand why they are saying that. A regulator cannot unilaterally decide something and impose it on regulated entities. But the way they are putting it may not be right.
You have worked with different governors, who was it easiest to get along with?Dr C. Rangarajan. In terms of long impact, I’d say S. Venkitramanan. He made us think 10 years forward in every area.
The decision to introduce Rs200 notes... Is it a precedent to slowly demonetize Rs2,000 notes?Introducing a currency denomination is a stand-alone exercise. It has nothing to do with demonetization. In the normal course in any country’s stable of denominations, we have the 1 series, 5 series and 2 series like 10s, 20s and 50s. We have Rs100 and Rs500. Rs200 is the missing one. Is there a need for Rs2,000 notes? Will they be phased out?The need for Rs2,000 will always be there. The highest denomination requirement is based on inflation. In any continuous inflation economy, you will have to introduce higher denominations. Or you will not be able to manage. In a stable inflation economy, there is no need. In the US, for instance, the $100 bill is more than 100 years old. For us, we introduced Rs100, then Rs500 and then Rs1,000. Our economy was facing inflation. Now with the monetary policy committee and inflation control, we can definitely hope to have stable inflation. Then we may not require any more new denominations.What happens to the liquidity worth Rs 3.5 trillion in the banking system?This is temporary. We knew the impact of demonetization was transient. Excess liquidity is coming down. In another few weeks, it will not be there. With remonetization, the liquidity has gone into the hands of the public. It is not going to be there for long. To the extent, people don’t want 1:1 cash, there will be excess. Right now about 75% of currency is remonetized. Remaining 25% is the excess you are seeing in the hands of banks. Is it a permanent addition to liquidity? It’s not. During this year, normal growth in currency has not taken place. We have not filled in whatever we have withdrawn. Excess liquidity will meet that need.So, it’s not going to be inflationary?No. It will not be. Credit growth has also not picked up. Day to day excess liquidity we are absorbing through LAF (liquidity adjustment facility).Has the excess liquidity in the system made it difficult for RBI to intervene to stem the rupee’s appreciation since January?The currency appreciation is a bit of a surprise. Post Trump (US president Donald Trump) we would have expected the dollar to strengthen. The decision to intervene is based on volatility. If the market is able to bear the changes, then we do not want to intervene. We are not against the direction of the rupee, whether it is appreciating or depreciating.",2017-04-05,R. Gandhi who retired as a deputy RBI governor this week says the note ban was a well-thought-out and well-deliberated decision,-0.51,02:01,"Note ban planned carefully by RBI, Rs500 note only hiccup: R. Gandhi" +0,"New Delhi: Lydia Bly Jett of SoftBank Group International joined the board of e-commerce company Snapdeal on 30 March, showed the company documents sourced from Tofler.After SoftBank Group’s chief operating officer Jonathan Bullock resigned from the board in February 2017 followed by the appointment of managing partner Kabir Misra on 10 March, Jett’s appointment is the third board movement from SoftBank to Snapdeal. The move comes at a time when the company is facing financial woes of its own. In January, Mint reported that Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd-owned Snapdeal had initiated discussions to raise fresh funds at a lower valuation, which recently concluded in an intra-board tiff: a conflict of interest between Snapdeal’s investors, Kalaari Capital and Nexus Venture Partners on one side, and SoftBank Group Corp. on the other had led the company miss out on at least two funding offers over the past six months, Mint reported on 31 March.While early investors Kalaari and Nexus together own roughly 18% stake in the company, SoftBank , the largest shareholder, owns 33% in the e-commerce firm.SoftBank has also been reported to be the driver of talks with Paytm and Flipkart to sell Snapdeal, in addition to infusing $50 million cash cushion to the company until a merger materializes, Mint reported on 22 March. For such a round to happen, Snapdeal’s other board members may need to be bought out or be convinced to take a large haircut on their investments.SoftBank has already pumped roughly $900 million into Snapdeal. Pushing sales through deep discounts and large marketing spends, e-commerce in India has been popularly criticised for burning a large sum of cash, which has resulted in the cash-deprived state of Snapdeal. As a result, the company has cut hundreds of jobs, slashed spending on discounts and marketing and has seen a sharp drop in monthly sales.Mint reported on 17 February that Jasper Infotech had about Rs1,100-1,200 crore cash left in the bank and Rs300-400 crore at its payments unit Freecharge at the end of 2016; the company registers an average monthly burn of about $25 million (about Rs160 crore), which includes the cash spent on its mobile wallet firm Freecharge over the past nine months of the financial year ending March 2017. Snapdeal has also seen the exit of senior executives in the past two months, including Freecharge chief executive Govind Rajan and head of partnerships and strategic investments Tony Navin.",2017-04-04,Lydia Bly Jett’s appointment is the third board movement from SoftBank to Snapdeal since February,-0.16,14:54,SoftBank Group’s Lydia Bly Jett joins Snapdeal board +0,"
With a target to sell six million two-wheelers in 2017-18, Honda Motor Co. will be breathing down the neck of Hero MotoCorp Ltd, India’s largest two-wheeler company and its erstwhile joint venture partner in India. Hero MotoCorp sold 6.6 million units in the year to March, compared with Honda’s five million in India. Six years after the separation, Noriaki Abe, chief executive for Honda’s global motorcycle business, talked about the difficulties in snatching marketshare from Hero in rural markets, Honda’s inability to introduce a model that will rival Hero’s Splendor or Passion, and changing the mindset of a lot of Indian buyers who are still in love with Hero. Edited excerpts:
You will now be the chief executive for Honda’s global motorcycle business. That means your involvement with India will get even more intense.India is our biggest market now. Last year, India operations exceeded volume of Indonesia.
What are your expectations from this market now?We have a very challenging target for next year (2017-18). In this year (2016-17), Honda Motorcycle India could not reach the original target because of demonetisation. Such a loss will pass to the next fiscal, which means the target will be very, very high.Basically, we will have to sell one million more next year. The target is to sell six million units.
Your ex-partner, Hero, has not seen the kind of growth you have seen. How long will Honda take to surpass Hero in sales volume?Luckily or unfortunately, the market has changed. The income of consumers is growing in urban areas. That helped us grow in India, because we have scooter models, which is very apt for urban ride. But in rural areas, Hero is very, very strong. We never give up, but it is very difficult to penetrate in rural areas. Improvement of the economy is reflecting on consumers’ choice in mass motorcycle field, and that will help us because the income of the rural area may improve gradually. Infrastructure of the country will improve and, then, many consumers will reach out to our products. We would like that to happen in motorcycle business in India. But, with some respect, Hero is very strong.ALSO READ: Honda to make a middleweight motorcycle in India to take on Royal Enfield
Your two-wheeler sales are driven by scooters. What stops you from introducing one brand that can change Honda’s fortunes in the motorcycle segment?To beat the Splendor? (laughs) Scooter is still the mainstay of our business plan. We are trying to launch many models in the motorcycle field. But in 110cc segment, we could not find one very strong scooter to compete with Splendor. But, variety of our line-up in motorcycle field surely stimulates our consumers’ mind.
What is ironic is Splendor and Passion brands were actually built on Honda technology and engines.Technology is one thing, but we learnt many things in our partnership with Hero. One of the most important things is cost structure, supplier network. We need to make similar network in the automobile field also to make our company more impactful. Price is one thing and mindset of customers is another. We have launched similar models like Hero’s in the motorcycle segment but it is really difficult to change the mindset of the consumer, which is a main issue.
If your target is six million for next year and Hero’s annual sales is about 6.5 million, it should not take you long since Hero is not growing as fast as you.Mass population is in rural areas, where we have many things to do. There, consumers are committed to Hero. So, we could not reach the real India. That’s our interpretation, but we can never give up to reach such area also. In urban area, there is new India, which has accepted Honda; but older India has not yet, which is our interpretation. So, it is quite interesting.
In the car business, do you see origin of product development moving to India anytime soon?Not soon. It will take time. Motorization in the motorcycle field is occurring now. Market is growing. But real motorization in automobile may happen in the middle of next decade. That is our expectation. So, we have sometime around 10 years. But, during such period, we have to face the new regulation, especially with environment-friendly regulation, which is very important for every manufacturer. Such kind of a change in battlefield may help us again. We are very optimistic. Indian market is very important for two decades because the potential of growth is very huge. If the country is conducted properly by the government here, the growth would be exponential.There has been a lot of consolidation in the global auto industry like Toyota-Suzuki or Toyota-Daihatsu. By nature, Honda has not been a company that would go for such strategic decisions.We don’t have such kind of alliances. But to make new technology and components, we already have a partnership with General Motors. We are open to partners but not in India. Toyota-Daihatsu in many ways are related companies. Two-three years ago, Toyota announced to have first Toyota and second Toyota. Second Toyota is for emerging markets and First Toyota is for developed markets. In that sense, below second Toyota, they needed Daihatsu.For example: Volkswagen already has that kind of culture. They have Audi as the top brand but Skoda is for mass market. Toyota is aiming for such kind of a model; but in Asia region, such European mix has struggled. Similar (is the case) with Ford and General Motors.In case of Honda, in Asia and especially in Asean countries, we are very successful. Our business is based on strong motorcycle sales; brand is well known. In automobile, we are a premium brand. But, if we were affordable to the consumer there, our volumes will grow automatically. That is happening in Malaysia and Indonesia.
It has not happened in India though. In India, competition is very difficult in Maruti. Situation is very difficult and different here. Taste and mindset of consumer is very different. India is a huge country and more than double of entire Asean. We have to recognize that India is different. In short term, we will use our global expertise to strengthen our premiumness in Indian market. But we must continue to learn. In motorcycle operations, we are gaining market share and volumes but still a long way to go to reach Hero.",2017-04-04,"Noriaki Abe, CEO of Honda’s global motorcycle business, talks about the difficulties in snatching marketshare from Hero MotoCorp in rural markets",0.98,01:28,"Still a long way to go to match Hero MotoCorp, says Honda’s Noriaki Abe" +0,"
On 1 April, State Bank of India (SBI) merged its five associate banks and Bharatiya Mahila Bank with itself, a union which will catapult it to the ranks of the top 50 lenders in the world.Following the merger, SBI’s growth will not necessarily be in the top line but in increased efficiency, productivity and better ratios, said its chairman, Arundhati Bhattacharya.In an interview, she also talked about how credit growth is likely to rebound to 7-8% by the middle of the current fiscal, and called upon the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to participate more in stressed asset resolution. Edited excerpts:
Do you think your growth will slow post this consolidation with associate banks? It depends on which areas we grow. While we may not be growing in certain areas, we may grow in areas where we are still small, like wealth management. It’s an area where I am small; so I am going to grow fast there. We don’t have any compulsion to simply increase the top line. The idea (behind the merger) is to increase efficiency, increase productivity, better the ratios that we have in various areas. Growth will come not necessarily in the top line.
What will be the integration cost for SBI due to the merger? Integration cost is only in respect of VRS (voluntary retirement scheme) cost. We will know what the number is by 12th of the month. At that point of time, we can put down the cost. Most things are coming together. Other than that, there are some re-branding costs. The additional provident fund provision for employees of associate banks will not be more than Rs25 crore. There is nothing very substantial.
Do you expect to wrap up the merger by October, before you retire? It should be wrapped up well before that. We are going to wait till the 22nd or 24th of April to finish the audit; and then, the data merger of banks will start taking place. That is expected to finish by end-May. Once the data merger is finished, thereafter, there is nothing which is left over. After that, there is only the question of doing rationalization, which will take place over a period of time. It will not happen very quickly. So, we should give 18 months’ time for all of that because there is the question of relocating branches. You have to locate to other places, move people and all of that takes a bit of time.
Credit growth has shrunk to 3.3% in February. Will credit growth be muted next year as well? On growth, I don’t see things happening quickly. The first two quarters will go trying to resolve stressed assets. It is only from the next busy season that we can hope to see things growing well. We also have a caveat: the monsoon should be normal or near normal because the busy season growth is very much dependent on agriculture in our country. So, that is also very much there. Overall, I think a lot of projects are beginning to take shape. Demand is growing no matter what we say. We had a little bit of blip in between. Most of the industry is back on track. Credit growth should be around 7-8%, driven by sectors such as roads, railways, transmission, fertilizers, renewable energy, affordable housing and some amount of work in smart city projects.
Are bankers taking any steps to resolve stressed assets, or are they waiting for regulatory or political support?Some amount of support from government and regulator is required when you are looking at resolving systemic issues. This time, the NPA (non-performing assets) cycle has been systemic. It’s not a question of one or two or three corporates getting hit. It’s a question of a large number of corporates in a few identified sectors which have been hit. With that kind of a problem, it is important to have a systemic answer to these issues. A little more participation from the government and regulator is warranted and required.
Do you think the government is doing enough to protect bankers for their decisions? We are looking to come up with valuations (for resolving NPAs) that will pass scrutiny. The difficulty even when you are putting up an asset for resolution is the variety of bids that come in: somebody says they want to buy it all out. Somebody says they want to come in as a strategic investor. Somebody says they want to come in as a financial investor. With the variety of bids that come in, it’s difficult to compare one with the other in order to determine which one is the best. That is where the controversy comes in.What’s required is for somebody to say in the circumstances this is the best that could have been done. So, that is what bankers are looking for. Something that will give them the confidence to go ahead with the best of their abilities to ascertain what is good for this particular unit, without it being checked by hindsight to say “well, this could have been a better decision” or “that could have been a better decision”. So, I think, that’s what people are looking for. Private sector banks have that freedom. Their commercial decisions are not questioned. I think it’s important for all of us to be on the same playing field.
Is it the only reason stopping banks from going ahead with resolution of stressed assets?There are other issues in respect of smaller banks. When you are looking at things like needing to meet large provisions, they will not have the wherewithal to do it at one time. That is another area that needs to be looked at. So, either they have to be given capital so that they can do it all at one time, or need to be given more time so that they can earn and pay. While we are asking for this, it is apparent that these will be quite transparently disclosed. So there is nothing that the stakeholders will not be able to understand. What it will do is enable these banks to function while they assimilate the provisions that need to be taken. So some amount of flexibility is sought. What could be done is instead of making these provisions in one quarter, we can spread it out over a year, a year-and-a-half, so that provisions come at a later date. But my own feeling is that the quicker we get this behind us, the better it will be. The world is an evolving and challenging place today, whether it be (owing to) technology, competition or risk awareness. We need to have the bandwidth to address these issues instead of getting stuck with one issue.
What is the status of your tie-up with Brookfield Asset Management Inc. (over a stressed asset joint venture fund)?There is nothing as of now. We don’t have a deal on the table.
Would you like to participate in a bad bank?Frankly, I don’t know what the structure will look like.
Is the banking industry prepared to implement goods and services tax on 1 July? There is a lot we have to do internally. We are already ready for people sending the money in through us (or paying tax). That will have to be tested with government servers. For our own internal purposes, there is a lot of work that needs to be done. The rules are not finalized. It’s going to be a humongous task. It is difficult to gauge at this time if we will meet the deadline of 1 July. We need more clarity on how things will happen.
Is SBI looking at giving variable pay to its employees? We would like to do it. But the actual proposal is not yet on the table.",2017-04-03,"SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya calls on RBI to participate more in resolution of stressed assets, says merger to be wrapped by May-end",0.8,13:47,SBI aims to boost efficiency rather than revenue after merger: Arundhati Bhattacharya +0,"
New Delhi: Tata Motors Ltd’s fiscal third-quarter profit plummeted 96% as lower sales at its British luxury car unit Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc. (JLR) and a wider loss in its domestic business took its toll on India’s largest automaker by revenue.
Net profit fell to Rs111.57 crore in the three months ended 31 December from Rs2,952.67 crore in the year-ago period, the Mumbai-based company said on Tuesday. A Bloomberg poll of 20 analysts had estimated a profit of Rs2,264.5 crore.
Consolidated sales fell 2.2% to Rs67,864.95 crore from Rs69,398.07 crore in the year-ago period.
Tata Motors said the invalidation of high-value banknotes by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 8 November hurt its domestic commercial vehicles business, a cash cow, with sales of trucks and buses declining 9%. Sales of light commercial vehicles were flat.
ALSO READ | Can’t tell right now Nano’s road ahead: Tata Motors’s Guenter Butschek
The biggest hit came from JLR, where net profit declined to £167 million ($208 million) from £440 million a year ago on a 13.1% increase in revenue to £6.5 billion.
“These are terrible numbers,” said Mahantesh Sabarad, head (retail research), SBI Cap Securities Ltd.
“That is because the JLR margin seem to be settling in to the single-digit space unlike (in) the past where a 14% was a given. More so, the JLR product mix has altered quite substantially” and variable marketing spending has been on the rise, Sabarad said.
Investors punished the stock. Tata Motors shares declined as much as 7% after the earnings announcement but recovered some ground to close down 3.68% at Rs486.80 on a day the BSE’s benchmark Sensex edged down 0.04% to 28,339.31 points on Tuesday.
The fall wiped off Rs5,993.23 crore from the company’s market value.
ALSO READ | Tata Motors reshuffles senior management for a leaner structure
On a standalone basis, the company said net loss widened to Rs1,046 crore in the December quarter from Rs137 crore a year ago. Revenues grew marginally to Rs10,167 crore from Rs10,019 crore.
“Standalone has been struggling, with the passenger vehicle business unit not really picking up pace, but this quarter has been one of the better ones,” Sabarad said.
Passenger vehicle sales rose 25.4% on the back of a continued strong customer response to the Tiago hatchback, said the company. Exports grew by 34.6% year-on-year.
Managing director and chief executive officer Guenter Butschek, a former chief operating officer at European aircraft maker Airbus, has been tasked with turning around the fortunes of Tata Motors, whose domestic passenger car sales and market share have roughly halved in the past two years.
As the domestic business floundered, JLR has sustained Tata Motors. In the December quarter, total retail sales at the unit rose 8.5% to 149,288 units, led by higher demand in China, North America and Europe.
“What is it that we need to be a high-performance organization— being lean, it’s about being agile and it’s about having clearly addressed and delegated accountability,” Butschek told a news conference on Tuesday.
The company expects to fare much better in the fourth quarter, chief financial officer C. Ramakrishnan told the conference.
Tata Motors unveils TAMO sub-brand, to showcase luxury sports car next month
“JLR margins would definitely be better in the fourth quarter, hopefully on the back of the new launches that we have,” Ramakrishnan said.
Other issues facing JLR include Britain’s Brexit vote and US President Donald Trump’s promised protectionist policies, according to a 20 January report by Mumbai-based IDFC Securities Ltd.
The US accounts for about 25% of JLR sales.
“Given this, JLR is in a more precarious position than its peers,” IDFC Securities analyst Deepak Jain wrote in the report.
The JLR unit is vulnerable because it doesn’t have factories in the US and sells much of its UK output abroad.
The unit’s operating profit margin narrowed to 9.3% from 14.4% a year earlier.
To offset the impact of a border tax now being studied by the Trump administration, JLR would need to raise prices by more than $17,000 per vehicle, according to West Bloomfield, an analyst at Michigan-based Baum & Associates Llc.
Reuters and Bloomberg contributed to this story. ",2017-02-15,"Tata Motors’ consolidated net profit stood at Rs111.57 crore for third quarter, dragged down by losses in domestic operations and lower profit of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) ",0.56,04:27,"Tata Motors Q3 profit plunges 96% on losses in India ops, lower JLR profit" +0,"Meet the 10 winners of the Mint-MIT Technology Review competition for innovators below the age of 35 from across India in different cutting-edge domains. The winners were selected after a rigorous judging process. The innovators were felicitated on 9 and 10 March at EmTech 2017, the second edition of the emerging technology conference organized in Delhi by Mint and MIT Technology Review.Akash DongreOrganization: Indus OSDesignation: Co-founder and chief product officerInnovation: A multilingual operating system available on over 50 mobile devicesEducation: BTech in mechanical engineering from IIT BombayAkash Dongre—along with co-founders Rakesh Deshmukh and Sudhir Bangarambandi—has always believed that “Indian problems require indigenous solutions”. No wonder their eponymous innovation, touted as the “world’s first regional operating system”, is blazing a trail in the Indian smartphone ecosystem. “In our short journey, beginning in 2015, we have already partnered with five domestic smartphone brands (Micromax, Intex, Karbonn, Celkon and Swipe) and built a user base of more than six million, which is consistently growing at a rate of 500,000 OS activations per month,” says Dongre. Indus OS, which is available in 12 Indian regional languages, boasts innovative features such as Indus Swipe (translation from English to a regional language and vice versa with just a swipe), Indus Keyboard (with built-in word and matra (a unit of metrical quantity in Indian languages) prediction) and Indus Reader (which can convert an English text into audio in eight regional languages). Besides, there’s a marketplace called App Bazaar, where over 50,000 apps are available in local languages.Dongre recalls one of his foreign trips when his lack of understanding of the local language made him feel handicapped: “Everything around me was in a language I did not understand.” Dongre also realized how digitally less connected the Indian heartland is and how alien English is to a lot of Indians. “After spending some more time to understand the Indian digital landscape and brainstorming with my team, we decided to start building an ecosystem for Indian consumers.” The team built Indus OS on three core pillars: simplicity, innovation and localization. “At the heart of our story lies the desire to equip anyone who is using a smartphone with a holistic ecosystem of their choice,” says Dongre.Indus OS, which introduced Indus OS 2.0 in July 2016, will introduce Indus OS 3.0 in 2017. “In 2017, we intend to continue to work with the Government of India and app developers alike to build a smartphone ecosystem of choice for the emerging markets population,” Dongre says.Ankit JhanwarOrganization: Pluss Advanced TechnologiesDesignation: Vice-president, corporate planning and strategyInnovation: A packaging box for vaccine transportation that uses phase change materials and a unique design for precise temperature controlEducation: BTech in polymer science and technology from IIT Roorkee; certificate in entrepreneurship, management and global leadership from London School of Economics and Political ScienceAn optimist by nature, Ankit Jhanwar was not put off by the disinterest displayed by some packaging companies in developing a temperature-controlled shipping solution using phase change materials (PCMs)—a domain in which his company, Pluss Advanced Technologies, had been working since 2005. Such a temperature-controlled solution could prove very useful in cutting down the 30% wastage of vaccines in the existing cold chain system in the country. So what Pluss did was develop a complete shipping solution using its own proprietary PCMs, which could not only provide better temperature control but also address the challenging Indian ambient conditions of 40°C. “A range of products were planned to address the gaps at each leg of the supply chain right from manufacturer to the depot to the distributor to chemist and finally to the patient,” says Jhanwar.The shipping solution that he developed was branded Celsure—which uses the PCM technology to provide precise temperature control. “It is the only shipping solution which provides temperature control for more than 72 hours even at ambient temperature of 40°C,” he says. Thanks to this innovation, all the current pharmaceutical shipments which happen by air can now be done by road using Celsure—something that can lead to huge savings in freight cost, thereby making it possible to lower the prices of medicines.According to Jhanwar, Celsure also addresses the unique challenge of shipping from a hot environment (say, India) to a cold environment (like Europe) or vice versa. What’s more, the solution has brought in simplicity in the packaging, removing human errors. Jhanwar says that it’s available in sizes as small as one vial to as large as 10,000 vials and can provide temperature control for as low as 2 hours to as high as 120 hours. Pluss has a goal of reducing medicine wastage due to ineffective cold chain to as low as 0.1% in the next three-five years. The firm is constantly working on scaling up and commercializing the innovation. Celsure was launched in April 2016 with only one variant; eight more variants have been added within a year. Logistics firms such as Blue Dart and DHL have adopted Celsure as one of their preferred modes of shipping temperature-sensitive pharma products. Successful trials have also been run with various pharmaceutical firms. Besides commercializing it in India, Pluss plans to go global with the launch in Singapore and the Middle East in 2018 and in the US and Europe in 2019. “We are also keen on tie-ups with the government, World Health Organization (WHO), Unicef and other related organizations for last-mile delivery of vaccines. Customized products are being planned to address the last mile challenges,” says Jhanwar. Anusha RammohanOrganization: General Electric Global ResearchDesignation: Lead engineerInnovation: Flow analytics for multi-phase flow metering in oil and gas industryEducation: BE (Hons.) in electronics and instrumentation from BITS-Pilani; MS in electrical engineering from Arizona State University, USAnusha Rammohan believes that the intersection of the digital and physical worlds is the ideal space for disruptive innovations. And that’s exactly what attracted her to the esoteric domain of flow analytics for multi-phase flow metering in the oil and gas industry.As the lead engineer at GE Global Research’s John F Welch Technology Center in Bengaluru, Anusha got the opportunity to combine physical sensors with advanced analytics to develop a solution capable of radically transforming the processes of the entire industry. “As the global energy demand continues to increase, there is an urgent need in the oil and gas industry to be more efficient with resources, people and investments to reduce the cost of producing oil while doing so safely with reduced environmental impact,” says Rammohan. Her innovation addresses this need by combining sensor and device data in the field using intelligent analytics to provide accurate and reliable information in real time about oil production. For instance, she says, timely information about well and field level production of oil, water and gas allows operators to make critical decisions related to optimizing pumps, allocating resources and energy to each well, shutting down or stimulating wells, and preventing leakage and blockage of pipes, etc. By transforming data into actionable insights, her analytics solution enables increased oil recovery, reduced human intervention and improved resource planning.Not merely restricting her innovation to a single industry, the next stop for Anusha is to extend it to applications in industries such as aviation, power and transportation. The applications include performance optimization of assets, health monitoring of safety-critical components and their increased reliability and reduced downtime—all of which can significantly improve productivity and bring down costs. Rammohan has been granted patents related to her work in image mapping, sensor positioning and flow measurement; she has filed for more. She dreams of a world powered by analytics and technologies such as artificial intelligence—one in which “autonomous decision making” would greatly reduce the ambiguity, uncertainty and human subjectivity that are currently proving to be bottlenecks in all industries.
Kshitij Marwah
Organization: Tesseract Imaging
Designation: Founder
Innovation: Virtual reality (VR) camera to create and share high resolution VR/holographic content; holographic augmented reality headset
Education: MTech in computer science from IIT Delhi; MS in media arts and sciences from MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts, US
Kshitij Marwah says virtual reality and augmented reality (VR and AR) are the new mediums for human beings to tell their stories in a much more “experiential and immersive manner”. It marks a natural progression, as he says: “From the spoken word to the written word, from photos to videos—we have always found new ways and tools to tell our stories.”The power of his belief in VR and AR, backed by the rigour of his technical education (never mind that he dropped out of his PhD at MIT Media Lab), led Marwah to his innovations: Quark VR camera and the Holoboard AR viewing headset. Says he, “The Quark VR camera will democratize mixed reality content creation and the Holoboard AR headset will allow for its viewing in a truly immersive and unique manner.”Marwah has a simple way of explaining his innovation. “Imagine the next time when you are watching a cricket match in your house. Rather than sitting in front of your television, with our Quark camera streaming the match live in VR and the Holoboard headset, you can feel as if you are sitting right in the stadium but in the comfort of your couch,” he says.His current company, Tesseract Imaging (in Norse mythology, Tesseract is said to be a cosmic cube of immense power; in geometry, the tesseract is a four-dimensional hypercube), was spun out of MIT Media Lab’s India arm, a unit that Marwah had co-founded to promote and spread inter-disciplinary learning among students in India. He is credited with growing the Lab initiative from a platform of 50 students to 500 students selected from hundreds of thousands of applicants across the country. He headed the India arm of the Lab from 2012 to 2015.Marwah believes that the innovations coming out of Tesseract will revolutionize “the way we capture, consume and see content and media”. On the anvil are plans to begin shipping the Quark VR cameras in mid-2017 and Holoboard AR headsets by the end of the year. “With our technology, we believe we can make sure that our society can capture, share and consume their daily experiences and share stories across generations with an experience that is immersive and powerful.”Nishant KumarOrganization: Embryyo Technologies Pvt. LtdDesignation: Founder and CEOInnovation: Sensor and mobile app-based drug adherence monitoring system for tuberculosisEducation: Dual degree in mechanical engineering from IIT Bombay Nishant Kumar, the founder and chief exec of Embryyo Technologies, a medical technology and research start-up incubated at Pune’s Venture Centre, was troubled by the way tuberculosis (TB) treatment was left midway by a large number of patients in India. There wasn’t an effective way of ensuring patients stayed the course. “This was because the TB medication involves a drug regimen of about 6 months where the patient is required to take a total of about 400 pills,” he says. There are several reasons why treatment is left incomplete, including side effects, forgetfulness, poor counselling and duration of the regimen. The enormity of the problem—as many as 2.5 million people in India were affected by TB in 2015 as per a World Health Organization report—inspired Kumar to do something about it. He visited the local district level hospitals and direct observation treatment (DOT) centres to interact with the clinicians, healthcare workers and patients, which helped him in “collecting more insights” and further strengthened his resolve to address this problem. He says that it demanded an easy-to-use, affordable solution which could fit seamlessly in an already established public health infrastructure in the country. The result was BoxRx, an electronic medical event monitoring system that has currently been piloted for drug adherence monitoring in TB patients. According to Kumar, most people with TB are cured by a strictly followed, six-month drug regimen but any interruption to it can cause drug resistance.That is where the innovation behind BoxRx comes in handy. The solution comprises a specially designed electronic pill box which carries the TB blister pack as prescribed by the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP). A tearable paper with conductive ink tracks printed corresponding to each pill is placed beneath the blister pack before closing the box. Whenever a pill is removed from the blister pack, the conductive track gets broken and this activity is logged and transmitted from an in-built Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) circuit to a central server in the form of an SMS. The server processes the information in the SMS and updates the mobile application of the doctor/health worker assigned to that particular patient.To scale up the innovation, Kumar plans to work very closely with the national and international organizations that are leading the TB control programmes. Also on the cards is large-scale manufacturing and on-field implementation of the innovation so that it reaches the maximum number of patients. Kumar envisions a society that is centred on harmonious and sustainable co-existence. “I believe that good health is the primary signature of prosperity for an individual, a family, a nation and the world at large,” he says.Pankaj AgarwalDesignation: Creative leaderOrganization: Samsung ElectronicsInnovation: A button-type device that connects to toys and a mobile app to enable intuitive interactions for kidsEducation: BTech in electrical engineering from IIT Kanpur; MS from Seoul National University; MBA from Harvard Business SchoolWhenever Pankaj Agarwal saw his son Anant play alone with his toy blocks, a question often nagged him: “Why does he have to play alone? Is there something I can do to make play-at-home social and interactive for him?” He was also inspired to change the status quo when he looked at the many expensive toys gathering dust around his house. Agarwal thought of the millions of middle-class homes that just couldn’t afford all those high-tech toys with pricey tags.So he added a simple and interactive, yet relatively inexpensive, tag of his own: TagPlus. The innovation comprises a button-type smart tag, a smart app (for phones/tablets), and, above all, content created and shared in the cloud by kids as young as 7-year-olds. A key benefit of TagPlus is that it can increase the repeat play value of toys. An important feature of the innovation, says Agarwal, is that there is no set-up required. “No device pairing, no logins, no passwords!” When kids buy toys that have this smart tag, they can start playing on the TagPlus platform immediately after unwrapping it. Kids can “click”, “long press”, “shake” and “bump” their smart tags and the smart app will respond accordingly. A “click” on the smart tag activates the TagPlus app on a nearby digital device to show toy-related content. A “long press” action will bring on a social media interface where kids can easily upload their creations and also see the creations of other kids playing with the same toy. “Think of this as a ‘mini Facebook for kids’,” says Agarwal. A “shake” action on the smart tag will help kids find and connect with children playing with an identical toy who could be anywhere in the world. Also, when kids “bump” two tags from two different toys, the connected app shows multiple ways in which the toys can be combined to create something entirely new. Agarwal and his other TagPlus team members at Samsung believe that this patent-pending technology platform has the potential to make kids’ playing experiences more serendipitous, socially engaging and creative “by seamlessly bridging their virtual and physical play environments”. Agarwal and his colleagues did multiple pilot tests of TagPlus in South Korea and they are also in discussion with many toy makers to adopt the platform. “The response has been very positive,” he says. Agarwal plans to continue his innovative work in the creative domain and believes that “members of our society should be educated and imbibe a culture of creativity”.Prasant MisraDesignation: ScientistOrganization: TCS Research and Innovation, Tata Consultancy Services LtdInnovation: Auditory sensing for micro unmanned aerial vehicles Education: PhD in computer science and engineering from the University of New South Wales, Sydney; postdoctoral fellowship from the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, StockholmPrasant Misra has been focusing his research efforts around building “spatially intelligent systems”. His current work pertains to the auditory sensing technology for micro unmanned aerial vehicles (MUAVs, more popularly known as drones). It’s like “growing the ears” for intelligent things, as he puts it. “It is part of a grand vision to equip this category of flying robots with a sensory gamut that is on par with humans,” he says. This will not only enable such “things” to derive better spatial intelligence, but also drive cognition to a better level of autonomy by combining auditory sensing with vision.There are, however, fundamental challenges in developing such robust auditory capabilities, especially in capturing the spatial dimensions of a sound scene and analysing its acoustic signature. “The signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio is extremely low due to the presence of (near-field) wideband acoustic interference (i.e., self-noise) from the MUAVs’ spinning rotors and motors, which is both strong and non-stationary,” he explains. Theoretically speaking, building an acoustic array with a large number of acoustic elements can overcome such high levels of noise, but the space, payload and energy limitations of an MUAV come in the way of meeting such exhaustive system requirements and computational needs.Misra is now investigating both lightweight acoustic sensing system design, and low-power (but efficient) computation paradigms to overcome this challenge. The initial results, he says, are quite promising.The impact of the work Misra is doing is far-reaching. It will not only force us to rethink the current model of aerial sensing (which is primarily vision dominated), but will also open up newer applications and usage scenarios for the betterment of society. It is now quite common to talk of aerial drones, especially tiny ones with multiple rotors that can hover mid-air, in applications ranging from e-commerce deliveries and inspection of industrial machinery to wildlife monitoring and search-and-rescue operations. Nevertheless, their sensing technology is predominately vision-centric. “While the advantages are clearly obvious in visual inspection and monitoring applications, on the flip side, they become unusable in camera-obstructed or low-light conditions, or in scenarios that offer non-visual clues such as those based on sound. In fact, these conditions are a norm in high-stress environments (dense canopy or fog, structures on fire, underground mines, etc.),” he says.Misra is working towards taking the MUAV technology from its existing level to “cognitive autonomous systems”. He believes that as spatial intelligence and cognitive technology mature, the lines between machines and humans would blur, enabling both to live together in the same society as companions. In the future, cognitive aerial drones will take up roles such as aerial cars and taxis, pick up and escort agents, search and rescue bots, and ears and eyes for the disabled. In short: anything you want them to be.Sandeep Senan Designation: Founder and directorOrganization: Evobi Automations Pvt. Ltd (Bibox Labs)Innovation: A toolkit-based approach to learning so that kids can learn through experiments by making things like a robotic toy or a fire alarmEducation: BE in computer science from Visvesvaraya Technological University, Karnataka; MBA in international business from Edith Cowan University, AustraliaWhen it comes to innovation and creativity, Sandeep Senan is as excited as the young kids he wants to empower with the innovative tools at his disposal. His innovation, Bibox (short for Brain-in-a-box), is like an “electronic brain which can be instructed by a kid using a graphical software, which can run on a tablet or smartphone or PC or even with cards”, he says. Senan is of the view that the realm of innovation must be extended to children rather than remain mostly confined to the adult world. There’s a need for a huge change in the way children are taught and allowed to be creative, he feels.“The task of making adults creative is a humongous task, but if we think about kids, they are naturally curious and thus it’s easy to instill an innovative thinking process in them,” says Senan. So when he discovered that there was a lack of tools and curricula designed for instilling the habit of innovation in kids, he decided to do something about it.“The innovation Bibox was originated out of that need to give kids the tools to change the world and thus the confidence to keep innovating and make it a habit so that when they become adults, they can go out and make large-scale impact because the thinking is ingrained into their minds,” he says.Bibox doesn’t have a definite shape or size but is basically a set of tools—processors, switches, sensors, battery and software, among others—using which children in different age groups can try their hand at innovation. This “brain”, says Senan, can be connected to a variety of accessories, including toys, lights and TV sets, and children can come up with stuff like walking robotic dogs, automatic TV and even connected health products using the Internet of Things.“Because Bibox responds to kids’ logic in the physical world, they can see what the logic means and correct themselves when required—making the learning experience truly experiential,” he says. Besides providing them such toolkits, Senan’s organization also provides them some structured mentoring to enable them to use their creative freedom and confidence to innovate more and more in any field they choose to be in. “We are just getting the process started a little early,” he says. Through Bibox Labs, he has enrolled more than 25,000 students in over 100 schools in India.To take his innovative ways to a much larger base of students, Senan and his team are digitizing the process of mentoring the kids to be innovators. Once this is in place, he says, any student anywhere in the world would be able to go through the same process that Bibox Labs follows in its affiliate schools. They also plan to partner with private firms, non-governmental organizations and various government bodies to scale up the programme.Subham Banerjee Designation: Young scientistOrganization: Centre for Biodesign and Diagnostic, Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, department of biotechnologyInnovation: Transdermal patch against neurotoxin poisoningEducation: Master of pharmacy from West Bengal University of Technology; PhD in pharmacy from Birla Institute of Technology, MesraSoldiers fighting in hostile territories often have to shield themselves against harmful or poisonous gases and chemical substances. One often hears of deadly strikes such as the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system (1995), the nerve gas attack in Syria (2013) or the recent attack in Iraq by Islamic State militants in which they set fire to a sulphur mine, spreading sulphur dioxide plumes.Subham Banerjee’s innovation concerns protecting people against neurotoxic poisoning resulting from such attacks. “The exposure of humans to neurotoxins is a major risk factor in severe mortality in chemical or biological warfare situations, as neurotoxins are one of the most potent toxins,” he says. His innovation, a transdermal patch that can provide protection against neurotoxin poisoning, comprises an inert adhesive matrix system with active pharmaceutical ingredients. The patch can be applied to intact or even burnt or blistered skin. It works by releasing a combination drug (eserine and pralidoxime chloride) through the skin in what is called a “controlled or sustained release” mechanism.According to Banerjee, the new patch has “an excellent safety profile”, can be “self-administered”, and has positive environmental as well as economic impact. “Apart from conventional dosage forms, no novel sustained release prophylactic transdermal patches are currently available in the market,” he says. Which is why this innovation has huge socio-economic benefits and the potential to achieve product dominance in the market.In order to sustain this project and take it to the next level of successful commercialization, however, Banerjee says that some studies have to be carried out. For one, process parameters have to be optimized to scale up the capability of manufacturing these patches in bulk quantities. Also, a preclinical toxicity study in rodents needs to be done, followed by a full-fledged pilot for the bioavailability study in human subjects as per the guidelines of the Drug Controller General of India.Banerjee believes that this innovation has the potential to make an “extra value-addition” to the existing measures for biological warfare protection available with India’s Armed Forces.Vinay Kumar Designation: Co-founder, director and CEOOrganization: PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. LtdInnovation: A single device that can diagnose multiple parameters related to diabetes managementEducation: MTech in microelectronics and VLSI design and MSc in electronic science from Kurukshetra University; PhD from Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science BangaloreAt age 14, when Vinay Kumar was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, his doctor told him he would have to take insulin injections. The look of disappointment on his face prompted the physician to lie that it was only for 10 days that injections were needed. Later on, when Kumar realized that he was stuck with the needle for a lifetime, he became determined to put the hurt and discomfort behind and do something about it. Over the years, diabetes took a bigger and bigger toll on his body, with episodes of hypoglycemia (abnormally low level of sugar in the blood) and even fainting—but all this only strengthened his resolve.In addition to struggling with a debilitating condition like millions in the world do, Kumar constantly thought about how a diabetic can manage his condition better and, at the same time, persisted with his studies. “These two aspects of my life merged when I decided to pursue a PhD at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc Bangalore),” he says. Besides working on novel ways to diagnose diseases and acquiring multiple patents, he also co-founded (along with Navakanta Bhat and Gautam Sharma) PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. Ltd, a start-up incubated at IISc that is focused on medical device research and development.Kumar’s innovation is a hand-held point-of-care device which, as a single unit, can measure eight different parameters related to diabetes management and early detection of its complications. “With a tiny drop of finger-pricked blood samples, patients can test HbA1c (which gives 90 days blood glucose control profile), glycated albumin (which gives 15 days blood glucose control profile) and instant blood glucose as well,” he says. The device can detect very early damage in the kidney by measuring the microalbuminuria, creatinine and ACR (albumin to creatinine ratio) in the urine samples. Apart from these, he adds, it can measure the haemoglobin level for anaemia and chronic kidney disease. “The device can measure serum albumin, an important blood marker for kidney and liver. So the single device can take care of full diabetes glycaemic management and early detection of complications such as diabetic nephropathy,” explains Kumar.The road ahead for PathShodh is well-defined. “The device is ready and regress clinical validation for most of the tests has been completed on real patient samples in collaboration with major pathology labs and hospitals in Bangalore. We also have the manufacturing line setup at IISc to manufacture the disposable test strips for these different tests,” says Kumar. The commercial launch of the device can happen any time now. That would certainly move the needle in a positive direction for PathShodh’s mission of making healthcare diagnostics affordable and available to all.",2017-03-31,Meet the 10 winners of the Mint-MIT Technology Review competition for innovators below the age of 35 from across India in different cutting-edge domains,0.49,17:26,EmTech 2017: Innovators under 35 +0,"Mumbai: Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL) Tuesday announced a net loss of Rs407.44 crore for the December quarter, less than half of the Rs869.73 crore loss it posted a year ago, helped by higher production and sales of steel.Total income from operations rose 24.7% to Rs5,407.87 crore from Rs4,336.05 crore a year earlier.Nine analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected JSPL to report consolidated net loss of Rs611 crore while eight analysts had expected sales of Rs5,297.6 crore.ALSO READ: Jindal Steel and Power in talks to sell Chhattisgarh power plant for over $1.5 billionThe Naveen Jindal-led integrated steel and power producer’s consolidated steel sales in the quarter rose 18% to 1.16 million tonnes while consolidated steel production rose 7% to 1.15 million tonne, JSPL said.Revenue in the iron and steel business rose 40.4% to Rs4,577.71 crore while revenue in the power business rose 6.2% to Rs1,554.27 crore. A large part of the company’s power capacity remained unutilized, the company said.Total expenses in the third quarter rose 7.7% to Rs5,158.57 crore from Rs4,789.58 crore a year earlier.“Going forward, the company will continue to focus on increased volumes of steel, improve product mix with a higher focus on high yield products, improve its product mix and increased production in all mines both in India and abroad which would enhance the revenues as well as the operating margins in the coming quarters,” JSPL said in a statement.",2017-02-14,"Jindal Steel and Power’s total income from operations rose 24.7% to Rs5,407.87 crore in the December quarter from Rs4,336.05 crore a year earlier",-0.16,23:24,JSPL reports loss of Rs407.44 crore +0,"Mumbai: Godrej Industries Ltd, one of the Godrej group holding companies, Tuesday posted a Rs42.31 crore standalone loss for the December quarter against a Rs49.42 crore profit a year ago, even as sales rose.Total revenue increased 30.34% to Rs410.52 crore from a year ago.The company’s finance costs rose 25.7% from a year ago to touch Rs52.78 crore. Godrej also posted a loss before interest and tax of Rs24.72 crore in the ‘other’ business, up 45% year-on-year. This segment includes integrated poultry, tissue culture, seeds, windmill energy generation, and gourmet and fine foods.On a consolidated basis, the company posted a Rs89.95 crore net profit, down 15.1% from a year ago. However, in a statement, the company said that consolidated results for this quarter were not comparable with previous quarters because of “changes in the shareholdings during the period in some of the subsidiaries, joint ventures, and associates.”ALSO READ: Godrej Properties Q3 net profit up nearly fourfold at Rs77.25 crore“The best way to look at this company is on a sum of the parts basis,” an analyst with an equities brokerage firm said, requesting anonymity. “The bulk of Godrej Industries’s holdings are in Godrej’s consumer business, Godrej Properties, and Godrej Agrovet. These are all fast-growing companies, and GIL’s market cap is equal to the market value of its shares in both the listed entities it holds–GCPL, and Godrej Properties,” he said. Godrej Industries currently holds 23.8% of Godrej Consumer Products and 56.7% of Godrej Properties, as per a company investor update released Tuesday.“The star business in Godrej Industries’ stable is Godrej Agrovet, their agriculture business,” the analyst said. “It has been growing at 25-30% CAGR.” Godrej Industries said this division posted an 18% growth in revenue and 369% growth in profit before tax (without exceptional items) year-on-year. The subsidiary has interests in animal feeds, oil palm, agri inputs, and life sciences, whose revenues grew steadily in the past three quarters. The agri-inputs grew fastest at 26% year-on-year.Brokerage firm Axis Capital in an October report had pointed out that Godrej Industries’s market cap is largely derived from its holdings in the listed properties and consumer businesses, ignoring the value generated by Agrovet, the company’s agri-chem business. Axis Capital estimated that Agrovet will be worth Rs7,000 crore by end of FY2018 and will be worth Rs14,000 crore by 2021, close to GIL’s current market cap of Rs17,409 crore. Shares of Godrej Industries closed 0.09% higher at Rs516.50 on the BSE on Tuesday, while the benchmark Sensex closed lower by 12 points, or 0.04%, at 28,339 points.",2017-02-14,Godrej Industries’ total revenue in Q3 increased 30.34% to Rs410.52 crore from a year ago,0.07,22:50,Godrej Industries posts Rs42.31 crore loss for December quarter +0,"Ahmedabad: Adani Enterprises Ltd (AEL), part of the Adani Group, posted a consolidated net profit of Rs340 crore for the quarter ended 31 December, a 62% increase from a year earlier.The company, which is in the business of mining, agro, renewable energy and city gas distribution, said in a media statement Tuesday evening that revenue rose to Rs8,606 crore from Rs7,895 crore in the same period last year.ALSO READ: Adani gets CCI nod to buy Reliance Infra’s power transmission projects in Gujarat, Maharashtra“Adani Enterprises demonstrated encouraging performance backed by mining, city gas and renewable businesses. Government’s focus of strong spending on infrastructure and energy space coupled with improving utilization and cost optimization enables the company to deliver on its growth plans,” executive director Ameet Desai said in the statement.According to Gautam Adani, chairman of the Adani Group, the government’s initiatives to curb the parallel economy and other reforms augured well for AEL’s businesses. “We at Adani Enterprises continue to focus on business opportunities with sustainable returns and value enhancement,” he added.",2017-02-14,"Adani Enterprises’ revenue rose to Rs8,606 crore in December quarter from Rs7,895 crore last year",0.69,20:59,Adani Enterprises posts 62% jump in Q3 profit at Rs340 crore +0,"Bengaluru: Low-fare airline SpiceJet Ltd’s fiscal third-quarter profit declined 24% because of higher fuel prices and a drop in demand after the government invalidated high-value banknotes in a shock announcement in November.Net profit fell to Rs181.1 crore in the three months ended 31 December from Rs239.9 crore in the year earlier, the company said in a statement to BSE on Tuesday.Revenue rose 12.5% to Rs1,642.4 crore from Rs1,459.95 crore the year before. Still, it was the eighth straight quarter SpiceJet reported a profit after nearly shutting down in December 2014.Ajay Singh, chairman and managing director of SpiceJet, attributed the decline in profits on high fuel prices and demonetisation denting demand for travel in what is typically the most profitable quarter for airlines.SpiceJet’s will start inducting fuel-efficient Boeing Max planes starting next year, Singh said, adding that the new planes will help the airline save costs over the long term.Last month, SpiceJet placed a $11 billion order to buy 100 Boeing 737 Max aircraft to expand operations.“Our historic aircraft order signifies the end of the turnaround phase for SpiceJet and marks the beginning of a growth story. This order will help build an even stronger and more profitable airline. We will be relentless in reducing our costs and identifying new avenues for revenue generation,” he said.SpiceJet, with about 13% domestic market share, has 343 daily flights to 45 cities with 32 Boeing 737NG and 17 Bombardier Q-400 planes. SpiceJet’s profits mirror a similar drop in earnings for two other listed airlines in the December quarter. InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, which operates IndiGo, and Jet Airways India Ltd have reported a slump in profits in the three months ended 31 December.IndiGo said third-quarter profit dropped 25% to Rs487.25 crore from Rs657.29 crore a year earlier while revenue rose 16.8% to Rs5,158.42 crore from Rs4,481.20 crore in the year-ago period.Jet Airways’ profit slumped 69% to Rs142.38 crore from Rs.467.11 crore a year ago while revenue dropped to Rs3,344.62 crore from Rs3,608 crore a year ago.Singh had said in mid-January that the December quarter will be a profitable one for SpiceJet.SpiceJet stock rose 0.55% to Rs 64.35 on BSE, while the benchmark Sensex fell 0.04% to end at 28,339.31 points on Monday. The earnings were announced after the end of trading on Tuesday.",2017-02-14,Budget airline SpiceJet’s profit declined 24% in the December quarter from the year-ago period on the back of higher fuel prices and competitive flight fares,0.97,20:53,SpiceJet’s Q3 profit declines 24% to Rs181 crore +0,"Ahmedabad: Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ), the country’s largest port developer, reported a consolidated net profit of Rs848 crore for the quarter ended 31 December, a rise of 26% from a year earlier.APSEZ said in a statement that its consolidated revenue rose 32% to Rs2,235.78 crore in the same period.In Q3 FY17, APSEZ handled cargo of 41 million tonnes, an increase of 8% from 38 million tonnes it handled in Q3 FY16.“Our strategy to diversify our cargo mix and focus on high value cargo continues to yield positive results. Like last quarter, the continued outperformance in cargo volumes is backed by healthy growth in our newer ports namely Hazira, Dhamra and Kattupalli,” said Karan Adani, chief executive officer of APSEZ, in the statement. ALSO READ: Adani Enterprises posts 62% jump in Q3 profit at Rs340 croreOperational efficiencies and the company’s efforts to change the mix of bulk cargo beyond coal have resulted in all-round growth in our financial numbers, he added.APSEZ owns and operates eight ports and terminals in India including Mundra, Dahej, Kandla and Hazira in Gujarat, Dhamra in Orissa, Mormugao in Goa, Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and Katupalli in Chennai. The company is developing a terminal at Ennore in Tamil Nadu and Vizhinjam in Kerala.",2017-02-14,"Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone’s consolidated revenue rose 32% to Rs2,235.78 crore in December quarter",0.89,22:35,Adani Ports Q3 profit rises 26% to Rs848 crore +0,"Bengaluru: DLF Ltd, India’s largest property developer, said on Tuesday that fiscal third-quarter profit fell 46% to Rs98.14 crore from the year-ago period. Revenue also fell 30% to Rs2,057.92 crore during the three months ended 31 December. The realty firm’s stake sale in its rental unit, which is expected to raise about Rs12,000-13,000 crore, is at an advanced stage with discussions on with shortlisted investors. The transaction involves promoters selling 40% in DLF’s commercial property arm, DLF CyberCity Developers Ltd (DCCDL), to institutional investors. The proceeds from the sale will be infused into DLF and be used mainly to reduce debt.“In respect of DCCDL CCPS (compulsorily convertible preference shares) transaction, the discussion with shortlisted investors is at an advanced stage and shall be presented to the committee of independent directors for their evaluation and final decision. In lieu of this, conversion period for CCPS issued to the promoters in DCCDL has been extended by one year at their request to facilitate its sale,” DLF said in a release. DLF on Saturday said that its promoters have deferred till March next year the conversion of securities held in the firm’s subsidiary into equity shares. The deadline to convert CCPS into shares was 19 March this year, but the same could not be executed in view of Securities and Exchange Board of India’s order in October 2014 banning DLF and six executives from the capital market for the next three years.ALSO READ: Property developers falling in line with new stringent realty law“The performance in the last quarter was subdued as markets adjusted itself to new paradigm initiated by demonetisation move. While demonetisation is extremely positive for the company and the industry, it has had short-term negative impact on secondary sales, which in turn has impacted primary off-take. The company expects this period of adjustment may continue for next few quarters till the time secondary market stabilizes and customers start to purchase new products,” DLF said in a statement.DLF said it remains focused on execution and creation of finished inventory. With deliveries of 11 million sq. ft in the first nine months of 2016-17, under-construction residential projects have come down to 19 million sq. ft.Meanwhile, office leasing business continues to witness healthy traction, backed by expansion in services sector. Witnessing the demand in office leasing, DLF is building two new office complexes in Gurgaon and Chennai.PTI contributed to this story.",2017-02-14,"DLF Ltd’s revenue also fell 30% to Rs2,057.92 crore during the quarter ",0.68,22:08,DLF’s Q3 profit falls 46% to Rs98.14 crore +0,"New Delhi: Fortis Healthcare on Tuesday reported a net profit of Rs453.29 crore for the third quarter ended on 31 December 2016-17. The company had reported net loss of Rs29.16 crore in the same quarter of last fiscal. Its consolidated total income from operations stood at Rs 1,133.38 crore for the third quarter of current fiscal, compared with Rs1,026.52 crore in the year-ago period, Fortis said in a BSE filing. Fortis Healthcare said results are not comparable, as the consolidated result includes financial results of FHTL which it had invested in last year. It has completed acquisition of 51% economic interest in Fortis Hospotel Ltd (FHTL) from RHT.Fortis Healthcare CEO Bhavdeep Singh said: “Like all other healthcare players, we have been impacted by demonetisation, however we have still continued to grow on most parameters in comparison to last year and the trailing quarter”. During the quarter, revenue of its hospital Business stood at Rs917.2 crore while revenue from its diagnostics business was at Rs188 crore. Fortis Healthcare stock closed 5.25% up at Rs195.60 on BSE.",2017-02-14,"Fortis Healthcare consolidated total income from operations stood at Rs 1,133.38 crore for the third quarter, compared with Rs1,026.52 crore in the year-ago period",0.58,18:26,Fortis Healthcare Q3 profit at Rs 453.29 crore +0,"Mumbai: Despite higher sales, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd’s consolidated net profit fell 4.7% year-on-year in the quarter ended December due to a sharp increase in tax expense.India’s largest pharmaceutical company reported a net profit of Rs1,471.82 crore for the quarter against Rs1,544.85 crore a year ago, missing analysts’ estimates. Sales were up 8.4% at Rs7,683.24 crore, as against Rs7,087.07 crore in the year-ago period.A Bloomberg poll of 24 brokerages had estimated the company’s net profit at Rs1,782 crore.Tax expense for the December quarter jumped four-fold to Rs372.92 crore from Rs88.82 crore in the same period last year.Sun Pharma’s sales in the US, which accounted for 45% of the total sales, rose 4% on year to $507 million, benefitting from authorized generic sales of olmesartan and its combinations, the company said in its earnings statement.The drug maker’s sales in India were up 5% at Rs1,969 crore, while sales in emerging markets grew 14% to $172 million in the quarter under review.The company’s spending on research and development stood at Rs613 crore, which was 8% of sales. During the quarter, 8 abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs) were filed with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A total of 149 of its applications await US FDA’s approval.Shares of Sun Pharma ended down 0.7% at Rs650.15 on Tuesday on the BSE, while benchmark Sensex index closed almost flat at 28339.31 points.",2017-02-14,"Sun Pharma reports a profit of Rs1,471.82 crore for the third quarter, as against Rs1,544.85 crore a year ago. Sales rises 8.4% at Rs7,683.24 crore",0.89,18:13,"Sun Pharma Q3 profit falls 5% to Rs1,471.82 crore on higher tax outgo" +0,"Seoul: Pre-orders for Samsung Electronics Co Ltd’s flagship Galaxy S8 smartphone have exceeded those of its predecessor S7, the firm’s mobile chief said on Thursday, suggesting many consumers are unfazed by last year’s Galaxy Note 7 fires.Strong initial demand for the S8 will be encouraging for a firm recovering from one of the worst product safety failures in tech history, which ended in the Note 7’s swift withdrawal.The new smartphone has received favourable reviews ahead of the start of sales in South Korea, the United States and Canada on 21 April. Some investors and analysts have even predicted a first-year sales record for the South Korean company.“It’s still a bit early, but initial response to the pre-orders that have begun at various places across the world have been better than expected,” mobile chief Koh Dong-jin said at an S8 media briefing.He said the S8 will be the safest Galaxy smartphone to date due to measures implemented to avoid the battery failures that caused some Note 7s to spontaneously combust.Analysts said strong S8 sales are likely to help Samsung to its best-ever quarterly profit in April-June, along with a booming memory chip market that is widely expected to deliver record revenue this year for the industry as a whole.Brand recoverySamsung has been working to restore investor trust as well as its reputation since the Note 7’s withdrawal in October within two months of being on the market, losing out on $5.4 billion in profit.Senior executives told foreign media on the sidelines of the briefing that it will take time for Samsung’s brand image to recover. They also said Samsung has seen a rebound in consumer sentiment towards the firm since announcing the results of a probe into the fires and preventative measures on 23 January.“It took Toyota about four years for its brand to get back to where it was, and I think ours can do it faster,” said Lee Young-hee, an executive vice president at Samsung’s mobile business, referring to a series of Toyota Motor Corp vehicle recalls from 2009 to 2011.S8 advertising focuses on features such as almost bezel-less screens rather than highlighting safety. Executives said this was deliberate in the belief that Samsung has done enough to convince consumers the Note 7’s problems will not be repeated.“We felt really comfortable that we had attained a level of confidence with consumers so that we could actually shift to the product campaign,” said Pio Schunker, global head of integrated marketing for Samsung’s mobile business.“Ultimately I think it is this product that proves this case.” Reuters",2017-04-13,"Pre-orders of flagship Galaxy S8 smartphone have exceeded those of its predecessor S7 suggesting consumers are unfazed by last year’s Note 7 fires, says Koh Dong-jin of Samsung",0.3,18:20,Samsung putting Note 7 behind it as S8 pre-orders surpass S7’s +0,"Washington: H1B work visas—the most sought after by Indian IT professionals—had a “positive effect” on innovation and increased the overall welfare of Americans, a new study has found, amidst uncertainty over the regulations of such visas by the Trump administration. The H1B visa allows US companies to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialised occupations. The number of these visas granted annually is capped by the federal government. Recently, the Trump administration issued a stern warning to companies not to discriminate against American workers by “misusing” the H1B work visas programme. Researchers, including John Bound and Nicolas Morales from the University of Michigan in the US, studied the impact that the recruitment of foreign computer scientists had on the US economy. They selected the time period of 1994-2001, which marked the rise of e-commerce and a growing need for technology workers. Foreign computer scientists granted H1B visas to work in the US during the IT boom of the 1990s had a significant impact on workers, consumers and tech companies, researchers said. Also Read: Tightening visa norms a blessing in disguise for IT firms, says Mohandas PaiBound, Morales and Gaurav Khanna of the University of California-San Diego found that “the high-skilled immigrants had a positive effect on innovation, increased the overall welfare of Americans and boosted profits substantially for firms in the IT sector.” Immigration also lowered prices and raised the output of IT goods by between 1.9% and 2.5%, thus benefiting consumers. Such immigration also had a big impact on the tech industry’s bottom line. “Firms in the IT sector also earned substantially higher profits thanks to immigration,” said Morales, a U-M economics doctoral student. On the flipside, the influx of immigrants dampened job prospects and wages for US computer scientists. US workers switched to other professions lowering the employment of domestic computer scientists by 6.1% to 10.8%. Based on their model, wages would have been 2.6% to 5.1% higher in 2001, researchers said. “As long as the demand curve for high-skill workers is downward sloping, the influx of foreign, high-skilled workers will both crowd out and lower the wages of US high-skill workers,” said Bound, U-M professor of economics.",2017-04-13,"Foreign computer scientists granted H1B visas to work in the US during the IT boom of the 1990s had a significant impact on workers, consumers and companies, researchers said",0.81,15:11,H1B visas boosted overall welfare of Americans: study +0,"New Delhi: Driven by higher income, metals and mining major Vedanta Ltd saw its consolidated net profit jump over four times to Rs1,866.28 crore during the December quarter of the current fiscal.Led by NRI billionaire Anil Agarwal, it had reported net profit of Rs408.58 crore in the October-December quarter of the previous fiscal, Vedanta said in a BSE filing.Its total consolidated income from operations of the metals-to-oil group rose significantly to Rs20,393.03 crore during the third quarter of 2016-17, as against Rs15,731.48 crore in the year-ago period. The total expenses of the firm also rose to 16,033.75 crore during the quarter as against Rs14,216.38 crore in the third quarter of 2015-16. Vedanta CEO Tom Albanese said: “Volume ramp-up and cost efficiencies across our operations, aided by higher commodity prices, have significantly driven up EBITDA y-o-y. Our financial position remains robust and we continue to strengthen our balance sheet by maximising free cash flow and reducing debt.”He further said that with the company’s focus on simplifying the group structure, the Vedanta Limited and Cairn India merger is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2017.“The proposed merger of Vedanta Limited and Cairn India is an important strategic step in simplifying the group structure. This was approved by all sets of shareholders in September 2016, and Vedanta expects the transaction to complete in the first quarter of CY2017 (by March, 2017),” the company said.It said this has been the “best ever quarter for Vedanta Limited in last 2 years. Profit after tax jumped 4.5 times (or 353%) to Rs1,866 crore in October-December 2016 quarter.”The company said results are driven by higher volumes at Iron Ore, Aluminium & Power, Copper India and Zinc India businesses as well as significant cost and marketing savings and higher commodities prices.It said it recorded “EBITDA at Rs6,002 crore, up 83% y-o-y” and EBITDA margins of 39% reflects benefits from higher commodity prices and volume ramp-up. Vedanta said that as on 31 December 2016, gross debt has been reduced by Rs1,828 crore to Rs64,966 crore and net debt stands reduced by Rs447 crore to Rs11,514 crore on account of positive free cash flow.Also, strong operating performance has led to generation of free cash flow of Rs1,801 crore, it said, adding that its financial position remains strong with total cash and liquid investments of Rs53,452 crore.The company said it is focused on strengthening its balance sheet by maximising free cash flow, refinancing and terming out maturing debt, and simplifying the group structure.It added, “Vedanta achieved cumulative cost and marketing savings of $545 million over the last 7 quarters. This is ahead of the plan to save $1.3 billion in four years.”",2017-02-14,"Vedanta’s total consolidated income from operations of the metals-to-oil group rose to Rs20,393.03 crore during third quarter of 2016-17, as against Rs15,731.48 crore in the year-ago period",0.69,17:34,"Vedanta Q3 profit rises 4-times at Rs1,866 crore" +0,"San Francisco: Facebook on Wednesday said it has started weeding out bogus accounts by watching for suspicious behaviour such as repetitive posts or torrents of messages. The security improvement was described as being part of a broader effort to rid the leading social network of hoaxes, misinformation and fake news by making sure people are who they claim to be.“We’ve found that when people represent themselves on Facebook the same way they do in real life, they act responsibly,” Shabnam Shaik of the Facebook protect and care team said in a blog post.“Fake accounts don’t follow this pattern, and are closely related to the creation and spread of spam.” Accounts suspected of being bogus are suspended and holders asked to verify identifies, which scammers typically don’t do, according to the California-based social network.In France, the new tactic has already resulted in Facebook taking action against 30,000 accounts believed to be fakes, Shaik said. “We’ve made improvements to recognize these inauthentic accounts more easily by identifying patterns of activity—without assessing the content itself,” Shaik said.“With these changes, we expect we will also reduce the spread of material generated through inauthentic activity, including spam, misinformation, or other deceptive content that is often shared by creators of fake accounts.”Under pressure to stymie the spread of fake news, Facebook has taken a series of steps including making it easier to report such posts and harder to make money from them. Facebook also modified its displays of trending topics to find stories faster, capture a broader range of news, and help ensure that trends reflect real world events being covered by multiple news outlets.Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has sought to deflect criticism that the huge social network may have been used to fuel the spread of misinformation that affected the 2016 US presidential race.Facebook last week unleashed a new weapon in the war against “revenge porn” at the social network as well as the messaging services Messenger and Instagram.When intimate images shared on Facebook without permission are reported, confirmed and removed, the company will use photo-matching technology to prevent copies from being shared again on its platform.",2017-04-13,"The security improvement is part of Facebook’s broader effort to rid the social network of hoaxes, misinformation and fake news ",-0.61,10:54,Facebook looking at behaviour to weed out fake accounts +0,"Charlottesville,US: To transform India’s economy, there is a need to reduce “friction” in businesses and create an “environment” wherein the government has more trust in its entrepreneurs, Infosys founder N. R. Narayana Murthy has said. For the transformation of the Indian economy, he said it is essential for the younger generation to be daring and that India is integrated with the global economy. “We still have a little bit of work in reducing friction to businesses. We need to create an environment where the government has more trust in its entrepreneurs than it is today,” Murthy, 70, told students of the prestigious Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia here. Murthy, the recipient of the 2017 Thomas Jefferson Foundation medal in Global Innovation, was responding to Darden School of Business Dean Scott Beardsley who asked, “what do you think needs to happen next to transform India’s economy. What is next”. Also read: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“We want our youngsters to be a little bit more daring in taking the entrepreneurial route more and more than the extent to which they do today. We have to become much more integrated to the world economy so that we can consider the entire world as our market and can become globally competitive. “And most importantly we can become much more open minded to learn from the wonderful things that are happening in this country and elsewhere. I would say these are required (for transforming India’s economy to the next level),” Murthy said. He, however, refrained from elaborating what the Indian government needs to do to create the environment of trust in its entrepreneurs and said, “I will tell you why, as an Indian citizen, it may not be proper if I were to be critical about India when I am outside India”. Interacting with students, he said, challenges for entrepreneurs are now different than the time when he started Infosys. Those days access to capital was almost non-existent and government was a big irritant. “Today, challenges are different. But in some sense even more complex, because today’s entrepreneurs have to be much more smarter than what we were because there is so much of competition on a global scale. Before you can say this can be done, somebody else may have already done it.” “Therefore, today’s entrepreneurs would have to be much more nimble, global, competitive because market is truly determinant for success today unlike our time when managing government was a big determinant in India,” he said. Murthy said good governance is all about maximising shareholders’ value while ensuring fairness, transparency and accountability to all stake holders. Of all the stakeholders, society is the most important player. “Respect from the society is the most important ingredient for longevity of a corporation,” he said. “To be honoured by the most innovative country in the world and to be awarded a medal in the name of Thomas Jefferson, author of Declaration of Independence is to me a big honour. I will certainly work hard, and hopefully smart in the remaining years of my life, to deserve this kindness, this generosity and this affection on their part,” he told PTI. The fact that the university has seen it fit to pick up somebody from India, and bestow this honour shows how open this country is and how generous they are, Murthy said. “Therefore this is a clear example of how Indian students wherever they are whether in India or here or anywhere else can be sure that as long as they are good citizens of this world, contribute to make the society a better place through peaceful and harmonious methods, they will be recognised, appreciated,” he said. Murthy said that Indian students are making a positive impact in the countries they are studying. “I have not come across a single person of Indian-origin who has conducted himself or herself in a manner that has brought sorrow to the society they are living in, anywhere, wherever in the world. So I think that is the right way. “I am very very proud of our Indian students. They are smart, have very good values and are very peaceful. They contribute to the society in a very significant way wherever they are. I just want them to continue to do this,” the Infosys founder said. The one important principle that Indian students should remember in everything they do is will this make India a more respected place, a more respected nation? Will this action of mine make me a better part of this community? Will this action deserve appreciation and affection from other members in this community? If they remember these then they will do everything possible, Murthy said. PTI",2017-04-13,Infosys founder Narayana Murthy says the younger generation needs to be daring in taking the entrepreneurial route for transformation of the Indian economy,0.43,14:26,Narayana Murthy says need to reduce ‘friction’ in businesses in India +0,"Bengaluru: For Vishal Sikka, 2016-17 stands as a rebuke.After three consecutive downward growth revisions, Infosys’s dollar revenue growth in the year ended 31 March 2017 will be at best 7.6%, 150 basis points (bps) lower than the 9.1% growth in 2015-16, and 620 bps short of its first projected 13.8% growth outlined in April last year. One bps is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Departure of four executive vice-presidents (EVP) in financial year 2017 (in addition to four EVP exits between August 2014 and March 2016) implies that Sikka continues to struggle to build a stable top leadership team. Further, Infosys continues to look away from acquisitions (it’s been 18 months since the company made its last acquisition), which makes one wonder what Houdini trick the management has to achieve its target of becoming a $20 billion firm by March 2021.Also read: Will corporate earnings disappoint once again?Finally, Infosys founder N.R.Narayana Murthy’s outburst, twice in public, against some of the decisions by the board is another painful blow to Sikka. Agreed, Murthy has not questioned Sikka directly. But few of these decisions, including agreeing to a generous severance money to its former CFO (chief financial officer), and giving a hike to the current COO (chief operating officer), were approved by the management, and so it is naive to conclude that all is okay between Sikka and Murthy.Understandably, these developments have unnerved shareholders: in full fiscal year 2017, Infosys shares declined 16.2%, more than the 9% fall by BSE IT index, even as the benchmark Sensex index returned 17% gains. For these reasons, business historians would take note of the fall in Sikka’s popularity: from being hailed as a hero in the first 18 months, Sikka now battles allegations of skulduggery and corporate greed.So what can Sikka—and Infosys—do to possibly break this impasse?First, get back growth and improve its execution. A related second measure is to get some growth from three divisions: Infosys BPO, EdgeVerve, the products and platforms unit (together bring about 13% of revenue), and Infosys Consulting. Infosys needs to improve its ability to sell more solutions from these three services to its clients. Lastly, Sikka needs to arrest senior management departures and build a stable leadership team. All this needs to be done swiftly, and once completed, hopefully, any corporate governance concerns of shareholders (including the founders) should be assuaged. It is important to note here that the displeasure expressed by some of the founders against the board only coincided with the period when Infosys’s growth started slipping (during the first quarter of last year).Significantly, Sikka’s $8 million performance-related pay as part of his $11 million compensation is a thorny issue, and how the board justifies this variable salary to its CEO on Thursday will dictate if there is a third instance of public spat between Murthy and the board. Is all this doable? Unlikely.Simply, because for IT services firms, chasing reclusive growth is more challenging than ever. Moreover, in case of Infosys, nothing short of a miracle can bring back peace between some of the founders and the board and management. With this as a backdrop, Mint puts the spotlight on five things to watch in Infosys’s fourth quarter earnings on Thursday:Revenue forecast: Brokerage firm BNP Paribas sees Infosys recording 1.3% sequential increase in revenue at $2.58 billion for the January-March period. The Infosys management will be mindful that this growth will be 30 basis points less than what the company did in January-March last year. Analysts term the growth in the fourth quarter as “exit rate” and a strong growth helps to start on a good note in the new financial year. Again, management commentary for the April-June period will be crucial.Will Infosys give full-year guidance? For Infosys, providing a growth outlook is one decision which appears to be going down the wire. Analysts believe the management will give a growth outlook. Based on conversations with executives familiar with the development, this paper thinks otherwise and Infosys may discontinue from this practice. The board will eventually take a call when it meets on 12 and 13 April but this decision will decide the road ahead for the Infosys stock. Performance of top customers: During the second and third quarters, Infosys’s largest client and top five and top 10 clients gave less business to the company. Until the June quarter of last year, Sikka did well to get more business from its largest clients. Since Infosys gets a fifth of total revenue from its top 10 clients, the management needs to reverse this decline if Infosys expects to record sustainable growth. A rain-check on Infosys’s new initiatives in the wake of President Trump’s strict visa laws: Over the last 33 months, Sikka has steered Infosys to embrace newer ways to do business, such as by bringing elements of user-centric method of Design Thinking. At the same time, Infosys has increased its focus on building platforms, in an effort to move away from people-led model of doing business. All these measures will be tested as US President Donald Trump works to have a strict policy in place which makes it arduous for outsourcing companies to bring engineers in the US. Hence, commentary on how Infosys is monetising its platforms business and impact of changes in visa will be eyed.Weak areas: Sikka has been unable to get respectable growth from EdgeVerve and Infosys BPO in his near three-year stint at Infosys. Another disappointment has been that the consulting division too ran into trouble in April last year. Infosys has put in a new leadership team at all three units over the last year, and management commentary on how soon it expects growth from these three units should decide the overall growth for the company.",2017-04-13,"Infosys founders spat, Donald Trump’s US visa policy and three consecutive downward growth revisions are likely to weigh in on the Q4 results to be declared today",0.44,05:04,Infosys results today: Five things to watch out for +0,"Tokyo: Toyota is introducing a wearable robotic leg brace designed to help partially paralysed people walk.The Welwalk WW-1000 system is made up of a motorized mechanical frame that fits on a person’s leg from the knee down. The patients can practice walking by wearing the robotic device on a special treadmill that supports their weight.Toyota Motor Corp. demonstrated the equipment for reporters at its Tokyo headquarters on Wednesday.One hundred such systems will be rented to medical facilities in Japan later this year, Toyota said. The service entails a one-time initial charge of 1 million yen ($9,000) and a 350,000 yen ($3,200) monthly fee.The gadget is designed to be worn on one leg at a time for patients severely paralysed on one side of the body due to a stroke or other ailments, Eiichi Saito, a medical doctor and executive vice-president at Fujita Health University, explained.The university collaborated with Toyota in developing the device.ALSO READ: The rise of the bad botsA demonstrator strapped the brace to her thigh, knee, ankle and foot and then showed how it is used to practice walking on the treadmill. Her body was supported from above by a harness and the motor helped to bend and straighten her knee. Sensors in the device can monitor the walking and adjust quickly to help out. Medical staff control the system through a touch panel screen.Japanese automakers have been developing robotics both for manufacturing and other uses. Honda Motor Co.’s Asimo humanoid can run and dance, pour a drink and carry on simple conversations, while WelWalk is more of a system that uses robotics rather than a stand-alone robot.Given how common paralysis due to strokes is in fast-aging Japan, Toyota’s device could be very helpful, Saito said. He said patients using it can recover more quickly as the sensitive robotic sensor in WelWalk fine-tunes the level of support better than a human therapist can.“This helps just barely enough,” said Saito, explaining that helping too much can slow progress in rehabilitation.The field of robotic aids for walking and rehabilitation is growing quickly. A battery-powered wearable exoskeleton, made by Israeli manufacturer ReWalk Robotics, enables people relying on a wheelchair to stand upright and walk.ALSO READ: Toyota makes $1.33 billion investment in Kentucky plantSuch systems also can aid therapists in monitoring a patient’s progress, Luke Hares, chief technology officer at Cambridge Medical Robotics in Britain, said in a phone interview.“They can be so much more precise,” he said.Previously, Toyota has shown robots that play the violin and trumpet. It plans to start sales in Japan of a tiny boy-like robot for conversational companionship. It is also investing in artificial intelligence and developing self-driving vehicles.Toshiyuki Isobe, Toyota’s chief officer for research, said WelWalk reflects the company’s desire to apply robotics in medicine and other social welfare areas, not just entertainment. The company also has an R2-D2-like machine, called the Human Support Robot, whose mechanical arm can help bed-ridden people pick things up.“Our vision is about trying to deliver mobility for everybody,” said Isobe. “We have been developing industrial robotics for auto manufacturing, and we are trying to figure out how we can use that technology to fill social needs and help people more.” AP",2017-04-12,Patients suffering from paralysis can practice walking by wearing Toyota’s robotic device on a special treadmill that supports their weight,0.77,15:52,Toyota unveils robotic leg brace that helps paralysed people walk +0,"San Francisco: Personal computer shipments notched their first quarterly growth in five years, researcher IDC said, though the gain of less than 1% from a year earlier underscored persistent weakness in demand, especially from consumers.Shipments totalled 60.3 million units in the first three months of the year, compared with 59.9 million in the same period a year earlier, IDC said Tuesday in a statement. It marked the first increase since the first quarter of 2012, IDC said.Gartner Inc., another major tracker of PCs, reported a decline of 2.4% for first-quarter global shipments. Both research companies said the business market for PCs had improved though not enough to offset a decline in consumer customers.Sales of desktop and laptop computers have been in decline as consumer demand shifted to smartphones and tablets for easily checking email or the internet on the go. Now the industry is counting on more interest in its machines from businesses and consumers wanting to replace aging hardware with sleeker and more powerful products that feature upgraded software. IDC and Gartner use their own methods for counting shipments in these reports, which are preliminary. Gartner, for example, includes desktops, notebooks and related devices such as Microsoft Corporation’s Surface, but not Google’s Chromebook. IDC includes Chromebooks, but not the Surface in this report, according to Jay Chou, research manager at IDC.The major brands in the industry all posted market share gains. HP retook the top spot with 22% in the first quarter, up from 19% a year earlier, IDC said. China-based Lenovo Group Ltd. posted a smaller uptick to 20.4% and Dell Technologies had 16%. Apple rose to 7% from 6.7%.Gartner puts Lenovo at number 1 with HP at number 2. Dell grabbed the number 3 spot, while Apple was number 5.Prices are climbing as key memory components get more expensive amid a shortage in the industry, according to Mikako Kitagawa, an analyst at Gartner. This doesn’t bode well for PC makers.“The price hike will suppress PC demand even further in the consumer market, discouraging buyers away from PC purchases unless it is absolutely necessary,” Kitagawa said in the statement. “The price hike started affecting the market in 1Q17.”In the US, Gartner said shipments fell 2.4%, with consumer demand dragging down sales. HP was number 1 in the US market, while Dell was number 2. Apple was number 4. Bloomberg",2017-04-12,"Personal computer shipments totalled 60.3 million units in the first three months of the year, compared with 59.9 million in the same period a year earlier, says IDC report",-0.15,16:37,PC shipments rise slightly in struggling market: IDC report +0,"
Shares of Future Retail Ltd hit an all-time high on Thursday after India’s biggest departmental store chain said its board has decided to consolidate its offline and online home retail businesses under a single entity called Praxis Home Retail Pvt. Ltd.In a stock exchange filing, Future Retail said the home retail business operated through its HomeTown stores, and the e-commerce home retail business operated by Blue eServices (which owns Fabfurnish.com) will be demerged into Praxis Home Retail.Future Retail had acquired Rocket Internet-backed online furniture and home furnishings store FabFurnish.com in an all-cash deal in April last year, its first acquisition of an Internet store.With this, Future Retail will spin off its specialty retail business and focus on large format and small format pure retail businesses. The company said this will bring “greater visibility on the performance of home retail business and e-commerce home retail business”.Under a so-called scheme of arrangement, Praxis Home Retail will issue one share to Future Retail shareholders for every 20 shares of the latter and its shares will be listed on the stock exchanges. Following the demerger, there would not be any change in the shareholding pattern of Future Retail, it said.Future Retail shares rose more than 7% to hit an all-time high of Rs312.85 during the day, before shedding some gains to close 4.46% higher at Rs305.90 on BSE. The benchmark Sensex closed 0.29% up at 29,422.39 points.The scheme is subject to approval from the National Company Law Tribunal, stock exchanges, the Securities and Exchange Board of India and various statutory approvals, including those from shareholders and lenders/creditors of the firms involved.The existing network of Future Retail, the flagship of the Future Group, includes small-format EasyDay stores and large-format Big Bazaar stores, along with other chains such as apparel chain fbb, Foodhall, electronics store eZone and furniture and home decor chain HomeTown.The hypermarket and supermarket business is led by Big Bazaar, fbb, Food Bazaar and Foodhall, while home solutions segment include HomeTown and Ezone, along with newly added Fabfunish.In November, Kishore Biyani-led Future Retail agreed to acquire the retail and allied businesses of Hyderabad-based Heritage Foods Ltd in an all-stock deal.For the fiscal year ended on March 2016, the revenue of the demerged division was recorded at Rs187.36 crore, out of the company’s overall Rs6,716 crore. It was considered on the basis of the five-month turnover of the demerged business vested with the company during the previous year with effect from 31 October 2015 and total revenue for the HomeTown division for fiscal 2015-16 (Rs477 crore).",2017-04-21,Future Retail to consolidate its offline and online home retail businesses under a single entity called Praxis Home Retail,0.17,05:02,Future Retail to demerge home retail business +0,"Mumbai: Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India Pvt. Ltd (HMSI), India’s second largest two-wheeler maker, will launch four completely new models—including the Africa Twin—in the current financial year, but is putting on hold plans to develop a middleweight motorcycle to take on Royal Enfield, a top company executive said.The new models HMSI plans to launch include the 1000cc Africa Twin that sports the advanced dual clutch technology and three more undisclosed brand new models—a bike and two scooters, said Minoru Kato, president and chief executive officer, HMSI.HMSI has already started assembling the completely knocked down kits of the Africa Twin. The model will go on sale next month. In March, Noriaki Abe, then president and chief executive officer (CEO) at Asian Honda Motor Co. Ltd, who took over as CEO of Honda’s global motorcycle business on 1 April, outlined in an interview with Mint Honda’s plans to develop a middleweight motorcycle to compete with Royal Enfield.Kato indicated on Thursday that the plans had been put on hold for now.“So far, from my point of view, the cost competitiveness as of today is not enough to compete in that segment,” Kato said. HMSI is very cost-competitive in big-volume models like the Activa scooter, which comes in 110cc and 125cc versions, but it doesn’t have the experience of developing motorcycles in the above-250cc (up to 450cc) segment, he said.HMSI is targeting the sale of 6 million scooters and motorcycles this financial year in a market that has just recovered from the impact of high-value currency invalidation. It is pinning its hopes on a normal monsoon that would boost rural demand.The two-wheeler maker sold 4.7 million units in the domestic market year ended March, up 10% from the previous year. Overall sales of bikes and scooters expanded 6.89% in the financial year; motorcycles grew at a slower pace of 4% in the same period, according to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam).Even as scooters, a market that HMSI leads, selling every second model in the country, will be the key volume driver for the company, the share of motorcycles as a percentage of sales is expected to go up, said Kato.HMSI, which emerged as the biggest contributor to Honda’s global sales in 2016, is also planning to make India an export hub once the BS-VI emission norms take effect in 2020, company officials told reporters in Mumbai. It has also formed a cross-functional team to lead the migration to BS-VI. HMSI plans to invest Rs1,600 crore this year to launch new products and enhance capacity. Its fourth Indian factory, being built in Karnataka, will commence production in July, taking its annual capacity to 6.4 million units.With sales of scooters growing at a faster pace than motorcycles, HMSI will have an edge over bigger rival and former partner Hero MotoCorp Ltd, said Nitesh Sharma, an analyst at Phillip Capital India Ltd. “Even as Honda is unlikely to dent Hero’s share in the motorcycle segment, where the latter has a dominant position, robust growth in the scooter market will help Honda increase share in the overall two wheeler market,” he said. Despite predictions of a normal monsoon and the lower base of last year, Sharma expects the two-wheeler market to expand by a mere 7-8% in the current financial year.",2017-04-21,"Honda has started assembling CKD units of Honda Africa Twin in India and slotted launch of three other models in FY18, but put on hold its Royal Enfield challenger",0.34,05:02,"Honda to launch Honda Africa Twin next month, three other models this year" +0,"
Aircraft engine maker Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc on Thursday opened a new defence service delivery centre (SDC) in Bengaluru, the first outside the US and UK, to provide localized engineering support and solutions and reduce turnaround time for the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy and state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL). Rolls-Royce is looking to improve capability and provide faster front-line support for over 750 engines in a range of aircraft used by the defence as well as commercial aircraft such as the C-130J, Hawk advanced jet, Embraer and Jaguar, among others. Shaun Agle, vice-president (customer services), India defence, said the new service delivery centre will be able to deliver real-time solutions through MRO (maintenance repair and overhaul), provide first and second line of support, have field service representatives, manage the health of the fleet, manage supply chains and collaborate with the armed forces. India is the last remaining user of the Jaguar type of aircraft and is one of the largest users of the Hawk, the company said, while trying to highlight the need for a local presence. The SDC will have at least 10 specialized engineers and service personnel to find localised solutions specific to India. The SDC is based on the model operated by the company at Marham in the UK and Kingsville in the US. The company did not quantify the reduction in time or cost that would result from setting up the local SDC, which will do the work that would otherwise have been referred to Bristol, UK. Last year, Indian customers raised 138 issues, according to the company, which were referred to Bristol. Rolls Royce has over 1,600 engineers based in India who help provide solutions for the UK-based company’s global customers, Kishore Jayaraman, president, India and South Asia, said.",2017-04-21,Rolls-Royce is looking to improve capability and provide faster front-line support for over 750 engines in a range of aircraft in India,0.69,02:00,Rolls-Royce opens defence service delivery centre in India +0,"Hyderabad: The tightening of H1B work visa rules in the US would be advantageous to Indian IT firms as they would shift more work offshore and also be in a position to improve their billing rate, says industry veteran T.V. Mohandas Pai. The present business model of Indian IT companies—offshore-onsite work ratio of 70:30 would now go up to 90:10, the former chief financial officer of Infosys said. “So, what will happen is they (Indian IT firms) will offshore more work and increase their competitiveness. They will do only 10% work onsite, and 90% offshore,” Pai told PTI. “It can be done very easily for 70-80% of the business. It will improve their competitiveness and make them better,” he said. “The new H1B regulations are very good for Indian IT, and bad for companies which try to use it for cheap labour. First of all, Indian IT is not cheap because what they bill to clients is $125,000 to $150,000 per year (for an onsite employee),” he said. “The average pay is around $80,000-85,000 per year. They are unnecessarily getting a bad name, because some fly-by-night operators are trying to do body-shopping and spoil the name of the entire (Indian IT) industry,” he said. The new regulations would play to the strength Indian IT companies because they have been reducing the number of H1B visas they collected since 2014, he said. “So, they are already getting prepared. It will increase the billing because it will create artificial scarcity in America, and allow Indian companies to bill more for work because there are not enough Americans to fill the positions that are needed,” said Pai, who is chairman of Manipal Global Education Services and Aarin Capital. “It’s a blessing in disguise, I don’t think they need to be scared or anything,” he said. As for possible downsides on the visa front, Pai said there would be some uncertainties for the next six months “because nobody knows what they (US Labour department) are going to do and how they are going to behave and all that.” “Uncertainty is because the US Labour Department is threatening more inspections. They will find out the number of applications (by Indian IT firms for H1B visas) have come down and they should be happy,” Pai said. On what Indian IT companies should now do following the tightening of H1B visa regulations, he said, “Increase offshoring, increase automation and drive up billing rates. It will be to their advantage.”",2017-04-12,"The tightening of H1B work visa rules in the US will shift more work offshore, says industry veteran Mohandas Pai",0.53,15:27,"Tightening visa norms a blessing in disguise for IT firms, says Mohandas Pai" +0,"
New Delhi: Sunil Munjal, who separated from his brothers in 2016 to carve an independent identity, has formed a new group company called Hero Enterprise that has started selling life and health insurance policies and plans to venture into aerospace parts. Hero Enterprise will, however, continue to focus on its existing real estate and steel businesses even as the group holding company consolidates its businesses and exit smaller ones such as Hero BPO.Sunil Munjal already sold motor insurance for Hero MotoCorp Ltd while he was still a part of the Pawan Munjal-led Hero Group. In an interview on Thursday, Sunil Munjal said that his insurance distribution firm, Ensure Plus, is also into non-motor insurance such as assets, buildings and aircraft. It has also started selling life insurance and health insurance policies. For life insurance, the company has a partnership with ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Ltd, while for general insurance, it has tied up with National Insurance and Tata AIG. “We are the largest distributor of insurance in India... probably in the world. We wrote 10 million policies last year. Nobody does even half of it,” Munjal said.“Distribution is where the margin is. For us, to step back and put up an insurance company is nothing... It takes around Rs100 crore to get a licence. We have looked at that a few times but distribution is where the main margin is and relationships are. That’s where market connect is and we are very good at it,” he said. Hero FinCorp Ltd, a two-wheeler financing company run by Sunil Munjal’s nephew Abhimanyu, also plans to get into insurance distribution and that means a larger chunk of Sunil Munjal’s motor insurance business that used to come from Hero MotoCorp will get affected.“They will compete like any other entity. Within our group, we always had this system. We could buy and sell from our companies as well as outside. So, that ensures that everybody maintains quality and you are buying because of merit and not because it is your company,” he added.Sunil Munjal, 56, stepped down as joint managing director of Hero MotoCorp Ltd, India’s largest motorcycle maker, in July 2016. By exiting Hero MotoCorp, he raised around Rs3,500 crore.Sunil Munjal’s businesses were a small part of the $6 billion Hero group founded by Brijmohan Lall Munjal, the family patriarch who died in 2015 at the age of 92. He had five strategic businesses: insurance distribution, Hero Realty Ltd, Hero Management Service Pvt. Ltd, Ludhiana-based Hero Steels Ltd and Hero Mindmine Institute Pvt. Ltd.Munjal has hired P.N. Gupta, a former executive from Tata Group’s TAL Manufacturing Solutions, to enter the aerospace parts manufacturing. A person aware of Munjal’s plans in the defence sector said that he is scouting for manufacturing sites for composites.“Talks are still at an exploratory stage,” the person said on condition of anonymity.Munjal said that new business initiatives are not an area of “public conversation” and declined to comment specifically on his diversification.“I have never said yes or no. I would say it is a difficult area but high potential area because India is the largest known importer, in terms of reported numbers, of defence equipment in the world,” he said. “In today’s time, there is no reason for India to be (an import-dependent country). You have every capability and potential to build that capability (to manufacture) here in India,” he added.With 60% of India’s defence requirements met through imports, local defence production has emerged at the heart of the Narendra Modi government’s ‘Make In India’ programme. Under Hero Realty, Munjal has completed one project in Haridwar and a couple of others are under construction in Ludhiana and Mohali. “We have just closed a transaction in Gurgaon,” Munjal said.“We are targeting middle India—middle income, middle class, lower middle class, small town, mid-sized cities, tier III, tier IV cities, and we are trying to see if we can help improve people’s standard of living itself. So, the model is based in the price range between Rs20-Rs80 lakh and the bulk of it will be between Rs30-65 lakh,” he said.We are hoping to provide attributes, functionality of the apartments that one buys for Rs10-20 crore, he added.Munjal added that he is looking to exit smaller businesses such as Hero BPO.“We won’t keep any small business. We don’t want to be in any of the small businesses,” he added.In a separate development, Hero Enterprises’ chairman Sunil Kant Munjal has invested about Rs 100 crore in impact investment firm Aavishkaar Venture Management Services’ new fund ‘Aavishkaar Bharat Fund’, according to a statement on Thursday.Aavishkaar Venture Management is aiming to raise Rs 2,000 crore for a fund that will invest in businesses that are working with the underserved population in sectors such as agriculture, financial services, healthcare, waste and sanitation, renewable energy and logistics and supply chain.",2017-04-21,Sunil Munjal’s Hero Enterprise has tied up with ICICI Prudential Life for life insurance and National Insurance and Tata AIG for general insurance,1.0,02:49,"Sunil Munjal’s Hero Enterprise to focus on insurance, aerospace manufacturing" +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",0.13,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0,"
Mumbai: Unilever Plc said on Thursday that its Indian business has recovered from the hit it experienced following the government’s invalidation of high-value currency notes in November. This guidance, ahead of the fourth-quarter earnings of its unit Hindustan Unilever Ltd, comes as a shot in the arm for the whole consumer packaged goods sector, which has been reeling from demonetisation. Analysts expected the lingering effects of demonetisation to hurt business for these companies in the March quarter as well.“Growth in India recovered from the uncertainty experienced due to the removal of the Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes in November 2016, while Brazil continued to be adversely impacted by the economic crisis,” Unilever said in the statement uploaded on the website and filed with stock exchanges. Brazil and India are two of the multinational’s largest markets.Overall, Unilever’s sales grew 6.9% and volumes grew 2.2% in the Asia and AMET/RUB region this quarter, the statement said. It didn’t give India-specific estimates. AMET and RUB stand for Africa, Middle East, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, whose results are reported together with Asia. ALSO READ: What impact does Unilever’s business review have on HUL?In a similar statement filed in January, the Anglo-Dutch packaged consumer goods giant said its growth in India “was below historic levels, particularly in the last quarter (October-December), when demand was adversely impacted” by demonetisation. In the December quarter, HUL’s volumes fell 4% year-on-year after the cash crunch hit consumer spending. This came after a 1% decline in the three months to September. The Unilever statement comes at a time when brokerages have pencilled in volume declines or marginal increases in their March quarter estimates. Motilal Oswal Financial Services, for instance, has forecast a 0.5% decline in HUL’s volumes and 4% for ITC Ltd. Nomura Research estimates a 1% volume growth.“Demand that had started to show signs of recovery in October got dampened due to the cash crunch. Now that money is back in the system demand has come back”, said Ajay Thakur, lead analyst, Anand Rathi Institutional Equities. “Additionally, (sales) growth in the March quarter will also be on account of price increases taken by most companies on account of inflation.”Most analysts say that companies with a tilt towards urban markets will benefit more.ALSO READ: Amul hits back at HUL in ice cream war in Bombay high court“Following demonetisation, we expect consumer companies with a focus on urban consumption, and larger contribution from direct reach to overall channels to see better results,” analysts at Nomura said in a 11 April note.In a report previewing the company’s March quarter results, ICICI Securities said it expects HUL to show a 3.59% increase in domestic revenue, partially helped by an early summer onset.“A slightly early summer resulted in growth of summer care products and is likely to benefit companies such as Emami and HUL,” the brokerage said. HUL owns several personal care brands that target summer sales including Liril, Rexona, and Dove. Since the beginning of the calendar year, the BSE FMCG Index has risen by 14.54%, outperforming the benchmark index, Sensex which has risen 10.50%.Sapna Agarwal contributed this story.",2017-04-21,"Unilever’s guidance on India, ahead of Hindustan Unilever’s Q4 results, comes as a shot in the arm for the whole FMCG sector reeling from demonetisation",0.61,02:48,Unilever says India business growth has recovered after demonetisation +0,"Beijing: The New Development Bank (NDB) set up by the Brics countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — plans to issue bonds this year in Indian rupee and Chinese yuan, its president K. V. Kamath said on Friday. The bank sold its first ¥3 billion yuan-denominated bonds in China last year in July to fund clean energy projects in member-states. Kamath, a former executive with India’s largest private lender ICICI Bank, told the state-run Xinhua news agency that after last year’s issuance of bonds, the preparation for the second batch of yuan-denominated bonds, possibly in the second half of this year, is expected to be more smooth. The size will be around ¥3 billion, similar to the last one. He said the issuance will come after the bank is rated by international rating agencies. Between $300-500 million of rupee-denominated ‘masala’ bonds will be issued after July, added Kamath, who is based in Shanghai. ‘Masala’ bonds are rupee-denominated bonds issued outside India. Kamath said the NDB plans to lend $2.5-3 billion to fund 15 projects to member-states this year, up from $1.5 billion for seven projects in 2016. Most projects last year were connected to clean energy and transportation. Kamath said the loans will go to more sectors this year. For example, in India the bank will prioritise rural drinking water networks and infrastructure projects. The Brics bank was set up with an initial authorised capital of $100 billion after leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa signed a treaty for its establishment during the sixth Brics Summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, in 2014. It officially opened in Shanghai in 2015. PTI",2017-04-14,"KV Kamath said the New Development Bank plans to lend $2.5-3 billion to fund 15 projects to member-states this year, up from $1.5 billion for seven projects in 2016",0.21,15:14,"Brics bank plans to issue rupee, yuan bonds this year: KV Kamath" +0,"Bengaluru: It’s hard to overstate the importance of the technology industry to India. Over the past three decades, the IT sector has helped drive the country’s economic growth, employed millions and made billionaires out of at least seven founders.Now the industry is at risk from US President Donald Trump’s policies. The administration is promising a clampdown on the work visas India’s tech services companies use to service American customers. In the days since the US government took first steps toward H1B visa reform, all of India’s high-profile technology tycoons have seen their net worth eroded.Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd and India’s fifth-richest man, and Shiv Nadar, the sixth-richest person in the country and chairman of HCL Technologies, have seen their shares slide. Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani and three other founders of Infosys Ltd, all among the top 100 of India’s richest billionaires, have taken a hit too. IT stocks have dropped about 3% over that stretch, while the benchmark index has climbed 0.6%.Also read: In Donald Trump’s H-1B visa crackdown, Indian students weigh Canada, Ireland“Whether these changes are a precursor for more radical measures is what is worrying companies,” said DD Mishra, a Pune-based research director at Gartner.Infosys, which reports earnings 13 April, may have the most at stake. The Bengaluru-based company is most vulnerable to US visa reforms because it has the lowest percentage of local hires in the US, Goldman Sachs analysts Sumeet Jain and Saurabh Thadani said in a research note last week. HCL and Wipro also have risks from visa reforms but they hire relatively more Americans, the analysts wrote.Infosys kicks off earnings season for the industry this week, giving investors a chance to get more insight into the challenges and corporate strategies for addressing them. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, the market leader, is scheduled to report results next week.The debate has been over the H1B visa program, which allows companies to bring 85,000 workers into the US from overseas each year. On 31 March, just as companies prepared to file applications for next year’s allotment, the Trump administration rolled out a series of policy measures making it harder for firms to use the program for computer programmers and announced measures to fight what it called “fraud and abuse.” In parallel, the Justice Department warned employers applying for visas not to discriminate against US workers. All of this was in line with promises made during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to overhaul the program he described as bringing cheap overseas labour at the cost of American jobs and salaries.From India, those promises look like threats to the economy. Information technology is the largest employer in the private sector, providing a livelihood to nearly 4 million, and contributes about 9% of gross domestic product. India’s software and services exports total about $110 billion, with nearly two thirds of that revenue coming from the US.Visa uncertainty could wreak havoc with planning and jeopardize profits in the industry. It may also raise risks for customers that depend on such services, from Wall Street banks to retailers and airlines. “Difficulties in getting visas or rising salaries of H-1B employees will have a material impact on companies,” said Rostow Ravanan, chief executive officer of Mindtree Ltd, a Bangalore-based outsourcer that uses hundreds of H-1B visas every year.Several countries around the world are adopting or considering similar policies. That poses a threat to the business model perfected by Indian companies, Ravanan said. “These trends are dangerous because the IT industry and its talent serve the entire world,” he said.Leading outsourcers including Infosys, Tata Consultancy, Wipro and HCL Technologies declined to comment on the visa issue.Companies have been working on contingency plans. If foreign workers cannot go to the US, it will become more expensive to hire local staff. Companies may also try to do more work for American clients from abroad, including India.Nitin Rakesh, chief executive officer of tech services provider Mphasis Ltd is optimistic. He said the industry has gone through four or five reincarnations since the outsourcing business began. A Trump crackdown may lead to more innovation in the model.“Through leveraging all the possible technology, including mobility and cloud, the growth opportunities are immense,” said Rakesh, warning however that some companies will adapt and others may not. “Growth will not be homogeneous.” Bloomberg",2017-04-12,"US President Donald Trump’s H1B visa reform policies have eroded the net worth of India’s high-profile technology tycoons, including Azim Premji ",0.35,14:28,"H1B visa reform hits tech billionaires, from Azim Premji to Shiv Nadar" +0,"New York: Chinese technology conglomerate LeEco Inc. is sharply scaling back its US ambitions.The company - which oversees a range of businesses in China, from streaming video to smartphones to electric cars - missed its projections for 2016 sales in the US by a wide margin and is planning to cut more than a third of its US workforce, a person familiar with the matter said.Billionaire Jia Yueting is narrowing his vision for LeEco’s global expansion amid lacklustre sales and the prospect of a cash crunch. The company entered the North American market in October with a splashy event in San Francisco, where it showed off an array of products, including ultra high-definition televisions, phones, virtual reality goggles and electric bikes. Yet LeEco generated US revenue of less than $15 million last year after that October debut, compared to an original goal of $100 million, according to the person cited above.The company so far is only selling TVs, smartphones and some accessories in the US. The US unit is also making plans to eliminate about 175 jobs, which would shrink its staff in the country to about 300 people, said the person, who asked not to be named because the financial details have not been made public.LeEco declined to comment on the planned job cuts and revenue miss.ALSO READ: Oppo founder reveals how he toppled Apple in ChinaOn Monday, the company said it was abandoning its plan to acquire US TV maker Vizio Inc. for $2 billion, citing regulatory hurdles. The collapse of the deal, which was meant to give LeEco a beachhead to build its brand with American customers, sets LeEco even further back in the US. The two companies said they will instead collaborate on ways to bring Vizio’s products to the Chinese market and integrate LeEco’s content into Vizio’s platform.Unfamiliar marketJia pushed into the unfamiliar US market even as his umbrella company struggled to alleviate a cash shortage. Executive departures and job cuts are further fuelling concern about the future of LeEco US, where the company delayed payroll earlier this month. Frustration has also stemmed from employees with bosses in China who appear to have little understanding of the American market, according to current and former employees.At the time of LeEco’s US roll-out, Jia said the US operations employed more than 500 people “with more being added each week”. The company had also purchased 49 acres of land in Santa Clara, California, from Yahoo! Inc. to build a campus that could house as many as 12,000 employees. Those plans have now been scrapped, according to the person with knowledge of the company’s operations.After rapid expansion of his tech empire, Jia admitted late last year in a letter to employees that the company was struggling to raise cash. Some suppliers said that LeEco was behind on payments and the company was stripped of some sports broadcasting rights.ALSO READ: Xiaomi’s Lei Jun doubles bet on IndiaThe company now employs about 475 across its US offices, which are based in San Jose, California. LeEco has been planning to make another round of job cuts for several months, but the timing for the reduction depends on when the company can build up enough funds to pay for employee severance packages, the person said.At the time of its US debut, analysts questioned whether LeEco could export its business model outside of China, where its brand is less well-known. The company’s aggressive approach to international expansion sharply contrasts with that of China’s three biggest internet companies: Baidu Inc., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. They have made slow forays in the US, opening modest offices in Silicon Valley and mostly focusing on investing in US start-ups. Bloomberg",2017-04-11,LeEco has abandoned its plan to acquire US TV maker Vizio and plans to eliminate 175 jobs in the country ,-0.97,17:12,LeEco plans to cut over a third of US workforce after missing sale target +0,"New Delhi: Insurance regulator Irdai has launched a web portal for insurers that will allow them to register and sell policies online. The portal—isnp.irda.gov.in—is also open to intermediaries in insurance business, Irdai said in a circular. Last month Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) issued guidelines on e-commerce for insurance sector. Announcing the launch of registration portal for Insurance Self Networking Platform (ISNP), Irdai said insurance companies, brokers and corporate agents can sell and service insurance policies through this platform. Also Read: Irdai wants insurance policies issued in demat formatInsurers and intermediaries can create a login credential for registration and submit ISNP application form on the portal. In its guidelines issued in March, Irdai had said that companies may offer discounts to customers if their policies are sold through e-commerce websites. This will help companies increase insurance penetration in the country, it said. The ISNP portal will offer host of services including change of policy details like name and address, collection of renewal premiums, surrender or withdrawals, fund switching, policy revival or cancellation or transfer, duplicate policy, death/maturity claim and other policy specific services, it added.",2017-04-14,"Insurance regulator Irdai said insurance companies, brokers and corporate agents can sell and service insurance policies via online platform",0.22,21:01,Irdai unveils portal for insurers to sell policies online +0,"
Mumbai: Edelweiss Global Asset and Wealth Management has raised $350 million for the final close of its second credit-focused fund, Edelweiss Special Opportunities Fund (ESOF) II, said a senior executive of the firm.“After successfully returning capital to investors in the first credit-focused fund, Edelweiss Special Opportunities Fund, Edelweiss has subsequently raised its second version, ESOF II. As of 31 March 2017, the firm has closed the fund at $350 million,” Nitin Jain, chief executive-global asset and wealth management, Edelweiss, said in an interview.The fund achieved a first close of $205 million in June 2015.ESOF II, which invests in privately negotiated collateralized credit transactions, has raised funds from several institutional investors including public pensions and insurance companies. ESOF I had raised $230 million.Edelweiss’s second credit fund comes at a time when a host of other firms in the alternative investment space are in the market to raise credit-focused funds. These include the likes of Reliance AIF Asset Management Co. Ltd, Avendus Capital and private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Lp and Baring Private Equity Asia.Credit products in the alternative investment space are seeing a sharp increase as investors hunt for higher yields in a lower interest rate environment, said Jain.“Increasingly, you are seeing that fixed income yields are becoming low. So, then, there is a hunt for yield. People want a higher yield, but a fixed income nature product. So a lot of interesting, absolute return products are getting traction in the market, which are alternate in nature—they can be credit funds or they can be hedge funds,” said Jain.People want double-digit returns and low volatility, so a lot of products are being created to deliver yields between 10-14% using credit, he added.The hunt for higher yields has also made other products such as public sector bank perpetual bonds or AT1 bonds (additional tier 1 bonds) attractive to investors, said Jain.“Perpetuals have become attractive and the need for higher yield is again driving that trend. Public sector banks are giving you a yield of anywhere between 9% and 10.5%. When you go to fixed deposits, you’re getting only 7-7.5%. While they have a slightly different risk profile, people are getting very comfortable with them,” said Jain.Led by Jain, the Edelweiss asset and wealth management business today manages assets worth Rs1.2 trillion, with over Rs60,000 crore worth of assets on the domestic wealth management side and the rest coming from the institutional asset management business.Edelweiss’s wealth management business caters to individuals across three categories—mass affluent, high net-worth individuals (HNI), and ultra HNI and family offices. The asset management business includes funds which invest in credit strategies across asset classes such as real estate, performing credit and distressed credit (including the Edelweiss asset reconstruction business) as well as public market funds. The firm’s wealth management business, which was set up in 2010, has witnessed a growth of almost 70-80% in the last two years, said Jain.Edelweiss is targeting a corpus of Rs1 trillion for its wealth management business, which it hopes to achieve in the next two years, he said. “For growing the wealth management business, we are tapping new generation entrepreneurs, family offices and employees in progressive organizations in sectors such as IT services and financial services,” said Jain.In order to achieve its planned growth, Edelweiss is also investing heavily in technology.“Technology is playing a very important role now. Clients want to access information, flow of information, practically on a real-time basis. Earlier it was acceptable if you told people the health of their portfolio once a quarter. Now, there are clients who want to track it on a minute by minute basis,” he said.The firm has embarked on a five-year digital transformation drive and has partnered with IT consulting and services firm IBM to help drive the transformation, said Jain.Edelweiss’s digital transformation drive is focused on increasing the productivity of its advisory team, while helping control costs to improve both the revenue and profit of the business. Edelweiss’s wealth management business employs around 1,300 people.",2017-04-14,Edelweiss Special Opportunities Fund II comes at a time when a host of other firms in the alternative investment space are in the market to raise credit-focused funds,0.57,04:47,Edelweiss raises $350 million for credit-focused fund +0,"
Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has tightened the rules that trigger regulatory action on lenders when they fall short of capital or exceed bad loan limits. Under the revised rules, as many as 16 banks could face RBI intervention if their December quarter numbers are considered. According to RBI’s so-called prompt corrective action (PCA) framework, banks are assessed on three parameters: capital ratios, asset quality and profitability. Failure to meet any of these norms could invite RBI action on these lenders, which could include strictures on lending and branch expansion, change in management and reduction in assets.
These norms come at a time when the bank s are struggling with Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and many banks are starved for capital.
Under the revisions announced on Thursday, the first risk threshold under PCA would be triggered if the capital-to-risk assets ratio falls below the minimum mandated 10.25%. The original rules introduced in 2002 had set this limit at 9%. Breaching this threshold would mean restrictions on dividend distribution or remittance or profits; promoters would also be asked for capital infusion, said RBI.
RBI has also defined two more risk thresholds—when the capital adequacy ratio falls below 7.75% and below 6.25%. Each higher threshold brings more strictures such as stopping branch expansion, higher provisions and even restrictions on management compensation and directors’ fees.
Apart from these mandatory actions, RBI has armed itself with discretionary powers such as winding up the bank or merging it, which it would use when the highest risk threshold is breached.
As of December, Dhanlaxmi Bank and Central Bank of India were the only ones to have a capital adequacy ratio of less than 10%. These rules are applicable based on 31 March 2017 numbers.
“The PCA framework is nothing new. In the backdrop of Basel (capital adequacy) norms incrementally going to be tighter, RBI is using this tool to finally intervene in the banks. This tool will assist in guiding banks to faster NPA (non-performing asset) resolution which, if left to their own, is only going to get delayed,” said Saswata Guha, director, Fitch Ratings.
On asset quality, RBI has mandated a maximum net NPA ratio of 6%. A net bad loan ratio of more than 12% is the highest limit and breaching it could result in RBI asking lenders to sell assets, cut unsecured exposures and so on. Under the old rules, net NPA had to breach 10% for RBI action to kick in.
There were 16 commercial banks which had a net NPA ratio of more than 6% at the end of December. Indian Overseas Bank—where RBI had previously initiated action under PCA in October 2015—had the maximum net NPA ratio of 14.32%. For Bank of Maharashtra and United Bank of India, it is in excess of 10%.
RBI will also monitor leverage as an additional parameter under the framework.",2017-04-14,Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has tightened the rules that trigger regulatory action on banks when they fall short of capital or exceed bad loan limits,-0.49,04:42,RBI tightens rules for regulatory action on banks +0,"
The government is working on a plan to list four state-run general insurers—United India Insurance Co. Ltd, New India Assurance Co. Ltd, Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd and National Insurance Co. Ltd—and national reinsurer General Insurance Corp. of India (GIC Re) in this financial year. Mint takes a look at some of the key financial indicators of these general insurance firms other than GIC Re and how they perform vis-à-vis some of their private sector peers. Combined ratio is an indicator of the profitability of operations of an insurance firm. It is the ratio of the sum of incurred losses plus operating expenses to earned premium. Insurance firms strive to bring their combined ratios below 100%. Combined ratios have broadly deteriorated for insurers since 2013-14.When one compares the combined ratios of the public and the private sector, private sector is seen as more efficient even in the deteriorating overall market. An an indicator of the capital strength of an insurance firm, solvency ratio refers to the company’s ability to meet its short-term and long-term liabilities. Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India mandates a solvency ratio of 1.5 for continuity in operations and stock market listing.The trend in solvency ratios shows three of the public sector firms have moved down in their capital strengths. National Insurance and Oriental Insurance have solvency ratios below 1.5. “These companies will need to improve their capital strength through improvement in their combined ratio and through better investment income. The drop in investment income of Oriental Insurance and United India is a matter of concern,” said K. Ramachandran, an insurance industry expert.Investment income is the sum of profit on the sale and redemption of investments and the interest payments, dividends, and rents. Investment income is declining significantly for three of the four state-run general insurers. But it is not the case for most of the big private insurance firms. Net worth is the amount by which assets exceed liabilities. It is an indicator of the financial strength of the firm. Three of the four state-run insurers, except New India Assurance, have seen an erosion in net worth in the last one year. “The challenge to the insurance companies lies in keeping the policyholders’ funds in excess. This would ensure a better service to shareholders’ funds,” added Ramachandran.",2017-04-14,Mint takes a look at some of the key financial indicators of these general insurance firms and how they perform vis-à-vis some of their private sector peers,0.25,04:46,A financial health check of state-run insurers to be listed +0,"New Delhi: Lendingkart Group, an online lender to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), has raised Rs30 crore in debt from Anicut Capital, the company said on Thursday.The funding has been raised against issuance of non-convertible debentures (NCDs), a type of debt security, to Anicut Capital, a Chennai-based alternative asset management firm. Lendingkart will use these funds to expand its loan book and expand to more regions in India. In June 2016, the company raised $32 million in series B round of debt plus equity funding led by Betelsmann India Investment. The company is also backed by Darrin Capital Management Mayfield India, Saama Capital and India. Founded in 2014 by Harshvardhan Lunia and Mukul Sachan, Lendingkart Group includes Lendingkart Technologies Pvt. Ltd. that has built the technology software for credit risk analysis, and a non-banking financial company (NBFC) Lendingkart Finance that underwrites the loans. “The latest round of NCD will further bolster our loan book and enable us to serve the credit needs of many more SMEs...We look forward to leverage Anicut’s rich experience in banking and small business financing in times to come.” said Lunia in a statement. It underwrites working capital loans online to SMEs, which have an annual turnover of Rs12 lakh to Rs1-1.5 crore. On an average, these SMEs are lent Rs5.5-6 lakh at an annualized interest rate ranging between 16% to 24%, for a duration of six to 12 months. Lendingkart claims to have a loan application approval rate of 22-23%, Mint reported in December 2016.Till December 2016, Lendingkart claimed to have disbursed 7,000 loans to SMEs in over 450 cities since its inception. It aims to cross 10,000 loans covering over 800 cities by June 2017. In addition, Lunia had also said that the company is launching its credit risk analytics software as a service for other financial institutions in 2017. Founded by Ashvin Chadha and IAS Balamurugan, Anicut Capital is in the process of final closing its Rs300 crore fund by September 2017. Since its first close in August 2016, Anicut has committed capital of over Rs110 crore across six investments. Chadha and Balamurugan have lent over Rs500 crore to over 70 companies in last five years, according to the statement.",2017-04-13,Lendingkart will use the funds to expand its loan book and expand to more regions in India,0.15,22:10,Lendingkart raises Rs30 crore in debt from Anicut Capital +0,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.",2017-04-20,"Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",0.65,23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +0,"Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday tweaked rules that trigger regulatory action against lenders who overshoot the limit on bad loans or fail to comply with capital ratios.The changes are under the so-called Prompt Corrective Action framework unveiled in 2002, which sets thresholds that when breached trigger supervisory action from the RBI, including restriction on dividend distribution.In extreme cases, the framework provides the RBI with powers to force mergers or even wind up the non-compliant lender.Regulatory action will be taken if a bank’s capital-to-risk-assets ratio falls below 7.75%, RBI said in a statement on Thursday.If the ratio falls below 3.625%, the bank could be a candidate for a merger or may even be wound up, the regulator added.It was not immediately possible to draw a direct comparison between the new limits and the existing ones.Meanwhile, on bad loan ratios, the central bank said the first threshold will be triggered if a bank’s net non-performing assets ratio crosses 6%.A net bad loan ratio of more than 12% will invite the extreme action of winding up or merger, it added. Reuters",2017-04-13,"In extreme cases, the framework provides the RBI with powers to force mergers or even wind up the non-compliant bank",-0.77,19:05,RBI changes rules for regulatory action on banks overshooting limit on bad loans +0,"New York: Apple Inc wants to “one day” end the need to mine materials from the earth to make its gadgets such as the iPhone, the company said in its annual environmental responsibility report out on Thursday.“Traditional supply chains are linear. Materials are mined, manufactured as products, and often end up in landfills after use. Then the process starts over and more materials are extracted from the earth for new products.We believe our goal should be a closed-loop supply chain, where products are built using only renewable resources or recycled material.”ALSO READ: iPhone supply chain bites back at AppleThe company’s research concluded that recycled aluminium should come from Apple products rather than from recycling facilities because of the high grade needed for the metal. Apple has been encouraging customers to return used products for recycling and has melted down iPhone aluminium enclosures to make mini computers used in its factories.“For tin, we took a different approach,” the tech giant said. “Unlike aluminium, there is an existing market supply of recycled tin that meets our quality standards.” As a result, Apple has been using recycled tin for its iPhone 6s. The ultimate aim is “to one day end our reliance on mining altogether,” said Apple, without settling a date.Apple did not disclose the amount of recycled products currently used in its products. The tech giant said 96% of the electricity at its global facilities comes from renewable energy and that its new corporate campus is powered entirely by renewable energy.",2017-04-20,Apple wants to ‘one day’ end the need to mine materials from the earth to make its gadgets ,0.19,21:49,Apple wants to use recycled metal to make iPhones +0,"Mumbai: Embassy Industrial Parks, a joint venture between real estate developer Embassy Group and private equity firm Warburg Pincus India Ltd, on Thursday said it had purchased 24 acres of land in Gurugram, Haryana, to build an industrial and warehousing hub at a total cost of Rs140 crore.Another Rs38 crore was spent on buying the land, the company said in a statement. Property consultant CBRE is the transaction advisor. Last year, Embassy Industrial Parks signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Haryana government to build three industrial parks in the state, investing Rs1,910 crore.Located on NH-8 near Bilaspur Chowk, the warehousing facility will have 600,000 sq ft. of leasable space containing a logistics park concept with a host of amenities, the company said in a statement. The manufacturing facilities of auto companies Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, Honda Cars India Ltd and Hero MotoCorp Ltd and warehouses of Decathlon Group, Amazon India, Flipkart Ltd and Blue Dart Express Ltd are in close proximity to the acquired plotThe company said the warehouse is being constructed to meet the growing logistics requirements of e-commerce, retail, consumer durables, apparel, automotive and pharmaceutical companies.Anshul Singhal, chief executive officer (CEO), Embassy Industrial Parks said India’s warehousing sector had grown 55% from 2013 till 2016. In the national capital region centred on Delhi, the sector had grown 45% in the same period.“We have entered a significant phase in the evolution of the Embassy Industrial Parks brand in the NCR Region. It has a strong reputation and is a key focus area for the company to grow our operations,” he said.Embassy Industrial Parks has also invested Rs350 crore to build a 1.1-million sq ft industrial park at Chakan, Pune. The group is planning to invest about Rs1,600 crore as equity to build seven-eight industrial parks over the next six years.“The Delhi-National Capital Region (Delhi-NCR) is one of the most preferred warehousing hubs in the country. It is also one of the largest manufacturing and consumption hubs in the country, garnering a share of almost 25% in the overall activity in the warehousing sector in the country,” said Anshuman Magazine, chairman, India and South East Asia, at CBRE.",2017-04-20,Embassy Industrial had purchased 24 acres of land in Gurugram to build an industrial and warehousing hub,0.23,20:04,Embassy Industrial to build warehousing hub in Gurugram for Rs140 crore +0,"
Mumbai: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has begun commercial production of coal bed methane (CBM) gas from two blocks in Madhya Pradesh, two people familiar with the development said. RIL’s move comes after the government approved pricing and marketing freedom for producers of natural gas from CBM on 15 March. The company has deferred production for a while due to lack of clarity over pricing CBM gas. The two blocks are located in Sohagpur East and West.“RIL has commenced commercial production from 24 March 2017 and expects sales to third party customers from May. RIL has appointed Crisil to help in price discovery process based on CCEA (cabinet committee on economic affairs) approval dated 15 March 2017. We are currently in ramp-up phase and expect to reach around 0.4 mmscmd of production by June 2017. The ramp-up phase will continue further for 15-18 months till we reach plateau production in CBM,” a RIL spokesperson said in response to a Mint query.RIL had begun test production from the block last April. “But wells had been shut as RIL wanted clarity on gas pricing. In CBM production, you need to de-water many small wells. And the de-watering sometimes takes nearly three years. Thus, RIL may take two-three years to reach peak production,” said the second of the two people mentioned above. RIL was awarded the CBM blocks in 2001, in the first round of CBM auctions. With this, RIL has become the third company in India to begin CBM gas production. Great Eastern Energy Corp. Ltd (GEECL) and Essar Oil Ltd are the two existing players selling CBM gas in the market. RIL holds another CBM block in Sonhat, Chhattisgarh.CBM is natural gas stored or absorbed in coal seams. India, with the world’s fourth largest proven coal reserves, holds significant potential for CBM exploration and production. CBM gas is similar to natural gas, containing 90-95% methane. Reliance Gas Pipeline Ltd (RGPL), an RIL subsidiary, has laid around 312km of pipeline to carry natural gas from Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh close to its CBM blocks to Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh. An RIL executive, one of the two mentioned earlier, added that initial gas output from RIL block could be around 0.4 million metric standard cubic metres per day(mmscmd). Peak output, however, is envisaged at 2.5-3 mmscmd. “RIL is best placed to sell its CBM gas as its blocks are centrally located and there will be good demand by industries nearby. Also, the cost of production for RIL may be around $3 per million British thermal unit (mBtu) and even if RIL sells the gas at around $7-8 per mBtu, it would be in a good spot,” said an oil and gas analyst with a domestic broking firm, asking not to be identified.",2017-04-13,"Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has commenced commercial production of coal bed methane, or CBM gas from 24 March and expects to start sales from May",0.02,04:57,Reliance starts CBM gas production from two blocks in Madhya Pradesh +0,"
New Delhi: IDFC Alternatives, the asset management arm of the infrastructure-focused lender, is in talks to buy First Solar’s 200 megawatts (MW) of renewable power assets in India in a deal potentially valued at around $200 million, two people aware of the development said.Mint reported First Solar’s Indian asset sale plans on 20 March.First Solar, a US-based photovoltaic (PV) panel maker and one of the first overseas companies to enter India’s solar energy market, counts the country as its second-largest market after the US in terms of total shipments.“IDFC Alternatives is interested in acquiring First Solar’s power generation assets,” said one of the two people cited above, requesting anonymity.The second person who also didn’t wish to be identified confirmed the development.The development comes in the backdrop of falling solar power tariffs because of plunging prices of solar modules. Module prices are expected to drop further in 2017 as global supply exceeds demand. Most solar power developers in India have been sourcing solar modules and equipment from countries such as China where they are cheaper. According to information available on its website, the infrastructure team of IDFC Alternatives has $1.8 billion under management.The Indian solar power generation space is getting intensely competitive.France’s Solairedirect SA won the rights to set up 250MW of solar plants at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh and sell power to NTPC Ltd at a new record-low tariff of Rs3.15 per kilowatt hour (kWh) in an auction on Wednesday.The previous low was Rs2.97 per kWh for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh. The winning bid offered a so-called levelized tariff—the value financially equivalent to different annual tariffs over the period of the power purchase agreement (PPA)—of around Rs3.30 per unit.Spokespersons for First Solar and IDFC Alternatives declined to comment.India plans to generate 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 100GW is to come from solar power projects.There has been a spate of activity in the solar power space in India. Australia’s Macquarie Group Ltd plans to buy about 330MW of operational solar assets from Hindustan Powerprojects Pvt. Ltd for an enterprise value of $600 million.Marque deals in the Indian clean energy space include Tata Power Co. Ltd buying the entire 1.1 gigawatt renewable energy portfolio of Welspun Energy Ltd for $1.4 billion and Hyderabad-based Greenko Energies Pvt. Ltd, backed by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Holdings Pte. and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, acquiring SunEdison’s Indian assets for $392 million last year.According to analysts, the country’s push for clean energy has gathered pace. India’s total renewable capacity including solar, wind, bio-mass and small hydro grew by around 11.2GW in FY 2016-17, similar to thermal capacity addition, which declined 50% in the year, according to consulting firm Bridge to India. “The country added 5,526MW of new solar capacity (up 83% over FY2015-16) and 5,400 MW of new wind capacity (up 63%) in the year,” Bridge to India wrote in a 20 March report.",2017-04-13,IDFC Alternatives is in talks to buy First Solar’s renewable power assets in India in a deal potentially valued at about $200 million,0.7,04:57,IDFC Alternatives eyes First Solar’s India assets +0,"Bengaluru:Rajiv Bansal, former CFO of Infosys, has dragged his former employer to arbitration to claim the remaining Rs12 crore of his severance pay. Infosys had agreed to pay Bansal a severance amount of Rs17.38 crore or 24 months of salary, but the company suspended payments after he got Rs5 crore as co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy and others objected to the severance package as excessive. According to sources, Bansal has invoked his rights to an arbitral tribunal and a meeting is scheduled next month. This has opened another battle front for Infosys, which is already fighting visa clampdown by US President Donald Trump and global headwinds. When contacted, Bansal declined to comment. “The company has already clarified on the severance package for the former CFO Rajiv Bansal through a detailed statement. We do not have anything additional to add at this point,” Infosys said in an e-mailed response. Bansal’s severance payout has been one of the issues that Infosys founders had raised to allege governance lapses at the Bengaluru-based firm. When Bansal left Infosys in 2015, Infosys had agreed to pay him Rs17.38 crore in severance pay, equalling 24 months of pay. In February, Infosys chairman R. Seshasayee had clarified that of the agreed amount, only Rs5 crore have been paid so far and that the remaining was withheld pending clarifications on the terms of the severance contract. He had also admitted that the “judgement” could have differed if circumstances were different or if certain processes had been in place. Murthy had raised concerns about the hefty amount and questioned if the same was “hush money”.",2017-04-20,"Former Infosys CFO Rajiv Bansal asks for arbitration for settlement of his Rs17.38 crore severance pay, which hadn’t gone down well with Infosys founders",-0.21,21:36,Infosys ex-CFO Rajiv Bansal seeks arbitration for severance pay: report +0,"
Mumbai: Following the Supreme Court’s judgement on Tuesday that disallowed Tata Power Co. Ltd and Adani Power Ltd from raising power tariffs to compensate for expensive imported Indonesian coal, the two companies are left with few options. Both companies will have to take measures to mitigate their losses to overcome the weakening of their finances, analysts said.The two companies could likely look at cheaper fuel sources, maintain optimum generation to recover capacity charge without losing too much on fuel cost under-recovery, utilize the losses to set off against alternate income, and refinance debt, Kotak Securities analyst Murtuza Arsiwalla wrote in a report Wednesday.The judgement is credit-negative for Tata Power but does not impact its Ba3 rating, Moody’s Investors Service said.ALSO READ: What next for Adani Power, Tata Power after Supreme Court order on tariffs?In Adani Power’s case, the order has allowed for “force majeure” benefits if it is related to Indian laws. The SC has asked the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) to hear the matter and determine the amount of relief to power generators who have been hurt by changes in local laws.Thus, Adani Power could seek relief for compensatory tariffs due to poor availability of domestic coal for sale of power from its Mundra plant to the state of Haryana; and for its Tiroda and Kawai plants that have used imported coal. Adani Power and Tata Power did not respond to Mint’s queries sent on Wednesday. On Tuesday, Tata Power had said it would continue to work towards alternatives, including sourcing of competitive and alternative coals “to best contain the onslaught of under-recovery”. Adani Power had said it was yet to decide the further course of action.While Adani Power has recognized compensatory tariff of Rs8,800 crore since FY13, Tata Power hasn’t. Thus, the judgement is negative for Adani Power and neutral for Tata Power, according to Rupesh Sankhe, analyst at Reliance Securities. Sankhe had told Mint on Tuesday that an option for Tata Power was to forego its equity of Rs4,000 crore in the plant and ask its lenders to come forward and take over the project.“We, prima facie, envisage about Rs13-18 hit on Tata Power’s SOTP (sum of the parts) (Rs85) due to its inability to book any CT (compensatory tariff) which we have assumed at about 0.30 paise/unit from FY18, thus impacting the NPV (net present value) to the tune of about Rs35-50 billion. We await further clarity on the APTEL order for Adani Power (SOTP – Rs28),” Edelweiss Securities Ltd analysts Swarnim Maheshwari and Manish Saxena wrote in their report on Wednesday The two power producers have long argued that a change in Indonesian regulations has pushed up their cost of coal imported from that country to fuel their electricity plants at Mundra, forcing the companies to seek a higher price.Tata Power’s Coastal Gujarat Power Ltd (CGPL) unit and Adani Power both operate over 4,000 megawatt (MW) coal-fired project in Mundra, Gujarat, and have power purchase agreements with state discoms in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana and Punjab.In a major setback to Tata Power and Adani Power on Tuesday, the Supreme Court denied award of compensation on account of expensive Indonesian coal, setting aside an earlier tribunal ruling that had allowed the power producers to charge higher tariff.The SC order is in contrast to a judgement by CERC in December that Tata Power and Adani Power were entitled to charge their customers more to recover the higher costs stemming from an increase in the price of imported coal by invoking ‘force majeure’.Adani Power had recognized compensatory tariff of Rs14.6 billion for the first nine months of FY17 and Rs30 billion for FY16 against Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) of Rs54 billion and Rs85 billion, respectively, according to the Kotak report. “Tata Power, on the other hand, did not recognize any compensatory tariffs but had an average under-recovery of Rs9 billion or Rs0.5/ kwh for 9MFY17 against Ebitda of Rs5 billion,” it said.Adani Power’s shares fell further on Wednesday, closing 9.01% lower at Rs33.85 on BSE. Tata Power’s shares closed up 0.06% to Rs85.45.The firms’ shares could languish further as some of the projects would turn unviable, brokerage Sharekhan Ltd said in a note on Wednesday. The SC order could also impact sentiments towards public sector banks due to potential asset quality issues, the note said.",2017-04-13,"Adani Power and Tata Power will have to take measures to mitigate their losses to overcome weakening of their finances, following Supreme Court’s order on power tariff",0.75,03:53,"Supreme Court tariff order reduces options for Adani, Tata Power" +0,"Big plans are afoot for India’s sprawling hydrocarbons industry. Finance minister Arun Jaitley says the government aims to create an “integrated public sector oil major” to match the might of the international oil and gas giants. The big question is how that plan will unfold. Details are beginning to emerge.What’s the logic?The government owns majority stakes in eight major listed oil and gas firms. Combining some or all would create a bigger corporation with clout to negotiate better deals, for instance, on crude oil purchases. India imports some 80% of its crude needs. A merged business would also be less vulnerable to the vagaries of oil prices, say, by combining producers (which benefit from higher prices) with refiners (which get a boost from lower prices).Just how big are those eight state-owned companies?Their combined market value is almost $109 billion. If folded into one company, that would rank seventh globally among oil and gas majors. (Exxon Mobil is No. 1 at $345 billion). Such an entity would outstrip India’s private oil giant, Reliance Industries, whose market value is $71 billion. Six smaller unlisted joint-venture oil and gas companies may also come into play.What do we know about the government’s plan?Not much, in terms of detail. In August, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said his ministry was open to discussing a merger to create a larger, stronger national oil company and that the government was figuring out the appropriate model for the combination. Jaitley then spoke in mostly general terms during his 2 February budget speech, about strengthening public-sector enterprises through consolidation, mergers and acquisitions.Where are we now?According to the Economic Times, the oil ministry, which administers the industry and works independently of the finance ministry, held a meeting in March with the state-run oil companies and asked them to produce a road map for integration. So far, that road map appears to entail Oil & Natural Gas Corp. purchasing the government’s stake in either Hindustan Petroleum Corp., worth $4 billion, or Bharat Petroleum Corp., worth $7.7 billion.How would that work?Surprisingly simply. ONGC could just buy shares from the government and keep the refiner as a separate subsidiary, obviating the need for an official merger. ONGC already has a refining subsidiary -- adding HPCL or BPCL would create the nation’s third-largest refiner. India would receive vital funds for reducing the country’s fiscal deficit, but the move would imperil Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s goal of cutting crude imports, since ONGC might need to divert spending from its exploration investments aimed at boosting oil and gas output.Is there a precedent?The government attempted something similar at least once in the oil sector, during the mid-2000s. Those efforts unraveled through opposition from some of the companies and employees. The newly proposed mergers deals would also need to surmount the enormous challenge of absorbing refiners with networks across 29 states, thousands of employees and unique work cultures.What about beyond the energy world?Air India has remained unprofitable since its 2007 merger with Indian Airlines, though it managed to reduce losses this year. The government has struggled to integrate the carriers, failed to achieve the expected synergies and faced labour issues. What does the market think?Shares of all but one of the five largest state oil companies fell in the two months after the February budget, even as India’s benchmark stock index surged.A 2015 study by the Journal of Business Management and Economics concluded that while mergers in India’s energy sector may not create immediate shareholder value, they produce companies that are better placed to compete and adapt. Credit ratings company Fitch reached a similar conclusion.",2017-04-12,The government owns majority stakes in eight listed oil and gas firms. Combining some or all would create a bigger corporation with clout to negotiate better deals on crude oil purchases,0.57,14:40,Why India is creating an oil and gas behemoth +0,"Mumbai/New Delhi: Petrol and diesel prices in some cities will now see daily change in sync with international rates, according to two officials from oil marketing companies.This will be effective 1 May in five cities including Puducherry and Visakhapatnam, Udaipur, Jamshedpur and Chandigarh as part of a pilot project. This will be extended to other parts of the country after an assessment of consumer response.Diesel and petrol prices move in tandem with the price of crude oil in most countries. In January, Mint reported that the fuel retailers plan to introduce dynamic pricing in India this year.“We have been piloting dynamic pricing at a few of our retail outlets for some months now, and the response has been encouraging. This has allowed us to go ahead and introduce it formally,” an executive director from an oil marketing company said on condition of anonymity as he is not allowed to talk to reporters.Currently, state-run fuel retailers—Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL)—revise petrol and diesel prices on the 1st and 15th of every month based on average international price of the fuel in the preceding fortnight and the currency exchange rate.“Due to the fortnightly revision of fuel prices, petroleum dealers were applying breaks (not lifting fuel daily) on uplifting of fuel. If the prices go up on the 1st or 15th of every month, there would be a rush to uplift products, else, the upliftment would be impacted. This would result in losses for OMCs and we wanted that this price predictability should go away. So dynamic pricing will be a good bet,” said a senior official from an oil marketing company on the condition of anonymity.Shares of Indian Oil fell 0.07% to Rs408.90 on BSE, Bharat Petroleum rose 1% to Rs717.60, Hindustan Petroleum rose 1% to Rs542.45 while India’s benchmark Sensex fell 0.49% to 29,643.48 points.Although state-run fuel retailers have the capability to revise petrol and diesel prices on a daily basis, what needs to be monitored is how consumers react to price volatility, industry experts say.“If there is heightened volatility in global markets due to geopolitical developments, it could get reflected in domestic retail prices too. Therefore, companies are doing the right thing in testing the model in pilot projects to see how its impact and consumer response. In the medium- to long-term, daily price revision may be a good idea as is practised elsewhere,” said R.S. Butola, a former chairman of Indian Oil.Indian Oil chairman B. Ashok and Hindustan Petroleum chairman and managing director M.K Surana didn’t immediately respond to phone calls seeking comment.Besides, global fuel prices and currency exchange rate, central and state taxes account for a major part of the fuel prices. It accounts for half of retail petrol price and 46% of retail diesel price. The central government collected Rs64,509 crore from petrol as excise duty in 2016-17 up to end-February, 20% more than what was collected in the whole of FY16. Excise receipts from diesel jumped 36% in the same period to Rs1.37 trillion.",2017-04-13,"Fuel retailers including Indian Oil will change petrol and diesel prices daily in Puducherry, Visakhapatnam, Udaipur, Jamshedpur and Chandigarh",0.22,02:55,"Petrol, diesel prices to change daily from 1 May" +0,"Anil Agarwal has sealed the merger of his mining and energy businesses in India, creating a BHP Billiton Ltd-like resources conglomerate, even as a recent investment in Anglo American Plc. raises questions about how far the billionaire’s ambitions stretch.Vedanta Ltd combined with unit Cairn India Ltd on Tuesday and fixed 27 April as the record date for determining the list of the latter’s shareholders who will be allotted stock in the parent company, according to a joint statement. Vedanta will offer minority shareholders of oil producer Cairn India one equity share and four redeemable-preference shares with a face value of Rs10 each as part of the deal agreement.The merger gives shareholders a company with a diverse portfolio encompassing iron ore, bauxite, aluminium, power, oil and gas that has the ability to ride out commodity cycles. Agarwal, a self-made billionaire, recently surprised the mining industry by becoming the second-biggest shareholder in Anglo American through an unusual deal that led analysts to speculate he might be planning to force a break up of or a merger with the century-old miner.“This merger will increase the appeal of Vedanta Ltd to global investors as it simplifies the structure and increases the size and free float of the company,” Tom Albanese, chief executive officer of Vedanta, said in the statement. The firm will continue to focus on remaining a low-cost and low-debt operator, he said.Agarwal’s fortune has been built on a series of ambitious acquisitions: In 2001, he bought control of then government-owned Bharat Aluminium Co. in one of the first tests of India’s efforts to offload state holdings. He followed with another government entity, Hindustan Zinc Ltd, in a deal that drew the attention of the nation’s top investigating agency. He successfully bid for what was India’s largest iron ore producer Sesa Goa Ltd. in 2007 and for Cairn India in 2010, despite having no oil and gas experience. Last year, Anglo American was said to have rebuffed informal approaches from the billionaire to discuss ideas including a combination with Hindustan Zinc Ltd.The Vedanta-Cairn combine was proposed by Agarwal in 2015, but delayed after Cairn shareholders held out for a better deal, which was offered last year.It will allow India’s most-indebted metals company after Tata Steel Ltd. to access Cairn’s cash pile, which stood at Rs26,000 crore ($4 billion) at the end of December. Vedanta’s debt at the time was Rs65,000 crore, while Cairn is debt-free.“They are under pressure because of the heavy debt and the merger is planned only because of this,” said Kishor Ostwal, managing director of CNI Research Ltd, an equity research provider in Mumbai. The strong commodity cycle has benefited the group and improving raw material prices will give them a further advantage, he added.Vedanta shares have nearly tripled in the past year, leading gains among India’s 100 largest companies. It advanced in March after unit Hindustan Zinc announced a special dividend of about $2.2 billion, of which the parent will get about $1.4 billion. The dividend payout will cover 68% of Vedanta’s debt maturities in the fiscal year ending March 2018 and alleviate near-term refinancing risk, according to Moody’s Investors Service.“The stock looks very interesting and our bias is positive,” Ashish Chaturmohta, head of derivatives and technicals at Sanctum Wealth Management Ltd, said by phone. “The dividend mostly is going to go for debt reduction and so will the cash with Cairn,” he added, saying the stock can move up further.Shares of Vedanta climbed 2.6% to Rs259.25 in Mumbai on Wednesday. The merged company will have a market-capitalization of about $15.6 billion and a higher free float of shares of 49.9%, according to Tuesday’s statement.Vedanta’s 6% 2019 dollar notes rallied 42% in the past year as the company reduced its leverage and strengthened prospects for repayments with dividends. Bloomberg",2017-04-12,"Anil Agarwal has sealed the merger of Vedanta and Cairn India, creating a BHP Billiton-like resources conglomerate ",0.67,14:15,Anil Agarwal creates BHP-style Indian resources major +0,"New Delhi: The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved setting up of an Indian Institute of Petroleum and Energy (IIPE) at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh at a cost of over Rs655 crore, fulfilling the commitment made to the state when Telangana was separated from it. The Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved setting IIPE as ‘an Institute of National Importance’ through an Act of Parliament. “The Institute will have the governance structure as well as legal mandate to grant degrees in a manner similar to that enjoyed by IITs,” an official statement said. A separate Act will also impart the required status to the institute to become a ‘Centre of Excellence’ in petroleum and energy studies. The Cabinet also approved Rs655.46 crore as capital expenditure to set up IIPE and contribution of Rs200 crore towards its Endowment Fund. This will be in addition to a contribution of Rs200 crore from oil companies towards the Endowment Fund. The Centre had promised a petroleum university as part of the package to Andhra Pradesh after Telangana was split from it. Andhra Pradesh has allocated 200 acres of land, free of cost, for setting up of IIPE at Sabbavaram Mandal in Visakhapatnam district. A temporary campus of IIPE has been set up from academic session 2016-17 at the Andhra University campus with two undergraduate programmes in petroleum engineering and chemical engineering (with capacity of 50 students each). IIT-Kharagpur has taken up the responsibility of mentoring the institute. “The objective is to meet the quantitative and qualitative gap in the supply of skilled manpower for the petroleum sector and to promote research activities needed for the growth of the sector. “The academic and research activities of IIPE will derive strength from the institute’s proximity to sector-related activities such as KG-Basin, Visakhapatnam refinery and the planned petrochemical complex at Kakinada,” the statement added.",2017-04-12,"Indian Institute of Petroleum , which will be build at a cost of over Rs655 crore, will have the legal mandate to grant degrees in a manner similar to that enjoyed by IITs",1.0,20:31,Cabinet approves setting up Indian Institute of Petroleum at Visakhapatnam +0,"New Delhi: About 4 crore subscribers of EPFO will get 8.65% interest on provident fund deposits for 2016-17, as decided by the organisation’s trustees in December, labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya said on Thursday.The comments follow reports suggesting that the finance ministry is nudging the labour ministry to lower the EPF interest rate by up to 50 basis points.“It is not like that. The CBT (EPFO trustees) had decided to give 8.65%. Our ministry keeps on discussing with finance ministry. We would have surplus of Rs158 crore on providing 8.65%,” Dattatreya said on being asked whether the finance ministry is making a case for lowering the interest rate.“If need be, I will talk to them (finance ministry). I have requested them to approve 8.65%. In any case this amount (interest income) will be given to workers. But how and when it will be provided, this is the question,” he added.Also Read: EPFO subscribers to get loyalty benefit of up to Rs50,000The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation’s (EPFP) apex decision making body the Central Board of Trustees (CBT) had decided to provide 8.65% rate of interest on EPF deposits last December. As per the practice, the board’s decision is concurred by the finance ministry after evaluating whether the EPFO would be able to provide the rate approved by trustees through its own income or not. Once the finance ministry ratifies the rate of interest approved by the CBT, it is credited into the account of EPFO members for that particular financial year.The finance ministry had last year also decided to lower the EPF interest rate of 8.8% for 2015-16 decided by the CBT, to 8.7%. The decision had drawn flak from all corners forcing the government to uphold 8.8%.The finance ministry has been asking the labour ministry to rationalise the EPF interest rates in view of lowering of returns on various administered saving scheme like PPF run by it.The government generally ratifies the rate of return approved by the CBT because the EPFO is an autonomous body and provides interest on EPF deposits from its own income.Asked whether rate of interest on EPF for current fiscal would be lowered amid pressure from finance ministry, he said: “Our situation (income earning on investments) is encouraging. We can expect better returns in 2017-18. But the rate of interest for this fiscal will be decided only after working out the income estimates.”",2017-04-13,"EPFO subscribers will get 8.65% interest on provident fund deposits for 2016-17, as decided by the trustees in December, says labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya ",0.96,18:40,PF body to provide 8.65% interest on EPF for FY 17: Bandaru Dattatreya +0,"Mumbai: The head of State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender, said she expects a boost to annual profit of as much as Rs3,000 crore ($465 million) in three years on cost and efficiency gains from the absorption of associate banks.Chair Arundhati Bhattacharya also said in an interview that signs of more factory activity pointed to a turnaround in India’s weak credit cycle this financial year — welcome news for a government keen to revive private investment.State-run SBI this month merged five subsidiary lenders and absorbed them into the parent company. It had fully owned two and had majority stakes in the others, but all had previously operated separately.Workforce integration will start in June, said Bhattacharya who joined SBI 40 years ago and rose through the ranks to become its first female chief in 2013. SBI has said it will shut or move some branches and close overlapping units.“Total bottom line impact (of) around two to three thousand crores (Rs2,000-3,000 ) is what we are thinking of,” she said. “I’ll have a better hang of these numbers by the middle of May.”ALSO READ: Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout falls short of what investors needThat would compare with a net profit of Rs115.9 billion for the year ended March 2016 if results of the five subsidiary banks were included.Profits at state-run lenders have been under pressure, weighed down by a record $150 billion in stressed assets. The pile of bad debt, combined with slower economic growth and deferral of large projects, has prevented lenders from boosting credit growth.As of March 17, banking sector loans had grown just 4.4%, compared with 10.9% in the previous year, the weakest pace since the fiscal year ended March 1954. But Bhattacharya, 61, said she was hoping for good growth from the July-September quarter.“I’ve already had a number of meetings with people saying their capacity utilisation has gone up. Commodity prices have gone up, so to that extent people are coming with working capital requests,” she said.SBI has forecast loans to grow 11% this financial year after an expected 6.5% growth in the year ended March.Bhattacharya also said the central bank would need to offer rates matching or higher than the reverse repo rate of 6.00%, the rate lenders get for deposits at the RBI, should it implement a special facility to drain cash from the banking system.India’s central bank wants to withdraw some of the big cash pile accumulated in the banking system since the government banned circulation of big currency-notes, but lenders are keen to get proper returns in exchange for transferring cash. Reuters",2017-04-13,SBI’s Arundhati Bhattacharya expects a boost to annual profit on cost and efficiency gains from the merger with five associate banks,1.0,17:55,SBI merger to boost profit in 3 years: Arundhati Bhattacharya +0,"London: HSBC Holdings Plc said some of its largest clients have already asked for their business to be routed through the bank’s offices in mainland Europe and aren’t waiting to see what Brexit deal the UK hammers out with the continent’s trading bloc.“A small number of our larger clients are asking us to book more of their trade and foreign-exchange activity in their French operation through our Paris office than their UK divisions,” Noel Quinn, head of global commercial banking, said in an interview. Executives at multinational companies are “making plans to ensure they can continue to trade irrespective of the outcome. They can’t afford to wait for a decision that may not emerge until two years’ time.”ALSO READ: How markets overcame past geopolitical crisesGlobal banks have started arranging for some British-based operations to move to new or expanded offices inside the EU after British Prime Minister Theresa May triggered discussions to leave the trading bloc. Privately, many executives at the world’s biggest firms say they’re now assuming the result will be a “hard Brexit”—the loss of their right to sell services freely around the region from the UK. That means they have to put contingency plans in place before the end of the two-year negotiation period.Flipping HQQuinn, who’s sat on the executive committee of HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, since December 2015, said some companies are also evaluating whether to “flip” their regional head offices to European cities from Britain. This would require them to reclassify the UK branch as a country office that would become a subsidiary of the continental headquarters, he said. This may result in some small-scale job moves and lost taxation for the UK government, as firms start reporting the purchase and distribution of services elsewhere.“Larger companies that already have a pan-European presence are going to find it easier to invoke a plan B than the smaller ones,” Quinn said. “They’re not losing faith in the UK, but the reality is businesses or even individuals themselves will start making their decisions before the answer emerges from the Brexit process.”Hoarding cashHSBC chief executive officer Stuart Gulliver has said as many as 1,000 of HSBC’s traders and salespeople, who generate about 20% of the investment bank’s revenue, will relocate from London to Paris after Prime Minister May confirmed the UK would leave the single market. Some French staff have already asked to return home, according to people familiar with the matter. The bank decided to keep its headquarters in London rather than move to Asia or France in February 2016 after a year-long review.Quinn also noted companies are maintaining higher levels of cash since the June 23 vote to leave the EU.“The quantity of cash they have in their bank accounts has progressively increased,” Quinn said in the interview. “The cause of that could be UK businesses trading really well post-Brexit because of the devaluation of sterling, or it could be the preservation of cash given the uncertain economic horizon, or it could be deferment or delay in investment activity.”The commercial bank reported a 12% increase in adjusted pretax profit to $6.1 billion last year, which was the most among HSBC’s four divisions and accounted for about a third of group’s total earnings, according to company filings. The UK contributed $1.8 billion of its pretax profit compared with $2.9 billion in the Asia region.Bloomberg",2017-04-13,HSBC says some of its clients aren’t waiting to see what Brexit deal the UK hammers out with the European Union and want to book their trade though the bank’s Paris office ,0.26,16:19,HSBC says companies already re-routing business due to Brexit +0,"
Ahmedabad: The Adani group’s plan to build one of the world’s largest coal mines in Queensland moved closer to realization after Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull met founder-chairman Gautam Adani during his three-day visit to India. Turnbull assured the Indian billionaire that his government would resolve an issue with native title laws, helping take the $16.5 billion project closer to fruition, Australian media reported on Tuesday. The native title issue surrounding the Carmichael Mine project refers to an Australian Federal Court ruling that invalidated deals with traditional land owners in that country. Legislation to fix this issue is before the Senate and Turnbull is understood to have assured the company it will be resolved, Sky News reported on Tuesday.Australia ready to supply uranium to India as soon as possible: Malcolm TurnbullTurnbull is said to have told Adani that he expected the changes overruling the court’s decision to be passed by the country’s Parliament when it reconvenes in May. He also told Adani that the ruling had caused problems with many land deals across Australia, the report added. A quick resolution is crucial for Adani, which has invested $3.3 billion in the coal mine, railway and port project and said previously that it will start construction in the second half of 2017. An Adani spokesperson said that the meeting was “very positive” for the group’s Australian project, but refused to comment on details. “Happy to meet with Australian PM today. Working together for economic and stronger Australia- India ties,” Gautam Adani posted on microblogging site Twitter on Monday evening.Turnbull’s reaffirmation of his government’s commitment to Adani’s coal mine project comes after Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk met Adani last month at Mundra in Gujarat where the conglomerate runs a port. In October, the Palaszczuk government exempted the project from new water laws that could have mired it in further legal challenges. The project, announced in 2010, has run into resistance from environmentalists, resulting in delays of at least three years. Last year, the Queensland state’s department of environment and heritage protection (EHP) issued a final environmental authority (EA) for the project in the Galilee Basin. On 19 August, Adani won a major legal battle when the Australian apex court dismissed appeals lodged by indigenous community member Adrian Burragubba as well as a Brisbane-based environmental group against the project.ALSO READ: What next for Adani Power, Tata Power after Supreme Court order on tariffs?But that has not stopped protests. Last month, just ahead of the Queensland premier’s visit, a group of protestors including former Test cricket captains Ian Chappell and Greg Chappell wrote an open letter to Adani saying that the mines project will threaten the Great Barrier Reef, and asking the group to instead invest in solar energy. Adani, during the meeting which lasted for about 30 minutes, also discussed the prospect of a $900 million government loan to Adani group to fund a rail line for the Carmichael mine project, said a person familiar with the matter who did not wish to be named. “As far as the rail link is concerned, if you’re asking about Adani’s interest in securing funding from the Northern Australian Infrastructure Fund, that’s an independent process—it has to go through that process, through that independent assessment by the board,” said Turnbull, ahead of the meeting, while answering a question related to the rail funding at a press conference in Delhi. Adani expects to complete the first phase of the project by 2020-21, producing 25 million tonnes of coal annually.",2017-04-12,"Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull, who is on a three-day India visit, met Gautam Adani on Tuesday—a boost to Adani Group’s coal mine project in Queensland",0.77,04:59,Malcolm Turnbull’s India visit boosts Adani’s Australia coal mine project +0,"Kolkata: Power utility NTPC Ltd has put its 1,320 mw Katwa project on hold even after resolving issues with land acquisition, alleges the West Bengal government, which has demanded an explanation from the central public sector enterprise for transferring key officials to other units.The project first ran into rough weather when Mamata Banerjee after taking office as chief minister in 2011 refused to acquire land for it. The state had by then already given the power utility around 556 acres to build a new thermal power generating station.NTPC needed at least 294 acres more to set up two units of 660 mw each at Katwa, but the company was asked to purchase land on its own. In 2015, the state provided around 100 acres more to the project, while NTPC on its own acquired the rest.Still, the project may not materialise in the foreseeable future, say key officials at NTPC and the state government.West Bengal’s power minister Sovandeb Chatterjee said NTPC had recently transferred several key officials from the Katwa project including its general manager. “We have written to NTPC seeking an explanation—how many officers have been transferred and why,” said the minister.On Wednesday, he will brief the chief minister on this matter, Chatterjee added.Though the key problem of land has been resolved, NTPC appears to have no immediate plans of starting construction of the power plant at Katwa, said a key power department official in Kolkata, who asked not to be named. The state will not take kindly to further delays in executing the project, he added.“These are routine transfers,” said a spokesperson for NTPC, adding that the Katwa project will “move at its own pace”. While admitting that the company had still not started the process to place orders for machines, he said the project was delayed for want of coal linkages.The state government has also been slow in sorting this out, said a former NTPC official who was closely involved with the Katwa project.The state government had earlier committed to supply coal from its own power generation units run by the West Bengal Power Development Corp. Ltd, but that arrangement requires clearance from the Centre, according to this person, who asked not to be identified.“In all these years, the state didn’t ever pressure the Centre to clear this proposal,” said this person. “It is natural that NTPC is now diverting its resources and management bandwidth to rescue distressed projects in other parts of the country such as in Rajasthan.”It was envisaged that in the long run coal for the Katwa project will come from the Deocha-Pachami coal block which has been allocated to multiple states led by West Bengal. A company has been formed and clearance given by the Centre to start exploring the 9.7 sq. km block in West Bengal’s Birbhum district.Though the block with an estimated reserve of two billion tonnes could theoretically be turned into the biggest coal mine in the country, extracting coal from it is not going to be easy because of the local geology and settlements, said a former Coal India Ltd official, who too asked not to be named.West Bengal has enough power for now and NTPC is of the view that it doesn’t need to invest in the state immediately, said the former NTPC official cited above. What is more, the political relations between West Bengal and Delhi have soured so much that central public sector enterprises such as NTPC will not be encouraged to invest in the state until things improved, he added.",2017-04-12,"West Bengal government alleges NTPC has put its 1,320 mw Katwa project on hold even after resolving issues with land acquisition",-0.02,01:54,NTPC puts Katwa power project on hold +0,"
The Bharat Financial Inclusion Ltd stock has staged perhaps the most impressive recovery in the financial sector space with a 67% rise since demonetisation, a reflection not entirely of its balance sheet. It took a warning from, ironically, the management of the company, to make investors take a reality check on their valuations.On Monday, the Bharat Financial management warned that close to 4.5% of its loan book may turn non-performing and the recovery of dues will take three-four months as against the earlier indication of March-end. But, the lender’s shares ended nearly 2% up after falling nearly 6% during the day. What makes investors so hopeful despite many analysts worried about the effects of demonetisation on the microlender as well as the whole sector?Bharat Financial Inclusion says 4.5% of loan portfolio at risk of turning bad in Q4Analysts at Kotak Securities Ltd warn that write-offs could escalate in the fourth quarter but the higher loan growth momentum could act as a cushion. But those at UBS Securities India Pvt. Ltd said that loan growth recovery is faster. “We believe that higher credit costs are one-off (driven by demonetisation) and expect core profitability to improve sharply from H2FY18,” the firm said in a note.But is this enough to warrant current valuations?Bharat Financial’s gross loan portfolio grew 38% year-on-year in the third quarter despite demonetisation taking a chunk off disbursals and bringing collections to a grinding halt. It also had an enviable bad loan ratio of 0.06% of its loan book. And a profit growth of 80% makes a convincing argument for the 67% recovery in the stock price since demonetisation.Also, Bharat Financial’s shares gained 41% between 26 December (when they hit their low in the wake of demonetisation) and 24 January when the company announced its quarterly results. The sharp gains were vindicated as the quarterly numbers seem to allay the fears of the lender being hard hit by the currency purge.Bharat Financial shares fall as much as 6% on bad loan fearsBut a large part of its valuations also reflect the hope of Bharat Financial getting acquired by another lender, which sprang from news reports of IndusInd Bank Ltd reviving talks of buying a majority stake in the company. Mainstream private banks are increasingly finding it difficult to grow their loan book in the traditional corporate and retail segments and therefore, microfinance is an attractive opportunity. The obvious choice to gain market share is to acquire an existing microfinance firm as setting up shop would be a costly affair for banks.So, the hope of a suitor has been keeping shares of not just BFIL but also other listed microfinance firms in play even though enough anecdotal evidence shows demonetisation is hurting their business.After the Bharat Financial management’s warning on Monday, several analysts cut their ratings. Analysts at Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd and Kotak Securities have a “neutral” rating on the company, while Religare Securities Ltd has a “sell” rating.Microfinance firms seek RBI nod to extend loan tenureThe microlender’s stock now trades at a multiple of 3.4 times its estimated book value for 2017-18. That seems to be pricing in most of the positives.",2017-03-08,The hope of a suitor has been keeping shares of not just Bharat Financial Inclusion but also other listed microfinance firms in play,1.0,08:04,Matchmaking hopes buoy Bharat Financial shares +0,"
New Delhi: Tata Power Co. Ltd and Adani Power Ltd were dealt a major setback on Tuesday when the Supreme Court set aside an earlier tribunal ruling that allowed the power producers to charge compensatory tariff from consumers.The ruling will likely weaken the finances of both companies, particularly Adani Power, which may have to write off some of the additional revenues it had booked in anticipation of a favourable verdict.Adani Power shares plunged 16% to Rs37.20, while those of Tata Power fell 1.95% to Rs85.40 on the BSE on Tuesday.ALSO READ: What next for Adani Power, Tata Power after Supreme Court order on tariffs?A bench comprising justices Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Rohinton F. Nariman ruled on a batch of appeals challenging a 2016 order of the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (Aptel) which held that an unforeseen increase in the cost of coal would be a “force majeure event” under the power purchase agreements (PPAs) between power-generating companies and distributors.The companies cited a change in Indonesian rules in 2010 as a force majeure event that raised the cost of coal imported from that country to fuel their electricity plants in Mundra.“The impugned order is set aside. The only benefit we are allowing is if the force majeure event is related to Indian laws,” the court said.Aptel had referred the decade-long issue to the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) to grant relief to Tata and Adani in accordance with the PPAs. In December, CERC came out with a compensation formula that allowed the companies to recover the higher costs stemming from the rise in the price of imported coal. This order will also stand nullified with the Supreme Court ruling.Tata Power’s Coastal Gujarat Power Ltd (CGPL) unit and Adani Power’s 4,000 megawatt (MW) coal-fired project in Mundra, Gujarat, have PPAs with state discoms in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana and Punjab. The annual impact for Tata Power could be a negative of Rs800-Rs1,000 crore if they want to run this plant at minimum PLF (plant load factor), according to Rupesh Sankhe, an analyst at Reliance Securities. “Since the (Mundra) plant will not be viable for Tata Power, it could look at an option of foregoing its equity of Rs4,000 crore in the plant and asking lenders to come forward and take (over) this project. Lenders, in turn, can then restructure the plant or sign new PPA or find a new developer for the project,” Sankhe said. CGPL has been consistently reporting cost under-recoveries. In the December quarter, it reported an under-recovery of 70 paise per unit, which led to a loss of Rs244 crore for the unit.“CGPL/Tata Power considers it very unfortunate that neither Regulatory Powers of CERC nor Forced Majeure as adjudicated by Aptel, have been accepted by Hon’ble Supreme Court,” Tata Power said in an emailed statement. “The final order got uploaded in the evening and the company is studying the same. However, CGPL would continue to work towards alternatives, including sourcing of competitive and alternative coals to best contain the onslaught of under recovery.”For Adani, this ruling will have more severe consequences, not just because of the additional revenues it had booked, but also due to its high leverage levels.In the past four years, the company has included likely compensatory tariffs of Rs8,800 crore—an amount higher than its net worth of Rs7,948 crore, according to analyst estimates. “Adani Power had been infusing close to Rs2,000 crore in this business every year and there is very limited visibility with respect to the profitability going forward,” said an analyst who didn’t want to be named as he is not authorized to speak to reporters. Adani Power’s consolidated debt at the end of September was Rs49,547 crore. After accounting for the cash in its books, that translates into a net debt-to-equity ratio of 6.1. Even after accounting for compensatory tariffs, Adani’s Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) accounts for about 1.25 times its interest costs for the nine months ended 31 December.However, Adani Power said in a statement to BSE that “its preliminary analysis showed that it will get benefit in respect of its power purchase agreement (PPA) for 1,424 megawatt (MW) to Haryana state distribution companies (discoms), PPA for 3,300 MW with Maharashtra Discoms and in PPA for 1,200MW with Rajasthan Discoms”.“The company would decide further course of action once the final order of Supreme Court is available,” Adani said in a filing.The company seems to be referring to the court’s order that it will allow “force majeure” benefits if it is related to Indian laws.In 2016, Aptel ruled in favour of the state electricity regulatory commissions of Maharashtra and Rajasthan, which had disallowed compensatory tariffs for Adani’s Tiroda and Kawai plants respectively, saying that the provisions of force majeure do not apply.Analysts declined to comment on this aspect without seeing the court’s order.Gireesh Chandra Prasad in New Delhi and Shailaja Sharma in Mumbai contributed to the story. ",2017-04-12,Supreme Court sets aside an earlier tribunal ruling that allowed Tata Power and Adani Power to charge compensatory tariff from consumers,1.0,00:40,"Blow to Tata Power, Adani as Supreme Court sets aside ruling on tariff" +0,"
Kalpataru Power Transmission Ltd’s shares have lost ground in the last four trading sessions despite it reporting better-than-expected performance for the December quarter. That suggests the positives are already priced in.The stock closed at a new 52-week high early this month as the company announced a large order win and indicated good growth momentum. The December quarter results closely tracked the upbeat commentary. Stand-alone revenues are up 29%. Profits rose 57% as finance costs fell.Kalpataru did not receive any major orders in the December quarter. But it made up with new order wins in the first half of this quarter. It is seeing strong business opportunities from state electricity boards, Indian Railways and the international market.The company is favourably placed for Rs3,000 crore worth of contracts and expects to start the next fiscal year with an order backlog of Rs10,000 crore, 1.4 times the 2015-16 consolidated revenues. On stand-alone revenues, the order backlog would be 2.3 times the previous fiscal year’s revenues. According to IDBI Capital Market Services Ltd, it takes six months to convert the order backlog into revenue stream. This should ensure good revenue momentum and analysts are confident the management will comfortably meet the lower end of the 15-20% growth in the current and next fiscal years.The optimism is captured in the stock—up around 60% in the last one year. For it to continue to do well, Kalpataru will have to impress the Street with more than revenue growth.Profitability is one aspect it can improve upon. Despite strong revenue growth, the company’s profitability did not see any major improvement (see chart). Also, earnings expectations are being weighed down by continuing troubles at its subsidiaries.Growth at one of them, JMC Projects (India) Ltd, is undermined by slow moving orders from the real estate sector. It is not expected to post any revenue growth in the current fiscal year. Another unit Shree Shubham Logistics Ltd, which offers agri-logistics services, is hit by under-utilization of assets and is estimated to post losses for the current fiscal year. According to HDFC Securities Ltd, the logistics firm may require financial support (cash infusion) from Kalpaturu next fiscal year.These issues are not unknown and strong growth in the core power transmission and infrastructure EPC business is making up for the weakness in subsidiaries. EPC is short for engineering procurement and construction. According to HDFC Securities, the strong order backlog should give Kalpataru leeway in picking projects with better margins. For the stock to outperform, it is crucial the company impresses on profitability and earnings front.",2017-02-21,"Kalpataru Power did not receive any major orders in the December quarter, but it made up with new order wins in the first half of this quarter",0.69,07:56,Kalpataru Power: strong revenue visibility masks subsidiary troubles +0,"
Automobile firms, apart from Tata Motors Ltd, sprung a pleasant surprise in their December quarter financial results. Operating margins topped forecasts and also inched up from the year-ago levels in some cases, in spite of subdued sales. However, the tide seems to be reversing now.Key input prices have steadily risen from their lows. Compared with a year ago, steel and rubber prices have almost doubled, while copper and aluminium are up 18-25%. This is certain to weigh on the operating margins in the March quarter. In fact, a margin correction was expected in the December quarter. But it didn’t happen because most auto companies had a high inventory of finished goods that skewed raw material costs as a percentage to sales.
Finished goods stocks were high because demonetisation played spoilsport on vehicle sales, especially in the rural markets. Auto firms also have to comply with new emission norms that will add to costs, too.For instance, brokerages have forecast a Rs600-1,000 per unit cost increase for two-wheelers on this count. It would be much higher for commercial vehicles. Therefore, the prospects for the next few quarters would hinge on the ability of auto companies to pass on the cost pressures to customers.Through the December quarter, there were no price hikes as sales were punctured. But many auto companies such as Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, Hero MotoCorp Ltd, Bajaj Auto Ltd and TVS Motor Co. Ltd reportedly raised prices in January. However, a report by Religare Capital Markets Ltd highlights that the price hikes may only partially offset cost pressures that would impact margins in the near term.Meanwhile, sales may move up as the pent-up demand of the December quarter kicks in. Another trigger could come from pre-buying by customers (especially in commercial vehicles) because vehicles may be costlier after April, when the new emission norms apply.Higher sales may then translate into operating leverage benefits such as margin improvement. This may take some time though.For now, the stocks in the auto universe trade at optimum valuations—ranging between 18-23 times estimated earnings for the fiscal year ahead. The key things to watch out for in the next few months are sales growth and price hikes in vehicles.",2017-02-27,"Steel and rubber prices have almost doubled, while copper and aluminium are up 18-25% against a year ago—certain to weigh on operating margins in March quarter",0.23,07:52,"Auto firms fend off demonetisation blues, but face the heat of rising costs"
+0,"
Until about a year ago, the agrochemical industry was beset by low demand and adverse weather conditions.
Then things seemed to ease.
But those risks are now emerging again. Shares of Rallis India Ltd and Bayer CropScience Ltd have fallen between 2% and 8% in the past month. Even shares of UPL Ltd and PI Industries Ltd, which are partly hedged because of a large overseas business, have lost 6-10% in value. The broad market has risen 1.5% during the period.Barring Bayer, all other stocks had outperformed the BSE 500 index in the past one year. But the correction in the past one month indicates that investors are getting cautious.International weather forecasts point to a reoccurrence of the El Niño warm weather pattern in 2017. The forecasts are inconclusive and clarity will emerge only in May. But if El Niño returns as feared, then it can crimp the crucial monsoon rains, which in turn, will impact agriculture activity. Though rural spending is now less dependent on agriculture, the monsoons and the corresponding agricultural output still affect rural demand, Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd said in a note.According to Aditya Jhawar, an analyst at Investec Capital, monsoon rains influence the quality and quantum of farm investments. “Agrochemical companies are exposed to the vagaries of monsoon as the consumption of agrochemicals and the up-trading/down-trading of molecules largely depends on performance of monsoon,” he says. Bayer and Rallis, with a 70-80% exposure to the domestic market, are expected to be the worst-hit companies.The concerns arise amid talk of a dull January-March quarter (fiscal Q4). Demand for agrochemical products is being hit to an extent by weak crop prices, low pest infestation and drought conditions in southern parts of the country. According to Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd, lower winter crop acreages in south India and higher inventory can weigh on pesticide consumption in the current quarter and result in muted revenue growth for the industry.Of course, the March quarter is a lean season for agrochemical companies. A large chunk of sales happen in the September and December quarters. And revenue growth till December 2016 has been good (see chart). Even so, growth is lower than initial expectations and is coming on a low base of two consecutive years of sub-par monsoon rains (2014-15, 2015-16).If current risks do not subside—deficit monsoon rains, weak crop prices and continuation of drought in several parts of the country—then revenue growth in the coming fiscal year can be hit, taking the industry back to anaemic growth levels.",2017-03-07,"If El Niño returns as feared, then it can crimp the crucial monsoon rains, which in turn, will impact agriculture activity",-0.42,07:49,Déjà vu for agrochemical stocks +0,"
Shares of Petronet LNG Ltd have increased an impressive three-fifths so far this fiscal year.Shortage of domestically produced gas leading to better demand prospects for liquefied natural gas (LNG) is what has fundamentally propelled the company’s stock upwards.The LNG importer’s profit growth has been robust each quarter so far in fiscal year 2017 and the December quarter results are no exception. Net profit increased spectacularly, more than doubling compared to the same quarter last year to Rs397 crore. Operating profit increased 114% year-on-year to Rs607 crore.The Petronet LNG management told analysts in a conference call that the Dahej (Gujarat) capacity expansion to 15 million tonnes (from 10mt) was fully operational during the December quarter. The company said that the volume of 187 trillion British thermal units regasified at the Dahej terminal in December quarter is a marginal increase over the September quarter and a 36% increase over the December 2015 quarter.However, Petronet LNG’s Kochi (Kerala) terminal continues to operate at miserably low utilization levels—6% during the December quarter. Pipeline infrastructure problems have adversely affected utilization levels at the Kochi terminal and that has been a worry. “On the Kochi pipeline issue, Petronet LNG management shared that work on the first phase (Kochi-Mangalore pipeline) has started,” point out analysts from IIFL Institutional Equities in a report on 15 February. According to the brokerage firm, once this line is complete, utilization of the Kochi terminal would increase to 40%. However, further ramp-up in utilization would depend on completion of Kochi-Bangalore, the second pipeline, which is likely to be completed only by 2019. Needless to say, developments on this front will be an important trigger for the stock.It helps that spot LNG prices are expected to remain subdued in the coming years on account of higher supply in global markets thanks to capacity additions. The Petronet LNG stock’s remarkable appreciation reflects that it captures this good news including the recent commissioning of expanded capacity. But further outperformance could be difficult.Incremental expansion at the Dahej terminal to 17.5mt is expected to be completed by fiscal year 2019. “Given we already assume further capacity expansion benefit of 2.5mmt with full utilization by FY19/FY20 and earnings growth post-FY20 would be minimal, we expect stock would be de-rated going forward,” wrote analysts from Elara Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd in a report on 14 February.Currently, one Petronet LNG share trades at about 17 times estimated earnings for the next fiscal year based on Bloomberg data.",2017-02-21,"Shortage of domestically produced gas leading to better demand prospects for liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is what has fundamentally propelled Petronet LNG’s stock",1.0,07:56,Petronet LNG’s impressive showing +0,"
Telenor ASA has handed its India business over on a silver platter to Bharti Airtel Ltd. Leave alone receiving any value for its equity, Telenor will also service the outstanding debt of its Indian subsidiary before the handover.Evidently, the company wants to cut losses and run. But in the process, Bharti Airtel gets spectrum worth Rs5,000 crore based on last year’s auction prices, by only making a payment of around Rs1,600 crore to the government.As consolidation has picked up pace, one thing is becoming increasingly clear—sellers are settling for lower and lower valuations. Telenor even settled for nothing, despite having 44 million customers and nearly Rs5,000 crore in annual revenues; leave alone the value of its spectrum.Remaining small- and mid-sized companies such as Reliance Communications Ltd (RCom), Aircel Ltd and Tata Teleservices Ltd should take note of the writing on the wall. Last year, when Videocon Telecommunications Ltd sold its spectrum assets, it got a considerably lower valuation than it had earlier envisaged. When Idea Cellular Ltd backed out of a generously priced deal, Airtel stepped in at lower valuations. But even then, Videocon managed to get around 1.4 times the value of the spectrum, based on recommended prices for an upcoming auction.Of course, since then, large companies filled many of their spectrum portfolio gaps in the auction. And spectrum ceases to be the scarce asset it once used to be.In addition, the massive reduction in tariffs after Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd’s launch last year has made things increasingly difficult for mid-sized companies such as RCom and Tata Teleservices. Each of them has huge debt and lacks the resources to compete in an environment where heavy capex is the order of the day. With Jio setting the pace with new tariff structures, these smaller companies no longer pose the competitive threat they once used to.News reports suggest they are in talks to combine operations to stand their ground against Airtel, Jio and the proposed Vodafone-Idea combine. Coming together may help display scale for a possible suitor, but the monumental debt on their books may more than offset any buying interest that emerges. Besides, even if they manage to overcome debt and other hurdles and combine operations, they will together have a revenue market share of around 18%. Consider that both Idea and Vodafone India Ltd individually have a higher market share (of 19% and 23.5%, respectively), but are still discussing a merger to effectively take on the might of Jio and Airtel. If Telenor’s painful exit from the Indian markets is any indication, the remaining small and mid-sized telecom companies would do well to take what they get and exit while they can.",2017-02-27,"If Telenor’s exit from the Indian markets is any indication, the remaining small and mid-sized telecom companies would do well to take what they get and exit while they can",-0.15,07:52,Telenor’s painful exit and the writing on the wall +0,"London: Unilever was all smiles when Kraft Heinz Co. abandoned its attempt to buy the UK consumer company for $143 billion. In an unusual joint statement, the two companies referred to their “high regard” for each other.This isn’t how bitterly contested takeover situations normally end. The Anglo-Dutch consumer giant must have wanted to end things amicably—or at least be seen to.Why would Unilever help Kraft Heinz save face, given it manifestly doesn’t want to be acquired, let alone by the US ketchup maker?ALSO READ | Unilever shares slide after Kraft Heinz withdraws $143 billion takeover bidSure, Unilever is a good-hearted corporate citizen. But it looks like it may need something from Kraft Heinz one day, and is showing the world the pair could do business.One possibility: CEO Paul Polman has a sale of its food assets in mind, and needs to keep potential buyers sweet.Kraft Heinz is all food. Almost 60% of Unilever’s revenue comes from personal products and homecare, things like soap and washing powder. A sale of the food business would let Polman preserve the company’s independence and culture, while meeting Kraft Heinz’s need for a deal that offers plenty of margin expansion potential.So why not do such a deal now? Perhaps Kraft Heinz wasn’t keen, or it really wanted Unilever’s faster-growing household products and personal care assets.ALSO READ | Unilever can’t breathe easily after fending off Kraft HeinzOr, it’s possible Polman wasn’t ready. Conceivably, Unilever wants to bulk up its household and personal care operation before selling the food business.How could it achieve that? A purchase of New York-based Colgate-Palmolive Co. would fit the bill. With a market value of $64 billion, it’s about half Unilever’s size, and would be a strategic match, as analysts at Exane point out.Buying a storied US name might seem tricky in the current climate, but a generous offer may assuage Colgate’s managers, making the politics easier.Alternatively, there is a messier way of getting to the same result—a deal with Swiss peer Nestle SA. The world’s largest food group, with a market value of 228 billion Swiss francs ($227 billion), suffers Unilever’s same problems of weak margins and low growth.At the very least, it might make sense for the two companies to merge most of their food operations into a joint venture and spin that off, or sell it. There are surprisingly few overlaps: the Swiss have mostly exited ice cream outside North America, while Unilever still makes choc-ices, for instance.ALSO READ | Kraft Heinz and Unilever’s food fightAn all-food combination would have combined sales of €32 billion ($34 billion). It could be worth €63 billion, based on the average sales multiple for the industry.Ulf Mark Schneider, Nestle’s newish CEO, has indicated he’s not in the market for big deals, so no one should hold their breath. But a full merger of the pair, with a spin-off of the food unit, would create a global group focused on the faster growing businesses of personal care, pet care and food supplements.Either way, the consumer industry needs deals to address weak profitability and growth.Polman needs to ensure Unilever has the strongest negotiating hand as opportunities arise. For now, that means cutting costs and reducing the company’s conglomerate discount. That is where he can still earn his legacy. If he fails, others will do it for him. Bloomberg",2017-02-20,"Why would Unilever help Kraft Heinz save face? One possibility: CEO Paul Polman has a sale of its food assets in mind, and needs to keep potential buyers sweet",1.0,20:57,Unilever’s boldest defence? A Colgate or Nestle deal +0,"
A seasonally weak quarter for air conditioners (ACs) coupled with the adverse impact of the note ban on sales was expected to be a drag on Voltas Ltd’s December quarter performance. However, although sales were affected, the projects division more than made up for it, leading to higher-than-anticipated operating profit jump.The quarter’s net revenue at Rs1,180.5 crore was 6.7% lower than the year-ago period. The unitary cooling products (UCP) division, comprising of AC sales and which accounts for a third of the total revenue, clocked a 5% drop in revenue. There was an 11% drop in the number of ACs sold as the currency crunch hit sales for most part of the quarter. Meanwhile, revenue at the electro-mechanical projects (EMP) division, too, contracted by a similar degree.Fortunately, the EMP division’s profit margin at 3.9% was better than what the Street had pencilled in. This made up for the 110 basis point decline in the UCP division’s profitability. A basis point is 0.01%.Besides, the operating expenditure as a percentage to sales fell from a year back as raw material cost was lower. Therefore, the operating profit at Rs89 crore zipped past the average estimate of 20 brokers by 40%. It was also around 52% higher year-on-year. Higher profit clocked in spite of lower revenue traction led to a significant 210 basis point jump in operating margin.Further, a steep rise in other income fuelled net profit by 55% to Rs81.6 crore.The Voltas stock, which last changed hands at around Rs350 on BSE, is on a strong wicket in spite of its relatively high price-to-earning multiple of 18 times one-year forward estimated earnings.For one, the next two quarters are better for the UCP division given that the demonetisation effect will wear off as the peak season for AC sales picks up. Note that Voltas is the market leader with a 27% share of the AC market. Also, the order inflows for its EMP projects division are likely to gain momentum as the economies of the Middle East, where Voltas has a significant presence, are improving on the back of rising crude oil prices. Above all, legacy loss-making projects are now behind the company, paving the way for improved overall profitability.",2017-02-21,"The next two quarters are better for the unitary cooling products division, given that the demonetisation effect will wear off as the peak season for AC sales picks up",1.0,07:56,Voltas profit tops forecast as project business surprises positively +0,"
Shree Cement’s December quarter earnings were marred by the performance of its power segment, which incurred a loss at the operating level, thus impacting overall profitability. In the cement segment, volumes improved 4.5% year-on-year (y-o-y) to 4.91 million tonnes (mt) due to capacity additions in east India, but realizations declined sequentially as prices corrected sharply in both eastern and northern markets post demonetization. On a y-o-y basis, net profit increased by a mere 0.72% to Rs235.45 crore and net sales rose 3.24% to Rs2,091.17 crore, aided by higher other income. Last but not the least, freight costs surged, pushing cement operating cost/tonne higher.Going by these factors, there’s nothing much to cheer about, but the stock’s valuations show a different picture. Shares of Shree Cement, trading at a one-year forward price-to-earnings multiple of 33.92 times, compare well with ACC Ltd and Ambuja Cements Ltd. Shree Cement is expected to have an edge over peers in the long run given positives like a less stressed balance sheet, better operating efficiency and geographical diversification. But the question to ask is, whether such rich valuations are justified? The answer probably is that current valuations already reflect the aforementioned factors.More importantly, there are concerns which cannot be ignored. Cement volumes would remain sluggish in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab due to elections thus impacting cement realizations. Brokerages Reliance Securities Ltd and Karvy Stock Broking have trimmed their Ebitda estimates for FY17, FY18 and FY19 to factor subdued realizations in key markets. Ebitda stands for earnings before interest, tax depreciation and amortization. Secondly, freight and energy costs would weigh on margins as they are expected to harden. Also, how soon volumes in the power segment revive is key. Shree Cement is on a capacity addition spree and aims to become a 40mt capacity company by FY19. It will incur a cost of Rs1,800 crore to add clinker capacity of 2.80 mtpa and cement capacity of 3 mtpa in Karnataka. This integrated project will be funded through internal accruals and is expected to be completed by December 2018. Though the company has been adding capacity without leverage, some analysts don’t favour this move simply because south India already has excess capacity. Meanwhile, it has announced a one-time special dividend of Rs100 for every equity share held.Since the company has been expanding its footprint in various regions, a slew of brokerage houses are gung-ho on the stock citing it to be a beneficiary of cement demand recovery. When this anticipated revival will finally happen is anybody’s guess, but for now valuations need to correct.",2017-02-20,"Since Shree Cement has been expanding its footprint, a slew of brokerage houses are gung-ho on the stock, citing it to be a beneficiary of cement demand recovery",1.0,07:51,Is Shree Cement’s rich valuation warranted? +0,"
Investors weren’t impressed with the Rs1,600 crore deal between Havells India Ltd and Lloyd Electric and Engineering Ltd. Shares of both companies fell on Monday—Lloyd’s shares dropped as much as 17.1% and Havells’s shares fell 3.2%. Cumulatively, their market capitalization fell by more than Rs1,000 crore. What gives?For starters, Havells hasn’t really got itself a bad deal as its shares suggest. The enterprise value (EV) of Rs1,600 crore for Lloyd’s consumer durables business translates into a valuation of 14.5 times estimated Ebitda for fiscal year 2016-17. This compares favourably with peers such as Voltas Ltd and Blue Star Ltd, which trade at an EV/Ebitda ratio of 22.9 and 23.7 times, according to an Ambit Capital Pvt. Ltd report on 20 February. Of course, Lloyd’s consumer durables business enjoys lower margins compared to these firms, although that seems to be factored in the valuations. Ebitda is short for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.But one man’s gain is another man’s loss and the Lloyd stock seems to be mirroring that sentiment. The Street clearly expected Lloyd to fetch better valuations from the sale. In fact, the stock had risen by around 25% year-till-date until last week in anticipation of the sale.As a part of the deal, Lloyd will get Rs1,550 crore, with the balance going to group company Fedders Lloyd Corp. Ltd. At the end of September, debt stood at about Rs720 crore, according to analysts. Assuming the company uses the proceeds to retire its entire debt, that leaves it with net proceeds of Rs830 crore.For perspective, its market capitalization on Monday was less than Rs1,100 crore. What this means is that the deal values Lloyd’s retained non-consumer durables business at about 2.4 times FY17 annualized earnings before interest and tax (Ebit) or, in other words, next to nothing.Of course, one can argue that the retained business largely consists of the unexciting supply to original equipment manufacturers, where margins tends to be low and working capital needs tend to be high. Even so, valuing the business at less than three times earnings net of cash suggests extremely low expectations from the company. Lloyd would do well to communicate to investors what it intends to do with the large inflow. Meanwhile, even as Havells has paid relatively cheap valuations, Lloyd’s low margin profile is understandably a cause of worry. The consumer durables business’ Ebit margin for the nine months ended December is only 7%. Compare that to Havells’s electrical consumer durables business, which enjoyed 25% margin for the same period. According to an analyst with a domestic institutional brokerage firm, the competitive intensity for Havells will increase with this deal, as it will now face competition from MNCs and Chinese firms.To be sure, Lloyd’s vast distribution network of more than 10,000 direct and indirect dealers is a positive. Havells will get access to ready infrastructure and a platform to enter the fast growing air conditioner market. But investors will watch out for improvement in margins and a pickup in growth. Else, Havells would have been better off with its money in the bank.Lloyd’s consumer durables business is expected to generate an Ebitda of Rs110 crore for FY17. Ambit Capital says that this would roughly amount to the interest income Havells could have earned on the Rs1,600 crore consideration paid to Lloyd.In that backdrop, the stock’s reaction is not totally surprising.",2017-02-21,"Even as Havells has paid relatively cheap valuations, Lloyd’s low margin profile is understandably a cause of worry",-0.4,07:56,Havells-Lloyd deal: Why are investors unimpressed? +0,"Mumbai: Tractor loans could see a rise in delinquency rates as a result of political pressure for farmers to be granted waivers on agricultural loans, Fitch Ratings said in a report on Tuesday. However, the negative impact of any potential rise in tractor loan delinquencies on Fitch-rated asset-backed security (ABS) transactions is likely to be minimal, given low exposure.According to the rating agency, post Uttar Pradesh government announcing farm loan waivers where tractor loans were not included, farmers might expect a change in this position in future announcements. Also, there is a lack of clarity whether tractor loans will be included in potential loan waiver programmes in Maharashtra, Punjab and Haryana where 30% of the population resides.“We would expect the delinquency rate on agricultural loans to take several months to return to normal following the announcement of policy details. The crop season is currently in its harvesting period in most parts of India, a time when most farmers earn the bulk of their income. If the farmers postpone loan repayments and use the money earned elsewhere, it could take at least until the next harvest in six months’ time to cure delinquencies,” the report noted. Many senior Reserve Bank of India (RBI) officials in the past have stated their opposition to loan waivers as it hurts the credit culture and imposes immense pressure on the banking system.State Bank of India (SBI) in March had announced one-time settlements for tractor and farm equipment loans that make up about Rs6,000 crore of doubtful and loss cases on its books. However, the bank specifically said that its scheme has nothing to do with any government announcement.On 15 March, SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said support to farmers is necessary but not at the cost of credit discipline as people who benefit from loan waivers often expect further waivers in future, which leads to many more loans remaining unpaid. The rating agency believes that government support might help cure delinquencies faster given that state governments compensate lenders quickly. However, this is unlikely since state bureaucracy works slowly. Effective collection practices and customer-education programmes can help in containing the potential rise in delinquencies. “Indian ABS transactions are unlikely to be significantly affected, even if tractor loan delinquencies do rise. We do not expect any significant stress or rating impact and we have a stable rating outlook on these transactions,” the report added.",2017-04-18,"Tractor loans could see rise in delinquency rates due to political pressure for farmers to be granted waivers on agricultural loans, says Fitch report ",0.21,12:07,Tractor loans could see rise in delinquency rates: Fitch report +0,"
Quarterly results of banks this time around would offer both the optical illusion of high profit growth and the harsh reality of a worse bad loan situation. From the looks of how the sector indices and stocks have moved over the last three months, the veneer of profit growth has been factored in. Given that the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2015-16 was horrifying due to the Reserve Bank of India’s asset quality review (AQR), by the sheer low base, profits for the same quarter in 2016-17 would be pleasing to the eyes. But the ground realities over bad loans are still the same. Investors therefore should focus on the five following numbers to judge how deep banks are in the bad-loan cesspool:Provisions: Those who had hoped for a better life after AQR are doomed to be disappointed. The gist of AQR was to identify and provide for all bad loans but lenders had hoped for quick deal-making and faster resolution thereafter. This hasn’t happened and due to ageing of non-performing assets (NPAs), provisions are unlikely to abate. With past mistakes continuing to haunt banks, corporate focused lenders such as ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and most public sector banks will continue to see erosion in profits through higher provisioning. To add insult to injury, the run-up in bond yields would trigger mark-to-market provisioning as well.Slippages: The trend in fresh slippages is perhaps the most awaited from banks because it is a gauge of how non-AQR loans have performed. Here several banks have primed investors with watchlists but past quarters have shown that trouble is brewing outside these watchlists as well. Fresh slippages for most banks had declined in the September quarter, while the impact of demonetization made them rebound in the December quarter. That of the March quarter will be the litmus test.Gross and net NPA ratios: These ratios could be tricky as they could show a decline from the year-ago period and that wouldn’t necessarily mean banks have finally got a grip on their bad loans. There is also a chance that gross and net NPA ratios may worsen because of the collapse in credit growth. Analysts at Icra Ltd expect the gross NPA ratio would hit 10% for FY17 from 7.6% in the previous year. Again, retail-focused banks win hands down here too.Core income: This is one metric that will set apart the bruised from the battered among banks. Lenders such as Kotak Mahindra Bank, Yes Bank, Federal Bank and IndusInd Bank would shine on net interest income or the income generated from core operations. Public sector banks and some private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank and Axis Bank would suffer as there are no takers for loans from the corporate sector. Analysts expect public sector lenders to show core income growth of just 5%, while private sector lenders may show around 10%.Margins: Net interest margins could take a beating simply because banks faced a deluge of deposits in the wake of demonetization and a lion’s share of these deposits have been deployed in low-yielding government bonds due to low credit demand.",2017-04-18,"Given that the Q4 of 2015-16 was horrifying due to RBI’s asset quality review, by the sheer low base, profits for the same quarter in 2016-17 would be pleasing to the eyes",0.02,08:20,Q4 results: Five numbers that distinguish bruised from battered banks +0,"New Delhi: Having seen a “modest setback” due to demonetisation last fiscal, the Indian economy will claw back to 7.2% growth this financial year and rise further to 7.5% in 2018-19, says a World Bank report. In its report on South Asian Economy, the World Bank said that “significant risks” to economic growth could emanate from fallout of demonetisation on small and informal economy, stress in the financial sector and uncertainty in global environment. Also, a rapid increase in oil and other commodity prices could have a negative implication for the economy, it added. The country’s economic growth is expected to see an uptick at 7.2% this fiscal and further accelerate to 7.5% in 2018-19, the report said. The growth slowed down to 6.8% in 2016-17 due to a combination of weak investments and the impact of demonetisation, the World Bank said, adding that timely and smooth implementation of the GST could prove to be a significant “upside risk” to economic activity in 2017-18. As per the report, the economic growth is projected to increase gradually to 7.7% by 2019-20, underpinned by a recovery in private investments, which are expected to be crowded in by the recent increase in public capex and an improvement in the investment climate.“India’s economic momentum suffered a modest setback due to demonetisation, while the poor and vulnerable likely witnessed a larger negative shock. The economy is expected to recover and growth will gradually accelerate to 7.7 per cent by 2019-20,” it said. The demonetisation, the World Bank said, caused an immediate cash crunch, and activity in cash reliant sectors was affected. The GDP growth slowed to 7% during the third quarter of 2016-17, from 7.3% during the first half of the fiscal. India’s fiscal, inflation and external conditions are expected to remain stable, the US-based multilateral lending agency said, adding that the centre will continue to consolidate modestly, while retaining the push towards infrastructure spending. “Inflation will stabilise, supported by favourable weather and structural reforms. Normal monsoons have so far offset increases in petroleum prices,” it said. Referring to the external factor, it said exchange rate has appreciated, partly reflecting expectations of a narrowing inflation gap between India and the US and limited external vulnerabilities as the current account deficit is expected to remain below 2% of the GDP and fully financed by FDI inflows. It said challenges to India’s favourable growth outlook could stem from continued uncertainties in the global environment, including rising global protectionism and a sharp slowdown in the Chinese economy, which could further delay a meaningful recovery of external demand. It said there is a great uncertainty about the extent to which demonetisation caused small, informal firms to exit and shed jobs. Also, private investment continues to face several impediments in the form of corporate debt overhang, stress in the financial sector, excess capacity and regulatory and policy challenges.",2017-04-18,The World Bank report says timely and smooth implementation of the GST could prove to be a significant ‘upside risk’ to Indian economy in FY18,0.15,08:47,World Bank says Indian economy to grow at 7.2% in FY18 +0,"
New Delhi: A key government department has advocated scrapping the rule mandating banks to invest a fixed portion of their deposits in government bonds, a view that has found support in the N.K. Singh committee reviewing rules on fiscal discipline.In its discussions with the committee, the department of financial services in the finance ministry suggested an end to statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) requirements that force banks to buy bonds, reducing their lending capability. The committee led by Singh, a former revenue secretary, is reviewing India's rules governing fiscal responsibility and budget management (FRBM).Last April, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) started reducing SLR by 0.25 percentage point every quarter, and allowed over half of these holdings to meet the Basel-mandated liquidity coverage ratio. Currently, the SLR stands at 20.5% of total bank deposits.“Economists generally advocate quick SLR phase out as one of the policy instruments to end the lazy/cautious banking syndrome and also make the governments more receptive to discipline of open markets rather than relying on financial repression. Presently—when most banks are holding government securities in excess of minimum SLR—it is the opportune time to wind up SLR,” the committee report said, quoting the department’s view.Apart from Singh, other members of the committee including chief economic adviser in the finance ministry Arvind Subramanian, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy director Rathin Roy, Reserve Bank of India governor Urjit Patel and former finance secretary Sumit Bose met officials of key central government departments to seek their views on various fiscal policy issues.The members also sought the opinion of economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das on whether SLR should be dispensed with.“Urjit Patel pointed out that SLR was partly used to hold government bonds. Secretary (economic affairs) mentioned that as on date, most banks have more than the 21% stipulated SLR. However, before taking any call on the issue, the role of SLR as assets in the context of huge NPAs (non-performing assets) of banks will need to be kept in view,” the report said, citing the interaction between Das and members of the committee.",2017-04-17,"In its discussions with the N.K. Singh panel, a finance ministry department suggested an end to statutory liquidity ratio requirements that force banks to buy bonds",0.15,03:10,N.K. Singh panel backs proposal to scrap SLR requirements for banks +0,"Hyderabad: The Hyderabad high court has directed the State Bank of India (SBI) not to finalise the options regarding retirement benefits offered to the officers of its associate banks until 15 June. The SBI had set the deadline of April 13 for the officers of five associate banks (which merged with it on 1 April ) for choosing options regarding provident fund, pension and gratuity benefits, among other issues. The Associate Bank Officers’ Association and some others had moved the court against this directive, saying the time given was very short as the process of integration of the SBI and associate banks was underway and their members won’t be able to take decision before 13 April. Justice Naveen Rao said in his interim order on 13 April that as “doubts arising out of various clauses of option notification are yet to be cleared”, the SBI shall not finalise them till 15 June. The court also asked the SBI and other respondents to file their reply in the meantime. Also Read: SBI merger to boost profit in 3 years: Arundhati BhattacharyaThe State Bank of Hyderabad, the State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, the State Bank of Mysore, the State Bank of Patiala and the State Bank of Travancore merged with the SBI, the country’s largest lender, on 1 April. Harshavardhan Madabhushi, general secretary of Associate Bank Officers’ Association, said the court’s interim order may also have impact on the voluntary retirement scheme announced by the SBI for the employees of merged entities.",2017-04-17,Hyderabad high court directs SBI not to finalise the options regarding retirement benefits offered to the staff of its associate banks until 15 June,0.06,21:24,SBI should not finalise benefit options for staff of merged banks: Hyderabad HC +0,"New Delhi: Arresting the trend of withdrawals that began in December, the net balance in Jan Dhan accounts swelled by Rs1,000 crore to Rs63,971.38 crore during the week ended 5 April.The net balance in the accounts opened under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) was Rs62,972.42 crore on 29 March, as per the finance ministry’s data. Total deposits in these accounts had increased to a record high of Rs74,610 crore on 7 December and thereafter, started declining gradually.As per the PMJDY data for 5 April, it is for the first time the net balance in the accounts has shown an increase on a weekly basis. PMJDY was launched in August 2014 to increase banking penetration and promote financial inclusion in the country. Meanwhile, the number of Jan Dhan accounts have increased to 28.23 crore of which 18.50 crore have been seeded with Aadhaar.The deposits in the accounts had surged following demonetisation of old Rs500/1,000 notes in November last year. After setting a cash deposit limit of Rs50,000 in Jan Dhan accounts, the government had on 18 November cautioned account holders that they will be prosecuted under the Income Tax Act for allowing misuse of their bank accounts through deposit of black money in Rs500/1,000 notes during the 50-day window till 30 December. The directive came against the backdrop of reports that some persons were misusing other people’ bank accounts to deposit demonetised notes.",2017-04-16,"The net balance in Jan Dhan accounts swelled by Rs1,000 crore to Rs63,971.38 crore during the week ended 5 April",0.23,22:36,"Withdrawal trend reverses in Jan Dhan accounts, deposits up by Rs1,000 crore" +0,"New Delhi: Cash and ATM management companies will soon be allowed to attract 100% foreign direct investment (FDI) as they are not required to comply with the Private Security Agencies (Regulation) Act (PSARA). A clarification to this effect is likely to be issued by the home ministry shortly. The clarification will be against the backdrop of the confusion among firms in cash and ATM management relating to compliance with the Act, under which they can receive FDI only up to 49%.The issue was discussed at a meeting convened by the prime minister’s office (PMO) last month. “In that meeting, it was decided that the home ministry would be asked to issue a clarification that these companies will not have to comply with PSARA and would be eligible to attract 100% FDI,” an official said. There are about a dozen cash management players in the country, including Writer Safeguard, SIS Securitas, CMS, Secure Value, Logicash, Brinks Arya, Securitrans and Scientific Security Management Services. According to experts, companies managing cash for banks have so far been caught in a policy tangle, with the home ministry insisting that 100% FDI could not be allowed for them if they provide private security guards or armoured vehicles. Companies that make devices such as currency authenticators and sorting and currency counting machines will also benefit from this clarification, they added. Several players, including TVS Electronics and ITI, are in such businesses. Cash Management companies handle over Rs40,000 crore of cash per day. The government in 2015 permitted 100% FDI under the automatic route for white label ATM operations with an aim to promote financial inclusion. FDI into the country grew 22% to $35.85 billion during April-December of 2016-17. Foreign investment is considered crucial for India, which needs around $1 trillion for overhauling its infrastructure such as ports, airports and highways to boost growth. A strong inflow of foreign investments also helps improve balance of payments and strengthen the rupee against other global currencies, especially the dollar.",2017-04-16,Cash and ATM management companies will soon be allowed to attract 100% FDI as they are not required to comply with the Private Security Agencies Act,0.77,22:36,"Govt may soon allow 100% FDI in cash, ATM management companies" +0,"
New Delhi: State-run broadcaster Doordarshan on Monday said its net revenue rose to Rs827.51 crore in the year ended 31 March, surpassing its annual target of Rs800 crore. The broadcaster got Rs318.06 crore from government advertisements and Rs157.59 crore from corporate ads during the year.Doordarshan, owned by Prasar Bharati, had reported a net revenue of Rs755 crore in 2015-16. “We surpassed our target this time and the revenue is much higher as compared to last year. Our DTH (direct-to-home) revenue has seen a significant rise. We have also tried to cut down our expenditure,” said Supriya Sahu, director general at Doordarshan, adding that the broadcaster is in the process of re-evaluating its manpower requirements in a bid to pare costs. The broadcaster, which operates 23 channels across the country, recorded the highest ever revenue from its free-to-air DTH platform DD Free Dish in 2016-17. DD Free Dish recorded a revenue of Rs264.17 crore in 2016-17, a 47% increase from a year ago. It had generated Rs180 crore from Free Dish in 2015-16.DD Free Dish currently carries 80 channels, including Star India Pvt. Ltd’s Star Utsav and Sony Pictures Network’s Sony Pal. It also broadcasts news channels such as Aaj Tak, ABP News and News 24.“The rise in our DTH revenue is a result of our expanded reach across the country. We had revised reserve prices in 2016 and have had very successful DTH slot auctions during the year,” Sahu added. DD Free Dish has 22 million subscribers across India, show recent estimates from television viewership measurement agency Barc India. Going forward, the broadcaster plans to add 24 new channels to DD Free Dish, taking the total channel count to 104. The platform is also planning to encrypt its free-to-air signals to secure the signals from being stolen by unauthorized operators.The broadcaster is in the middle of a revamp to revive its viewership and finances. In 2017-18, Doordarshan expects to generate Rs100 crore from the prime-time programming slot auction that concluded in December 2016. “We are revamping all the content on channels like DD National, DD Kashir and DD Sports. We are also curating content for our north-east channel, DD Arun Prabha. We expect the revenues to further go up this year,” Sahu said. The broadcaster is also planning to introduce new channels in kids, youth and music genres. “The overall approach is good. It is a good strategy to have a mix of Doordarshan’s own content as well as content from private producers. What Doordarshan is doing with Free Dish is outstanding. Free Dish is the largest DTH company and is only getting bigger,” said Ashish Pherwani, media and entertainment advisory leader at EY India.",2017-04-04,Doordarshan got Rs318.06 crore from government advertisements and Rs157.59 crore from corporate ads during the year,0.25,01:35,Doordarshan’s revenue rises to Rs827.51 crore in FY17 +0,"New York: Apple Inc has secured a permit to test autonomous vehicles in California, fuelling speculation that it is working on self-driving car technology in a crowded arena of companies hoping to offer those cars to the masses.The permit allows it to conduct test drives in three vehicles with six drivers, the state Department of Motor Vehicles said on Friday. The vehicles are all 2015 Lexus RX450h, according to the DMV.Although it has never openly acknowledged it is looking into building an electric car, Apple has recruited dozens of auto experts in recent years, and the permit pulls the curtain back a bit on any possible plan. “This does confirm what’s long been rumored: that Apple is at least toying with the idea of getting into the autonomous game in some capacity,” said Chris Theodore, president of consultancy Theodore & Associates, and a former vice president at Ford Motor Co and Chrysler. The permit does not mean Apple is definitely building a car. “This is not necessarily automobiles as initially rumored, but software or possibly hardware associated with autonomous technology,” Theodore said. An Apple spokesman declined to comment directly on the filing, pointing back to a statement the company made in November when it wrote to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on the subject of regulating self-driving vehicles.“The company is investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation,” Apple’s director of product integrity, Steve Kenner, wrote in that five-page letter.Apple executives have been coy about their interest in cars. Chief executive Tim Cook has suggested that Apple wants to move beyond integration of Apple smartphones into vehicle infotainment systems.Apple joins a growing list of traditional carmakers, technology companies, and small start ups to test drive cars in California — all vying to be the first to have commercially viable vehicles on the roads. Companies that have been issued permits also include Alphabet Inc’s Google unit, Ford Motor Co, Volkswagen AG, Daimler AG, Tesla Motors Inc and General Motors Co.Many companies have said the first cars will launch in 2020 but some experts believe it may take much longer due to regulatory challenges. Reuters",2017-04-15,"Apple has secured a permit to test autonomous vehicles in California, fuelling speculation that it is working on self-driving car technology",0.44,17:10,Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars: report +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday launched the BHIM-Aadhaar platform—a merchant interface linking the unique identification number to the Bharat Interface for Money mobile application—at Nagpur on the 126th birth anniversary of Dr B.R. Ambedkar.“Like Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar worked to give rights to the common man through the Indian Constitution, one can expect the BHIM app to do similarly great work through the financial system,” said Modi.The new interface will enable customers to make payments using a merchant’s biometric-enabled device. The merchant merely has to download the BHIM app on his smartphone and link the device to an Aadhaar biometric reader.“Any citizen without access to smartphones, Internet, debit or credit cards will be able to transact digitally through the BHIM-Aadhaar platform,” a government statement said.Also Read: Narendra Modi to visit Nagpur on Ambedkar Jayanti tomorrow
To avail of this service, a customer has to first link his bank account to his Aadhaar number. To make a payment, all he has to do is select the bank’s name and enter the Aadhaar number. His fingerprint will serve as the password to authenticate the transaction.To start with, no transaction fee will be levied on either the merchants or customers to encourage adoption of the new digital payment service, especially in small towns and rural India. The government statement said 27 major banks had already tied up with 300,000 merchants for accepting payments using BHIM-Aadhaar. It went on to add that all public sector banks have been instructed to go live with Aadhaar Pay. In his speech, Modi said that the time is not far when premise-less and paperless banking will become part of people’s lives. He announced two new incentive schemes for the BHIM app—cashback (for merchants) and referral bonus (for customers). The schemes will start from 14 April and end on 14 October, he added.Also Read: Is Narendra Modi abandoning his promise of good governance?Under the referral bonus scheme, an individual will earn Rs10 for every new referral made—i.e., educating another person or merchant about the BHIM app and ensuring that they carry out three transactions using the same. “Even in one day, if you refer around 20 people, you can end up earning Rs200 per day. This can continue for a period of three months,” said Modi.Under the cashback scheme, merchants can earn up to Rs300 per month for transactions made using BHIM. An updated version of BHIM (version 1.3) is available on Android and ioS. Several new features have been added to its interface such as new languages, the option to block unwanted collection requests and pay by scanning QR (quick response) codes.“The new upgrade is aligned to facilitate government’s initiative of launching customer referral bonus and merchant incentive schemes. We have added more regional languages, enhanced user experience and security features for wider acceptance and usage of the BHIM app,” said A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive of National Payments Corporation of India.Three new languages—Punjabi, Marathi and Assamese—have gone live on the app. This development was reported earlier by Mint on 24 January (bit.ly/2kbqHky).According to Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union minister for electronics and information technology, 20 million people have downloaded BHIM so far, and payments worth Rs823 crore have been made. The app was launched on 30 December. It was one of several measures aimed at promoting digital transactions in the aftermath of the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes, which triggered a nationwide cash crunch.",2017-04-14,"Any citizen without access to smartphones, Internet, debit or credit cards will be able to transact digitally through the BHIM-Aadhaar platform launched by Narendr a Modi",0.61,22:53,"BHIM-Aadhaar platform launched, advancing PM Modi’s digital push " +0,"
London: Fast fashion is getting tougher.Zara owner Inditex SA said on Wednesday that profitability shrank to an eight-year low. Main rival Hennes & Mauritz AB reported the first monthly sales drop in almost four years. Shares of both retailers sank.The reports illustrate the difficulties facing the fashion industry as consumers divert spending to leisure activities and buy more of their apparel from a rising number of online suppliers. The increased competition is putting pressure on prices, while higher production costs are also squeezing profitability.“In February, industry data was very challenging,” Richard Chamberlain, an analyst at RBC Capital, said in a note. Sales declines of 9% in Germany and 6% in Sweden reflect “some spend rotation into other consumer categories.”H&M shares fell as much as 5.1% in Stockholm, the most in three months. A 1% drop in February sales was caused by the month having one day fewer than in the leap year of 2016. Adjusting for that, revenue rose 3% in local currencies, missing estimates. Chamberlain estimates that H&M’s same-store sales fell 3% in the month, weighed down by the tough industry conditions and as initiatives to expand online options for customers and improve methods of supply take time to feed through to sales.In Zara’s shadowH&M has been in the shadow of faster-growing competitor Inditex in recent years, though Wednesday’s results from the Zara owner suggest it too is finding life more difficult.Inditex’s gross margin narrowed to 57% from 57.8% in the 12 months through January, missing the Spanish retailer’s goal to keep the measure within 0.5 percentage points of the previous year. The shares fell as much as 2.7%, the most since December, though pared their losses after chief executive officer Pablo Isla said that at current exchange rates, the gross margin won’t fall this year.Inditex said the decline in last year’s gross margin was due to currency swings. Foreign exchange stripped 3 percentage points off sales growth. Weaker currencies in Russia, China and Mexico reduce the value of sales in those markets when translated into euros. BloombergRodrigo Orihuela contributed to this story.",2017-03-16,Zara’s profitability shrinks to eight-year low; H&M reports first monthly sales drop in four years,-0.65,08:56,"Fast Fashion fading? H&M, Zara come under pressure" +0,"New Delhi: Online real-estate company, Housing.com (Locon Solutions Pvt Ltd), now owned by PropTiger, posted losses that soared 45% to over Rs400 crore in the year ended 31 March 2016, financial documents sourced from Tofler showed. The company registered an 111% increase in revenue to Rs26.76 crore, while total expenditure rose to Rs430 crore, a jump of 48% during financial year 2015-16. Softbank-backed Housing.com was acquired by News Corp-backed PropTiger in January 2017 in an all-stock deal and was reported to receive $50 million in fresh funds from News Corp.’s REA Group Ltd and $5 million from SoftBank Group.Most of Housing.com’s original 12 founders left during fiscal 2015-16 when its chief executive and co-founder Rahul Yadav was fired by company directors in July 2015. As a result, the company saw many CXO level entries and appointments, reflecting in its total employee benefit expense which increased by 120% to Rs188.5 crore. In November 2015, the company appointed Jason Kothari as chief executive. After Housing.com’s acquisition, Kothari joined e-commerce company Snapdeal in January as its chief strategy and investment officer. Founded in 2012, Housing.com has undergone changes in terms of both its business model as well its top-level management in the past year. The company moved away from being a property listing portal to a property buying and selling portal in November 2015.During Kothari’s leadership, Housing had shut its rental business. In January 2016, Housing.com moved to a new model—earning advertising revenue from property listers that pay for greater visibility of their properties.In December 2016, Housing announced that it had relaunched rentals. “Last year (in 2015) Housing.com had taken a strategic decision to close rentals in order to focus the company on the home buying and selling segment... Housing.com has now started preparing for the re-entry and plans to launch home rentals early next year,” Housing had said in a statement in December 2016. In May, Mint reported that Housing.com is looking to touch $10 million in revenue in the current financial year. Housing.com had not replied to Mint’s queries.",2017-03-11,"Housing.com registered an 111% increase in revenue to Rs26.76 crore, while total expenditure rose to Rs430 crore, a jump of 48% during financial year 2015-16",0.05,01:34,Housing.com posts FY16 loss of over Rs400 crore +0,"Munich: BMW AG reported its weakest profitability since 2010, capping a negative year for chief executive officer (CEO) Harald Krueger after losing the luxury-car crown to arch-rival Mercedes-Benz.Amid higher spending on electric-car and autonomous-driving technologies, BMW’s automotive profit margin narrowed to 8.9% in 2016 from 9.2% a year earlier, according to a statement on Thursday. The shares fell as much as 4.2%, the most in four months.“We are fully focused on implementing our strategy,” which involves pivoting to self-driving, electric vehicles, Krueger said in the statement. “From 2019 onwards, we will be firmly embedding all-electric, battery-powered mobility in our core brands.”ALSO READ | Geneva Motor Show: Car makers focus on technology, not consolidationBMW, lacking the financial heft of rivals backed by a larger parent, is focusing its resources on innovating for the future instead of chasing short-term sales volume. The Munich-based carmaker plans to launch the self-driving, electric iNext model in 2021 in a bid to regain its edge as an automotive leader. To manage rising development costs, BMW is pushing high-margin traditional models, such as the new X7 sport utility vehicle that’s due in 2018.Bolstered by the revamped BMW 5-Series and Mini Countryman, sales in 2017 will likely be slightly higher, the company said, adding that the overall outlook is clouded by global political and economic volatility.The world car market is cooling, with demand in the US and Europe set to peak after years of growth, and Chinese purchases forecast to slow after the government raised the sales tax on small-engine vehicles.BMW shares fell as low as €83.01, before paring the loss to 3.4% at €83.74 at 1:07pm in Frankfurt.Electric futureCarmakers are investing in battery-powered vehicles to comply with tightening emissions regulations, even though customers aren’t rewarding the effort because they’re concerned about cost and driving range. BMW said it plans to sell 100,000 electrified vehicles this year, for the first time.However, demand isn’t enough to offset the investment costs, which is burdening profitability even as BMW posted record sales last year. Groupwide earnings before interest and taxes dropped 2.2% to €9.39 billion ($9.91 billion), missing the average analyst estimate of €9.82 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.ALSO READ | These automakers could be Donald Trump’s next targets“Operational performance falls a bit short of expectations, but net result and dividend exceed expectations,” DZ Bank analyst Michael Punzet wrote in a note to clients, adding that BMW’s “competitive advantage” on electrification is a positive.The automaker was one of the first to develop an electric car from the ground up with the $42,400 i3 in 2013, and despite reining in rollouts in recent years, it’s planning to add battery packs to existing models in a move that sets it up to act quickly should demand take off.Luxury raceBMW faces the additional burden of having to spend money on redesigning a lineup at its main brand that’s been largely static for years, amid a styling lull that gave Mercedes the opening to oust its long-time rival from the top of the sales ranking.Global deliveries at BMW rose 5.2% in 2016 to 2 million cars, growing to a record but at less than half the 11% rate which lifted deliveries at Mercedes to 2.08 million. Mercedes had lagged behind its rival since 2005 and temporarily dropped below Audi to third place before a revamped SUV lineup drove a strong comeback in recent years.ALSO READ | Mercedes-Benz to overtake BMW as largest premium carmakerBMW, which also owns the Rolls-Royce brand, said growth was driven by gains in China and Europe, which offset a weaker US market.Rising sales pushed BMW’s group revenues 2.2% higher to €94.2 billion. While BMW’s automotive margin stayed within its target range of 8% to 10%, it’s lower than Mercedes’s 10%.Despite the challenges, BMW said it plans to pay a dividend of €3.50 per share for 2016, its highest ever, after €3.20 a year earlier. The carmaker is scheduled to release full 2016 earnings details on 21 March. Bloomberg",2017-03-09,"Amid higher spending on electric-car and autonomous-driving technologies, BMW’s automotive profit margin narrowed to 8.9% in 2016 from 9.2% a year earlier",0.13,19:27,BMW’s profitability hits lowest since 2010 amid tech rivalry +0,"London: Standard Chartered Plc posted annual profit that missed analyst estimates as the bank took losses on a private-equity business it’s shutting down and said efforts to clean up conduct issues affected performance. The shares fell as much as 5.4%.Pretax profit for 2016 was $409 million, compared with a loss of $1.52 billion a year earlier, the London-based company said in a statement Friday. Operating profit excluding one-time items was $1.09 billion, missing the $1.42 billion average estimate of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.Chief executive officer Bill Winters, more than a year and a half into the job, has yet to convince investors he can sustainably reverse the bank’s losses and restore a dividend, after a sharp drop in revenue and surging loan impairments in 2015 drove the Asia-focused lender to its first annual loss since 1989. Winters has also vowed to clean up the culture of the firm, where senior staff flouted ethics rules and considered themselves “above the law.”“We have sharpened our focus on all aspects of conduct,” Winters said in the statement. “The pace and scale of those changes—many of which were done in parallel and required intense periods of adjustment for employees—undoubtedly impacted some elements of the group’s financial performance in the period. But they were the right things to do.”ALSO READ: Baidu needs to speed up the future after that Uber boostStandard Chartered dropped 3.8% to 722.7 pence at 11:50 am in London. The bank’s shares jumped 85% over the past 12 months before today, the best performance among major European lenders. The stock still trades at a steep discount to book value.‘Traumatic’ changeRevenue declined 11% to $13.8 billion, surpassing the average $13.7 billion estimate in the Bloomberg survey. Loan impairments fell to $2.38 billion from $4.01 billion in 2015. In August, the bank said it would probably miss a profitability target set only last year, blaming an uncertain regulatory and economic environment.While bad-debt costs almost halved, the size of the “grade 12” category that houses the loans most at risk of default increased 26% to $1.5 billion last year. A “small number of exposures in the diamond and jewellery sector” drove loan impairments up to $511 million in Europe and the Americas. The bank said in June it was closing its $2 billion diamond-financing business because it doesn’t comply with stricter lending standards.“There are still plenty of challenges, obviously, but they’re going in the right direction,” said Hugh Young, Asia managing director at Aberdeen Asset Management Plc, one of Standard Chartered’s largest shareholders.The bank recognizes it must increase revenue to hit its targets, Winters said on a call with reporters Friday. Last year, the CEO said the annual loss “rips at our souls,” but he said Friday his outlook has improved in 2016, while acknowledging the “hill is still steep.”“My soul is intact, I feel very good about the bank, but it has been a wrenching year and a half,” the CEO said. There’s been “a traumatic amount of change” as he instituted “a very different approach to business. No one harbours any illusions that we are done, we have quite a long way to go.”ALSO READ: Should the fall in Taurus mutual fund worry investors?Standard Chartered said it plans to exit its principal finance business, which includes a private-equity unit known as SCPE, after that division incurred losses of $650 million in 2016. The firm valued its assets in the principal finance business at $1.2 billion at the end of 2016, compared with $2.1 billion a year earlier, according to a company report.Standard Chartered also said it’s “addressing credit issues” and “bolstering its management team and risk discipline” at PT Bank Permata, a lender it part-owns in Indonesia. That nation’s government has changed rules on foreign-owned banks, meaning Standard Chartered must decide whether to merge the two lenders it owns in the country, or sell one of them. A decision probably won’t come until next year, Winters said today.Standard Chartered said its common equity Tier 1 capital ratio, a measure of financial strength, rose to 13.6% from 13% at the end of September. That was higher than the 13.5% average estimate from five analysts.No dividendFinance director Andy Halford said the bank decided not to reinstate a dividend, after scrapping it in November 2015, because its turnaround was still in early stages. The lack of a payout “will be taken as disappointing,” Sanford C. Bernstein analysts said in a note to clients.Despite planning 15,000 job cuts in a strategic review in 2015, full-time employees actually rose on a “scaled-up” basis to 86,693 at 31 December from 84,076 a year earlier, the bank’s annual report shows.Headcount costs are down 7% as the bank moved employees to lower cost locations, a spokesman said. The company has also hired in some strategic areas, including more than 1,000 full-time retail banking employees in India, Singapore and Bangladesh.The bank identified “new uncertainties ahead, including threats to open trade and globalization” in its statement, and Winters said he’d seen Asian companies’ behaviour start to change already.“Clients in our markets are focusing on diversifying trading partners as much as possible to avoid a cliff-edge effect,” if President Donald Trump’s administration implements protectionist policies, Winters said. “If the US for whatever reason makes itself a less desirable trading partner, some other countries will be willing to fill that gap.” Bloomberg",2017-02-24,"Pretax profit for 2016 was $409 million, compared with a loss of $1.52 billion a year earlier, says Standard Chartered in a statement ",0.15,21:17,Standard Chartered misses annual profit estimates +0,"Bengaluru: It’s hard to overstate the importance of the technology industry to India. Over the past three decades, the IT sector has helped drive the country’s economic growth, employed millions and made billionaires out of at least seven founders.Now the industry is at risk from US President Donald Trump’s policies. The administration is promising a clampdown on the work visas India’s tech services companies use to service American customers. In the days since the US government took first steps toward H1B visa reform, all of India’s high-profile technology tycoons have seen their net worth eroded.Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd and India’s fifth-richest man, and Shiv Nadar, the sixth-richest person in the country and chairman of HCL Technologies, have seen their shares slide. Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani and three other founders of Infosys Ltd, all among the top 100 of India’s richest billionaires, have taken a hit too. IT stocks have dropped about 3% over that stretch, while the benchmark index has climbed 0.6%.Also read: In Donald Trump’s H-1B visa crackdown, Indian students weigh Canada, Ireland“Whether these changes are a precursor for more radical measures is what is worrying companies,” said DD Mishra, a Pune-based research director at Gartner.Infosys, which reports earnings 13 April, may have the most at stake. The Bengaluru-based company is most vulnerable to US visa reforms because it has the lowest percentage of local hires in the US, Goldman Sachs analysts Sumeet Jain and Saurabh Thadani said in a research note last week. HCL and Wipro also have risks from visa reforms but they hire relatively more Americans, the analysts wrote.Infosys kicks off earnings season for the industry this week, giving investors a chance to get more insight into the challenges and corporate strategies for addressing them. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, the market leader, is scheduled to report results next week.The debate has been over the H1B visa program, which allows companies to bring 85,000 workers into the US from overseas each year. On 31 March, just as companies prepared to file applications for next year’s allotment, the Trump administration rolled out a series of policy measures making it harder for firms to use the program for computer programmers and announced measures to fight what it called “fraud and abuse.” In parallel, the Justice Department warned employers applying for visas not to discriminate against US workers. All of this was in line with promises made during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to overhaul the program he described as bringing cheap overseas labour at the cost of American jobs and salaries.From India, those promises look like threats to the economy. Information technology is the largest employer in the private sector, providing a livelihood to nearly 4 million, and contributes about 9% of gross domestic product. India’s software and services exports total about $110 billion, with nearly two thirds of that revenue coming from the US.Visa uncertainty could wreak havoc with planning and jeopardize profits in the industry. It may also raise risks for customers that depend on such services, from Wall Street banks to retailers and airlines. “Difficulties in getting visas or rising salaries of H-1B employees will have a material impact on companies,” said Rostow Ravanan, chief executive officer of Mindtree Ltd, a Bangalore-based outsourcer that uses hundreds of H-1B visas every year.Several countries around the world are adopting or considering similar policies. That poses a threat to the business model perfected by Indian companies, Ravanan said. “These trends are dangerous because the IT industry and its talent serve the entire world,” he said.Leading outsourcers including Infosys, Tata Consultancy, Wipro and HCL Technologies declined to comment on the visa issue.Companies have been working on contingency plans. If foreign workers cannot go to the US, it will become more expensive to hire local staff. Companies may also try to do more work for American clients from abroad, including India.Nitin Rakesh, chief executive officer of tech services provider Mphasis Ltd is optimistic. He said the industry has gone through four or five reincarnations since the outsourcing business began. A Trump crackdown may lead to more innovation in the model.“Through leveraging all the possible technology, including mobility and cloud, the growth opportunities are immense,” said Rakesh, warning however that some companies will adapt and others may not. “Growth will not be homogeneous.” Bloomberg",2017-04-12,"US President Donald Trump’s H1B visa reform policies have eroded the net worth of India’s high-profile technology tycoons, including Azim Premji ",0.35,14:28,"H1B visa reform hits tech billionaires, from Azim Premji to Shiv Nadar" +0,"New York/Seattle: Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said fourth-quarter profit rose 15% as investment gains climbed.Net income climbed to $6.29 billion, or $3,823 a share, from $5.48 billion, or $3,333, a year earlier, the Omaha, Nebraska-based company said Saturday in a statement. Operating earnings, which exclude some investment results, were $2,665 a share, compared with the average $2,717 estimate of three analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.While Buffett is widely known as a gifted stock picker, Berkshire derives most of its income from the businesses he’s bought during his five decades running the firm. Its dozens of subsidiaries include auto insurer Geico, railroad BNSF, a network of auto dealerships, retailers and electric utilities.Also read: Warren Buffett says US market system to continue far into the futureThe 86-year-old billionaire keeps adding to the mix. Last year, he completed deals for battery maker Duracell and Precision Castparts, a supplier to the aerospace industry, helping to boost profit in his company’s manufacturing segment.Buffett tells investors to focus on the earnings from his stable of operating businesses, rather than one-time gains or losses on Berkshire’s securities portfolio. That’s because results can fluctuate widely on investments and derivatives contracts that he entered years ago.In the fourth quarter, Dow Chemical Co. converted Berkshire’s $3 billion preferred stake to more than $4 billion of common stock. The investment dates to the chemical maker’s 2009 takeover of Rohm & Haas, a transaction that Buffett helped finance.Berkshire has been a major beneficiary of the rally in stocks since Donald Trump was elected US president. Class A shares have climbed 15% since 8 November, bringing the company’s market capitalization above $400 billion for the first time. That compares with the 11% increase in the S&P 500 Index. Bloomberg",2017-02-25,"Berkshire Hathaway’s operating earnings, which exclude some investment results, were $2,665 a share",0.72,19:35,Berkshire Hathaway profit advances 15% to $6.29 billion on investments +0,"New Delhi: A Delhi court on Wednesday issued an open-ended non-bailable warrant against beleaguered businessman Vijay Mallya for allegedly evading summons in a Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) violation case. Chief metropolitan magistrate Sumit Dass passed the order after the Enforcement Directorate submitted that non-bailable warrant issued on 4 November last year by the court has not been executed and it needs more time to do so. An “open-ended NBW” does not carry a time limit for execution unlike NBW. The court, which put up the matter for next hearing on 8 November, however, asked the agency to file a progress report in this regard within two months.",2017-04-12,Delhi court issues an open-ended non-bailable warrant against Vijay Mallya for allegedly evading summons in a FERA violation case,-0.76,12:56,Delhi court issues non-bailable warrant against Vijay Mallya in FERA violation case +0,"New Delhi: Roy Price, vice-president of Amazon Studios, a unit of e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. that recently won three Academy Awards, was in Mumbai on Tuesday to announce Amazon Prime Video’s latest original content partnership with director Kabir Khan. Based on Subhash Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army, the new series, tentatively titled The Forgotten Army is the 18th Amazon India original show to go on the floors.During this third visit to India in a year, Price, who oversees all development and production of original film and television properties for Amazon, met several filmmakers and producers.“We have had positive and productive conversations with film studios and producers in India. We have been moving forward with a variety of deals many of which have been announced,” said Price on the phone from Mumbai. He talked about the significance of original content to the India strategy,streaming wars and viewership growth in India. Edited excerpts:What makes original content so integral to Amazon Prime Video’s India strategy?Our goal is to get and create compelling content for our customers whether its licensed or originals. So originals is important, it’s a differentiator, it also helps build our brand. And obviously the team globally has led the charge in that way. We have won over a 100 awards for our originals in the US. We recently won three Academy awards (for Manchester by the Sea and The Salesman) and that’s testimony to our vision that great original content is not just popular with customers but also works as a differentiator. You can have a global service but all customers are local. From a content point of view, we really have what we call a multi-local strategy. To make Prime Video India really speak to Indians we want to develop Indian shows with Indian artistes telling Indian stories that may have a universal sensibility. So our real job is to find those really great ambitious artistes and empower them and today was a great example of that.I think India is a huge and important country and there is a strong appetite here for Indian content. So, according to the multi-local strategy, we are focusing a lot of attention on Indian originals.How do you respond to Amazon Prime Video’s viewership growth in India so far?We think it’s a very strong start. I think customers are happy with what they are seeing on the service. There are a lot of titles that are doing well including Top Gear and Sultan and a mix of different kinds of things. We are always learning from what customers are enjoying and so we will continuously be looking at that to think about whether we have the exact right mix or should we invest more in a particular area and less towards some other. Its all determined by customer reactions.What’s your favourite title from Amazon’s India content library?Sultan and Bajirao Mastaani. I showed it to many people in LA and they enjoyed that.What’s your take on streaming wars in India?Wherever we operate in the world there are a lot of platforms that exist and I think the best thing to do is to really focus on customers and their wants and then focus on the talented filmmakers and creators and their wants and if you can satisfy both those groups then you’ll be just fine.How has the India journey been so far?Well, it is early; we have only been here a few months but we also discuss it a lot (globally). It is an important area of focus. I think the only two countries that I have been to three times over the past year is India and the UK. That’s not the only metric but it is very important and we are growing the team and it’s an important effort from Amazon.",2017-04-12,Amazon Studios VP Roy Price sees original shows as central to Amazon Prime Video’s India strategy,0.99,05:07,Amazon Prime Video focusing a lot on Indian original shows: Roy Price +0,"Bengaluru: Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, co-founders of India’s most valuable internet firm Flipkart, lost their billionaire status after the e-commerce firm’s valuation fell in its latest funding round.Their fortunes are now worth $650-750 million each after Flipkart’s valuation reduced to $11.6 billion in its funding round of $1.4 billion announced on Monday, according to Mint research.The Bansals became the first internet billionaires in 2015 when Flipkart raised $700 million at a valuation of $15 billion. Their fortunes were then estimated to be worth roughly $1.3 billion each, according to Forbes magazine.While that is a fall, they are still among the top three richest internet entrepreneurs, behind Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who is the only Internet billionaire currently.Also read: Why Flipkart’s valuation wasn’t hurt by multiple markdownsSachin and Binny, who are in their mid-30s, started Flipkart in a two-bedroom apartment in Bengaluru as an online bookseller inspired by their previous employer Amazon, the giant American online retailer that is Flipkart’s arch rival now.The two are now out of operational roles at Flipkart. Sachin became executive chairman in January 2016, when Binny replaced him as chief executive officer. Exactly a year later, Binny himself was replaced as CEO by Kalyan Krishnamurthy, a representative of Tiger Global Management, Flipkart’s largest investor. Binny is now Group CEO.",2017-04-12,Sachin and Binny Bansal’s net worth has fallen to $650-750 million each after Flipkart raised $1.4 billion and acquired eBay India at a valuation of $11.6 billion,-0.16,05:01,"Flipkart’s Sachin, Binny Bansal no more billionaires after raising $1.4 billion" +0,"Singapore: Aliza Knox helped Twitter Inc. and Google Inc. build Asian businesses from scratch. Now she plans to do the same for an Australian mobile advertising start-up whose backers include 21st Century Fox Inc. co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch.Knox quit as Twitter’s most senior Asian executive this month to join Unlockd, a company that offers users a discount on wireless bills, additional data or entertainment content if they agree to view ads when unlocking their device screens. As chief operating officer, the former Google executive will spearhead the start-up’s global expansion.The Melbourne-based firm, which got off the ground in 2014, joins a growing list of companies—from Amazon.com Inc. to startup Jana—targeting a global mobile advertising market that researcher eMarketer expects to reach $101 billion in 2016.“They are totally aggressive about the business and getting things done,” said Knox, who hails from the San Francisco Bay area and worked at Boston Consulting and Visa before joining Google, mostly in Singapore and Australia. “But they also have the humility that this is a competitive environment.”Unlockd now reaches about a million users through partnerships with carriers such as Boost Mobile, a subsidiary of Sprint Corp., Tesco Mobile Ltd in the UK and Digicel Group Ltd in the Caribbean. It works with advertisers including Uber, McDonald’s, British Airways and Doritos, and its content partners include Twitter, Yahoo and the Facebook Audience Network.The company is now in talks with carriers to expand into several new markets, including India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, company co-founder and chief executive officer Matt Berriman said. Unlockd may eventually set up a regional office in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, he added.“We expect at least two or three markets to be launched in the next six to nine months,” Berriman said in a phone interview. The company, which has raised about A$25 million ($19 million), plans to announce the closing of its Series B round in coming weeks, he added. New investors as well as existing backers joined the round, he said. Unlockd’s backers include Peter Gammell, former CEO of Seven Group Holdings.Berriman, 32, met Knox over drinks in December at a restaurant across from the Twitter building in San Francisco. They were introduced by a headhunter who thought Knox’s management experience could come in handy at Unlockd. What appealed to Knox about the Australian start-up were its strong growth potential and culture. “What I love doing and I have proven to be good at doing is taking companies from almost nothing to a really significant presence,” Knox said. “Unlockd has a tremendous growth potential.” Bloomberg",2017-04-11,Aliza Knox quit as Twitter’s most senior Asian executive this month to join Australian mobile advertising start-up Unlockd,0.39,08:39,Twitter’s former Asian chief joins mobile ad start-up Unlockd +0,"London/Hong Kong: HSBC Holdings Plc’s fourth-quarter profit missed estimates amid lower revenue, as the lender extended a stock buyback that has driven its London shares to a three-year high.Adjusted pretax profit, which excludes one-time items, jumped 39% to $2.62 billion, Europe’s largest bank said in a statement on Tuesday. That missed the $3.78 billion average estimate of six analysts compiled by Bloomberg News. On an unadjusted basis, HSBC reported a $3.4 billion pretax loss for the fourth quarter. The bank’s shares fell in Hong Kong by the most since November.Chief executive officer Stuart Gulliver said the lender will spend $1 billion buying back its stock, adding to $2.5 billion of repurchases it made last year. Gulliver is battling five years of declining revenue as he pares back HSBC’s sprawling global footprint and cuts $5 billion in costs. HSBC also has to assess its operations after the UK voted to leave the European Union and navigate the potential global disruption from US President Donald Trump’s protectionist stance.“We anticipate new challenges in 2017 from geopolitical developments, heightened trade barriers and regulatory uncertainty,” Gulliver said in the statement.Adjusted revenue in the fourth quarter fell 3% to $11 billion, less than the $12.4 billion analysts expected. Operating costs rose 3% to $8.4 billion, compared with the $8.3 billion average estimate of the six analysts surveyed.The bank’s Hong Kong stock lost 3.4% to HK$66.65 as of 1:21pm local time, the biggest intraday drop since 9 November.In London, HSBC shares surged 57% since the Brexit vote on 23 June, the most of any major European bank, rising to 712.30 pence, the highest since August 2013. Even so, the lender trades at less than its book value.Since Gulliver started restructuring in 2011, he’s slashed more than 40,000 jobs and has pledged another 25,000 cuts, exited at least 80 businesses and reduced its global footprint to 71 countries and territories from 88. Nevertheless, alongside most European lenders, HSBC has been struggling to boost profitability. Investors need to lower their expectations as a 10% return on equity is probably the best a large universal lender can do, the CEO said in January.Gulliver, 57, along with chairman Douglas Flint, 61, are the longest-serving duo heading a major European bank. HSBC said last March that it will nominate a replacement for Flint sometime in 2017 and Flint said in the statement that the process to find his successor remains “on track.”The bank reported a common equity Tier 1 ratio, the key measure of financial resilience, of 13.6%, compared with 13.9% at the end of September. While the latest figure was slightly lower than estimated, the capital position helped HSBC announce the additional buyback, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts wrote in a report.The stock purchases are expected to be completed in the first half this year, HSBC said. Bloomberg",2017-02-21,"HSBC’s adjusted pretax profit, which excludes one-time items, jumped 39% to $2.62 billion",0.43,11:55,HSBC’s profit misses estimates as lender extends stock buyback +0,"New Delhi: FMCG major Nestle India on Wednesday reported a decline of 8.66% in its standalone net profit to Rs167.31 crore for the fourth quarter ended on 31 December 2016.The company, which follows January-December financial year, had posted a net profit of Rs183.19 crore during the October-December quarter last fiscal. However, net sales of the company during the quarter under review were up 16.17% to Rs2,261.28 crore as against Rs 1,946.44 crore in the corresponding quarter of the last fiscal, Nestle said in a BSE filing.Total expenses during the quarter under review moved up 15.99% to Rs1,927.16 crore as against Rs1,661.45 crore in the year-ago period.Shares of Nestle India today settled at Rs6,173.60 on BSE, down 0.58% from previous close.",2017-02-15,"Nestle India’s net sales during the fourth quarter were up 16.17% to Rs2,261.28 crore as against Rs 1,946.44 crore in the corresponding quarter of the last fiscal",0.62,19:36,Nestle India Q4 net profit down 8.6% to Rs 167.31 crore +0,"Paris: European aerospace group Airbus took a new €1 billion ($1.1 billion) charge for its troubled A400M military aircraft programme as it posted higher than expected core earnings and revenues for 2016.The company, reporting for the first time as Airbus and with a new financial format after ditching the Airbus Group brand in a revamp that recognizes the dominance of its civil business, said “adjusted” operating income fell 4% to €3.955 billion on revenues which rose 3% to 66.581 billion.Its results had been buoyed by a last-minute surge in civil jetliner deliveries.Analysts were on average expecting a 7.3% drop in full-year operating earnings before one-offs to €3.83 billion on sales up 0.7% to 64.919 billion. Reuters",2017-02-22,Airbus said ‘adjusted’ operating income fell 4% to €3.955 billion on revenues which rose 3% to 66.581 billion,0.31,12:58,Airbus takes new hit for A400M as core profit beats forecasts +0,"Paris: Up-to-date Microsoft customers are safe from the purported National Security Agency (NSA) spying tools dumped online, the software company said Saturday, tamping down fears that the digital arsenal was poised to wreak havoc across the internet .In a blog post , Microsoft Corp. security manager Phillip Misner said that the software giant had already built defences against nine of the 12 tools disclosed by TheShadowBrokers, a mysterious group that has repeatedly published NSA code . The three others affected old, unsupported products.“Most of the exploits are already patched,” Misner said.The post tamped down fears expressed by some researchers that the digital espionage toolkit made public by TheShadowBrokers took advantage of undisclosed vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s code. That would have been a potentially damaging development because such tools could swiftly be repurposed to strike across the company’s massive customer base.Those fears appear to have been prompted by experts using even slightly out-of-date versions of Windows in their labs. One of Microsoft’s fixes, also called a patch, was only released last month .“I missed the patch,” said British security architect Kevin Beaumont, jokingly adding, “I’m thinking about going to live in the woods now.”Beaumont wasn’t alone. Matthew Hickey, of cybersecurity firm Hacker House, also ran the code against earlier versions of Windows on Friday. But he noted that many organizations put patches off, meaning “many servers will still be affected by these flaws.”Everyone involved recommended keeping up with software updates.“We encourage customers to ensure their computers are up-to-date,” Misner said.",2017-04-15,Microsoft security manager Phillip Misner said that the software giant had already built defences against nine of the 12 tools disclosed by TheShadowBrokers,0.38,18:26,Microsoft says users are protected from alleged NSA malware +0,"New Delhi: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, whose pay package was a point of contention for the company’s founders, has drawn $ 6.68 million (about Rs 43 crore) or 61% of the promised compensation for the 2016-17 fiscal. Sikka was eligible for a $11 million pay including basic salary, variable pay, restricted stock units (RSUs) and performance stock options for the year. Incidentally, this is also lower than what Sikka drew in the previous financial year when he took home Rs 48.73 crore. According to Infosys’ financial statements that outline compensation to key executives, Sikka received only $3.68 million of the $8 million variable component that he was promised. One of the highest paid executives in the Indian IT industry, Sikka took home $0.82 million in variable pay, $1.9 million in RSUs and ESOPs worth $0.96 million, totalling $3.68 million. Sikka’s salary was revised from $7.08 million to a handsome $11 million package with effect from April 2016, a move that did not go down well with the founders, including NR Narayana Murthy. The $11 million package was to include a base salary of $1 million and $2 million worth of stock annually as well $3 million in variable pay. Sikka is also eligible for another $5 million worth of performance-based equity and stock options upon achievement of certain performance targets.Also Read: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka guaranteed 90% of $11 million salary“The Board, based on the recommendations of the Nominations Committee, approved on April 13, 2017, $0.82 million as variable pay to CEO for the year ended March 31, 2017,” Infosys said. It further mentions “...RSUs amounting to $1.9 million and ESOPs amounting to $0.96 million representing the performance-based equity and stock options for the financial year 2017”. While the founders had raised concerns over the significant salary hike given to Sikka, the Board, on its part, maintained that the variable component was tied to steep performance goals. However, Infosys has not made those goals public. Infosys had defended Sikka’s pay hike saying all decisions were made “in the overall interest of the company”. Infosys’ performance of 2016-17 has disappointed the street, especially after it lowered its annual revenue guidance thrice last fiscal. The “aspirational goal” of $20 billion revenue by 2020 set by Infosys looks like a tall order given the current performance, said industry watchers. The Bengaluru-based firm, which posted a revenue of $ 10.2 billion in 2016-17, has been focussing on new areas like automation and artificial intelligence to bolster its revenues to meet the said target. For the financial year 2017-18, Infosys expects its revenues to grow by 6.1-8.1% in dollar terms.",2017-04-14,"Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka has drawn about Rs43 crore or 61% of the promised compensation, $11 million, for the 2016-17 fiscal",0.31,19:10,Infosys’s Vishal Sikka takes home only 61% of eligible pay +0,"New Delhi: Leading stock exchange BSE has reported a 17% decline in consolidate net profit to Rs63.73 crore in the October-December quarter of the current fiscal.The exchange had posted a net profit of Rs76.73 crore in the third quarter ended 31 December 2015-16, latest update available with BSE (formerly known as Bombay Stock Exchange) website showed. However, total income increased to Rs174.72 crore in the third quarter, from Rs160.56 crore in the same period a year ago. Overall expenses rose to Rs112.36 crore in the quarter under review, from Rs97.78 crore in the same period last fiscal, mainly due to employees, computer technology and administration related spending. Employee costs surged by 21% to Rs32.46 crore. The exchange’s group firms include CDSL, Indian Clearing Corporation, BSE Institute and BSE Investments. On a standalone basis, BSE’s net profit rose to Rs70.07 crore during the quarter under review, from Rs32.37 crore in the year-ago period. The exchange’s total income grew to Rs122.56 crore from Rs108.53 crore. Earlier this month, BSE got listed on the rival NSE platform, becoming the first stock exchange to go public. Shares of BSE were trading at Rs998.85 apiece on the NSE on Wednesday, down 0.51% from the previous close.",2017-02-15,"BSE’s total income however increased to Rs174.72 crore in the third quarter, from Rs160.56 crore in the same period a year ago",0.8,14:23,Bombay Stock Exchange Q3 net profit drops 17% to Rs64 crore +0,"Seoul: South Korean authorities found no explosives at the headquarters of Samsung Life Insurance Co Ltd in Seoul, police said on Friday. A police official told Reuters that officers dispatched to the Samsung Life building in Seocho, a southern district of Seoul, concluded there were no explosives at 1:38pm (0438 GMT). The building had been evacuated earlier in the day following a report that explosives were inside. Reuters",2017-04-14,Samsung Life HQ building had been evacuated earlier in the day following a report that explosives were inside,-0.43,15:12,South Korea police says no explosives found at Samsung Life HQ +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday launched the BHIM-Aadhaar platform—a merchant interface linking the unique identification number to the Bharat Interface for Money mobile application—at Nagpur on the 126th birth anniversary of Dr B.R. Ambedkar.“Like Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar worked to give rights to the common man through the Indian Constitution, one can expect the BHIM app to do similarly great work through the financial system,” said Modi.The new interface will enable customers to make payments using a merchant’s biometric-enabled device. The merchant merely has to download the BHIM app on his smartphone and link the device to an Aadhaar biometric reader.“Any citizen without access to smartphones, Internet, debit or credit cards will be able to transact digitally through the BHIM-Aadhaar platform,” a government statement said.Also Read: Narendra Modi to visit Nagpur on Ambedkar Jayanti tomorrow
To avail of this service, a customer has to first link his bank account to his Aadhaar number. To make a payment, all he has to do is select the bank’s name and enter the Aadhaar number. His fingerprint will serve as the password to authenticate the transaction.To start with, no transaction fee will be levied on either the merchants or customers to encourage adoption of the new digital payment service, especially in small towns and rural India. The government statement said 27 major banks had already tied up with 300,000 merchants for accepting payments using BHIM-Aadhaar. It went on to add that all public sector banks have been instructed to go live with Aadhaar Pay. In his speech, Modi said that the time is not far when premise-less and paperless banking will become part of people’s lives. He announced two new incentive schemes for the BHIM app—cashback (for merchants) and referral bonus (for customers). The schemes will start from 14 April and end on 14 October, he added.Also Read: Is Narendra Modi abandoning his promise of good governance?Under the referral bonus scheme, an individual will earn Rs10 for every new referral made—i.e., educating another person or merchant about the BHIM app and ensuring that they carry out three transactions using the same. “Even in one day, if you refer around 20 people, you can end up earning Rs200 per day. This can continue for a period of three months,” said Modi.Under the cashback scheme, merchants can earn up to Rs300 per month for transactions made using BHIM. An updated version of BHIM (version 1.3) is available on Android and ioS. Several new features have been added to its interface such as new languages, the option to block unwanted collection requests and pay by scanning QR (quick response) codes.“The new upgrade is aligned to facilitate government’s initiative of launching customer referral bonus and merchant incentive schemes. We have added more regional languages, enhanced user experience and security features for wider acceptance and usage of the BHIM app,” said A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive of National Payments Corporation of India.Three new languages—Punjabi, Marathi and Assamese—have gone live on the app. This development was reported earlier by Mint on 24 January (bit.ly/2kbqHky).According to Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union minister for electronics and information technology, 20 million people have downloaded BHIM so far, and payments worth Rs823 crore have been made. The app was launched on 30 December. It was one of several measures aimed at promoting digital transactions in the aftermath of the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes, which triggered a nationwide cash crunch.",2017-04-14,"Any citizen without access to smartphones, Internet, debit or credit cards will be able to transact digitally through the BHIM-Aadhaar platform launched by Narendr a Modi",0.61,22:53,"BHIM-Aadhaar platform launched, advancing PM Modi’s digital push " +0,"Pittsburg: A prestigious US university and Tata Consultancy Services have collaborated to set up a state-of-the-art facility which its promoters say would lay the groundwork for the fourth industrial revolution by conducting cutting edge research.The collaboration comes more than a century after Jamshedji Tata came to this city known as the steel-making capital to understand technologies which he would later use to launch India’s own industrial revolution. Top Indian industrialist Ratan Tata, joined by Carnegie Mellon University president Subra Suresh along with Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran broke the ground of the new TCS Hall at the university campus. Supported by an unprecedented $35 million grant from TCS, which is the largest ever industry donation the CMU, the building when complete by next year, would become the hub of CMU and TCS collaborations on promoting next generation technologies that will drive the 4th Industrial revolution, Suresh said. “Today, we are not looking at heavy metal and millions of tons of steel. We are looking at a collaboration of intellectual skills and the development of two countries together that might bring about global understanding between people,” Tata said.Ratan Tata, Chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, described the CMU-TCS partnership a visionary collaboration of skills that will bring understanding between young people of India, the United States and other places in the world. “The wide-ranging multi-national partnership that is creating new research opportunities, new student aid, and a brand-new facility for educational research that we are celebrating today has deep roots. In fact, the historical parallels and connections between the Tata Group of companies and Carnegie Tech and Carnegie Mellon make this new chapter in our partnership even more meaningful,” Suresh said.“In the late 19th century - years before this university was founded - the Tata family patriarch, Jamshedji Tata, came to Pittsburgh—the steel capital of the world—to learn from expert steelmakers how to launch his own steel-making business in India,” he said. Jamshedji Tata famously had four goals in life: setting up an iron and steel company in India, opening a world-class learning institution, building a unique cartel, and constructing a hydroelectric plant, he added. “Years later, a company affiliated with one of Andrew Carnegie’s executives landed a contract to build the Tata plant in India, bringing to life the Jamshedji Tata goal that mirrored Andrew Carnegie’s life’s work: the great steel empire built here in Pittsburgh, and a great university, Carnegie Tech, now known as Carnegie Mellon as we celebrate it today,” he said. Suresh said the latest addition to the rapidly-expanding CMU landscape, this nearly 50 000 gross square-foot TCS Hall will house research and academic spaces where both institutions will collaborate on mutual interests in fields such as cognitive systems and autonomous vehicles and robotics. “TCS Hall will house a variety of activities in education and research, as well as the CMU Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Departments. And it’ll fit seamlessly into Carnegie Mellon’s pioneering work in leading the fourth industrial revolution,” said the CMU president. PTI",2017-04-14,"The TCS-Carnegie Mellon collaboration comes more than a century after Jamshedji Tata came to Pittsburg, known as the steel-making capital to understand technologies",0.12,12:29,"TCS, Carnegie Mellon University to set up facility for cutting edge research " +0,"
Vedanta group has clearly given up hope that the sale of the government’s stake in Hindustan Zinc Ltd (HZL) will happen in the foreseeable future. Why else would it decide on a hefty dividend that entails a huge tax outgo and enriches the government more than anyone else? Vedanta has a 64.9% stake in HZL, but its share in the magnanimous Rs13,985 crore payout by the latter will only be 53.9%. The government, on the other hand, has a 29.5% stake in HZL, but gets 41.5% share of the spoils. This is thanks to the dividend distribution tax of over 20% that firms have to bear while paying dividends. A number of companies such as Wipro Ltd and Bharti Airtel Ltd have used tender buybacks as a means to return cash to shareholders, given the large amount of tax savings. Vedanta, unfortunately, doesn’t have that luxury. Because of a Supreme Court order that has stayed the sale of the government’s residual stake in HZL, it may not be able to participate in a tender buyback offer. And if the company were to go ahead with a buyback without the government participating, that would result in a drop in the government’s shareholding, which may again flout the apex court’s directives. As such, dividends seem to be the only option left to take cash out of HZL. From Vedanta’s point of view, the ideal outcome would be to buy the government’s stake and then use its control over the company to directly pursue inorganic opportunities such as its interest in Anglo American Plc. Now, apart from gifting the government a disproportionate share of HZL’s cash, it also has to share the company’s cash with its minority shareholders, as well as those of Vedanta Ltd and Vedanta Plc (see chart).Analysts at Credit Suisse Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd say Vedanta could use the funds to service some of its debt and to fund its stake purchase in Anglo American. “Depending on the extent of upstreaming at Vedanta Ltd and Vedanta Plc, the ultimate promoter entity (Volcan Investments Ltd) could receive $220-$500mn of dividend which could come in handy in pursuing its Anglo American ambitions,” wrote the analysts in a note to clients. Upstreaming refers to dividend payments by Vedanta Ltd and Vedanta Plc from their respective dividend income. In other words, Volcan may eventually get only 20-23% of the total payout by HZL. From HZL’s point of view, while the outflow looks huge, it hardly poses much of a problem for it. As of 31 December, the company’s net cash and cash equivalents were Rs25,319 crore. Post the dividend payouts, its cash balance is expected to drop to Rs15,000 crore, point out analysts from Edelweiss Securities Ltd. But that shouldn’t worry investors. Edelweiss pegs free cash flow generation at Rs10,000 crore each for fiscal years 2018 and 2019 on the back of robust zinc price outlook and capacity ramp-up.
HZL shares have risen about 88% in the past year, thanks to the rally in zinc prices. But as Credit Suisse’s analysts point out, valuations are rich. “Even with our bullish Ebitda estimates, the stock is trading at a high 8x EV-Ebitda multiple: valuations have rarely been this rich,” they said in another note on 6 February. EV is short for enterprise value, and Ebitda is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. HZL’s shares have been more or less flat since, while zinc prices have averaged at around $2,800/tonne, about $100/tonne lower than the levels the broker has used for its earnings estimates.",2017-03-24,Vedanta has given up hope of a govt stake sale in Hindustan Zinc. Why else would it decide on a hefty dividend that enriches the govt more than anyone else?,0.47,08:56,Getting hold of Hindustan Zinc’s cash turning an expensive affair for Vedanta +0,"The packaged consumer goods sector had a difficult time in the December 2016 quarter. Even before demonetisation, demand was simply not getting off the ground. While urban demand had shown some early signs of reviving, companies said rural demand continued to show signs of strain. The BSE FMCG Index declined 4.8% in the December quarter. FMCG stands for fast-moving consumer goods. The current quarter has seen it increase by 13.5%, partly as the effects of demonetisation are fading but also because ITC Ltd’s stock has run up sharply.Demonetisation made things worse. In cities, consumption was briefly affected but revived as modern trade outlets stepped in and consumers switched to digital currency. However, rural markets were affected. Also, companies use wholesalers to service relatively smaller outlets and markets, and this channel was adversely affected.In the December quarter, the sector’s sales declined by 2.5%, while its operating profit fell 0.4%. Volume growth was affected, not only by demonetisation, but also by price hikes by companies to compensate for an increase in the price of inputs.Hindustan Unilever Ltd, for instance, reported a 4% decline in volumes, partly due to the currency ban and partly due to price hikes.ITC’s shares have gained in the current quarter as the hike in excise duties in the budget was lower than expected and even after an additional cess on cigarettes, the company is expected to benefit from the introduction of the goods and services tax, or GST, from 1 July.The outlook for packaged consumer goods makers’ stocks remains mixed. Consumer confidence improved in the December quarter, indicating urban markets can be expected to recover. Good monsoon rains in 2016-17 are expected to contribute to better farm output. While that is good, it is being tempered by a moderate increase in prices. By how much farm incomes improve and to what extent non-farm incomes revive will determine rural consumption trends in the medium term. Meanwhile, companies may use price hikes to drive growth till demand recovers. GST remains a key event to watch out for in FY18.",2017-03-24,Volume growth was affected in the December quarter not only by demonetisation but also by price hikes taken by firms to compensate for an increase in the price of inputs,0.95,09:32,FMCG: GST and urban consumers offer hope +0,"Bengaluru: In a conversation with Mint, Ravi Venkatesan, 54, who in addition to being Infosys co-chairman is also chairman of Bank of Baroda, said that one of his immediate priorities would be to align all stakeholders around the transformational journey that Infosys is in the midst of.
Why did you agree to take on this role as co-chairman?Because the board asked me to. But also because I love Infosys. Just like the Idea of India (Sunil Khilnani’s book), the idea of Infosys is a powerful one; Infosys remains a vital institution of our country. It’s important that it continues to flourish.
Was this decision solely the board’s or was it made after some of the founders suggested it?This was a decision of the board. Why did the board decide to go for a co-chairman? Simple because when an aircraft is going through turbulent weather, it only helps to get a co-pilot.
Questions have been raised by some of the founders against the board and even against the management. So how would you get both the founders and board aligned and make sure this is not a distraction for the management? For the record, I was close to the founders of Infosys before I joined the board. What they accomplished was incredible. I hope to remain close to them long after I cease to be on the board. Equally, I believe in the strategy that (CEO) Vishal Sikka has set out for transforming Infosys. I intend to do my very best to see that he succeeds in this mission. Everything else is a sideshow. I don’t see any contradiction here.
How do you rate Vishal’s leadership in the three years that he has been CEO now?I think Infosys has done somethings incredibly well under Vishal’s leadership. We have a bold and differentiated strategy which customers are excited about; customer satisfaction is at an all-time high. Most employees are energized by the vision and strategy. Vishal and his team have built on the momentum they inherited and closed the gap with competition. Many seeds for the future have been sown and we see the green shoots in many areas—in AI, in automation, with initiatives like design thinking. That said, the transformation is a work in progress. Some things aren’t working as intended and course corrections are being applied. There are pockets of underperformance which represent opportunities. We need to rapidly scale up things that are working. There are capability gaps that need to be fixed. But overall, I am optimistic about our prospects.
How will the co-chair arrangement work? How will you delineate roles to make sure there’s no overlap?Sesh (R. Seshasayee) and I have known each other for 20 years and worked on the Infy board for six years, so we are quite comfortable with each other. We have decided that there are some areas that he will continue to lead such as overall leadership of the board or investor outreach while in other areas like strategy or talent I will work more closely with Vishal and his team. We have decided that we will work as partners rather than compartments.
What are your immediate priorities?My first priority is to help align all stakeholders around the transformation journey that we are on. The second is to work closely with Vishal in helping build a world class leadership team that can execute the transformation strategy.Your elevation has been seen positively and the general view is that relations between the board and the founders will improve now. What’s your take on that and how do you intend to repair relations with the founders?I have the greatest respect for the founders of Infosys and especially for Mr (N.R. Narayana) Murthy who has been a mentor and friend for a long time. I believe that everyone wants the same thing—which is to see Infosys flourish and prosper from the incredible opportunities that are being thrown up by technology shifts. The board and leadership team wants this. Investors want this. Employees want this. The founders want this. However, this is a journey through uncharted waters and so the key is to earn the trust of all stakeholders so we stay together through the ups and downs of this voyage. Trust really is the key. This requires intense, honest and ongoing dialogue. It also requires courage, willingness to experiment, assimilate feedback, learn and change.After a stellar year in 2015-16, the last 12 months have been slow by Infy’s lofty standards. What in your opinion needs to be fixed immediately in order to get back the company to industry-leading growth?This has been a tough year for everyone with growth slowing and severe commoditization. Infy’s performance must be seen not just in absolute terms but in the context of the industry. Vishal has already commented on our performance and what he and the team will do. I personally believe we have to more aggressively move investments and our brightest people from more commoditized areas towards our best growth prospects which are in areas such as digital, cyber security, AI, IOT and so on. Our job as a board is to support management in moving much more quickly on the many opportunities we have.Will you reduce your other board commitments now that you’re taking up this role? Will you remain chairman at BoB?The transformation of BoB is also a work in progress. (P.S.) Jayakumar and his team have worked really hard and we are seeing the green shoots of their labour. I would love to see it through if that’s what the government also wishes.",2017-04-14,"Ravi Venkatesan, who was appointed as Infosys co-chairman Thursday, says the idea of Infosys is a powerful one and it’s important that it continues to flourish",0.91,04:46,"Ravi Venkatesan: In turbulent weather, it only helps to get a co-pilot" +0,"Indian oil firms delivered a subdued performance in the December quarter. Take for instance Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL’s) results. Despite the fact that it crossed the Rs8,000-crore mark in stand-alone net profit for the first time, the performance would have been sweeter if income from sources other than its main business had not played a key role in boosting profit. Notably, while RIL’s gross refining margin (GRM) improved to $10.8 a barrel from $10.1 a barrel in the September quarter, the measure was lower than expected, considering that the benchmark Singapore refining margin had done much better sequentially.GRM is the realization from turning every barrel of crude oil into finished products and is an important measure of profitability for refining firms.RIL’s petrochemicals segment performed well but that couldn’t compensate for the disappointment from the refining business. However, investors have little to complain given that the stock has appreciated as much as 21% till 17 March since RIL announced it will start charging its customers in the telecom business. Further stock appreciation will be dependent on how the telecom venture fares in the days to come.State-run refining and marketing firms—Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) and India Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL)—delivered a decent performance. Reported GRMs improved sequentially. Inventory gains helped. According to analysts from Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd, core earnings, adjusted for inventory gains, came in at Rs12.7/12.1/7.6/ share for BPCL/HPCL/IOCL versus reported earnings per share of Rs15.7/15.7/8.4, respectively. “After adjusting for one-offs, core earnings of IOCL and BPCL came in-line with our estimates but HPCL missed the mark on this metric as marketing margins disappointed,” an Emkay report said last month. However, broadly, reported earnings of all three firms were in-line, according to Emkay. These stocks have done well in the past two years, helped by diesel price deregulation and improvements in earnings. A further upside can come if refining margins improve further.Meanwhile, stocks of upstream oil firms—Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd—have performed well in the past couple of months, thanks to firmer crude prices. However, if oil prices continue to remain range-bound, further appreciation in shares of ONGC and Oil India will be tough. Both firms saw their net price realization improve year-on-year as well as sequentially.",2017-03-24,Oil firms delivered a subdued performance for the December quarter,0.25,08:14,Subdued performance from oil firms in the December quarter +0,"Growth of information technology (IT) services firms continues to decelerate on a year-on-year basis. Growth in constant currency terms stood at 8.7% for tier-I IT companies in the December quarter, excluding Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., according to data collated by Nomura Research. Two quarters ago, growth stood at over 10%, and a year before that, growth was in the teens.Of course, that growth rates have been declining in the IT sector is well known and, as a result, IT stocks have underperformed the Nifty 50 index by around 18% in the past year.The moot question is if the December quarter results give signs of a possible turnaround. Investors will be disappointed there. Nomura’s analysts point out that growth in the key US region was the slowest in 12 quarters. Growth in some of the industry verticals that were doing well in previous quarters, such as retail, healthcare and telecom, slowed in the December quarter. And the performance of the largest industry vertical—banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI)—gave no hints of a turnaround. Besides, as US firms await the broad policy direction of the new government, there may be some delays in taking decisions.Of course, there are some silver linings. Companies, for instance, are sounding more optimistic, especially with regards to demand from BFSI. Besides, analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities say the intensity with which some large corporations shifted work to captive units earlier has abated to an extent.But, from the looks of it, things are likely to go further south before any turnaround comes about. The recent appreciation in the rupee is likely to worsen matters for Indian IT companies. Profit margins have already been under pressure, owing to the increased investments in building digital capabilities and thanks to pricing pressure in the traditional application maintenance work. Besides, all of the noise against H1B visas in the US may result in new laws that increase costs of providing on-site services. Kotak’s analysts wrote in a note to clients, “In case the rupee were to sustain at current levels, we do highlight that many traditional levers of the industry are exhausted... Our EPS (earnings per share) estimates for FY2018/19 are based on INR/USD rate of 68 and have 5-9% downside risk at spot prices.”",2017-03-24,The recent appreciation in rupee may worsen matters for Indian IT firms as profit margins are already under pressure owing to increased investments in building digital capabilities ,-0.03,07:56,"IT sector: Donald Trump, rupee worsen matters in December quarter" +0,"The absence of negative surprises proved to be good news for power utilities. Against an 8% rise in the Sensex, the BSE Power index gained 10% in the first two months of 2017 even as the companies reported a lacklustre performance for the December quarter.Overall generation was up 5.3%, slightly better than the 4.4% rise a year ago. Power production at NTPC Ltd was up just 1%. As power off-take remained subdued, the firm’s thermal power plants’ utilization dropped 1%. “3QFY17 has seen a continuation of the overall trend of weak power demand growth, subdued merchant prices, back-downs by discoms and marginal generation capacity addition,” Antique Stock Broking Ltd said in a review.Due to a normalization of taxes, NTPC’s unadjusted profits fell 7.5%. JSW Energy Ltd reported an even steeper drop in profit on high costs and low realizations. Still, as the rise in the BSE Utilities index shows, investors attached little importance to the results. Why? Because of positive commentary from managements and the hope that 2017 will end the woes of Tata Power Co. Ltd and Adani Power Ltd.NTPC maintained its 4,000 megawatts (MW) capacity addition guidance for the current fiscal despite adding just 1,400MW till December. Similarly, Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd, whose project start-ups grew just 2% from the September quarter, indicated strong capitalization in January-March. “As against ~4,650 ckm (circuit km) transmission line commissioned in 9mFY17, management is targeting to commission a ~4,750 ckm transmission line in 4QFY17E,” HDFC Securities Ltd wrote in a note.Tata Power’s coal business venture did well. But high coal prices affected profitability of its Mundra plant. Adani Power reported a higher-than-expected loss on low volume off-take and shortage of domestic coal. Even then both stocks went up in January-February on speculation the coming Supreme Court order will end the under-recovery woes at their plants in Mundra, Gujarat. “For us, the key trigger remains the Supreme Court’s ratification of CERC (central electricity regulatory commission) compensatory tariff recommendations,” Edelweiss Securities Ltd wrote in a note on Tata Power.The story is similar at CESC Ltd. The stock, too, has gained sharply, as the management said its Spencer’s retail business, which has been losing money, stopped making losses at the operating level in the last quarter. Further, it also indicated it is open to listing the retail business, fuelling valuation gains. With the retail business showing signs of profitability, analysts are optimistic CESC’s return ratios will improve.The optimism is also providing heft to NTPC, Power Grid, Tata Power, and Adani Power. The question is: will 2017 live up to the expectations?",2017-03-24,"Overall electricity generation in the December quarter was up 5.3%, only slightly better than the 4.4% rise in the year ago quarter",0.44,06:22,Power utilities: eye on key milestones helped investors overcome subdued Q3 +0,"
Mumbai: Drugmaker Wockhardt Ltd’s extensive antibiotics research is expected to start yielding benefits soon, with one of its new drugs likely to be launched in the US in 2020-21. Notwithstanding regulatory issues, the company’s new drugs pipeline of five antibiotics looks promising, says Habil Khorakiwala, founder chairman of Wockhardt. In an interview, he talks about how the new drugs portfolio will pan out and ongoing efforts to resolve compliance issues with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Edited excerpts:
Wockhardt recently got USFDA approval for the abridged phase-III clinical trial for one new antibiotic. When will the company start the trial and when can we expect the product to be launched?We will start trials for WCK 5222 in two to three months. It will take about two years to complete the trial. Today, there is a major crisis in antibiotics. It has happened mainly because large companies have reduced or given up antibiotic research over the last 30 years and the number of approvals has come down. We started our antibiotics research programme 20 years back. In all, 11 antibiotics in clinical trials have received qualified infectious disease product (QIDP) status, of which five are Wockhardt’s drugs. One of the things that the USFDA has done is that where there is a huge unmet need, they are fast-tracking approvals. For our antibiotic, WCK 5222, USFDA has asked us to do a single trial on a limited 600-650 patients. Normally, they ask for two full clinical trials with 1,000-1,200 patients. Hopefully, we will launch the drug in the US in 2020-21. We might have to do some trials post the marketing approval.
In what stage of development are the other four new antibiotics?For two drugs—WCK 771 and WCK 2349—we plan to soon begin phase-III clinical trials in India and hope to launch them in the domestic market in two years. Another one will enter phase-III trials in India after about eight to nine months. The next new drug that we plan to take to the US market is WCK 4282, which is indicated for treating urinary tract infections, hospital-acquired bacterial pneumonia and bloodstream infections.
Will you out-license the new drugs?We are not looking to out-license all of them. Some of the products for hospital-acquired infections (the company has three such products) we can commercialize on our own. For those drugs, we don’t need a large sales force. We may look at partnerships for other drugs for the US market. We plan to out-license our entire new drug portfolio for the Japan market, where we do not have any presence. For Europe and other markets, we haven’t decided yet.
How are you funding the research activities?We have about Rs2,000 crore of cash; so we are utilizing that. Plus, with our growth in India, the UK and emerging markets, we expect profitability to improve. This will be able to absorb our research and development expenses. We will maintain R&D spend around the same level as last year or slightly higher for the next two years and a significant portion of it will be spent on clinical trials of new drugs. In 2015-16, R&D spend was Rs669 crore, accounting for 15% of total sales.
Wockhardt’s five manufacturing plants are facing compliance issues with the USFDA. What remedial measures has the company taken?We have been having regular dialogues with FDA regarding remedial measures at our plants. We meet them two to three times a year. Some of the things we have done are that we have a whole new team in manufacturing and quality control and we are giving a lot of training to employees at various levels. We have automated quality systems to ensure data integrity. We are also trying to simplify operating procedures. All these activities are being done along with third-party consultants. We are focusing on one plant at a time.Were any of the company’s plants inspected recently by the USFDA or is any inspection likely in the near future?I will not be able to comment on this. Given that US business has taken a hit due to regulatory issues, what is the growth outlook for the next two-three years?We can expect double-digit revenue growth. Our India, UK and emerging markets business is doing well and it will continue. For the US market, we have already initiated a process of site transfer for critical products to third-party manufacturing plants. This is for both APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients) and formulations. So, we are trying to mitigate the risks. We might get some product approvals in the current year and also in the next two years. We also hope to get clearance from USFDA for our plants. Any positives in terms of US market will provide incremental growth.What about profitability?I would not like to comment on this. Are you planning to launch insulin products in regulated markets?We have already launched insulin products in India and in emerging markets. In the near term, we are not looking to launch them in regulated markets as our focus is on the new antibiotic drugs pipeline. However, diabetes is one area where we are trying to build a portfolio for the US market.",2017-04-11,"Wockhardt chairman Habil Khorakiwala on the pharma firm’s plans, how its new drugs portfolio will pan out and ongoing efforts to resolve compliance issues with US FDA",0.44,03:30,Wockhardt aiming to launch new antibiotic in US in 2020-21: Habil Khorakiwala +0,"Bangalore: SoftBank Group Corp.’s Masayoshi Son and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos are heading for a clash in India.SoftBank is closing in on an agreement to combine its e-commerce company Snapdeal with market leader Flipkart Online Services Pvt. Ltd, creating a stronger domestic player to compete with the American behemoth, according to people familiar with the matter. To get the merger done, Son is willing to cut Snapdeal’s valuation 85% to $1 billion, said the people, asking not to be named because the talk is private.Snapdeal’s founders and early investors had resisted such a steep cut, but SoftBank has argued the deal is necessary as venture funding dries up and competition intensifies, the people said. Talks are now in the final stages and a deal could be signed within weeks, they said, though it’s also possible they could fall apart.Snapdeal co-founder and chief executive officer Kunal Bahl raised the possibility of an acquisition in an email to employees over the weekend, explaining he and co-founder Rohit Bansal are seeking to protect employees.Also read: Snapdeal’s co-founders hint firm’s fate not in their hands“While our investors are driving the discussions around the way forward, I am reaching out to let you know that the well-being of the entire team is mine and Rohit’s top and only priority,” Bahl wrote, according to a copy obtained by Bloomberg.Flipkart, Snapdeal and SoftBank all declined to comment.The combination of India’s two leading e-commerce players is being called an arranged marriage, said the people, with Son playing the role of matchmaker. The Japanese billionaire, who owns about a third of Snapdeal parent Jasper Infotech Pvt., plans to contribute that equity to the merged entity and to infuse another $500 million to $1 billion in Flipkart through a transaction with Flipkart backer Tiger Global Management, the people said.That would give Flipkart more firepower to battle Amazon in one of the world’s fastest growing online retail markets. The Seattle-based company has vowed to spend $5 billion in the country and India chief Amit Agarwal has used the money to gain customers.Son financed a similar battle in China—and won billions. He was one of the earliest backers of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the e-commerce player that first defeated eBay in China and then successfully fended off Amazon. That investment remains one of his most successful to date, giving him stock worth more than $80 billion.Flipkart is already raising cash for the battle. The Bangalore-based company is said to have recently struck a deal for $1 billion in funding from investors including Tencent Holdings, Microsoft Corp and EBay Inc. An alliance among Flipkart, Snapdeal and EBay would give the business customers, scale and technology, though it’s not clear how easily those could be integrated.“We will do all that we can, and more, in working with our investors to ensure that there is no disruption in employment and there are positive professional as well as financial outcomes for the team as the way forward becomes clear,” Bahl said in the email. Bloomberg",2017-04-10,"Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank is closing in on a deal to merge Snapdeal with Flipkart, creating a stronger domestic player to compete with Jeff Bezos’s Amazon ",0.19,17:56,"In battle of billionaires, Son set to clash with Bezos in India" +0,"The construction sector put up an unimpressive show, although on expected lines, in the December quarter. Undoubtedly, demonetisation hurt the sector in several ways.One, engineering and construction work came to a standstill in November and December as the economy was hit by a cash crunch. Deferred payments to workers delayed execution and billing across infrastructure firms. The average net revenue of 156 firms in the mid- and large-sized category excluding Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T) fell by 8.9% year-on-year (y-o-y). L&T, too, posted marginal revenue growth.Road construction firms with operational projects were worse off than the rest of the pack because toll collections were suspended for about three weeks. How this impacts earnings for the full year depends on when and how the expected government compensation for revenue loss will shape up.Weak revenue trickled down to a similar performance on operating metrics. Firms such as IRB Infrastructure Ltd and NCC Ltd, that have been improving profitability, found the going tough, but were able to sustain profitability.Adding to the quarter’s woes was the weak ordering activity across infrastructure segments. Save for a few orders in the capital goods space, there were hardly any big-ticket orders in power, roads and railways.The only solace is that the large firms have put their house in order by deleveraging balance sheets, reducing indebtedness and optimizing cost structures.Meanwhile, firms in power transmission such as KEC International Ltd and ABB Ltd put up a decent show during the quarter. In contrast, firms whose performance is linked to power generation paled in comparison.The S&P BSE Infrastructure index has rallied sharply on hopes that the government will live up to its commitment of boosting investment in infrastructure.So far, reality is far from it and, given the current pace of new projects tendered until February, it is likely that road sector will not meet the targets both in terms of fresh ordering and execution during FY17.",2017-03-24,"Firms in power transmission such as KEC International Ltd and ABB Ltd put up a decent show, while those whose performance is linked to power generation paled",0.22,06:22,A subdued December quarter for infrastructure firms +0,"Los Angeles: Neil Hunt, one of the chief architects of Netflix Inc.’s streaming service, is leaving after 18 years.Greg Peters, a Netflix veteran who works with telecom providers and consumer electronics makers around the world, will replace Hunt in July, the company said Friday in a statement. Peters oversaw the 2015 expansion into Japan and worked under Hunt as the head of streaming and partnerships.The company didn’t give a reason for Hunt’s departure and didn’t respond to requests for comment.Hunt oversaw everything from the design of the Netflix service to the algorithm that spits out recommendations and managed the technical challenges of introducing the world’s most popular paid video service to 190 countries. Investors tend to overlook the difficulties in delivering high-definition video online to millions of homes worldwide, fixating instead of the company’s multi-billion-dollar annual budget for movies and TV shows.“Greg and Neil have collaborated through the years to make the Netflix experience all over the world absolutely incredible,” chief executive officer Reed Hastings said in the statement.Hunt worked at Pure Software, which was founded by Hastings before Netflix.Netflix is scheduled to report first-quarter results on 17 April. The shares are up 16% this year, compared with 5.2% for the S&P Index.Tawni Cranz, Netflix’s chief talent officer, is also leaving. She joined Netflix’s human resources department in 2007 and took her current post in 2012. Bloomberg",2017-04-10,"Greg Peters, a Netflix veteran who works with telecom providers and consumer electronics makers around the world, will replace Neil Hunt in July",0.18,04:42,"Neil Hunt, architect of Netflix’s streaming service, leaves after 18 years" +0,"New Delhi: Skills and talent development firm NIIT on Friday said its chief executive officer (CEO) Rahul Patwardhan has put in his papers due to personal reasons. The company has appointed Sapnesh Lalla as CEO designate with immediate effect. He will take over as CEO from 1 August. “The CEO of NIIT Ltd, Rahul Keshav Patwardhan, has tendered his resignation due to compelling family reasons and has requested to be relieved from the close of business hours of 31 July 2017,” NIIT said in a BSE filing. It added that the board has accepted Patwardhan’s resignation at its meeting on Friday. Lalla currently heads the Global Corporate Business (GCB) which constitutes nearly 70% of the global business of NIIT. He has been with NIIT for 25 years and has served both in India and the US.",2017-04-07,NIIT CEO Rahul Patwardhan tendered his resignation due to compelling family reasons and has requested to be relieved from the close of business hours of 31 July,0.38,19:35,NIIT CEO Rahul Patwardhan quits +0,"Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd named Ravi Venkatesan as co-chairman and decided to payout Rs13,000 crore to shareholders through dividends and/or share buyback, in an attempt to buy peace with its promoters and other shareholders. Starting this year, the company will use 70% of its free cash flows (as against 63% earlier) to award dividends or buy back shares.The company made both announcements while declaring its results for the fourth quarter of 2016-17 and the full year. In the January-March quarter, Infosys reported a 0.7% sequential rise in dollar revenue to $2.57 billion (about Rs17,000 crore), allowing it to end fiscal 2016-17 with a 7.4% growth and $10.21 billion in revenue. Net profit declined 0.8% to $543 million in the March quarter, from $547 million in the October-December period. For the full year, the net profit was $2.14 billion.ALSO READ: Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout falls short of what investors needBut the big news in the company, which has, over the past few months witnessed an unseemly scrap between its promoters and board and management over issues related to corporate governance, an irregular and very generous severance package given to its former chief financial officer, and salaries of the chief executive and chief operating officer, was the elevation of Venkatesan, now an independent director, and the shareholder payout.The appointment of a co-chairman was one of founder N.R. Narayana Murthy’s demands when hostilities between the promoters and the board, led by chairman R. Seshasayee and management were at their peak in early February. At the time, an Infosys spokesperson termed Mint’s query on this “speculative”. It isn’t clear whether Venkatesan, former chairman of Microsoft India and the chairman of Bank of Baroda who has been on the board of Infosys since 2011, is the person Murthy wanted as co-chairman. Murthy didn’t respond to a query. Venkatesan responded with a text message saying: “Big challenges; bigger opportunities.”Analysts have also argued that the promoters could be seeking a share buyback. Two of Infosys’s former CFOs, T.V. Mohandas Pai and V. Balakrishnan have articulated this demand.Analysts see three possible reasons for the announcements made on Thursday.One, the board wants to buy peace so that the management can be insulated from what CEO Vishal Sikka calls as “distractions”, which were partially responsible for a poor 0.7% sequential growth during the January-March period.ALSO READ: Infosys will have to ‘live with’ H1B visa policy: Vishal SikkaTwo, Venkatesan’s elevation suggests that the board is working towards a succession plan, which could possibly even see Seshasayee stepping down in coming months, well before his term ends in June 2018. This too, was a demand raised by the promoters at one time.Three, the sudden elevation of Venkatesan could suggest that the founders have won their 10-month long battle to regain control of the board.Infosys’s board has Sikka and COO U.B. Pravin Rao as executive members and eight independent directors. Other than Seshasayee, Venkatesan and D.N. Prahlad, a former employee and a relative of Murthy who was appointed last year, the other independent directors are Punita Kumar-Sinha, John W. Etchemendy, Jeffrey Sean Lehman, Roopa Kudva and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw.Some analysts and executives in the IT industry who know both Murthy and Venkatesan say the two share a good rapport.“Knowing Ravi, I believe he will certainly be able to bring both parties (together) and (get them to) agree on things (so) that public spats don’t happen and consensus between the founders and the board and management is reached”.One proxy advisory firm said the appointment sends out the wrong message.“The appointment of Ravi Venkatesan as co-chairman may be construed as signs of Infosys’s board listening to feedback. But, in doing so, it has courted another controversy. IiAS believes that Infosys is now fighting the wrong battle: instead of focussing on its performance, it is now spending more time focussing internally and quelling perceptions,” IiAS, a proxy advisory firm, wrote in a note on Thursday.",2017-04-13,"Ravi Venkatesan’s appointment as Infosys co-chairman and Rs13,000 crore payout to shareholders seen as moves to placate founders led by N.R. Narayana Murthy",0.95,22:41,"Infosys seeks to buy peace with new co-chairman, Rs13,000 crore payout promise" +0,"Seattle: Amazon.com Inc. is embracing artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver goods more quickly, enhance its voice-activated Alexa assistant and create new tools sold to others through its cloud-computing division, chief executive officer Jeff Bezos said in his annual shareholder letter.Changes ushered in by artificial intelligence and machine learning will help the companies that embrace them and put up barriers for those who don’t, the world’s second-richest man wrote in a 1,700-word letter released Wednesday.Bezos repeated familiar themes, such as the need to operate a business like it’s always “Day 1” to keep a start-up mentality and the ability to act quickly on limited information to stay ahead, what he calls “high-velocity decision making.” His emphasis on artificial intelligence and machine learning was the most concrete indication of areas in which the e-commerce giant will continue to invest.ALSO READ: Jeff Bezos is selling $1 billion of Amazon stock a year to fund rocket ventureMachine learning is the science of getting computers to act without being programmed, and is used in autonomous cars, speech-recognition and Internet search engines. The technology has influenced high-profile projects at Amazon such as drone delivery, its popular Echo voice-activated speaker and the new cashier-less Amazon Go convenience store unveiled late last year in Seattle, Bezos wrote.“But much of what we do with machine learning happens beneath the surface,” he wrote. “Machine learning drives our algorithms for demand forecasting, product search ranking, product and deals recommendations, merchandising placements, fraud detection, translations, and much more. Though less visible, much of the impact of machine learning will be of this type—quietly but meaningfully improving core operations.”ALSO READ : Amazon Web Services head Andrew Jassy reaps $35.4 million for 2016Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud-computing division, will offer affordable tools so clients can incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning into their own operations. Such tools have already been used by to detect diseases and increase crop yields, Bezos wrote. Bloomberg",2017-04-13,"Changes ushered in by artificial intelligence will help the companies that embrace them and put up barriers for those who don’t, says Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos",1.0,19:26,Jeff Bezos says artificial intelligence to fuel Amazon’s success +0,"Mumbai: After three failed auctions, banks have finally managed to sell the Kingfisher Villa in Goa belonging to the troubled businessman Vijay Mallya to a city-based actor for Rs73 crore through a private treaty. The harried lenders to Kingfisher Airlines have ended the jinx to recover the dues of over Rs9,000 crore by monetising assets of the airline under their custody by selling the villa to actor-producer Sachiin Joshi. The sale of KFA Villa finally took off earlier this week after three failed auctions, the last being on 6 March. With this, the lenders’ only other asset is the Kingfisher House in the city, which had commanded a valuation of over Rs150 crore initially, but could not be auctioned even at the fourth round. Though both the parties—the 17-bank consortium led by State Bank of India (SBI) and the buyer actor-producer Sachiin Joshi, who owns Viiking Media, refused to confirm the deal, sources said the villa in north Goa has finally been sold to Joshi for Rs73.01 crore, far less than the reserve price the bankers set at upwards of Rs90 crore for auctions, which failed thrice.“Secured creditors have the right to go for a private treaty if the auction route fails. With this, it seems the jinx over the sale of KFA properties is over. The villa was sold through a bilateral agreement earlier this week for Rs 73.01 crore to actor-producer Sachiin Joshi,” a source who is aware of the development told PTI. The villa, spread over 12,350 sq. ft or three acres at Candolim (on the way to Fort Aguada), was legally owned by United Breweries Holdings, the parent of the airline. The lenders had taken physical possession of the villa in May 2016. The lenders’ bid to auction trademarks, including the brand value of the Kingfisher logo, in August 2016, too, was unsuccessful. The reserve price for the brands was set at Rs330 crore, which is not even a tenth of the Rs4,000 crore valuation it commanded when offered as collateral. Asked if a similar route will be followed to dispose of Kingfisher House in the city, which was once the headquarters of the airline, the source said with the sale of the villa, at least a process has been initiated. The source also said movable assets lying in the villa will be sold through a recovery officer as per the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) orders. For the third auction on 6 March, the reserve price for the villa was set at Rs73 crore, which was around 10% lower than the second auction held last December when the price of the sea-facing property was set at Rs81 crore. It was put under the hammer for the first time last October with a reserve price of Rs85.29 crore. The villa was used by Mallya to host lavish parties. SBI Caps Trustee was entrusted with auctioning the properties on behalf of the lenders. Mallya was declared a wilful defaulter and is wanted by authorities for default in payment for loans related to Kingfisher Airlines that was grounded in 2012. He owes over Rs9,000 crore to lenders like SBI, Punjab National Bank, IDBI Bank, Bank of Baroda, Allahabad Bank, Federal Bank and Axis Bank, among others. He left the country on 3 March last year and is currently said to be in Britain and his extradition talks are on. The SBI-led consortium had also reduced the reserve price of the Kingfisher House by 10% to Rs103.50 crore from Rs115 crore during the third failed auction last December. In the first auction in March 2016, the reserve price was set at Rs150 crore, but was lowered to Rs135 crore in the second held last August.",2017-04-09,Lenders to Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines have sell Kingfisher Villa to actor Sachiin Joshi for a reported Rs73.01 crore,-0.22,23:45,Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Villa sold to actor Sachiin Joshi for Rs73 crore +0,"Apple Inc. has hired a team of biomedical engineers as part of a secret initiative, initially envisioned by late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, to develop sensors to treat diabetes, CNBC reported, citing three people familiar with the matter.An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.The engineers are expected to work at a non-descript office in Palo Alto, California, close to the corporate headquarters, CNBC said.The news comes at the time when the line between pharmaceuticals and technology is blurring, as companies are joining forces to tackle chronic diseases using high-tech devices that combine biology, software and hardware, thereby jump-starting a novel field of medicine called bioelectronics.Last year, GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Google’s parent firm Alphabet Inc. unveiled a joint company aimed at marketing bioelectronic devices to fight illness by attaching to individual nerves.US biotech firms Setpoint Medical and EnteroMedics Inc. have already shown early benefits of bioelectronics in treating rheumatoid arthritis and suppressing appetite in the obese.Other companies playing around the idea of bioelectronics include Medtronic Plc, Proteus Digital Technology, Sanofi SA and Biogen Inc. Reuters",2017-04-14,The development takes place as pharma and tech companies join forces to tackle chronic diseases using high-tech devices,0.27,01:24,Apple hires secret team to develop sensors for treating diabetes: report +0,"After a year of underperformance, the BSE Capital Goods index started the New Year on a positive note. Compared with an 8.7% increase in the Sensex, the capital goods index gained 12.2% in January-February as the companies delivered revenue growth despite a general sluggishness in investment activity.A Kotak Institutional Equities’ review of six notable companies’ results shows that revenues increased by about 5% in the December quarter.In the previous two quarters, they grew in the range of 3-5%.A Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd’s review of 12 companies in the sector shows that aggregate revenues grew 6% from a year ago. Profits grew at an even faster pace as companies benefited from cost rationalization measures.“Domestic revenue of industrial companies showed moderate growth in 3QFY17, which is heartening. We attribute the pick-up in domestic revenues to (1) the low base of the past several quarters and (2) modest pick-up in investments in certain sectors such as railways, roads, power generation and transmission,” Kotak Institutional Equities added.Overall order inflows, which reflect the business environment and future prospects, remained muted.At an aggregate level, firms reviewed by both Kotak and Motilal Oswal saw a decline in order inflows. Both Larsen and Toubro Ltd and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd reported a drop in order inflows. If one excludes these two firms, aggregate orders inflows will rise year-on-year, Motilal Oswal said.Compared with project-based firms, product companies did better.ABB India Ltd, Siemens Ltd, Thermax Ltd and GE T&D Ltd reported a year-on-year improvement in order inflows. According to Motilal Oswal, there is a rise in inquiries for small-ticket orders in conventional segments. Another broking firm, Sharekhan Ltd, says it is expecting better order inflows on improved prospects in international markets.While the commentary should provide comfort to investors, everybody is not convinced about the future growth trajectory yet. Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd’s study of ordering activity in West Asia, a large engineering procurement and construction market for Indian firms, shows that contract awards fell in the first 10 months of the current fiscal year.Of course, government-led investments in India have raised domestic market prospects. But as Kotak points out, conviction about immediate earnings growth trajectory is low right now. “The high valuations of industrial and infrastructure stocks reflect the market’s confidence in a recovery of revenues and profits in the medium term. We do not dispute the medium-term potential of investment in India but suspect that revenues will continue to be weak for the next few quarters,” Kotak adds.",2017-03-24,"Government-led investments have raised domestic market prospects, but conviction about immediate earnings growth trajectory is low right now, say analysts",0.1,06:22,Capital goods: No broad based recovery in order inflows yet +0,"Hyderabad: Infosys Ltd’s decision to return Rs13,000 crore to shareholders is “too little”, said former chief financial officer V. Balakrishnan on Thursday, and added that appointing a co-chairman would make the structure much more complex at board level.“I think it’s a good step forward, but the quantum could have been bigger because they have Rs40,000 crore on their balancesheet. Returning Rs13,000 crore is too little,” Balakrishnan told PTI over the phone. “On go-forward basis, returning 70% of free cash flow is almost similar to what they (Infosys) have today—that is 50% of net profit,” Balakrishnan said.Infosys on Thursday said will payout up to Rs13,000 crore in FY18 either in dividends or via a buyback or a mix of both, after it reported an almost flat net profit in the March quarter and sales outlook that fell short of estimates.The Bengaluru-headquartered, NASDAQ-listed company said it would begin to pay 70% of annual free cash flow as dividend compared to a previous policy of sharing up to half its post-tax profit.“... I think the benchmark for IT services companies should be Accenture,” Balakrishnan added. “Accenture returned substantial part of existing cash, and also, if I am right, they returned around 90% of free cash flow to shareholders every year. So, progressively Infosys should move towards this. That is a good benchmark.”On the appointment of Ravi Venkatesan as co-chairman of Infosys, Balakrishnan said there is no substance in that because the company today has a chairman, chief executive, chief operating officer, co-COO, chief financial offer, and a deputy CFO.“And I think it’s too top heavy. And they have not articulated why this change is required now and what value it is going to add. So, I don’t want to read too much into it. I think it’s making the structure much more complex at the board level, and that has got its own repercussions,” he saidBalakrishnan also labelled Infosys results for the March quarter as disappointing. “Whole year (2016-17), they have not met numbers in any of the quarters. And guidance also looks muted. I think the performance is very challenging.”",2017-04-13,"Former CFO V. Balakrishnan calls Infosys results for the March quarter disappointing, wants the IT firm to emulate Accenture on dividend payout to shareholders",-0.0,19:12,"Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout to shareholders too little: ex-CFO V. Balakrishnan" +0,"Metal shares paused for breath in the December quarter, rising by 1.1%, coming on the back of a 14% increase in the September quarter. That pause did not hurt the sector apparently, as it gained over 15% in this quarter so far. A large part of that pause can be attributed to demonetisation, which had pulled down the broader market as well.Demonetisation was expected to have an adverse effect on the demand for metals, especially steel, due to fears that automobiles and real estate will get affected. While real estate has indeed been affected, automobiles recovered rather quickly, except for two-wheelers. Sales did not get badly affected, either.In some cases, there were reports that dealers had stocked up on inventory using old currency during the initial days, while in steel, an expectation that prices will be increased led to higher purchases. When companies announced results, the effects of demonetisation were hardly seen. Output was higher for most firms, especially as they were producing more metal from expanded or new capacity. Although domestic demand was subdued, exports have proved to be a viable option. Rising metal prices have helped. Overall, the metals sector saw sales increase by 12.9%, while operating profit increased by 19.6%.Price realizations have played a supportive role. Steel prices have been trending up, supported by rising iron ore prices and coking coal prices, too. The current quarter has seen that continue but iron-ore prices have come off their highs. Non-ferrous metals continue to do well. There is some concern that the treatment and refining charges earned by copper firms may see some pressure in 2017.Overall, the outlook for metal firms continues to look good. One weak link is that private sector capital investment is not picking up smartly. Along with a weakness in the real estate sector, that does not augur well for domestic metal demand. However, global trends are looking up, which augurs well for exports and prices. External risks include a setback to China’s plans to regulate output and if the US Federal Reserve hikes rates by more than expected.",2017-03-24,"The outlook for metal companies continues to look good, but the one weak link is that private sector capital investment is not picking up smartly",-0.34,06:14,Metals: Waiting for domestic consumption to pick up speed +0,"Cement demand in the December quarter was impacted by demonetisation in most parts of the country, with southern India being an exception.Pan-India firms ACC Ltd and Ambuja Cements Ltd saw a 9% year-on-year (y-o-y) decline in volumes; and for UltraTech Cement Ltd, it was a 2% y-o-y fall. South-based firms Dalmia Bharat Ltd (36% y-o-y), India Cements Ltd (22% y-o-y) and Orient Cement Ltd (19% y-o-y) saw strong volume growth, benefiting from improved institutional demand in Andhra Pradesh/Telangana and a low-base effect on account of floods in Chennai during the same period a year ago. As a result, on an overall basis, cement companies reported a flat volume growth at 37 million tonnes (mt) in the third quarter.Not only demand, profitability also took a hit as production costs increased. Fuel prices, especially those of petroleum coke (petcoke), surged Rs400-500/tonne in the past quarter. According to a Kotak Institutional Equities (KIE) report, on a sequential basis, profitability of cement companies declined 11% to Rs753/tonne, though y-o-y it is up 10%.Meanwhile, low demand kept realizations subdued.In the past two months, the impact of demonetisation has subsided and the demand scenario has improved, but it remains below normal levels, especially retail demand. A pick-up in government spending on infrastructure and affordable housing projects may lead to a sequential demand uptick, but y-o-y demand would decline mainly due to a high base since demand growth in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2016 was strong. Cement prices in the country, except the south, have begun to rise, but if this improvement in cement prices doesn’t sustain, then realizations would decline sequentially in the March quarter.That apart, another worry is surging input costs. In the December quarter, a slew of cement manufacturers opted for alternative fuels to minimize the adverse impact on margins, while some others made use of the low-cost petcoke stock they were left with. As per analysts, the full impact of the rise in petcoke prices will be felt in the March quarter as most cement companies are likely to have exhausted that inventory. Diesel price, too, is trending upwards which will result in higher road freight costs, raising the production cost per tonne.Though the shares of large-cap cement companies have recovered from where they were when demonetisation was announced and are currently trading at rich valuations, given these concerns, March quarter earnings would be lacklustre, indicating that valuations need to correct.",2017-03-24,"Cement prices have begun to rise; but if this improvement doesn’t sustain, realizations would decline sequentially in the March quarter",0.05,06:22,"Cement: After demonetisation, rising costs, unfavourable volume base to hurt " +0,"If fiscal 2015-16 was annus horribilis for Indian banks, the year to March seems to be no different.Banks and their investors seem to be coming to terms with this as analysts have slashed their 2016-17 earnings per share (EPS) estimates for the Bankex by about 10% since demonetisation.The third-quarter financial results of banks, particularly large corporate lenders, were as painful if not more than those of the previous quarters as bad loans continued to pile up.The stock of gross non-performing assets (NPA) of listed banks is now a massive Rs7.1 trillion ($108 billion), a rise of 60% from a year ago.Notwithstanding NPA war rooms such as that of Punjab National Bank or watch lists made public in the case of ICICI Bank Ltd and Axis Bank Ltd, the rate of bad loan accretion remained elevated. To be fair, though, the slippage rate (good loans turning bad) slowed in the December quarter from the previous quarters.Of course, setting aside money against the NPA stockpile was mandatory and while many banks cut corners (shown by the fall in their provision coverage ratio), some lenders continued to make higher provisioning. Nevertheless, the cumulative provisioning of all listed banks fell 8% in the December quarter to Rs45,147 crore. But recoveries and upgrades being unimpressive, this bad-loan pile will age and necessitate higher provisioning in the future, which explains the bearish outlook on the full-year earnings.Analysts have understandably pencilled in a jump in credit costs for the current financial year.If bad loans were the constant bugbear for banks, a new irritant that chipped away some of the fee income was the waiver of various charges on ATM, or automated teller machine, transactions and use of cards after the demonetisation of high-value bank notes.Given the twin blows, one out of three public sector banks made losses while the cumulative profit of all listed private banks fell 14% from a year ago.Even India’s most valuable bank, HDFC Bank Ltd, couldn’t go unscathed, and its profit growth fell to 15% for the third quarter from 20% in the second quarter.That the earnings per share estimate of 2017-18 for the Bankex is also down 12% indicates that many feel the pain will persist longer.But, ironically, the shares of banks, especially those of public sector lenders, have gained sharply even after many reported worsening asset quality metrics and reduction in their core business of lending.These gains are largely on the back of hopes that the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would work out a decisive plan to tackle the bad loan problem.While balance sheets do not seem to warrant current valuations, analysts believe that if a concrete plan for bad loan resolution emerges, corporate lenders such as ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and even State Bank of India, or SBI, could be re-rated.“In our view, a joint private-government initiative may work, with the private sector providing the capital and expertise to manage the bad loans and the government’s legal backing to the PSUs (public sector undertakings) to enable them to make suitable ‘haircuts’ to bad loans,” Kotak Securities wrote in a note.",2017-03-24,"While balance sheets do not seem to warrant current valuations, analysts say if a concrete plan for bad loan resolution emerges, corporate lenders could be re-rated",-0.51,06:14,A bleaker FY17 for banks +0,"New York: The spectacular failure of what was once the world’s biggest renewable-energy company has turned into a smorgasbord of wind and solar farms being gobbled up by infrastructure investors, clean-power developers and even a vegan soccer team.Since filing the largest US bankruptcy of 2016, SunEdison Inc. has hosted the biggest-ever sale of renewables assets. It’s shed at least $1 billion of assets from Southern California to Chile to India—some through record-breaking deals—including projects that would have died without new owners. With wind and solar supplying more than 11% of global electricity, the company’s debt-induced collapse enabled competitors to strengthen their existing hands or enter new markets.“Developers have been picking at the carcass,” Nathan Serota, a New York-based analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said in an interview. “As it turns out, the carcass was not so bad.”Based in Maryland Heights, Missouri, SunEdison amassed its portfolio by taking advantage of clean-energy’s push into the mainstream. Its financial engineering helped enable wind and solar to make up more than half of all new power-plant capacity in the US in the past decade. In the process, the company piled up $16.1 billion in liabilities by the time it sought court protection from creditors on 21 April, a year ago next week.Its ascent was marked by landmark acquisitions announced in the first seven months of 2015, making SunEdison a key driver for the clean-energy ambitions of some developing countries, including India.Now, it’s looking at how to make a comeback. After toggling between a wind-down or a reorganization since filing for bankruptcy, it announced last month a rough outline for restructuring. But it’s also sold off so many prized assets and lost key staff that questions remain about what of value will be left.“They’re not coming back as anything material, just the rump or shadow of their former self,” Swami Venkataraman, a New York-based analyst at Moody’s Investors Service, said last month.SunEdison didn’t offer any official comment.Bulk dealsWhether or not SunEdison prospers, its assets have found loving owners.Its piecemeal sales process started tentatively, but it soon became clear that bulk transactions were preferred. That meant fewer deals, a plus considering SunEdison had at one point marketed several gigawatts of assets. That favoured large companies able to cope with large-scale finance and project development, including the US’ largest independent power producer, NRG Energy Inc.“They could look at us with a high degree of transaction-certainty,” Craig Cornelius, NRG’s San Francisco-based senior vice president of renewables. “Otherwise, they would have needed four different buyers for the same portfolio.”NRG in November bought about 1.5 gigawatts of wind and solar projects—its biggest-ever clean-power acquisition—for as much as $183 million, depending on certain milestones. That saved three solar farms in Hawaii that a local utility had effectively halted, citing SunEdison’s uncertain status. Hawaii is a new solar state for NRG.In March, SunEdison one-upped itself with twin deals that would together represent the biggest-ever transfer of operating clean-power plants—4 gigawatts of wind and solar farms. Those transactions would shift its TerraForm yieldcos to Brookfield Asset Management Inc., Canada’s largest alternative-asset manager, valuing the two entities at $2.49 billion.The deals would make Brookfield—the owner of about 10,700 megawatts of clean-energy plants globally—a major solar force. Brookfield today owns a half-megawatt of solar, enough to power just 82 US homes.SunEdison’s aggressive bids in 2015 helped drive down solar tariffs in India, and its bankruptcy shocked the country that saw a big western company’s presence as a vote of confidence in its renewables goals.Greenko Energies Pvt., an Indian developer backed by sovereign wealth funds of Abu Dhabi and Singapore, emerged to fill the void. In January, it bought about 1.7 gigawatts of solar assets from SunEdison, valued at about $500 million.About 440 megawatts were in operation and another 1.2 gigawatts in development. The acquisition will help Greenko expand its generation capacity to about 5 gigawatts in the next two years, said Mahesh Kolli, its founder.With insolvency looming, SunEdison sold 198 megawatts of solar assets in Japan to BCPG. The deal accelerated BCPG’s clean-energy efforts, which date to its 2015 acquisition of solar projects in Thailand. It had already been evaluating Japan, and the SunEdison portfolio helped it establish itself there.Actis LLP, a London-based private equity firm, also used SunEdison assets to expand with a deal this year for a 1.5-gigawatt portfolio of Latin American solar projects. It wants to invest $525 million in renewable energy across Latin America, with a focus on Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay and Chile.In the UK, meanwhile, the Forest Green Rovers Football Club Ltd, purchased SunEdison’s residential rooftop business shortly before the bankruptcy filing.Forest Green Rovers, a vegan soccer team based in Gloucestershire, is owned by the clean-energy supplier Ecotricity Group Ltd. Chairman Dale Vince, who wants his club to be the greenest in the world, is building a new stadium made almost entirely of wood, and already uses a solar-powered robot lawnmower.ScaleIn late December through the first quarter, SunEdison closed more than $250 million in deals, according to a bankruptcy filing.“What made it exceptional was the scale of the overall portfolio—that it included every stage of development, that it covered every imaginable geography,” NRG’s Cornelius said. “That was the result of the expansion SunEdison had taken.” Bloomberg",2017-04-14,"Bankrupt Sun Edison has shed at least $1 billion of assets from Southern California to Chile to India, including projects that would have died without new owners",0.23,16:43,Developers from India to Chile find solar gems in SunEdison asset sale +0,"Mumbai: Indian renewable energy companies have raised over $1.62 billion during the first quarter of 2017 in transactions ranging from venture capital (VC) funding, debt financing, project funding and merger and acquisitions (M&A), according to data from Mercom Capital Group Llc., a global clean energy consulting firm. Transactions in Indian solar and renewable energy companies made up for nearly half of the total global funding raised by solar companies around the world in the first three months of 2017. The global solar sector raised total corporate funding of $3.2 billion in the first quarter of 2017—nearly double of $1.6 billion raised in the fourth quarter of 2016, Mercom said in a report on Thursday. This included venture capital funding, public market and debt financing. The growth in the first quarter is higher by 15% when compared with the total corporate funding of $2.8 billion raised in the first quarter of 2016, the report said. In its study, Mercom tracked 233 new large-scale project announcements worldwide in the first quarter of 2017, totaling 12.7 gigawatt (GW). Large Indian transactions included ReNew Power Ventures Pvt. Ltd securing $200 million from a joint venture between Tokyo Electric Power and Chubu Electric Power, Greenko Energy Holdings raising $155 million from an affiliate of GIC, and Hero Future Energies securing $125 million from International Finance Corporation (IFC). ReNew Power also raised $475 million through its subsidiary Neerg Energy by selling green bonds to overseas investors and also secured $390 million in project funding from Asian Development Bank. Welspun Renewables Energy Pvt. Ltd (WREPL), now owned by Tata Power Co. Ltd, raised $176.27 million through issuance of non-convertible debentures on a private placement basis. Solairedirect, a French solar project developer, through its India unit, secured a $100.4 million loan from IDFC for the construction of its two solar projects, while India Power Green Utility, a subsidiary of India Power, acquired a 49% stake in two solar project companies from Punj Lloyd Infrastructure. “Q1 funding levels were up in the solar sector from the 2016 lows, largely due to increased debt financing activity. Corporate funding never reached $3 billion in any of the quarters in 2016. M&A activity was also strong with several large deals. Solar public companies also had a good first quarter,” said Raj Prabhu, chief executive, Mercom Capital Group. Global VC funding (venture capital, private equity, and corporate venture capital) for the solar sector saw a 78% rise in the first quarter of 2017 with $585 million in 22 deals compared to $329 million raised in the same number of deals in the fourth quarter of 2016, the report said. The amount raised was also higher when compared to $406 million raised in 23 deals in the first quarter of 2016. There were 29 solar M&A transactions in the first quarter of 2017 compared to 20 transactions in the fourth quarter of 2016 and 14 transactions in the first quarter of 2016. About 7.4 GW of solar projects were acquired in the quarter compared to 5 GW in the previous quarter, Mercom said. However, residential and commercial solar funds dropped to $630 million sequentially from $1.5 billion, the report said.",2017-04-14,"Indian renewable energy companies have raised over $1.62 billion of the total $3.2 billion raised by global solar sector in the first quarter of 2017, says Mercom",0.58,04:51,India solar transactions top global fund raise of $3.2 billion so far in 2017: report +0,"Paris: Supply and demand in the oil market are close to matching up, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday, as landmark Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)-led production cuts are mitigated by rising US supply and slipping worldwide demand growth. The compliance rate with the agreement among OPEC members and some non-members, including Russia, “has been impressive”, the IEA said in its monthly oil market report, giving a lift to oil prices. But oil at above $50 a barrel has, in turn, attracted higher-cost producers in the United States back to the market, and frantic American drilling will push non-OPEC supply to surprisingly high levels throughout the year, the IEA predicted. “Although the oil market will likely tighten throughout the year, overall non-OPEC production, not just in the US, will soon be on the rise again,” it said in the report. At the end of November, OPEC agreed to cut output by 1.2 million barrels per day (mb/d) from 1 January, initially for a period of six months. Then in December, non-OPEC producers led by Russia agreed to cut their own output to 558,000 barrels per day. The aim was to reduce a glut in global oil supply that had depressed prices.Reports this week said that OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia is pushing the cartel’s producers to extend the agreement by another six months at their meeting in May. The IEA made no prediction about such a likelihood, but said that a consequence of OPEC “hypothetically” renewing the deal would be to support prices more, and give further encouragement to US shale oil producers. This means that non-OPEC oil production will soon be on the rise again.Also Read: Indian Oil shares rise over 3%“Even after taking into account production cut pledges from the eleven non-OPEC countries, unplanned outages in Canada as well as in the North Sea, we expect (non-OPEC) production will grow again on a year-on-year basis by May,” the report said. Meanwhile on the demand side, the IEA revised down its estimates for the worldwide thirst for oil, meaning there will be more oil available than previously thought. “New data shows weaker-than-expected growth in a number of countries including Russia, India, several Middle Eastern countries, Korea and the US, where demand has stalled in recent months,” it said. Demand growth for 2017 is now expected to be 1.3 million barrels per day, down from the IEA’s previous forecast of 1.4 million.",2017-04-13,"The IEA in its monthly oil market report said the compliance rate with the agreement among OPEC members and some non-members, including Russia, ‘has been impressive’",0.71,21:16,World oil market ‘close to balance’ despite OPEC cuts: IEA +0,"Mumbai: Reliance Power Ltd posted more than a three-fold increase in March quarter consolidated profit, helped by a 40% fall in tax expenses during the period.The company, which is part of billionaire Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group, reported a consolidated profit of Rs216 crore for the quarter ended 31 March 2017, the company said. Fourth-quarter consolidated revenue from operations stood little changed at Rs2,466 crore. The company had posted a rise in its quarterly profit in three of the four quarters preceding March quarter, according to Thomson Reuters data. ReutersReliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.",2017-04-13,Reliance Power reported a consolidated profit of Rs216 crore for the quarter ended 31 March 2017,0.61,18:20,Reliance Power Q4 profit jumps on lower tax expense +0,"New Delhi: Shares of fuel retailer Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) rose by over 3% on Thursday, helping its market valuation surge past Rs 2trillion, following a decision that state-owned firms will have price revision on daily basis in select cities from next month. Also Read: Petrol, diesel prices to change daily from 1 MayThe scrip went up by 3.30% to end at Rs 422.40 on BSE. During the day, it soared 4.84% to Rs 428.70 —52-week high. On NSE, the shares moved up by 3.21% to close at Rs 422.40. IOC apart, shares of HPCL gained 3.07% and BPCL rose by 1.85% on BSE. Led by surge in the stock price, IOC’s market valuation rose to Rs 2,05,113.43 crore. With this the company became the ninth most-valued firm in terms of market capitalisation (m-cap). TCS remains the country’s most-valued firm followed by RIL, HDFC Bank, ITC, ONGC, SBI, HDFC and Infosys. In terms of volume, 6.19 lakh shares of the company were traded on BSE and over 77 lakh shares changed hands at NSE during the day. Besides, IOC eight companies have a market valuation of more than Rs 2 lakh crore.State-owned fuel retailers IOC, Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL), which own over 95% of nearly 58,000 petrol pumps in the country, will launch a pilot for daily price revision in five select cities from May 1 and gradually extend it to all over the country.",2017-04-13,The Indian Oil shares rose after a decision that state-owned firms will have price revision on daily basis in select cities from next month,0.68,18:32,Indian Oil shares rise over 3% +0,"Hong Kong: High in the Andes, in northwest Argentina, stories are told of fortunes being made in lithium, the wonder metal inside iPhones to Teslas that has captivated global investors from Warren Buffett down.This is not one of those stories.It begins in the lithium-rich salt pans of Argentina’s Salta Province and stretches all the way to South Korea and Hong Kong, leaving a trail of lawsuits and unhappy investors. The drama reinforces a timeless lesson about sinking money into natural resources: Chasing the latest rush, whether in lithium, uranium or oil, is a high-risk game.Just five years ago, investors were told that lithium mining company Lithea Inc. soon might be worth $1.4 billion. But last month, after various legal wrangles, a Hong Kong court ordered the assets of a businessman behind Lithea to be frozen as investigators chased him over unpaid debts.The man in question, Choi Sung-min, got in early on the lithium rush. In 2009, his British Virgin-registered Cordia Global Ltd. gained control of Lithea for $15 million, company and court documents show.Three years later, with the lithium rush in full swing, an investor presentation produced by Lithea valued Choi’s stake at $250 million. It went on to predict that its value would quickly quintuple once the mining company went public.Enter Kwon Ohjoon, chairman of Posco, the South Korean steel giant. Under Kwon, Posco had developed a new extraction method designed to speed up the processing of lithium-rich brine, which currently takes many months.Posco hired a geological firm run by Hong Kong-based Herman Tso, to assess two deposits in Argentina as potential partners for its technology, including Lithea.It turned out to be a controversial choice. Only a few months earlier, Tso had appraised a Russian coal mine part-owned by Choi, and his report was used to help raise millions in debt. Investors later claimed the mine was worthless—and the mine’s owner, Siberian Mining Group, saw its market value virtually wiped out in Hong Kong. Last year, a court in the city judged that Tso wasn’t even qualified to assess mines.Tso declined to comment on the report, while Choi says he has acted properly throughout. Posco said Tso’s bid was chosen because it was the fastest and cheapest.All of that came to light only after Posco’s foray into Argentina. In July 2013, Tso travelled to Salta Province near the Chilean border and pronounced Lithea’s project to be “technically viable” and worth $280 million, according to a copy of his report seen by Bloomberg.While Posco was talking with Lithea, troubles began to pile up for Choi. He was investigated by the Korea Deposit Insurance Corp., the government agency that insures bank deposits. Choi had guaranteed several loans from a Korean bank that had collapsed amid scandal, according to court documents.KDIC was trying to get the money back and said that Choi had routed a $2 million loan from the failed bank through various companies to his Russian coal mine.In an interview in Hong Kong, Choi denied KDIC’s version of events, saying he mostly used money made from an Indonesian mine venture to fund his investments. In 2014 he sold his stake in Lithea for $1.3 million -- less than 1 percent of the value that Tso had placed on the company a year earlier.The intrigue didn’t end there. The buyer was BMC Global Ltd., a BVI-registered firm owned by an associate of Choi’s who had worked with him on the Siberian Mining venture, corporate documents show. Choi said he sold his stake to BMC because of debts he owned to a Hong Kong lender and not to hide assets from KDIC.After learning about Choi’s troubles, Posco said it broke off talks with Lithea, only to reopen them in late 2014, on the understanding that Choi would no longer be involved. But a photo on Posco’s website shows Kwon and Choi together at the Argentina mine in early 2016. Choi said he was acting as a consultant. Posco said Kwon, 66, wasn’t available for interview.At the same time, KDIC continued to exert pressure on Choi. In February 2016, a BVI court agreed to freeze assets worth up to 102 billion won ($85 million) owned by Choi and six firms connected to him, court documents and Hong Kong exchange filings show.KDIC said it also obtained an order to freeze Choi’s $3.4 million Manhattan apartment.The Posco-Lithea venture, meantime, began to unravel. Last September, Posco finally pulled out, citing breach of contract, a Hong Kong court document shows. BMC was sued by a creditor, Tor Asia Credit Master Fund LP, according to Hong Kong court documents. The fund’s adviser, a firm set up by former Goldman Sachs banker Chris Mikosh and former Citadel LLC executive Patrick Edsparr, declined to comment.BMC last month agreed to sell Lithea to a Canadian company, LSC Lithium Corp., for $44 million. A spokeswoman for LSC declined to comment on the sale because the deal has not yet closed.The sale brings the story of the Argentine lithium deposit full circle, with a value of roughly twice what Choi paid in 2009—far less than the $280 million in Tso’s official valuation or the $1.4 billion Lithea’s presentation once boldly predicted. The mine has yet to produce any commercial lithium.",2017-04-13,"The drama reinforces a timeless lesson about sinking money into natural resources: Chasing the latest rush, whether in lithium, uranium or oil, is a high-risk game",0.72,11:49,Curious case of the billion-dollar lithium mine sold for a song +0,"London: UK-based Indian-origin entrepreneur Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty House Group on Friday announced an in-principal agreement to acquire ArcelorMittal’s Georgetown Steelworks in South Carolina. The proposed deal between Liberty House and NRI steel magnate Lakshmi N. Mittal’s US steelworks includes a 5,40,000-tonne a year electric arc furnace and 6,80,000-tonne a year rod mill. The agreement is subject to final terms between the two parties and completion of due diligence by Liberty over the coming weeks, a joint statement said. If completed as planned, the acquisition will give Liberty House the opportunity to reopen and revitalise business, which was an important part of the state’s industrial infrastructure for 47 years before its closure in August 2015. It would also mark the first significant step in Liberty’s plan to make major investments in the US steel industry, the UK-based company said. “This is a landmark day for Georgetown and its residents, particularly families with a previous stake in the steel industry who will now get a chance to rediscover what was lost. Our agreement in principle with ArcelorMittal opens the door to the eventual restoration of several hundred jobs, both directly and in the supply chain, and it gives this region’s economy a new industrial focus,” Gupta said. ALSO READ: Tata Steel to issue debt securities of up to Rs9,000 croreThe businessman behind the GreenSteel strategy of Liberty House has been instrumental in a string of recent acquisitions of struggling steel units in the UK, including those formerly owned by NRI industrialist Swraj Paul’s Caparo Group and Tata Steel. He explained: “This is a key first step for us in the US. We’re keen to apply the same low-carbon GreenSteel vision here as we are doing in the UK. Acquiring the plant at Georgetown, with its ability to recycle scrap steel in an arc furnace, gives us a strong platform from which to launch our strategy in the US. “We’re confident that, with the right support from the community and authorities, we can make Georgetown and other US steel plants competitive, profitable and sustainable.” Confirming the provisional agreement, John Brett, president and CEO of ArcelorMittal US, said: “We have achieved our goal of identifying a purchaser with extensive steel experience and a commitment to returning this site to its steelmaking capability. We hope the community will welcome this opportunity that will preserve the facility and equipment and create good jobs with good wages.” Liberty House has also been in discussion with United Steelworkers and said it is confident that the workers’ union will support and assist in the process of recruiting a workforce to re-open the plant and rebuild the business. The 6,00,000 sq ft Georgetown plant sits on a 60-acre site next to a deep-water port along the Sampit River. When operating at full capacity the steelworks employed more than 320 workers directly and supported hundreds more jobs in the local economy. The plant has traditionally served the construction, automotive and industrial markets. Liberty’s GreenSteel strategy is aimed at achieving a competitive, low-carbon and sustainable steel industry worldwide.",2017-04-21,"The proposed deal between Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty House and Lakshmi N. Mittal’s ArcelorMittal includes a 5,40,000-tonne a year electric arc furnace and 6,80,000-tonne a year rod mill",1.0,19:22,Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty House to acquire ArcelorMittal’s US unit +0,"Mumbai: Steelmaker Tata Steel Ltd said its board has approved issue of debt securities of up to Rs9,000 crore in order to refinance existing debt and to meet working capital requirements.The issue will be in the form of non-convertible debentures (NCDs) on private placement or foreign currency or rupee-denominated bonds, or in a combination, in one or more tranches, Tata Steel said in a BSE filing late on Thursday. Earlier on Thursday, the company’s board had met to consider the proposal for fund raising.“The funds will primarily be deployed towards re-financing the existing debt, capex/working capital requirements and general corporate purposes. The board of directors also authorized the Finance Committee of the board to determine and approve the timing and terms of such issue of securities,” the filing said.As on September 2016, Tata Steel had a consolidated debt of Rs82,777.51 crore. The company has in recent months divested certain overseas assets to cut losses. In February, the company posted its first profit in five quarters due to strong performance by its Indian business, a rebound in demand and higher pricing.On Wednesday, Economic Times reported that Tata Steel plans to pay $663 million to its UK pensioners as one-time settlement under a new scheme Regulated Appointment Arrangement. Tata Steel declined to comment on the story.The one-time payout could “remove the overhang of potential deficit contributions and the stock should likely re-rate”, Shivraj Gupta, analyst at Citigroup Global Markets Inc., said in a note to clients.In December, subsidiary Tata Steel UK reached an agreement with trade unions to replace its defined benefit pension scheme British Steel Pension Scheme with a defined contribution plan.At Rs454.30 a share, Tata Steel’s shares were little changed on Friday morning on the BSE.",2017-04-21,"Tata Steel board has approved issue of debt securities of up to Rs9,000 crore in order to refinance existing debt and to meet working capital requirements",0.11,10:46,"Tata Steel to issue debt securities of up to Rs9,000 crore" +0,"Chennai: Ashok Leyland on Friday said that 10,664 units of its commercial vehicles were impacted by the Supreme Court ban on BS-III vehicles but the financial hit will be minimal as the affected engines would be upgraded for aftermarket sales. The Hinduja flagship firm said the BS-III engines would be upgraded to BS-IV standard using its new intelligent exhaust gas re-circulation (iEGR) technology. “Out of a total of 10,664 units of BS-III vehicles, 95% were with us, not with dealers. So we will be upgrading the engines of those vehicles using our indigenously developed iEGR,” Ashok Leyland managing director Vinod Dasari said. The cost of fitting iEGR technology will be just around Rs20,000 per engine and these engines will be used for sales in the aftermarket at a premium, he added. “We can sell these engines at around Rs2 lakh though usually the BS-III engines are priced around Rs1.5 lakh. So the net financial impact on us because of the BS-III ban will be minimal,” Dasari said. He did not give details of the iEGR technology, citing it being a trade secret, but claimed it “is a simple innovative solution of achieving the desired results in order to meet BS-IV norms”. Dasari said BS-IV compliant engines with iEGR have 10% higher fuel economy and can be used for engines of up to 400 horsepower. Ashok Leyland has already started converting 250 old BS- III engines to BS-IV standard using iEGR. “It will take about two to three months to get all the BS-III engines (converted) to BS-IV. It is not about the financial impact but it’s about effort needed to do so, “ he added. The new BS-IV compliant engines would be fitted on the chassis of the affected vehicles for sale in the market. Ashok Leyland has been selling BS-IV compliant commercial vehicles since 2010, Dasari said. Last month, the Supreme Court had banned sale and registration of vehicles with the older BS-III emission norms from 1 April, in a blow to auto firms saddled with a stock of over 8 lakh such vehicles valued up to Rs20,000 crore.",2017-04-21,Ashok Leyland said the BS-III engines would be upgraded to BS-IV standard using its new intelligent exhaust gas re-circulation (iEGR) technology,-0.26,16:57,"Ashok Leyland says over 10,000 vehicles impacted by BS-III ban " +0,"New Delhi: Vodafone has agreed to sell 9.5% additional stake to Aditya Birla Group for Rs 130 per share after they merge their telecom operations to create the country’s largest operator worth more than $23 billion. Aditya Birla Group has filed with the BSE the composite scheme of amalgamation between Vodafone and Idea Cellular, which stated that the merged entity shall be under the joint control of the two firms and will be governed by the shareholders’ agreement.In the merged entity, Vodafone will hold 50% stake, while Aditya Birla Group hold 21%. Upon completion of merger, Vodafone will transfer 4.9% shares of merged entity to Aditya Birla Group for Rs 3,874 crore. Post such transfer, Aditya Birla Group shareholding will increase to 26% and Vodafone shareholding will reduce to 45.1%, according to the scheme. The remaining 28.9% will be held by other shareholders. Also, Aditya Birla Group will have the right to acquire more shares from Vodafone at a price of Rs 130 per share, in order to equalise the shareholdings over 4 years. If equal shareholding is not achieved within four years, Vodafone will sell down its shareholding to equalise its shareholding with Aditya Birla Group over the following 5 years, the scheme said. Until equalisation the voting rights on additional shares of Vodafone shall be exercised jointly by Vodafone and Aditya Birla Group. The two firms had last month announced merger of their telecom operations in India to create the country’s largest mobile phone operator with a 35% market share.The combined entity of Vodafone and Idea Cellular, which are India’s number 2 and 3 mobile players, respectively, will overtake Bharti Airtel and would be in a better position to take on a raging price war unleashed by newcomer Reliance Jio in the world’s second-largest market.The new company, which will come into being over the next two years, will be headed by Kumar Mangalam Birla, while Vodafone will have the right to appoint chief financial officer. The CEO and the chief operating officer will be appointed with the approval of both companies. The two firms will have three nominees each on the board of the new entity, the scheme said. The merger excludes Vodafone’s 42% stake in Indus Towers and will be effected through issuing new shares in Idea to Vodafone, which will result in Vodafone deconsolidating Vodafone India. This mechanism will facilitate reducing Vodafone Group net debt by Rs 55,200 crore and lowering Vodafone Group leverage by around 0.3x net debt/EBITDA, the scheme added. Vodafone-Idea is the second merger in the sector to be announced this year.In February, Bharti Airtel unveiled plans to buy the Indian business of the Norway-based Telenor. The merged venture will create India’s largest mobile operator with almost 400 million users and a 35% market share by customers. The deal gives Vodafone India an implied enterprise value of Rs 82,800 crore and Idea an enterprise value of Rs 72,200 crore.",2017-04-21,Vodafone has agreed to sell 9.5% additional stake to Aditya Birla Group for Rs 130 per share after the Vodafone’s merger with Idea Cellular,0.5,18:29,Vodafone to sell over 9% additional stake to Aditya Birla Group post merger +0,"New Delhi: Niche bike maker Royal Enfield on Friday announced its entry into Brazil, the fourth largest two-wheeler market in the world. The company has entered the Latin American country with three models—Bullet 500, Classic 500 and the Continental GT cafe racer. It has set up its second direct distribution subsidiary outside India in Brazil, with having established the first such entity in the US in 2015.The newly-formed subsidiary—Royal Enfield Brazil—at Sao Paulo will sell bikes to dealers, as well as conduct all front-end development and support activities such as marketing and after-sales in the country. A flagship store has also been opened in the city. “We are delighted to be formally entering Brazil, and are able to offer our motorcycles to a whole new group of customers, that will enable us to realise our competitive potential in the fourth biggest motorcycle market in the world,” Royal Enfield president Rudratej (Rudy) Singh said in a statement. The company sees a huge opportunity in Brazil that has a hugely underserved mid-sized motorcycle market with a massive commuter base, he added. “With motorcycle enthusiasts in Brazil waiting to upgrade to simple yet timeless and evocative motorcycles, Royal Enfield with its authentic British pedigree will be able to provide an excellent alternative with an accessible cost of ownership,” Singh said.In the coming years, Brazil can become one of the company’s biggest markets outside of India and help it become a leader in the middle weight motorcycle segment globally, he added. Royal Enfield already has strong presence in Colombia, another important two-wheeler market in Latin America. With a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 50 per cent in the last six years, Royal Enfield has become one of the most profitable automobile brands in the world. The company sold more than 6.6 lakh units globally in 2016-17 fiscal. It intends to ramp-up its production capacity to up to 9 lakh motorcycles by 2018-end, to meet its increasingly rising global demands.",2017-04-21,"Royal Enfield has entered Brazil with three models—Bullet 500, Classic 500 and the Continental GT cafe racer",0.46,16:27,Royal Enfield rides into Brazilian market +0,"New Delhi: The government aims to auction coal blocks for commercial mining by end-December, coal secretary Susheel Kumar told television channel ET NOW on Thursday.India is the world’s third-biggest producer and importer of the fuel, and with coal accounting for about 70% of India’s power generation, the government wants to boost domestic output to cut imports. Reuters",2017-04-13,Coal secretary Susheel Kumar says government aims to auction coal blocks for commercial mining by end-December,0.09,10:49,Govt hopes to auction coal blocks for commercial mining by end-December +0,"Mumbai: Danish stereo and speaker system maker Bang and Olufsen is planning to set up 8-10 standalone “satellite” stores this fiscal year to expand the luxury lifestyle brand’s reach in India.“We are looking at setting up at least 8-10 stores by the end of fiscal year 2018 in cities like Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Kolkata, and Ahemdabad,” said Gaganmeet Singh, CEO of Beoworld India Pvt. Ltd that licenses the Bang and Olufsen brand in India. He was speaking at the launch of the company’s final double-storey flagship store at the Taj Santa Cruz Hotel in Mumbai. Bang and Olufsen set up its first flagship store that sells all its home and recreational range of products at the luxury Emporio mall in Delhi.Each of the new “satellite stores”—of around 15-50 square metres—will cost the company Rs7-10 crore to set up, Singh said. He declined to share a total investment target.“We are already getting interest from malls and hotels in these cities such as hotel Taj Krishna in Hyderabad, Elante Mall in Chandigarh, Select City Walk in Delhi and others,” Singh said. “We are looking at the options.”Bang and Olufsen’s satellite stores will carry a limited range of their high-end products, focusing more on their affordable “B&O Play” range of speakers that start at Rs10,000-12,000 apiece.The flagship stores use more space as they carry Bang and Olufsen’s large screen televisions and customizable home theatre and sound systems that are priced at up to Rs3-5 crore each.To reach out to more customers, Singh said the company has been expanding its network of third-party sellers that has grown 30% annually.“Companies like Bose have the first mover advantage, they came to India much earlier,” Singh said. “The challenge is that not enough people know about Bang and Olufsen.”",2017-04-21,Danish stereo and speaker system maker Bang and Olufsen set up its first flagship store —selling its home and recreational range of products—at Delhi’s Emporio mall ,0.28,10:37,Bang and Olufsen plans 8-10 stores in India this fiscal +0,"New Delhi: Rather than inviting competitive bids for 1,000 megawatt (MW) wind power projects, the Central government should call for 5,000-6,000 MW tenders to give a clear direction to the wind power sector, the Indian Wind Turbine Manufacturing Association (IWTMA) said.“The government wants everything to be procured through competitive bidding. We are for it. In their first initiative, they started with competitive bidding for 1,000 MW. But we feel that 1,000 MW is not enough... you come with 5,000-6,000 MW,” said Sarvesh Kumar, chairman of IWTMA in an interview with Mint on Wednesday.“If you have given us a target to do 60,000 MW of wind power by 2022 which means there has to be a capacity addition of 6,000-7,000 MW every year. So keeping that in mind, they should come into competitive bidding with (tenders for) 5,000-6,000 MW. Industry is ready to meet those challenges and whatever the tariff comes we are ready to work with that,” Kumar added. IWTMA has already appealed to the ministry of new and renewable energy to announce a bid for 4-5 gigawatt in 2017-18 to give a definite momentum to the process.Kumar also stressed that “while competitive bidding is a good vehicle, it must also encompass freedom in open access to sell the power to both captive and group captive transaction.”Under the Paris Climate Agreement, the Indian government has committed to install 175 GW of renewable power by 2022, of which 100GW will be from solar power and 60GW from wind power. Wind is already the mainstay of India’s renewable power. Of about 50,018 MW of installed renewable power, about 57.3% (28,700 MW) comes from wind alone. The past few months have been very positive for the wind sector. In February 2017, wind power witnessed a significant drop in tariffs when it reached Rs3.46 kilowatt hour (kWh) for a 1,000 MW tender by state-run Solar Energy Corp. of India (SECI).Also Read: India wind power tariff follows solar route, falls to record lowThe government also recently announced that India added a record 5,400 megawatts (MW) of wind power in 2016-17, exceeding its 4,000MW target.Also Read: India adds record 5,400MW wind power in 2016-17IWTMA also acknowledged the support of MNRE in framing and enforcement of various policies and initiatives for the wind power sector. The association in collaboration with the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) is organizing a mega three-day conference ‘Windergy India 2017’ during 25-27 April in Delhi. Stakeholders and experts from across the globe are expected to take part in the conference. IWTMA expressed confidence that the industry will surpass the government’s target of 60 GW by wind by 2022. Chintan Shah, vice-chairman of IWTMA, said, “Tremendous opportunity lies in exports from India as our goods are accepted with international quality.” “We need to sort out problems of freight, logistics, and favourable lines of credit and this can witness an export of 2 to 2.5 GW per annum in a span of 18 to 24 months,” Shah added.",2017-04-13,"1,000 MW wind power projects not enough, government should call for 5,000-6,000 MW tenders, says chairman of IWTMA",0.48,10:01,"Govt should call for 5,000-6,000 MW tenders for wind power sector: IWTMA" +0,"
New Delhi: Ahead of Kia Motors’ India entry, its sister company and the country’s second-largest car maker Hyundai Motor India Ltd said both companies will have separate strategies and aggressively compete with each other.“Kia and Hyundai will be different. Management, operations and network... Everything will be different. Vendors can be shared for cost reduction, but strategy will be different,” Y.K. Koo, managing director of Hyundai India, said in a press briefing.“We will be aggressive against Kia. They are competition,” he added.Koo said it will not be easy for Kia to make inroads in India since the market has changed dramatically.“Since 1997-98, the auto industry has changed a lot; the competition is very different. Now, the competition is very tough. Almost 19 players... To set up a factory is okay since people have money, but to survive and continue the success is a different issue,” he explained.Reuters on 7 February first reported that Kia is likely to choose a site for its plant in Andhra Pradesh’s Anantapur district. The Economic Times newspaper on 17 April said Kia’s investments in Andhra Pradesh could be as much as Rs10,000 crore. Mint could not verify these independently.Hyundai isn’t worried.“Already 19 players are here. If that becomes 20 or 21, it does not make a lot of difference,” said Koo, who was part of the original team that set up Hyundai’s operations in India.“Kia is not the same as Hyundai. Their DNA is different. They have different sales and marketing strategies. Product line-up could also be different,” he added.Hyundai has had a phenomenal ride in the Indian market. The Indian business is the third largest contributor to the South Korean firm’s revenue after its home market and China; in 2013, it accounted for 14.5% of global sales. Since inception, Hyundai has invested $3 billion in India. It has two car assembly facilities, an engine manufacturing unit (all in Chennai) and a research and development centre (in Hyderabad). Hyundai India is planning to invest Rs5,000 crore as it looks to double its sales in India to 1 million units by 2021. The company also plans to introduce eight models by 2020, including three models in the compact, small sport utility vehicle (SUV) and hybrid segments.The company plans to sell 682,000 units in 2017-18 and aims to maintain its market share, which stood at 17% during the fiscal year ended 31 March.On Thursday, Hyundai introduced a new version of its compact sedan Xcent, priced between Rs5.38 lakh and Rs8.41 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi). The six petrol variants are priced between Rs5.38 lakh and Rs7.51 lakh, while the five diesel trims are tagged between Rs6.28 lakh and Rs8.41 lakh. The company will keep selling the older versions of Xcent and old Grand i10 under the Prime brand to the fleet segment, Koo said.",2017-04-21,Hyundai India managing director Y.K. Koo says will not be easy for Kia Motors to make inroads in India since the car market has changed dramatically,-1.0,09:18,"Hyundai, Kia Motors will aggressively compete in India: MD Y.K. Koo" +0,"New Delhi: Solar power tariff discovered through auctions hit a new low on Wednesday with NTPC Ltd’s 250 mega watt (MW) project at Kadapa in south-central Andhra Pradesh getting awarded for a flat Rs3.15 per unit. The project was awarded to the Indian arm of French clean energy firm Solairedirect SA, said an NTPC official, who asked not to be named. Solairedirect Energy India Pvt. Ltd already has 182 MW of projects in India including 97 MW in operation and 85MW under construction. Power, coal, mines and new and renewable energy minister Piyush Goyal tweeted on Wednesday that solar tariff achieved another record low at a flat Rs3.15 a unit during the Kadapa auction by NTPC. The previous low was Rs3.3 a unit levelised tariff recorded when the 750 MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh was auctioned by Rewa Ultra Mega Power Ltd in February. Levelised tariff indicates the average fixed and variable tariff over the entire term of the power purchase agreement.Solar power tariff has been declining on account of sharply declining prices of solar panels, better structuring of the project that reduces risk for project developers and better currency hedging deals that make financing available at competitive cost. Also, many pension and sovereign wealth funds looking for not very high, but stable and long-term returns are willing to finance clean energy projects in India. At current rates, solar power generation cost is at par with that of thermal power generation. That is prompting many businesses in the services and manufacturing sectors to go for captive solar power generation as they could save on the cross-subsidy component that makes power from the grid costlier. When the first 150 MW of solar power project was tendered under the National Solar Mission (NSM) in 2010, the average tariff quoted was Rs12.16 a unit. Tariff has fallen since then almost in line with Chinese spot module prices, which have fallen by approximately 80% since 2010, according to Mercom Communications India, a clean energy intelligence provider.",2017-04-13,Solar power tariff discovered through auctions hit a new low of Rs3.15 per unit with NTPC’s 250MW project at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh ,-0.17,09:42,Solar power tariff falls to record low of Rs3.15 a unit +0,"
Solar power tariff hit a new low of Rs3.15 per unit in an auction on Wednesday. The previous low was Rs3.30 per unit discovered in February, while in an auction a year ago, the discovered tariff was about 40% higher at Rs4.34 per unit.Plunging solar tariffs may well have a disruptive impact on the power sector in the short term. The steep fall in tariffs is triggering a rethink among states, leading to a slowing down of fresh tenders and auctioning activity. According to Mercom Capital Group, a clean energy communications firm, states want new power purchase agreements (PPAs) to match the newly discovered solar tariffs and this is slowing tendering activity.Jharkhand which auctioned about 1,000 megawatts of solar capacity more than a year back is yet to sign PPAs, points out Mercom. “In this case the discom (power distribution company) was unwilling to sign the PPAs for tariffs above Rs5 per kWh claiming it is not viable for the discom,” adds Mercom. A derived unit of energy, kWh stands for kilowatt hour.Subdued demand is a major reason for the reluctance from states to sign PPAs. But the weak financial condition of discoms is also forcing them to lean towards cheaper tariffs. This can spell trouble for PPAs signed at higher tariffs some time back, as discoms will now find them unpalatable. “Due to aggressive renewable energy targets in some states such as Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, solar grew even at high tariff levels, only to leave these states struggling with finances a few years later and finding it difficult to take on new solar generation,” adds Mercom.According to an industry expert, every PPA has legal sanctity. But the weak financial condition of discoms and availability of cheaper energy options (electricity is cheaper in the spot energy market) means projects locked in at higher prices can face indirect risks such as payment delays or power offtake curtailments, the expert points out.The risks are not confined to the green energy sector. JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd in a report last month warned that weak demand and the poor financial condition of state electricity boards can hit conventional energy contracts as well. “With depressed power demand, even projects with PPAs can suffer from delayed payments/PPA cancellations, wherein the rates are high (>Rs4.5/kWh). This is because cheaper power is available in long-term bids at around Rs4/kWh, while solar/wind bids have plunged to Rs3.4-3.5/kWh levels. Power is available on exchanges at Rs2.5/kWh,” pointed out JM Financial.Of course, renewable energy and the spot electricity market are still relatively small in scale (compared to the whole power market). So they may not have a large impact yet. But the growing prevalence of renewable energy, plunging tariffs and easing congestion in the transmission sector, which makes it easier for states to buy electricity in the spot market, mean these segments are emerging as reliable options and they can have a disruptive impact on the power sector.",2017-04-13,Plunging solar power tariffs may well have a disruptive impact on the power sector in the short term,-0.24,07:59,Solar power tariffs: A race to the bottom? +0,"Mumbai: Indian billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla is exploring entry into the production of carbon fibre, a high-strength and light-weight composite material expected to be a $4.7 billion global business by 2022, according to a person familiar with his thinking.The Aditya Birla Group, the $40 billion mining-to-mobile phone carrier conglomerate, may buy the technology to manufacture carbon fibre at one of its existing overseas manufacturing facilities, said the person, asking not to be identified because the plan is private. Another option is to buy a carbon fibre plant from another company if the technology is too complex to be adapted at Birla plants, the person said.Carbon fibre is finding increasing traction among defence manufacturers and automobiles makers that seek strong, high-tensile, heat-resistant and light materials. The market for carbon fibre — dubbed the ‘wonder material’ by The Guardian newspaper last month — is estimated to more than double to about $4.7 billion by 2022 from $2.2 billion in 2015, according to an Allied Market Research report.“The main positive is that it’s a much lighter material versus competitors such as steel or aluminium — but is just as strong,” said Johnson Imode, a London-based analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. “This makes for energy and efficiency savings for customers.”The group’s consideration is still at an exploratory stage and there’s no timeline for entering this business, the person said. The demand from the automobile sector is particularly high as designers aim to make cars both lighter, stronger and less polluting, according to this person. A company spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment.Thinner than hairCarbon fibre is a thin long strand, far thinner than even a human hair, in which carbon atoms are bonded together in a crystal alignment that makes the fibre incredibly strong for its size. Thousands of these strands are entwined together to form a yarn, which can be then woven into a fabric or used as it is.The applications for the material range from aircraft and spacecrafts to racing cars, sailboat masts, wind turbines and even golf clubs. The market could grow as much as 10 percent annually, Imode estimates.Nearly half of the airframe of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is comprised of carbon fibre reinforced plastic and other composites, according to the airline manufacturer.Japan, US and Europe are home to the bulk of the world’s carbon fibre manufacturers, making it one of the likely corporate hunting grounds for Birla to scout for a target. The biggest players include Toray Industries Inc., Hexcel Corporation, Mitsubishi Rayon Co., Teijin Ltd., SGL Group, Cytec Industries Inc., Nippon Graphite fibre Corp. and Zoltek Companies, Inc.The conglomerate, if it takes the plunge, would be the first large Indian player in the carbon fibre market.Birla, 49, known for his penchant for dealmaking, has sealed two dozen mergers and acquisitions in the past two decades.He’s in the process of combining his mobile-phone unit Idea Cellular Ltd. with Vodafone Group Plc’s Indian business to form the nation’s largest wireless carrier. UltraTech Cement Ltd. had bought cement units from debt-laden Jaiprakash Associates Ltd. last year. This month he received a nod from shareholders to merge two listed group firms, Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd. and Grasim Industries Ltd., to create a behemoth with $9 billion in combined revenues. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,"Kumar Mangalam Birla is exploring entry into the production of carbon fibre, a high-strength and light-weight composite material expected to be a $4.7 billion global business by 2022",0.24,09:01,Kumar Mangalam Birla said to eye booming global carbon fibre market +0,"The mood was sombre in the December quarter among real estate firms. The November ban on old, high-value banknotes affected the real estate sector hugely, given that it is infamous for cash transactions.As liquidity was sucked out of the system through the note ban, and with the fear of unearthing “black money” transactions looming over the sector, residential unit sales on a pan-India basis fell 30-40%. In fact, realty firms were among the worst performers in terms of revenue and operating performance.For instance, the net consolidated revenue at DLF Ltd—the largest developer—plunged 29% in value terms. Even the more conservative Sobha Developers Ltd, which has a strong southern presence, posted a 22% drop in revenue year-on-year.Likewise, the entire sector saw tepid sales, almost nil new launches and even cancellation of booked units by customers, on fears that demonetisation could slow down the process of recovery in realty. Obviously, this had an impact on profits, too, in spite of firms being proactive in controlling marketing costs. Hence, profit margins shrank, too.Discernibly, though, those with a significant exposure to commercial assets sailed through plummeting residential sales. The quarter saw sector analysts turn positive on demand and rental rates for office space and malls. A report by Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd says, “amid the demonetisation storm and the high debt levels, we prefer firms that have a strong portfolio of operational rental assets and mid-income housing.”The December quarter results show that rental income from commercial property is alleviating, at least partially the financial implications of rising interest costs from the unsold inventory burden in residential projects. Even the real estate investment trusts (REITs) and private equity firms that are bold enough to enter the realty space, prefer commercial assets. So, firms such as Phoenix Mills Ltd, Prestige Estates and Developers Ltd and Brigade Enterprises Ltd are on a stronger foundation for now.Meanwhile, although the BSE Realty index has recovered from the demonetisation blues, retail investor interest is likely to be restricted to firms with asset-light balance sheets or with exposure to retail and commercial segments as a recovery in residential unit sales is still a long way off.",2017-03-24,"December quarter results show rental income from commercial assets is alleviating, at least partially. Residential properties still not up to the mark",0.2,05:24,Real estate firms with commercial portfolio scored in December quarter +0,"
Indian mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deal value surged in the first quarter of the calendar year, driven by the telecom sector, according to global deal tracking firm Mergermarket.Deal value rose to $17.9 billion in January-March, from $9.2 billion in the year-ago period, Mergermarket said in its report on quarterly M&A trends. The number of deals fell to 76 from 110 in the same period last year.The telecom sector alone witnessed three transactions worth $13.6 billion in the quarter, compared to just $60 million from two deals a year ago.The top telecom deal in the quarter was Vodafone Group Plc.’s merger of Vodafone India Ltd with Idea Cellular Ltd in a $12.7 billion transaction that accounted for 70.6% of the total deal value in this quarter.Another major deal in the telecommunication sector was global private equity fund KKR & Co Lp’s $948 million investment in Bharti Infratel Ltd for a 10.3% equity stake.The second best performing sector in M&A was energy, mining and utilities (EMU), in terms of deal value, recording 11 deals worth $1.5 billion in the quarter. Across the 11 deals, six were in the renewable energy space and were valued at $419 million, the report noted.Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd’s acquisition of an 80% equity stake in the KG-OSN-2001/03 field from Gujarat State Petroleum Corp. Ltd for about $995 million topped EMU sector deals, and was the second-biggest after the Vodafone India-Idea Cellular merger.Inbound M&A activity declined by 28.2% to $2.7 billion in the quarter compared with$3.8 billion in the year-ago period, despite strong foreign interest in the renewables sector. The number of inbound M&A transactions also fell to 39 from 51.Domestic M&A activity increased 181.2% from a year ago with deals worth $15.3 billion.Also, it was the third-highest first quarter by value for private equity buyouts since 2001 by Mergermarket records, with 19 deals worth $2 billion.India’s share of the Asia-Pacific deal value in the first quarter came to 13.2%— the highest across all quarters since 2013.",2017-04-21,"The telecom sector alone witnessed three M&A transactions worth $13.6 billion in the quarter, compared to just $60 million from two deals a year ago",0.57,05:05,Indian M&A deal value doubles in Mar quarter: Mergermarket +0,"
It was a foregone conclusion that shares of Avenue Supermarts Ltd, which runs the D-Mart supermarket chain, would list at a huge premium on Tuesday. But a 115% appreciation is taking things too far, notwithstanding the pedigree of the company.At Tuesday’s closing price of Rs641.60, the D-Mart stock trades at 77 times estimated earnings for fiscal year 2016-17 and 55 times one-year forward earnings. “Valuations are certainly expensive; the euphoria around the listing is driving prices,” says Arun Kejriwal, director of Kejriwal Research and Information Services Pvt. Ltd.On an EV (enterprise value) to Ebitda basis too, valuations are sky-high at around 31.6 times, based on IIFL Institutional Equities’ FY18 estimates. Ebitda stands for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. “I find it very difficult to buy D-Mart at this valuation. It reminds me of the heydays of retail stocks,” says a fund manager.Nevertheless, the absurd valuations may well sustain, given a dearth of quality stocks and investors’ admiration for the company’s promoter, who is an ardent investor himself.ALSO READ | D-Mart IPO: Value does not come cheap“It may take some time for the euphoria to cool down”, says Kejriwal.“We expect premium valuations to sustain given strong growth and limited options to play the organised retail story in India,” analysts at Prabhudas Lilladher Pvt. Ltd said in a note to clients.To be sure, the quality of the company and its superior margin profile are appealing as well. Its net margin in the nine months to December stood at 4.4%, higher than Future Retail’s mere 2% margin. And since the IPO (initial public offering) proceeds will be used to repay debt, net margin is expected to rise to about 5%, increasing its lead over other retailers. Further, D-Mart’s return on capital employed for 9MFY17 was 22.9%, higher than Future Retail’s estimated return of 12.8% for FY17.Still, should that justify valuations of as high as 31.6 times Ebitda. Analysts at IIFL Institutional Equities, for instance, have a price target of Rs480 for the stock, at EV/Ebitda valuations of roughly 24 times, based on its FY18 estimates. In hindsight, it’s clear that the issue was underpriced. S.P. Tulsian, an independent analyst says, “It was a goodwill gesture on the part of the company to price the issue lower and the market has rewarded it generously.” But as a consequence, the company ended up raising far less funds than it could potentially have raised. The value of its free float capital has risen by around Rs2,000 crore; if it had decided to share half of the spoils by pricing the issue higher, D-Mart would have received an additional inflow of around Rs1,000 crore. That is fairly significant for a company with a balance-sheet size of around Rs4,000 crore.While the good taste of the spectacular listing may linger for some time, investors would be keen to know whether growth rates will persist. More recently, revenue growth has slowed. For FY16 and FY15, revenue growth was 33% and 37%, respectively, year-on-year. That is lower than the annual revenue growth seen in the preceding two years.It’s also worth remembering that D-Mart’s quarterly financial results history and the impact of seasonality, if any, is not known to the Street yet. Those factors are worth watching for the stock along with other factors such as same-store sales growth. And finally, with valuations so high, there is hardly any room for error on any of these counts.",2017-03-22,"The 115% appreciation in D-Mart share prices on listing day is taking things too far, notwithstanding the pedigree of the parent company Avenue Supermarts",0.53,03:47,Irrational exuberance in D-Mart shares +0,"
New Delhi: Higher fares slowed air passenger traffic growth to an 18-month low in March, typically a lean month for air travel.Passenger traffic grew 14.9% to 9 million passengers during the month, as against 7.8 million a year ago, according to data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Thursday. Air traffic growth has remained around 20% in the past two and half years. The last time it fell below 15% was in September 2015, when it grew 14.56%. Despite a significant increase in capacity, airlines have been flying with high occupancy. This presented an opportunity to charge higher.“Why lose the opportunity to get higher fares?” an airline executive said, declining to be named. Fares have been raised gradually over the past few weeks, the executive added.Cheaper fares increase discretionary travel, which gets curtailed when fares rise.In March, SpiceJet flew its planes 91.4% full, AirAsia 87.8%, GoAir 84.8%,Vistara 82.2%, IndiGo 81.6%, Jet Airways 79.8% and Air India 74.6%.Flights between metros were fairly on time. IndiGo regained its top spot in terms of on-time performance after many months. Its flights in four metros were 88% on time, displacing previous No. 1 SpiceJet, which came in at 85.7%. Vistara (85.1%), GoAir (81.8%), Jet Airways (80.7%) and Air India (79.7%) followed. Regional airline Air Carnival flew 64.8% full, Zoom Air 74.6% and TruJet 75%. Air Costa did not operate, as its planes were impounded by aircraft lessors GE Capital Aviation Services over non-payment of dues. Airlines’ market share remained mostly consistent. IndiGo’s domestic market share was 39.9%, followed by Jet (17.9%), SpiceJet (13.2%), Air India (13%), GoAir (8.9%), Vistara (3.2%) and AirAsia India (3.1%). To be sure, Air India and Jet Airways have significant international operations, while the other airlines mostly fly domestic. The number of complaints against airlines fell from the month of February. There were a total of 680 complaints that DGCA received in March, compared with February’s 810. Of these, 242 were against Air India, 213 against Jet Airways, 90 against IndiGo. SpiceJet had 58 complaints, GoAir 55, AirAsia 16, TruJet and Vistara had three each. April-June is considered the peak season for air travel in India as schools shut for summer vacations. “Airfares will rise; you will see strong yields in this quarter from 15 April to June-end,” the airline official cited above said, “Once a customer become accustomed to pay less, he will never pay more.”",2017-04-21,"Air passenger traffic grew 14.9% to 9 million passengers during the month, as against 7.8 million a year ago, according to data released by the DGCA",0.18,08:51,Air traffic growth slows to 18-month low as fares rise +0,"
Private sector infrastructure firm Ashoka Buildcon Ltd scaled a 52-week high of Rs199 last week as it became the lowest bidder for a Rs1,187 crore road project. The project, once secured, will increase its already swelling order book of Rs6,220 crore, which is three times the company’s trailing consolidated revenue.What sets Ashoka Buildcon apart from its peers is that its order book comprises a healthy 44% of engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) projects, 29% of build-operate-transfer (BOT) projects and the rest in power transmission and distribution (T&D). So far, the EPC projects in its kitty have been on schedule.Its December quarter’s 18% growth in stand-alone revenue was the result of the company kick-starting projects bagged in fiscal year 2016. The operating leverage gave a leg-up to its profit margin that rose 50 basis points year-on-year. In fact, operating profitability at both EPC and BOT levels has steadily improved over the last two years. Of course, like others in the infrastructure pack, Ashoka Buildcon’s December quarter performance was hit by demonetization, when toll collection was suspended for 23 days. Collections were about 25% lower than the year-ago period.Still, this did not hamper profit growth. Net profit for the quarter was a little over double that in the year-ago period.Analysts are positive on the stock’s prospects also because the company operates roads in key mineral-rich states. Chances of revenue accretion are higher on these routes with economic and industrial recovery, both by way of increased traffic and higher incidence of commercial vehicles plying on these routes.That said, being nimble-footed in bagging orders could lead to a rise in debt, which is currently twice the equity at the consolidated level. A report by Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd says, “ABL’s (Ashoka Buildcon’s) strong order book and low stand-alone debt levels will drive the EPC revenue by a compounded annual growth rate of 17% between FY2017 and 2019.”Since January, the Ashoka Buildcon stock has gained momentum on the back of strong execution and order wins. There is significant wind beneath its wings, provided its robust order book is converted into revenue through timely execution.",2017-03-21,"There is significant wind beneath Ashoka Buildcon’s wings, provided its robust order book is converted into revenue through timely execution",1.0,08:12,Ashoka Buildcon’s diversified order mix supports profit margins +0,"
You might have met this boss. His hand brushes your back. One-on-one discussions are laced with innuendo. At meetings he will ask about your love life. He’s just being “friendly”; don’t be such a prude, yaar, the others will say. You shrug. You ignore it. You need the job. Or you could choose to complain. Should you choose this option, here is what will likely happen. You might discover that your organization is the one in three Indian companies that doesn’t have an Internal Complaints Committee (ICC), as required by the law, because “these kind of things don’t happen here”. Or, if it has one, it will initiate a hearing to which you will be summoned and asked about specific incidents and perhaps also about whether you have a boyfriend, your drinking habits and so on. Colleagues could urge you to “settle”. As you approach the water-cooler, conversation will cease because, naturally, everyone is gossiping about you—she’s not that attractive. Wasn’t she overlooked for promotion…?Despite a law since 2013 and the Vishakha guidelines before that, sexual harassment at the workplace remains a maze that nobody seems to be able to negotiate. To start with, there seems to be a complete and perhaps deliberate lack of awareness as to what constitutes sexual harassment. Is it against the law to call a female colleague “sexy”? Is it OK to do so outside the office? The answers are simple: Yes and no. So, even if you’re a heterosexual single male, you may not call a female colleague “sexy” because, guess what, to do so would be not just morally wrong and demeaning to her, it is also against the law. Easy and straightforward? Not quite. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from a spate of high profile cases from Greenpeace India to The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri), it is that the wheels of justice seem stuck in the mire. ALSO READ | Understanding the male principleAt Teri where forensics have established that R.K. Pachauri’s claim that his phone and email were hacked was a lie, the original woman complainant has quit the organization and is now working for another research institute. “Sexual harassment and assault can scar you for life,” she says. But, “if someone is willing to talk, they must be given a patient hearing because they can be true survivors of a willful misogynist crime penetrated deep in mindsets that we assume to be liberal and modern.” Why is the law failing women like her? “It’s the attitude of the organization,” she says. Companies tend to support the more powerful accused male rather than the subordinate female complainant. Moreover, there’s a tendency to brush the matter under the carpet for fear that it will damage the company’s reputation. “We don’t think the violation of a woman’s dignity or bodily integrity is a crime,” says advocate Vrinda Grover. The problem is not that organizations are unaware of the law. The problem is that they don’t care. A text-book case on how not to deal with sexual harassment would be the manner in which entertainment content start-up, The Viral Fever, dealt with an anonymous social media complaint. Refusing to even acknowledge such a possibility (and I concede that an anonymous social media complaint comes with its own set of problems), an initial company statement threatened to “find the author of the article and bring them to severe justice”. The company has since, after howls of protest on social media, admitted to being “confused” and says it is now “committed to getting to the bottom of these allegations.” At a time when India’s female labour force participation is declining and economists are talking about the potential boost to gross domestic product (GDP) from equal participation, it might be useful to look at conditions that make it hostile for women to seek jobs. National Crime Records Bureau data finds a 51% increase in cases of sexual harassment cases from 2014 to 2015. Nearly 70% of respondents in a survey by the Indian Bar Association earlier this year said they would not report sexual harassment for fear of reprisals. And smaller companies might be prone to serious under-reporting, found this Mint report.The fact that this malaise should exist across the board from multinational companies (MNCs) to public sector organizations, from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to young start-ups says something about attitudes to women at work. This is not about a few bad apples but a culture of entitlement and an attitude that states, what’s the big deal about sexual harassment? More than committees and norms, companies need policies against sexism. A female employee is not eye candy, placed for men to admire and comment on. She is a professional worthy of the dignity afforded to any man in the office. Ultimately sexual harassment at work is about unequal power balances. When that balance is so out of whack in society, how can we expect it to be any different at workplaces?Namita Bhandare writes on social and gender issues.Her Twitter handle is @namitabhandare.",2017-03-22,A text-book case on how not to deal with sexual harassment at the workplace would be the manner in which The Viral Fever dealt with an anonymous social media complaint,-0.93,03:47,An unequal balance +0,"Vodafone chief executive Vittorio Colao has negotiated a partial retreat from a tough situation in India on reasonable terms. Given a bloody price war brought on by new rival Reliance Jio Infocomm, a merger deal with Idea Cellular Ltd is smart even though Colao has ceded control without getting a premium.Combined subscribers: 395 millionVodafone Group Plc and Idea Cellular said on Monday that they would combine their Indian mobile operations to create the country’s largest telecom firm with 395 million subscribers, vaulting the new company ahead of Bharti Airtel Ltd. At first, Vodafone and Idea will share ownership, although power will tilt towards the Indian side.To get to that supposed ownership equilibrium, Colao and negotiating partner Kumar Mangalam Birla—billionaire owner of Aditya Birla Group, Idea’s biggest shareholder—had to perform some serious contortions. Vodafone India was bigger and worth more than Idea, so the pair each contributed assets, cash and debt to get to an equal contribution.Both put in their mobile operations at roughly similar multiples of 6.4 times Ebitda for Vodafone and 6.3 times for Idea. That looks like a compromise on Vodafone’s part since Idea’s Ebitda has been falling faster than its own. Meanwhile, Vodafone has excluded its 42% stake in the Indian towers company Indus, while Idea has thrown in its 11.2% stake in that same entity, worth about $1 billion. Finally, Birla pays $579 million to buy 4.9% of the new company from Vodafone.ALSO READ | The rationale behind Idea-Vodafone merger in five chartsColao can live with the fiddly structure, given that the big prize is $10 billion of cost savings within four years from combining the number two and three operators in the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market. Vodafone and Idea will both benefit from those synergies, but how the bounty will be divided will depend on how quickly Idea ups its stake in the new entity.As for governance, Vodafone ends up being the junior partner. Both sides get to nominate the same number of board seats and choose the CEO jointly, but Birla nominates the chairman. While that may seem unfair, the reality of doing business in India means having locals in charge should be a good thing. Vodafone’s inability to end a long, acrimonious tax dispute with the government shows the problems foreign companies can face there.Reliance Jio not main reason for merger of Idea Cellular, Vodafone: Vittorio ColaoThe slightly lopsided power-sharing will make more sense if Birla later raises its stake, as it has the option to do under a shareholder agreement. Birla can buy up to an additional 9.5% from Vodafone in the first three years at an already negotiated price of Rs130 per share. If it doesn’t, then Vodafone can later begin to sell down to get to equal ownership.Much of Colao’s nine-year tenure at Vodafone has been spent undoing a global expansion undertaken by his predecessor. Its experience in India hasn’t been happy as it racked up some 900 million euros of cumulative losses, prompting a massive write-down in November.As he’s shown in well-timed exits from the US and France, Colao is an unemotional seller. With the Idea deal, he’s shown again that pragmatism beats pride. Bloomberg",2017-03-20,"Given a bloody tariff war brought on by Reliance Jio, Vodafone’s merger deal with Idea Cellular is smart even though CEO Vittorio Colao has ceded control without getting a premium",-0.08,22:36,Vodafone’s Indian escape act is heavy on the contortions +0,"
A 7% jump in ITC Ltd’s share on Friday was puzzling at first and though it closed with a lower gain of 4.9%, it was still substantial. The provocation was the GST council’s caps fixed on the cess on demerit goods. The reaction would have been justified if ITC’s share had fallen in anticipation of the cess. Till Thursday, ITC’s share was just a bit lower than its level in early February but a good 24.4% higher than end-December.How does the GST council’s decision benefit cigarettes? News reports state that cigarettes will, in addition to a 28% basic tax under GST, also pay a cess of either 290% or Rs4,170 per thousand sticks or a combination of both. This cess is to compensate states for potential losses in revenue due to GST. News reports say the GST Council wants the tax incidence and price of cigarettes to stay at current levels, terming it as revenue-neutral.ALSO READ | GST council clears last two bills, caps cess on demerit goodsMore details will become clear when the actual legislation and rules become available. Cigarettes are at present charged a specific excise rate, based on length, which starts from Rs1,681/thousand sticks for filter cigarettes up to 65 mm and to Rs4,421/thousand sticks for cigarettes greater than 75mm. States charge sales tax in addition.A first reading suggests cigarettes at the higher end will attract a lower levy than the current specific excise rate. But there is the basic tax of 28% also that is being levied. Also, input tax credit cannot be used to lower the cess, and will be restricted to inputs on which a similar cess has been paid, according to the draft compensation bill.If the government’s effort is to keep revenue and prices at the same level, then firms don’t really gain or lose. The real transformation appears to be a transition to a well defined tax structure. Every fiscal, before budget, ITC’s shares would swing with investor concerns on a potential hike in taxes. The reason could be to raise revenue or to use punitive taxation to curb cigarette consumption. In many years, they were proved right. The past two budgets are an exception. That changes now. Cigarettes are already in the highest tax bracket, the cess rate is capped, and states and municipal authorities cannot levy (or increase) additional taxes. Of course, if tax collections are poorer than expected, the GST council could potentially review these caps. States are to be compensated for five years. That may mean the cess may go after five years unless the governments decide to retain it under some other form.Even then, as long as there’s no devil in the details, cigarette taxation has entered an era of certainty. Companies can now focus on the market and not worry about taxation. That alone is a good reason to relook valuations and might explain why ITC’s share jumped. With tax uncertainty behind it, the only concern should be public health-related legislation to curb cigarette consumption.",2017-03-20,"GST Council wants the tax incidence and price of cigarettes to stay at current levels, hence the jump in ITC shares despite the news of cess on demerit goods",0.59,08:11,Why the cap on cess puffed up ITC shares +0,"
The big broad theme in the Indian aviation industry this financial year has been pricing pressures.Sure, competitive fares improved load factors but profitability was impacted adversely. InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, the company that runs IndiGo, wasn’t immune to those problems. However, a glimmer of hope is emerging. Yields are showing signs of improvement. The airline had said its January yields declined 10% year-on-year at the time of announcing its December quarter earnings.February and March have been better months on the yield front as the industry tries to deal with rising fuel costs, point out analysts.Kotak Institutional Equities notes that fares for 30 days plus advance bookings have improved only marginally in the past two months, but fares for travel dates earlier than 30 days have increased meaningfully.“This should provide some support to IndiGo’s yield in 4QFY17E, as short-notice trips usually account for a sizeable chunk of the 4QFY17E passengers, as per the management,” Mohan Lal, an analyst with Kotak, wrote in a 16 March note.Fuel surcharge to pass on the increase in crude price has been absorbed well by the market, according to IIFL Institutional Equities. The brokerage has raised its financial year 2017 earnings per share estimate by 8% to factor in this improvement.For the nine months to December, IndiGo’s Ebitdar or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and aircraft and engine rentals declined 4.4% from a year earlier. Ebitdar margin narrowed 550 basis points to 28.67%. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. To be sure, even as there are indications of improvement in yields, IndiGo’s profits for the March quarter are expected to decline year-on-year given that crude oil prices were comparatively much lower in the same period last year. Year-on-year yields, too, are expected to fall.In general, analysts hope that financial year 2018 will bring some stabilization in industry yields as the scope for a further decline in yields appears limited. Moreover, a lower base will help. The stock currently trades at Rs921.85, a bit lower than the Rs926.25 share price on 8 November when demonetization was announced. During this time, the benchmark Sensex has increased 7.5%. Based on Kotak’s estimates, one IndiGo share trades at 20 times expected financial year 2017 earnings. It goes without saying that yields and traffic growth are key measures to watch out for. Further, an upside in the stock shall depend on how these factors play out in the coming months and, of course, on the movement in crude oil prices.",2017-03-20,"For IndiGo and other aviation stocks, February and March have been better months on the yield front as the industry tries to deal with rising fuel costs",0.91,08:11,A glimmer of hope for the IndiGo stock +0,"Kenosha, Wisconsin: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered federal agencies to look at tightening the H1B visa programme used to bring high-skilled foreign workers to the US, as he tries to carry out his campaign pledges to put “America First”.The move is a deterrent to Indian IT companies which send hundreds of software engineers to the US on H1B visas. Trump signed an executive order on enforcing and reviewing the H1B visa, popular in the IT industry, on a visit to the headquarters of Snap-On Inc. a tool manufacturer in Kenosha, Wisconsin.In the document, known to the White House as the “Buy American and Hire American” order, Trump also seeks changes in government procurement that would boost purchases of American products in federal contracts, with one aim being to help US steelmakers.The moves show Trump once again using his power to issue executive orders to try to fulfil promises he made last year in his election campaign, in this case to reform US immigration policies and encourage purchases of American products. Senior officials gave few details on implementation of the order but Trump aides have expressed concern that most H1B visas are awarded for lower-paid jobs at outsourcing firms, many based in India, which they say takes work away from Americans. They seek a more merit-based way to give the visas to highly skilled workers. “Right now, widespread abuse in our immigration system is allowing American workers of all backgrounds to be replaced by workers brought in from other countries,” Trump said.As he nears the 100-day benchmark of his presidency, Trump still has no major legislative achievements. With his attempts to overhaul healthcare and tax law not bearing fruit so far in a Congress controlled by his fellow Republicans, Trump has leaned heavily on executive orders to seek changes to the US economy.The venue for Trump’s visit on Tuesday is a nod to his voter base in the manufacturing centres of the American heartland. Wisconsin unexpectedly voted for the Republican last year, partly due to his promises to bring back industrial jobs. H1B visas are intended for foreign nationals in occupations that generally require higher education, including science, engineering or computer programming. The government uses a lottery to award 65,000 visas every year and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.Critics say the lottery benefits outsourcing firms that flood the system with mass applications for visas for lower-paid information technology workers. “Right now H1B visas are awarded in a totally random lottery and that’s wrong. Instead, they should be given to the most skilled and highest paid applicants and they should never, ever be used to replace Americans,” Trump said. Reuters",2017-04-19,Donald Trump orders a look at tightening regulations on H1 B visa used by Indian IT companies to bring high-skilled foreign workers to the US,0.23,13:19,Donald Trump signs H1B visa order to tighten rules on foreign workers +0,"
By most accounts, Yogendra Vasupal, co-founder and chief executive officer of Chennai-based budget stays aggregator Stayzilla, is a decent human being and the least likely of people in India’s bustling start-up market to cheat anybody.
Yet, on Tuesday, Vasupal was arrested by local authorities in Chennai on charges of defrauding one of the company’s vendors, an advertising agency called Jigsaw Advertising. The arrest comes in the wake of Stayzilla, backed by front-line venture capital firms Matrix Partners India and Nexus Venture Partners, recently shuttering its operations in a bid to pivot to a more viable business model.
The details around Vasupal’s arrest remain murky but, in a rare show of solidarity, entrepreneurs and investors from across the start-up ecosystem rallied behind Vasupal, seeking his release from what they consider wrongful confinement by the authorities.
That isn’t the only ugly incident that made headlines this week. On 12 March, Sandeep Aggarwal, a founder of Delhi-based e-commerce marketplace ShopClues, took to social network Facebook to rage against his co-founders Radhika Aggarwal and Sanjay Sethi for allegedly pushing him out of the company. The Facebook post has since been removed. Sandeep Aggarwal, a former Wall Street analyst, founded ShopClues in 2011 with Radhika Aggarwal, also his wife, and Sethi, and was its CEO till he was arrested in July 2013 by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation on insider trading charges. Aggarwal immediately stepped down as CEO and subsequently pleaded guilty to the charges.
It isn’t difficult to understand why Aggarwal is keen to get back in the game with ShopClues. In his absence, Radhika Aggarwal and Sethi have grown the company’s valuation to more than $1 billion and attracted a host of well- known investors including New York-based hedge fund Tiger Global Management and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte. Ltd. It is also the only e-commerce unicorn (start-ups valued by investors privately at $1 billion or more) from India that hasn’t yet shown any outward signs of being in trouble. A squabble between its founders at this juncture would only be harmful to the company.
The two disparate incidents are manifestations of the immense stress that India’s start-up market has been under for well over a year. The market, as is now well-documented, slipped into a downturn in the final quarter of 2015. There is next to no later-stage capital available because of the withdrawal of non-traditional start-up investors such as hedge funds and strategic corporate investors. Valuations have plummeted from their dizzying heights back in 2014 and early 2015. The absence of later-stage capital has compelled traditional start-up investors, venture capital firms, to turn cautious on deploying fresh capital. There have been more than a few fire sales of start-ups that ran out of cash in the past year, and job cuts are now fairly commonplace in the ecosystem.
What’s worrying though is that the market is still some way off from a recovery. The general consensus, at least within the venture capital community, is that it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. That could just be an inordinately pessimistic view or not. Apart from the Stayzilla shutdown, other events over the first three months of this year underline that what started as a correction in the later part of 2015 is now starting to veer dangerously close to a crisis.
In February, Snapdeal, the e-commerce marketplace owned by Delhi-based Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd, became the first of India’s technology unicorns to implode. In an email to employees, which leaked out to the press, Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal admitted that their e-commerce company had fallen off the wagon. Job cuts were announced and in a somewhat empty gesture, Bahl and Bansal also said they would be taking a 100% cut in salaries in the greater interest of the company. Empty because last year the two had earned about Rs40 crore (a little over $6 million) each via salaries and stock sales. The company has burnt through most of the nearly $2 billion it raised from investors over the years.
As things stand now, according to multiple media reports, Snapdeal is trying to find a buyer for its payments platform Freecharge, which it bought for a reported $400 million in 2015. It is also in talks with SoftBank Group Corp. for a fresh round of funding—Mint had reported in January that discussions were on for a fresh round but at a valuation of $3-4 billion compared to the $6.5 billion it touched the last time it raised capital. There’s also talk of Snapdeal exploring a merger with Alibaba-backed online payments platform Paytm’s e-commerce business.
While the Snapdeal implosion sends out the message that even a unicorn backed by the most powerful of investors isn’t immune to a downturn, its state of affairs are seen as having fewer consequences for the market compared to its Bengaluru-based rival Flipkart. Early in January, Flipkart, the flag-bearer of the current start-up wave, officially became an investor-run company. Tiger Global Management, its largest investor and shareholder, shipped in one of its managing directors, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, to replace the company’s co-founder Binny Bansal as CEO. Binny Bansal, incidentally, had replaced co-founder Sachin Bansal as CEO in January last year. As of today, Flipkart retains its status as India’s most valuable start-up, despite multiple valuation markdowns by several minority shareholders. But it continues to struggle to raise fresh capital at the reported $15 billion valuation it commanded when it last got funded. That was nearly 20 months ago.
Mint reported last month that the company was in talks with several investors including Tencent Holdings Ltd, eBay Inc. and Microsoft Corp. to raise $1.5 billion. It needs the fresh capital desperately to retain its place in the market against the might of Seattle-based e-tailer Amazon. And, it has to raise the money at a decent valuation. At stake is nearly $3.5 billion in investor money that the company has burnt through. Tiger Global alone accounts for about $1 billion. Some may argue that Flipkart is too big to fail. But if it does implode, the after-effects could well be devastating.
Stayzilla, Snapdeal and Flipkart are all examples of start-ups where investors have clearly decided that it’s time to take the hardest of decisions to stem the further erosion of the value of their investments. And, these are the good ones. It’s an inevitable part of the cycle in the high-stakes venture capital business in the interest of creating a healthier start-up market when the cycle turns. It would be nice, of course, to get there without any more entrepreneurs landing themselves in jail.
Snigdha Sengupta is a consulting writer with Mint. She contributes stories on venture capital and private equity.",2017-03-18,"Apart from the Stayzilla shutdown, events in the first three months of 2017 underline that what started as a correction in late 2015 is starting to veer dangerously close to a crisis",-0.58,00:09,It may get worse before it gets better for Indian start-ups +0,"
Barring south India, cement prices in other parts of the country have begun to improve after remaining subdued until January, mainly impacted by demonetisation . According to dealer channel checks by various brokers, cement prices in the southern region, which were robust in the past, are now down by nearly 2% month-on-month. Since south-based cement makers saw strong volume growth in the December quarter unfazed by the currency ban, what has pushed cement prices lower now?Increased competitive intensity, sand procurement issues, and water shortage in some of the markets of Tamil Nadu (TN) and Andhra Pradesh (AP) have hurt demand, thus hurting prices. “Companies did try to undertake hikes in the AP/Telangana (TG) markets, but the hikes didn’t sustain. Versus pre-demonetisation levels, prices are lower at Rs260/bag in AP/TG (versus Rs300/bag in October), at Rs320/bag in Karnataka (versus Rs330/bag), at Rs330-335/bag in TN (versus Rs345/bag),” said a recent Antique Stock Broking Ltd report. Also, the political situation in TN is still unstable, which may have impacted the state’s spending on infrastructure and allied activities.Interestingly, apart from the above mentioned factors, the so-called March phenomenon too has a role to play in this price correction. “Generally, in the March quarter, focus of cement companies shifts to pushing volumes, it is very likely that to meet that purpose companies may have taken a price cut,” said Vijay Goel, an analyst at Karvy Stock Broking Ltd. Some analysts point out the price correction that happened last year in March in some southern cities was steeper than this. Also, given the high volume base of last year, concerns are that volume growth of south-based cement makers may take a hit in the current quarter, so this price correction could also be with a view to minimize the adverse impact on cement volumes by boosting sales. Just like last year, the downward trend in prices is unlikely to last for more than a month and prices may begin to recover from May onwards, added the analysts.Meanwhile, on a year-to-date basis, shares of some south-based cement firms like India Cements Ltd and Dalmia Bharat Ltd have rallied 35% and 40%, respectively, much higher than pan-India companies UltraTech Cement Ltd (18%), ACC Ltd (5%) and Ambuja Cements Ltd (11%). That’s because, on the valuations front, excluding Dalmia Bharat, the one-year forward price-to-earnings multiple of many south-focused cement makers is lower than the larger pan-India companies.",2017-03-14,"Cement prices in South India are now down by nearly 2% month-on-month, show dealer channel checks by various brokers",0.22,10:02,Why are cement prices in south India correcting? +0,"
Tech Mahindra Ltd has made another acquisition with the aim to cross-sell its services to a new set of clients. It said on Monday it has acquired CJS Solutions Group Llc, a US-based healthcare information technology consulting firm that does business as the HCI Group.The enterprise value of $110 million seems reasonable, given HCI’s trailing 12-month revenue of $114 million. Besides, the US-based firm has grown by as much as 28% annually in the past two years. Of course, operating margin is low at high single-digit levels, but this is typical of US-based tech firms. And it seems unlikely that Tech Mahindra can bring about a meaningful improvement in margins, considering that HCI’s work is mostly done on site.
Analysts at Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd said in a note to clients, “We believe that the nature of work that HCI does in the US provides limited opportunity for offshorability. While some margin benefits might still be realized on the back of cost cutting and other efficiencies, the major benefit due to offshoring will not materialize.”The big idea behind the acquisition then appears to be the ability to cross-sell Tech Mahindra’s services to a new set of clients. The company has almost no exposure to the healthcare provider space, and the acquisition will give access to 30 new clients. Overall, the healthcare and life sciences vertical contributes less than 5% to its revenues. Jefferies’ analysts point out that the acquisition is on the same lines as two previous acquisitions in 2016—Target and Bio Agency—where a specific expertise was acquired with the cross-sell of existing services being the major incremental positive.Alongside the company’s penchant for mergers and acquisitions, the performance of its organic business has also picked up in the past two quarters. In turn, this has got investors excited. Since it announced Q2 results in end-October, Tech Mahindra’s shares have risen by around 20%, far higher than the 7% gain in the Nifty IT index.In the process, its valuations have risen to 15.6 times estimated fiscal year 2017 earnings, only slightly lower than Infosys Ltd’s 16.2 times valuation. While the better-than-expected growth in the past quarters suggests Tech Mahindra is firmly on the recovery path, not everyone is convinced. Analysts at Nomura Research said in a note to clients, “We see the telecom (~47% of revenues) segment to be stable but not in a material rebound scenario, with likely near-term headwinds from LCC (Lightbridge Communications Corp.) restructuring and non-recurrence of milestone payments (which aided growth in Q3)... Overall, we look for 8% EPS CAGR over FY17-19F (after a 3% decline in FY17).” EPS is short for earnings per share and CAGR stands for compound annual growth rate. If earnings growth ends up being in single digits, as Nomura expects, the mid-teens price-earnings multiple looks overdone.",2017-03-08,"The acquisition of CJS Solutions Group, with the aim to cross-sell its services to a new set of clients, reflects well on Tech Mahindra shares",1.0,08:05,Investors see Tech Mahindra shares gaining momentum +0,"
New Delhi: More Indians living in the US want a job back home after Donald Trump became the president of the world’s largest economy. The number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has gone up more than 10-fold between December and March, according to an analysis by consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Pvt. Ltd, shared exclusively with Mint .There were approximately 600 US-based Indians seeking jobs in India in December 2016. By the end of March 2017, the number had gone up to approximately 7,000, Deloitte analysis said.ALSO READ: Donald Trump orders review of H-1B visa norms, in deterrent to Indian IT companiesThis data comes amid a crackdown by the Trump administration on job visas for skilled workers, including software engineers from India. US Citizenship and Immigration Services said employers seeking H-1B work visas—a non-immigrant visa allowing American firms to employ foreign workers—for 2018 declined for the first time in five years.The surge in the number of applicants has been triggered by Trump’s vows to protect jobs for locals. A Bloomberg report on Tuesday said Trump will take aim at information technology outsourcing companies when he orders a review of H-1B visa programmes to favour more skilled and highly paid applicants. The report also cited companies such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. and Mphasis Corp. as examples of outsourcing firms that would likely have fewer visas approved once the changes are adopted. The H-1B work visa programme channels thousands of foreign workers to the US technology industry.“While US companies will find some tech talent in the US, the numbers might be less than what are required to meet their needs. Add to that, the wages they need to pay to US employees will be much higher than what they pay to H-1B visa holders,” said C.K. Guruprasad, a consultant with executive search firm Spencer Stuart.On Tuesday, Australia abolished the 457 visa programme used by over 95,000 temporary foreign workers, the majority of them Indians, to tackle unemployment.Experts see global in-house centres (GICs) as a viable option for companies to not only retain Indian talent but also address the anticipated shortage in the required volume of workers in the US.According to Parag Saigaonkar, Principal at consulting firm Deloitte in India, while the initial thrust of GICs was on moving job roles from a high-cost to low-cost centre to get a competitive edge, companies are now looking at non-linear values that GICs can add to the business—new things that Indian GICs can produce—and supporting the parent organization.“With the seemingly shifting dynamics towards options between outsourcing and local hiring, companies with GICs in India could move Indian talent from the US to India and also hire locals into the GICs and thus sidestep the restrictions of outsourcing to third party companies,” Guruprasad said.According to K.S.Viswanathan, vice-president for industry initiatives at lobby group Nasscom, while the purpose of GICs so far has revolved around cost and skills arbitration advantages and talent consideration, it is now expected to change.“We are seeing a lot of companies looking at building newer competencies around newer technologies like machine learning, AI, automation, UI/UX, product management, DevOps etc,” said Anand Subramaniam, engagement manager and delivery head (GIC Accelerator Platform), Zinnov, a consulting firm.On an average, GICs add 50,000 to 70,000 people in India every year and due to the volume requirements, this number is expected to go up, according to Nasscom. According to the lobby group, there are over 1,000 GICs in India. Of these, around 67% of them are of US origin. Around 65% of the total workforce of 750,000 employed by these GICs are for US origin companies.",2017-04-19,The number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has surged 10-fold since December as Donald Trump moved to tighten US visa policy,-0.17,11:07,"As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come back" +0,"Washington: The executive order signed by President Donald Trump calling for a review of H1B visas is too little and too late, US lawmakers said, even as more than half a dozen legislations on reforming the programme remain pending in the House of Representatives and the Senate. “We already know H1B visa abuse hurts American workers. Simply reviewing the program is too little, too late,” Senator Dick Durbin said after Trump signed the order directing his administration to review the functioning of the system. US lawmakers have already tabled more than half a dozen legislations in the Congress with specific proposals to reform and improve the H1B visas systems. Many of those proposals, as per industry body Nasscom, are discriminatory and are targeted towards Indian IT companies. Trump’s long-awaited executive order drew sharp reactions from the opposition Democrat lawmakers and the sponsors of these legislations, but drew applause from the treasury benches. “I applaud President Trump for his efforts to spur job creation, economic growth, and American competitiveness by improving our country’s high-skilled immigration programs,” said House Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte. Also Read: Donald Trump calls for tighter H-1B visa programme used by Indians“The President’s Buy American, Hire American Executive Order directs the secretaries of the appropriate agencies to examine the H1B visa program and identify reforms that will root out fraud and abuse to ultimately make the program more workable for American businesses while protecting American workers,” he said. The H1B visa program allows US employers to hire foreign specialty workers in technical and highly-skilled fields, like engineering, medicine, mathematics, and science. These workers receive a non-immigrant visa that can last as long as six years. Congressman Bill Pascrell, Ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade, alleged that the executive order is yet another “broken promise” from Trump, who told the American people that he would end the H1B visa program. “For far too long the H1B visa has been abused by some as a cheap way to replace American workers. With no mandated time frames and no changes to the law, today’s executive order cannot solve the underlying problem,” Pascrell said. “I have introduced bipartisan, comprehensive reform legislation to improve the H1B visa program to ensure foreign workers are not underpaid and Americans are sought to be hired first. Real reform must happen legislatively. The Administration should come to the Congress and work with us on changing the law,” Pascrell said. Senator Chuck Grassley, an author of legislation to reform the H1B and L1 skilled work visa programs, said it is time to take action against the abuse of H1B visa system. “The H1B program was designed to fill gaps in America’s workforce with highly-skilled foreign workers, but as we’ve seen in recent years, the program has been abused and exploited at the expense of American workers and most qualified foreign workers,” he said. “We’ve seen companies use the program to fire American workers and replace them with lower-paid foreign counterparts. The visa lottery system makes this problem worse by rewarding visas randomly, instead of prioritising foreign workers with greater experience, skill, and qualifications,” he added. “I’ve introduced bipartisan legislation with Senator Durbin to address these problems, and I’ve expressed to President Trump the need to take action to restore the integrity in the H-1B Program,” Grassley said. Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown meanwhile applauded Trump for the executive order. PTI",2017-04-19,US lawmakers have already tabled more than half a dozen legislations in the Congress with specific proposals to reform and improve the H1B visas systems,0.0,08:54,"Reviewing H1B visa program too little, too late: US lawmakers" +0,"Bengaluru: Baidu Inc. said on Tuesday it would launch its self-driving car technology for restricted environment in July before gradually introducing fully autonomous driving capabilities on highways and open city roads by 2020.The project is named Apollo after the lunar landing program, the Chinese search giant said, adding it would work with partners who provide vehicles, sensors and other components for the new technology.As part of its push into artificial intelligence (AI), the company in January named former Microsoft Corp. executive Qi Lu as chief operating officer. Two months after the appointment, Baidu’s chief scientist Andrew Ng, who led AI (artificial intelligence) and augmented reality (AR) projects, said he would step down.The company also launched a $200 million fund in October to focus on AI, AR and deep learning, followed by a $3 billion fund announced in September to target mid- and late- stage start-ups.“AI has great potential to drive social development, and one of AI’s biggest opportunities is intelligent vehicles,” Qi said in a statement. In November, Baidu and German automaker BMW AG said they would end their joint research on self-driving cars due to differences in opinion on how to proceed.Technology and automotive leaders contend that cars of the future will be capable of completely driving themselves, revolutionizing the transportation industry, with virtually all carmakers as well as companies such as Alphabet’s Google and parts supplier Delphi investing heavily in developing the technology.",2017-04-19,Baidu will gradually introduce fully autonomous driving capabilities on highways and open city roads by 2020,0.23,09:23,Baidu to launch self-driving car technology in July +0,"New Delhi: Australia scrapping the 457 visa programme comes as a new challenge to India’s IT industry that was already facing pressure from the Donald Trump administration’s attempts to overhaul H1B visas in the US. Indian IT professionals account for nearly 18,000 visas issued under the 457 visa category, according to a research report by the Australian Population Research Institute.In 2015-16, information communication and technology (ICT) professionals accounted for 17,185 or 16% of 106,130 visas issued under visa category 457 and for those which took permanent residence, according to a 6 December 2016 report, titled Immigration Overflow: Why It Matters by The Australian Population Research Institute. Indians constituted 76% of the total 457 visas issues. The 457 visa programme allows businesses to employ foreign workers for a period up to four years in skilled jobs where there is shortage of Australian workers. “We are an immigration nation, but the fact remains: Australian workers must have priority for Australian jobs, so we are abolishing the 457 visa, the visa that brings temporary foreign workers into our country,” said prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.The report’s authors also concluded that the relative success of Indian IT companies in Australia “winning IT consulting work in the design and implementation of new IT software systems for Australian businesses and governments” was also due to “import of their own staff on temporary visas to do much of the work”. “This is a policy change and the new change comes into effect from March 2018. We still need to read the fine print but as we understand that the Australian government will do away with visa category 457 and so ICT professionals will need to apply as part of the new short-term and long-term visa categories. We do not see this change curtailing the number of visas approved for now,” said Shivendra Singh, global trade development head at the National Association of Software and services Companies (Nasscom).",2017-04-18,Indian IT professionals accounted for 16% of the over 1 lakh visas issued under the 457 visa programme by Australia in 2015-16,0.22,20:42,Australian 457 visa: Indians IT workers make up nearly 16% of applicants +0,"San Francisco/Tokyo: Ten years after Steve Jobs held up the original iPhone to a gushing San Francisco crowd, Apple Inc. is planning its most extensive iPhone lineup to date.Apple is preparing three iPhones for launch as soon as this fall, including upgraded versions of the current two iPhone models and a new top-of-the-line handset with an overhauled look, according to people familiar with the matter. For the redesigned phone, Apple is testing a new type of screen, curved glass and stainless steel materials, and more advanced cameras, the people said. Those anxiously awaiting the redesigned iPhone, however, may have to wait because supply constraints could mean the device isn’t readily available until one or two months after the typical fall introduction. The iPhone is Apple’s most important product, representing about two-thirds of sales. It also leads customers to buy other Apple devices like the iPad and Apple Watch, and serves as a home for lucrative services like the App Store. This year’s new iPhone lineup comes at a critical time. Last year, Apple broke its typical upgrade cycle by retaining the same iPhone shape for a third year in a row and endured a rare sales slide. Samsung Electronics Co.’s new S8 lineup has also been thus far well received after last year’s Note 7 battery debacle. For the premium model, Apple is testing a screen that covers almost the entire front of the device, according to people familiar with the matter. That results in a display slightly larger than that of the iPhone 7 Plus but an overall size closer to the iPhone 7, the people said. Apple is also aiming to reduce the overall size of the handset by integrating the home button into the screen itself via software in a similar manner to Samsung’s S8, the people said.The overhauled iPhone will use an organic light-emitting diode display that more accurately shows colours, while the other two phones will continue to use liquid crystal display technology and come in the same 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch screen sizes as last year’s iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple’s iPhone feature and design plans are still in flux and can change, they added. The people asked not to be identified discussing Apple’s private testing and design plans. For its redesigned phone, Apple has tested multiple prototypes with manufacturing partners in Asia, including some versions that use curved glass and stainless steel, according to one of the people. One of the latest prototype designs includes symmetrical, slightly curved glass on the front and the back. The curves are similar in shape to those on the front of the iPhone 7. The new OLED screen itself is flat, while the cover glass curves into a steel frame. The design is similar conceptually to the iPhone 4 from 2010. An earlier prototype design had a thinner steel band, leaving more noticeable curved glass on the sides. Apple also tested a more ambitious prototype with the same slightly curved front and steel frame, but a glass back with more dramatic curves on the top and bottom like the original iPhone design from 2007, one of the people said. Apple suppliers have so far struggled to reliably produce heavily curved glass in mass quantities, so the company is more likely to ship the version with more subdued curves, the person added. The company is also testing a simpler design that has an aluminum back, rather than a glass one, and slightly larger dimensions, one of the people said.Because of its early lead in the mobile OLED display space, Samsung will enjoy a rare upper hand in this year’s high-end smartphone contest. At launch, Apple will exclusively use Samsung Display Co. OLED panels for the redesigned iPhone, as other suppliers won’t be ready to supply mass quantities until later, Bloomberg News reported last year. Apple has ordered around 100 million panels from Samsung, the people said. “This fall, it would be three years since we had a remarkable shift in iPhone hardware. This raises expectations for this year’s phone having a material change in functionality and look,” said Gene Munster, co-founder of Loup Ventures and a veteran Apple analyst. “The Samsung Galaxy S8 raises the bar for Apple to hit a home run.” Spokespeople for Apple and Samsung declined to comment. Apple has also experimented with integrating the iPhone’s fingerprint scanner into the screen of the OLED version, which would be technically challenging, the people said. It’s currently unclear if that feature will make it into the final product. Samsung also tried this approach for the S8, but ended up installing a more standard fingerprint reader on the back of its phone due to the challenges, another person said. Significant camera changes are also in testing for Apple’s overhauled iPhone. For the back of the phone, Apple is testing versions of the phone with the dual-camera system positioned vertically, instead of horizontally like on the iPhone 7 Plus, which could result in improved photos, according to people familiar with the matter. Some prototypes in testing continue to include the slight camera bump found on current iPhones, rather than having them flush with the back surface, the people said. For the front-camera, Apple is testing dual-lenses, one of the people said. The current iPhone 7 and 7 Plus have single front cameras. As it has done in the past, Apple is using camera components from Sony Corp., the person added. Apple has explored adding augmented reality-based features and depth-of-field enhancements to its iPhone camera system, Bloomberg News reported earlier this year. Company engineers in the past have also experimented with integrating cameras into screens, another person said.All the new iPhones will run iOS 11, a mobile operating system that will include a refreshed user-interface and will be announced in June at the company’s annual conference for developers, according to a person familiar with the matter.Apple has been testing using faster processors based on a smaller 10-nanometer production process for all three new models, a person familiar with Apple’s chip plans said. That’s down from 16 nanometers for existing iPhones. The smaller processors are more efficient, allowing Apple to retain its battery life standards while adding more advanced features. Bloomberg",2017-04-18,"Apple is preparing 3 iPhones for launch, including upgraded versions of the current 2 iPhone models and a new top-of-the-line handset with an overhauled look for the 10th anniversary",0.25,18:03,Apple readies iPhone overhaul for smartphone’s 10th anniversary +0,"
Often, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and its investors don’t see eye to eye. The company’s March quarter results announcement was no different. Revenue grew 1% sequentially in constant currency terms, lower than analysts’ estimates of around 1.6% growth. Worryingly, revenues in the mainstay North American region fell by 1.8%, and those of the key banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) vertical fell 0.4%.
ALSO READ: TCS misses both revenue and profit estimates in March quarterStill, chief executive officer (CEO) Rajesh Gopinathan said, “We are quite happy with the way we have ended the year.” He added on a call with analysts that the outlook for the BFSI segment remains positive, and that thanks to large deal wins, it may be only a matter of time before the expected growth comes in. TCS has been saying for the past few months that things are looking up in the US and particularly in the BFSI segment. Over 40% of its revenues come from the BFSI segment, while the North American region accounted for 54% of revenues last year.But after the March quarter performance, investors are likely to question the company’s optimism. As the chart alongside shows, year-on-year growth rates have fallen significantly at TCS in the past year. Besides, operating profit margin, too, has fallen below its targeted range of 26-28%. The result of this double whammy was that earnings per share grew by just 8.3% last year.With the rupee having appreciated sharply compared to the average rate in fiscal year 2017 (FY17), margins are expected to be under further pressure in the new fiscal year. What’s more, thanks to the many changes in H-1B visa rules and policies, costs of providing on-site services to clients are also expected to rise. As such, earnings can be under pressure in FY18. Against this backdrop, TCS shares trade at around 16 times one-year forward earnings. And while CEO Gopinathan said that he expects FY18 to be incrementally positive, things could turn out to be particularly dire, depending on new visa rules. “We see near-term impact on decision-making due to immigration-related issues, even as companies are denying this. We expect 1QFY18 to start slowly and do not build growth acceleration in FY18,” analysts at Nomura Research wrote in a note to clients. Some of the possible impact of new visa norms is detailed here: bit.ly/2ngI48H.And unlike TCS’s upbeat post-results commentary, most other technology companies including Accenture Plc. have guided for slower growth in the new fiscal year. Besides, while Infosys Ltd tried to soothe investors’ nerves by outlining a detailed capital allocation policy, TCS said it will stay with its existing payout policy.In sum, there’s nothing much to like in TCS’s March quarter results announcement, except perhaps for the management’s hopeful commentary. But given the fair bit of divergence between the company’s outlook three months ago and its actual performance, investors would do well to tread cautiously.",2017-04-19,"After the March quarter performance, investors are likely to question the optimism being shown by new TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan",0.52,07:25,"TCS results: Upbeat commentary, downbeat performance in March quarter" +0,"New Delhi: Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) missed analysts’ estimates for both revenue and profit in the fourth fiscal quarter, even as India’s largest software services firm’s full-year sales rose 6.2% to $17.58 billion.The company reported revenue of $4.45 billion in the three months ended 31 March, a 1.5% increase from the preceding quarter and 5.8% from the year-ago period. Net profit totalled $992 million, a 0.8% decline on a sequential basis and an increase of 5.8% from the year-ago period.A Bloomberg survey of 30 analysts had estimated TCS to report quarterly revenue of $4.62 billion and net profit of $1.03 billion in the quarter.Also read: TCS unperturbed by possible changes to H1B visa regime“FY17 was a year of broad-based growth amid economic and political turbulence in our key markets,” said Rajesh Gopinathan, who took over as chief executive of TCS in February. “We believe we are better placed for the year-ahead,” said Gopinathan, who spent much time on the numbers, suggesting that the new CEO will take time to probably replicate the success managed by his predecessor N. Chandrasekaran, the current chairman of Tata Sons Ltd. At the heart of TCS’s underperformance is the company’s inability to generate more business from its largest customers, banks, in its largest market, the US. TCS’s banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) segment, which accounts for over 40% of its revenue, grew 4.8% from a year earlier in constant currency terms. North America, which brings 54% of its business, reported a 4.3% rise.TCS does not give quarterly or annual forecasts but a few equity analysts are sceptical about the company’s prospects. The January-March quarter marks the 10th straight quarter (the company has recorded slow growth since July 2014) in which TCS has either underperformed, or at best managed to keep up with estimates. “Looking at this protracted slowdown, I believe TCS has reached a point where unless the company really brings about a change in the way it has done business, it will be tough for the company to ever beat street expectations,” said a Mumbai-based analyst at a domestic brokerage, on the condition of anonymity. “At best it can match street expectations.”TCS’s performance mirrors the poor show put up by Infosys Ltd last week, and this is worrying for three reasons.First, both growth and profitability for Indian IT firms is under pressure. Mumbai-based TCS reported a full-year increase of 8.3% in constant currency terms, similar to the full-year growth reported by Bengaluru-based Infosys (with $10.21 billion in revenue) although Infosys reported a higher 7.4% expansion in dollar revenue.Like Infosys, TCS’s growth in 2016-17 was slower than in 2015-16: TCS’s revenue growth in constant currency terms was 3.6 percentage points slower than the 11.9% increase in 2015-16. TCS added $1.03 billion in incremental revenue in the year ended 31 March 2017, less than $1.09 billion added in new business in 2015-16 when it reported a 7.1% increase and half of the $2.01 billion in new business added in 2014-15. TCS’s operating margin in the January-March quarter and for the full year stood at 25.7%. Operating margin narrowed 80 basis points from 26.5% in 2015-16, again similar to Infosys, which too saw its profitability eroded as commoditized outsourcing contracts see intense pricing pressure.Despite falling short of its operating margin forecast of 26-28% in the last financial year, the company’s management retained this guidance for the current fiscal year, which at least two analysts say will be “impossible to achieve”.“In this kind of environment, where most companies want more skilled people at client-facing sides, when most countries are adopting a protectionist stance, it looks impossible to keep operating in that band,” a Mumbai-based analyst at a foreign brokerage said, requesting anonymity.Second, despite higher growth in digital, which remains a fuzzy word, and the success of new and renew strategy rolled out by CEO Vishal Sikka to revive Infosys, both companies continue to be plagued by anaemic growth. This has made many analysts question if existing traditional contracts are merely getting rebadged as digital. A case in point: TCS claims its digital business grew 29% in the last year and now brings $3 billion in business.Finally, both TCS and Infosys continue to shy away from acquiring technology-focused firms. Infosys has not made a single acquisition in the last 18 months; TCS has looked away from acquiring a company since it partnered with Japan’s Mitsubishi Group in 2014. This is important because most large technology firms, including Accenture Plc, are looking at acquisitions to bring in new technology and skill sets. Nevertheless, the quarter does have some positives. For starters, the TCS management claimed that its insurance business under Diligenta and Japan has turned the corner, with Gopinathan expressing confidence of growth from these two lagging business units.On Tuesday, TCS shares fell 0.53% to Rs2,308.65 on BSE, while the benchmark Sensex declined 0.32% to 29,319.1 points. The results were announced after the end of trading in Mumbai.",2017-04-19,"Q4 revenue of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) rose 5.8% from the year-ago period to $4.45 billion, while Q4 profit increases 5.8% to $992 million",0.72,05:15,TCS misses both revenue and profit estimates in March quarter +0,"Bengaluru: For Vishal Sikka, 2016-17 stands as a rebuke.After three consecutive downward growth revisions, Infosys’s dollar revenue growth in the year ended 31 March 2017 will be at best 7.6%, 150 basis points (bps) lower than the 9.1% growth in 2015-16, and 620 bps short of its first projected 13.8% growth outlined in April last year. One bps is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Departure of four executive vice-presidents (EVP) in financial year 2017 (in addition to four EVP exits between August 2014 and March 2016) implies that Sikka continues to struggle to build a stable top leadership team. Further, Infosys continues to look away from acquisitions (it’s been 18 months since the company made its last acquisition), which makes one wonder what Houdini trick the management has to achieve its target of becoming a $20 billion firm by March 2021.Also read: Will corporate earnings disappoint once again?Finally, Infosys founder N.R.Narayana Murthy’s outburst, twice in public, against some of the decisions by the board is another painful blow to Sikka. Agreed, Murthy has not questioned Sikka directly. But few of these decisions, including agreeing to a generous severance money to its former CFO (chief financial officer), and giving a hike to the current COO (chief operating officer), were approved by the management, and so it is naive to conclude that all is okay between Sikka and Murthy.Understandably, these developments have unnerved shareholders: in full fiscal year 2017, Infosys shares declined 16.2%, more than the 9% fall by BSE IT index, even as the benchmark Sensex index returned 17% gains. For these reasons, business historians would take note of the fall in Sikka’s popularity: from being hailed as a hero in the first 18 months, Sikka now battles allegations of skulduggery and corporate greed.So what can Sikka—and Infosys—do to possibly break this impasse?First, get back growth and improve its execution. A related second measure is to get some growth from three divisions: Infosys BPO, EdgeVerve, the products and platforms unit (together bring about 13% of revenue), and Infosys Consulting. Infosys needs to improve its ability to sell more solutions from these three services to its clients. Lastly, Sikka needs to arrest senior management departures and build a stable leadership team. All this needs to be done swiftly, and once completed, hopefully, any corporate governance concerns of shareholders (including the founders) should be assuaged. It is important to note here that the displeasure expressed by some of the founders against the board only coincided with the period when Infosys’s growth started slipping (during the first quarter of last year).Significantly, Sikka’s $8 million performance-related pay as part of his $11 million compensation is a thorny issue, and how the board justifies this variable salary to its CEO on Thursday will dictate if there is a third instance of public spat between Murthy and the board. Is all this doable? Unlikely.Simply, because for IT services firms, chasing reclusive growth is more challenging than ever. Moreover, in case of Infosys, nothing short of a miracle can bring back peace between some of the founders and the board and management. With this as a backdrop, Mint puts the spotlight on five things to watch in Infosys’s fourth quarter earnings on Thursday:Revenue forecast: Brokerage firm BNP Paribas sees Infosys recording 1.3% sequential increase in revenue at $2.58 billion for the January-March period. The Infosys management will be mindful that this growth will be 30 basis points less than what the company did in January-March last year. Analysts term the growth in the fourth quarter as “exit rate” and a strong growth helps to start on a good note in the new financial year. Again, management commentary for the April-June period will be crucial.Will Infosys give full-year guidance? For Infosys, providing a growth outlook is one decision which appears to be going down the wire. Analysts believe the management will give a growth outlook. Based on conversations with executives familiar with the development, this paper thinks otherwise and Infosys may discontinue from this practice. The board will eventually take a call when it meets on 12 and 13 April but this decision will decide the road ahead for the Infosys stock. Performance of top customers: During the second and third quarters, Infosys’s largest client and top five and top 10 clients gave less business to the company. Until the June quarter of last year, Sikka did well to get more business from its largest clients. Since Infosys gets a fifth of total revenue from its top 10 clients, the management needs to reverse this decline if Infosys expects to record sustainable growth. A rain-check on Infosys’s new initiatives in the wake of President Trump’s strict visa laws: Over the last 33 months, Sikka has steered Infosys to embrace newer ways to do business, such as by bringing elements of user-centric method of Design Thinking. At the same time, Infosys has increased its focus on building platforms, in an effort to move away from people-led model of doing business. All these measures will be tested as US President Donald Trump works to have a strict policy in place which makes it arduous for outsourcing companies to bring engineers in the US. Hence, commentary on how Infosys is monetising its platforms business and impact of changes in visa will be eyed.Weak areas: Sikka has been unable to get respectable growth from EdgeVerve and Infosys BPO in his near three-year stint at Infosys. Another disappointment has been that the consulting division too ran into trouble in April last year. Infosys has put in a new leadership team at all three units over the last year, and management commentary on how soon it expects growth from these three units should decide the overall growth for the company.",2017-04-13,"Infosys founders spat, Donald Trump’s US visa policy and three consecutive downward growth revisions are likely to weigh in on the Q4 results to be declared today",0.44,05:04,Infosys results today: Five things to watch out for +0,"Mumbai: Reliance Power Ltd posted more than a three-fold increase in March quarter consolidated profit, helped by a 40% fall in tax expenses during the period.The company, which is part of billionaire Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group, reported a consolidated profit of Rs216 crore for the quarter ended 31 March 2017, the company said. Fourth-quarter consolidated revenue from operations stood little changed at Rs2,466 crore. The company had posted a rise in its quarterly profit in three of the four quarters preceding March quarter, according to Thomson Reuters data. ReutersReliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.",2017-04-13,Reliance Power reported a consolidated profit of Rs216 crore for the quarter ended 31 March 2017,0.61,18:20,Reliance Power Q4 profit jumps on lower tax expense +0,"San Francisco: Google on Tuesday launched a re-imagined version of its free Earth mapping service, weaving in storytelling and artificial intelligence and freeing it from apps. “This is our gift to the world,” said Google Earth director Rebecca Moore about the new version of the program that lets people range the planet from the comfort of their computers, smartphones or tablets. “It’s a product that speaks to our deepest values around education and making information available to people.” A new “Voyager” feature enables people digitally exploring the planet to be guided on interactive stories told by experts and boasting partners including BBC Earth, Nasa, Sesame Street, and the Jane Goodall Institute. Google artificial intelligence will be put to work for Earth users in the form of “knowledge cards” that let them dive deeper into online information about mountains, countries, landmarks or other places being virtually visited. It will also make suggestions on other locations that armchair explorers might be interested in exploring, based on what they have searched in the past. “This is the first time we have done this deep integration with the Google knowledge graph,” Earth engineering manager Sean Askay said. “Everything Google knows about the world, you can know about the world.” There is also a newly installed “Feeling Lucky?” feature for people who want to let the software suggest hidden gems such as Pemba Island off the Swahili coast or the Oodaira Hot Spring in Yamagata, Japan. People can choose to fly around the world in Earth, using a 3-D button to see the Grand Canyon, Chateau Loire Valley and other stunning spots from any angles they wish. “With the new Earth, we want to open up different lenses for you to see the world and learn a bit about how it all fits together; to open your mind with new stories while giving you a new perspective on the locations and experiences you cherish,” Earth product manager Gopal Shah said in a blog post. Online explorers cruising the mobile version of Earth can also capture pictures on their travels, sending friends digital postcards. New Earth was launched on Google’s Chrome and Android software, with versions tailored for Apple devices and other internet browsing software promised soon. It is the first time that Earth can be reached on a web browser instead of through applications installed on devices. The move allows Google to tap into more powerful computing power at data centres in the Internet “cloud” instead of relying on the capabilities of smartphones and other devices.",2017-04-18,"Google launches reimagined version of its free Earth mapping service, weaving in storytelling and artificial intelligence and freeing it from apps",0.68,17:43,"Google Earth gets facelift, integrated with Knowledge Graph " +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd reported subdued earnings for the March quarter and gave a weak forecast for 2017-18, suggesting that India’s second largest software services company has to do more to become a next-generation services-led company and meet its target of $20 billion in revenue by 2020.In the January-March period, Infosys reported a 0.7% sequential rise in dollar revenue to $2.57 billion, allowing it to end fiscal year 2016-17 with a 7.4% year-on-year growth and $10.21 billion in revenue. Embarrassingly for the management, despite three downward revisions in annual growth, Infosys could manage only a 8.3% full-year growth in constant currency terms, missing the guidance of 8.4-8.8% made in January.Net profit declined 0.8% to $543 million in the March quarter, from $547 million in October-December. In rupee terms, revenue declined sequentially by 0.9% to Rs17,120 crore, while net profit declined 2.8% to Rs3,603 crore.ALSO READ: Infosys seeks to buy peace with new co-chairman, Rs13,000 crore payout promiseA Bloomberg survey of 34 analysts had forecast Infosys to report revenue of $2.68 billion, or Rs17,283.7 crore, in the quarter. The analysts estimated the company to report a net profit of $554.4 million, or Rs3,564.1 crore, in the period.Infosys expects its dollar revenue to expand between 6.1% and 8.1% in 2017-18, lower than the growth projected by Nasdaq-listed Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., which follows a January-December fiscal year and expects to grow between 8% and 10%. In constant currency terms, Infosys now expects 6.5-8.5% growth for the full year.Infosys’s lower growth guidance of 6.1-8.1% in 2017-18 means the firm expects less incremental revenue this year. In 2015-16, it reported a 9.1% growth and did $790 million in incremental business. In 2016-17, it managed $707 million in new business. The guidance of 6.1-8.1% means it expects to add between $600 and $800 million in new business.Q4 results: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?Another area of concern is Infosys’s lower profitability estimate of 23-25% for the current fiscal year—it has operated in a 24-26% band over the last few years—which implies that even as the firm sees pricing pressure for commoditized deals, it has been unable to sell more value-added services.Even though chief executive Vishal Sikka has tried to make engineers embrace newer ways of design thinking and tried to steer the firm to focus on building platforms, for now, it is struggling to change the way it has traditionally done business. This is the biggest worry ahead for the management, with the firm appearing to be unable to scale up business from newer offerings even as the core services business appears to be “structurally breaking down”, according to two equity analysts and one industry executive. This fact is disappointing because until the start of last fiscal year, Infosys appeared to be in the early stages of a turnaround.ALSO READ: Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout falls short of what investors need“We believe the top-line weakness and the lower-than-expected FY18 guidance is driven by the application services (Infosys had the highest exposure of 64% of its revenues to application services among peers in fiscal 2016) weakness (amid threat from cloud and SaaS, or Software as a Service) and low penetration in digital services,” Goldman Sachs analysts Sumeet Jain and Saurabh Thadani wrote in a note after Infosys declared earnings.Still, the management put up a brave face. “Yes, we have had challenges but I think we are progressing well despite all the macroeconomic challenges, pricing pressure and the distractions we have had over the last quarter,” Sikka said. The distractions he is referring to are the two public spats between Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy and the board, where the former raised issues of corporate governance and disproportionately high salaries to the CEO and COO.Although Infosys will likely grow faster than both Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and Wipro Ltd in 2016-17, its growth is lower than the 8.7% reported by Cognizant in 2016. TCS declares its earnings on 18 April and Wipro declares its fourth-quarter results on 25 April. Industry body Nasscom also avoided giving a growth outlook for India’s $150 billion outsourcing sector in February, on account of the uncertain macroeconomic outlook.“In order to get the stuttering sales engine firing again, Infosys needs to articulate its strategy in a more nuanced way and drive it through the organization,” said Thomas Reuner, managing director of IT outsourcing research at HfS Research. “Infosys urgently needs to focus on sales execution.”Investors punished the stock, which fell 3.71% to Rs932.90 on BSE at the close on Thursday, dragging the benchmark Sensex down 0.61% to 29,461.45 points.Infosys’s poor performance also hurt Sikka, who earned $6.7 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.7 million of the promised $8 million performance related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract allowing him to end his contract if his total compensation of $11 million fell more than 10%.",2017-04-14,"Infosys March quarter results show a 0.7% sequential rise in dollar revenue to $2.57 billion, allowing it to end FY17 with a 7.4% y-o-y growth and $10.21 billion in revenue",-0.07,03:25,Infosys Q4 results disappoint as growth sputters +0,"San Francisco: In the race to the autonomous revolution, developers have realized there aren’t enough hours in a day to clock the real-world miles needed to teach cars how to drive themselves. Which is why Grand Theft Auto V is in the mix.The blockbuster video game is one of the simulation platforms researchers and engineers increasingly rely on to test and train the machines being primed to take control of the family sedan. Companies from Ford Motor Co. to Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo may boast about putting no-hands models on the market in three years, but there’s a lot still to learn about drilling algorithms in how to respond when, say, a mattress falls off a truck on the freeway.If automakers and tech enterprises want to make their deadline, they have to hurry up. The test cars tricked out with lasers, sensors and cameras being put through the paces on tracks and public roads can’t do it on their own. Simulators never run out of gas—and the ones at Waymo can model driving more than 3 million miles in a single day.“Just relying on data from the roads is not practical,” said Davide Bacchet, who leads the simulation effort in San Jose, California, for Nio, a start-up aiming to introduce an autonomous electric car in the US in 2020. “With simulation, you can run the same scenario over and over again for infinite times, then test it again.”As improbable as it may seem to the lay person, hyper-realistic video games are able to generate data that’s very close to what artificial-intelligence agents can glean on the road. AI software has been playing around with games from Super Mario Bros. to Angry Birds for a while now, tackling problems in controlled environments and learning through trial and error.Last year, scientists from Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany and Intel Labs developed a way to pull visual information from Grand Theft Auto V. Now some researchers are deriving algorithms from GTAV software that’s been tweaked for use in the burgeoning self-driving sector.The latest in the franchise from publisher Rockstar Games Inc. is just about as good as reality, with 262 types of vehicles, more than 1,000 different unpredictable pedestrians and animals, 14 weather conditions and countless bridges, traffic signals, tunnels and intersections. (The hoodlums, heists and accumulated corpses aren’t crucial components.)The idea isn’t that the highways and byways of the fictional city of Los Santos would ever be a substitute for bona fide asphalt. But the game “is the richest virtual environment that we could extract data from,” said Alain Kornhauser, a Princeton University professor of operations research and financial engineering who advises the Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering team.Waymo uses its simulators to create a confounding motoring situation for every variation engineers can think of: having three cars changing lanes at the same time at an assortment of speeds and directions, for instance. What’s learned virtually is applied physically, and problems encountered on the road are studied in simulation.Whenever a human has to grab the wheel of a test car because self-driving software hasn’t responded properly, “we’re able to play back the exact situation and predict via simulation what could have happened if the car had been left to drive itself,” Waymo said in a self-driving project report. “If the simulator shows better driving is called for, our engineers can make refinements to the software, and run those changes in simulation in order to test the fixes.”At Toyota Motor Corp.’s Toyota Research Institute in California, engineers try to “break the system” through what’s known as the Quick Brown Fox test: running mile after mile in the most challenging weather and traffic conditions.For all the stupid mistakes motorists regularly make, the human brain is far superior to a computer in perceiving and reacting to the unexpected, from a pothole to a construction zone to a toddler chasing a ball into the street. That’s the great challenge for all the companies competing to be first in the autonomous space: how to make on-board systems better than people at driving, and make driving safer.A looming question is what state and federal safety regulators will demand as proof an autonomous car should be given license to roam. Hundreds of billions of miles may have to be racked up, one way or another. The authorities will probably accept a combination of real and replicated, but rules spelling out requirements have yet to be written.Gill Pratt, chief executive officer of the Toyota institute, told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee in February that simulation should “be an acceptable equivalent to real-word testing,” with follow-up validation. That’s the road developers are increasingly travelling. Bloomberg",2017-04-17,Grand Theft Auto is one of the simulation platforms researchers increasingly rely on to test and train the machines being primed to take control of driverless cars,0.94,19:43,Driverless cars are learning from Grand Theft Auto +0,"
Mumbai: The quarterly earnings season that begins this week will determine whether Indian stocks that have rallied to record highs last week will be able to sustain the gains. Inflows from foreign and domestic investors have been driving up stocks but they may easily retreat if earnings disappoint. With rising commodity prices and the lingering effects of demonetization, earnings prospects for most companies are anything but rosy, analysts say. Companies, excluding banks and commodities suppliers, are likely to be weighed down by margin pressure as raw material costs have surged from a year earlier, they said.Margins of members of the Nifty index are estimated to narrow by as much as 116 basis points in the three months ended 31 March because of rising input costs, Edelweiss Securities Ltd said in a note released on 7 April. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Infosys Ltd, Bajaj Capital Ltd and Reliance Power Ltd are scheduled to report their fourth quarter earnings on 13 April. Analysts expect quarterly earnings growth to be driven by banks and metals companies. Banks’ profit growth in the March quarter is likely to be boosted mostly as a result of a favourable base effect. They had reported weak earnings in the year-ago period because of higher provisions following the Reserve Bank of India’s asset quality review. For metals companies, higher commodity prices are expected to support earnings growth.“Excluding banks and commodities, profits are likely to contract by 9%, similar to last quarter’s contraction and significantly lower than the 10% plus profit growth seen in FY15, FY16 and H1FY17. The slowdown in profit will be more pronounced in consumption sectors and cement,” Edelweiss said in the 7 April note. The brokerage expects FY17 Nifty earnings per share (EPS) to grow 10%, a marked improvement over the past two years, with Nifty EPS expected at Rs455, Rs555 and Rs660 at the end of FY17, FY18 and FY19, respectively. The brokerage expects Nifty firms to report revenue, operating profit and net profit growth of 15%, 8% and 14%, respectively, in the March quarter. Analysts are worried that the lingering effects of demonetization are still likely to impact companies that are dependent on domestic consumption. Recovery of volume growth is likely to be one of the key concerns in the March quarter earnings, Sanjay Mookim, India equity strategist, Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA-ML), said on Thursday. BofA-ML expects earnings growth to improve from sub-5% in FY17 to 12% in FY18 and 15% in FY19. Indian markets have touched record highs in March and April after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party won the crucial Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. The Sensex and Nifty rose 11% and 12%, respectively in the March quarter and if earnings fail to deliver, the rally may lose steam.The net income of Sensex companies is likely to grow 9% on an annual basis and 15.3% quarter-on-quarter, Kotak Institutional Equities said in a report dated 7 April.Excluding banks, the brokerage expects an 8.8% year-on-year growth in net income. Weak demand environment, rising raw material costs and increase in discounts may result in an annual decline in net income for automobile firms, while downstream energy firms may be hurt because of lower refining margins, muted growth in volume and the recent decline in global crude oil prices. Kotak estimates Sensex FY18 EPS at Rs1,682 and FY19 EPS at Rs1,972. Its Nifty EPS estimates for FY18 and FY19 are Rs520 and Rs608, respectively. Gautam Duggad, head of research at Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd, said the March quarter may see margin contraction of 50 basis points for firms under the brokerage’s coverage, excluding financials. “We are expecting 23% earnings growth for our universe and 22% CAGR over FY17-19. Expectations for our Motilal Oswal universe net profit growth is 28% and largely led by three sectors—PSU banks, metals, oil and gas. Rest of the universe may decline by 5%,” he said. Rakesh Tarway, head of research at Reliance Securities, expects 10% profit growth in the March quarter, reflecting similar trends in the first nine months of the fiscal year. He, however, said commodity prices will have a marginal impact on profitability as firms in many industries like tyres, autos and packaged consumer goods have raised prices. “Also, commodity prices have now started stabilizing, which will further insulate margin erosion,” he added. According to Deutsche Bank, Sensex firms are expected to post a 9.1% profit growth in the fourth quarter. “Excluding banks, Sensex net profit growth is likely to be at 5.4%. Autos are likely to be the biggest drag on Sensex growth, as our analyst has factored in a one-time impact of the BS-III vehicle ban,” it said in a note dated 7 April. In the current fiscal year, CRISIL Ratings expects corporate revenue to grow at around 8% on a year-on-year basis. “Revival in sectors such as construction equipment, EPC (on improving order book); metals (especially non-ferrous) and sugar—on better prices, are expected to aid the improvement,” the rating agency said on 3 April.",2017-04-10,"With rising commodity prices and lingering effects of demonetisation, earnings prospects for most companies for the March quarter are anything but rosy",-0.08,20:41,Will corporate earnings disappoint once again? +0,"New Delhi: Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) on Friday reported its best-ever annual retail sales of 6,04,009 units in the financial year ended 31 March, 2017, up 16% from the year-ago period. The company exceeded sales of 600,000 units for the first time in its history, Tata Motors said in a BSE filing. Retail sales for the fourth quarter ended March 2017 were up 13% to 1,79,509 vehicles as compared to same quarter a year ago. In March, sales were at 90,838 units, up 21% as against March 2016, it added. Commenting on the sales performance, Jaguar Land Rover Group sales operations director Andy Goss said: “These numbers set the seal on Jaguar Land Rover’s seventh successive year of sales growth, by breaking through the 6,00,000 barrier.” He further said: “The last 12 months have seen the launch of three completely new product lines, and successful growth across many of our existing products.” Retail sales for Jaguar went up by 83% to 1,72,848 units in the financial year, primarily driven by the successful introduction of the F-PACE and solid sales of the XE and XF. Land Rover sales were marginally up by 1% to 4,31,161 units in FY17, as continuing strong sales of the Discovery Sport, Evoque and Range Rover Sport were offset by the run-out of Defender and Discovery.",2017-04-07,"The Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) recorded its best-ever annual retail sales and crossed the 600,000-mark in sales for the first time",0.62,21:54,"Tata Motors’ JLR clocks 16% growth in sales at 604,009 units in FY17" +0,"Kolkata: In a bid to stave off potential privatization, the management of India’s oldest pharmaceuticals company, Bengal Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals Ltd, on Wednesday said the state-owned enterprise can be turned around in five years.Acting managing director and director (finance) P.M. Chandraiah on Wednesday said the 125-year-old company had turned in an operating profit of Rs4 crore in fiscal 2016-17 as against a loss of Rs9.13 crore in the previous year, thanks to better control over costs and improved employee efficiency.Announcing the first profit in decades, Chandraiah said he was confident that in the current year, Bengal Chemicals’ operating profit can be ramped up to Rs10 crore, and in five years, the company will turn in profits of Rs30-40 crore a year if the government agreed to restructure its loans.Operating results improved in fiscal 2016-17 despite a marginal decline in revenue from Rs112.76 crore to Rs111 crore. But in the current year, the management expects to expand its product range, which, in turn, will lead to the company’s revenue jumping sharply.ALSO READ: Bengal Chemicals divestment may turn into a real estate playFor decades, Bengal Chemicals has been producing low-margin generic drugs, but from May, it proposes to start manufacturing injectable drugs, which alone can generate Rs50 crore in annual revenue, according to Chandraiah. Going forward, the company plans to start producing oral drugs as it seeks to reclaim its lost glory, he added.There is, however, no clarity immediately on the government’s plan to privatize the firm though it has been identified as one in which the government does not wish to remain invested in the long run.The company has valuable real estate across cities, including in Mumbai, where its office is conservatively valued at Rs1,000 crore, according to Chandraiah. Yet, the company has through decades scaled back production for want of working capital.Bengal Chemicals currently owes the government Rs215 crore in outstanding loans and unpaid interest. The management now wants the government to lower the interest rate on its outstanding loans from 21% to levels offered by commercial banks.Alongside, the company is also looking to shore up sales of its over-the-counter products and home disinfectants. For want of a strong distribution channel, the company was forced to sell home disinfectants largely to institutional buyers at low realizations. Now with cash flows improving, it is looking to open up channels to sell these products, which currently account for 30% of its revenue, in the retail market, Chandraiah said.",2017-04-12,"Announcing the first profit in decades, MD P.M. Chandraiah said in the current year, Bengal Chemicals’ operating profit can be ramped up to Rs10 crore",1.0,22:09,Bengal Chemicals reports profit of Rs4 crore for FY2017 +0,"New Delhi: Reliance Defence and Engineering Ltd has reduced its consolidated loss to Rs577.22 crore for the year ended March, 2017. The company had posted a loss of Rs592.42 crore for the year ended 31 March, 2016, Reliance Defence and Engineering said in a filing to BSE. The consolidated total revenue of the ocmpany for the year ended 31 March, 2017 increased to Rs603.12 crore, over Rs346.16 crore for the year ended 31 March, 2016. The company said that its board, at a meeting held on Tuesday, has approved revalidation and approval of rights issue up to Rs1,200 crore which was approved “by the board held in 22 April, 2016.” The board has also approved the appointment of Kartik Subramaniam, chief executive officer, as a whole-time director of the comapny with effect from Tuesday in place of H.S. Malhi who superannuated from the services of the comapny and “ceased to be the whole-time director with effect from 11 April, 2017.” The appointment of Subramaniam, CEO, as “whole time director of the company is approved for three years with effect from 11 April, 2017.Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.",2017-04-11,"Reliance Defence’s consolidated total revenue for the year ended 31 March, 2017 increased to Rs603.12 crore, over Rs346.16 crore a year ago",0.13,22:33,Reliance Defence FY2017 loss narrows to Rs577.22 crore +0,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.",2017-04-19,"For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",-0.12,07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +0,"Mumbai/New Delhi: India risks straining public finances and undermining already ailing state banks, economists said, after a $5.6 billion loan write-off for farmers in Uttar Pradesh and moves to do something similar in at least four other states.One of the first acts of the new government in India’s most populous state following last month’s election triumph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was to keep a promise to provide debt relief to 21.5 million farmers.Taking their cue from Uttar Pradesh, more state governments could waive loans to farmers, senior officials there said, to fulfil election pledges or woo rural voters before further polls in the run-up to a general election in 2019 when Modi is expected to run for a second term.“This will spread like a contagious disease to most parts of the country and you will very soon see at least 3-4 states announcing similar farm loan waivers,” said Ashok Gulati, a farm economist who advised India’s last government.Economists caution that the move could encourage indebted farmers not to repay loans, deepening malaise at public sector banks already saddled with most of India’s $150 billion in stressed loans.Also Read: Loan waiver is not the solution to farm crisisUttar Pradesh will cover the cost of the waivers by issuing bonds. This would in turn constrain India’s sovereign credit because such bonds are backstopped by the federal government, the economists said.India’s total public sector debt, as a share of gross domestic product, stands at around 66 percent - high compared to other emerging economies.Economists at Merrill Lynch estimate that states will end up writing off debts equivalent to 2% of GDP — the bulk of all outstanding loans to farmers.Leverage levelsRatings agencies would like to see India’s debt-to-GDP ratio fall below 60% over the next three years to justify an upgrade in its sovereign rating. Yet debt waivers would, even if staggered, force up borrowing, analysts said.“The loan waivers would likely worsen the fiscal deficits and leverage levels of the state governments, unless other resources are mobilised or expenditure is controlled,” said Aditi Nayar of ICRA, an affiliate of Moody’s Investors Service.“There is a significant risk that productive capital spending may end up being reduced to fund a portion of the loan waivers.”A government-appointed panel has suggested capping the states’ debt at 20% of India’s GDP, while Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel has said the Uttar Pradesh loan waiver “undermines honest credit culture”.Who’s next?Maharashtra and Punjab are expected to announce similar loan waivers soon, senior officials in both states told Reuters.In Maharashtra, ruled by the BJP, farmers are clamouring for a bailout after two years of drought and falling commodity prices. In Punjab, known as India’s grain bowl, the opposition Congress party won last month’s election partly on the promise of a farm loan waiver.In Tamil Nadu, reeling from dry weather, a court asked the state government to write off loans to all farmers.Farmers from Tamil Nadu recently protested in New Delhi, showing the skulls of neighbours who had committed suicide to press their demand for drought relief and loan write-offs.Won’t paySome of India’s 263 million farmers have decided not to repay their debts, expecting loan waivers to mean they don’t have to.“I am not going to repay the loan because defaulters benefited from the previous waiver and I didn’t get any government help even as I repaid the loan on time,” said Gorakh Patil, a farmer from Jalgaon in western India.Patil was referring to an $11 billion national farm loan waiver in 2008 that helped the Congress party-led coalition of the day win re-election the following year. But non-performing assets jumped.Gross non-performing loans in agriculture and its allied sectors surged to Rs58,800 crore ($9.12 billion) at the end of the December quarter, from Rs9,740 crore in the 2007/08 fiscal year, RBI data show.“There’s no benefit from such waivers,” said a director at one state bank who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. “If you give any benefit across the board, it definitely has an adverse effect on credit discipline.” Reuters",2017-04-19,"Farm loan write-off could encourage indebted farmers not to repay loans, deepening malaise at PSU banks already saddled with $150 bn in stressed loans, say economists",-0.14,09:32,"Farm loan write-offs win votes in India, but may hurt economy" +0,"
New Delhi/Bengaluru: Fintech start-up Paytm, run by One97 Communications Ltd, is in talks with Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. to raise $1.2-1.5 billion in cash in a deal that could raise Paytm’s valuation to $7-9 billion, according to three people familiar with the matter.The deal, which has been in the works for nearly three months now, will see SoftBank buying some shares from existing Paytm investor SAIF Partners and founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma as well as investing money in the company, the people mentioned above said on condition of anonymity.Paytm, India’s second-most valuable Internet firm, may also buy Snapdeal-owned payments firm Freecharge (SoftBank is Snapdeal’s largest shareholder) in a fire sale, though the fundraising is not contingent upon the proposed buyout, the people said.The fund infusion, one of the largest investments by a single investor in an Indian start-up, would make SoftBank one of the largest shareholders in Paytm, the country’s top mobile wallet which is set to launch a payments bank.Getting SoftBank on board as a large shareholder will help Paytm reduce the control of China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, currently its largest shareholder, and pre-empt possible government concerns about a Chinese company having a strong hold on Paytm. Financial services is considered a strategically important sector.SoftBank and Alibaba are themselves intimately connected. The Japanese company was an early backer of Alibaba and its initial investment of $20 million turned into a stake worth more than $60 billion when Alibaba listed its shares in 2014.“Getting SoftBank will help Paytm change the perception of being a Chinese company with the regulators as well as the public,” said one of the three people cited above.SoftBank and Paytm declined comment.For SoftBank, the world’s biggest investor in start-ups, an investment in Paytm means an entry into India’s big financial services market. “It is the Alipay success story it is looking to repeat in India,” said the second person, referring to the success of Alibaba’s payment services firm. The proposed deal with Paytm is another instance of SoftBank trying to get it right the second time.Separately, SoftBank is trying to sell Snapdeal, run by Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd, to Flipkart. Another of its portfolio companies, Grofers, is in initial talks with Big Basket for a merger. SoftBank initially considered investing in Paytm in late 2014 but passed on the opportunity. It instead bet on online marketplace Snapdeal. At that time, Paytm was rapidly expanding its nascent commerce business, which SoftBank was opposed to because of its Snapdeal investment.After SoftBank passed up on Paytm, the latter ended up raising $1 billion in 2015 from Alibaba and its financial arm Alipay (now called Ant Financial).Paytm’s owner One97 was valued at about $5 billion in August when the company raised $60 million from Mediatek. It saw a valuation of close to $6 billion in March when three existing investors—Reliance Capital, SVB (Saama Capital) and SAP Ventures—sold their combined stake of about 4.3% to Alibaba and Ant Financial.Investor interest in Paytm, the top online payment services provider in India, has increased after the government’s move in late 2016 to invalidate old high-value currency notes. That, and the consequent emphasis on digital payments, have worked well for Paytm.One97 founder Sharma was one of 11 recipients of a payments bank licence from the Reserve Bank of India in August 2015. Paytm Payments Bank, which now houses the electronic wallet business, plans to roll out several financial services products.",2017-04-19,SoftBank’s $1.5 billion investment will increase Paytm’s valuation to $7-9 billion and will make the Japanese firm one of the largest shareholders alongside Alibaba,0.41,14:55,SoftBank may invest around $1.5 billion in Paytm +0,"
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday advised banks to consider setting aside higher provisions even for good loans in stressed sectors. The advisory means the central bank is worried that banks have not fully recognized their bad loans, said experts. Indian banks are sitting on a toxic loan pile of at least Rs7 trillion, or 9% of all bank credit.The central bank specifically red-flagged the telecom industry, and asked bank boards to review their exposure to the sector by 30 June and consider making provisions at higher rates “so that necessary resilience is built in the balance sheets should the stress reflect on the quality of exposure to the sector at a future date.” This means banks should consider making higher provisions immediately for the telecom sector.Under current rules, most standard assets attract a provision of 0.4%. The few exceptions include credit to commercial real estate—which has a 1% provision, and residential real estate (0.75%). However, the regulator hasn’t specified the extent of higher provisioning for good loans to telecom or other stressed sectors. “We are not surprised that banks will see higher provisioning going forward. We have already accounted for a potential jump in fresh slippages of 2.6% of total bank loans in the next 12 months,” said Udit Kariwala, analyst-financial institutions at India Ratings and Research. In a 15 February report, the ratings agency had said that impaired assets would peak at 12.5%-13% by 2018-19.The central bank has also asked banks to put in place a board-approved policy for making higher provisions depending on the stress in various sectors. This policy should be reviewed every quarter depending on the performance of the sectors to which the bank has an exposure, the central bank said. Currently, bank lending to the telecom sector stands at around Rs82,200 crore. The industry has been going through a tumultuous period with the launch of services by Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. A 17 February India Ratings and Research Report had predicted that the industry has lost about 20% of revenues post the launch of free services by Jio. The industry’s debt levels have risen sharply from Rs2.7 trillion in 2014 to Rs4.85 trillion at the end of 31 December 2016. “Telecom industry is now on a downward trajectory as far as margins are concerned. Profitability is getting thinner. There is no scope for a volume game going forward. Because of these concerns, RBI must have asked banks to keep higher provision,” said Dharmesh Kant, vice-president and head of retail research at Motilal Oswal Securities. “The new regulation will increase credit cost for banks. However, the extent may be limited because the exposure to the telecom sector is only 1% of the total credit in the system,” said Karthik Srinivasan, senior vice-president, Icra Ltd. In a separate notification, the regulator also increased disclosure norms for banks after it noted instances of divergences in banks’ asset classification and the provisioning required as per RBI norms. “This has led to the published financial statements not depicting a true and fair view of the financial position of the bank,” the regulator said.The regulator told banks to make a disclosure in the “notes to accounts” if the additional provisioning requirement assessed by RBI exceeds 15% of their net profit. Further, banks also have to make additional disclosures if the additional gross NPAs (non-performing assets) identified by RBI under its asset quality review are greater than 15% of the incremental gross NPAs reported. The first such disclosure will have to be made for financial year 2015-16 in the annual accounts statements for the just ended fiscal 2017.",2017-04-19,"RBI tells banks to make higher provisioning for good loans in stressed sectors such as telecom, asks bank boards to review exposure by 30 June",-0.08,04:15,RBI asks banks to closely monitor telecom loans as debt mounts +0,"Mumbai: Weak state-run banks like Indian Overseas Bank, IDBI Bank, Bank of India and Union Bank of India are in for regulatory action if the tightened prompt corrective action (PCA) is implemented properly, warns S&P in a report.“If the norms were applied to reported numbers for December 2016, among the banks rated by us, Indian Overseas Bank is in risk threshold 3; IDBI Bank is in risk threshold 2; and Bank of India and Union Bank of India are likely be in risk threshold 1;” S&P credit analyst Geeta Chugh said on Tuesday.She also said the revised PCA, released last week by the Reserve Bank invests a lot of powers on the regulator to supersede the troubled banks, may trigger faster consolidation among the bad loan saddled state-run banks or higher capital infusion by the government.“Our ratings on the banks factor in weak stand-alone credit profiles of ‘B-’ on IOB and IDBI Bank, and ‘BB’ on Bank of India and Union Bank. The ‘BB’ issuer credit ratings on IOB and IDBI Bank and ‘BB+’ issuer credit ratings on BoI and UBI continue to benefit from the very high likelihood of government support,” Chugh said.Welcoming the new guidelines, she said “we believe the Reserve Bank is taking a step in the right direction and the new regulations will force public sector banks to raise their generally low provisioning coverage, and likely accelerate the need for capital.” The revised norms may not necessarily be effective as early warning signals amid the current industry downcycle, she said and noted that a number of public sector banks are already knee-deep in NPAs and firmly entrenched within the new risk thresholds.She further noted that the PCA measures such as restrictions on dividend distributions or branch expansion will have limited benefit because most banks didn’t pay any dividends in fiscal 2016 as they are conserving capital.Also, most of them have shown little growth, and in many cases have contracted their balance sheets.",2017-04-19,"A report from Standard & Poor’s says weak state-run banks like IOBank, IDBI Bank, BoI and UBI are in for RBI action if the tightened PCA is implemented properly",-0.59,05:21,"IOB, IDBI, BoI, UBI may be 1st in line of RBI fire under new PCA" +0,"Mumbai: The RBI on Tuesday permitted banks to invest up to 10% of the unit capital of an Real Estate Investment Trust (REITs) or Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs).The banks’ exposure to REITs/InvITs will be within the overall ceiling of 20% of the net worth permitted for direct investments in shares, convertible bonds/ debentures, units of equity-oriented mutual funds and Venture Capital Funds (VCFs).“Banks should put in place a Board approved policy on exposures to REITs/ InvITs which lays down an internal limit on such investments within the overall exposure limits in respect of the real estate sector and infrastructure sector,” the Reserve Bank said while issuing prudential guidelines in this regard. It further said banks will not invest more than 10% of the unit capital of an REIT/ InvIT. In addition, banks will have to ensure adherence to the prudential guidelines on equity investments, classification and valuation of investment portfolio, Basel III Capital requirements for commercial real estate exposures and large exposure framework. In its first bimonthly monetary policy of 2017-18, the RBI had permitted banks to invest in REITs and InvITs. The move was aimed to help revive the cash-starved infrastructure sector.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has put in place regulations for REITs and InvITs and requested the RBI to allow banks to participate in these schemes.",2017-04-18,"RBI says banks’ exposure to REITs/InvITs will be within the overall ceiling of 20% of the net worth permitted for direct investments in shares, convertible bonds/ debentures, VCFs",0.48,19:27,"RBI caps bank exposure to REITs, InvITs at 10%" +0,"
Mumbai: It was just another Friday for the hundreds of office goers who were jostling with each other to get to their own work places in and around the corporate office of the Union Bank of India at Nariman Point in Mumbai. Even those queuing up in the early hours at the cash counters across the 4,233 branches and 7,946 ATMs of the bank spread across India, were calmly going about their tasks— depositing money or withdrawing cash.However, those early hours of 21 July 2016, were going to be anything but ordinary for the chairman and managing director of Union Bank, Arun Tiwari, who also sits in the corporate office—the Union Bank Bhavan. Happily going about his routine tasks of reading newspapers, sipping a cup of tea and updating himself of the goings-on in the bank, Tiwari was just settling in when his phone rang.He still remembers the time. “It was around 10.30am when I was informed that an unidentified hacker was attempting to swindle us of $171 million (about Rs1,100 crore at today’s rates) from our Nostro account.” A Nostro account is an account that a bank holds in a foreign currency in another bank. All hell should have broken loose. But Tiwari, who insists that he is a “non-technical” person kept his cool. “The thing uppermost in my mind was that I had to quickly get onto the money trail and recover the money.”That was easier said than done. By the time the Union Bank official in the treasury department, who was reconciling the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) payments for the day realized that an amount of $171 million had already been debited from the dollar account of the bank without his authorization, the money had travelled far and wide.The money had found its way to accounts in two banks in Cambodia—the Canadia Bank Plc and RHB IndoChina Bank Ltd, besides the Siam Commercial Bank in Thailand, Bank Sinopac in Taiwan, and a bank in Australia. These funds were routed by Citibank New York and JP Morgan Chase New York, which hold UBI’s foreign exchange accounts.Even as Tiwari informed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the ministry of external affairs and Gulshan Rai, director general of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), to apprise them of the matter and take advice, he simultaneously sent a terse message instructing all the staff at Union Bank Bhavan that “a whole floor on that building was to be cordoned off, and that all staff members working to solve this problem would only leave after the matter was resolved”.“Inspection investigation was done by CERT-In, RBI, our own team,” Tiwari recalls, adding that he also appointed consulting firm EY “the same night”. EY said “as far operations are concerned, you are ahead of time. Whatever was required to be done, as a non-technical person, has already been done.”How did it exactly happen?First, the bank had to know what exactly had gone wrong and how the hackers got access to Union Bank’s servers. Did an insider assist in the task or was it a breach by an external device?It appears, it was neither. Rather, it was an email from a very authentic source— (RBI)—with an attachment. “This email was sent to a few email IDs, and some of them were from customer care, e-banking and some were addressed to individuals too. It might have happened even before 20 July,” Tiwari recalls.Kartik Shinde, partner, advisory services, EY, recalls receiving a call at 10pm that night. “Which PSU (public sector undertaking) bank in India has that ability to take that call? I know of two-three others, who started evaluating vendors, took prices from them. UBI said start the work and we will give whatever the fees. You need to have someone authoritative in the bank like the chairman who will take the call saying that I will take the necessary approvals from CVC (Central Vigilance Commission) and all others but get this analysis done sooner because the more time you spent analysing it, you are giving more lead time for attackers to cover up their tracks, to get out of the system,” he said.It wasn’t that Union Bank was the specific target. Shinde insists that “I wouldn’t say it was a random pick. If I have to break into this network, I will send the payload or malware to all employees. It doesn’t matter who clicks on the link. The hacker simply wants to access the system from where he will do the transaction.”This is also what happened in Union Bank’s case. The “phishing”—an attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and other financial details by pretending to be a trustworthy entity—mails were sent to 15 email IDs. “Three people reported that the email was suspicious to the IT security. The other Union Bank employees were “technically-savvy” persons. They noticed that although the email address said @rbi.org.in, it had an attachment that a zip file. Within the zip file, there was a dot (xer) file and not a dot pdf file, which is why they reported it as suspicious,” Shinde said. Unfortunately, one of the “not-so-tech-savvy” Union Bank officials fell prey to the phishing email and clicked on the link which released the malware that went viral on the bank’s servers. The hackers would have got their way and swindled the cash but for a silly mistake they made, according to Shinde.When a bank does a SWIFT transaction during the day, they typically get a reconciliation report the next day and all the corresponding banks send them the “end-of-the-day balance” report the following morning. When Union Bank got it from the originating bank, they saw a difference of $170 million and that alerted them because of one mistake—the hackers deleted the six entries they had made. “That’s why we say it’s quite similar to the Bangladesh online heist (theft of $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh in February 2016). If they had not deleted the entries, it would have taken some more time for the bank to realise that there are fraudulent transactions,” Shinde explained.Every bank runs a reconciliation process at the end of the day. The malware that infected the central bank of Bangladesh, too, had a component which manipulated the SWIFT’s prt file. The prt file is a print file which usually prints the report of transactions for that day.For instance, if the report shows 106 transactions when they have actually done only 100 transactions, the discrepancy will come to light. This is one reason why the hackers deleted the six transactions in the Union Bank episode. However, this is also the reason that the hack was discovered.So what did Union Bank do?Shinde recalls some RBI officials being there when the forensics began. “The CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) had not come yet. The cybercrime cell officials were there. Traditional police mentality was it must be some insider,” Shinde said. Even a First Information Report (FIR) was filed almost a month after the incident, according to Tiwari.“It took us sometime to zero down on the fact that the attack was similar to what happened in the Bangladesh case,” Shinde explained.EY officials went about doing an analysis of the server and “some network forensics”. They, thus, narrowed down on the systems involved. “Imaging takes 48 hours, indexing takes 24 hours. For instance, when you put a system to do imaging of the disk, it takes two days for a 2 terrabyte (TB) hard disk. There is a lot of time lag that happens. We had a tough time facing the regulators and security officers. It was a high-pressure environment. RBI used to call us every day, asking us what happened. We had to tell them that analysis takes time,” Shinde said.The problem, according to Shinde, is that EY had access only to a “limited set of logs”. Organizations, according to Shinde, typically keep logs in the system for a period of 2-4 months and not for 1-2 years. The reason is also that the data is humongous. “If someone had the ability to analyse a two-year log, you’d have different answers coming out. It’s very difficult. So attribution of zeroing down on a particular geography is very difficult.”In UBI’s case, the UBI employee was sitting in the Mumbai office. But he could have been anywhere. Given that networks of most organizations are flat, SWIFT networks are not segregated—one computer can reach the other computer very easily, according to Shinde. The objective of the attacker is to infect anyone and then start searching for critical systems within the network. In technical terms, it’s called lateral movement, Shinde explained.After analyzing the problem with the “limited resources” on hand, Union Bank delinked its “380-odd SWIFT pan-India connections” in a bid to centralize operations. “Then we created space in this building (Union Bank Bhavan), and had around 40 hotline operators manning the phones. I had told them that nobody will leave till such time that this is put in place and tested,” Tiwari explained. The ploy worked. As regulation necessitates, Union Bank informed the exchanges on 22 July that “…there was an attempted cyber incidence in USD Nostro Account of the bank. The money trail was promptly traced and movement of funds was blocked. Resultantly, there is no loss caused to the bank”.“What pains me —in cricket, we call this a late run. The headlines (referring to reports that appeared a year after the heist) are screaming as if this happened yesterday,” Tiwari rued. He added, “We had, and have, concurrent manual checks too. In all these kinds of heists, money is lost or partly retrieved. Credence must be given that we did not lose a single cent. We recovered about 70% of the money within 24 hours. The last tranche of $30 million took me 50-60 hours because of a legal process.”But isn’t prevention better than cure?Union Bank, according to the 22 July press statement to the exchanges, added that a cybersecurity forensic audit was being done to “identify, plug any gaps and strengthen the system. “There is no impact on the Bank’s operations,” the note concluded.The question that begs an answer—one which even Tiwari could not answer satisfactorily—is who was to blame for the lapse: Union Bank or SWIFT?Kiran Shetty, CEO of SWIFT India, insisted that “SWIFT’s system has not been compromised. We have not got a cyber report from Union Bank or any forensic report from them. The investigation is closely held by them. In most cases, when cyber attacks happen, people are not forthcoming with information. We have not been exposed to full details.”“Globally, there are controls and principles we are defining. We are revisiting the vendors that we have in terms of our connection. We have never been compromised. We are only doing pieces to further strengthen the evolution of our system. We are doing roadshows across five cities in India along with the Indian Banks Association talking about cyber security controls, cyber hygiene, etc,” Shetty said.Shetty, though, acknowledged that “cyber threat is real and is growing”. According to him, the pace of digitization that we have seen in the last decade and at a more accelerated pace, requires the same level of investment on the cyber side as well. The regulator (RBI), he added, has introduced regulations around a CISO (chief information and security officer) directly reporting to the board. There is also a customer security programme where “we are now mandating 27 controls, of which 16 are mandates and 11 are advisory. If you don’t have 16, we will start reporting to the regulator.” Implementation of all these regulations will have to be done by the end of the year.Even Tiwari expressed his inability to share a copy of the forensics report. “I cannot share further details because even I don’t have a copy,” he said.Tiwari, however, pointed out that the measures his bank has undertaken after the incident last July included the “most stringent filtering, awareness of employees, whitelisting (proactive security technique that only allows a limited set of approved programs to run while blocking the others), BIOS passwords (to prevent external devices from accessing computers and servers) and engagement with regional office levels constantly”. He added, though, that even as the bank was fortifying its IT platform “trying to see how to make your processes efficient”, he would not rule out future cyber attacks.“We have put the best IT guys on the jobs and even a CISO but the fact is that however many locks you put on the door, a burglary can still take place. The point is to remain alert and put measures in place, which we have done already,” Tiwari insisted.Shinde concurred that cyber crimes are well thought and well researched most of the times. Even when EY does cyber attack simulations, the first part is the reconnaissance phase.“It’s like in any war on an attack, you first do a thorough reconnaissance on the target to see how weak they are, what controls are there, who to target first, what are the avenues for entry, how many avenues are there,” Shinde explained. Shinde added that one can easily pick up and sniff out email addresses from employees putting news on groups, public forums. “It’s possible that Union Bank, too, could have been targeted via a reconnaissance exercise. This is just one bank which has come out in the open. We don’t know how many banks are there who have gone through the same incident and not reported it to the regulator,” Shinde said, concluding, “Even if you fix everything, you cannot rule out the chance that it will not happen again. In UBI’s case, they responded faster. Today, the response time is critical.”Incidents of hacking in recent times
—Federal prosecutors are investigating North Korea’s possible role in a SWIFT hack that resulted in the theft of $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh in February 2016, according to a 15 April report in the New York Times. Security researchers found that traces of code used in the Bangladesh theft had been used in a cyber attack against Sony in 2014, which the Obama administration and security experts blamed North Korean hackers for carrying out, the report added. Soon after RBI asked Indian banks to immediately put in place a cyber security policy.
—Card data of 3.2 million customers was stolen between 25 May and 10 July in 2016 from a network of Yes Bank Ltd ATMs managed by Hitachi Payment Services Pvt. Ltd.
—Axis Bank reported cyber security breach in October 2016; malware found in its server; no monetary loss reported.
—Bank of Maharashtra lost Rs25 crore when a bug in the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system allowed people to send money without having the necessary funds in their accounts earlier this year.
—On 8 April SBI ATM in Odisha spews out cash without any card being swiped. Physical malware attack suspected in these ATMs.",2017-04-18,Union Bank of India recently fell prey to hacking—robbing the lender of $171 million—but the hackers made a silly mistake,-0.8,22:11,How Union Bank was hacked and got its money back +0,"Bengaluru: Titan Co. Ltd said business in the second half of fiscal 2016-17 exceeded its expectations despite demonetization, after the maker of watches and accessories struggled in the first half due to a jewellery industry strike against excise duty and a new rule requiring customers to disclose their permanent account numbers for purchases above Rs2 lakh.Consumer sentiment and demand recovered significantly by the start of the fourth quarter of 2016-17 and sales were good across divisions in varying degrees, Titan said in a quarterly update filed with BSE Ltd on Tuesday.The jewellery unit, led by the firm’s primary brand Tanishq, had a good quarter due to the “resounding success of the studded jewellery activation”, the Titan said.The firm launched Rivaah, a range of wedding jewellery during the quarter and is going all out to promote the sub-brand under Tanishq.Gross margins from the jewellery business are expected to be good in the quarter and enrolments and redemptions in the Golden Harvest Scheme are on track, Titan said.Jewellery accounts for a major portion of Titan’s overall revenue. The firm opened 16 Tanishq stores in 2016-17.The watches unit, which had been struggling after demonetization hurt sales in both trade and multi-brand retail channels, also had a good quarter, according to the BSE filing. The trade channel has recovered from the after-effects of the cash ban, it added.However, the exports and original equipment manufacturing businesses within Titan’s watches unit continue to face headwinds, slowing down overall growth marginally. During the quarter, the company launched its slimmest ceramic watch, Edge Date, and also entered the fitness band market with an activity tracker launched under the Fastrack brand. Titan added 24 World of Titan stores and eight Helios stores during 2016-17.Titan said a revival in the demand for sunglasses turned around overall sales at its eyewear division. But the closure of 12 Spexx stores dampened top line growth to some extent. It opened 59 Titan Eye Plus stores during the year.During the fourth quarter, the company also opened its first handloom apparel store in Bengaluru’s upscale Indiranagar, marking its entry into the women’s wear segment, which is in the pilot mode for now.Titan is optimistic about revenue growth in the coming year, though a high goods and services tax rate for jewellery might have some impact on its growth rate.",2017-04-05,Titan said the second half of 2016-17 was a reversal from the first half when the firm struggled due to policy changes in the jewellery industry,0.07,01:47,Titan says H2 FY17 exceeded expectations despite demonetisation +0,"New Delhi: Markets regulator Sebi is looking to allow investors to buy mutual funds worth up to Rs50,000 through digital wallets to make it easier for investors to purchase these instruments, especially the youth. The move would help in speedy and easy transactions while reducing failures due to payment gateway issues. Besides, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is expected to put in place regulations for instant withdrawal facility in liquid mutual fund. Also, asset management companies (AMCs) can tie-up with payment banks to provide digital transaction to investors. The board of Sebi will discuss proposals in this regard next week, sources said. These new facilities will help in increasing the penetration of mutual funds and help in channelising household savings into capital markets. They would also provide a convenient option to investors to diversify from the traditional saving avenue. Under the proposal, the total subscription through an e-wallet for an investor should be restricted up to Rs50,000 per mutual fund in a financial year. The regulator may ask AMCs to enter into an agreement with pre-paid payment instruments for facilitating payment from e-wallets of the investors to mutual fund schemes. AMCs will have to ensure that e-wallet issuers must not offer incentives such as cash back directly or indirectly for investing in MFs through them. Further, an e-wallet’s balance, loaded through cash, debit card and net banking, can only be used for subscriptions to mutual funds. However, balance loaded with a credit card, cash back and promotional scheme should not be allowed for purchase of such products. Sebi may come out with a framework for an instant access facility in liquid schemes, wherein investors can withdraw their funds invested in the scheme within a very short time through an online mechanism. For the instant access facility, the regulator may set a limit of Rs50,000 or 90% of investment, whichever is lower, per day per investor per scheme. The regulator may mandate fund houses to get prior approval from the AMC board and trustee board before offering this facility to investors and also make appropriate disclosures in offer documents. Currently, 41 AMCs together manage assets worth Rs18.3 lakh crore and mutual fund investor accounts are over Rs5 crore. MFs are investment vehicles made up of a pool of funds collected from a number of investors. The funds are invested in stocks, bonds and money market instruments, among others.",2017-04-18,"Sebi is looking to allow investors to buy mutual funds worth up to Rs50,000 through digital wallets in a move aimed at enabling speedy and easy transactions ",0.82,17:55,Sebi may allow investors to buy mutual funds via digital wallet +0,"New Delhi: SBI Card, with over 4 million customers, has started charging Rs100 for payment through cheque if the amount is up to Rs2,000 and anything above will attract no fee. The fee kicks in from 1 April. The move, SBI Card said, is aimed at encouraging digital payments in line with the government’s policy. “A fee of Rs100 will be charged for payments made by cheque for an amount less than or equal to Rs2,000 w.e.f 1 April 2017,” it said.The credit card company, however, said there will be no additional fee for cheque payments greater than Rs2,000. CEO of SBI Card Vijay Jasuja said that over 90% of its customers make payments through non-cheque mode. “We have observed a trend of payment related disputes arising in small cheque payments, causing inconvenience to customers as well. We offer several seamless digital modes of payment which we are seeking to encourage, in line with the government’s focus towards digital payments and this step will facilitate the same,” the CEO said.Jasuja added that there will be no charge on cheque payments on holders of SBI Card Unnati which is targeted at first-time credit card users and aimed at inclusion of people into the organised financial stream.With a customer base of over 4 million, SBI Card operates through a footprint of more than 90 locations in India. SBI Card is a joint venture between State Bank of India and GE Capital. The joint venture operates through two companies. GE Capital Business Processes Management Services (GECBPMSL) takes care of the technology and processing needs of SBI Card while SBI Cards and Payments Services (SBICPSL) focuses on customer acquisition, marketing and risk management of SBI Card.Last month, SBI had said it would increase its stake in SBI Card to 74% by June-end.",2017-04-18,"SBI Card has started charging Rs100 for payment through cheque if the amount is up to Rs2,000 and anything above will attract no fee",0.26,18:40,SBI Card starts charging Rs100 on small payments via cheque +0,"
Bengaluru: Advertising technology firm InMobi eked out a net profit in the last quarter of 2016 and the company expects to be profitable this year, chief executive Naveen Tewari said in an interview.Tewari declined to disclose the company’s profit figures. News website Factordaily last year reported that InMobi reported a loss of $40 million on a revenue of $262 million for the year to March 2015, citing the company’s Singapore filings. InMobi said it follows a calendar year but because it is incorporated in Singapore, the firm reports its numbers there according to the financial year.If InMobi can achieve its target of generating a net profit this year, it will mark a remarkable turnaround for a company that has been written off by many investors and analysts.“Till about the first half of last year, InMobi was struggling to make some of its recent big bets work on a sustainable basis. What they’ve done since then is they’ve gone back to the basics and doubled down on some of their core products and markets like the US and China,” said Satish Meena, a senior forecast analyst at Forrester Research. “They’ve also channelled resources into key areas such as mobile video, and that has helped them show early signs of recovery. Their other offerings around mobile are also starting to witness some traction.”He added: “However, we may have to wait a little longer to assess whether the recent recovery is sustainable. For now, mobile video holds the key for them, since most large companies that are investing in this space are betting big on mobile advertising—that’s where most of the advertising dollars are being spent right now.” Tewari said the company’s profit push, which began in mid-2015, was based on signing high-margin deals with clients, an increase in its video ad business and a shift towards more profitable markets.“We became ultra-focused on doing the right deals. You start choosing the right deals and giving up the bad deals. Then, last year, we focused only on two markets—US and China. This year, we’re focusing on three other markets—India, Indonesia and Australia. This is a big shift from previous years when we were spending freely on expanding in all markets,” Tewari said.The firm, which didn’t increase its headcount last year, was also helped by an increase in its re-seller business, in which its partners in various markets earn commissions based on the business they bring, Tewari said.The focus on profits came at a cost: sales growth at the firm dropped to roughly 20% in 2016. In previous years, InMobi has seen sales growth of at least 30%. However, Tewari said growth will pick up this year as it increases its presence in India, Indonesia and Australia, and strikes deals with large enterprises across the world that are eager to generate advertising revenues online.To be sure, InMobi has missed targets in the past. It competes with the giants of the online advertising business—Google and Facebook—both of which have been mentioned as potential buyers of InMobi in the past. It went on a hiring spree in 2012 and 2013 with disastrous consequences. And some of its products have flopped. One such, launched in 2015, was Miip, which took the form of an animated monkey that tracked users’ browsing habits across mobile apps and showed ads in the forms of bubbles and animations instead of traditional display ads. InMobi’s last fund-raising was in 2011, when it raised $200 million from SoftBank Group Corp. Since then, discussions with several investors over funding haven’t materialized.“Our need for raising money was never for operational uses even when we were losing $3-5 million a quarter. At that rate, we would have had cash to last till 2019. Now, of course, we’re adding cash. So, to clarify, we wanted to raise money to be able to do strategic things like acquisitions and not for running the business. For a variety of reasons like differences over valuation, these acquisitions didn’t go through,” Tewari said.InMobi has raised a working capital debt of $60 million, which has to be repaid by 2020. Tewari said the firm is adding to its cash reserves every month after its business turned profitable at the EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) level last March.InMobi is also in the process of hiring a new chief financial officer after its previous finance chief, Manish Dugar, left to join online healthcare platform Practo last May. “Now that we are profitable, we think we can be a public company. Either going public or figuring out if this could be a bigger play (combining) with somebody else—those are both opportunities,” Tewari said.",2017-04-05,"If InMobi can achieve its target of generating a net profit for this year, it will mark a remarkable turnaround for a company that has been written off by many analysts",1.0,01:41,InMobi posts profit in December quarter +0,"Seoul: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd forecast on Friday its best quarterly profit in more than three years in the January-March period, beating expectations and putting it on track for record annual earnings on the back of a memory chip super-cycle.The Apple Inc. rival has rapidly recovered from last year’s costly failure of its fire-prone Galaxy Note 7 device, despite a political scandal involving vice chairman Jay Y. Lee who appeared in a Seoul court on Friday facing charges including bribing ousted president Park Geun-hye.The global memory chip leader said first-quarter operating profit was likely 9.9 trillion won ($8.8 billion), compared with an average forecast of 9.4 trillion won from a Thomson Reuters survey of 18 analysts. Revenue rose 0.4% to 50 trillion won, just ahead of analysts’ forecasts. “The semiconductor business was likely the main driver for earnings,” said Heungkuk Securities analyst Lee Min-hee, adding that sales of mid-to-low tier smartphones also helped the mobile business remain profitable. Samsung shares touched a record high of 2.134 million won in late March on expectations of record annual profit in 2017, as the South Korean tech giant bounced back from the embarrassing withdrawal of its Note 7 devices due to combustible batteries.Investors and analysts expect Samsung to report its best-ever quarterly profit in April-June, with the Galaxy S8 smartphone hitting the market on 21 April in Samsung’s first premium device launch since the Note 7’s withdrawal in October. Some researchers forecast the S8, which sports the largest screens for Samsung high-end smartphones to date, to set a new first-year sales record.“Samsung will look to recover market share they lost last year and pump up volumes even if they have to spend more to do so,” IBK’s Kim said. All this is happening amid management upheaval at South Korea’s biggest family-run conglomerate, with third-generation leader Lee embroiled in a scandal that has already led to Park’s removal from office for allegedly receiving bribes.Lee was arrested in February over his alleged role in a corruption scandal. He denies any wrongdoing. Chips sizzle While Samsung will not provide detailed earnings results until the end of April, analysts tipped its chip division to earn a record 5.8 trillion won in January-March and propel the firm to its best overall operating profit since the third quarter of 2013. Favourable memory market conditions will likely persist throughout 2017 due to diminishing production gains on investments and careful capacity management among chipmakers.Growing demand for more firepower from devices such as smartphones and servers have also helped push up margins for Samsung and its rivals in recent quarters.Samsung shares were down 1.2% in early Friday trade, underperforming a 0.2% fall for the broader market on profit-taking pressures. Reuters",2017-04-07,"Samsung forecast its best quarterly profit in more than three years in the January-March period, putting it on track for record annual earnings on the back of a memory chip super-cycle",1.0,10:21,Samsung tips best quarterly profit in over three years as chips soar +0,"Mumbai: State Bank of India (SBI) on Tuesday surpassed ONGC to become the country’s most valuable public sector unit (PSU), in terms of market valuation. At the end of trade, the market cap of SBI stood at Rs2,35,307.51 crore. This is about Rs2,961.79 crore more than that of PSU energy major ONGC’s Rs2,32,345.72 crore. ONGC once used to be the country’s most-valued company in terms of market valuation. Among the top-10 most valued companies list, SBI is at fifth position, while ONGC is seventh. Shares of SBI ended the day with a mild gain of 0.17% at Rs290.15, while ONGC fell by 1.12% to Rs181.05 on BSE. In intra-day, shares of SBI rose by 2.33% to Rs 296.40 and ONGC lost 1.36% to Rs180.60. So far this year, shares of SBI surged almost 16% while that of ONGC fell by over 4%. IT major TCS is the most valued Indian company with a market cap of Rs4,54,902.85 crore followed by RIL (Rs4,45,578.92 crore), HDFC Bank (Rs3,70,480.05 crore), ITC (Rs3,38,851.25 crore), SBI, HDFC (Rs2,35,122.56 crore), ONGC, Infosys (Rs2,11,870.18 crore), HUL (Rs1,97,464.44 crore) and Maruti Suzuki (Rs1,85,235.49 crore).",2017-04-18,"SBI becoems India’s most valuable PSU firm after market cap rises to Rs2,35,307.51 crore , about Rs2,961.79 crore more than that of ONGC ",1.0,17:47,"SBI market cap crosses ONGC’s, becomes India’s most valuable PSU firm " +0,"Delhi Metro Rail Corp. Ltd (DMRC) will make huge savings by purchasing power from Rewa Ultra Mega Solar Ltd which is implementing the world’s largest solar power project at a single site in Madhya Pradesh, a power ministry statement said.“There would be huge savings to the Delhi Metro because of per unit cost of power reducing from over Rs4.50 to Rs3.30,” the statement said quoting power and renewable energy minister Piyush Goyal, who presided over the signing of DMRC’s power purchase agreement in Bhopal on Monday.The 750 megawatt (MW) project sharply brought down solar power tariff to Rs3.3 a unit in February this year, the lowest discovered in an auction till then, when three 250MW projects were awarded to Mahindra Renewables Pvt. Ltd, Acme Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd and Sweden’s Solenergi Power Pvt. Ltd. Subsequently, NTPC’s 250MW project at Kadapa in south-central Andhra Pradesh was awarded for a flat Rs3.15 per unit in an auction last week.International Finance Corp. (IFC), the private lending and advisory arm of the World Bank Group, which was the transaction advisor for the Rewa project said in a statement on Monday that the project will mobilize $550 million in private investment.“The Rewa solar park transaction will have an enormous ripple effect, helping create new markets for large solar projects across India and the region,” the IFC statement said quoting executive vice president and CEO, Philippe Le Houérou. “This is the first time that solar power has achieved grid parity, which means that the ambitious renewable energy targets set by the government are within reach,” said the IFC statement quoting Rewa Ultra Mega Solar Ltd chairman and principal secretary, government of Madhya Pradesh, Manu Srivastava. The winning bidders of the project signed two sets of power purchase agreements with the Madhya Pradesh Power Management Corporation Ltd (MPPMCL) and the DMRC. With about 24% of energy from the park being sold to the Delhi Metro, it will meet about 80% of daytime energy requirement of Delhi Metro, the IFC statement said further.",2017-04-18,"Delhi Metro’s per unit cost of power would reduce from over Rs4.50 to Rs3.30, says power minister Piyush Goyal",1.0,01:03,Rewa solar power deal to help Delhi Metro save energy cost: Piyush Goyal +0,"New Delhi: A joint venture of state-run NTPC has decided to snap power supply to three states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana from its Vallure thermal station over non-payment of dues of Rs 1,388 crore. The NTPC Tamil Nadu Energy Company Ltd (NTECL) has issued a notice for regulation of power supply to Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Karnataka to the extent of 1,229 MW from its Vallur Thermal Power Station (1500 MW), for non-payment of long outstanding dues of Rs1,388 crore, person familiar with the development said. “The regulation or suspension of power supply shall be implemented from 00:00 hrs of 26 April 2017, and is expected to seriously affect power supply position in these states,” the person aware of the development added. The NTECL, a joint venture company between NTPC and Tamil Nadu Electricity Board, is engaged in generation, transmission and distribution of electricity. The joint venture was formed for setting up a 1,500 mw coal-based power station at Vallur, Ennore in Tamil Nadu utilising the existing infrastructure facility at Ennore and supply power mainly to Tamil Nadu and also to Kerala, Karnataka and Pondicherry.",2017-04-18,"The NTPC Tamil Nadu Energy Company has issued a notice for regulation of power supply to Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Karnataka to the extent of 1,229 MW ",0.06,21:26,NTPC Vallure station to cut power supply to 3 states over pending dues +0,"New Delhi: In a boost to India’s lagging solar rooftop sector, the Union ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE) has decided to give custom and excise duty benefits to it for ensuring high growth.The move will not only bring down the costs of setting up projects but also that of generation.Solar power developers setting up grid-connected solar PV (photovoltaic) projects have been seeking “grant of duty benefits” (custom and excise duty) from the MNRE for installation of rooftop systems.“The matter of extending the duty benefits to the rooftop grid connected solar PV power plants has been under consideration in this ministry for past some time. After examination of various issues involved, it has been decided to give customs and excise duty exemption certificates, with immediate effect, to all rooftop solar PV power projects upto a minimum capacity of 100 KW (Kilowatt) as a single project or bundled project,” said an MNRE order dated 11 April.India has set up an ambitious 100 GW solar power target by 2022. Of the 100 GW, 60 GW is planned through large- and medium-scale grid-connected solar power projects while 40 GW is planned from the solar PV (photovoltaic) rooftop system. But the sector has not seen great growth and the target of 40 GW by 2022 remains a mammoth task. As per reports, India’s rooftop solar capacity till 2016-end was about 1GW only.Experts welcomed the custom and excise duty benefits for the solar sector. “It’s a good decision. We have ambitious targets and we need to take various steps to encourage the solar rooftop sector. We need to bring the cost down and make it more lucrative,” said Rakesh Kamal, a consultant with The Climate Reality Project, an independent organisation working on climate change-related issues.Kamal, however, cautioned that MNRE should also focus on maintaining the quality of solar panels being used.India has given a huge thrust to the solar rooftop sector as it does not require pooling of land or separate transmission facilities and has minimal technical losses, unlike ground-mounted solar projects.The solar rooftop sector also benefits power distribution companies in various ways. For instance, rooftop projects enable these companies to meet their renewable purchase obligations, help them in managing daytime peak loads which are projected to become more widespread as India’s economy grows and in localised generation of power that ultimately helps them in avoiding costly power.States leading in providing solar rooftop power are Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Punjab.",2017-04-18,The ministry of new and renewable energy has decided to give custom and excise duty benefits to the solar rooftop sector to boost growth,1.0,17:39,"Govt to give customs, excise duty benefits to boost solar rooftop sector" +0,"New Delhi: India’s fossil fuel consumption trend is suggesting a shift away from inefficient and highly polluting use of hydrocarbons, as a result of efforts to move towards a less-carbon-intensive economy.Consumption of kerosene, used primarily for lighting and cooking purposes in rural areas, has dropped by a sharp 21% in 2016-17 from a year ago to 5.3 million tonnes, aided by greater use of cleaner liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking and coverage of more villages under the rural electrification programme, as per data from Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, an arm of the oil ministry.In the same period, consumption of LPG jumped 9.8% to 21.5 million tonnes, supported by a nationwide drive to boost consumption of clean cooking fuel. In 2016-17, state-owned fuel retailers Indian Oil Corp. (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp. and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. issued a total 3.25 crore new connections, the highest number of connections given in any year ever. The number included the 2 crore connections given under the “LPG-for poor women” scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana.The Central government has been encouraging states to cut down their kerosene use in line with progress in village electrification and LPG penetration as it is widely believed that a large part of kerosene meant to be distributed through state public distribution system is diverted for adulteration of diesel.The data showed that consumption of diesel, which, apart from as a transportation fuel, is used in power generation sets by businesses and commercial enterprises, grew at a modest pace of 1.8% in 2016-17 to 76 million tonnes compared to a 7.5% growth in the previous 12 months, as the country added more renewable power capacity.India added 5,526 MW of new solar capacity in 2016-17, up 83% from a year ago. Addition in wind power capacity in the same period was 5,400 MW, 63% more than what was achieved a year ago.A draft five-year electricity plan brought out by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), a federal statutory body, last December said that the share of non-fossil fuels in India’s sources of electricity will reach 46.8% by 2021-22. This projection suggests the country could improve upon its climate change goal of generating 40% of electricity from non-fossil fuels by 2030—the intended nationally determined contribution, a commitment made at the UN framework convention on climate change in Paris last December.Indian Oil Corp. chairman B. Ashok said that the growth rate in diesel should be seen in the context of its high base—three times that of petrol. Ashok said that every class of fuel has scope for growth in line with the country’s economic growth rate and rising energy requirement.Petrol consumption grew 8.7% during the year under review to 23.7 million tonnes and jet fuel by 12% to 7 million tonnes. Gas consumption during the period grew to 8.7% to 50.7 billion cubic metres.",2017-04-17,"Consumption of kerosene dropped by 21% in 2016-17 from a year ago to 5.3 million tonnes, while that of LPG jumped 9.8% to 21.5 million tonnes in the same period",0.83,12:47,"Use of kerosene, diesel falls, LPG consumption rises on clean energy drive" +0,"
Kolkata: The national coal quality watchdog has downgraded 177 of Coal India Ltd’s 413 mines, potentially impairing the monopoly miner’s profitability, starting from the current year. The downgrades took effect 1 April. A total of 2,636 samples from the miner’s seven subsidiaries were examined and that led to the downgrading of 177 mines, said a key official at Coal Controller’s Organization (CCO)—the watchdog. A few mines were upgraded too, added this person, asking not to be identified.Admitting the downgrade, key Coal India officials said the miner’s focus in the current year will be on quality of coal, and that in most cases downgrading was by 1-2 grades only. The company’s profitability will surely be impacted by the move, but it is too early to assess to what extent, the Coal India officials said, asking not to be named.There will be a negative impact in the short run, said Goutam Chakraborty, an analyst (metals and mining) with Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd. “However, at the same time, the impact may not be too significant going forward,” he added. Because of the downgrade, Coal India’s realization from the 177 coal mines will decline whereas the cost of mining will remain unchanged or inch up due to inflation. Coal grades are determined by the gross calorific value of the fuel. Earlier, Coal India used to determine the grade on its own.After years of bickering between power producers and Coal India over grades and quality slippages, the union government agreed to start a process of independent inspection of coal for quality.Since the Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research started monitoring quality, the slippages have declined, said Ashok Khurana, the secretary general of lobby group Association of Power Producers.Cases of recurrent slippages were referred to the Coal Controller’s Organization and that led to the downgrading of 177 mines, according to Khurana.“The results of the past year have been encouraging and several power producers have benefited,” he added.",2017-04-17,"Coal Controller’s Organization has downgraded 177 of Coal India’s 413 mines, potentially impairing the monopoly miner’s profitability",0.31,04:41,177 mines of Coal India downgraded on quality concerns +0,"New York: A well operated by BP Exploration Alaska Inc. on Alaska’s frigid North Slope is no longer spraying crude oil after leaks were discovered Friday morning.The well, located in the Greater Prudhoe Bay area, was venting gas, which caused a spray of crude oil to impact the well pad. By Sunday afternoon in Alaska, that had been stopped. A second leak had been reduced but was still emitting gas, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said in a statement. Well pressure was monitored throughout the night and excess pressure was bled off to keep it within a safe range.The volume of the leak hasn’t been determined, and the cause of the release is unknown, the Department said. There have been no injuries and no reports of harm to wildlife.Based on aerial pictures, the release appears to be contained to the gravel pad surrounding the well head and hasn’t reached the surrounding tundra, BP said in a statement. The well has been shut in since Friday and the response is ongoing, BP spokeswoman Dawn Patience said by email Sunday.The leak comes as the remote North Slope, once home to America’s biggest oilfields, enjoys a resurgence as producers work to boost output from aging wells and extend their reach to new supplies. North Slope production rose to 565,000 barrels a day in March, its highest level since December 2013. It’s another sign, along with multibillion-barrel discoveries in recent months, that the area may be reversing decades of declining volumes and investment.Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.’s Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which runs from Prudhoe Bay south to Valdez, isn’t affected by this incident and is operating normally, Michelle Egan, a company spokeswoman, said by telephone Sunday. Alyeska is a joint partnership led by the North Slope’s top producers, BP Plc, Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips. Bloomberg",2017-04-17,BP’s well on Alaska’s frigid North Slope is no longer spraying crude oil after leaks were discovered Friday morning,0.12,12:47,BP races to contain Alaska’s North Slope well after finding leaks +0,"
New Delhi: After making forays into Bangladesh and Nepal, Indian refiners are about to venture into Myanmar to supply auto fuel. At the same time, they are also consolidating their presence in their earlier South Asian markets. Later this year, Numaligarh Refinery Ltd in Assam will be the first off the block in selling petroleum products to Myanmar. “Supply of fuel will initially be by road and if the quantity required turns out to be huge, then it will make sense to invest in pipelines,” a person with direct knowledge of the matter said on condition of anonymity. State-owned Indian Oil Corp. is also keen to start retailing operations in Myanmar for which it has submitted a proposal to the government of that country, the person said. Indian Oil is also preparing to expand its Nepal operations by opening 100 retail outlets in partnership with Nepal Oil Corp., a state-owned trading company. Besides, talks are on to extend the scope of an earlier planned pipeline between Raxaul in Bihar to Amlekhganj in eastern Nepal, the person said. Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Nepal’s minister for supplies Deepak Bohara discussed the possibility of expanding the proposed pipeline to connect Motihari in Bihar and Chitwan in Nepal when they met in the last week of March, said the person cited above. The governments are also studying the possibility of two additional pipelines to transport liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and natural gas. During Bohara’s visit, Nepal renewed its fuel purchase deal with India for another five years. The Himalayan nation will buy 1.3 million tonnes of fuel from India every year during the period.Indian Oil chairman B. Ashok told Mint in an interview published on 6 March that the company is working on expanding almost all of its existing refineries including the ones in the north-east. The move is part of the Make in India drive, and aimed at adding jobs in the refining and petrochemical sectors. Earlier this week, India and Bangladesh agreed to increase energy cooperation which included business-to-business deals in the hydrocarbon sector. A $1 billion contract between Petronet LNG Ltd. and Bangladesh Oil, Gas and Mineral Corp., (Petrobangla) for use of Petronet’s LNG terminal and a $300 million deal between Reliance Power Ltd. and Petrobangla for setting up a 500 million standard cubic feet per day LNG terminal at Kutubdia island near Chittagong are among them. A report by the Boston Consulting Group in 2016 titled Hydrocarbons to Fuel the Future noted that India’s refinery capacity addition witnessed a halt between the period 2012-2015, driven largely by project delays and that it was important the country regained its lost momentum in adding capacity to reinvigorate export potential. India has a 230 million tonne a year refining capacity. “India has demonstrated technical capability and cost competitiveness in building and operating large refineries. It makes sense to invest in mega coastal refineries of high complexity to serve growing domestic demand and also to serve markets such as East Africa and Asia,” said Debasish Mishra, partner at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP.",2017-04-15,Indian Oil Corp. is keen to start retailing operations in Myanmar for which it has submitted a proposal to the government of that country,0.41,00:10,Indian refiners eye entry into Myanmar to supply auto fuel +0,"New Delhi: The price of petrol was hiked by Rs1.39 per litre and diesel by Rs1.04 a litre in sync with firming international rates. The hike comes on the back of a Rs4.85 per litre reduction in rates of petrol and Rs3.41 a litre in diesel effected from 1 April. Indian Oil Corp (IOC), the nation’s largest fuel retailer, said price of petrol is being increased by Rs1.39 per litre, excluding state levies, and that of diesel by Rs1.04 (excluding state levies) with effect from Saturday midnight. Actual increase in price will be more after taking into account local value added tax (VAT). Petrol in Delhi currently costs Rs66.29 a litre while a litre of diesel is priced at Rs55.61. Also Read: Limerick: On petrol and diesel prices“The current level of international product prices of petrol and diesel and INR-USD exchange rate warrant increase in selling price of petrol and diesel, the impact of which is being passed on to the consumers with this price revision,” IOC said in a statement. The movement of prices in the international oil market and INR-USD exchange rate shall continue to be monitored closely and developing trends of the market will be reflected in future price changes, it said. IOC also said it intends to shortly start daily changes in price of petrol and diesel on pilot basis, in Udaipur, Jamshedpur, Pondicherry, Chandigarh and Vizag.",2017-04-16,Petrol in Delhi currently costs Rs66.29 a litre while a litre of diesel is priced at Rs55.61,0.2,08:42,"Petrol price hiked by Rs1.39 per litre, diesel up by Rs1.04" +0,"Hyderabad: Cairn India Limited, along with its partners is set to invest Rs3,240 crore in the Ravva Fields in the Krishna-Godavari Basin, to undertake 20 Developmental Wells and for setting up related infrastructure, as the oil and gas production is dwindling from the existing wells. Cairn India Limited approached the ministry of environment forest and climate change seeking necessary clearances for the proposed project. According to the minutes of the meeting by Expert Appraisal Committee under the ministry, the proposal was given green signal as far as Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) is concerned. “In order to enhance the hydrocarbon production within the already approved capacities, Cairn India Limited on behalf of Ravva JV proposes the following oil and gas developments to produce contingent hydrocarbon resources available in Ravva Field-Drilling of 20 developmental wells: 6 from new RI Platform and 14 from existing platforms... Drilling of 6 nos. of exploratory/appraisal wells to assess presence of hydrocarbons in identified pockets.. “The cost of the above proposed oil and gas development is estimated to be approximately Rs3,240 crore,” the EAC said in the minutes of the meeting held last month. According to the company’s annual report of FY 16, the Ravva Fields produced 18,602 Barrels of Oil Equivalent per Day (BOEPD) average daily gross operated production in 2016-17 against 23, 845 BOEPD in FY 16. Cairn India officials did not respond to mail seeking additional information. The Ravva field (PKGM-1 Block) located in the shallow offshore area of Krishna Godavari Basin, has completed 21 years of successful operations with ,Cairn India as the operator with 22.5% participating Interest. Exploration, development and production in the block are governed by a PSC that runs until 2019, which is in partnership with ONGC, Videocon and Ravva Oil Singapore. Currently, there are eight unmanned offshore platforms and a 225 acre onshore processing facility at Surasaniyanam in East Godavari of Andhra Pradesh which processes the natural gas and crude oil produced from the field, the annual report said. Over the years due to ageing of the field, production of oil and gas has declined. The onshore processing facility though has approved capacity to produce 50,000 Barrels of Oil Per Day (BOPD) crude oil and 2.32 Million Metric Standard Cubic Meters per Day MMSMD ( MMSMD) of gas and is presently producing approximately 22,000 BOPD of crude oil and 1.44 MMSCMD of natural gas, the minutes added.",2017-04-16,"Cairn India Limited along with its partners to invest Rs3,240 crore in the Ravva Fields in the Krishna-Godavari Basin",-0.02,15:10,"Cairn India, partners to invest Rs3,240 crore in Ravva Field" +0,"New Delhi: The government has identified old power projects totalling 7,738 MW capacity owned by the Centre and states for replacement with energy-efficient supercritical plants, which will generate a gross 18,560 MW.“The government has identified 7,738 MW inefficient thermal plants, which would be replaced with supercritical units, to conserve scarce natural resources like land, water and coal,” a senior official said. According to the official, the replacement will result in creation of 18,560 MW of capacity as per the assessment of power generation utilities. The move is expected to not just save natural resources, but help in boosting generation capacity of the plants. Taking an example, the official added that 440 MW of the Haryana Power Generation Corporation in Panipat will be replaced with an 800 MW energy efficient plant, which will almost double the generation capacity. Breaking down the numbers, state power generation utilities have marked out 6,608 MW for the purpose, which will lead to creation of 16,580 MW. The central utilities have marked 1,130 MW for replacement that will create 1,980 MW, going forward. According to power ministry estimates, as on 31 March, 2016, the capacity of coal-based thermal plants that are more than 25 years old was about 37,453 MW, including 35,509 MW in the government sector and 1,947 MW in private space. The official said the move towards energy efficiency and less-polluting technology makes more sense than renovation and modernisation and will yield long-term benefits. The plan is being chalked out after stringent norms for thermal power plants were laid down by the environment ministry. The new guidelines for coal-based power stations were introduced in December 2015 to cut down emission of PM10, SO2 and NOx and improve ambient air quality around plants. The ministry for the first time had fixed SOx and NOx norms for such stations and mandated that plants must adhere to these guidelines by 2017. According to industry estimate, the cost for technical changes at these plants could entail up to Rs1.5 crore per megawatt. Besides, the domestic capacity to manufacture power equipment for the upgrade is not more than 15 GW a year compared to demand of around 40 GW per annum for meeting SOx norms alone.",2017-04-16,"The inefficient 7,738 MW thermal power plants would be replaced with supercritical units to generate a gross 18,560 MW",0.61,10:43,Govt to replace 7.7 GW old power units with energy efficient plants +0,"New York: Leading the fastest-growing and most profitable division of Amazon.com Inc. is paying off for Andrew Jassy.The head of Amazon Web Services, which includes the company’s cloud business, received $35.4 million in stock and about $179,000 in salary and a 401(k) match, according to a regulatory filing from the Seattle-based company Wednesday. The shares rose in value to about $54 million as of Tuesday’s close. Jassy, promoted to a new CEO role for the division a year ago, was the company’s top-paid employee among the six executives whose compensation has to be publicly disclosed, including chief executive officer Jeff Bezos.Jassy is leading a push into artificial intelligence to boost Amazon’s cloud computing, which commands about 45% of the market for infrastructure as a service, where companies buy basic computing and storage power from the cloud. The unit, which Jassy has run since its inception 11 years ago, brought in a record $12.2 billion in revenue last year as the company introduced an image-recognition program, a speech-to-text service dubbed Polly and tools for building conversational apps. AWS has data centres around the world that provide computing power for many large companies, such as Netflix Inc. and Capital One Corp.“Inside AWS, we’re excited to lower the costs and barriers to machine learning and AI so organizations of all sizes can take advantage of these advanced techniques,” Bezos wrote in his annual letter to shareholders, which was also released Wednesday.Biennial grantsLike fellow tech giant Alphabet Inc., Amazon mainly pays top employees with biennial grants of restricted shares that vest over several years independently of company performance. That sets them apart from large companies in other industries, which tend to link payouts to specific goals such as revenue or stock return. Emphasizing certain criteria “could cause employees to focus solely on short-term returns at the expense of long-term growth and innovation,” Amazon’s board said in the filing.Amazon last year also promoted Jeffrey Wilke to CEO of the worldwide consumer business, awarding him a $33 million compensation package, the bulk coming from restricted shares vesting over several years.Senior vice presidents Jeffrey Blackburn and Diego Piacentini got $22.2 million and $23.7 million, respectively, mostly coming from biennial stock grants.CEO Bezos, who’s the world’s second-richest person with net worth of $77.7 billion, got his usual $81,840 annual salary and $1.6 million in security services last year. The billionaire, whose wealth comes from his ownership stake in the company, has never received equity compensation from Amazon. Bloomberg",2017-04-13,"Andrew Jassy, the head of Amazon Web Services received $35.4 million in stock and about $179,000 in salary and a 401(k) match",0.51,11:04,Amazon Web Services head Andrew Jassy reaps $35.4 million for 2016 +0,"
Singapore: One of the world’s best known investment gurus, Jim Rogers of Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interests, admitted in an interview that he may have been too hasty in exiting India in 2015, but says he won’t enter it now when the markets are at record highs. He says he was surprised that the government managed to get the legislation for the goods and services tax (GST) through. “It is a historic move as this has been a very contentious issue among Indian politicians for several years,” he added.Rogers said that in addition to GST, he has also been tracking the Indian market, the best performer among the world’s 10 largest stock markets thus far in 2017. “Yes, I am impressed, and I see that the markets are at an all-time high, currency is going up—they are making new highs without me, and that does not make me happy.”Also read: Jim Rogers: Surprised Modi government got GST throughKeen as he is to enter India, Rogers says he will wait because it doesn’t make sense to enter a market when it is on a high. “I don’t want to jump on to a moving train. When you jump on to a moving train, you’ll get hurt.”Rogers, a hedge fund manager whose investments serve as leads for many other investors, has long been an India bear. In 2014, though, soon after the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance came to power, he changed his tune. He explains that his investments in India were driven by his understanding of Modi’s achievements in Gujarat as chief minister and policy-leanings. “See, first I was interested in India because of his (Modi’s) record and what he said he planned to do,” he said. Then, in 2015, disappointed with the pace of progress in terms of reforms, he exited India. “He (Modi) did nothing much for two years, and I sold,” Rogers added. “Unfortunately, I sold too soon.”If the government continues in the same lines, India can’t be ignored, Rogers said. “If Modi continues doing stuff like GST, then not just me— everybody has to pay a lot more attention to India.”",2017-04-13,Investment guru Jim Rogers says he may have been too hasty in exiting India in 2015,-0.06,11:31,"Jim Rogers changes his mind on India again, says he missed the bus" +0,"
Singapore: Commodities trading guru and hedge fund manager Jim Rogers, who had sold his holdings in Indian companies and exited the country in late 2015 on the grounds that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had failed to live up to investors’ expectations, said he was reconsidering entering India.With Indian markets sustaining a record-breaking rally, Rogers admitted that he may have missed the bus on India, “On GST, I am amazed, shocked and stunned,” he said in an interaction, referring to the goods and services tax that will create a unified market in India.ALSO READ: Jim Rogers changes his mind on India again, says he missed the bus“If Modi continues doing stuff like GST, then not just me—everybody has to pay a lot more attention to India. This does not mean that I won’t have another chance to enter—India is currently on my list of something to do,” he added.Edited excerpts from an interview:
In September 2015, when we last spoke, you said you had sold all your holdings in Indian companies and exited India because the NDA government had failed to live up to investors’ expectations. But since then, the Indian markets have rallied and are at record highs, and reforms are on track, including the passage of GST. Foreign direct investment (FDI) into India touched an eight-year high of $46.4 billion in 2016.Wait—India passed the GST and that astonished me. I am surprised that Mr Modi’s government got that through. It is a historic move as this has been a very contentious issue among Indian politicians for several years.You say FDI flows into India are at record highs, and it is certainly not me. I am surprised with the FDI inflows—while Modi has undertaken small reforms, and cleaned up some stuff, I am not aware of any big steps to boost FDI. Yes, I am impressed, and I see that the markets are at an all-time high; currency is going up—they are making new highs without me, and that does not make me happy.This has made me realize that something is happening in India. When GST was passed, I reconsidered investing in India, and I thought, “wait a minute—this is going to work”. I am positively impressed, but I’am not back to investing in India yet—the markets are at an all-time high, but I don’t want to jump on to a moving train. When you jump on to a moving train, you’ll get hurt.I missed the bus in India. If Modi continues doing stuff like GST, then not just me—everybody has to pay a lot more attention to India. This does not mean that I won’t have another chance to enter—India is currently on my list of something to do.
When you look at emerging markets as an investor, where do you see India?India still has a lot of debt, unlike Russia that has a convertible currency and does not have much debt. I am invested in Russia. One reason why Russia does not have a high level of debt is that no one was willing to lend them money—and that is not necessarily a good thing. Indian politicians have been saying for a while now that the country will address this situation of debt, but nothing has been done. Some studies say India’s debt-to-GDP ratio is at 90% now. It is difficult to grow at a rapid pace when you have such high levels of debt, because you are dragging along interest rate payments. But India is still on my list, especially if Mr Modi can continue doing some of the stuff that he said he would do, and especially if the government makes the currency convertible and opens up the markets. I am more impressed by Mr Modi as a politician than as someone who is executing reforms—yes, GST was extraordinary. But your prime minister is a great politician; he is travelling around the world and making friends everywhere. As a politician, Mr Modi is one of the most successful and exceptional of this generation—no question about that. No surprise that he has picked up all states in the recent elections. Seventy years since independence, he is cleaning up the gigantic mess with moves like GST, which no on else has been able to do so far.
Finance minister Arun Jaitley recently said India’s economy is expected to grow at 7.2% in 2017 and 7.7% in 2018. What is your view?Most people don’t trust these numbers, including me. I used to say that what India does is to wait for China to announce its numbers, and then top them. I am skeptical of Chinese numbers and I am skeptical of Indian data. I am skeptical of American numbers, too. I’ve learnt over the years that if you are sitting and watching government numbers, and do your investments based on that, you are not going to make much money. Not too long ago, they caught the Germans faking numbers—the Germans of all people!
When you look at India, what are the risks? Could it be populist steps leading to 2019, the reforms process not continuing, or rising oil prices?I am more worried about the world because that will impact India. Yes, India has elections coming, and normally when that happens, any politician will do anything to win elections. Mr Modi is in a position to do a lot of stuff. I am not too worried about what is happening internally in India as the Modi-led government has momentum and everything going for it. The world situation is more worrying. Mr Trump has now bombed Syria. Many American presidents love war, and Mr Trump had said he was a non-interventionist. Now look at him! He is involved with Syria, and also saying he is going to get involved with North Korea. These can potentially not be good for the world. If the Middle East blows up in the next year or two, it won’t help the markets. It will help Russia and oil. It won’t help India or China. Mr Trump has promised to have trade wars with Mexico and China. He has not done it so far and so, maybe, is just another lying politician. But he said the same of Syria and then he intervened. He has said North Korea better watch out. He met with the Chinese and did not get anything. Power corrupts. Interest rates are going higher no matter what happens. The French and German elections are coming up—they could be disruptive. These worry me more than what Mr Modi is doing inside India.See, first I was interested in India because of his (Modi’s) record and what he said he planned to do. Then I invested. But he did nothing much for two years, and I sold. Unfortunately, I sold too soon. Modi will not do anything foolish before next elections—but the global situation can have an impact on India, irrespective of what Modi does. On the (farm) loan waivers, while I would say it is terrible economics, it is also brilliant politics.
Not just India, the global markets have rallied since Trump took over. So where can one invest in times like these?America is at an all-time high, and be it Japan or Germany—their markets are all doing well. There is a lot of money floating around. I had expected it all to slow down by now, but it has not. The Americans say they are going to be cutting back—but nobody has really done that in that past year or two. The only place I am looking to invest right now is Russian government bonds because the yields are very high—the rouble is down a lot. For whatever reason, Russia, which has been the most hated market in the world, is becoming less hated—more countries and politicians are reconsidering Russia. I’ve learnt in my life that if you buy things that are hated, they will make a lot of money even if takes a couple of years.India is at an all-time high.I own a lot of US dollars, and the reason I own it is because of the turmoil that I see coming, and people look for a safe haven in times like that and the dollar, rightly or wrongly, is considered a safe haven. But it is not—America is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world. What will happen is the US dollar will get overpriced and may even turn into a bubble, depending on where the turmoil is, and I hope that at that time, I am smart enough to sell the US dollar and put my monies elsewhere. Conceivably, it will be gold. Often, when the US dollar is very strong, gold goes down. I own gold, but I’ve not been buying gold in recent years. But if gold goes down sufficiently, I will sell my US dollars and buy gold. I expect the dollar to go substantially higher, and I hope I can sell then.Crude is in the process of making a bottom—it is a complicated bottom—we are going to look back in a few years from now and say that in 2015, 2016 and 2017, crude made its bottoming pattern. I will not sell crude now, especially if Trump is going to throw some more bombs around.
The Fed has said they will raise rates again this year. What’s your view on that?The Fed will continue to raise interest rates—we cannot continue like this—negative interest rates in most parts of the world are destroying a lot of people. Many pension plans, insurance companies and trusts are suffering badly now—you are going to have some pension plans in America go bankrupt, or not earn any money. They have the obligations to meet their promises as people continue to get older. When interest rates go higher, they are going to make bonds go lower—it is going to help the US dollar. Historically, in the US, if the Fed raised interest rates four times, it meant the stock market would go down and go down substantially for a while—it is clear that the Fed will raise interest rates four times, and it does not mean that it has to happen that way. One could counter and say, rates going up from zero to four times is not such a big deal and, therefore, it is different this time. Four of the most dangerous words in the financial markets are: “it’s different this time”. It is very dangerous when you hear people say that.
We are already four months into this calendar year. What do we need to look out for when it comes to the rest of 2017?We are also eight years into an economic recovery in the US, which is also very unusual. Most times in the US, every four years to 7-8 years, we’ve had economic setbacks since the beginning of the republic. Again, it does not always have to happen that way, but it nearly always has. Yes, we are four months into 2017, but I am more worried about the next couple of years. Mr Trump has promised some wonderful things. He has promised lower taxes, which is great for any economy and America is the largest in the world. He has promised to rebuild infrastructure, and that is wonderful, and we need it. He has promised to bring US dollars home—we have $3 trillion sitting outside the US by American companies and he has promised tax incentives to bring that home. He has promised to cut regulations and controls in the US economy—all of that is fantastic. If he does all this, and does not go to war, and also does not engage in a trade war, we can continue to have a good time for the foreseeable future. But I am skeptical because interest rates will be going higher, and because it has been eight years since we’ve had no problems in the US. For the US to continue this run, it can happen, but it has to be on a lot more debt. If all of that leads to a bubble…The other side will be very bad. Don’t worry—you will have a job and Mint will be in business because someone will have to be reporting all of this coming turmoil.",2017-04-13,"Investment guru Jim Rogers says if PM Narendra Modi continues doing stuff like GST, then not just him, everybody has to pay a lot more attention to India",0.61,18:21,Jim Rogers: I am surprised Modi government got GST through +0,"Charlottesville,US: To transform India’s economy, there is a need to reduce “friction” in businesses and create an “environment” wherein the government has more trust in its entrepreneurs, Infosys founder N. R. Narayana Murthy has said. For the transformation of the Indian economy, he said it is essential for the younger generation to be daring and that India is integrated with the global economy. “We still have a little bit of work in reducing friction to businesses. We need to create an environment where the government has more trust in its entrepreneurs than it is today,” Murthy, 70, told students of the prestigious Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia here. Murthy, the recipient of the 2017 Thomas Jefferson Foundation medal in Global Innovation, was responding to Darden School of Business Dean Scott Beardsley who asked, “what do you think needs to happen next to transform India’s economy. What is next”. Also read: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“We want our youngsters to be a little bit more daring in taking the entrepreneurial route more and more than the extent to which they do today. We have to become much more integrated to the world economy so that we can consider the entire world as our market and can become globally competitive. “And most importantly we can become much more open minded to learn from the wonderful things that are happening in this country and elsewhere. I would say these are required (for transforming India’s economy to the next level),” Murthy said. He, however, refrained from elaborating what the Indian government needs to do to create the environment of trust in its entrepreneurs and said, “I will tell you why, as an Indian citizen, it may not be proper if I were to be critical about India when I am outside India”. Interacting with students, he said, challenges for entrepreneurs are now different than the time when he started Infosys. Those days access to capital was almost non-existent and government was a big irritant. “Today, challenges are different. But in some sense even more complex, because today’s entrepreneurs have to be much more smarter than what we were because there is so much of competition on a global scale. Before you can say this can be done, somebody else may have already done it.” “Therefore, today’s entrepreneurs would have to be much more nimble, global, competitive because market is truly determinant for success today unlike our time when managing government was a big determinant in India,” he said. Murthy said good governance is all about maximising shareholders’ value while ensuring fairness, transparency and accountability to all stake holders. Of all the stakeholders, society is the most important player. “Respect from the society is the most important ingredient for longevity of a corporation,” he said. “To be honoured by the most innovative country in the world and to be awarded a medal in the name of Thomas Jefferson, author of Declaration of Independence is to me a big honour. I will certainly work hard, and hopefully smart in the remaining years of my life, to deserve this kindness, this generosity and this affection on their part,” he told PTI. The fact that the university has seen it fit to pick up somebody from India, and bestow this honour shows how open this country is and how generous they are, Murthy said. “Therefore this is a clear example of how Indian students wherever they are whether in India or here or anywhere else can be sure that as long as they are good citizens of this world, contribute to make the society a better place through peaceful and harmonious methods, they will be recognised, appreciated,” he said. Murthy said that Indian students are making a positive impact in the countries they are studying. “I have not come across a single person of Indian-origin who has conducted himself or herself in a manner that has brought sorrow to the society they are living in, anywhere, wherever in the world. So I think that is the right way. “I am very very proud of our Indian students. They are smart, have very good values and are very peaceful. They contribute to the society in a very significant way wherever they are. I just want them to continue to do this,” the Infosys founder said. The one important principle that Indian students should remember in everything they do is will this make India a more respected place, a more respected nation? Will this action of mine make me a better part of this community? Will this action deserve appreciation and affection from other members in this community? If they remember these then they will do everything possible, Murthy said. PTI",2017-04-13,Infosys founder Narayana Murthy says the younger generation needs to be daring in taking the entrepreneurial route for transformation of the Indian economy,0.43,14:26,Narayana Murthy says need to reduce ‘friction’ in businesses in India +0,"New York: Angry United Airlines customers can now vent their fury at a juicy target: the chief executive’s pocketbook.United ties about $500,000 of CEO Oscar Munoz’s annual bonus to customer satisfaction questionnaires. The manhandling of a doctor dragged off an overbooked flight in Chicago—and Munoz’s response, widely viewed as ham-handed—doesn’t figure to help his cause.Each day, United collects about 8,000 customer surveys on items such as legroom and the quality of in-flight coffee. Fliers were already pretty disgruntled. In 2016, researcher J.D. Power rated United dead last of traditional North American carriers. Early returns are now even less promising.“United Airlines just sent me a customer survey about my flight yesterday,” Meredith Tucker deadpanned on Twitter after the overbooking episode. “Looking forward to sharing my thoughts.”Of course, Munoz won’t be begging on street corners if he’s docked the half a million. The CEO has 2016 target compensation of about $14.3 million, according to his employment agreement. The actual amount for last year is expected to be disclosed by month’s end.In a filing, the company’s board said executive pay is “designed to further our objective of aligning the interests of our employees with those of our stockholders and customers.” United declined to comment.Hashtag: awkwardSouthwest Airlines Co. also ties part of CEO Gary Kelly’s bonus to a measure of customer loyalty. Delta Air Lines Inc. links a part of CEO Ed Bastian’s annual long-term stock award to customer service.At the airline officially known as United Continental Holdings Inc., the board mentions “customer satisfaction” in the pay filing no less than 20 times. The company didn’t specify exactly how that’s calculated, though the bonus is tied to improvement of the survey results.Presumably, dragging customers out of their seats won’t help. A Twitter wag named Joe Householder wrote, under the hashtag, #awkward: “Based on experience, the guy on the #united flight is getting his, ‘tell us about your trip,” email survey about now.”Another Twitter commentator said he actually received one, which asked, “According to you, why do we consider ourselves the best airline to fly with?” His answer: “beats me.” Bloomberg",2017-04-13,The manhandling of a doctor dragged off an overbooked United Airlines flight in Chicago—and CEO Oscar Munoz’s response—doesn’t figure to help his cause,1.0,10:19,"United Airlines tied $500,000 CEO bonus to customer satisfaction results" +0,"The absence of negative surprises proved to be good news for power utilities. Against an 8% rise in the Sensex, the BSE Power index gained 10% in the first two months of 2017 even as the companies reported a lacklustre performance for the December quarter.Overall generation was up 5.3%, slightly better than the 4.4% rise a year ago. Power production at NTPC Ltd was up just 1%. As power off-take remained subdued, the firm’s thermal power plants’ utilization dropped 1%. “3QFY17 has seen a continuation of the overall trend of weak power demand growth, subdued merchant prices, back-downs by discoms and marginal generation capacity addition,” Antique Stock Broking Ltd said in a review.Due to a normalization of taxes, NTPC’s unadjusted profits fell 7.5%. JSW Energy Ltd reported an even steeper drop in profit on high costs and low realizations. Still, as the rise in the BSE Utilities index shows, investors attached little importance to the results. Why? Because of positive commentary from managements and the hope that 2017 will end the woes of Tata Power Co. Ltd and Adani Power Ltd.NTPC maintained its 4,000 megawatts (MW) capacity addition guidance for the current fiscal despite adding just 1,400MW till December. Similarly, Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd, whose project start-ups grew just 2% from the September quarter, indicated strong capitalization in January-March. “As against ~4,650 ckm (circuit km) transmission line commissioned in 9mFY17, management is targeting to commission a ~4,750 ckm transmission line in 4QFY17E,” HDFC Securities Ltd wrote in a note.Tata Power’s coal business venture did well. But high coal prices affected profitability of its Mundra plant. Adani Power reported a higher-than-expected loss on low volume off-take and shortage of domestic coal. Even then both stocks went up in January-February on speculation the coming Supreme Court order will end the under-recovery woes at their plants in Mundra, Gujarat. “For us, the key trigger remains the Supreme Court’s ratification of CERC (central electricity regulatory commission) compensatory tariff recommendations,” Edelweiss Securities Ltd wrote in a note on Tata Power.The story is similar at CESC Ltd. The stock, too, has gained sharply, as the management said its Spencer’s retail business, which has been losing money, stopped making losses at the operating level in the last quarter. Further, it also indicated it is open to listing the retail business, fuelling valuation gains. With the retail business showing signs of profitability, analysts are optimistic CESC’s return ratios will improve.The optimism is also providing heft to NTPC, Power Grid, Tata Power, and Adani Power. The question is: will 2017 live up to the expectations?",2017-03-24,"Overall electricity generation in the December quarter was up 5.3%, only slightly better than the 4.4% rise in the year ago quarter",0.44,06:22,Power utilities: eye on key milestones helped investors overcome subdued Q3 +0,"Indian oil firms delivered a subdued performance in the December quarter. Take for instance Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL’s) results. Despite the fact that it crossed the Rs8,000-crore mark in stand-alone net profit for the first time, the performance would have been sweeter if income from sources other than its main business had not played a key role in boosting profit. Notably, while RIL’s gross refining margin (GRM) improved to $10.8 a barrel from $10.1 a barrel in the September quarter, the measure was lower than expected, considering that the benchmark Singapore refining margin had done much better sequentially.GRM is the realization from turning every barrel of crude oil into finished products and is an important measure of profitability for refining firms.RIL’s petrochemicals segment performed well but that couldn’t compensate for the disappointment from the refining business. However, investors have little to complain given that the stock has appreciated as much as 21% till 17 March since RIL announced it will start charging its customers in the telecom business. Further stock appreciation will be dependent on how the telecom venture fares in the days to come.State-run refining and marketing firms—Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) and India Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL)—delivered a decent performance. Reported GRMs improved sequentially. Inventory gains helped. According to analysts from Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd, core earnings, adjusted for inventory gains, came in at Rs12.7/12.1/7.6/ share for BPCL/HPCL/IOCL versus reported earnings per share of Rs15.7/15.7/8.4, respectively. “After adjusting for one-offs, core earnings of IOCL and BPCL came in-line with our estimates but HPCL missed the mark on this metric as marketing margins disappointed,” an Emkay report said last month. However, broadly, reported earnings of all three firms were in-line, according to Emkay. These stocks have done well in the past two years, helped by diesel price deregulation and improvements in earnings. A further upside can come if refining margins improve further.Meanwhile, stocks of upstream oil firms—Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd—have performed well in the past couple of months, thanks to firmer crude prices. However, if oil prices continue to remain range-bound, further appreciation in shares of ONGC and Oil India will be tough. Both firms saw their net price realization improve year-on-year as well as sequentially.",2017-03-24,Oil firms delivered a subdued performance for the December quarter,0.25,08:14,Subdued performance from oil firms in the December quarter +0,"New Delhi: Henry Kravis, the boss of private equity pioneer KKR & Co. walks into the slightly cramped meeting room of the Vigyan Bhawan with a stride that belies his 73 years and his diminutive build. Sporting a conservative grey suit with a stylish pocket square, the man who is effectively the CEO to 129 CEOs of KKR’s portfolio companies, kicks off the proceedings by delivering a concise insight into what’s happening in the US and closes on the hour by talking about India’s narrow credit market and the lack of depth in its equity markets, both of which have restricted the financing options for small and medium enterprises.Vigyan Bhawan on Motilal Nehru Road in New Delhi’s central district is an odd choice for the meeting. In the past it was the venue for dull global events like meetings of Non Aligned countries or commonwealth heads of states. That was when the government could not be seen patronizing private hotels. Now most ministers call editors to meals at the best hotels. So this is a real surprise—one of the world’s most successful capitalists with a net worth close to $5 billion who is at the very top of the private enterprise food cycle, now meeting selected journalists at this throwback to India’s socialist era.Kravis is a contrarian and instead of dwelling on US President Donald Trump’s many gaffes, talks of how he is a business-friendly president who has a big task ahead to deliver on his many promises, including tax reforms and infrastructure development. He is optimistic, if cautious, on the prospects for his country, pointing to the high levels of enthusiasm among US business people but tempers that by accepting growth could be lower than 2% in the coming year. The humour though, trenchant and pointed, is never far away. Despairing on the lack of dialogue between the Democrats and the Republicans he adds that now he’s not sure “if the Republicans are talking to each other” either.On Europe, he points to the elections in France and Germany as the wild cards that could upset all projections. China, on the other hand, will have to make some tough decisions. It is a country he knows well and it is his next stop after this trip.On India, as much as on any other subject, he is precise and razor sharp. No surprise that. He is after all an Ashkenazi Jew. Legend and scholarly academic papers have it that Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group in the world. Says a paper by researchers at University of Utah, “During the 20th century, they made up about 3% of the US population but won 27% of the US Nobel science prizes and 25% of the ACM Turing awards. They account for more than half of world chess champions.”Coming from that genetic pool you would expect him to be successful and the co-chairman and co-chief executive officer of KKR is among the most successful money managers in the world. The “co” bit is a consequence of sharing the job, the role and the founding of the company with his first cousin George R. Roberts.Kravis pioneered the private equity business when with two other partners he founded a leveraged buyout company called Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. L.P. (KKR) in 1976. Since then the company has grown—22 offices and over $130 billion of assets under management worldwide. Equally the PE business has transformed from being purely the money bags in spectacular deals to being an active participant in corporate change from within. In fact, KKR’s 100-day plan for the companies it invests in is both dreaded by managers and also emulated widely. Nor is the firm restricted merely to private equity. It offers all manner of financing solutions to companies.In India since 2009, it has investments of over $8 billion in companies like Bharti Infratel, Aricent, Café Day Enterprises, Dalmia Cement and Gland Pharma. But for a self-confessed Indophile who likes both Indian food as well the country’s temples (Hampi and the Golden Temple in Amritsar are particular favourites), that doesn’t seem like enough. Maybe that’s what he’s here to fix. With some help from India CEO Sanjay Nayar. After Kravis advised Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his first visit to the US on the need for a bankruptcy code, Nayar played a key role in helping the government frame and structure the same.It marks the evolution of the company from brash upstart in the 1980s memorably dubbed “barbarians at the gate” for its role in the audacious leveraged buy-out of RJR Nabisco, to the high seat of global finance.",2017-04-13,Henry Kravis pioneered the private equity business when with two other partners he founded KKR in 1976,0.25,01:55,"Henry Kravis, the high priest of private equity" +0,"Growth of information technology (IT) services firms continues to decelerate on a year-on-year basis. Growth in constant currency terms stood at 8.7% for tier-I IT companies in the December quarter, excluding Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., according to data collated by Nomura Research. Two quarters ago, growth stood at over 10%, and a year before that, growth was in the teens.Of course, that growth rates have been declining in the IT sector is well known and, as a result, IT stocks have underperformed the Nifty 50 index by around 18% in the past year.The moot question is if the December quarter results give signs of a possible turnaround. Investors will be disappointed there. Nomura’s analysts point out that growth in the key US region was the slowest in 12 quarters. Growth in some of the industry verticals that were doing well in previous quarters, such as retail, healthcare and telecom, slowed in the December quarter. And the performance of the largest industry vertical—banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI)—gave no hints of a turnaround. Besides, as US firms await the broad policy direction of the new government, there may be some delays in taking decisions.Of course, there are some silver linings. Companies, for instance, are sounding more optimistic, especially with regards to demand from BFSI. Besides, analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities say the intensity with which some large corporations shifted work to captive units earlier has abated to an extent.But, from the looks of it, things are likely to go further south before any turnaround comes about. The recent appreciation in the rupee is likely to worsen matters for Indian IT companies. Profit margins have already been under pressure, owing to the increased investments in building digital capabilities and thanks to pricing pressure in the traditional application maintenance work. Besides, all of the noise against H1B visas in the US may result in new laws that increase costs of providing on-site services. Kotak’s analysts wrote in a note to clients, “In case the rupee were to sustain at current levels, we do highlight that many traditional levers of the industry are exhausted... Our EPS (earnings per share) estimates for FY2018/19 are based on INR/USD rate of 68 and have 5-9% downside risk at spot prices.”",2017-03-24,The recent appreciation in rupee may worsen matters for Indian IT firms as profit margins are already under pressure owing to increased investments in building digital capabilities ,-0.03,07:56,"IT sector: Donald Trump, rupee worsen matters in December quarter" +0,"The construction sector put up an unimpressive show, although on expected lines, in the December quarter. Undoubtedly, demonetisation hurt the sector in several ways.One, engineering and construction work came to a standstill in November and December as the economy was hit by a cash crunch. Deferred payments to workers delayed execution and billing across infrastructure firms. The average net revenue of 156 firms in the mid- and large-sized category excluding Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T) fell by 8.9% year-on-year (y-o-y). L&T, too, posted marginal revenue growth.Road construction firms with operational projects were worse off than the rest of the pack because toll collections were suspended for about three weeks. How this impacts earnings for the full year depends on when and how the expected government compensation for revenue loss will shape up.Weak revenue trickled down to a similar performance on operating metrics. Firms such as IRB Infrastructure Ltd and NCC Ltd, that have been improving profitability, found the going tough, but were able to sustain profitability.Adding to the quarter’s woes was the weak ordering activity across infrastructure segments. Save for a few orders in the capital goods space, there were hardly any big-ticket orders in power, roads and railways.The only solace is that the large firms have put their house in order by deleveraging balance sheets, reducing indebtedness and optimizing cost structures.Meanwhile, firms in power transmission such as KEC International Ltd and ABB Ltd put up a decent show during the quarter. In contrast, firms whose performance is linked to power generation paled in comparison.The S&P BSE Infrastructure index has rallied sharply on hopes that the government will live up to its commitment of boosting investment in infrastructure.So far, reality is far from it and, given the current pace of new projects tendered until February, it is likely that road sector will not meet the targets both in terms of fresh ordering and execution during FY17.",2017-03-24,"Firms in power transmission such as KEC International Ltd and ABB Ltd put up a decent show, while those whose performance is linked to power generation paled",0.22,06:22,A subdued December quarter for infrastructure firms +0,"If fiscal 2015-16 was annus horribilis for Indian banks, the year to March seems to be no different.Banks and their investors seem to be coming to terms with this as analysts have slashed their 2016-17 earnings per share (EPS) estimates for the Bankex by about 10% since demonetisation.The third-quarter financial results of banks, particularly large corporate lenders, were as painful if not more than those of the previous quarters as bad loans continued to pile up.The stock of gross non-performing assets (NPA) of listed banks is now a massive Rs7.1 trillion ($108 billion), a rise of 60% from a year ago.Notwithstanding NPA war rooms such as that of Punjab National Bank or watch lists made public in the case of ICICI Bank Ltd and Axis Bank Ltd, the rate of bad loan accretion remained elevated. To be fair, though, the slippage rate (good loans turning bad) slowed in the December quarter from the previous quarters.Of course, setting aside money against the NPA stockpile was mandatory and while many banks cut corners (shown by the fall in their provision coverage ratio), some lenders continued to make higher provisioning. Nevertheless, the cumulative provisioning of all listed banks fell 8% in the December quarter to Rs45,147 crore. But recoveries and upgrades being unimpressive, this bad-loan pile will age and necessitate higher provisioning in the future, which explains the bearish outlook on the full-year earnings.Analysts have understandably pencilled in a jump in credit costs for the current financial year.If bad loans were the constant bugbear for banks, a new irritant that chipped away some of the fee income was the waiver of various charges on ATM, or automated teller machine, transactions and use of cards after the demonetisation of high-value bank notes.Given the twin blows, one out of three public sector banks made losses while the cumulative profit of all listed private banks fell 14% from a year ago.Even India’s most valuable bank, HDFC Bank Ltd, couldn’t go unscathed, and its profit growth fell to 15% for the third quarter from 20% in the second quarter.That the earnings per share estimate of 2017-18 for the Bankex is also down 12% indicates that many feel the pain will persist longer.But, ironically, the shares of banks, especially those of public sector lenders, have gained sharply even after many reported worsening asset quality metrics and reduction in their core business of lending.These gains are largely on the back of hopes that the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would work out a decisive plan to tackle the bad loan problem.While balance sheets do not seem to warrant current valuations, analysts believe that if a concrete plan for bad loan resolution emerges, corporate lenders such as ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and even State Bank of India, or SBI, could be re-rated.“In our view, a joint private-government initiative may work, with the private sector providing the capital and expertise to manage the bad loans and the government’s legal backing to the PSUs (public sector undertakings) to enable them to make suitable ‘haircuts’ to bad loans,” Kotak Securities wrote in a note.",2017-03-24,"While balance sheets do not seem to warrant current valuations, analysts say if a concrete plan for bad loan resolution emerges, corporate lenders could be re-rated",-0.51,06:14,A bleaker FY17 for banks +0,"Cement demand in the December quarter was impacted by demonetisation in most parts of the country, with southern India being an exception.Pan-India firms ACC Ltd and Ambuja Cements Ltd saw a 9% year-on-year (y-o-y) decline in volumes; and for UltraTech Cement Ltd, it was a 2% y-o-y fall. South-based firms Dalmia Bharat Ltd (36% y-o-y), India Cements Ltd (22% y-o-y) and Orient Cement Ltd (19% y-o-y) saw strong volume growth, benefiting from improved institutional demand in Andhra Pradesh/Telangana and a low-base effect on account of floods in Chennai during the same period a year ago. As a result, on an overall basis, cement companies reported a flat volume growth at 37 million tonnes (mt) in the third quarter.Not only demand, profitability also took a hit as production costs increased. Fuel prices, especially those of petroleum coke (petcoke), surged Rs400-500/tonne in the past quarter. According to a Kotak Institutional Equities (KIE) report, on a sequential basis, profitability of cement companies declined 11% to Rs753/tonne, though y-o-y it is up 10%.Meanwhile, low demand kept realizations subdued.In the past two months, the impact of demonetisation has subsided and the demand scenario has improved, but it remains below normal levels, especially retail demand. A pick-up in government spending on infrastructure and affordable housing projects may lead to a sequential demand uptick, but y-o-y demand would decline mainly due to a high base since demand growth in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2016 was strong. Cement prices in the country, except the south, have begun to rise, but if this improvement in cement prices doesn’t sustain, then realizations would decline sequentially in the March quarter.That apart, another worry is surging input costs. In the December quarter, a slew of cement manufacturers opted for alternative fuels to minimize the adverse impact on margins, while some others made use of the low-cost petcoke stock they were left with. As per analysts, the full impact of the rise in petcoke prices will be felt in the March quarter as most cement companies are likely to have exhausted that inventory. Diesel price, too, is trending upwards which will result in higher road freight costs, raising the production cost per tonne.Though the shares of large-cap cement companies have recovered from where they were when demonetisation was announced and are currently trading at rich valuations, given these concerns, March quarter earnings would be lacklustre, indicating that valuations need to correct.",2017-03-24,"Cement prices have begun to rise; but if this improvement doesn’t sustain, realizations would decline sequentially in the March quarter",0.05,06:22,"Cement: After demonetisation, rising costs, unfavourable volume base to hurt " +0,"Los Angeles: Fox News’s most-popular host, Bill O’Reilly, is taking what he called a long-scheduled vacation after revelations of financial settlements over alleged sexual harassment.While New York magazine reported Tuesday that 21st Century Fox Inc. chief executive officer (CEO) James Murdoch wants him to step down permanently, people familiar with Fox’s plans said O’Reilly intends to return to the The O’Reilly Factor. The people asked not to be identified because the matter is private.O’Reilly’s holiday until 24 April follows a wave of companies pulling advertisements from his prime-time show, the cable news channel’s biggest. The media group controlled by Rupert Murdoch has been dealing with the fallout of alleged sexual harassment at Fox News since last summer, leading to the ouster of its former CEO Roger Ailes. The claims against O’Reilly, reported in the New York Times, add to pressure on a company that is seeking regulatory approval for its bid for Sky PLC.“Last fall I booked a trip that should be terrific,” O’Reilly told viewers. “All of us deserve a break.”Fox News anchors Dana Perino will fill in Wednesday night and Monday through Thursday next week, while Bret Baier will host Thursday’s show and Greg Gutfeld will fill O’Reilly’s seat Friday this week and next, a person familiar with the situation said.“Other than the vacation guest hosts, The Factor broadcast will remain unchanged,” Mark Fabiani, an attorney representing the host, said by e-mail. Fabiani said arrangements for the vacation were made in October and the timing coincides with O’Reilly’s children’s spring break.Fox said in a recent statement that it “investigates all complaints and we have asked the law firm Paul Weiss to continue assisting the company in these serious matters.”The New York Times reported last week that five women received payments from either 21st Century Fox or from O’Reilly in exchange for agreeing not to sue or talk about their allegations that O’Reilly verbally abused them, subjected them to unwanted advances or made lewd comments. Fox said no employees had raised concerns about O’Reilly and it had been looking into the matter in recent months.No one has filed a complaint about O’Reilly with the company’s human resources department over the more than 20 years he has been at Fox News Channel, the host said in an 1 April statement.Fox News, which accounts for an estimated quarter of Fox’s profit, has stayed on top in cable ratings despite the internal turmoil. The network remains the most-watched on cable year-to-date, with 2.8 million average daily viewers, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence analysis. Ratings have seen a bump by several appearances of President Donald Trump.Bloomberg",2017-04-12,Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s holiday until 24 April follows a wave of companies pulling ads from his prime-time show over sexual harassment allegations,-0.64,19:59,Fox News host Bill O’Reilly taking vacation amid sex harassment furore +0,"
New Delhi: Ramesh Chandra Agarwal inherited a publishing business set up by his father Dwarka Prasad Agarwal in 1956.In 1983, he decided to expand and diversify the business. “The rest is history,” says Arun Pareek, a former employee who worked closely with Agarwal. Agarwal, who died following a heart attack upon his arrival at Ahmedabad airport on Wednesday, leaves behind a company, DB Corp Ltd, that publishes seven newspapers including its three flagship newspapers Dainik Bhaskar, Divya Bhaskar and Saurashtra Samachar. The three have a combined average daily readership of 19.8 million across the country, according to the company’s BSE filings. The company that was listed in 2010 reported a revenue of Rs630.9 crore in the quarter ended December 2016, up 6% from a year ago. The company also has interests in radio as well as outdoor advertising. It operates 30 radio stations under the 94.3 My FM brand. Agarwal and DB Corp’s journey started in 1983 with the launch of the Indore edition of Dainik Bhaskar. In the mid 1990s, Bhaskar stepped out of Madhya Pradesh and launched in Rajasthan. Currently, Dainik Bhaskar is among the top three most-read newspapers in the country, according to the Indian Readership Survey published by the Readership Studies Council of India (RSCI), an industry body formed jointly by the Media Research Users Council (MRUC) and the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC).Along with his three sons— Sudhir, Girish and Pawan— Ramesh Agarwal further expanded the newspaper business when he launched the Gujarati daily Divya Bhaskar in 2003. The newspaper’s success story became a case study at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. Later, in 2005, he also launched DNA (Daily News & Analysis) an English language newspaper in Mumbai in a joint venture with Subhash Chandra’s Essel group. However, in 2012 it sold its 50% stake in the business to Essel group. As per the report Press in India 2015-16, prepared by the Registrar of Newspapers of India (RNI), Dainik Bhaskar was the most circulated multi-edition daily in 2015-16 with 45 editions and a total claimed circulation of 4.6 million copies per publishing day. Speaking about Ramesh Agarwal, former group editor of Dainik Bhaskar Shravan Garg said: “He was a visionary. He was a man of determination and courage. No one can imagine the kind of leadership he provided to the group. He was responsible for taking the group to such heights. He launched the paper in Indore at a time when the market was completely dominated by other players.”Mint’s publisher HT Media and its subsidiary HMVL compete with DB in some markets.",2017-04-13,Dainik Bhaskar group chairman Ramesh Agrawal died following a heart attack upon his arrival at Ahmedabad airport on Wednesday,-0.15,01:51,"Ramesh Agrawal, Dainik Bhaskar group chairman, dies at 73" +0,"The Indian aviation sector continues to be plagued by pricing pressures. What stood out in the December quarter was that SpiceJet Ltd, which hadn’t succumbed to pricing woes in the September quarter, gave in. Its average fare fell 7% year-on-year (y-o-y) for the December quarter, compared with a 5% increase seen during the September quarter.Sure, healthy load factors helped, resulting in a 12.5% rise in SpiceJet’s operating revenue. But profit growth wasn’t commensurate, thanks to higher fuel costs as a percentage of revenue.Ebitdar declined by one-fifth, whereas earnings before tax and exceptional items dropped two-fifths. Ebitdar is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and aircraft lease rentals, and is an important measure of profitability for airlines.To be fair, it’s not as if SpiceJet’s peers—InterGlobe Aviation Ltd (which runs IndiGo) and Jet Airways (India) Ltd, had a great quarter either. Airlines also had to bear the brunt of the adverse impact of demonetisation in the past quarter.IndiGo said its yields declined 20% and 17%, respectively, in November and December, thanks to demonetisation. That decline was sharper than what analysts had expected. Overall, IndiGo’s Ebitdar fell about 14%, despite the fact that operating revenue increased 16% (helped by better volumes).Post-results, Kotak Institutional Equities cut its fiscal 2017 earnings per share (EPS) estimate by 15% to account for a likely poor performance in the second half of the year to March. “This has resulted in a 10-12% cut in our FY2018-19E EPS (earnings per share) estimates as well,” added Kotak in a report on 31 January.Apart from pricing issues, Jet’s financials were also affected on account of demand problems from the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC, countries. Consolidated December-quarter operating revenue increased by a mere 1.4% and average fare per passenger fell 1.6%. Jet’s Ebitdar was lower than analysts’ estimates. Operating costs—including fuel, employee costs, selling and distribution expenses, and other operating expenses—increased at a much faster pace. Jet’s stock has declined in the past year, whereas IndiGo and SpiceJet have seen their stocks rise. High debt continues to remain a worry for investors in Jet stock.Meanwhile, traffic growth is strong. Passengers carried by domestic airlines in January rose 25% y-o-y, according to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. While that augurs well, firmer crude prices are a threat as they account for a huge portion of operating costs for airlines. Also, in such an environment, fares need to improve to support profit margins, which may have an impact on volume growth. But analysts say pricing pressures will continue for some time. That could well mean that aviation stocks may find it difficult to take off in the interim.",2017-03-24,"With pricing pressures likely to continue for some more time, aviation stocks may find it difficult to take off in the interim",-0.05,06:14,Aviation stocks: Turbulent journey in the December quarter +0,"Atlanta/Dallas: For most of his 19-month tenure, United Continental Holdings Inc. chief executive officer (CEO) Oscar Munoz has cleaned up messes left behind by others. Now he’s mopping up a PR disaster at United Airlines that’s unfolded under his watch.After United Airlines ordered a passenger forcibly removed from a plane in Chicago shortly before departure to make room for a United employee, Munoz’s initial response made the company a punch line on social media. He said United Airlines had to “re-accommodate’’ the man, who was bloodied in the encounter with security officials. In a subsequent letter to employees, the CEO called the customer “disruptive’’ and “belligerent’’ when he would not voluntarily relinquish his seat.“It’s sort of a self-immolation and makes you wonder about his choice as CEO,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management, said of Munoz’s handling of the crisis. He “worked at Coke and Pepsi and AT&T, and someone would have thought he had a better customer sensitivity.”ALSO READ : United Airlines seat fiasco among worst corporate PR gaffesAlmost 24 hours later, after global condemnation of United Airline’s behaviour had time to sink in, Munoz struck a far more contrite tone.“The truly horrific event that occurred on this flight has elicited many responses from all of us: outrage, anger, disappointment. I share all of those sentiments,” Munoz said in a statement Tuesday. “I deeply apologize to the customer forcibly removed and to all the customers aboard. No one should ever be mistreated this way.”On Wednesday he said the carrier no longer will rely on law enforcement to remove seated, paying customers.“This can never, will never, happen again on a United Airlines flight,” he said on ABC’s Good Morning America. He said he hasn’t considered resigning after the incident.‘Thorough review’He committed the third-largest US airline to “a thorough review” of its policies for handling oversold flights and vowed to report back to the public by 30 April. “I promise you we will do better,” he said in the Tuesday statement.Yet the damage had already been done. With a few ill-chosen words, Munoz stoked the flames of an already raging social-media firestorm and squandered goodwill he had worked hard to generate by forging a turnaround plan since joining the company in September 2015. He has overseen a 23% stock rally since then, compared with 13% for the Bloomberg US Airlines Index.Previously known for his deft touch in rescuing United from a corruption scandal, weathering a proxy fight and winning unprecedented labour peace, now he’s the head of an airline that, for some passengers, has instantly become Public Enemy No. 1.ALSO READ : United Airlines CEO: ‘I’m sorry’, in response to dragged passengerThe fallout continued Tuesday with some people saying on United’s Facebook page that they would boycott the Chicago-based carrier. Others said on Twitter that they’d cancelled their United-affiliated credit cards—a key revenue source for airlines.In China, a crucial part of United’s lucrative trans-Pacific network, the incident was a focus of social media and editorials in the state-controlled Global Times newspaper. The hashtag #UnitedForcesPassengerOffPlane was the top trending item on Sina Weibo, the equivalent of Twitter, with more than 270 million views. The man who was removed, David Dao, appeared to be of Asian descent.Dao is receiving treatment in a Chicago hospital for his injuries, according to a statement from lawyers who said they represent him. Video posted to Facebook and Twitter showed him as he was dragged out of his seat and down the aisle of the plane after refusing to give up his seat.United overhaulFor Munoz, the timing of the worldwide outcry is, at the very least, extremely awkward and at worst a serious setback for his overhaul of United, which suffered for years as the industry laggard in both profitability and on-time performance. In an ironic touch, Munoz just last month was named “Communicator of the Year for 2017” by PRWeek. The public-relations industry publication said Munoz “has shown himself to be a smart, dedicated, and excellent leader who understands the value of communications.”In 2015, Munoz took over as CEO from Jeff Smisek, who was ousted amid a federal investigation into ties between the carrier and the former chairman of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. The next month, Munoz suffered a serious heart attack and underwent a transplant in early 2016. He bounced back only to face a proxy challenge from two hedge funds. United named a new chairman and agreed to add new board members approved by PAR Capital Management and Altimeter Capital Management.Within months after the board tussle, Munoz had unveiled a $3.1 billion plan to cut costs and boost revenue, and he set the stage for labour peace for the first time since the 2010 merger with Continental Airlines that created the company. He also brought in new senior leadership including President Scott Kirby, who previously served in the same position at American Airlines Group Inc. This year, United’s market value surpassed that of American, which generates more in annual sales.‘Some credit’The Monday incident comes two weeks after United drew social-media scorn for enforcing its employee dress code for those who fly as non-revenue passengers, such as relatives of employees. Two young girls flying from Denver were told to change their leggings before boarding. In response, the airline then took efforts to tell “our regular customers” that “leggings are welcome.”In his letter to United workers Monday night, the CEO said he stood behind employees and criticized the passenger for refusing to deplane. Sara Nelson, international president of the flight attendants union representing United, said the incident was the most severe customer backlash she’d seen in 20 years on the job and was “completely unacceptable.” Still, employees were grateful to have a chief executive who “has their backs.”“When something like this happens and people have to go to work and have order in their workplace to keep everyone safe, it can be incredibly demoralizing,” Nelson said. “Some credit needs to be given to him.” Bloomberg",2017-04-12,"In his 19-month tenure, United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz cleaned up mess left behind by others. Now he’s mopping up a PR disaster that’s unfolded under his watch",0.04,19:37,United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz goes from saviour to man on hot seat real fast +0,"The pharmaceutical sector had a difficult time in the December quarter, with the BSE Healthcare index falling 10.6%. It has done relatively better in the quarter so far, with the index gaining 5%.The heavyweights in the sector found the going tough in the US as a combination of pricing pressure, stiff competition and a relatively slow pace of approvals affected growth. Although demonetisation did cause some disruption, the effect was not as adverse as feared. Data from market research firm AIOCD-Awacs showed sales rose 10.5% in the December quarter over a year ago. This was lower than the 13.5% growth in the September quarter. While November saw sales growth improve since chemists could accept old notes, December saw it slow down after the concession ended.Overall, the pharmaceutical sector’s sales rose 8.8% over a year ago but other operating income rose 22% (this component includes licensing/drug development revenue). As material costs rose only 8%, that constrained expenditure growth, leading to an 18.4% increase in operating profit. Profit after tax rose 15.4%. For a sector that is trading at a price-to-earnings multiple of 29 times its trailing 12-month earnings, that’s not enough.Among firms that reported relatively better sales growth were Biocon Ltd, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Lupin Ltd and Cipla Ltd, partly due to revenue from the launch of important products in the US. Emerging markets and currencies have turned relatively stable, which augurs well as most companies have built sizeable businesses here.On the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) front, the news has been mixed. Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd and Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd got observations from the regulator on a re-inspection of their facilities. This dashed investor hopes that these plants would be cleared. But the news is not uniformly bad, with companies such as Lupin and Cadila Healthcare Ltd getting approvals for their units after re-inspection. More recently, Sun Pharma also announced that the warning letter on its Mohali plant has been lifted by the US FDA.Companies have been going after acquisitions to boost their revenue and keep the growth engine humming. They continue to be on the hunt and the risk here is that companies overpay or the acquired assets don’t generate value.The sector’s valuations suggest that investors still hold hope that the US market problems will get resolved and earnings growth of the sector will recover. FY18 is likely to provide a reality check on that front.",2017-03-24,Valuations of pharma firms suggest investors still hold hope that the US market problems will get resolved and earnings growth of the sector will recover,0.52,05:28,Q3 results show pharma sector recovering in fits and starts +0,"Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd’s free services wreaked havoc on the December quarter financial statements of India’s leading telecom companies. Idea Cellular Ltd reported losses, and Bharti Airtel Ltd reported a 16% sequential drop in operating profit for its wireless business. Airtel generated barely enough cash flow from operations to cover increased capital expenditure (capex). Idea’s cash profits weren’t enough to meet enhanced capex needs and, as a result, its debt has gone out of whack.Analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities wrote in a note to clients after Airtel’s results announcement, “We could be down to as low as Rs20,000-25,000 crore in annualized Ebitda (ex-Jio) for an industry sitting on an aggregate net debt in the vicinity of Rs3 trillion (ex-Jio). This is as distressed as it gets, in our view.” Ebitda is short for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization—an indicator of operating profitability.Customers who availed themselves of Jio’s free services simply stopped using paid data services of incumbents, leading to a drop in revenue and profits. Things are likely to be far worse in the March quarter as Jio’s free services have continued over this period and were used by a far higher number of customers. The silver lining is that Jio will start charging customers from 1 April, although that doesn’t reduce the pressure on incumbents much. Already, they have been forced to bring down tariffs substantially to try and match Jio’s offers to their subscribers. Yet, while it’s clear that revenues and profits will be under pressure for some time to come, it’s anybody’s guess how long the pain will continue and to what extent profits will fall.",2017-03-24,"While it’s clear revenue and profits will continue to be under pressure, it’s anybody’s guess how long the pain will continue and to what extent profits will fall",-0.44,06:13,Reliance Jio wreaks havoc on Q3 results of telecom firms +0,"Hyderabad: Veteran industrialist Adi B. Godrej has disapproved the move of Infosys co-founder N. R. Narayana Murthy to publicly express concern over the pay hike of the company’s chief operating officer (COO), as he justified a big gap between salaries at the entry and top levels. “Of course, there will be a big gap because there are very few people capable of taking top-level things but I think that it (executive pay packets) should be left to each company,” the Godrej Group chairman told PTI. “And I don’t think people should publicly comment on such issues. There is no need to publicly comment on such issues,” he said. Godrej was responding to questions on Murthy criticising the pay hike of COO of Infosys, U.B. Pravin Rao. “Each company should decide, its Board should decide. If the Board has decided after proper considerations why should others complain?” the former president of the Confederation of Indian Industry asked.",2017-04-12,"Adi Godrej says people should not publicly comment on issues such as pay hikes, responding questions on Infosys co-founder N. R. Narayana Murthy’s comments ",-0.32,18:12,Adi Godrej disapproves of N.R Narayana Murthy’s pay hike comments +0,"Auto firms’ performance in the December quarter was under stress on account of the ban on high-value banknotes that crippled sales for almost half the quarter. Net revenue of leading auto firms, therefore, declined slightly from the year-ago quarter, with the biggest impact being on two-wheelers.Save for premium motorcycle manufacturer Royal Enfield, which bucked the trend, both Hero MotoCorp Ltd and Bajaj Auto Ltd sold fewer vehicles. This, in turn, led to a sales year-on-year decline. However, TVS Motor Co. Ltd’s mopeds fared well, lifting overall sales slightly.Commercial vehicle (CV) firms presented a divergent trend. No. 2 player Ashok Leyland Ltd’s sales bumped up significantly. Realization and profits rose. The CV market leader Tata Motors Ltd, on the other hand, posted weak growth. Its passenger car segment was the saving grace on the domestic front.The country’s largest car manufacturer Maruti Suzuki India Ltd saw dull growth. This is because the firm has a significant exposure to rural markets with entry-level cars. This segment did badly. Fortunately, the higher-end segment, comprising utility vehicles along with new launches, compensated for the drop in sales of entry-level cars.The biggest takeaway is that most firms maintained operating margins at cushy year-ago levels despite the odds. A higher inventory of unsold vehicles masked cost increases. Further, other expenses and staff costs were trimmed too. But then, higher inventory of finished goods offset the material cost increase and lifted profitability. This trend is unlikely to continue in the quarters ahead. Higher material costs could cap margins.What stuck out as a sore thumb was Tata Motors. Its results were dismal, thanks to dismal global sales and operating performance by its UK subsidiary and cash cow, Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc.That said, in spite of the sudden blip, analysts feel demonetisation blues are already behind the sector. All eyes are now on a sales revival, especially in two-wheelers and CVs, driven by the race to buy vehicles before the new and more expensive vehicles, compliant with the new emission norms (BS-IV), hit the market in April.Here again, in the two months of the March quarter already gone by, the “pre-buying” story has not been impressive. Sales continue to be weak across most vehicle categories.Further, the higher raw material cost effect is bound to weigh on profit margins in the current and forthcoming quarters, unless price hikes and sales offset the same. Of course, valuations are fair at the current stock prices. A robust pick-up in sales, along with the ability of firms to pass on any cost pressures to customers, will be key in the coming quarters.",2017-03-24,"A higher raw material cost effect is bound to weigh on profit margins in the current and forthcoming quarters, unless price hikes and sales offset the same",0.41,06:14,Auto firms Q3 results: A blip in growth as demonetisation cripples sales +0,"New Delhi: The government plans to cancel the registration of more than two lakh companies that have not been carrying out business for a considerable period of time, amid stepped up efforts to tackle the black money menace.More than 200,000 companies, spread across various states, have been served with show cause notices as they have not been carrying out any operation or business activity for a prolonged time.The corporate affairs ministry’s move also comes against the backdrop of overall efforts by the authorities to crack the whip on shell companies, suspected to be used for money laundering activities.The Registrars of Companies (RoCs) in various states and union territories have issued notices to more than 200,000 firms under the Companies Act, 2013, according to information available with the ministry.These notices have been issued under Section 248 of the Act, which is implemented by the Ministry. This section pertains to striking off names of companies on certain grounds.With the issuance of notices, the companies concerned have to explain their position and if the responses are not satisfactory, then their names would be struck off by the Ministry.Data showed that RoC Mumbai has issued notices to more than 71,000 companies while RoC Delhi has served notices to over 53,000 firms, among others.As per the regulations, an RoC can seek explanation from a company if the latter has not commenced business within one year of getting incorporated under the Act.Notice is also issued if a particular company has not been carrying out business for at least two continuous financial years and has not applied for dormant status. Such entities are given a time of 30 days to submit objections if any.The Ministry has power to remove or strike off the names of such entities from the “register of companies” if the response is not satisfactory. Earlier this month, the Ministry had amended the Companies (Removal of Names of Companies from the Register of Companies) Rules. There are more than 15 lakh registered companies in the country.",2017-04-22,"The firms, spread across various states, have been served with show cause notices as they have not been carrying out any operation or business activity for a prolonged time",-0.32,01:14,Govt prepares to strike off registration of over two lakh firms +0,"New Delhi: Indian engineering firm Larsen & Toubro signed a deal with South Korea’s Hanwha Techwin to supply artillery guns to the Indian army in a deal estimated to be 4.5 billion rupees ($696.38 million), the two firms said on Friday.Jayant Patil, head of the defence and aerospace wing of L&T, said the two companies will jointly manufacture the self-propelled howitzer—a boost for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make-in-India drive to push domestic industry.The Indian army had chosen L&T to supply 100 guns, Patil said, adding the contract will be among the first under the indigenisation campaign aimed at reducing the military’s dependence on foreign imports.The military’s bigger projects such as acquisition of fighter planes, helicopters and submarines are making slower progress because of the government’s insistence on involvement of local players.South Korea’s Minister for Defence Acquisition Program Administration, Chang Myoung Jin, said Seoul was looking to significantly expand defence ties with India. Reuters",2017-04-22,L&T and Hanwha Techwin to jointly manufacture self-propelled howitzer in a boost for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make-in-India drive to push domestic industry,0.42,01:06,L&T signs deal with S.Korea’s Hanwha Techwin for artillery guns +0,"New Delhi: Global private equity giant KKR on Friday sold a 5.6% stake in Dalmia Bharat for an estimated Rs575 crore through an open market transaction. The shares were purchased by a host of entities, including Kuwait Investment Authority, Birla Mutual Fund and Franklin Templeton Investment Funds.According to block deal data available with stock exchanges, KKR Mauritius Cement Investments Ltd offloaded a total of 49,65,270 shares, amounting to 5.58 per cent stake, of Dalmia Bharat. The shares were sold on an average price of Rs 2,047.5, valuing the transaction at Rs574.86 crore, it added.In January 2016, Dalmia Bharat had announced that it signed a pact with KKR to acquire the global private equity giant’s 15 per cent stake in its subsidiary Dalmia Cement Bharat Ltd for over Rs 1,218 crore in a cash-and-stock deal. The deal had earned the private equity player a return of 2.4 times on its investment of Rs 500 crore it made in September 2010. The stock of Dalmia Bharat today closed at Rs 2,048.95 on BSE, down 1.74 per cent from the previous close.",2017-04-22,"The shares were purchased by a host of entities, including Kuwait Investment Authority, Birla Mutual Fund and Franklin Templeton Investment Funds",0.35,01:00,KKR sells 5.6% stake in Dalmia Bharat for Rs575 crore +0,"
Mumbai: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) is likely to report a higher fourth-quarter profit on Monday, as it likely benefited from higher margins in its petrochemical and refining businesses. The company is expected to post a standalone net profit of Rs8,015.70 crore on revenue of Rs67,467.10 crore for the three months ended 31 March, according to a Bloomberg poll of 16 analysts.RIL, which runs the world’s largest refining and petrochemicals complex at Jamnagar in Gujarat, posted a standalone net profit of Rs7,320 crore on revenue of Rs49,957 crore in the year-ago period.“We expect strong earnings driven by refining and petchem (higher volumes, improved margins). Despite increased losses in domestic exploration and production, we expect RIL to report a ninth straight quarter of quarter-on-quarter stand-alone profit after tax growth,” Nomura Research said in a report dated 7 April. RIL’s standalone profit for the quarter ended 31 January was Rs8,022 crore.Analysts expect RIL to post a gross refining margin, or GRM, of between $10.5 and $11 per barrel against $10.8 per barrel a year ago. GRM is the difference between the per-barrel price of crude and the value of products distilled from it.In the March quarter, Brent crude oil prices averaged $54 per barrel, up 8% on a quarterly basis. The average rupee-dollar rate improved on a quarterly basis to 67 and closed at 64.9 at the end of March against 67.9 in the third quarter. This may lead to forex gains for refiners on their crude payables and foreign debt.Singapore’s benchmark GRM was slightly down on a quarterly basis at $6.5 per barrel. “We expect GRM at $11 per barrel (up 2% quarter-on-quarter), a $4.6 per barrel premium over Singapore benchmark,” Edelweiss Securities Ltd in a report dated 7 April.Over the last few quarters RIL’s refineries have enjoyed a premium of $4-5 per barrel to Singapore GRMs. RIL’s petrochemicals business is estimated to report better earnings on account of an improvement in margins and higher volumes. “We expect petchem EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) to rise 11% quarter on quarter (q-o-q) on stronger margins and slight uptick in volumes. Polymer margins are near-record levels, aromatics margins have rebounded q-o-q and integrated polyester margins are also at multi-quarter highs in the fourth quarter,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a report dated 10 April. Ebit is an indication of a company’s operating profitability.Losses in the exploration and production front may widen for RIL, with production from its KG D6 block expected to have declined 23% year-on-year to 7.3 million metric standard cubic metres per day. On Friday, RIL’s scrip ended at Rs1,399.75, up 2.22% on the BSE, while the benchmark Sensex closed at 29,365.30 points, down 0.19%.",2017-04-22,"Analysts expect better petrochemical, refining margins to have aided profit growth ",1.0,00:51,RIL may post higher March-quarter profit +0,"
Bengaluru: Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp.’s growth of 8.6% in calendar year 2016, the slowest in the history of the Nasdaq-listed company, hurt its senior management ranks, including chief executive officer Francisco D’Souza, whose compensation last year fell by a sharp 31%. D’Souza took home $8.26 million, against $11.95 million in 2015.Cognizant’s subdued performance last year—along with the company moving the grant of restricted stock units (RSU) to its senior management from the fourth quarter of last year to the first quarter of this calendar year—further hit the earnings of other senior management members, including president Rajeev Mehta and chief financial officer Karen McLoughlin. Mehta and McLoughlin saw their compensation drop by 30.5% and 30% respectively last year, as compared to 2015, according to filings made to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.ALSO READ: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backCognizant’s 8.6% growth in 2016 paled in comparison with the 21% growth it posted in 2015, underlining a broader slowdown witnessed by technology outsourcing companies, which are battling to keep themselves relevant. Newer technologies like cloud computing and data analytics are making the largest Fortune 1000 companies, across industries, cut reliance on traditional solutions offered under application development and maintenance by technology outsourcers.For this reason, chief executives are seeing a fall in their compensation. Vishal Sikka, CEO of Infosys Ltd, saw his compensation for 2016-17 decline 8.1% to $6.8 million from $7.4 million earned in 2015-16, after the firm’s growth slipped to 7.4%, compared to 9.1% in 2015-16.D’Souza, son of an Indian diplomat, has been at the helm of Cognizant for over a decade. Since he took over as CEO in January 2007, Cognizant has grown from a $1.4 billion company to end last year with $13.5 billion in revenue, overtaking both Infosys and Wipro Ltd.Starting in 2010, Cognizant added over $1 billion in new revenue or incremental revenue every year for seven straight years, a feat only matched by Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.",2017-04-22,"Due to the poor show by Cognizant, CEO Francisco D’Souza took home $8.26 million, against $11.95 million in 2015.",0.26,00:51,Cognizant CEO Francisco D’Souza’s pay falls 31% in 2016 as growth slows +0,"New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Friday stayed an order imposing a penalty of Rs290 crore on AT&T Global Network Services India Pvt. Ltd for unpaid licence fees between 2002-2005 by its affiliate AT & T Communication Services India Pvt. Ltd.Both AT&T Global Network Services and AT&T Communication Services India are subsidiaries of AT&T Global Network Holdings LLC.Based on a show cause notice issued to AT & T Communication Services India Pvt. Ltd in August 2005, the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) passed an order on 5 April imposing the penalty for unpaid license fee on AT & T Global Network Services India. Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva questioned the validity of imposing penalty on a company which had not been issued a notice or given a chance to be heard in the first place.Rajiv Nayyar, counsel for AT & T, told the court that AT & T Global Network Services was incorporated in 2005 and could not be penalized for breaches committed earlier. He added that AT&T Communication Services India had been involved in the proceedings from the very beginning, and yet the demand was levied on AT&T Global Network Services, which had not been a party to the dispute. Nayyar told the court that the 5 April order was “cryptic, bad in law, arbitrary and against the principles of natural justice” and was passed by a committee comprising members who were different from those who had heard the entire issue.AT & T Global Network Services sought for the order to be set aside and contended that the although it belonged to the AT & T group, it was economically and operationally independent from AT&T Communication Services India.The matter will be heard next on 19 May.",2017-04-21,The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) passed an order on 5 April imposing the penalty for unpaid license fee on AT & T Global Network Services India,-0.94,23:39,Delhi HC stays DOT order levying Rs290 crore penalty on AT&T Global over unpaid fees +0,"
Investors were underwhelmed by Accenture Plc’s results for the quarter ended February 2017. While revenue was more or less in line with expectations, new order bookings fell below expectations, and so did the company’s outlook for the consulting business. Accenture’s shares have fallen by around 4% since the results were announced last week. Some analysts have cheered the relatively higher growth in the company’s outsourcing business, suggesting this augurs well for India’s IT services industry. Outsourcing services grew 8% in constant currency terms last quarter, compared to 5% growth in consulting services. This is the first time in two years that Accenture’s outsourcing segment has outgrown its consulting practice. But as analysts at Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd point out, “(The outsourcing segment) is largely market share gain-driven and cannot be read positively from an Indian IT perspective, in our view.” In other words, the pickup in Accenture’s outsourcing business may well be coming at the expense of Indian IT, with which it competes directly. Worse still, the analysts add that the heightening of immigration fears could put the multinational firm in an advantageous position in this segment versus Indian IT, which is far more dependent on H-1B visas. Not very long ago, Indian investors were celebrating the fact that Tata Consultancy Services Ltd’s (TCS’s) market capitalization exceeded the combined value of Accenture and Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. Now, Accenture’s value exceeds that of TCS by around $5.5 billion. Note that Accenture’s new order bookings fell by 4% year-on-year and were below expectations. Growth in the key North American region fell to 4%, compared to double-digit growth a year ago. Company-wide growth has more-or-less halved in the past one year. These aren’t comforting signs for Indian IT, by any stretch of imagination. Some analysts see the relatively higher growth in Accenture’s outsourcing business as a positive for Indian IT, since it points to a shift in the nature of digital spends by customers, which may provide more opportunities for Indian companies. The argument goes that digital has moved beyond the consulting phase and is now scaling up, where Indian IT’s capabilities will be required. It would be prudent for investors to look for more datapoints that attest this. For now, what’s working in the favour of IT stocks is that since valuations are low when compared to the broad market, they have takers when stocks fall below a certain threshold. Although revenue growth has come down substantially, these companies still generate high amounts of cash, and have lately increased payout ratios.",2017-03-31,"The pickup in Accenture’s outsourcing business may well be coming at the expense of Indian IT firms, such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro",-0.09,07:42,Is Accenture making things worse for Indian IT? +0,"
Is coconut oil a hair oil or edible oil? Marico Ltd would be keen to know the answer, as the GST (goods and services tax) Council will soon get down to deciding rates. While GST rates on all consumer products are of interest, if one takes the government’s word at face value — that consumer prices will not increase—then the impact on companies should be minimal. In any case, many FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) firms, including Marico, have units in states such as Assam to avail of excise benefits. These will continue under the GST regime.Of more immediate interest to Marico’s investors should be an increase in its Parachute pure coconut oil sold in bottles. Some pack sizes have seen prices increase by 7-10% in March. This comes on the back of a sustained increase in copra prices, which are up by 38% since October while coconut oil is up by 42%, as per prices maintained by Marico.The increase in Parachute prices may seem relatively less and even delayed, compared to the raw material price trend. This may be deliberate. For one, Marico may have locked in earlier to lower input prices. Also, the company did not reduce prices sharply when input costs fell. It prefers to maintain its margins in a range. When input prices increase, this strategy allows it to increase market share, as buyers of loose oil shift to Parachute as the price differential between the two narrows. About a third of the coconut oil market by volume is still sold in loose form.Parachute’s market share in coconut oil is likely to have risen in the March quarter, and with the increase in price, margins should improve in fiscal year 2018. Post-December quarter results, when domestic coconut oil volume had declined by 1% due to demonetization, the company said it expects to recover and grow by 5-6% in the near term. In Bangladesh, which contributes to 45% of Marico’s international sales, the firm had said sales growth of coconut oil will return to constant currency growth in the fourth quarter.The raw material prices in other inputs in edible oils for its Saffola range or for paraffin oil for its value-added hair oils are stable or increasing. Broadly speaking, a firming of its cost base should allow for price hikes, with the extent depending on demand and competition. Urban demand is expected to be in better form in FY18, which should help the premium part of Marico’s portfolio.Rural markets were affected more by demonetization than urban markets in the December quarter. FY17 was expected to be better due to a better monsoon. If rural demand recovers, that should help its low-price packs and hair oil sales.The Marico stock has risen by 23% since end-December and is trading around the same level it was in early September. It trades at a price-to-earnings multiple of 40 times the estimated FY18 mean earnings per share, based on estimates polled by Reuters. That makes it a relatively expensive stock. If product prices keep increasing, if demand improves and if GST benefits become evident, the stock’s valuation could still be justified. A near-term risk is supply disruption when GST is implemented.",2017-03-31,Sustained increase in copra prices have starting reflecting in Parachute coconut oil prices—a matter of much interest to investors and beneficial to Marico share prices,0.68,07:42,Marico numbers to get a massage with pricier coconut oil +0,"
Bharti Airtel Ltd has been looking to sell a stake in its tower infrastructure subsidiary, Bharti Infratel Ltd, for some now. It was initially even willing to give up majority control, although it has dropped those plans for now. According to an analyst at a domestic institutional brokerage firm, a majority stake sale may not have been feasible given the hit on tower companies owing to the consolidation in the telecom sector. With Airtel deciding to retain a stake of over 50%, a stake of up to 21.6% was up for grabs in Infratel. The company announced on Tuesday it has sold a 10.3% stake for Rs6,194 crore. The shares were sold at Rs325 apiece, or a 4% premium over Monday’s close and a 6% premium compared to the average price in the past one month. Given the selling pressure and the 12% correction in Infratel shares since end-January, Airtel has got itself a fairly decent deal. Based on the transaction price, the tower company has been valued at a healthy EV/Ebitda multiple of 9.5 times, based on FY17 earnings and 8.7 times based on FY18 earnings, according to JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd’s estimates. EV is short for enterprise value. Ebitda stands for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.Airtel’s Bharti Infratel stake sale: KKR, CPPIB part of bigger agreement?Valuations were even higher earlier this year before Vodafone India Ltd and Idea Cellular Ltd said they were in talks for a potential merger. Evidently, the combined entity will no longer need as many towers as they did when they ran separate operations. But as it turns out, the two companies said last week while announcing their merger that the overlap on tower tenancies amounts to only around 20% of the total. Analysts at Credit Suisse, for instance, had estimated the overlap to be as high as 33%, and hence a greater hit on Infratel as redundancies are removed from the system post-merger. “Idea management believes that with subscribers of over 400 million (combined entity) and rapidly growing data volumes, it would be risky to shut down other tenancies. In other words, they see 220,000 sites as the size of the network in the long term. Seen from point of view of Bharti/Jio (165,000/100,000 tenancies), this could become a benchmark for nationwide network and accelerate new tenancy demands from these two operators,” Credit Suisse’s analysts wrote in a note to clients.As such, the outlook for Infratel has improved marginally after Idea and Vodafone’s merger announcement last week. Of course, this is not to say that everything is hunky-dory. Revenue growth will be hit as Idea and Vodafone rationalize tower assets, and this will have an impact on economies of scale, and hence, margins. It is also not clear whether Infratel will be compensated by the combined entity through the payment of exit penalties. Meanwhile, with Idea looking to sell its tower assets, as well as its stake in Indus Towers Ltd, and Vodafone possibly looking for an exit, too, Infratel could well consolidate its position in the sector, and gain a sizeable lead over competitors. Perhaps, this prospect helped get Airtel a premium for its Infratel shares.",2017-03-29,"Airtel has sold 10.3% stake in Bharti Infratel for Rs6,194 crore with shares valued at Rs325 apiece, or a 4% premium over Monday’s close",0.86,07:57,Airtel finally gets decent deal for its Bharti Infratel shares +0,"
All nation-states have armed forces which consist of individuals who are willing to sacrifice their lives for the country. How many corporations in the world, with all their management systems and resources, have managed to create employees with such dedication? This was a question I had raised in my last article. The question that follows is: How does a nation-state build loyalty among its citizens? What can human resources professionals in various organizations learn from this?All strong nations have enemies they have fought multiple wars with. This column had earlier referred to the creation of out-groups to effectively consolidate the members of an in-group. Starting a war does a far more effective job of binding the nation together than the creation of an out-group. The famous historian Ian Morris, in his book War! What Is It good For? : Conflict And The Progress Of Civilization From Primates To Robots, has pointed out that, throughout history, by fighting wars, people have created larger, more organized societies that have gone on to be richer. Creation of conflict is integral to all great human movements too. Communism is not about peaceful coexistence of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie but a conflict between them. Organized religions know that the concepts of God and heaven are strong only when there is an equally strong concept of devil and hell as part of their belief systems. Most organizations have a vision of what they aspire to be. But very few have defined what they don’t want to be, the enemy they are at war with. Steve Jobs, in the “1984” launch commercial, made it clear that his organization was not interested in peaceful coexistence with other existing technology giants. At the outset he declared a war on technology that was not human friendly (read IBM and Microsoft). That belief is reflected even today in the design of Apple products. This also explains why Jobs and the brand he created continue to have a mass following of dedicated, aggressive fans.From the many wars that nation-states fight, heroes emerge. All strong nations have their national heroes—those who fought for its people, laid down their lives for the flag. Even after their death, nations ensure that these heroes are remembered. The history of nations is filled with stories of their valour. These stories help preserve the memories of the past for many generations of its citizens to come. How many organizations have a well thought out strategy to identify and project their heroes? Is there a process to collect their stories? Is there a mechanism to disseminate the inspiring stories, not just through formal training programmes, but also through water-cooler conversations? Why have nations not redesigned their flags or remixed their national anthems?Management experts who profess that “change is the only constant” forget the scientific fact—the human brain loves status quo. As Stephen Fleming of University College London says, whether it’s moving house or changing a TV channel, there is a considerable tendency for the human brain to stick with the current situation and choose not to act anew. When any action is repeated, the corresponding neural connections become stronger and over a point of time the brain gets to perform that action without even consciously thinking. The comfort of not thinking too much is disturbed by new stimuli. Political parties, organized religion and even god-men who manage to build strong loyalty with their followers have understood this brain fact. No political party or organized religion changes their symbols. Some of these symbols are thousands of years old. All godmen make sure that not just their attire, even their hairstyles remain constant over decades. And, organized religions have not allowed anyone to change even a comma in their holy books. But many organizations change their logos and other physical expressions at the drop of a hat. Such rebranding exercises are short cuts used by organizational leaders to show that they are making “visible” changes. Design agencies whose business thrives with every logo change will continue to give plausible arguments to prove that the new font and colours are far superior to the previous ones!Very few professional organizations have exploited the powers of consistency. To do that, organizational leaders should begin with a strong vision that has depth and width. They should know what expressions of that vision are permanent and what facets of that vision could change with the times. From its economic policies to global status to the demographic profile of its citizens, India has changed a lot. But the design of the national flag and the tune of its national anthem has always remained constant. Great nations understand the power of consistency. Nation-states do not try to build strong bonds with their citizens through financial incentives. The bond between all nations and their citizens is emotional. Political leaders know the power of emotional rewards over monetary rewards. And these emotional rewards are amplified through rituals. All nations have several rituals: standing up when the national anthem is sung, hoisting a flag, republic day parades—all add to strengthening the emotional bond between the nation and its citizen.An intuitive understanding of the core concepts of human behaviour has been used by nation leaders to build strong loyalty among its citizens. What prevents organizations from learning from these national leaders?Biju Dominic is the chief executive officer of Final Mile Consulting, a behaviour architecture firm.Comments are welcome at views@livemint.com",2017-03-30,How does a nation-state build loyalty among its citizens? What can human resources professionals in various organizations learn from this?,0.55,08:46,Why national flags don’t change +0,"
There’s a noticeable dichotomy within power sector companies. While there is surplus capacity and low utilization of existing capacity among power generation firms, the stage is all set for revenue and order book growth for power transmission and distribution (T&D) firms.This is not without reason. Analysts from the sector are hopeful that the draft National Electricity Plan (December 2016), which signals a sizeable Rs2.6 trillion investment into building T&D networks between 2017 and 2022, should open avenues for firms in this business.In any case, after some sluggishness until fiscal year 2015, domestic T&D orders started to pick up. Firms like KEC International Ltd, Kalpataru Power Transmission Ltd, Techno Electric and Engineering Co. Ltd, and ABB India Ltd have shown robust order inflows in the last three-four quarters. The road ahead is clear too. An Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd report says, “The addressable opportunity for larger engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) players in transmission lines would be around Rs900 billion (Rs90,000 crore) and in the substation segment around Rs750 billion, over the next five years.”It was after the FY08-09 downturn that some of these firms battled losses and were also caught in a debt trap. However, stringent cost management has now brought large-sized companies back on to the profit track. Those that could not cope are not in the race to bid for new orders. Further, the government is also clear that firms that are yet to complete orders will not be given fresh contracts. Hence, there is lower competition for large-sized companies that have weathered the tough times.Meanwhile, some firms have struck a meaningful geographic balance to diversify risks. For example, two-thirds of Kalpataru Power’s current order book accrues from the Middle-East, Africa and South-East Asia. KEC and Thermax Ltd have successfully diversified in terms of geographic regions and business verticals. Else, the T&D orders, which are mainly government tenders, run the risk of delays in awards and cost overruns.Some others are restructuring businesses to improve profitability. Techno Electric, for instance, has taken the decision to exit the wind power generation business and plough back the funds raised towards more viable substation projects, besides repaying debt.Such efforts have powered up the operating margins by 100-150 basis points in the last few quarters and they are poised to grow further as order inflows bring in benefits of operating leverage too. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.No doubt, T&D stocks in the entire power sector are to investors what roads are in the infrastructure universe. In a year, shares of KEC and Kalpataru Power have returned twice that of the BSE Capital Goods index. Although the price-to-earnings multiple did expand, the expected order inflows and revenue momentum should expand earnings to support valuations.",2017-03-29,Analysts are hopeful that the draft National Electricity Plan should open avenues for power transmission companies and power discoms,0.79,07:58,Prospects light up for power transmission and distribution firms +0,"
I am not a big fan of shopping at D-Mart. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not that I dislike it. I like to buy my fresh fruits and vegetables at the farmers’ market on Sunday at a park close to where I live in Juhu. They also sell staples, organic honey, preserves and cookies. I enjoy the interaction with the farmers, the experience and discovery. To me retail is not just about value for money, functionality and utility, it’s also about theatre, experience and discovery.Unlike me, millions of consumers in western India love shopping at D-Mart. The fact that the no-frills discount retail chain’s parent Avenue Supermarts Ltd listed on 21 March with a 115% premium to its sale price is testimony to that.To be sure, it’s not without reason that investors drove up the stock so steeply. The regional chain is India’s most profitable retailer. Over 90% of D-Mart’s customers are regular shoppers who buy from the retailer 2-3 times a month on average. This is despite having no loyalty programme.What seems to be working for D-Mart is offering limited merchandise at prices lower than its rivals. If Future Retail’s large format stores like Big Bazaar stock 30,0000-50,000 units on average, a D-Mart store stocks just 40-50% of that merchandise. Most of this seems to defy logic. After all, over the years, we have been getting used to increased choices. Today, there are around 141 models of passenger vehicles from 15 car manufacturers on Indian roads. This is without taking into consideration luxury car models such as BMW, Audi and Mercedes. In the early 1990s, there were just four passenger car manufacturers with about a dozen car models, which included Hindustan’s Ambassador and Contessa, Premier Padmini, Standard Herald and 2000, the Maruti 800, Omni and Gypsy, and a range of Mahindra utility vehicles.A search for soap on online retailer Amazon.com Inc.’s India website shows up 324,992 results whereas a search for shampoo produces 17,028 results. A huge change from 30-40 years ago when bath soaps were dominated by the red Lifebuoy, pink Lux, Liril and Cinthol soaps and hair wash options were largely Shikakai soap, Halo and Sunsilk shampoo. However, too much is not always a good thing. Especially given our stressful and busy urban lives, offering more options to consumers may just lead to confusion, making shopping an ordeal instead of a pleasure. Psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper said that consumers who are offered fewer choices are more likely to purchase, based on an experiment that they conducted with jam at an upscale food market in a landmark study in 2000. The psychologists put up a display of 24 varieties of gourmet jam on one table one evening and on another day, shoppers saw a similar table, except that only six varieties of the jam were on display. The large display attracted more interest than the small one. But when the time came to purchase, people who saw the large display were one-tenth as likely to buy as people who saw the small display.In his provocative book, The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz warns that giving consumers more product choices actually lowers their purchase satisfaction. Schwartz reasons that having too many options makes us fear missing out, which causes anxiety, analysis paralysis and regret.Globally, some of the biggest success stories in food retailing in recent years are not that of US retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. or UK retailer Tesco Plc. They are of the international expansion of German no-frills retail chains Aldi and Lidl, founded in 1946 and 1973, respectively.Aldi and Lidl only offer between 2,000 and 3,000 lines. In comparison an average Walmart store has 100,000 products and an average retailer 45,000 items. It’s not only in retail. Look at some of the most successful brands—Tesla Inc., Apple Inc. and Google’s home page. What stands out is the simplicity of design, a clean interface, and no clutter.Among large retailers and manufacturers, the shift towards simplicity and offering less choice has already started happening. In 2015, Tesco announced cutting its range on its retail shelves by a third. Walmart reduced its average number of store displays by 15%. Even Procter and Gamble reduced its range of Head and Shoulders shampoos by nearly half—and ended up seeing a 10% bump in sales.Interestingly, for India, the journey from having no choices to having a plethora of choices, and now to preferring our choices curated for us has happened in a very short time frame of 25-26 years. It was only in 1991 that India opened its doors to multinationals and we saw our markets being flooded by foreign manufacturers like The Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. The lessons, though, are crystal clear. D-Mart, even though much smaller in size, on listing, had a market capitalization of Rs39,916.44 crore, more than the aggregate of all of its key listed national rivals including Future Retail Ltd, Shoppers Stop Ltd and Trent Ltd.Shop Talk will take a weekly look at consumer trends, behaviour and insights.",2017-03-29,"Given our stressful and busy urban lives, offering more options to consumers may just lead to confusion, making shopping an ordeal instead of a pleasure",0.15,11:36,Why less is more +0,"New Delhi: National carrier Air India has lowered the age limit for availing travel concession under its scheme for senior citizens to 60. As per the scheme, an Indian citizen who has attained the age of 60 on the date of commencement of journey is entitled to a 50% discount on the basic fare of an economy class seat, an Air India spokesperson confirmed. Earlier, the age limit for this offer was 63 years. This offer, however, is only valid for domestic travel. Those seeking to avail this scheme will have to produce a valid identity proof like voter identity card, passport, driving licence, or a senior citizen card issued by Air India.",2017-04-21,"Earlier, the age limit for Air India’s elderly travel concession was 63 years",-0.01,20:52,Air India lowers age limit for elderly travel concession to 60 +0,"New Delhi: Bengaluru-based hospital chain Narayana Hrudayalaya Ltd has acquired Gurgaon-based multi-speciality hospital NewRise Healthcare Pvt. Ltd from drug maker Panacea Biotech Ltd for Rs180 crore. The 230-bed hospital is in the final stages of completion and is likely to be commissioned within the next nine months, Narayana Hrudayalaya said in a stock exchange filing on Friday, adding that the acquisition is expected to strengthen its position in the north. Narayana Hrudayalaya currently has a network of 23 hospitals and seven heart centres across India. As per the agreement, Panacea Biotech and its associate firm PanEra Biotech Pvt. Ltd will sell 100% equity shares and 100% preference shares, respectively, in NewRise Healthcare to Narayana Hrudayalaya.In a separate stock exchange filing, Panacea Biotech said that NewRise Healthcare’s net worth was Rs55.31 crore as of 31 March 2017. Panacea Biotech had entered into a corporate debt restructuring exercise in 2014-15 and the company had total liabilities of Rs1,807.43 crore as of 31 March 2016. On Friday, shares of Narayana Hrudayalaya ended down 0.2% at Rs317.65 apiece on BSE, while Panacea Biotech’s shares closed 3.6% higher at Rs164.85 each. The benchmark Sensex index fell 0.2% to 29,365.30 points.",2017-04-21,"The company has entered an agreement to acquire 100% stake in NewRise Healthcare from Panacea Biotec, Narayana Hrudayalaya said in a BSE filing",0.47,23:09,Narayana Hrudayalaya to buy Panacea Biotec’s NewRise Healthcare for Rs180 crore +0,"
Mindtree Ltd’s shares have fallen 44.3% since it issued a profit warning for the March quarter. Growth at the company has taken a tumble since then, owing to delays in project starts and troubles at its UK subsidiary Bluefin Solutions. In this backdrop, it may come as a relief for investors that for the first time in over a year, Mindtree has beaten the Street’s expectations by a meaningful margin. Revenue grew 2% sequentially in constant currency terms last quarter, compared to estimated growth of less than 1%. What’s more, margins rose by 60 basis points, again ahead of estimates, indicating that the burn at Bluefin has reduced meaningfully. The company said that Bluefin’s revenue increased more than 11% sequentially; although, of course, it makes sense to wait and see if the recovery will sustain. The churn in Mindtree’s top 10 customers continues, and the company said it is in the process of rebuilding its top 10 portfolio. Last quarter, growth in the revenues of top 10 customers rose 0.7%, far lower than the company’s average growth rate. And in a clear sign that Mindtree isn’t exactly out of the woods, year-on-year growth in revenue stood at merely 0.3%. In this backdrop, the company’s assertion that growth in fiscal year 2018 will be in low double-digits seems ambitious at first. Having said that, Mindtree’s strong deal wins in the past few quarters also provide hope that growth will pick up in the new fiscal year. Work has commenced on some of the large deal wins in the December quarter, with on-site effort increasing by 6.1% sequentially last quarter. And while deal wins in the March quarter was considerably lower vis-à-vis December, at $209 million, on a cumulative basis the total contract value won by the company in the past few quarters should help sustain growth. “Even as the overall growth has slipped, Mindtree’s customer relationships and engagement with deal advisory (firms) continues to be strong and could result in an improvement in growth rates starting the June quarter,” analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities said in a recent note to clients. Of course, given the rough ride investors have had with Mindtree shares in the past year, they may do well to be cautious. Besides the fact that it makes sense to wait for the company to deliver consistent performance, it’s also important to remember that valuations aren’t cheap at 17.8 times trailing earnings.",2017-04-21,"While Mindtree shares have fallen 44.3% since it issued a profit warning for March quarter, its better-than-expected Q4 results should come as a relief to investors",0.5,07:41,Mindtree shows signs of a recovery +0,"Mumbai: The US Food and Drug Administration noted incomplete laboratory records among potential manufacturing violations it observed during an inspection of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.’s Dadra unit this month, according to an inspection report obtained by Bloomberg News.Other observations included failure to create accurate duplicates of key records, and to properly investigate drug batches that didn’t meet specifications, according to the FDA’s report, called a Form 483, obtained through a Freedom of Information request. Sun Pharma’s stock fell as much as 3% to Rs636.60, the lowest intra-day level in more than two months, before trading at Rs637.70 at 1:47pm in Mumbai.Frederick Castro, a spokesman for Sun Pharma, declined to comment on the FDA’s observations.Sun Pharma, India’s largest drugmaker, has been contending with increased scrutiny from US regulators that has constrained access to the market where it gets about half its sales, slowing revenue growth. Another Sun Pharma plant in Halol, Gujarat, remains under an FDA warning letter that prevents new product launches from that facility to the US. A reinspection of the Halol plant last year produced 14 pages of new observations, including poorly designed tests and tardiness reporting results. Sun has said it is responding to those observations.“They need to improve on the documentation aspect across their plants,” said Surya Patra, an analyst at PhillipCapital India Pvt. “But improving their documentation systems will not hamper their manufacturing activities, so their business is not likely to be hampered.” The observations at the Dadra and the Halol plants were of a similar nature, and don’t appear to be serious as they are procedural, he said.In March, Sun announced the FDA had lifted its import ban against a facility in Punjab which had been acquired with the 2015 purchase of Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd.FDA observationsDadra is a union territory in western India. The FDA made 11 total observations on the plant. The remainder range from an instance where expired intermediate-stage drugs were stored with unexpired batches, to a quality control unit that lacked authority to review manufacturing records, to criticisms of the lighting, employee clothing and equipment maintenance schedules, according to the document.In explaining the observation of incomplete lab records the report says inspectors noticed a torn and discarded printout showing data which was not included in records of test data for a batch of medicine. Inspectors also found an Excel spreadsheet on a shared computer network which was not included in official data elsewhere, and in another instance raw data was missing from some drug production activities, according to the report.The FDA’s website says that a Form 483 is issued to a company when inspectors note any conditions that may constitute violations of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The agency also says that the report does not constitute a final decision of whether any regulations were violated. The FDA considers company responses and other documents before deciding what further action, if any, is appropriate after a Form 483.",2017-04-21,US FDA reports incomplete laboratory records among potential manufacturing violations during an inspection of Sun Pharmaceutical’s Dadra unit this month,-0.47,20:22,US FDA inspection of Sun Pharma’s Dadra unit finds incomplete lab records +0,"Mumbai: A Jet Airways flight from Amsterdam to Toronto on Friday suffered a tail strike, forcing the pilot to return to the Dutch capital. The airline was operating a Boeing 777-300ER plane, which has capacity to seat more than 300 passengers. Sources said the flight suffered a tail strike while taking off from Amsterdam to Toronto and later faced pressurisation problems. Following the issues, the pilot decided to return to Amsterdam, they added. The exact number of passengers on board the aircraft was not immediately known. In January this year, a Jet Airways plane’s tail had touched the runway during landing at the Dhaka airport. The flight was from Mumbai.",2017-04-21,"The Jet airways flight, from Amsterdam to Toronto, suffered a tail strike while taking off, forcing the pilot to return to the Dutch capital",-1.0,19:31,Jet Airways flight suffers tail strike +0,"
On 10 April, Flipkart announced a new funding round and the acquisition of eBay India. Let us look at this development through the filter of something previously discussed in this column: the winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce.Since there is little differentiation between e-commerce firms, price becomes the sole differentiator. The company with most money to burn wins, while others sell out, usually to the winner. This may be simplistic, but it captures the essence of how e-commerce has played out globally.India is witnessing that scenario right now. Flipkart just announced acquisition of eBay India, and is likely to strike a similar deal with Snapdeal. Does this change the endgame? Can Flipkart outlast Amazon India? Or somehow settle into a stable duopoly beating the global trend? Or is it just delaying the inevitable? And what of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd?The winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce has not changed at all. And it will not until firms find a way to differentiate. Do customers see any real difference between Amazon and Flipkart? Both have great customer service, and similar merchandise. Even the frills are the same: if one has Amazon Prime, the other has Flipkart First. Does this acquisition change the endgame for Flipkart? Let us go through the arguments.Unique positioning of the acquired company: if the acquired company has unique strengths, it probably wouldn’t be up for acquisition. One argument could be that the target is strong in a certain segment such as a product category or geography. That may be true but it does not take that much effort or time to build from scratch. One has to only see how Amazon India has grown.Synergies with the acquired firm: the less said about this, the better, but we would be happy to be proven wrong. Flipkart’s deal-making has always been more about value buying, or common investors triggering a consolidation, than tapping synergies. Making the most of the opportunity of Rocket Internet pulling out of India, Flipkart snapped up Jabong for a song at $70 million. Its acquisition of Letsbuy and Myntra was triggered by common early stage investors. Its next buy Snapdeal, if the deal closes, will happen for similar reasons. With no home-grown mid-stage to late-stage venture funding available in India, Snapdeal is left with no choice but to sell.One oft-heard argument is that by buying everyone else, Flipkart will acquire such scale that it will either be able to survive stand-alone or force either Alibaba or Amazon to buy it. Given that all e-commerce firms are losing money, being bigger may just mean losing more money. Also, scale and customer base are meaningful only when entry barriers exist and there is some sort of customer loyalty. Otherwise, both are just vanity metrics.However, it is true that by acquiring all other rivals, Flipkart’s ability to present itself as the sole alternative to Amazon to investors and customers increases.There are other reasons for investors to back such acquisitions. The incentives of fund managers may not be aligned with those of the company. Many such deals are driven by investors such as Tiger Global and SoftBank, explained a limited partner (an investor in venture capital and private equity firms) from Hong Kong. In Flipkart’s case, Tiger has been an investor in the company for more than seven years and has to start thinking of providing liquidity to its investors. A deal to acquire Snapdeal, with an added deal for money from SoftBank (the single largest shareholder in Snapdeal), may provide this, this person added.ALSO READ: Why Flipkart’s valuation wasn’t hurt by multiple markdownsNew investors may be driven by a different logic, the limited partner explained. This could be strong liquidation preference terms that reduce downside risk. Or it could just be the opportunity to back a winning horse—or, at least, one that has a better chance of at least being there when the last race is run. Shrija Agrawal is Mint’s deals editor. Due Diligence will cover issues in India’s venture capital, private equity and deals space.",2017-04-12,"Flipkart’s $1.4 billion fundraising, acquisition of eBay India and a likely Snapdeal buyout shows the winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce hasn’t changed at all",0.25,01:57,Is Flipkart’s latest fundraising a game changer? +0,"
Shares of paint maker Akzo Nobel India touched an all-time high of Rs1,965 on BSE last week, on 3 April.The stock has been on market participants’ radar after its Dutch parent, Akzo Nobel NV, rejected US rival PPG Industries unsolicited takeover bid, twice, in March, stating that the proposal doesn’t reflect the current and future value of the firm. Akzo Nobel NV will hold an investor update on 19 April, where it will provide updated financial guidance and a detailed plan for separation of its specialty chemicals business, in an attempt to avoid the bid.Despite the deal not going through, they remain bullish on the stock because of a slew of domestic factors.First and foremost, they cite the firm’s rising market share in premium decorative paints segment. The industry has grown at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 12% over FY11-16 and most other firms have reflected the same trend. However, Akzo has grown at 20% CAGR in the same period, said an Angel Broking report.Secondly, its premium decorative paint brand, Dulux, is well positioned in that segment, the second largest after Asian Paints; and the firm’s recent unconventional strategy of introducing wholesalers into paint distribution would boost its presence in under-penetrated tier-II and tier-III cities, and provide the brand a competitive pricing advantage over peers, added analysts.Not only that, the company has also been aggressively adding capacities, expanding its base and making acquisitions. In December, Akzo Nobel India commissioned a specialty coatings production facility in Noida that can manufacture 600 kilolitres of coatings annually, with an investment of Rs3 crore. In the same month, it also bought BASF India’s industrial coating business. It is setting up a facility in Mumbai to serve its customers in the Northern and Western parts of India. Akzo Nobel India has six manufacturing facilities in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mohali, Gwalior, Raigad and Navi Mumbai.A steady balance sheet and lucrative dividend payout ratio are some other positives.However, what concerns analysts is Akzo Nobel’s operating margin, which had taken a beating for two years following the amalgamation of three subsidiaries with itself in FY12. Though the operating margin has improved from then, it still lags peers.“Despite continuing to deliver robust gross margins, which are at par with the market leader, Akzo’s operating margins have remained significantly lower (with a minimal differential of ~350 basis points with the closest peer) than peers in the paints sector on account of higher operating costs,” said a Spark Capital Research report. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. In FY16, operating margin came in at 11%, and Angel Broking foresees a further improvement of 200-250 bps. The firm has taken many cost-control steps, especially keeping staff costs in check, to improve operating margins.Meanwhile, talking about valuations, Akzo Nobel India is the fourth largest firm by market-cap in the organized paint sector, but trades at a significant discount to larger peers (see chart). After soaring to a new high, the stock witnessed some profit-booking and is currently trading at Rs1,867. Though the stock’s recent surge had to do with the aforementioned global factor, bridging of the valuation gap would largely depend on improvement in its operating margin.",2017-04-10,"Akzo Nobel India’s operating margin, which had taken a beating for two years following the amalgamation of three subsidiaries with itself in FY12, has improved from then, but still lags peers",-0.04,08:00,"Akzo Nobel India stock hits all-time high, but valuations yet to catch-up" +0,"
Flipkart announced a massive funding round this week, after a gap of nearly two years. Although, at $1.4 billion, it’s the company largest, the backdrop for the funding is markedly different from previous funding rounds. About two years ago, in July 2015, the e-commerce firm had raised $2.4 billion in three funding rounds over a 12- month period. Funds flowed in easily back then, not only for Flipkart, but also for its competitors and all forms of start-ups. Companies used these funds to provide huge discounts and gain customers, which in turn brought in a new set of investors.ALSO READ: Why Flipkart valuation wasn’t hurt by multiple markdownsIn the past 18 months or so, investors have become a lot more discerning. They’ve realized India’s e-commerce opportunity is no longer as big as it once seemed to be. Their focus has shifted to unit economics and other efficiency parameters. Flipkart said in a meet organized by an investment bank late last year that its cash burn has reduced by around 25% from peak levels. The flip side is that growth has faltered in the past year.Among other things, the large funding by Tencent Holdings Ltd, eBay Inc. and Microsoft Corp. can be seen as a sign of approval for this more sensible strategy. As such, unlike previous years, Flipkart will be expected to use its freshly raised funds far more cautiously. According to an analyst at a multinational bank, the new investors may well have included terms where funds are released based on certain milestones being met. With Amazon.com Inc. breathing down its neck with high levels of discounting in the Indian market, Flipkart could be walking a very tight rope, trying to protect market share as well as improve unit economics and reduce cash burn.ALSO READ: Flipkart’s Sachin, Binny Bansal no more billionaires after raising $1.4 billionHaving said that, Flipkart’s latest funding round provides the reassurance that there are still some takers for the Indian e-commerce story. In particular, that there is room for another large company alongside Amazon. While the growth opportunity may not be as big as estimated earlier, it is still clearly big enough to attract some investors. When funding had nearly dried up in the past 18 months, financial investor Morgan Stanley Institutional Fund Trust marked down Flipkart’s valuation to around $5.4 billion, or about 65% lower compared to its valuation in July 2015. The latest funding values the firm at $11.6 billion on a post-money basis. Of the total equity issuance of $1.4 billion, about $200-250 million is estimated to be in exchange for eBay’s India business. The net inflow of $1.2 billion or so should easily suffice in terms of funding cash burn for another two years. If Flipkart manages these funds well, and uses it to gain scale and improve unit economics, it may continue to find new investors; especially since most of its competitors are gradually shutting shop.",2017-04-12,"If Flipkart manages the new funds well, and uses it to gain scale and improve unit economics, it may continue to find new investors",0.36,03:15,Flipkart’s largest funding may also be the trickiest to navigate +0,"
NMDC Ltd was slow to increase iron ore prices when global prices soared to high levels in fiscal year 2017. Now that global prices are slipping, the company’s investors will hope it will be slow to cut them as well. Between October 2016 and early-March 2017, the prices of seaborne iron ore rose by 63.3% during which NMDC’s domestic prices rose by 15.5% (for iron ore lumps) and 24.1% (fines). Domestic market conditions would be one reason for the slower increase in prices, while the government’s desire to keep the cost of steel-making down may be another.The global iron ore market has turned bearish, says a Bloomberg report, as bankers turn nervous about its future in a scenario where China cuts back its steel output. Whether the bear case is here to stay will be known in a few months from now. On earlier occasions too, iron prices have rebounded after falling sharply for some time, due to adverse news. Iron ore in Qingdao, China, closed at $75.5/tonne on 7 April, according to Bloomberg, which is still 35% higher than its level in October.Unless prices fall sharply, NMDC may still be able to justify in holding on to prices at current levels. Last week, it disclosed that sales for the March quarter had risen by 14.3% over a year ago but declined by 2.9% sequentially. Average prices during the quarter are up by 10.7% in the case of lumps and 16% in the case of fines, which indicates that sales and profit should post good growth rates both over a year ago and sequentially.Rising domestic steel capacity is a good sign for NMDC, although one worrying sign is slower growth in steel consumption. A pickup in domestic consumption will help steel makers earn better margins, improve steel output and in turn benefit the company. The main risk it is facing at present is if iron ore prices crash, as that will directly affect profitability and cash flows.NMDC had said in December that it may exit its three-million-tonne steel project under construction through a strategic disinvestment. Clarity on whether it will focus on iron ore going forward and leave steel-making to others will be useful to investors. That will mean its cash surplus will be available for distribution, either by way of dividends or by buying back of shares. While the government is the moving force behind the return of cash, minority shareholders also gain in the process. The company’s share is up by 31% over a year ago but is below its February levels as falling global iron prices worry investors.",2017-04-11,"Unless prices fall sharply, NMDC may still be able to justify in holding on to prices at current levels",-0.19,08:02,Slipping global iron ore prices worry NMDC investors +0,"
Improving volume is raising earnings expectations of Container Corp. of India Ltd (Concor). Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd revised the company’s fiscal 2016-17 to 2018-19 earnings estimates upwards by 2-3% after the container rail and logistics solutions provider reported a 7.8% growth in volume in tonnage terms for 2016-17. They had fallen in 2015-16. Exim (export-import) volume, its core business, is up 9.2%.Of course, the earnings upgrade is moderate, and it is not yet clear if higher volume will translate into revenue.Due to the fall in lead distance, the company’s revenue in the December quarter dropped about 5% from the year-ago quarter. But that should not bother investors much. The company’s steps to lower empty (container) running costs are bearing fruit. This factor, coupled with volume recovery, can help it extract better economies of scale, which should aid earnings.“Volume-linked leverage clearly helps Concor, given the fixed-cost nature of the business. Also in 3Q, just between higher double stacking to 216 trains from 188 trains q-o-q (quarter-on-quarter) and lower rebates, ConCor’s EXIM EBIT margins improved to 17.1% from 15.7% q-o-q ,” Jefferies adds. “Double stacking (of containers) benefits should also play out in 4QFY17E (fourth quarter FY17 estimates).”Adding to the optimism is the improving volume outlook. Maersk Line, a container shipping line, says Exim container trade volume growth, which doubled in 2016 from 2015, can be maintained if the government keeps up policy action.Sandeep Mathew, an analyst at SBICAP Securities Ltd, says the prospects of core Exim trade (excluding crude and oil products) are improving. This should improve Concor’s volume outlook, given its dominant position in the domestic Exim container market.Further, the Indian Railways’ initiatives to strengthen its freight traffic business, focus on dedicated freight corridor construction, and government initiatives such as multi-modal logistics parks are expected to help improve rail container operators’ competitive positioning. JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd expects the creation of a rail development authority and other initiatives to help rail container operators to regain freight market share from the road transport sector.The optimism has driven up the stock 26% so far this calendar year. The BSE 500 index during the period is up less than 16%. While valuations at 26 times 2017-18 earnings estimate are not cheap, a sustained recovery in volumes will be crucial for continuation of the stock’s outperformance.",2017-04-10,"While Concor’s valuations at 26 times 2017-18 earnings estimate are not cheap, a sustained recovery in volumes will be crucial for continuation of the outperformance",0.65,07:59,Concor’s earnings expectations get a boost from higher volumes +0,"
The monetary policy committee (MPC) will meet in the first week of April to discuss what the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) should do next. A lot of attention in the next few days will quite naturally be focused on what it will decide or what it should decide as far as interest rates go. This will be the fourth meeting of the MPC. The minutes of the three MPC meetings over the past six months offer some important clues on an issue that needs more clarity—how the committee has been interpreting the inflation-targeting mandate given to it by the government.
What is the inflation target?
The official inflation target notified by the government is 4%, with a band of 2% on either side. A lot depends on how the MPC interprets this target. There were concerns after the surprise 25 basis points rate cut in October 2016 that the committee was in effect considering the upper end of the band as the inflation target, thus raising fears about a compromise in the long fight against high inflation.
But RBI governor Urjit Patel has subsequently made clear in the December 2016 and February 2017 MPC meetings that the primary objective of the Indian central bank should be to secure the central point of the notified inflation target, i.e. 4%.
Does the real economy matter?
The minutes of the first three MPC meetings show that developments in the real economy are a central concern for monetary policy decisions. This is evident from the number of times the output gap has been mentioned in the MPC meetings. Few seem to appreciate that RBI has embraced flexible inflation targeting. It is quite different from pure inflation targeting where the central bank is solely concerned about inflation while the government is solely concerned about growth.
The importance of the output gap is implicitly recognized in the theoretical model that provides the theoretical framework of the Urjit Patel committee report. The real economy enters the model in terms of the Taylor Rule as well as the New Keynesian Phillips Curve.
However, one current problem is that RBI has not clearly indicated what it believes to be the potential rate of economic growth in India right now, so it is difficult for outsiders to assess how large the output gap is. The Indian central bank needs to share more information about its assessment of potential output.
One additional point: The discussions on the impact of demonetisation, especially in the December meeting, show that the MPC will look past temporary shocks to output or inflation rather than respond in a knee-jerk fashion—and that is how it should be.
Is there an intermediate target for Indian monetary policy?
The RBI has traditionally used money supply growth, the nominal exchange rate and the interest rate as intermediate targets to control inflation. It has now moved to directly targeting inflation, but that does not mean that the central bank has completely abandoned intermediate targets. As Michael Patra made clear in the October MPC meeting, the inflation forecast now serves as the intermediate target of monetary policy. Many central banks that have embraced flexible inflation targeting use the inflation forecast as the intermediate target. So RBI is on good ground here: it seems committed to the notified inflation target in the long run and the inflation forecast in the medium term.
However, the main problem here is that the Indian central bank does not provide enough information about its inflation forecast over the medium term in the fan charts that are released with every monetary policy statement.
What about the exchange rate?
Indian monetary policy has till now kept a close eye on the exchange rate as well. There are good reasons for central banks in emerging markets to do so—because of the impact of exchange rate shocks on inflation on the one hand and on private sector balance sheets on the other. Some versions of the Taylor Rule define the central bank response function not only in terms of the inflation gap and output gap, but also exchange rate dynamics (which in the Indian case could be the real exchange rate).
The MPC has not given too much importance to the exchange rate in its first three meetings. It is not clear whether this is because the rupee has been stable in the past six months or because the MPC members do not give weightage to the exchange rate while setting interest rates.
The MPC has also been silent on financial stability issues. One reason could be that the current monetary policy orthodoxy is that macro prudential regulations rather than monetary policy tools are a better way to achieve financial stability.
These are early days yet. The new MPC arrangement is barely six months old. There have been only three meetings till now. But the discussions during these meetings—as revealed in the minutes that have been made public—do offer some important clues on how inflation targeting is getting operationalized in India.
Finally, the unanimity in the MPC is still puzzling given the fact that a committee is supposed to be less prone to groupthink. This will undoubtedly change as the committee settles down.Niranjan Rajadhyaksha is executive editor of Mint.Comments are welcome at cafeeconomics@livemint.com. Read Niranjan Rajadhyaksha’s previous Mint columns at www.livemint.com/cafeeconomics",2017-03-29,The minutes of the past three MPC meetings offer important clues on how it has been interpreting the inflation-targeting mandate given to it by the govt,0.35,02:19,How RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee has been thinking +0,"
On Friday, most state-owned bank stocks rose. For a few of them, the rise was spectacular. For instance, the Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC) stock jumped 6.6% and Bank of India (BoI) 5.2% on the National Stock Exchange. The Nifty PSU Bank Index, a measure of public sector banks’ shares, gained 3.31% on Friday compared with less than a quarter percentage point rise in the exchange’s benchmark 50-stock Nifty.Incidentally, in the quarter ended 31 December, both OBC and BoI had at least 13% gross bad loans on their books. After setting aside money, OBC’s net bad loans were 9.68% of its overall loan book; for BoI, 7.09%. Still their stocks jumped, along with most other public sector banks’, after finance minister Arun Jaitley announced that the government has been working on a radical proposal to resolve the bad loans crisis in Indian banking.Banks bat for relaxed RBI norms on bad loan resolution as deadline loomsI presume the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the government have been discussing this radical proposal for weeks. It appears to have been galvanized by, and likely evolved around, what the RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya outlined in his maiden speech—on “Some Ways to Decisively Resolve Bank Stressed Assets”—delivered at an Indian Banks’ Association conference in February. Some of the banking sector analysts have found the proposal too academic and not feasible in the Indian context and the “status quoist” bankers are not too excited since it talks about resolving the bad loan problem in a time-bound, decisive manner.I will be happy if indeed the proposal turns out to be the blueprint for resolving the bad loan problem in Indian banking. Collectively, all listed banks recorded around Rs7.2 trillion gross bad loans in the December quarter; it will rise further in March. The state-run banks are far more affected by this malaise than their counterparts in the private sector. More importantly, this does not represent the bad loan scenario accurately.Every bank is carrying dollops of restructured loans on its books and a portion of that is likely to turn bad; at least Rs3 trillion worth of bad loans have been written off by the banks in the past few years and there is no clarity on how much bad loans are on the books of non-banking financial companies (including microfinance entities), regional rural banks, housing companies and cooperative banks. If we add all of them, the bad loan figures might look staggering.Not a blanket bad bankWhat is interesting is that the plan has not proposed a blanket bad bank, separating the bad loans of troubled banks from performing loans and creating a pool without any clear resolution path.It is also not in favour of leaving things to the banks, as most bank managements are not in a hurry to resolve the problem. Given a choice, they would like to postpone the inevitable as they are not comfortable getting rid of bad assets at a steep discount for fear of being hounded by investigative agencies. This is one of the many reasons why they would like to delay the resolution process and instead focus solely on persuading the government for capital every year.ALSO READ | Banks’ bad loan growth slowing but the last word can’t be said as yetThe proposal is, instead, to create special structures to deal with stressed loans keeping in mind the turnaround potential of the companies that have borrowed money from banks.One such structure is a private asset management company to handle the creation, selection and implementation of a feasible resolution plan for a quick turnaround of the 50 largest troubled companies in telecoms, metals (iron and steel, in particular), engineering-procurement-construction and textiles within a fixed time frame. One or more credit rating agencies will rate the resolution plans and the promoters of the companies will have no say in the restructuring plan.The banks will choose from among those resolution plans that ensure adequately high credit rating of the restructured entity, and likely take a deep haircut approved by the government (or likely, by an approved oversight committee) and accepted by the vigilance authorities.The insolvency code will come into play only if the process to arrive at an acceptable resolution plan fails.For those sectors such as power, which suffer from excess capacity and need a longer-term solution, the plan is to create a quasi-government body – a national asset management company with a minority government stake. This will raise debt, possibly government-guaranteed, and manage the asset reconstruction companies and private equity firms which will be responsible for turning around the stressed companies.Radical departure from the pastThe proposal is a radical departure from measures that RBI has so far adopted to resolve the bad loan problems.The platforms such as corporate debt restructuring (CDR), strategic debt restructuring (SDR) and the scheme for sustainable structuring of stressed assets (S4A) which have been used to clean up the bank balance sheets have left the job to the banks. Here, for the first time, we are seeing an aggressive regulatory intervention with a clear incentive structure. Those banks which will not be able to implement them or do not coordinate well with others run the risk of being punished.SDR, introduced in June 2015, gave banks the power to convert a part of their debt in stressed companies into majority equity but it didn’t work because promoters delayed the restructuring, dangling the promise of bringing in new investors. Before that, in February 2014, RBI had allowed a change in management of stressed companies. The principle of the restructuring exercise was that the shareholders must bear the first loss and not the lenders; and the promoters must have more skin in the game.This was done after the regulator realized that the CDR mechanism, put in place in August 2001, could not do much to alleviate the pain of the lenders. Any loan exposure of Rs10 crore and more (including non-fund limits) and involving at least two lenders could have been tackled on this platform. Of the 530 cases with loans worth over Rs4.3 trillion that were approved for restructuring at the CDR cell as on 31 December, 2016, 264 cases with loans worth Rs1.25 trillion failed their restructuring agreements.The S4A scheme allowed the banks to convert up to half the loans of stressed companies into equity or equity-like securities. Meant for restructuring companies with an overall exposure of at least Rs500 crore, this scheme can come into play only when the bankers are convinced that the cash flows of the stressed companies are enough to service at least half of the funded liabilities or “sustainable debt”. Not much has, however, got resolved under this scheme either.The most important point in the new proposal is that it has subtly shifted the focus from banks to the larger economic scenario, as a banking crisis can morph into a larger crisis that hits the industrial growth in Asia’s third-largest economy. Without dissecting the economic viability of underlying assets and finding ways of restructuring them, if we want to save the banks first and take care of the industries later, it could be too late to lift the economic growth and create jobs. We can have healthy banks but who will they lend to? In other words, the suggestion is not to look at the health of the banking sector in isolation but to treat the sick banks and sick industries at the same time.Bang for the buckFor that, a big hit on the bank balance sheets and additional bank recapitalization is a given. The best way to get the maximum bang for the buck is to make the banks understand that they would need to opt for a deep haircut or get rid of the bad assets at a steep discount before the assets are nurtured back to health by one of the two agencies.The proposal has also called for a significant restructuring of the public sector banks, including raising private capital, sale of assets or securitizing them, merging banks and getting rid of non-performing work force by offering voluntary retirement schemes and replacing them with a younger, digitally-savvy talent pool. Those banks which show no signs of improvement would be put under the so-called prompt corrective action plan of RBI that curbs their growth. It’s refreshing to hear the Indian banking regulator talk about “tough love” and allow the market forces to decide which banks should be around and which shouldn’t.If both the banking regulator and the government are ready to bite the bullet, the banks will be left with no choice but to toe the line.And Friday’s market reaction suggests many banks might, in fact, be better off if their stressed assets are resolved swiftly. Their valuation will go up and if the government wants to divest its stake in some of the banks, it will be able to make some money and bring down the fiscal deficit.Is this the silver bullet to address the problem which is getting deeper by the day? I don’t know. But there is little doubt that we need to get the job done and time is of the essence. Neither the regulator nor the government can remain in denial anymore. The days of forbearance are over. One of the reasons why global rating agencies seem unwilling to raise the sovereign rating of the world’s fastest-growing large economy is its not-so-healthy banking system. In short, it’s now or never.Tamal Bandyopadhyay, consulting editor at Mint, is adviser to Bandhan Bank. He is also the author of A Bank for the Buck, Sahara: The Untold Story and Bandhan: The Making of a Bank.His Twitter handle is @tamalbandyo",2017-03-27,We can have healthy banks but who will they lend to? Let’s treat the sick banks and sick industries simultaneously,-0.65,12:17,Bad loan resolution: It’s now or never +0,"The demonetisation-led cash crunch meant expectations for the December quarter results of retail firms—Titan Co. Ltd, Shoppers Stop Ltd and Bata India Ltd—were running low. In that backdrop, these companies did better than expected.Titan’s jewellery business, which contributes the lion’s share of its overall revenue, performed well, reporting a 15.4% year-on-year revenue growth. This looks even better considering that the December 2015 quarter had a high base, thanks to the presence in the initial days of studded jewellery activation. Gold jewellery volume growth for the December 2016 quarter was 4%. Titan’s watch business performed well, too.Shoppers Stop’s like-to-like sales growth for its department stores came in at 6.4%. Now, by itself that number isn’t impressive considering this is the stronger festive quarter we are talking about. Note that the measure had increased 17.4% a year ago. But the December 2016 quarter like-to-like performance was better than analysts’ estimates. The firm maintains like-to-like growth saw double-digit year-on-year decline in November, compared with double-digit increase in October and December.Like-to-like sales growth is the comparable sales growth of stores that have been operational for over a year.Bata India’s revenue rose 2.4%, while its operating profit declined as staff costs, rent and other expenses rose at a faster pace. For the nine-month period to December, revenue increased just 0.8%. This is estimated to improve. ICICI Securities Ltd expects Bata India’s revenue growth to revive from fiscal 2018 onwards on account of an improved product mix and the company following a dual strategy of driving same-store sales growth and opening new stores in untapped locations. “We expect revenue to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 8.1% year-on-year during FY16-19E,” wrote ICICI Securities in a report last month.From 8 November (when demonetisation was announced) till 17 March, share prices of Titan and Bata India have appreciated, while those of Shoppers Stop have declined. Analysts at Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd say Shoppers Stop has nudged ahead its Ebitda margin target of 6.5% by one year to FY18E on the back of demand disruption owing to demonetisation. Ebitda is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The performance of subsidiary HyperCity will be a key thing to follow for the Shoppers Stop stock. In general, improvement in consumer demand translating into better like-to-like growth and eventually higher revenue growth are key factors to watch out for.",2017-03-24,"Retail firms Titan, Shoppers Stop and Bata India performed well in the December quarter though demonetisation ensured expectations were running low",0.1,09:32,Retail stocks: Q3 results exceed expectations +0,"New Delhi: Confidence in India’s company corner rooms has climbed and now far outpace that at their global counterparts despite concerns over economic growth, regulation and protectionism, a global survey showed. According to the results of PricewaterhouseCoopers’s 20th global survey of chief executive officers released on Tuesday, 71% of India’s CEOs are very confident of their company’s prospects for revenue growth over the next 12 months as opposed to 64% a year ago. Worldwide, only 38% of CEOs exude similar confidence.Across geographies, the concerns on top of CEOs’ minds seem to be similar. This year, 82% of CEOs are concerned about uncertain economic growth, while 81% are concerned about over-regulation. These concerns, along with looming protectionism, are seen by CEOs as threats to growth. In India, 64% of the CEOs surveyed were concerned about protectionism, against 59% globally. Inadequate infrastructure and the lack of availability of key skills in the country—key enablers for growth— continue to be major concerns.Eighty-one per cent of CEOs in India rated inadequate basic infrastructure as the top threat to growth as opposed to 54% of CEOs globally. Further, 87% of India’s CEOs rated availability of key skills as a key threat to growth, compared to 77% globally. Strong growth fundamentals and upcoming policy reforms, including the Goods and Services Tax (GST) expected to be rolled out on 1 July, are giving CEOs reasons to be optimistic about the overall business environment in India. Foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country has grown by 53% in the past two years to reach $55 billion in 2015-16.",2017-04-19,"According to the results of PwC survey, 71% of India’s CEOs are very confident of their company’s prospects for revenue growth over the next 12 months as opposed to 64% a year ago",1.0,00:27,Indian CEOs more optimistic than global counterparts: PwC +0,"
There is a widespread belief that the implementation of the goods and services tax (GST) will herald a new era for logistics firms. The new regulation will strengthen organized companies’ competitive position vis-à-vis the unorganized sector, as customers will be allowed to offset service tax under GST. Currently, a large part of the surface logistics business is handled by the unorganized sector as tax avoidance helps them keep prices lower.The second benefit is the transformation of India into one market. Post GST, stakeholders expect customers to consolidate their warehousing requirement to the hub and spoke model and drive business to efficient transportation solutions providers. “As inefficiencies and costs come down, inland transport would be more cost effective. This increases business, creating the space for expansion,” says Prakash Tulsiani, executive director and chief operating officer, Allcargo Logistics Ltd.But the Street is not yet fully convinced. As GST implementation is now round the corner, shares of TCI Express Ltd and Gati Ltd have gained 19-38% in the past two months. VRL Logistics Ltd, which is also focused on local logistics, is up less than 2%, while Allcargo Logistics Ltd lost 5%. VRL and Allcargo are also lagging behind on one-year returns, compared with the BSE 500 index.Some stocks recovered a bit in recent weeks. But the euphoria is missing. Why? Among the several reasons, one is the subdued business environment. The second is the lack of clarity on GST benefits. Antique Stock Broking Ltd notes that the business model which will lead growth post the roll-out of GST is still unclear even as “managements share different insights on growth opportunities”.Analysts warn competitive intensity can rise as the sector consolidates post GST. Besides, they expect the unorganized logistics sector to move into the tax net rather than risk losing business. In other words, there may not be a large amount of business for grabs, as many of these firms may remain in business.Tulsiani of Allcargo Logistics says demand may see a gradual rise as customers will take time to adapt to the new system. “We sense that companies will take some time to adopt and understand the implications of GST and then take a cautious call.The demand increase should be able to take care of available supply,” Tulsiani adds.Sandeep Mathew, an analyst at SBICAP Securities Ltd, reasons that the requirement for scale and cost-efficient solutions may benefit large organized firms more than smaller firms. “Smaller players will have to start focusing on niches (eg. underserved markets) to effectively compete with larger players,” Mathew adds.Of course, the overarching belief among the experts cited above is that GST will have a positive impact on the sector. Tulsiani of Allcargo Logistics validates his view by pointing to outsourcing of warehousing activity by private companies.Mathew of SBICAP Securities expects companies to start reflecting the positive impact of GST in earnings from 2018-19 onwards in a more meaningful manner.While these expectations should keep hopes alive for logistics firms, the way things are currently also suggests that business will not come on a platter for them. Depending on the region and client profile, they will have to realign their service offerings in a cost-efficient manner. The next six months will provide much required cues about the kind of growth opportunities that GST throws up, and how companies are pursuing them.",2017-03-27,"The next 6 months will provide much required cues about kind of growth opportunities that GST throws up, and how companies are pursuing them",0.93,07:47,Logistics companies will have to sweat it out for GST benefits +0,"New Delhi: Businessman Vijay Mallya was arrested by the Scotland Yard in London on Monday on India’s request for his extradition on fraud charges. He was released on bail a few hours later after he appeared at a central London police station.“Officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Extradition Unit this morning arrested a man on an extradition warrant. Vijay Mallya was arrested on behalf of the Indian authorities in relation to accusations of fraud,” said the Scotland Yard.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise: lawyersThe London Metropolitan Police said Mallya was arrested after appearing at a central London police station. He appeared at Westminster magistrates’ court in London and was seen walking out with his legal team a few hours later after being granted bail.An unfazed Mallya later tweeted on Tuesday, “Usual Indian media hype. Extradition hearing in Court started today as expected.”The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Indian High Commission in London will now present India’s case in the UK court for Vijay Mallya’s extradition as the country “wants to the myth that by crossing boundaries you are out of bounds“, said a person aware of the developments. India is seeking extradition of Mallya for defaulting on Kingfisher Airlines loans due to IDBI Bank.CBI has been investigating a case against Mallya and the companies he controlled over allegations of money laundering since early last year and had secured a non-bailable warrant against the absconding businessman in a case related to money laundering and wilful default of loans, Mint reported on 22 November. CBI clarified that the arrest was in connection with his extradition.“Vijay Mallya has been arrested in connection with the IDBI bank case. We cannot comment further on the matter till it is heard at the London Court,” a senior CBI official told Mint, on condition of anonymity.A senior government official on condition of anonymity stated that, “protocol would now require Mallya’s case to be heard in London. The extradition case will be heard and evidence related to the same will be produced on the basis of which the London courts will take an informed decision. It is too soon to comment on when he will be extradited to India.”On 23 January, CBI’s central and Bengaluru division raided the premises of the Vijay Mallya-run UB Group in Bengaluru in connection with a Rs900-crore loan default and money laundering case. On the same day, CBI arrested nine officials of Kingfisher Airlines and IDBI Bank Ltd, including the bank’s former chief.In September 2016, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had issued the order, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), to attach the various properties including flats, a farmhouse, shares and fixed deposits in Mallya’s name and his associate firms. The agency had earlier said that the market value of these assets was Rs6,630 crore.The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had stated that India’s request for Mallya’s extradition had recently been certified by the UK, after the UK’s home department on 21 February conveyed India’s request for Mallya’s extradition to the Westminster magistrate’s court, after being certified by the UK secretary of state. However, with Mallya’s extradition proceedings just beginning in the UK, India may well have to wait till he is handed over by the British authorities.In New Delhi, MoS (finance) Santosh Kumar Gangwar said, “We are now assessing the facts how we can bring him back into the country and start judicial proceedings against him.” The government, he said, will leave no stone unturned to bring to justice anyone indulging in financial irregularities.On 23 March, MoS (external affairs) V.K. Singh informed the Rajya Sabha that while India and the UK had an Extradition Treaty which has been in force since 1993, “In the last five years, only one fugitive criminal namely Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel has been extradited from the UK. As per Article 2 of the India-UK Extradition Treaty, an extradition offence for the purposes of this Treaty is constituted by conduct which under the laws of each Contracting State is punishable by a term of imprisonment for a period of at least one year. An offence may be an extradition offence notwithstanding that it relates to taxation or revenue or is one of a purely fiscal character.” Singh also added that the extradition requests in respect of criminal fugitives namely Raymond Varley, Ravi Shankaran, Velu Boopalan, Ajay Prasad Khaitan, Virendra Kumar Rastogi and Anand Kumar Jain had been rejected by the UK government.Meanwhile, S.S.Naganad, who is the senior counsel appearing for the consortium of banks led by State Bank of India stated that, “There was more than one issue against him (Mallya). There was money laundering case, Karnataka high court has issued an arrest warrant, a magistrate court has also issued an arrest warrant. All this put together is what the Indian government had sought an extradition for.”Sharan Poovanna in Bengaluru contributed to this story.",2017-04-19,Vijay Mallya was arrested in London by Scotland Yard on India’s request for his extradition on fraud charges relating to Kingfisher Airlines loans but was soon released on bail,-1.0,04:17,"Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hours" +0,"Mumbai: Private sector lender IndusInd Bank Ltd on Wednesday said its net profit for the March quarter rose 21.16% from a year ago due to higher net interest income and other income.Net profit for the quarter stood at Rs751.61 crore as compared with Rs620.35 crore a year ago. A Bloomberg poll of 24 analysts had forecast a net profit of Rs791 crore.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, increased 31.5% to Rs1,667.45 crore from Rs1,268.21 crore last year. Other income jumped 32.70% to Rs1,211.30 crore from Rs912.80 crore in the same period last year.Provisions and contingencies jumped 101.32% to Rs430.13 crore in the quarter from Rs213.66 crore in the same quarter last year. The bank’s gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rose 8.57% to Rs1,054.87 crore at the end of the March quarter from Rs971.62 crore in the December quarter. On year-on-year basis, it jumped 35.8% from Rs776.82 crore.As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were at 0.93% at the end of the March quarter, as compared to 0.94% in the previous quarter and 0.87% in the year-ago quarter. Net NPAs were at 0.39% in the quarter, unchanged from the previous quarter and 0.36% in the same quarter last year.Deposits rose 36.1% to Rs126.57 billion, while advances rose 27.9% to Rs1.13 trillion.The bank announced a dividend of Rs6 a share.At 2.22pm, IndusInd Bank fell 0.47% to Rs1,425 on the BSE, while India's benchmark Sensex Index fell 0.04% to 29,317.39 points.",2017-04-19,IndusInd Bank's net profit for the fourth quarter stood at Rs751.61 crore as compared with Rs620.35 crore a year ago,0.89,20:41,IndusInd Bank Q4 profit rises 21% to Rs751.61 crore +0,"Atlanta: United Airlines chief executive officer (CEO) Oscar Munoz, pivoting from a public apology to face investors, assured Wall Street that the carrier would rebound from the uproar that followed the dragging of a passenger off one of its planes.“This will prove to be a watershed moment for our company, and we are more determined than ever to put our customers at the center of everything we do,” Munoz said in a statement Monday. “We are dedicated to setting the standard for customer service among U.S. airlines, as we elevate the experience our customers have with us from booking to baggage claim.”ALSO READ : United Airlines tied $500,000 CEO bonus to customer satisfaction resultsThe comments were the CEO’s first to investors since the 9 April incident, when security officers forcibly removed David Dao from a flight after he refused to give up his seat to make room for airline employees. Munoz, who also announced a first-quarter financial performance that topped expectations, is trying to maintain momentum for his plan to catch up to Delta Air Lines Inc. and American Airlines Group Inc. in profitability and operational performance.“United said the right things regarding its need to upgrade its customer service and should be able to move past its PR nightmare,” Jim Corridore, an analyst at CFRA Research, said in a note to clients in which he reiterated a “strong buy” rating on the shares.The shares rose less than 1% to $71.20 before regular trading hours Tuesday in New York. The company plans to hold a conference call Tuesday to discuss the financial results.Earnings performanceMunoz’s sober tone contrasted with a better-than-expected financial performance. Adjusted earnings of 41 cents a share beat the 38-cent average of analyst estimates even as higher fuel and labour costs caused profit to fall from a year earlier. Sales were $8.42 billion, topping the $8.38 billion that analysts anticipated.ALSO READ : Lessons from the United Airlines debaclePassenger revenue for each seat flown a mile will rise by 1% to 3% in the current quarter, the Chicago-based airline said. That would be the first increase since the first three months of 2015.“We are most interested with how each region is performing,” Cowen & Co. analyst Helane Becker wrote in a note to investors. “We suspect the underlying improvement is being driven by the domestic and Latin American markets. It will be interesting to see how the Pacific and Atlantic are performing, given both regions have been drags” on profit.Domestic capacity will climb by as much as 5.5% in the second quarter while total capacity will rise by a maximum of 4%, United said.‘Humbling experience’Munoz said Dao’s treatment was a “humbling experience” for United and accepted full responsibility.ALSO READ : The game theory of overbooking flightsThe CEO’s initial reaction drew scorn worldwide last week when he called the incident “upsetting” and apologized for having to “re-accommodate” the passengers who were asked to leave the plane. Hours later he told employees that Dao had been “disruptive and belligerent” after being asked to leave the plane, based on early reports.He finally went on ABC’s Good Morning America with a more contrite message and promised a full review of United’s policies regarding oversold flights.Dao suffered a concussion, broken nose and two lost teeth, and “probably” will sue the carrier, his lawyer, Thomas Demetrio, said at a press conference last week. Bloomberg",2017-04-18,United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz assured investors that the carrier would rebound from the uproar that followed the dragging of a passenger off one of its flights,0.49,18:45,United Airlines CEO takes apology to investors after passenger dragging fiasco +0,"Past mistakes tend to come back to haunt you at the most inopportune moment, and Yes Bank’s financial results are a case in point. The private lender reported a 169% rise in gross bad loans for the fourth quarter and a resultant 66% increase in provisions. Recall that the March quarter of 2015-16 was the worst in terms of asset quality for banks.The stock has gained a massive 39% so far this year, fuelled partly by the news and then subsequent success of its qualified institutional placement (QIP). This impressive rise now seems like an overkill and analysts are already expecting a correction.In Yes Bank’s case, the indiscretion pertains to a single borrower which the bank should have labelled as non-performing asset (NPA) in the previous financial year. What made the lender do it now is the new rule put in place by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday that mandates banks to disclose deviations in the asset quality assessment of the central bank and the lender in question.If the mandated provisioning by the RBI exceeds 15% of published profit after tax of FY16 or additional gross NPA exceeds 15% of the published figure, the lenders have to disclose the same in full in their financial statements for FY17. If the RBI’s asset quality review brought to light a massive pool of decaying loans, Tuesday’s rule makes sure any residual bad loan skeletons come in full view of investors.In Yes Bank’s case, this meant an additional slippage of Rs911.5 crore in the March quarter. But the lender still saw healthy profit growth of 30% from the year-ago period because of a sustained robust growth in core income. The bank’s core metrics including loan growth, net interest income and even net interest margin held up. This perhaps was the saving grace of the quarterly results.The stock trades at a price-to-book value multiple of 3.12 of the estimated earnings of FY18 and for these valuations to be justified, the bank will have to show a quick turnaround in its asset quality.Ever since RBI triggered widespread recognition of stressed loans through its asset quality review (AQR) in 2015, the unease that banks have not revealed the rot in loan books in its entirety has set in. The quarterly results of Yes Bank deepen this unease.",2017-04-19,"Yes Bank reports 169% rise in gross bad loans for the March quarter and 66% increase in provisions, following RBI’s new asset quality rules",-0.4,20:41,Yes Bank first casualty in RBI’s rule to pull out bad loan skeletons +0,"New Delhi: Vijay Mallya took to Twitter on Tuesday to poke fun at the “Indian media hype” over his arrest in London and said the extradition hearing was “as expected”. The 61-year-old businessman, who is co-owner of Sahara Force India Formula One Team, made a series of retweets of the team’s practice session in Bahrain. Known for his flamboyance, the only reference Mallya made to his arrest was to blame the Indian media with an earlier tweet. “Usual Indian media hype. Extradition hearing in Court started today as expected,” Mallya tweeted.Apart from the Formula One action, he showed his interest in health matters, retweeting two tweets from Doctify, a health platform in the UK that offers solutions to patients who want to search, compare and book doctors online. While one was on medical data security and health challenges, his other retweet was on contact lens hygiene routine. Earlier in the day, Mallya—who has been declared a proclaimed offender—was arrested in London after he appeared at a central London police station. Mallya is wanted in India for defaulting on loans. His now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines owes more than Rs9,000 crore to many banks. He had fled India on 2 March 2016 and has repeatedly dismissed the charges against him.",2017-04-18,"Vijay Mallya tweets ‘usual media hype’ over his arrest in London, adding that his extradition process has started as expected in a UK court",0.04,21:10,Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in London +0,"Palo Alto: The day Donald Trump was elected US President, Doug Derwin came into a lot of money. Derwin is a lawyer turned venture capitalist, and he’d cashed in on a successful investment. Like so many wealthy, Silicon Valley types, Derwin used the windfall to buy a Tesla Inc. electric car and stick it to the man—or at least to the climate-change deniers he thought Trump represented. “One of the reasons I felt good about buying it was as a sort of statement in opposition to what was happening around me,” Derwin says.But, as Derwin’s order worked its way through Tesla’s manufacturing backlog, he had second thoughts. Elon Musk, Tesla’s co-founder and chief executive officer, was meeting Trump and joining committees in the new administration. The more Derwin dwelled on this, the angrier he became. And so, after receiving an email in February saying his Model S sedan was finally ready, Derwin cancelled the purchase. He still cut a check for $150,000—only he donated it to the American Civil Liberties Union.“Trump was using Elon to legitimize himself,” says Derwin. “It says a lot to low information voters that Trump can’t possibly be that bad because here is Elon Musk hanging on his every word. That’s why I canceled the order. A principled opposition is important here.” Musk declined to comment for this story, but he has argued that moderates should engage with Trump, rather than leaving only extremists advising the president.Derwin’s personal protest has now morphed into a full-on public campaign to force Musk to sever all ties with the President. Derwin is the secret backer of billboards that appeared in recent weeks near Tesla’s headquarters and factory in Silicon Valley that said “Elon: Please dump Trump.” And, on Monday, he launched a website—featuring videos of upset Tesla owners, “Elon: Dump Trump” bumper stickers and hats and shirts that say, “Resist.”It’s just the start. Derwin, 59, is prepared to spend $2 million on Musk-Trump protests. He’s bought $500,000 worth of media, including ads that will run 23 April in the New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News, and television ads that will appear during Meet The Press, Morning Joe and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. He’s going to set up information booths on college campuses in a bid to dissuade young engineers from working at Tesla or Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Musk’s rocket company. He’s going to offer to pay people who sent in deposits for the upcoming Tesla Model 3, if they cancel their orders. And he’s going to partner with anti-Trump groups in Silicon Valley to make the Musk attack part of their campaigns.Derwin stuck to Silicon Valley law and start-up investing most of his career. He’s never owned a Tesla and did not follow Musk’s every move as millions of others do—which makes his new fixation all the more quixotic. His anger stems more from a dislike of Trump, with Musk serving as a proxy for that rage.“The worst thing that happens is that I lose some money and maybe make a public idiot out of myself,” he says. “But it seemed to me that it would make sense to push back on Trump in a way that I could.”Musk has become a cult of personality, and it’s understandable that loyal customers were upset when he started showing up at Trump Tower and then joined Trump’s business advisory council. Musk has been a relentless fighter against climate change. Many Tesla customers share Musk’s concerns and bought his products as statements. Trump, by contrast, has described global warming as a hoax and loosened environmental policies, while surrounding himself with people who dispute the scientific climate-change consensus. It’s been hard for many Musk fans to square this circle.Uber Technologies Inc. chief executive officer Travis Kalanick was quick to leave Trump’s business advisory council after an online backlash. Musk, though, has held his ground amid criticism on Twitter and in the press. Musk’s old friend and business partner Peter Thiel is a close Trump advisor, so there’s a meeting of the minds there. Musk has also argued on Twitter that it makes sense to have a moderate voice as close as possible to Trump to sway him on issues. Musk is supremely logical and smart enough to capitalize on opportunities like having a close relationship with the President. Time and again, Musk has watched lobbyists from automotive, aerospace and energy sectors sway policies in favour of incumbents, while positioning Musk and his companies as radical hucksters. Now he may have an edge with the administration and could turn things in his favour.If you’re a man who wants to settle Mars and have electric cars swarm the Earth, then having friends in high places makes sense. Musk, for example, has been pushing to get Pete Worden, a longtime commercial space supporter, tapped as the new director of Nasa. Worden advised SpaceX early on and could advocate for the company.Derwin, though, argues Musk has already lost whatever influence may have existed. Despite Musk’s presence, Trump has moved to cut funding to the sciences and the Environmental Protection Agency, while rolling back regulations against coal mining companies. “Short of putting a big pile of old tires on the White House lawn and lighting them on fire, I don’t know what Donald Trump could do that is worse for climate change,” Derwin says. “Musk got rolled by Trump. He has gotten absolutely nothing.”Derwin recently told Musk’s camp about his campaign and asked to meet with the CEO. Musk declined, but did have three top lieutenants sit down with Derwin. Nothing much came of the meeting, Derwin said, prompting him to go live with the web site and other efforts. Musk declined to comment through a spokesman.“If Elon will resign from the boards and speak out against what Trump is doing, I’ll call off the campaign,” Derwin says. He’s pledged to donate $1 million to the charity of Musk’s choice, if Musk dons a “Resist” hat and tweets that he disagrees with Trump’s climate-change policies. Derwin has his work cut out. Musk revels in the opportunity to prove critics wrong and rarely backs down from a fight. The uproar over advising Trump has died down, and Musk continues to dazzle fans and confound naysayers: Tesla’s share price has surged to records this year and SpaceX has upended the aerospace industry by proving the abilities of its reusable rockets. The baggage that comes with Trump associations in Silicon Valley circles seems to have done little to dull Musk’s shine. Bloomberg",2017-04-18,Venture capitalist Doug Derwin has launched a full-on public campaign to force Tesla co-founder Elon Musk to sever all ties with President Donald Trump,-0.18,11:27,This man is spending millions to break Elon Musk’s Trump ties +0,"Private sector lender Yes Bank Ltd on Wednesday said its March quarter net profit rose 30.2% due to higher net interest income and other income.Net profit for the quarter stood at Rs914.12 crore as compared with Rs702.11 crore a year ago. A Bloomberg poll of 24 analysts had forecast a net profit of Rs791 crore.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, increased 32.08% to Rs1639.70 crore from Rs1241.44 crore last year. Other income jumped 56.62% to Rs1257.39 crore from Rs802.81 crore in the same period last year.Net interest margin expanded to 3.6% in the quarter from 3.5% a quarter ago. “The Bank continued delivering sustained financial performance through robust growth in earnings and expanding net interest margins despite challenging operating environment”, said Rana Kapoor managing director and chief executive officer, Yes Bank.“Additionally, continued investments in Human Capital, Technology and Digitization has resulted in significant momentum across Retail Assets, Liabilities and Retail Fees. The bank’s growth and earning models continue to remain robust with increasing granularity and diversity across Asset, Liabilities and Earnings”, Kapoor added.Provisions and contingencies climbed 66.11% to Rs309.73 crore in the quarter from Rs186.46 crore in the same quarter last year.The bank’s gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rose 100.68% to Rs2018.56 crore at the end of the March quarter from Rs1005.85 crore in the December quarter. On year-on-year basis, it jumped 169.51% from Rs748.98 crore.As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were at 1.52% at the end of the March quarter, as compared to 0.85% in the previous quarter and 0.76% in the year-ago quarter. Net NPAs were at 0.81% in the quarter against 0.29% each from a quarter and year ago.“The increase in NPA and consequent provision is in conformity with the divergences observed by the RBI as per its compliance process referred to in the RBI circular dated April 18, 2017 on ‘Disclosure in the Notes to Accounts to the Financial Statements – Divergence in Asset Classification and Provisioning”, the bank said in a notice to BSE.Deposits rose 27.89% to Rs1.43 trillion, while advances rose 34.67% to Rs1.32 trillion.On Wednesday, Yes Bank ended at Rs 1605.40 on BSE, down 0.03% from previous close while India’s benchmark Sensex Index rose 0.06% to closed at 29336.57 points.",2017-04-19,Yes Bank’s net profit for the fourth quarter stood at Rs914.12 crore as compared with Rs702.11 crore a year ago,1.0,19:53,"Yes Bank Q4 profit rises 30%, non-performing assets jump 169.51%" +0,"San Francisco: In its final months as a standalone company, Yahoo Inc. is showing signs it can move toward growth.Yahoo made progress in its last quarterly earnings report before the sale of its main internet operations to Verizon Communications Inc., posting adjusted revenue and profit that topped analysts’ estimates. The web portal, which had said the Verizon deal would close in the current quarter, on Tuesday narrowed the time frame to June.The sale, which comes after chief executive officer Marissa Mayer’s tumultuous tenure leading Yahoo, was threatened by two massive hacks that exposed user account data. The companies agreed to reduce the value of the deal by about $350 million in February to about $4.5 billion after the telecommunications giant had earlier suggested concessions closer to $1 billion.“As we enter our final quarter as an independent company, we are committed to finishing strong and planning for the best possible integration with Verizon,” Mayer said in a statement on the results.Revenue, excluding sales passed on to partners, was $833.8 million, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $814 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Profit, before certain items, was 18 cents a share. Analysts projected 14 cents.Before Tuesday’s announcement, the company had failed to meet estimates for revenue and adjusted earnings in four of the last nine quarterly reports. Shares of Yahoo were little changed in extended trading after closing at $47.56 in New York.Mayer, who arrived in July 2012 from Google to fanfare, pushed Yahoo into more mobile services and tried to attract better talent to improve products. But that never translated into much sales growth—and early last year the company began entertaining offers that led to the Verizon deal.In September, investors got a surprise when Yahoo said the personal information from at least 500 million user accounts was stolen in 2014. An attack that breached the security of more than 1 billion user accounts in 2013 was revealed in December. By last month, the company said its general counsel was resigning, and Mayer’s compensation was trimmed. Later in March, the US government accused Russia of directing some of the world’s most notorious cybercriminals to break into the web portal’s systems.The acquisition offers some interesting assets for Verizon. It gets a large, mature, consumer internet service with hundreds of millions of users in areas such as video, email, news and search. The operations will become part of a unit called Oath that includes Verizon’s earlier acquisition of AOL, another web portal that rose to prominence in the 1990s.Mayer’s focus on mobile revenue from smartphones and tablets showed positive results in the first quarter, increasing 58% to $412 million, the company said.What remains are the most valuable parts of Yahoo’s current company: the stakes in Alibaba Group Holding Inc. and Yahoo Japan that are worth more than $40 billion. Those holdings will become part of a new company called Altaba Inc., and will be led by CEO Thomas McInerney, a current Yahoo board member.Bloomberg",2017-04-19,Yahoo posted adjusted revenue and profit that topped analysts’ estimates in its last quarterly earnings report before sale to Verizon,0.89,19:44,Yahoo shows some progress in last stretch as standalone company +0,"
The business of technology can turn people into billionaires overnight. Well, that’s if you consider that in any field of human endeavour “overnight success” usually takes at least 15 years. Despite the complaints one hears about venture capitalists wanting quick returns on their investments, the battle for real dominance of a corner of the information technology space (IT) takes at least 15 years, after which the ruptures begin. The fissures that cause the eventual rupture are several. Here are four: Some observers warn that both Amazon Inc. and its various businesses like Amazon Web Services are creating such a hegemony that they will soon begin to bait anti-monopoly legislation. Giants like International Business Machines Corp. and AT&T Inc. were broken up for similar reasons in the past. Google has run afoul of some its advertising customers this week, including the UK government, as it has become apparent that these advertisers’ commercials are featured before videos carrying objectionable content played on YouTube, one of that company’s subsidiaries. Meanwhile, many IT services firms are facing the growing squeeze of the double-ended vise of nationalism and automation; many firms with large employee-centric operations have cut down on hiring and some have even announced layoffs. Yet other firms simply lose their edge when it comes to innovation and start regurgitating old technology packaged as new. The road from there is often downhill. The introduction of a new red iPhone 7 has been in the news this week. Same innards, different hue. However, this isn’t a column that’s only about the varying cycles of fortune for technology firms. Apple Inc.’s new phone isn’t just another marketing gimmick being employed by a tired firm whose critics say that it has been coming up short with respect to technological advances when compared with its competitors in the mobile handset business. Apple’s red devices are not new. Some years ago, it had created a series of red iPods with the object that some of the money from the sale of these devices would go to an AIDS foundation that was jointly created by Apple and by some-time musician and whole-time campaigner, Bono. A portion of the proceeds from sales of the new red iPhone 7 will similarly be disbursed to this charity.Over the last several years, I have been fortunate enough to interact closely with almost every chairman or CEO in India’s IT sector, but Azim Premji is one of the few hyper-successful technology entrepreneurs whom I truly respect and admire. Not for his business-building skills, which in my estimation are about the same as those of anyone else who has been at the helm of these extraordinarily fortunate enterprises, but for the extent of his charitable giving. In January last year, Mint reported that he had donated Rs27,514 crore to various charitable initiatives, through the foundation that bears his name.Bill Gates has also given generously of his fortune, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been involved in many philanthropic efforts all over the world. When at the height of his power as Microsoft Corp.’s boss during the 1990s, Gates was roundly criticized for not contributing to charity. Despite his detractors, he maintained that he would do so at the right time, and sure enough, the Gates Foundation ensued in the year 2000. It now has almost $40 billion in its corpus.In contrast to Premji and Gates, and other technology titans who have also given generously, Steve Jobs, the iconoclast behind Apple’s success over the past decade or so, was famously niggardly with his public giving. However, his friend Bono came to his defence, disclosing in an op-ed piece Jobs’ and Apple’s contribution to charity, especially to Bono’s project RED, which is where some of the proceeds from Apple’s red devices go.Jobs even famously refused to discuss the subject of his niggardliness with Walter Isaacson, his biographer. He preferred instead to focus on how much his work had changed the lives of millions of people—not only did he enrich himself and hundreds of employees at Apple, he said, the products that Apple produced had inarguably changed the lives of hundreds of millions. To be fair, that is exactly what Jobs did. He dedicated himself completely, despite his battle with cancer, to improving the company’s products. And the competitors who modelled their products on Apple’s groundbreaking iPhone have changed the lives of several hundred million more. There is the possibility, of course that Jobs donated anonymously. Perhaps he knew that giving is to be done quietly, and without publicity.Then there is the third type of giver: the lavish spender. Larry Ellison of Oracle Corp. falls in this class. While he is not ungenerous by any stretch of the imagination, having donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charity, he is also profligate. Inc. magazine reports that when a judge unsealed court records in 2006 from a shareholder lawsuit, it was revealed that Ellison’s accountant had chastised him for repeatedly pushing his credit limit to the maximum with extravagant purchases including mansions, yachts, and luxury cars. That said, the truth is that this sort of conspicuous consumption is itself charity in a manner of speaking—it creates jobs, and puts food on the tables of the people manufacturing these expensive items.But the fourth class, the miser, may be the most generous of all. As Chanakya said: “No greater donor was ever born than the miser.” The miser donates everything when he dies without ever having touched his wealth. His left hand truly does not know what his right hand gives!Siddharth Pai is a world-renowned technology consultant who has led over $20 billion in complex, first-of-a-kind outsourcing transactions.",2017-03-28,"The battle for real dominance of a corner of IT takes at least 15 years, after which the ruptures begin. A look at four of the fissures that cause the eventual rupture ",0.86,12:14,Technology dominance and charitable giving +0,"
After crash landing in 2016, airline stocks are taking off again. Since mid-February, shares of IndiGo parent InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, Jet Airways (India) Ltd and SpiceJet Ltd have risen between 28% and 68%. Interestingly, the 28% appreciation in IndiGo’s stock pales in comparison with SpiceJet’s spectacular 68% gain during this period. Even the Jet Airways stock has done much better, with a 41% gain. What gives?For starters, analysts say that SpiceJet was trading at a large discount to its bigger rival IndiGo, and that it was unwarranted considering that the former has managed its profit margins better. SpiceJet’s profits have grown in the nine-month period ended December, whereas profits of the other two airlines have fallen. Moreover, on the yields front, too, it has performed comparatively better.While Jet Airways shares have risen sharply since mid-February, they had underperformed by a huge margin prior to that. As such, it remains the least preferred airline stock in terms of valuation multiples.According to Praveen Sahay, a research analyst at Edelweiss Broking, SpiceJet with its smaller Bombardier Q-400s is better placed than IndiGo, which has Airbus A320 aircraft, as far as the regional connectivity scheme (RCS) is concerned. That is because traffic from RCS is not expected to be robust in the initial stages, making smaller aircraft more suitable under this scheme. “Further, there may not be adequate airport infrastructure to accommodate bigger aircraft,” adds Sahay. News reports say 11 airlines including SpiceJet have bid under the scheme. Needless to say, investors need to be clued in for more details on this and for announcements on the routes that SpiceJet will fly to.Despite the sharp rally, SpiceJet shares still trade at a meaningful discount to those of IndiGo. Based on Bloomberg data, SpiceJet trades at 10 times estimated earnings for the next fiscal year compared to 18 times in the case of IndiGo. In terms of EV/Ebitda, SpiceJet trades at 8.3 times, lower than Indigo’s 11.8 times valuation. EV stands for enterprise value, while Ebitda is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. Of course, the fact that IndiGo is the market leader and still runs a tight ship will continue to result in premium valuations.For any further rerating of valuations, yields, which have been a big pain point this year, have to inch up.Among the reasons airline stocks have risen, in general, is the strengthening rupee and a correction in oil prices. Since mid-February, the rupee has appreciated close to 3% against the dollar. Further, while the rally in crude oil looked threatening earlier, prices have softened since. Brent crude prices have declined around a tenth since mid-February. It is a relief that earlier expectations of much stronger crude oil prices on account of measures taken by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to curb output, hasn’t really played out.“A 1% appreciation of the rupee changes earnings positively by around 3.5%, while a similar reduction in crude price changes earnings positively by around 2%”, JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd said in a note to clients.",2017-03-28,"SpiceJet’s profits have grown in the nine-month period ended December, whereas profits of IndiGo (Interglobe Aviation) and Jet Airways have fallen",1.0,07:49,Why have SpiceJet shares done better than IndiGo’s? +0,"The demonetisation-led cash crunch meant expectations for the December quarter results of retail firms—Titan Co. Ltd, Shoppers Stop Ltd and Bata India Ltd—were running low. In that backdrop, these companies did better than expected.Titan’s jewellery business, which contributes the lion’s share of its overall revenue, performed well, reporting a 15.4% year-on-year revenue growth. This looks even better considering that the December 2015 quarter had a high base, thanks to the presence in the initial days of studded jewellery activation. Gold jewellery volume growth for the December 2016 quarter was 4%. Titan’s watch business performed well, too.Shoppers Stop’s like-to-like sales growth for its department stores came in at 6.4%. Now, by itself that number isn’t impressive considering this is the stronger festive quarter we are talking about. Note that the measure had increased 17.4% a year ago. But the December 2016 quarter like-to-like performance was better than analysts’ estimates. The firm maintains like-to-like growth saw double-digit year-on-year decline in November, compared with double-digit increase in October and December.Like-to-like sales growth is the comparable sales growth of stores that have been operational for over a year.Bata India’s revenue rose 2.4%, while its operating profit declined as staff costs, rent and other expenses rose at a faster pace. For the nine-month period to December, revenue increased just 0.8%. This is estimated to improve. ICICI Securities Ltd expects Bata India’s revenue growth to revive from fiscal 2018 onwards on account of an improved product mix and the company following a dual strategy of driving same-store sales growth and opening new stores in untapped locations. “We expect revenue to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 8.1% year-on-year during FY16-19E,” wrote ICICI Securities in a report last month.From 8 November (when demonetisation was announced) till 17 March, share prices of Titan and Bata India have appreciated, while those of Shoppers Stop have declined. Analysts at Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd say Shoppers Stop has nudged ahead its Ebitda margin target of 6.5% by one year to FY18E on the back of demand disruption owing to demonetisation. Ebitda is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The performance of subsidiary HyperCity will be a key thing to follow for the Shoppers Stop stock. In general, improvement in consumer demand translating into better like-to-like growth and eventually higher revenue growth are key factors to watch out for.",2017-03-24,"Retail firms Titan, Shoppers Stop and Bata India performed well in the December quarter though demonetisation ensured expectations were running low",0.1,09:32,Retail stocks: Q3 results exceed expectations +0,"The packaged consumer goods sector had a difficult time in the December 2016 quarter. Even before demonetisation, demand was simply not getting off the ground. While urban demand had shown some early signs of reviving, companies said rural demand continued to show signs of strain. The BSE FMCG Index declined 4.8% in the December quarter. FMCG stands for fast-moving consumer goods. The current quarter has seen it increase by 13.5%, partly as the effects of demonetisation are fading but also because ITC Ltd’s stock has run up sharply.Demonetisation made things worse. In cities, consumption was briefly affected but revived as modern trade outlets stepped in and consumers switched to digital currency. However, rural markets were affected. Also, companies use wholesalers to service relatively smaller outlets and markets, and this channel was adversely affected.In the December quarter, the sector’s sales declined by 2.5%, while its operating profit fell 0.4%. Volume growth was affected, not only by demonetisation, but also by price hikes by companies to compensate for an increase in the price of inputs.Hindustan Unilever Ltd, for instance, reported a 4% decline in volumes, partly due to the currency ban and partly due to price hikes.ITC’s shares have gained in the current quarter as the hike in excise duties in the budget was lower than expected and even after an additional cess on cigarettes, the company is expected to benefit from the introduction of the goods and services tax, or GST, from 1 July.The outlook for packaged consumer goods makers’ stocks remains mixed. Consumer confidence improved in the December quarter, indicating urban markets can be expected to recover. Good monsoon rains in 2016-17 are expected to contribute to better farm output. While that is good, it is being tempered by a moderate increase in prices. By how much farm incomes improve and to what extent non-farm incomes revive will determine rural consumption trends in the medium term. Meanwhile, companies may use price hikes to drive growth till demand recovers. GST remains a key event to watch out for in FY18.",2017-03-24,Volume growth was affected in the December quarter not only by demonetisation but also by price hikes taken by firms to compensate for an increase in the price of inputs,0.95,09:32,FMCG: GST and urban consumers offer hope +0,"New Delhi: The country’s third largest software services firm Wipro is learnt to have fired hundreds of employees as part of its annual “performance appraisal”. According to sources, Wipro has shown the door to about 600 employees, while speculation was rife that the number could go as high as 2,000. At the end of December 2016, the Bengaluru-based company had over 1.79 lakh employees. When contacted, Wipro said it undertakes a “rigorous performance appraisal process” on a regular basis to align its workforce with business objectives, strategic priorities of the company, and client requirements. “The performance appraisal may also lead to the separation of some employees from the company and these numbers vary from year to year,” it added. The company, however, did not comment on the number of employees that have been asked to leave. Wipro said its comprehensive performance evaluation process includes mentoring, re-training and upskilling of employees. The company is scheduled to report its fourth quarter and full-year numbers on 25 April.The development comes at a time when Indian IT companies are facing an uncertain environment given the curbs being proposed on worker visa norms by various countries like the US, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.These companies use temporary work visas to send employees to work on client sites. With visa programmes in these countries becoming more rigorous, Indian IT companies are likely to face challenges in movement of labour as well as a spike in operational costs. Indian IT companies get over 60% of their revenues from the North American market, about 20% from Europe and the remaining from other economies. Besides, higher adoption of technologies like automation and artificial intelligence is also reducing the need to have a large number of employees at client site.",2017-04-20,"Wipro is learnt to have sacked 600 employees as part of its annual ‘performance appraisal’, at a time when IT firms are facing curbs on work visas in US and Australia",0.15,22:17,600 Wipro employees sacked after performance appraisal: report +0,"
Mumbai: Dell Technologies, the company that was formed when Dell Inc. acquired EMC Corp. for $67 billion, remains bullish on its “long-term” growth prospects in India, which is the company’s third-largest market.“I think we are on track to hit the $3 billion revenue mark in this country in a couple of years,” Thomas Sweet, executive vice-president and chief financial officer (CFO), Dell Inc., said in an interview last week.Explaining why he is bullish on the Indian market, Sweet reasoned that the country now had “a government that is pro-growth, pro-development, and which is also pro-technology in helping to enable that growth and the government’s mission”. Further, he claimed that the Dell-EMC combine in India is growing faster than the domestic IT market growth. According to Nasscom’s Strategic Review 2017 report, in FY2017, India’s domestic IT-BPM (information technology-business process management) market is likely to grow 8.5% year on year to reach $38 billion (excluding e-commerce).To accelerate the pace of growth globally, Dell rolled out a distribution, or the so-called channel strategy in February. According to Sweet, half of the company’s revenue is routed through its distributors and his company hopes to increase their output with the recent reorganization it initiated to bring together the distribution partners of the erstwhile Dell and EMC companies.What the company did two months back, according to Sweet, was to merge the EMC and Dell sales forces (which existed as separate entities before the merger) into two units. One is an enterprise sales unit that would now focus on the top 3,000 customers, and the second is a commercial sales organization that will focus on an estimated 500,000 clients. Sweet said he is “pretty pleased” with how the combined sales units have shaped up so far.The company also plans to sharpen its focus on its digital transformation push. Dell Technologies breaks up digital transformation into three parts, according to Sweet: IT transformation-how IT can support what the business needs; security transformation-how a company can tackle multiple threats; and workforce transformation-how an organization makes its employees more productive in a mobile environment.In the past couple of years, most large technology solution providers such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE), International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Accenture Plc., Oracle Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others have been competing fiercely for the increasingly lucrative digital transformation pie. According to research firm International Data Corp. (IDC) forecasts, global spending on digital transformation technologies is projected to be more than $1.2 trillion in 2017—an increase of 17.8% over 2016.“There is clearly a greater focus among our customers on digital, but most of them are currently focused on IT transformation,” said Sweet. According to him, companies are looking to modernize their IT infrastructure to support cloud-native applications. In cloud computing, companies can consume IT services and only pay for the applications or infrastructure they use rather than buy the equipment upfront, thus reducing capital expenditure (capex).One change in the way technology adoption occurs in companies, according to Sweet, is the growing involvement of top management, especially when it comes to digital. “We are seeing more C-suite executives, particularly the chief executive officers (CEOs), chief operating officers (COOs) and CFOs, participating in the conversation on digital as, increasingly, they are seeking business solutions and business model evolution,” he said. The focus for CFOs, he said, continues to be on return on investment, even as most of them are also ready to bet on emerging technologies that are still not mature in order to future-proof their organizations.Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst of Greyhound Research, said that while the Dell-EMC combine has done a good job of “integrating the channel network” of both the organizations, managing the reskilling of the partners and introducing customised solutions tailored for specific industry segments may require an intensive focus, especially in the short term. “If they can manage this aspect well, they can have an edge in the digital transformation infrastructure market, where companies such as HPE and Lenovo have been showing renewed aggression of late,” he concluded.",2017-04-20,Dell Inc. CFO Thomas Sweet claims that the Dell-EMC combine in India is growing faster than the domestic IT market growth,1.0,08:34,Dell on track to hit the $3 billion revenue mark in India: CFO Thomas Sweet +0,"Bengaluru:Rajiv Bansal, former CFO of Infosys, has dragged his former employer to arbitration to claim the remaining Rs12 crore of his severance pay. Infosys had agreed to pay Bansal a severance amount of Rs17.38 crore or 24 months of salary, but the company suspended payments after he got Rs5 crore as co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy and others objected to the severance package as excessive. According to sources, Bansal has invoked his rights to an arbitral tribunal and a meeting is scheduled next month. This has opened another battle front for Infosys, which is already fighting visa clampdown by US President Donald Trump and global headwinds. When contacted, Bansal declined to comment. “The company has already clarified on the severance package for the former CFO Rajiv Bansal through a detailed statement. We do not have anything additional to add at this point,” Infosys said in an e-mailed response. Bansal’s severance payout has been one of the issues that Infosys founders had raised to allege governance lapses at the Bengaluru-based firm. When Bansal left Infosys in 2015, Infosys had agreed to pay him Rs17.38 crore in severance pay, equalling 24 months of pay. In February, Infosys chairman R. Seshasayee had clarified that of the agreed amount, only Rs5 crore have been paid so far and that the remaining was withheld pending clarifications on the terms of the severance contract. He had also admitted that the “judgement” could have differed if circumstances were different or if certain processes had been in place. Murthy had raised concerns about the hefty amount and questioned if the same was “hush money”.",2017-04-20,"Former Infosys CFO Rajiv Bansal asks for arbitration for settlement of his Rs17.38 crore severance pay, which hadn’t gone down well with Infosys founders",-0.21,21:36,Infosys ex-CFO Rajiv Bansal seeks arbitration for severance pay: report +0,"New Delhi: Delhi has emerged as the top ranked state in terms of overall Internet readiness including e-infrastructure and e-participation, overtaking last year’s winner Maharashtra, according to a report titled ‘Index of Internet readiness of Indian states’ by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and Nielsen Holdings PLC, a global information and data measurement company unveiled on Wednesday.The capital city-state is followed by Karnataka, Maharashtra, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.Internet readiness index is a composite benchmark of four components, i.e., e-infrastructure, e-participation, IT-environment and government e-services. All four components have been given equal weightage in the model, claims the research report.Among the smaller states, Delhi is at the top followed by Chandigarh and Puducherry. Chandigarh is ranked second in both e-infrastructure and e-participation. Puducherry ranks after Chandigarh when measured on the e-infrastructure index.The report also highlights the status of digital start-up ecosystem of the states. It finds that Karnataka, Delhi and Maharashtra are the top three states with the highest number of digital start-ups. There are a total of 242 start-up incubators in the country, out of which 61 incubators are in Tamil Nadu.Speaking at the launch of the report, IT secretary, Aruna Sundararajan, said, “Niti Aayog and other ministries of the government are increasingly trying to see that which states are leading in best practices. We are trying to find out these practices and the possibility of sharing these practices in benchmarking where each state can be.”Among the northeastern states, Nagaland tops the list, closely followed by Manipur and Tripura. Nagaland leads in IT environment and performs moderately well in other categories to get to the top.“Significantly, even within smaller states, the northeastern states ranked low in terms of overall Internet readiness. Therefore, much more needs to be done in the form of investment and infrastructure development in the region,” the report said.",2017-04-20,"Delhi has emerged as the top state in terms of overall Internet readiness including e-infrastructure and e-participation, overtaking last year’s winner Maharashtra, a report says",1.0,01:05,Delhi tops among states in Internet readiness: report +0,"New Delhi: Talent shortage is acute in the IT and data science ecosystem in India with a survey claiming that 95% of engineers in the country are not fit to take up software development jobs. According to a study by employability assessment company Aspiring Minds, only 4.77% candidates can write the correct logic for a programme — a minimum requirement for any programming job. Over 36,000 engineering students form IT related branches of over 500 colleges took Automata — a machine learning-based assessment of software development skills — and over two-thirds could not even write code that compiles. The study further noted that while more than 60% candidates cannot even write code that compiles, only 1.4% can write functionally correct and efficient code. “Lack of programming skills is adversely impacting the IT and data science ecosystem in India... India needs to catch up,” Aspiring Minds CTO and co-founder Varun Aggarwal said. The employability gap can be attributed to rote learning based approaches rather than actually writing programmes on a computer for different problems. Also, there is a dearth of good teachers for programming, since most good programmers get jobs in industry at good salaries, the study said. Moreover, programming skills are five times poorer for tier III colleges as compared to tier 1 colleges. “69% of candidates from top 100 colleges are able to write a compilable code versus rest of the colleges where only 31% are able to write a compilable code,” the report said.",2017-04-20,"Only 4.77% engineering students can write correct logic—the minimum requirement for any computer programming job, over two-thirds are inept at coding",0.1,20:37,95% engineers in India unfit for programming jobs: study +0,"New York: LeEco Inc.’s global head of corporate finance is leaving, according to a person familiar with the matter, the latest sign of retrenchment by the Chinese technology giant.Winston Cheng, who joined LeEco in 2015, will be president of international at Chinese e-commerce company JD.com Inc., leading new business initiatives including investments and mergers and acquisitions, the person said. LeEco declined to comment. JD.com didn’t respond to a request for comment on Friday.Cheng previously held managing director roles at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Merrill Lynch was a lead underwriter for JD.com when the company went public in 2014, a deal Cheng worked on. He also advised JD.com that same year when Tencent Holdings Ltd bought a 15% stake. JD.com has become Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s biggest competitor in China’s online shopping sector.LeEco’s ambitious international expansion plans have suffered from a cash squeeze and other roadblocks. Cheng played a key role in LeEco’s proposed acquisition of TV maker Vizio Inc. for $2 billion, a deal that the company said fell apart because of regulatory hurdles. LeEco’s US plans have also been set back by lacklustre sales, job cuts, and delayed payroll to US employees.Controlled by billionaire Jia Yueting, LeEco lured executives from global technology giants and banks to run its operations. In the past year, there have been several high-profile executive departures. Todd Pendleton, a marketing executive, and Shawn Williams, a senior vice president from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, left LeEco after about a year, according to several people familiar with the matter and Williams’ LinkedIn profile. Bloomberg",2017-04-15,"Winston Cheng, who joined LeEco in 2015, will be president of international at Chinese e-commerce company JD.com Inc.",-0.66,16:13,Struggling tech giant LeEco loses global corporate finance head +0,"New Delhi/London: Vijay Mallya, the Kingfisher Airlines Ltd executive arrested in London on Tuesday, will return to UK court next month as authorities attempt to extradite him to face fraud accusations in India.The 61-year-old surrendered his Indian passport during a London court hearing Tuesday before being released on £650,000 ($830,000) bail, according to court records. He’s scheduled to return for another hearing 17 May. A spokesman for Mallya, who disputes the charges against him, declined to comment.Mallya’s arrest comes after a special Indian court in June declared the flamboyant former beer baron a proclaimed offender in a case involving loans to his airline. That helped pave the way for banks to take over his properties and auction assets such as his personal private jet, and sought to have him extradited from the UK. A consortium of 17 banks accuses him of wilfully defaulting on more than Rs9,100 crore ($1.4 billion) in debt accumulated by Kingfisher Airlines.The UK court “will consider” if he can get a fair trial in India, the nation’s former additional solicitor general A.S. Chandhiok said in an interview. “He may say ‘Everything is against me, the media is prejudiced against me,’” to avoid getting extradited, he said.Also Read: Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banksThe tycoon left the country a year ago saying he was moving to England to be closer to his children. Lawmakers criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government for failing to impound his passport and prevent him from leaving. His airline defaulted on the loans guaranteed by Mallya and United Breweries Holdings Ltd.“Vijay Mallya is a victim of circumstance,” Satish Maneshinde, an Indian lawyer told BloombergQuint. “His contention that he is being hounded politically and through the media may find favour” in the UK, he said.Mallya has maintained that Kingfisher was an “unfortunate commercial failure” because of macroeconomic factors and government policies. He has sparred with local media for portraying him as the poster boy for the nation’s bad loans. He has said that government agencies “are pursuing a heavily biased investigation and are already holding me guilty without trial after which I need to prove my innocence.” “Usual Indian media hype,” Mallya wrote in a Twitter post on Tuesday after reports of his arrest.Mallya left the country 2 March, prompting the government’s attorney general to label the businessman as a fugitive at a hearing in the Supreme Court in New Delhi. The Indian banks, fighting to recover dues from the chairman and founder of the airline — named after Mallya’s best-selling beer brand — were told in court that their petition to bar him from leaving the country was filed a few days too late.Also Read: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursIndia’s Enforcement Directorate, a federal body that probes violations in foreign exchange transactions, has been seeking Mallya’s extradition over accusations of diverting some funds from loans to buy property abroad. A Mumbai court had previously issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya, whose businesses included liquor and an airline.“Extradition from the UK is a long winding procedure and Mallya will have enough opportunities to challenge it in various forums,” said Pooja Dutta, managing partner at Mumbai-based Astute Law. “The process is complex and can go on for years.”The Indian government eventually cancelled his passport after he failed to appear before the Supreme Court in a separate case.Bail conditionsIn addition to the bail and surrendering his passport, the London court on Tuesday ordered Mallya not to leave England or Wales and keep his mobile phone — fully charged — with him at all times.After taking over a beer and liquor empire from his father in the 1980s, he started Kingfisher Airlines in 2005, which was one of India’s leading carriers until it was grounded in 2012 amid mounting debt.Mallya also gradually ceded control of his beer and liquor empire to rivals. Diageo Plc bought his United Spirits Ltd. in April 2014. Heineken NV is now the biggest shareholder of United Breweries, the maker of the nation’s best-selling Kingfisher beer.Mallya said previously he neither had the intention or any reason to flee, and personally he wasn’t a borrower or a “judgment defaulter.” He said he was “most pained as being painted as an absconder” when he was a non-resident for almost 28 years.The man at the center of India’s battle against soured loans was ranked the 45th-richest Indian by Forbes in 2012, with a net worth of $1 billion. He was earlier elected to the Rajya Sabha, India’s upper house of Parliament, in 2002 and again in 2010, both as an independent. Bloomberg",2017-04-19,"Vijay Mallya, who was arrested in London on Tuesday, will return to UK court on 17 May as authorities attempt to extradite him to face fraud accusations in India",-0.67,13:22,"Vijay Mallya surrenders passport, faces UK extradition hearing on 17 May" +0,"New Delhi: Journalist Arnab Goswami’s soon-to-be launched news channel Republic TV has been served a legal notice by his former employer The Times Group over use of the phrase “nation wants to know”.The Times Group runs the English language news channels Times Now and ET Now and publishes The Times of India and The Economic Times newspapers.In a three-minute audio clip posted on YouTube, Goswami claimed that he has been served with yet another legal threat and this time for using the aforementioned phrase. “A media group has sent me a six-page letter threatening me with imprisonment if I ever use the phrase ‘Nation wants to know’. They say that they own the phrase,” said Goswami, in the clip without naming the media group. HT Media Ltd, the publisher of Mint and Hindustan Times, competes with The Times Group in some markets.Goswami was using the catch phrase ‘Nation wants to know’ on his popular prime time show Newshour on Times Now till he quit the company on 1 November 2016. He was the president and editor-in-chief of news channels Times Now and ET Now. In the YouTube clip, Goswami further said that the threat of imprisonment will not deter him and that he has been using the phrase for the last 20 years throughout his reporting career. “ARG Outliers had filed for trademark for these and similar phrases which were already filed for and extensively used for years by Times Now. We have responded with a standard caution notice. He (Arnab) is just trying to gain soundbytes from it,” said a spokesperson for the Times Network, when contacted for comments. Republic is a part of a company called ARG Outlier Media Pvt. Ltd, of which Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar is the biggest investor. Goswami’s Republic made its social media debut on 7 January with a Facebook page and a Twitter handle @republicworld. The company has received the regulatory nod from the information and broadcasting ministry and is expected to launch the news channel soon.",2017-04-18,Arnab Goswami claims he has been served a legal notice by Times Group against using the ‘nation wants to know’ phrase on his Republic TV venture,-0.03,00:50,Times Group serves Arnab Goswami notice on using ‘nation wants to know’ +0,"New Delhi: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, whose pay package was a point of contention for the company’s founders, has drawn $ 6.68 million (about Rs 43 crore) or 61% of the promised compensation for the 2016-17 fiscal. Sikka was eligible for a $11 million pay including basic salary, variable pay, restricted stock units (RSUs) and performance stock options for the year. Incidentally, this is also lower than what Sikka drew in the previous financial year when he took home Rs 48.73 crore. According to Infosys’ financial statements that outline compensation to key executives, Sikka received only $3.68 million of the $8 million variable component that he was promised. One of the highest paid executives in the Indian IT industry, Sikka took home $0.82 million in variable pay, $1.9 million in RSUs and ESOPs worth $0.96 million, totalling $3.68 million. Sikka’s salary was revised from $7.08 million to a handsome $11 million package with effect from April 2016, a move that did not go down well with the founders, including NR Narayana Murthy. The $11 million package was to include a base salary of $1 million and $2 million worth of stock annually as well $3 million in variable pay. Sikka is also eligible for another $5 million worth of performance-based equity and stock options upon achievement of certain performance targets.Also Read: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka guaranteed 90% of $11 million salary“The Board, based on the recommendations of the Nominations Committee, approved on April 13, 2017, $0.82 million as variable pay to CEO for the year ended March 31, 2017,” Infosys said. It further mentions “...RSUs amounting to $1.9 million and ESOPs amounting to $0.96 million representing the performance-based equity and stock options for the financial year 2017”. While the founders had raised concerns over the significant salary hike given to Sikka, the Board, on its part, maintained that the variable component was tied to steep performance goals. However, Infosys has not made those goals public. Infosys had defended Sikka’s pay hike saying all decisions were made “in the overall interest of the company”. Infosys’ performance of 2016-17 has disappointed the street, especially after it lowered its annual revenue guidance thrice last fiscal. The “aspirational goal” of $20 billion revenue by 2020 set by Infosys looks like a tall order given the current performance, said industry watchers. The Bengaluru-based firm, which posted a revenue of $ 10.2 billion in 2016-17, has been focussing on new areas like automation and artificial intelligence to bolster its revenues to meet the said target. For the financial year 2017-18, Infosys expects its revenues to grow by 6.1-8.1% in dollar terms.",2017-04-14,"Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka has drawn about Rs43 crore or 61% of the promised compensation, $11 million, for the 2016-17 fiscal",0.31,19:10,Infosys’s Vishal Sikka takes home only 61% of eligible pay +0,"
Mumbai: In the last two-three years, many dining concepts have emerged from chefs-turned-restaurateurs and established restaurateurs launching new brands. So there is Floyd Cardoz’s The Bombay Canteen and Vicky Ratnani with The Korner House, which are less than two years old. Meanwhile a company like Massive Restaurants Pvt. Ltd has launched concepts like Farzi Café, a modern Indian bistro, and Pa Pa Ya, a pan-Asian bistro. Likewise Olive Bar and Kitchen Pvt. Ltd, which operates Olive, has in the last three-four years diversified to open SodaBottleOpenerWala and Monkey Bar. deGustibus Hospitality Pvt. Ltd of Indigo fame, which has been opening, on average, one restaurant every two years, has launched a new concept D:Oh two months ago. The coming year will see the company stepping on the accelerator and doing things differently, says Anurag Katriar, executive director and chief executive officer of deGustibus Hospitality. Edited excerpts from an interview:
You have moved from fine dining to casual dining to what now looks like a mix between quick service restaurants (QSR) and casual dining. What was the rationale behind this journey?Our journey started with fine dining—Indigo. At some point in time I realized that Indigo, despite all the lovely numbers it was doing, had its own limitations. So in 2003 we decided to do something for the larger mass and that is how the first Indigo Deli was launched in 2005, which is in the casual dining space. We now have seven Indigo Delis in Mumbai, one in Gurgaon and one in Pune. I felt Mumbai could take maybe a couple more Delis. So a year ago I came back to the same question: now what? My initial thoughts were QSR and I spent a lot of time at food courts across the country observing.
Are you saying that you needed a cheaper per-head average cost offering to expand?Today 65% of our population is millennials. They are young and go to QSRs and bars selling at economical prices. We wanted to have a place for them that is fun and economical.
But D:Oh is not really a QSR...QSR is not essentially good food served quick. It has become convenient food served cheap. I was unnerved by this realization. So, I did a rethink and picked up the niceties of a QSR—quick service, easy-to-understand menu—and merged it with the goodness of casual dining—ambience and limited service. This is the area we will be expanding into now.
Why not take Indigo Deli to newer geographies? There is Delhi for instance which can take a few more...In Delhi we had a very poor experience honestly. Also every city is different. I prefer to expand in my core area and that is where D:Oh fits in.
Your peers have been on an expansion spree, launching new formats and opening branches. What’s holding you back?Yes, we have been a little slow. We were not innovating as quickly as we could have. We were in our comfort zone. On average we have been opening one restaurant every two years. Having said that, we were also trying to restructure our company as investors came in. We consolidated and also gave every brand a leadership team to grow their business. But that was our principle earlier, we didn’t believe in doing too many things. Today I think differently. I believe that gone are the days when you could multiply one brand into 500 locations. You have to think differently. The socio-economic changes are driving a very different kind of a market. The boredom creeps in a lot faster. Consumers are not as loyal. The shelf life is a lot shorter and therefore brands have to be innovative.
So does that mean you are ready to launch more new brands for faster growth?In the last financial year we opened five new restaurants. In the coming year we will be opening nine restaurants, which will be our fastest expansion. We are also open to inorganic growth and are in talks with a couple of brands, which I can’t disclose right now. In the next one-two years, we will also expand outside India.
You have made some changes at Neel. Can you share what prompted them?Neel, which is at Turf Club, is fine dining. We are not expanding that format. The one in Powai is casual dining. We have realized that in casual dining, vegetarian and seafood works better than red meat. So we have reduced the red meat and increased vegetarian to get more balance in the menu. We have also introduced evening snacks like kathi rolls.The conversion on vegetarian snacks is 46%, which is a lot.
Your expansion is in the casual dining space with Indigo Deli and Neel-All-day Diner, and now in the new concept, which is even more casual. What about fine dining where you have the Indigo restaurant and Tote on the Turf brand?Fine dining is a dying format. No one wants such an elaborate meal. It’s become a place only for celebrations. For me the biggest benchmark of fine dining was Zodiac Grill. If that shut down, how long will the bachas (kids) survive? For me the Indigo restaurant business is good but it’s 40% down from its peak. We have one Indigo restaurant and one Tote on the Turf restaurant. We are not expanding these fine dining formats any more.
You have been in the restaurant space for the last 15-20 years. Can you tell us what has changed over the years?Today, drinking is out of the closet. Earlier you would be very shy to say you were going for a drink. Now you would be looked down upon if you say you are not going out for a drink. Secondly, value-for- money expectations have gone up. Today people want good experiences at QSR prices. Also shelf life of a brand has reduced. Let’s look at the last 10 years and restaurant chains that have started and are still thriving. There are hardly any. Today a lot of new restaurants are focused on gimmickry and that is why the novelty factor wears off and they fade away.
At D:Oh, you have cold sandwiches on offer. Do cold sandwiches work in India?Indians are not used to cold food. We like our food hot. Customers feel cold food means purana (stale) even though we are not selling anything more than 24 hours old. So we are doing away with the grab-a-tray concept and cold sandwiches.
Overall the restaurant and out-of-home eating sector has had muted growth for the last couple of years. Also there was the impact of demonetization. Are we seeing a revival now?I don’t see any major difference. There was no major downturn or revival. There was some stress on operating margins as costs of doing business were going up. Demonetization impact was for two weeks. The change in business was a 3% drop year-on-year this November. Yes, one can argue that there could have been growth but that’s fine; it’s not as bad as it was made out to be.
We are seeing so many new launches. Chefs turning restaurateurs and restaurant chains like yours now looking at rapid expansion. What’s happening?The entry barrier for this profession is very low. A lot of start-ups with no background in hospitality want to start a restaurant as they feel it’s attractive. I was once approached by a traditional metal business family who said they want to start a restaurant for their son as it would help them get a good marriage proposal for him. For chefs turning entrepreneurs it’s a good time to start up. Having said that, today the risk of failure is also very high and they have a reputation at stake. It’s interesting times.
Has the recent Supreme Court ruling on not serving alcohol within 500 metres of highways impacted you?Two of our restaurants have been impacted. One is in Cyber Hub in Gurgaon and the second is in Phoenix Market City in Pune. From 1 April we have not served any alcohol at these two places and business has dropped by 50% already. Overall this rule will be catastrophic for the industry.
What are your thoughts on the proposed initiative to regulate food portions?Following this announcement we did a two-day survey in our restaurants. There is very little wastage of food at restaurants. People don’t order to waste. If there is extra food, customers usually pack it and take it back. What is returned on the plates is something they don’t like. We hope they don’t regulate food portions.",2017-04-15,"No one wants such an elaborate meal; it’s become a place only for celebrations, says Anurag Katriar",-0.45,00:10,"Fine dining is dead, says deGustibus Hospitality’s Anurag Katriar" +0,"New Delhi: Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) missed analysts’ estimates for both revenue and profit in the fourth fiscal quarter, even as India’s largest software services firm’s full-year sales rose 6.2% to $17.58 billion.The company reported revenue of $4.45 billion in the three months ended 31 March, a 1.5% increase from the preceding quarter and 5.8% from the year-ago period. Net profit totalled $992 million, a 0.8% decline on a sequential basis and an increase of 5.8% from the year-ago period.A Bloomberg survey of 30 analysts had estimated TCS to report quarterly revenue of $4.62 billion and net profit of $1.03 billion in the quarter.Also read: TCS unperturbed by possible changes to H1B visa regime“FY17 was a year of broad-based growth amid economic and political turbulence in our key markets,” said Rajesh Gopinathan, who took over as chief executive of TCS in February. “We believe we are better placed for the year-ahead,” said Gopinathan, who spent much time on the numbers, suggesting that the new CEO will take time to probably replicate the success managed by his predecessor N. Chandrasekaran, the current chairman of Tata Sons Ltd. At the heart of TCS’s underperformance is the company’s inability to generate more business from its largest customers, banks, in its largest market, the US. TCS’s banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) segment, which accounts for over 40% of its revenue, grew 4.8% from a year earlier in constant currency terms. North America, which brings 54% of its business, reported a 4.3% rise.TCS does not give quarterly or annual forecasts but a few equity analysts are sceptical about the company’s prospects. The January-March quarter marks the 10th straight quarter (the company has recorded slow growth since July 2014) in which TCS has either underperformed, or at best managed to keep up with estimates. “Looking at this protracted slowdown, I believe TCS has reached a point where unless the company really brings about a change in the way it has done business, it will be tough for the company to ever beat street expectations,” said a Mumbai-based analyst at a domestic brokerage, on the condition of anonymity. “At best it can match street expectations.”TCS’s performance mirrors the poor show put up by Infosys Ltd last week, and this is worrying for three reasons.First, both growth and profitability for Indian IT firms is under pressure. Mumbai-based TCS reported a full-year increase of 8.3% in constant currency terms, similar to the full-year growth reported by Bengaluru-based Infosys (with $10.21 billion in revenue) although Infosys reported a higher 7.4% expansion in dollar revenue.Like Infosys, TCS’s growth in 2016-17 was slower than in 2015-16: TCS’s revenue growth in constant currency terms was 3.6 percentage points slower than the 11.9% increase in 2015-16. TCS added $1.03 billion in incremental revenue in the year ended 31 March 2017, less than $1.09 billion added in new business in 2015-16 when it reported a 7.1% increase and half of the $2.01 billion in new business added in 2014-15. TCS’s operating margin in the January-March quarter and for the full year stood at 25.7%. Operating margin narrowed 80 basis points from 26.5% in 2015-16, again similar to Infosys, which too saw its profitability eroded as commoditized outsourcing contracts see intense pricing pressure.Despite falling short of its operating margin forecast of 26-28% in the last financial year, the company’s management retained this guidance for the current fiscal year, which at least two analysts say will be “impossible to achieve”.“In this kind of environment, where most companies want more skilled people at client-facing sides, when most countries are adopting a protectionist stance, it looks impossible to keep operating in that band,” a Mumbai-based analyst at a foreign brokerage said, requesting anonymity.Second, despite higher growth in digital, which remains a fuzzy word, and the success of new and renew strategy rolled out by CEO Vishal Sikka to revive Infosys, both companies continue to be plagued by anaemic growth. This has made many analysts question if existing traditional contracts are merely getting rebadged as digital. A case in point: TCS claims its digital business grew 29% in the last year and now brings $3 billion in business.Finally, both TCS and Infosys continue to shy away from acquiring technology-focused firms. Infosys has not made a single acquisition in the last 18 months; TCS has looked away from acquiring a company since it partnered with Japan’s Mitsubishi Group in 2014. This is important because most large technology firms, including Accenture Plc, are looking at acquisitions to bring in new technology and skill sets. Nevertheless, the quarter does have some positives. For starters, the TCS management claimed that its insurance business under Diligenta and Japan has turned the corner, with Gopinathan expressing confidence of growth from these two lagging business units.On Tuesday, TCS shares fell 0.53% to Rs2,308.65 on BSE, while the benchmark Sensex declined 0.32% to 29,319.1 points. The results were announced after the end of trading in Mumbai.",2017-04-19,"Q4 revenue of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) rose 5.8% from the year-ago period to $4.45 billion, while Q4 profit increases 5.8% to $992 million",0.72,05:15,TCS misses both revenue and profit estimates in March quarter +0,"New Delhi: Reliance Infrastructure Ltd on Saturday reported a net profit of Rs40.94 crore for the quarter ended 31 March. The company had recorded a consolidated net loss of Rs327.41 crore during the January-March quarter in 2015-16, Reliance Infrastructure said in a BSE filing. According to the statement, total income of the company was recorded at Rs6,145 crore in the quarter against Rs6,910 crore in the year-ago period. The company’s consolidated net profit for 2016-17 rose to Rs1,425.18 crore as compared to Rs759.63 crore in 2015-16. The total income in the fiscal under review was Rs28,222 crore against Rs28,462 crore in 2015-16. Its engineering procurement and construction order book stood at Rs5,960 crore and earned a revenue of Rs2,492 crore in the last fiscal from this business. The company won EPC contract for setting up 2 x 250 MW thermal power plants worth Rs3,675 crore in Rajasthan from Neyveli Lignite Corporation Ltd. It also bagged EPC contract to build 66km road project worth Rs711 crore in Tamil Nadu. All its 11 road projects of Rs4,370 lane km are now revenue generating , it said. The company said the arbitration award won for 2 road projects—NK Toll Road and DS Toll Road—was worth Rs170 crore. Besides, over Rs14,000 crore is under advanced stage of arbitration. Reliance Infrastructure develop projects through various special purpose vehicles in several high growth areas such as power, roads and metro rail in the infrastructure space and the defence sector. The company’s board has recommended a dividend of Rs9 per share. Its share prices closed at Rs556.50 a piece, down 0.47% on the BSE. Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.",2017-04-15,"Reliance Infrastructure’s Q4 consolidated net profit for FY17 rose to Rs1,425.18 crore as compared to Rs759.63 crore in FY16",0.91,23:15,Reliance Infrastructure Q4 profit at Rs40.94 crore +0,"
Often, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and its investors don’t see eye to eye. The company’s March quarter results announcement was no different. Revenue grew 1% sequentially in constant currency terms, lower than analysts’ estimates of around 1.6% growth. Worryingly, revenues in the mainstay North American region fell by 1.8%, and those of the key banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) vertical fell 0.4%.
ALSO READ: TCS misses both revenue and profit estimates in March quarterStill, chief executive officer (CEO) Rajesh Gopinathan said, “We are quite happy with the way we have ended the year.” He added on a call with analysts that the outlook for the BFSI segment remains positive, and that thanks to large deal wins, it may be only a matter of time before the expected growth comes in. TCS has been saying for the past few months that things are looking up in the US and particularly in the BFSI segment. Over 40% of its revenues come from the BFSI segment, while the North American region accounted for 54% of revenues last year.But after the March quarter performance, investors are likely to question the company’s optimism. As the chart alongside shows, year-on-year growth rates have fallen significantly at TCS in the past year. Besides, operating profit margin, too, has fallen below its targeted range of 26-28%. The result of this double whammy was that earnings per share grew by just 8.3% last year.With the rupee having appreciated sharply compared to the average rate in fiscal year 2017 (FY17), margins are expected to be under further pressure in the new fiscal year. What’s more, thanks to the many changes in H-1B visa rules and policies, costs of providing on-site services to clients are also expected to rise. As such, earnings can be under pressure in FY18. Against this backdrop, TCS shares trade at around 16 times one-year forward earnings. And while CEO Gopinathan said that he expects FY18 to be incrementally positive, things could turn out to be particularly dire, depending on new visa rules. “We see near-term impact on decision-making due to immigration-related issues, even as companies are denying this. We expect 1QFY18 to start slowly and do not build growth acceleration in FY18,” analysts at Nomura Research wrote in a note to clients. Some of the possible impact of new visa norms is detailed here: bit.ly/2ngI48H.And unlike TCS’s upbeat post-results commentary, most other technology companies including Accenture Plc. have guided for slower growth in the new fiscal year. Besides, while Infosys Ltd tried to soothe investors’ nerves by outlining a detailed capital allocation policy, TCS said it will stay with its existing payout policy.In sum, there’s nothing much to like in TCS’s March quarter results announcement, except perhaps for the management’s hopeful commentary. But given the fair bit of divergence between the company’s outlook three months ago and its actual performance, investors would do well to tread cautiously.",2017-04-19,"After the March quarter performance, investors are likely to question the optimism being shown by new TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan",0.52,07:25,"TCS results: Upbeat commentary, downbeat performance in March quarter" +0,"Los Angeles: For now, Netflix Inc. investors can have rapid subscriber growth or a big jump in profit—not both.The streaming-video giant reported first-quarter user gains that fell short of estimates because there wasn’t a House of Cards-style hit to draw new viewers and retain others. On the other hand, the lack of big-budget productions boosted net income. Next quarter, with the return of House of Cards and three major movies on the release schedule, profit will miss estimates while customer gains will improve, Netflix said Monday.The dilemma whipsawed Netflix investors late Monday, with the stock dropping on the subscriber figures before recovering later and moving higher. The shares rose 1.4% to $149.30 in extended trading after results were announced. They had gained 15% this year through 13 April.The world’s biggest paid video service signed 4.95 million new customers last quarter, less than the 5.49 million analysts were expecting. It’ll make up some of that in the current period, with a forecast for viewer growth that beat analysts’ forecasts.“There’s nothing here that changes the thesis,” said Anthony DiClemente, an Instinet LLC analyst who recommends buying the shares. “If you own Netflix because you think they are going to add subscribers globally, you’re still going to own it. If you don’t own it because you think Netflix was spending too much money to invest in said growth, you still feel the same way.”Netflix needs to add millions of subscribers every quarter to help pay for the billions of dollars the company spends making TV shows and movies or licensing programs from others. The company, which has committed $15.3 billion for movies and TV shows over the next five years, hasn’t given any indication it plans to slow those outlays and said Monday it plans to raise money this quarter by issuing long-term debt.Netflix released 17 stand-up specials, nine feature films and an array of original series for kids and adults, but blamed the absence of one show—House of Cards—for its slower-than-projected viewer growth.The company could turn the tide in the second quarter, typically one of its weakest. Netflix, based in Los Gatos, California, has lined up a slew of high-profile releases in the coming months, including new seasons of House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black and Master of None.The heavy second-quarter schedule comes with costs and highlights a dilemma. Because of those expenses, Netflix said profit in the period will be 15 cents a share, short of analysts’ estimate of 23 cents. Revenue will be $2.75 billion, versus Wall Street projections of $2.76 billion. The first quarter, lighter on new releases, was the company’s most profitable ever and the first time international operations made money.Future profitInvestors have permitted Netflix to operate near break-even on the expectation that the company, which expects to top 100 million customers this week, will continue to grow rapidly, especially outside the US chief executive officer Reed Hastings has also pledged to deliver material profits starting this year. Analysts are forecasting net income of $477.2 million, or $1.09 a share, on revenue of $11.2 billion, based on the average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg.The company said first-quarter profit more than quadrupled to $178 million, or 40 cents a share, compared with analysts’ predictions of 37 cents. Revenue grew 35% to $2.64 billion.The company wants to be assessed in the future based on sales and margins, as opposed to subscriber growth.Netflix’s investment in original programming has inspired competing technology companies and TV networks up their spending, creating more competition for attention and eyeballs. Netflix said it will spend $1 billion marketing in 2017 to bring more attention to its shows.Analysts were expecting slower growth this quarter, after Netflix expanded to more than 130 new countries in the year-earlier period. The company has expanded in stages, and is having more success with older markets.“We have high satisfaction and are rapidly growing in Latin America, Europe, and North America,” the company said in a letter to investors. “We are making good strides in improving our content offering to match local tastes in Asia, Middle East, and Africa, but have much progress to make, like in Latin America a few years ago.” Bloomberg",2017-04-18,Netflix reports first-quarter user gains that fell short of estimates because there wasn’t a House of Cards-style hit to draw new viewers and retain others,0.93,13:57,Netflix trades user growth for profits with no ‘House of Cards’ +0,"New Delhi: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has filed FIRs against eight websites, seeking to curb fraudulent activities promising Aadhaar-related services and illegal collection of information from people.The sites are aadhaarupdate.com, aadhaarindia.com, pvcaadhaar.in, aadhaarprinters.com, geteaadhaar.com, downloadaadhaarcard.in, aadharcopy.in, and duplicateaadharcard.com.“We found that even after we ordered the shutting down of some unauthorised websites, some new websites had come up. This time, we have lodged an FIR against the erring websites,” said Ajay Bhushan Pandey, chief executive officer, UIDAI.These websites were collecting Aadhaar number and enrolment details illegally from residents and promising Aadhaar services posing as entities authorized by UIDAI. In February, UIDAI had shut down 12 websites and 12 mobile applications to curb unauthorized Aadhaar related services.It had also directed authorities to close another 26 fraudulent and illegal websites and mobile applications.According to UIDAI, the websites and companies extending unauthorized services, tantamount to violation under Information Technology Act 2000, Section 38 of Aadhaar Act 2016, and Section 409 (Criminal breach of trust) and Section 420 (cheating) of IPC.Under the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, intentionally copying Aadhaar data is a criminal offence and entails a three-year sentence and a fine.The authority will continue to take stringent action against such sites and also asked the public to use UIDAI official website (www.uidai.gov.in) for all Aadhaar-related services, added Pandey.Late February, UIDAI had also filed a complaint against Axis Bank Ltd, business correspondent Suvidhaa Infoserve and e-sign provider eMudhra, alleging they had attempted unauthorized authentication and impersonation by illegally storing Aadhaar biometrics. The breach was noticed after one individual performed 397 biometric transactions between 14 July 2016 and 19 February 2017. All three entities have been temporarily barred from offering Aadhaar-related services until UIDAI makes a final decision.Last month, UIDAI blacklisted an overenthusiastic common services centre for 10 years after the Aadhaar details of former cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni were shared on social media.At present, any Aadhaar-related demographic information can only be shared following the procedures laid down in the Aadhaar Act, 2016.There are more than 1.13 billion Aadhaar number holders in the country. PTI contributed to this copy.",2017-04-19,"UIDAI filed FIRs against eight websites, seeking to curb fraudulent activities promising Aadhaar-related services and illegal collection of information from people",-0.53,22:00,UIDAI files FIRs against 8 websites for collecting Aadhaar-related information +0,"New Delhi: Industry body Nasscom on Wednesday warned that the US’ move to replace the lottery system for issuing H1B work visas with a merit-based approach could have “unintended consequences” even as it sought to downplay any immediate impact on IT companies this year. Under a new executive order signed by US President Donald Trump, America is reviewing its visa programme for foreign workers, while ensuring a crackdown on visa abuse and frauds. The H1B visa programme is most sought-after by Indian IT firms and professionals to work on customer sites. Every year, the US grants 65,000 H1B visas, while another 20,000 are set aside for those with US advanced degrees. “No new changes are being implemented immediately... Nothing is being proposed that would impact or change the FY18 H1B lottery that is currently underway,” Nasscom said in a statement. ALSO READ: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookThe proposed changes are forward-looking and non- specific, it contended. Any change in visa norms can affect the movement of labour as well as spike operational costs for IT players. Most Indian IT companies get over 60% of their revenues from the North American market. The Indian government, on its part, has said it will take up the issue with the American authorities during the upcoming visit of finance minister Arun Jaitley to the US. Another industry body Assocham also expressed concern over the tightening of the visa norms. “...Indian IT companies are bound to face disruptions by way of higher costs and even some laying off work force back home, as the rising rupee is aggravating the situation further for the technology export firms,” it said. Indian IT firms, however, put a brave face to the impending changes being mooted by the US. “We continue to invest in the local communities in which we operate, including hiring local American top talent, bringing education and training to our clients to shrink the skills gap in the US, and working with policymakers to foster innovation,” Infosys said in a statement. Larger rival TCS, too, has exuded confidence that these issues can be tackled through greater engagement. It has also said it will “tweak” its business model to continue to be in compliance with regulations. With rising protectionism across markets like the US, Singapore and now Australia, companies are beginning to adjust their business models to reduce their dependence on visas, hiring more locals instead. Nasscom also highlighted that there is shortage of highly-skilled domestic talent in the US in IT, healthcare, education, and other fields.",2017-04-19,Nasscom warned that the US’ move to replace the lottery system for issuing H1B work visas with a merit-based approach could have ‘unintended consequences’ ,0.11,18:09,Scrapping H1B visa lottery can have unintended consequences: Nasscom +0,"New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday indicated that he would take up the visa issue with the US authorities during his visit to America. “These (IT industry issues) are matters of discussion with the appropriate authorities there. Once I do discuss and get an opportunity, I will let you know,” he told reporters when asked whether he would take up the concerns of the Indian IT sector with the US administration. The Indian IT industry has expressed serious concerns over the US government moving towards tightening the rules for grant of H1B visa, mainly used by domestic IT professionals for short-term work. US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order for tightening the rules of the H1B visa programme to stop its “abuse” and ensure that the visas are given to the “most- skilled or highest paid” petitioners. Also read | As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backJaitley is leaving tonight on a five-day visit to the United States to attend the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF as well as deliberations of G20 nations. During his stay in Washington and New York, he will hold meetings with American CEOs and institutional and pension fund investors, where he will pitch India as a favourable investment destination. The finance minister is also slated to hold a meeting with the US Treasury Secretary. India has time and again flagged its concerns over tightening of the visa regime in the US which targets the movement of professionals particularly in the IT sector. Also read | Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookThe H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise in specialised fields. Indian technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year for their US operations. The US market accounts for about 60% of the revenue of the Indian IT industry.",2017-04-19,FM Arun Jaitley is leaving tonight on a 5-day visit to the US to attend the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF as well as deliberations of G20 nations,0.32,18:21,Arun Jaitley may take up H1B visa issue with US authorities during his visit +0,"Taipei: President Donald Trump just made life a little easier for Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai. And a lot harder for Vishal Sikka and Rajesh Gopinathan.“Right now, H1B visas are being awarded in a totally random lottery. And that’s wrong,” Trump told workers in Wisconsin, announcing a reform of the visa category. “Instead, they should be given to the most skilled and highest paid applicants.”Whatever your views on Trump, he is factually correct on that last point. H1Bs are supposed to go to those working in an occupation that requires “theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge.”It’s hard to make a case that the jobs being filled by the Indian IT outsourcing firms that dominate H1B visa issuance—such as Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys Ltd, which Sikka and Gopinathan helm—make use of highly specialized knowledge when they regularly pay less than other firms like Apple Inc. or Google parent Alphabet Inc.On the first point, Trump’s a little off, though, because the awarding of H1Bs isn’t a totally random lottery: A 2015 amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act outlined a pecking order the secretary of labour is meant to follow. The 65,000 annual cap is also exceeded because of exceptions and rollovers that put the annual figure at over 180,000 last year.The flood of H1B applications does make the reviewing and awarding of visas a slow process. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services centre in California is only now processing applications made back in August, for example.That’s bad for companies like Apple and Google, led by Cook and Pichai, which seek far fewer H1Bs. I’ve written before of employees being parked offshore while they await the correct paperwork, and the risks to the US of this situation continuing.In tightening the rules—he can’t unilaterally rewrite them—Trump will help those tech titans that really need the talent, as evidenced by them paying such high salaries for their H1B workers.Yet he won’t be doing much for manufacturers like tool maker Snap-on Inc, where he delivered his broadside. That’s because factories in Asia still offer cost benefits over the US, and Trump’s decision to trade a weaker Chinese currency for assistance on North Korea shows how hard he’s willing to push Beijing in the effort to ease the plight of American workers.By making bold statements about H1Bs, Trump has played to his working-class support base but also diverted attention away from dependence on Chinese manufacturing. And that’s definitely good for Apple. Bloomberg",2017-04-19,"Companies like Apple and Google, led by Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, seek far fewer H1Bs, while Indian IT firms such as TCS and Infosys dominate H1B visa issuance",0.69,13:34,Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps Cook +0,"Mumbai: DCB Bank Ltd on Friday reported 24% drop in net profit for the fourth quarter on higher provisioning and higher tax expense.Net profit for the quarter was Rs 52.86 crore as compared to Rs 69.53 crore a year ago. Nine analysts polled by Bloomberg had forecast a net profit of Rs 53.72 crore.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, increased 30.57% to Rs 220.26 crore from Rs 168.69 crore last year. Other income increased to Rs 63.59 crore from Rs 61.45 crore in the same period last year, a rise of 3.48%.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rose 11.53% to Rs 254.20 crore at the end of the March quarter from Rs 227.93 crore in the December quarter. On year-on-year basis, it jumped 28.79% from Rs 197.38 crore.Provisions and contingencies rose 11.14% to Rs 33.93 crore in the quarter from Rs 30.53 crore a quarter ago. On a year-on-year basis, it rose 24.51% from Rs 27.25 crore.As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs rose to 1.59% at the end of the March quarter from 1.55% in the previous quarter and 1.51% in the year-ago quarter.Net NPAs rose to 0.79% in the March quarter from 0.74% in the previous quarter and 0.75% in the same quarter last year.On Thursday, DCB Bank shares closed at Rs 179.65 on the BSE, down 1.07% from its previous close, while India’s benchmark Sensex index lost 0.61% to 29461.45 points. Indian Markets are closed for a holiday on Friday.",2017-04-14,DCB Bank’s fourth quarter profit was Rs52.86 crore as compared to Rs69.53 crore a year ago on the higher provisioning and higher tax expense,0.89,20:59,DCB Bank Q4 profit down 24% to Rs52.86 crore +0,"Bengaluru: In a conversation with Mint, Ravi Venkatesan, 54, who in addition to being Infosys co-chairman is also chairman of Bank of Baroda, said that one of his immediate priorities would be to align all stakeholders around the transformational journey that Infosys is in the midst of.
Why did you agree to take on this role as co-chairman?Because the board asked me to. But also because I love Infosys. Just like the Idea of India (Sunil Khilnani’s book), the idea of Infosys is a powerful one; Infosys remains a vital institution of our country. It’s important that it continues to flourish.
Was this decision solely the board’s or was it made after some of the founders suggested it?This was a decision of the board. Why did the board decide to go for a co-chairman? Simple because when an aircraft is going through turbulent weather, it only helps to get a co-pilot.
Questions have been raised by some of the founders against the board and even against the management. So how would you get both the founders and board aligned and make sure this is not a distraction for the management? For the record, I was close to the founders of Infosys before I joined the board. What they accomplished was incredible. I hope to remain close to them long after I cease to be on the board. Equally, I believe in the strategy that (CEO) Vishal Sikka has set out for transforming Infosys. I intend to do my very best to see that he succeeds in this mission. Everything else is a sideshow. I don’t see any contradiction here.
How do you rate Vishal’s leadership in the three years that he has been CEO now?I think Infosys has done somethings incredibly well under Vishal’s leadership. We have a bold and differentiated strategy which customers are excited about; customer satisfaction is at an all-time high. Most employees are energized by the vision and strategy. Vishal and his team have built on the momentum they inherited and closed the gap with competition. Many seeds for the future have been sown and we see the green shoots in many areas—in AI, in automation, with initiatives like design thinking. That said, the transformation is a work in progress. Some things aren’t working as intended and course corrections are being applied. There are pockets of underperformance which represent opportunities. We need to rapidly scale up things that are working. There are capability gaps that need to be fixed. But overall, I am optimistic about our prospects.
How will the co-chair arrangement work? How will you delineate roles to make sure there’s no overlap?Sesh (R. Seshasayee) and I have known each other for 20 years and worked on the Infy board for six years, so we are quite comfortable with each other. We have decided that there are some areas that he will continue to lead such as overall leadership of the board or investor outreach while in other areas like strategy or talent I will work more closely with Vishal and his team. We have decided that we will work as partners rather than compartments.
What are your immediate priorities?My first priority is to help align all stakeholders around the transformation journey that we are on. The second is to work closely with Vishal in helping build a world class leadership team that can execute the transformation strategy.Your elevation has been seen positively and the general view is that relations between the board and the founders will improve now. What’s your take on that and how do you intend to repair relations with the founders?I have the greatest respect for the founders of Infosys and especially for Mr (N.R. Narayana) Murthy who has been a mentor and friend for a long time. I believe that everyone wants the same thing—which is to see Infosys flourish and prosper from the incredible opportunities that are being thrown up by technology shifts. The board and leadership team wants this. Investors want this. Employees want this. The founders want this. However, this is a journey through uncharted waters and so the key is to earn the trust of all stakeholders so we stay together through the ups and downs of this voyage. Trust really is the key. This requires intense, honest and ongoing dialogue. It also requires courage, willingness to experiment, assimilate feedback, learn and change.After a stellar year in 2015-16, the last 12 months have been slow by Infy’s lofty standards. What in your opinion needs to be fixed immediately in order to get back the company to industry-leading growth?This has been a tough year for everyone with growth slowing and severe commoditization. Infy’s performance must be seen not just in absolute terms but in the context of the industry. Vishal has already commented on our performance and what he and the team will do. I personally believe we have to more aggressively move investments and our brightest people from more commoditized areas towards our best growth prospects which are in areas such as digital, cyber security, AI, IOT and so on. Our job as a board is to support management in moving much more quickly on the many opportunities we have.Will you reduce your other board commitments now that you’re taking up this role? Will you remain chairman at BoB?The transformation of BoB is also a work in progress. (P.S.) Jayakumar and his team have worked really hard and we are seeing the green shoots of their labour. I would love to see it through if that’s what the government also wishes.",2017-04-14,"Ravi Venkatesan, who was appointed as Infosys co-chairman Thursday, says the idea of Infosys is a powerful one and it’s important that it continues to flourish",0.91,04:46,"Ravi Venkatesan: In turbulent weather, it only helps to get a co-pilot" +0,"New York: Facebook does innovation to serve “everyone” in the community and not just the “high end”, its chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has said in an apparent swipe at Snapchat boss’s reported “poor countries” remark that triggered a controversy in India. “I think one thing that people probably don’t think about as much as we do is innovation to serve everyone in the community, not just the high end, right?,” Zuckerberg told Tech Crunch on the sidelines of the annual Facebook developer conference (F8) at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California on Tuesday. When asked about the perception of Facebook being less innovative, Zuckerberg said, “I guess I’m not that worried about that. I mean, I feel like we do different kinds of work in different areas. I mean, I think certainly, no one who looks at the solar-powered planes that we’re building or the satellites that were making, and thinks that that stuff isn’t interesting.” Zuckerberg, 32, said we focus on a lot of things like Facebook Lite. It’s up to 200 million people in like a year...I tend to worry more and think more about the substance of what our community actually wants, Tech Crunch reported. Snapchat is strongly denying allegations by a former employee Anthony Pompliano, who alleged in a lawsuit that Spiegel had once shot down his suggestion to pursue growth in certain international markets. Pompliano alleged that Spiegel said Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India and Spain. Snapchat had refuted the reported claims of a former employee who alleged that its CEO Evan Spiegel made negative comments about the Indian market, saying the multimedia mobile app is for everyone and the company is “grateful” to its Indian users. Spiegels remarks caused an uproar in India where users are quickly uninstalling the Snapchat app.",2017-04-19,"Facebook does innovation to serve ‘everyone’ in the community, says Mark Zuckerberg in the face of Snapchat boss’s reported ‘poor countries remark ",0.42,15:05,"Facebook for ‘everyone’ and not just high end, says Mark Zuckerberg " +0,"Singapore: It’s not often that the International Monetary Fund warns of a risk to global financial stability at its spring meeting in Washington, and almost immediately evidence jumps out of a bank earnings report in Mumbai.That’s what happened on Wednesday. The IMF released analysis showing an alarming buildup of vulnerable corporate debt—the kind where operating profit is falling short of interest payments—in India, Indonesia, China, Turkey and Brazil. And right on cue, Yes Bank Ltd, an Indian lender that raised fresh money from equity investors only last month, reported a near-doubling of its gross non-performing assets to 1.52% at the end of March, from 0.85% in December.India has many troubled state-run lenders; Yes Bank is not one of them. The spike in its soured loans is due to the cement units of Jaiprakash Associates Ltd. The builder of India’s sole Formula One track is a distressed borrower with a US currency bond due in September that’s trading below 42 cents on the dollar. Its cement assets are in the process of being sold to billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla, so Yes Bank will probably get repaid after all.Still, corporate leverage is a worry for emerging markets like India precisely because a disproportionately large chunk of it can be found on rickety balance sheets like Jaiprakash’s. The obligations of companies that have an interest coverage ratio of less than one account for 22% of total debt in India, 17.5% in Indonesia, and almost 13% in China.Worse, as the IMF notes, a rise in global risk premiums alone would add $135 billion to this weak tail of debt distribution. Protectionism is the other way for the back end to get longer. The Trump administration’s trade policies should matter less to commodity exporters such as Russia or Saudi Arabia, but China’s corporate debt profile could weaken sharply.Also read: New RBI rules on provisioning, bad loans seen taking a toll on banks Luckily for Indonesia, its banking system is in reasonably good shape. India, South Africa, Russia and China face a double whammy. Their lenders may not have enough profit—or capital—to absorb a further souring of corporate debt. After making additional loan-loss provisions, between 45 and 77% of corporate loan assets in these markets would be with banks that have Tier 1 capital ratios below 10%.When it comes to company profitability, the weak tail of debt is already wagging the dog in India. If it grows any longer because of risk premiums or protectionism, other emerging economies may not be all that safe either. Bloomberg",2017-04-20,Corporate leverage is a worry for emerging markets like India precisely because a disproportionately large chunk of it can be found on rickety balance sheets ,-0.92,13:06,Beware the weak debt tail wagging emerging markets +0,"
Mumbai: Mortgage lender Dewan Housing Finance Corp. Ltd (DHFL) plans to sell a majority stake in its Aadhar Housing Finance Ltd unit, two people aware of the development said. Aadhar Housing Finance, which provides housing loans for low- and middle-income customers, had a loan book of Rs1,736 crore as of 31 March 2016. DHFL has hired investment bank Rothschild to find a buyer, one of the two persons said on condition of anonymity.International Finance Corp. (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, holds about a 20% stake in Aadhar Housing.“The process has been just launched and it is too early to talk about potential investors. But, there would be serious interest from private equity investors,” the second person said, also on condition of anonymity. It was too early to talk about valuation, but it could be anywhere between 1.5-3 times the loan book, he added.Established in 2011, Aadhar Housing has operations in 13 states including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar, which account for 72% of India’s population, according to the company website. It lends to those with income levels of between Rs60,000 and Rs6 lakh per annum. Home loans are capped at Rs25 lakh. In FY15, Aadhar Housing’s loan book stood at Rs933 crore.Aadhar disbursed Rs1,032 crore in the first nine months of FY17.An email, text messages and several calls made to a DHFL spokesperson did not elicit any response. An email sent to IFC also did not elicit any response. A Rothschild spokesperson declined to comment.Housing credit growth slowed to 16% from a year earlier, taking overall housing credit to Rs13.7 trillion in the year ended 31 March from Rs12.4 trillion in the previous year, according to a March report by rating agency ICRA Ltd.The affordable housing segment is likely to continue to grow at a faster pace than the industry average, supported by the government’s efforts to address supply, demand and affordability issues. Higher allocations by the government, providing infrastructure status to affordable housing projects and extension of the credit-linked subsidy scheme, which, coupled with the current low-to-moderate penetration levels, are likely to help growth in the affordable housing segment, the ICRA report added.With the prospects of the luxury real estate market remaining bleak, more builders are shifting their focus to the affordable housing sector in India, which may create increased revenue for housing finance firms in India. Besides, the government’s push for affordable housing also created a boom in this space. A new credit-linked subsidy scheme for the middle-income group with a budget of Rs1,000 crore has been launched by the Union government. As part of its vision of ‘Housing for All by 2020’, credit-linked subsidy scheme was launched under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana programme targeted at the middle-income group earning as much as Rs18 lakh a year.Against the backdrop of increased demand in affordable housing , a handful of leading home financiers are raising funds. Discussions are on with private equity (PE) investors to raise money to meet expansion plans.In February, Mumbai-based Home First Finance Co. India Pvt. Ltd said private equity firm True North was in advanced talks to acquire a majority stake in Home First Finance for around $100 million. Shubham Housing Development Finance Co. Pvt. Ltd is looking to raise around $100 million from PE funds, as the company looks to increase its loan portfolio and expand its network nationally, Mint reported last year.Aspire Home Finance Corp. Ltd, the mortgage lending unit of Motilal Oswal Group, is also in the market to raise funds.Expanding its presence in a segment that offers loans for low-cost houses, IFC announced its plan to invest in three housing finance firms—Aspire Home Finance, Micro Housing Finance Corp., and Aptus Value Housing Finance India Ltd—through non-convertible debentures.The US-based PE fund Carlyle had purchased New Silk Route-controlled financial services firm Destimoney in February 2015, which also resulted in an indirect acquisition of a 49% stake in PNB Housing Finance Ltd.",2017-04-20,Dewan Housing Finance has hired investment bank Rothschild to find a buyer for its 80% stake in Aadhar Housing Finance,0.25,08:47,Dewan Housing Finance may sell majority stake in Aadhar Housing Finance +0,"Mumbai: The Indian government and the Reserve Bank of India had not yet reached an agreement on a new plan to clean up the record troubled debt accumulated at the country’s lenders, S.S. Mundra, a deputy governor at the central bank, said on Thursday.Mundra, in an interview with CNBC TV18, added it would be “difficult to put a timeline” on when consensus could be reached, but said it “could be very near”.Investors have been waiting for India to come up with a new plan on how to deal with almost $150 billion stressed assets at banks after finance minister Arun Jaitley said last month it would soon announce new action.Mundra said among the considerations would be how to provide more capital for the banks, making it important to get consensus from the government, which owns majority stakes in nearly two dozen lenders that together dominate India’s banking system. Reuters",2017-04-20,"RBI deputy governor S.S. Mundra says it is ‘difficult to put a timeline’ on when the consensus be reached over bad debt cleanup plan, but it ‘could be very near’",-0.35,16:49,"Govt, RBI have not agreed on bad debt cleanup plan: S.S. Mundra" +0,"New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s ‘prompt corrective action’ (PCA) framework suggests a greater willingness to regulatory action to address problems of struggling banks, Fitch Ratings said on Thursday. However, its implementation is only likely to be effective if it is matched by credible plans to address banks’ significant asset quality issues and capital shortages, it said. The RBI has tightened the thresholds—for capital ratios, non-performing loans (NPLs), profitability and leverage—at which banks enter the PCA framework. “This appears to be an acknowledgement of the significant asset quality stress in the system and that more banks are in need of regulatory intervention,” the US-based agency said. It said PCA was previously viewed as an extraordinary step, which the RBI urged banks to make great efforts to avoid. That now looks likely to change. “More than half of state-owned banks would breach at least one of the new thresholds, mainly owing to high NPLs, based on their latest financial reports,” it said. ALSO READ: Govt, RBI have not agreed on bad debt cleanup plan: S.S. MundraThe gross NPAs of public sector banks have risen from Rs5.02 lakh crore at the end of March 2016 to Rs6.06 lakh crore in December 2016. The new PCA framework will be invoked on the basis of the banks’ 2016-17 financials. The RBI has also given itself greater discretion in terms of the measures it can use to intervene in banks once they fall under the PCA framework, which suggests it has recognised a need to take corrective action at an earlier stage when banks run into difficulties. Fitch said the previous PCA, in contrast, explicitly reserved the most interventionist actions for banks that had breached more extreme thresholds. “It is possible that intervention could involve forcing banks to conserve capital, if other actions do not address problems. The risk of non-performance on bank capital instruments may, therefore, have risen,” it said, adding the actual impact of the new rules will depend on how the RBI uses them. The RBI has recently tightened the PCA rules requiring regulatory action on lenders if they fall short of capital or exceed bad loan limits. According to PCA framework, banks are assessed on three grounds—asset quality, profitability and capital ratios. Not meeting the requirements in any of these parameters could lead to RBI action on banks. The actions could include stricter norms for lending, branch expansion, management change and asset reduction. “These circulars might weigh on bank earnings in the next round of reports. Should the additional disclosures reveal weaknesses that are greater than expected, there could be further pressure on the banks’ Viability Ratings,” the agency said. Under the amended PCA norms the scope for possible regulatory actions has been broadened, but it remains uncertain to what extent the RBI will use the tools it has just made available, it added: “The RBI may use the PCA framework to identify weak banks as candidates for mergers. State Bank of India took over five smaller lenders earlier this month, and further consolidation could be part of the overall strategy to clean up the banking system. However, mergers would also require the support of the government,” Fitch said.",2017-04-20,Fitch Ratings says implementation of RBI’s PCA is only likely to be effective if it is matched by credible plans to address banks’ significant asset quality issues ,0.88,17:33,RBI’s PCA norm for greater regulatory action on banks: Fitch +0,"Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday.The 6-member monetary policy committee (MPC) which had unanimously decided to keep the repo rate unchanged at 6.25% in early April, had raised a secondary rate called the reverse repo rate, which is used to drain excess funds from banks.The MPC, which aims to bring down inflation to 4% in the medium term, maintained its hawkish stance on inflation, with most members expressing concern over upside risks to core inflation.One member, M. D. Patra, the executive director of the RBI, and in charge of monetary policy, favoured an increase in the repo rate by 25 basis points as a pre-emptive move to curb inflation pressures.But Patra finally agreed with the rest of the panel on holding the rate unchanged for now. Reuters",2017-04-20,RBI’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged ,-0.2,18:12,RBI’s monetary policy minutes show inflation primary concern +0,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",2017-04-20,Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,0.16,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +0,"
Mumbai: Private sector lenders Yes Bank Ltd and IndusInd Bank Ltd on Wednesday reported a sharp rise in their quarterly bad loan provisioning, eroding profits, after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) advised lenders to follow stricter standard asset provisioning and disclosure rules.The additional provisioning pertains to their exposure to the Jaiprakash Associates Ltd cement assets that are being purchased by UltraTech Cement Ltd, said three people aware of the matter. Other banks which have the same exposure are also likely to report a jump in their provisions in the March quarter. However, these provisions are likely to be written back as the UltraTech-Jaiprakash deal will be completed by the end of this quarter, they said. UltraTech has agreed to buy Jaiprakash Associates’ cement assets for Rs16,189 crore.ALSO READ: Yes Bank first casualty in RBI’s rule to pull out bad loan skeletonsYes Bank reported a doubling of gross non-performing assets (NPAs) to Rs2,018 crore in the March quarter, as it had to set aside an additional Rs228 crore to cover potential loan losses. Yes Bank’s gross NPAs were at 1.52% at the end of the March quarter and net NPAs were at 0.81%.“The increase in NPA and consequent provision is in conformity with the divergences observed by the RBI as per its compliance process” mentioned in the RBI circular on Tuesday, a Yes Bank statement said. According to the RBI circular, banks have to make disclosures if their asset classification and provisioning diverge from the central bank norms.“As of 31 March 2017, the impact of divergences overall is at Rs1,040 crore on which we have made 25% provisioning. This includes one borrower exposure of Rs911 crore towards a Delhi-based cement company. However, this is a performing asset which has been servicing interest regularly. We expect to recover the amount in the near term,” said Rana Kapoor, managing director and chief executive officer, Yes Bank.Despite the higher provisions, Yes Bank’s net profit for the quarter ended 31 March rose 30% to Rs914 crore from a year ago. Net interest income, or the income that a bank earns by giving loans, increased 32% to Rs1,639.70 crore. This comes on the heels of a strong loan book growth of 34.7% and deposit growth of 28% during the quarter.
“Yes Bank has negatively surprised by almost doubling on gross non-performing assets during Q4, which is likely to overshadow its strong operational performance and strong capital position. Thus, the sentiments are likely to turn weak in short term,” said Lalitabh Shrivastawa, associate vice-president, research, for banking, financial services and insurance, at Sharekhan.IndusInd Bank reported a 21% rise in net profit to Rs751 crore during the quarter, even as it saw its provisions double to Rs430 crore on account of RBI’s latest disclosure and provisioning norms. Gross NPAs rose 8.57% to Rs1,054.87 crore at the end of the March quarter from Rs971.62 crore in the preceding quarter. “We have provided Rs122 crore against a M&A (mergers and acquisitions) case in the cement sector on advice from the RBI. The repayment is due in June 2017, which we are sure is going to happen,” said Romesh Sobti, managing director and CEO, IndusInd Bank.Yes Bank shares edged down 0.03% and IndusInd Bank shares fell 0.63% on a day the BSE’s benchmark Sensex inched up 0.06% to 29,336.57 points.According to Sobti, the bank has closed its third three-year plan and is going to start on its fourth such plan, where it plans to double its presence as well as its profits by March 2020. The bank aims to have a microfinance portfolio of Rs10,000 crore and its rural finance business will contribute 10% of the overall earnings in this period.“Our plan has not taken into account any inorganic play during this period. We are, however, open to inorganic growth as well. We are looking at various opportunities including microfinance,” Sobti said.“IndusInd Bank results were largely in line, and would have been termed strong if not for the one-off provision impact of Rs122 crore on a standard asset exposure. The ability to outperform industry growth as well as maintain less than 1% gross NPA is commendable, and with its strong management and performance delivery, the bank should be attractive for long-term investors,” said Shrivastawa.",2017-04-20,Yes Bank and IndusInd Bank’s Q4 results showed surge in bad loans and provisions following RBI’s new asset quality rules and exposure to Jaiprakash Associates,0.14,04:40,"Yes Bank, IndusInd bad loan provisions rise on exposure to Jaiprakash Associates"
+0,"
Mumbai: New RBI guidelines on standard asset provisioning and disclosure of details regarding non-performing assets (NPAs) may create difficulties for Indian banks, thanks to additional provisioning requirements, analysts estimate. Public sector banks are likely to see a 5-15% impact on their earnings going ahead, while private sector lenders would see their earnings hurt by 1-2% due to the new norms, Credit Suisse said in a report on Wednesday. Prior to this advisory, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) required banks to set aside 0.4% as provision against standard assets. The RBI on Tuesday had advised banks to consider setting aside higher provisions even for good loans in stressed sectors.According to Credit Suisse analysts, the hit on profitability has been calculated on a 50 basis points (bps) increase in provisioning owing to the RBI guidelines. The central bank specifically red-flagged the telecom industry, and asked bank boards to review their exposure to the sector by 30 June and consider making provisions at higher rates “so that necessary resilience is built in the balance sheets should the stress reflect on the quality of exposure to the sector at a future date”. According to data available with the RBI, bank exposure to the telecom sector was Rs82,200 crore at the end of February.In a report that Nomura released on Wednesday, analysts note that the risk on the telecom sector is likely to be limited owing to the expected consolidation, with the merger of Vodafone Group Plc and Idea Cellular Ltd. Weaker companies like GTL Infrastructure Ltd have already been classified as non-performing assets. In the case of Reliance Communications Ltd, most of the debt is from foreign banks which limits the impact on Indian banks, while in case of Aircel, even though the research firm sees risk, it is not big enough to change much for the sector. “This, in our view, would lead to faster recognition of future asset quality issues and will help avoid the cliff effect of large and lumpy provisions,” Kotak Institutional Equities Research said in a report on Wednesday.“This approach is closer to Ind-AS (to be applicable from April 2018 CHK onwards) which requires a dynamic approach to provisioning based on expected credit losses, instead of the current system based on days-past-due,” the Kotak report said.In addition to these norms, the regulator has also asked banks to disclose any major divergence in reporting of NPAs, when compared with what it had asked banks to do under the supervisory processes. In situations like the asset quality review (AQR), the central bank had asked lenders to classify certain accounts as NPAs even though the banks had classified them as standard.These norms have already started having an impact on bank results for the quarter ended 31 March. Private sector lenders IndusInd Bank and Yes Bank both reported increased provisions owing to the RBI directions on NPA disclosure.",2017-04-20,Credit Suisse report says PSU banks are likely to see a 5-15% and private banks 1-2% impact on quarterly results due to new RBI rules on bad loans and provisions,-0.42,04:40,"New RBI rules on provisioning, bad loans seen taking a toll on banks" +0,"New Delhi: The government and the RBI on Wednesday gave time till 30 April for “commensurate deposits” by people who have declared their unaccounted income under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Deposit Scheme (PMGKDS) that allowed parking money in non-interest bearing deposits for four years. The extension of time till 30 April has also been given to banks for uploading details into the RBI’s E-Kuber system. The PMGKDS, which opened on 17 December last year, provided a last chance to holders of undisclosed income to come clean by paying tax and penalty. The scheme closed on 31 March. In a press release, the RBI said, “It has now been decided by the government of India, in case of persons who had filed the declaration by depositing tax, surcharge and penalty under PMGKDS on or before March 31, to allow extension of time till April 30 for banks to upload details into RBI’s E-Kuber system and for depositors to make commensurate deposits, if not already done.” “The date of deposit and uploading would not be extended beyond April 30, 2017,” it added. Separately, the finance ministry said in a notification in this regard, “The effective date of opening of the bonds ledger account shall be the date of receipt of deposits by the Reserve Bank of India from the authorised banks; wherein the due tax, surcharge and penalty has been received till March 31, 2017.” Earlier the “effective date” of opening of the bonds ledger account was the date of tender of cash or the date of realisation of draft or cheque or transfer through electronic transfer. Under the scheme, a person having undisclosed income in the form of cash or deposit in an account maintained with a specified entity (which includes banks and post office) could come clean by declaring such income and pay tax, surcharge and penalty totaling in all to 49.9% of such declared income. Also, a mandatory deposit of 25% of such income was to be made in the zero-interest bearing PMGKDS for four years.",2017-04-19,"Govt, RBI give time till 30 April for ’commensurate deposits’ by people who have declared their unaccounted income under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Deposit Scheme ",-0.04,22:10,Deposits under income amnesty scheme can be made till 30 April +0,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.",2017-04-23,"Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",0.64,15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +0,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",2017-04-23,The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,-0.19,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +0,"Past mistakes tend to come back to haunt you at the most inopportune moment, and Yes Bank’s financial results are a case in point. The private lender reported a 169% rise in gross bad loans for the fourth quarter and a resultant 66% increase in provisions. Recall that the March quarter of 2015-16 was the worst in terms of asset quality for banks.The stock has gained a massive 39% so far this year, fuelled partly by the news and then subsequent success of its qualified institutional placement (QIP). This impressive rise now seems like an overkill and analysts are already expecting a correction.In Yes Bank’s case, the indiscretion pertains to a single borrower which the bank should have labelled as non-performing asset (NPA) in the previous financial year. What made the lender do it now is the new rule put in place by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday that mandates banks to disclose deviations in the asset quality assessment of the central bank and the lender in question.If the mandated provisioning by the RBI exceeds 15% of published profit after tax of FY16 or additional gross NPA exceeds 15% of the published figure, the lenders have to disclose the same in full in their financial statements for FY17. If the RBI’s asset quality review brought to light a massive pool of decaying loans, Tuesday’s rule makes sure any residual bad loan skeletons come in full view of investors.In Yes Bank’s case, this meant an additional slippage of Rs911.5 crore in the March quarter. But the lender still saw healthy profit growth of 30% from the year-ago period because of a sustained robust growth in core income. The bank’s core metrics including loan growth, net interest income and even net interest margin held up. This perhaps was the saving grace of the quarterly results.The stock trades at a price-to-book value multiple of 3.12 of the estimated earnings of FY18 and for these valuations to be justified, the bank will have to show a quick turnaround in its asset quality.Ever since RBI triggered widespread recognition of stressed loans through its asset quality review (AQR) in 2015, the unease that banks have not revealed the rot in loan books in its entirety has set in. The quarterly results of Yes Bank deepen this unease.",2017-04-19,"Yes Bank reports 169% rise in gross bad loans for the March quarter and 66% increase in provisions, following RBI’s new asset quality rules",-0.4,20:41,Yes Bank first casualty in RBI’s rule to pull out bad loan skeletons +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"Mumbai: Cement maker ACC Ltd on Friday reported an 8.9% fall in net profit for the quarter ended 31 March, hurt in part by higher costs. Consolidated net profit for the quarter fell to Rs211.06 crore from Rs231.70 crore a year earlier. Consolidated sales in the quarter rose 9.1% to Rs3,556.70 crore from Rs3,259.95 crore a year earlier. The company follows a January-December financial year.The results, however, beat analyst estimates, helped by higher sales. Four analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected ACC to report consolidated net profit of Rs166.4 crore on sales of Rs3152.5 crore. Revenue in its largest cement business rose 9.3% to Rs3,401.27 crore, helped in part by a price hike, while those in its ready-mix concrete business rose about 10% to Rs285 crore. During the quarter, the company launched two cement products ACC Suraksha and ACC HPC (high performance cement). The company said its total expenses during the March-ended quarter rose 11.8% to Rs3,404.41 crore. Increased government spending on infrastructure development, housing, roads, railways, and irrigation is likely to boost cement demand in the rest of 2017, ACC said in a statement.Separately, ACC said it has appointed Surendra Mehta as company secretary and head of compliance with immediate effect. ACC’s shares closed down 1.03% to Rs1,496.75 a share on the BSE on Friday.",2017-04-21,"ACC’s net profit for the quarter fell to Rs211.06 crore from Rs231.70 crore a year earlier while its sales in the quarter rose 9.1% to Rs3,556.70 crore from Rs3,259.95 crore a year earlier",0.69,21:57,ACC profit falls 8.9% but sales beat estimates +0,"Mumbai: Rating agency Crisil has reported a muted net profit at Rs 73.34 crore for the March quarter, largely due to adverse forex movement and subdued growth in the mid-corporate and MSME segments. Its March 2016 net profit stood at Rs 73.15 crore. Net was impacted by Rs 11.9 crore due to adverse forex movement against a gain of Rs 3.31 crore in the year-ago period. Its consolidated income grew 12% to Rs 402.23 crore, the company said in a statement. “Growth for the quarter was driven by our research segment on account of opportunities in risk & analytics such as model validation, stress testing and regulatory change management,” the company said, adding the ratings business witnessed modest growth despite a continued weak investment climate and soft credit growth.",2017-04-21,Rating agency Crisil has reported a muted net profit in March quarter at Rs 73.34 crore while its March 2016 net profit stood at Rs73.15 crore,1.0,17:09,Crisil Q4 profit stays flat at Rs 73 crore +0,"New Delhi: The income tax department has slapped a fresh notice on British firm Cairn Energy, seeking up to Rs30,700 crore in penalties for its alleged failure to pay Rs10,247 crore capital gains tax on time. Within weeks of tax tribunal ITAT upholding levy of retrospective tax, the income tax department first sent a fresh demand note of Rs10,247 crore and another show cause notice asking as to why penalty should not be levied for its failure in paying tax on time and filing of returns. Senior tax department officials said Cairn Energy has sought 10 more days to reply to the show cause seeking levy of penalty. “Capital gains was due on Cairn Energy on March 31, 2007, and due date for filing return was December 2007. But the company filed return by 31 March 2014” after the tax department on 24 January 2014 sent a draft assessment order, an official told PTI. The assessment, the official said, got completed in January 2016 and a final order was issued raising a tax demand of Rs 10,247 crore and another Rs18,800 crore in interest for 10 years. The ITAT, however, in its 9 March order held that while Cairn Energy was liable to pay tax on the 2006 transfer of India assets to newly created Cairn India, prior to its listing, interest cannot be charged as the demand was raised using retrospective tax legislation. The official said the ITAT had not barred levy of penalties and so the fresh notice is being sent. The Income Tax Act provides for penalties of 100 per cent to 300 per cent of the tax due, the official said, adding that the notice sent does not mention of the quantum of penalties the tax department is seeking. “It is a show cause kind of a notice and further action will follow based on the response the company files,” the official said, adding that the tax department has six months from the passage of ITAT order to impose penalty. The penalties are being sought under Section 271 (1)(c) of the Income Tax Act for failing to pay tax on capital gains made. A Cairn Energy spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comments. The company had earlier this month in a notice to shareholders acknowledged that it had received an amended tax demand on 31 March 2017 that also talked about late payment of interest to be charged from February 2016—30 days following the date of the final assessment order.The final assessment order did not include any penalties which may also be applied to the final assessment (potentially up to 300% of any tax finally agreed), it had said. Following the January 2014 draft assessment order, the tax department had restrained the company from selling the residual 9.8% stake it holds in Cairn India. Cairn Energy had in 2011 sold Cairn India to Vedanta.The company had in the shareholder notice stated that it strongly contests the final assessment order and that the enforcement of any tax liability deemed due by the tax department will be limited to India assets, which had a value of about $ 750 million as of 31 December 2016.These assets comprised principally Cairn’s residual shareholding in Cairn India. Cairn also said that it had on 11 March 2015 filed a notice of dispute under The UK-India Investment Treaty in order to protect its legal position and shareholder interests.",2017-04-20,"Income tax department slaps fresh notice on Cairn Energy seeking Rs30,700 crore in penalties for its alleged failure to pay Rs10,247 crore capital gains tax on time",-0.09,16:49,"I-T dept seeks Rs30,000 crore penalty from Cairn for non-payment of tax" +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"Abu Dhabi:Crude-producing countries reached an initial agreement to extend output cuts, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister said on Thursday, as persistently high stockpiles and resurgent output from US shale fields weigh on prices.The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and other major suppliers have failed, after three months of limiting production, to achieve their target of reducing oil inventories below the five-year historical average, Saudi Arabia’s Khalid Al-Falih said. The producers pledged to reduce output for six months starting in January.“Although there is a high level of commitment, we haven’t reached our goal, which is to reach the five-year average,” Al-Falih said. “There is an initial agreement that we might be obligated to extend to get to our target.” Countries participating in the cuts have yet to reach a consensus on prolonging their agreement into the second half of the year, and an extension would not necessarily be for an additional six months. he said.Opec and other producers, including Russia, agreed in December to pump less oil in an effort to counter a global glut. Output shows signs of rebounding in the US, where explorers have added rigs for the past 13 weeks, data from Baker Hughes Inc. show. Opec will decide at a meeting on 25 May whether to prolong its pledged cuts into the second half, the group’s secretary-general Mohammad Barkindo said on Wednesday. Gulf cooperation council countries agreed to push for an extension of cuts in a meeting on Wednesday, Oman oil minister Mohammed Al Rumhy said. The GCC comprises Opec members Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Oman and Bahrain. GCC states are participating in the current deal to cap output.Iran and Venezuela, both members of Opec, have expressed support for an extension of the production cuts, Al Rumhy said. Iran’s oil minister made a commitment to freeze output at 3.8 million barrels a day for the rest of the year on the assumption the cuts are extended beyond June, Kuwait oil minister Issam Almarzooq told reporters.",2017-04-20,"Opec and other producers, including Russia, agreed in December to pump less oil in an effort to counter a global glut",0.79,17:58,Major oil producers reach agreement to extend output cuts +0,"New Delhi: The oil ministry has denounced the decision of some petrol pump operators to keep outlets closed on Sundays, saying such a move will be of inconvenience to the public.“@PetroleumMin neither endorses nor approves of move by a small section of dealers to keep their petrol pumps closed on Sundays,” the ministry said in a series of tweets. Such closure, the ministry said, “by a small section of dealers will lead to inconvenience for the general public”.The tweets, which were retweeted by oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan, also stated that major dealer associations are not participating in the closure.“Major dealers’ federations have clarified that they don’t endorse any closure of petrol pumps on any day,” the oil ministry tweeted.On the issue of Modi’s slogan, the ministry said, “The Prime Minister in #MannKiBaat appealed to People of India not to use fuel once a week and not to dealers to close their pumps on Sundays.”The All India Petroleum Dealers Association, which claims to represent 80% of the 53,224 petrol pumps of public sector oil companies, has said not participating in the closure exercise. The association’s president Ajay Bansal said not participating in the closure.A few petrol pump associations had called for petrol pumps to remain shut on Sundays in eight states following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal to cut down on fuel consumption. Southern states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, parts of Karnataka—mostly around Bengaluru—and some areas of Maharashtra, especially Mumbai, may see petrol pump owners down their shutters on Sundays beginning 14 May to press for higher commission on petrol and diesel they sell.“Our members in 22 states are not going on any protests,” he clarified, adding that the association has called a meeting of the general body in the next few weeks to discuss the agreement PSU oil companies had signed with it in November last year to consider their demand for raising fuel margins.",2017-04-20,Oil ministry says the move to keep petrol pumps closed on Sundays will be of much inconvenience to the public,-0.25,18:24,Oil ministry red-flags ‘Sunday Closed’ move of petrol pump operators +0,"New Delhi/Mumbai: India’s newest petrochemicals maker is seeking to sell half its $4.6 billion facility to Saudi Arabian Oil Co., according to people with knowledge of the matter.Formal talks between ONGC Petro additions Ltd (OPaL). and the world’s biggest oil exporter, known as Saudi Aramco, will start soon, said the people, who asked not to be named as the information isn’t public. OPaL’s earlier talks with a unit of Kuwait Petroleum Corp. about investing in the project stalled last year, the people said.A spokesman for OPaL was unable to comment. Saudi Aramco and Kuwait Petroleum didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.The investment could help Saudi Aramco strengthen its hand in the world’s largest oil consuming region as it prepares for what may be the biggest-ever initial public offering. India’s per capita consumption of polymer products, which is about a third of the global average, is expected to expand as a growing middle class, increasing income levels and higher urbanization drive growth, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said last month while inaugurating OPaL’s plant.“India’s petrochemical business is booming and Aramco will definitely want to be a part of this growth,” said Vaibhav Chowdhry, an analyst at KR Choksey Shares & Securities Pvt. Ltd. The country’s petrochemical market is expected to grow as fast as 12% annually for next several years, he said.Oil & Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC), which owns the biggest stake in OPaL, entered into a preliminary cooperation agreement in January 2014 with Petrochemical Industries Co., a subsidiary of state-owned Kuwait Petroleum. Talks between OPaL and PIC about the Kuwaiti company investing in the Indian project stalled last year, according to the people. OPaL hosted a team from Saudi Aramco at its plant in Gujarat last month, they said.Rising incomeHigher demand for these products prompted billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd and the nation’s biggest refiner Indian Oil Corp. to expand their petrochemicals businesses. Reliance invested about $19 billion to double the capacity of its petrochemicals unit, while Indian Oil will spend $4.6 billion to add new facilities and expand existing units.Saudi Aramco, which is the biggest supplier of crude oil to India, has shown interest in a proposed 60 million tonnes-a-year refinery and petrochemicals project being planned by Indian state refiners on the nation’s west coast, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on 30 March.The Saudi oil major has already invested in integrated refining, chemicals, marketing and distribution companies in the region. Last month, it bought half of a Malaysian oil refinery and petrochemical plant and signed a deal to provide up to 70% of its crude requirements. Separately, the Saudi oil giant signed a $6 billion oil refinery deal with Indonesia’s PT Pertamina.Dahej plantOPaL’s Rs30,000-crore petrochemical project is a dual-feed cracker with a capacity to produce 1.1 million tonnes a year of ethylene and 400,000 tonnes of propylene, according to its website. The plant, located at the Dahej Special Economic Zone, started production last year and aims to capture 13% of India’s polymer sector by next year, according to its website.While investment in OPaL will allow Aramco to access India’s growing market, the Indian company will be able to use the Saudi company’s export channels to push products in the international market, two of the people said. ONGC has said it intends to hold 26%, with state utility GAIL India Ltd owning 15.5%, after half of OPaL is sold. Bloomberg",2017-04-20,"Formal talks between ONGC Petro additions Ltd (OPaL), and the world’s biggest oil exporter, Saudi Aramco, will start soon",0.56,08:56,India said to woo Aramco for 50% OPaL sale as Kuwait talks stall +0,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.",2017-04-21,"The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",0.61,22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +0,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters",2017-04-22,"Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",1.0,10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +0,"Mumbai: Capacity utilization of generation assets in the power sector continues to drop and scope for improvement in capacity utilization is expected to be limited, highlighting a supply glut in the power sector, according to a Kotak Securities report.“Power demand has grown at a CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) of 3% over the past five years, which means that supply will continue to outstrip demand and keep capacity utilization in check,” Kotak Securities analyst Murtuza Arsiwalla said in an 18 April report. All India power volume, excluding renewable energy, rose 5.5% in the month of March to 101.8 billion units and 4.7% for FY17, according to an Elara Capital report this week. Coal-fired volume rose 6.5% to 83 billion units in March, while plant load factor (PLF) dropped 34 basis points to 63%, the Elara report said. “In March, coal-fired volume is up 6.5% but gas is down 9% and hydro is up by 12%. Government volume is up 8% and private IPP (individual power producer) volume rises by 1,” the report said. India currently has about 320 gigawatt (GW) of installed power capacity compared with peak demand of about 160 GW, and about another 87 GW of assets are under construction. Over 60% of this total installed capacity is coal-based, 16% is in renewable energy, 14% in hydropower, 8% in gas, and the remaining in nuclear and diesel. The private sector owns 44% of the total installed power capacity in the country, while the government controls the remaining. Total loans worth Rs1.2 trillion toward the power sector are currently at risk with an upside risk from cases where power purchase agreement (PPA) tariffs are high, there is an overleveraged parent balance sheet and where PPA rate is unprofitable, according to an 8 March report by JM Financial. About 28,000 megawatt (MW) or 28 GW of power capacity lacks PPAs and about 14GW of these are at a high risk, the report had said. With improved cash flows, the power sector may witness revival in demand by state distribution companies (discoms), but incremental benefits could accrue over the next two-three years, Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd said in a 3 April note.",2017-04-20,"All India power volume, excluding renewable energy, rose 5.5% in the month of March to 101.8 billion units and 4.7% for FY17, says report",0.09,11:39,Power utilization continues to drop due to supply glut: report +0,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.",2017-05-04,"When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",0.25,23:18,How to start an analytics journey +0,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",2017-04-21,Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,0.37,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +0,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",2017-04-21,India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,-0.24,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +0,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.",2017-04-22,"Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",0.56,19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +0,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg",2017-04-22,"KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",0.62,18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +0,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",2017-04-22,Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,-0.1,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +0,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",2017-04-22,ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,0.89,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +0,"New Delhi: ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company on Friday reported an increase of 38.3% in net profit at Rs 701.9 crore for the fiscal ended March 2017. The company’s net profit in the preceding fiscal 2015-16 stood at Rs507.5 crore. The gross domestic premium income of the company rose by 32.6% to Rs 10,725.90 crore, a company statement said. “The robust performance was delivered on the back of increase in policies serviced at 1.77 crore in 2016-17 compared to 1.58 crore policies in 2015-16,” it said. “As we progress through the year, we shall...further expand our insurance solutions proposition as well as enhance our customer service and claim leadership stature backed by innovative technology,” ICICI Lombard, MD and CEO, Bhargav Dasgupta said. ICICI Lombard GIC Ltd is a joint venture between country’s largest private lender ICICI Bank and Canada-based Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited. The general insurance subsidiary of the bank is a non- listed entity though the life insurance joint venture— ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Co—is a listed firm. Shares of ICICI Bank closed 1.34% down at Rs 269.15 apiece on BSE today.",2017-04-21,ICICI Lombard’s net profit in the 2015-16 fiscal stood at Rs507.5 crore,0.9,16:36,ICICI Lombard net profit grows 38% to Rs 702 crore in fiscal 2017 +0,"Bengaluru: EBay Inc. on Wednesday forecast second-quarter profit that fell short of analysts’ estimates, as it spends heavily on revamping and marketing its e-commerce platform amid stiff competition from much larger rival Amazon.com Inc.Shares of the company fell 2.5% to $33 in trading after the bell. San Jose, California-based eBay has been making changes to its platform to lure more shoppers as well as better compete with Amazon. That has meant a shift away from online auctions towards fixed-price sales and product landing pages, which are easier to navigate than the dozens of listings sellers would generate for a single good.EBay has also increased its marketing spending, running a rare TV campaign ahead of last year’s holiday shopping period.Sales and marketing costs climbed 4.5% to $562 million in the first quarter ended 31 March, while product development expenses jumped 16.3% to $278 million. The company’s profit in the second quarter would be affected by “increased investment to drive improved user experiences and to market our brand,” eBay’s finance chief Scott Schenkel said on a call with analysts.EBay said it expects second-quarter adjusted profit of 43 to 45 cents per share. Analysts on average were expecting a profit of 47 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The company, however, stuck to its earlier forecast for full-year adjusted profit of $1.98 to $2.03 per share, expecting more growth in the second half of 2017.The first quarter “showed some early indication that their efforts are beginning to bear fruit,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Aaron Turner, citing more active buyers coming to the site. “We’re still waiting to see” the outcome, he added.EBay said gross merchandise volume—the total value of all goods sold on its websites—rose 2.4% to $20.95 billion in the first quarter. But the result fell short of analysts’ average estimate of $21.06 billion, according to research firm FactSet StreetAccount.The company’s net income rose to $1.04 billion, or 94 cents per share in the quarter, from $482 million, or 41 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, the company earned 49 cents per share, beating analysts’ average expectation of 48 cents per share.Revenue rose 3.7% to $2.22 billion. Analysts on average had expected $2.21 billion. Reuters",2017-04-20,"EBay’s Q2 profit forecast fell short of analysts’ estimates, as it spends heavily on revamping and marketing its e-commerce platform amid stiff competition from Amazon",0.97,11:19,EBay Q2 profit forecast falls short of estimates +0,"Bengaluru: India’s biggest zinc miner Hindustan Zinc Ltd posted a 42% jump in fourth-quarter net profit on Thursday, topping street estimates, helped by higher income from zinc production and an increase in metal prices.Net profit rose to Rs3,057 crore for the January-March quarter from Rs2,147 crore a year earlier. The profit growth is the biggest in at least nine quarters. Analysts on average had expected a net profit of Rs2,852 crore, according to Thomson Reuters data.Total income rose 72.4% to Rs7,237 crore. The LME zinc prices have risen about 53 percent from March-end 2016 to March-end 2017.Income from zinc operations rose over two fold to Rs5160 crore, said the company, which is a subsidiary of billionaire Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Ltd. The Indian government has a 29.5% stake in Hindustan Zinc.Hindustan Zinc shares rose as much as 5.5% after the results.",2017-04-20,"Hindustan Zinc’s fourth quarter net profit rose to Rs3,057 crore from Rs2,147 crore a year earlier",0.9,16:54,"Hindustan Zinc Q4 profit jumps 42% to Rs 3,057 crore " +0,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”",2017-04-22,"Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",0.0,01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +0,"Bengaluru: Information technology company Mindtree Ltd said consolidated net profit fell 27% in the fourth quarter hurt by a foreign exchange loss and fewer client additions. The lower-than-expected profit came in at Rs97.2 crore ($15.04 million) for the three months ended 31 March, marking the fourth consecutive quarterly profit decline.Analysts on average were expecting consolidated profit at Rs105 crore, Thomson Reuters data showed.Mindtree incurred a consolidated foreign exchange loss of Rs28.8 crore in the quarter, against a gain of Rs3.1 crore a year earlier. Clients added in the fourth quarter dropped 46% to 20. Reuters",2017-04-20,"Mindtree’s lower-than-expected profit came in at Rs97.2 crore for the fourth quarter ended 31 March, marking the fourth consecutive quarterly profit decline",0.8,16:52,"Mindtree Q4 profit plunges 27%, misses estimates" +0,"New Delhi: Network18 Media and Investments Ltd, the media company controlled by Reliance Industries Ltd, on Wednesday said its consolidated loss widened to Rs33.3 crore in the March quarter, from Rs25 crore in the year-ago period. The company, which has interests in television, films and online retailing, generated revenue of Rs3,471.1 crore, up 5% from Rs3,321 crore last year. For the full year to 31 March, the company swung to a loss of Rs233.5 crore from a profit of Rs25.4 crore in the previous year. A decline in advertising spending following demonetization of high-value currency notes, operating losses from new initiatives in regional and digital broadcasting, and losses in the digital commerce businesses contributed to the overall net loss.“The media industry is still facing impact of deferment of advertising spends that kicked in from November-December 2016 on likely slowdown in consumer spending. Further, the revival of advertising spends has been witnessed at a much faster clip for national channels, while regional markets are still recovering with a lag,” Network18 said in a statement. Revenue from TV18 Broadcast Ltd, a unit of Network18 that operates news channels CNN-News18 and CNBC TV18, rose 7% in the year to Rs2,677 crore from Rs2,494.8 crore in the previous year. Net profit declined 90% to Rs19.1 crore. Network18 also runs digital news websites moneycontrol.com, news18.com and firstpost.com as well as the movie and events ticketing website BookMyShow.“The digital space in India continues to become more and more vibrant, as bottlenecks around connectivity and cost reduce substantially. We see the emergence of new formats and services, and rapidly evolving business models and aim to be at the forefront of this change. Our strength in linear media provides us the edge, helping us leapfrog in our aspiration to be a channel-agnostic provider of top-drawer content,” said Adil Zainulbhai, chairman of Network18.",2017-04-19,"For the full year to 31 March, Network18 swung to a loss of Rs233.5 crore from a profit of Rs25.4 crore in the previous year",-0.03,21:08,Network18’s net loss widens to Rs33.3 crore in March quarter +0,"New Delhi: Upendra Tripathy, a former secretary of the renewable energy ministry, has been appointed interim director general of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), which brings together countries with abundant sunshine with the aim of lowering solar energy costs. India has taken a lead role in setting up the ISA—an alliance of 121 sunshine countries situated between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The first treaty-based international government organisation which is headquartered in India, ISA, was launched at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in November 2015.The idea of a solar alliance of countries that receive sunshine for around 300 days in a year was mooted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.Other prominent intergovernmental organisations in the energy sector include the Vienna-headquartered Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA).Confirming his appointment, Tripathy said, “We will be involving all the stakeholders in finding out how the programs can be implemented to mobilise more finances to the solar sector globally and how to help the farmers across the member countries to go for affordable solar pumps so that farmer’s income gets enhanced. It is also equally important that other solar applications address the issue of roti, kapdaa and makaan.”In January last year, Prime Minister Modi and French President Francois Hollande laid the foundation stone of the ISA at Gurgaon. Besides, the World Bank last year signed an agreement with the ISA to mobilize $1 trillion in investments by 2030.One of the ways that the ISA is exploring to reduce costs is to aggregate the demand from member nations and then call for tenders. To start with, this approach is being explored for bringing down the cost of solar powered agricultural pumps.Tripathy, a former Indian Administrative Service officer from the Karnataka cadre, has been closely involved in solar power development in the country. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government raised the target for solar power production in India to 100 gigawatt (GW) by 2022 from 20,000 megawatts (MW) earlier.Experts welcomed Tripathy’s appointment. “Bringing Upendra Tripathy is a good step as he was deeply involved when ISA was envisaged. But then the hurdle of finance for activities of ISA is still there. There is a lot of scope for ISA but let’s see as there is a still a long way to go,” said Rakesh Kamal, a consultant with The Climate Reality Project, an independent organisation working on climate change related issues.“However, India should be proud of hosting ISA. It is a big step for India as ISA is a first of a kind body on a world scale. It also shows our commitment to the world,” he added.The ISA framework agreement was opened for signing up at the Conference of the Parties (COP 22) at Marrakesh in November last year and 25 countries including France, Bangladesh, Brazil and Tanzania have joined it. The assembly will meet after 15 of these signatories ratify the ISA.ISA will have an assembly, a council and a secretariat. The Indian government will support the secretariat for five years, after which would have to generate its own resources. The secretariat has been set up at the National Institute of Solar Energy in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of New Delhi.Queries emailed late on Monday to a spokesperson at the ministry of new and renewable energy remained unanswered till the time of publishing.ISA will also collaborate with other multilateral bodies such as the IEA, International Renewable Energy Agency and the United Nations.Tripathy’s appointment comes in the backdrop of record low Indian solar power tariffs that have raised viability concerns. Solar power project developers placed a record low bid of Rs2.97 per kWh to win contracts for a 750 MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh. A so-called levelized tariff—the value financially equivalent to different annual tariffs over the period of the power purchase agreement (PPA)—of around Rs3.30 per unit will be charged.",2017-04-19,"Upendra Tripathy, a former secretary of the renewable energy ministry, has been appointed interim director general of the International Solar Alliance",0.39,18:30,India’s Upendra Tripathy to head International Solar Alliance +0,"New Delhi: Rural Electrification Corp. (REC), a state-owned backer of India’s power sector, plans to lend billions of rupees to clean-energy projects and equipment makers this fiscal year as part of an expanded push into renewables that will also see it issue green bonds overseas.The non-banking financial company is aiming to triple its clean-energy lending and is expecting to set aside nearly Rs10,000 crore ($1.5 billion) for renewable energy in the financial year ending 31 March, chairman P.V. Ramesh said in an interview.“We’re not only financing projects but also evacuation infrastructure and have been talking with manufacturers of equipment like wind turbines, solar panels and storage batteries,” Ramesh said in an interview in New Delhi where the lender, which has a loan book of Rs2 trillion, is based.REC’s renewables strategy underscores a push by companies associated with conventional power to shift resources toward clean energy. The move, which supports Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s climate goals, also comes as some coal-fired electricity generators struggle to service debts.The lender could issue clean-energy bonds outside India by the end of June, Ramesh said.Lending shift“We are also looking at mobilizing resources from raising green bonds in Europe and social impact bonds in Scandinavia,” he said.Tesla Inc., the maker of electric vehicles, is another company that REC would be interested in backing should it decide to establish a presence in India, Ramesh added. Tesla founder Elon Musk tweeted in February that the company may enter the Indian market this summer.With demand from equipment manufacturers largely unknown at the moment, lending to the sector would be separate from what REC wants to set aside for renewable projects, Ramesh said.The shift in lending at REC takes place against a backdrop of an expansion in clean energy led by Modi and his promise to install 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable capacity by 2022.Between April 2016 to February, India added 8 GW of new renewable energy, reaching total installed capacity of 51 GW, according to government data. Meanwhile, thermal capacity grew by 8 GW in the same period, 36% lower than the previous year.Saddled with power plants running under their maximum capacity, India’s thermal-energy producers like NTPC Ltd and RattanIndia Power Ltd have been considering setting up solar-power projects on land initially intended for coal-fired facilities.REC, which has traditionally financed large-sized power and related infrastructure projects, is customizing products to suit the needs of clean-energy projects, which are often small compared with conventional plants and much quicker to set up, Ramesh said.“We’re customizing products for each project so it’s tailor-made for each of them because not everyone wants a standard product,” Ramesh said, adding that his company needs to be agile in the new market because the days of lending a billion dollars to a single big project are nearing an end.REC has been appointed by India’s government as the central agency responsible for implementing two nationwide power reform projects aimed at increasing electricity coverage in rural areas through the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana and the financial turnaround of state-owned power retailers through the Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojna (UDAY). Bloomberg",2017-04-20,"Rural Electrification Corp. (REC) is aiming to triple its clean-energy lending and is expecting to set aside nearly Rs10,000 for renewable energy in this fiscal",0.38,08:34,"Rural Electrification eyes Rs10,000 crore renewables lending push" +0,"
Mumbai: New RBI guidelines on standard asset provisioning and disclosure of details regarding non-performing assets (NPAs) may create difficulties for Indian banks, thanks to additional provisioning requirements, analysts estimate. Public sector banks are likely to see a 5-15% impact on their earnings going ahead, while private sector lenders would see their earnings hurt by 1-2% due to the new norms, Credit Suisse said in a report on Wednesday. Prior to this advisory, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) required banks to set aside 0.4% as provision against standard assets. The RBI on Tuesday had advised banks to consider setting aside higher provisions even for good loans in stressed sectors.According to Credit Suisse analysts, the hit on profitability has been calculated on a 50 basis points (bps) increase in provisioning owing to the RBI guidelines. The central bank specifically red-flagged the telecom industry, and asked bank boards to review their exposure to the sector by 30 June and consider making provisions at higher rates “so that necessary resilience is built in the balance sheets should the stress reflect on the quality of exposure to the sector at a future date”. According to data available with the RBI, bank exposure to the telecom sector was Rs82,200 crore at the end of February.In a report that Nomura released on Wednesday, analysts note that the risk on the telecom sector is likely to be limited owing to the expected consolidation, with the merger of Vodafone Group Plc and Idea Cellular Ltd. Weaker companies like GTL Infrastructure Ltd have already been classified as non-performing assets. In the case of Reliance Communications Ltd, most of the debt is from foreign banks which limits the impact on Indian banks, while in case of Aircel, even though the research firm sees risk, it is not big enough to change much for the sector. “This, in our view, would lead to faster recognition of future asset quality issues and will help avoid the cliff effect of large and lumpy provisions,” Kotak Institutional Equities Research said in a report on Wednesday.“This approach is closer to Ind-AS (to be applicable from April 2018 CHK onwards) which requires a dynamic approach to provisioning based on expected credit losses, instead of the current system based on days-past-due,” the Kotak report said.In addition to these norms, the regulator has also asked banks to disclose any major divergence in reporting of NPAs, when compared with what it had asked banks to do under the supervisory processes. In situations like the asset quality review (AQR), the central bank had asked lenders to classify certain accounts as NPAs even though the banks had classified them as standard.These norms have already started having an impact on bank results for the quarter ended 31 March. Private sector lenders IndusInd Bank and Yes Bank both reported increased provisions owing to the RBI directions on NPA disclosure.",2017-04-20,Credit Suisse report says PSU banks are likely to see a 5-15% and private banks 1-2% impact on quarterly results due to new RBI rules on bad loans and provisions,-0.42,04:40,"New RBI rules on provisioning, bad loans seen taking a toll on banks" +0,"New Delhi: State-run Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) on Tuesday signed an agreement with the Rajasthan government to set up a 9 million tonne joint venture refinery at a cost of Rs43,129 crore, a statement from oil ministry said. HPCL will hold 74% equity in the joint venture, HPCL Rajasthan Refinery Ltd, while the state government will hold the balance. The agreement signed in the presence of oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje entitles the company to a viability gap funding of Rs1,123 crore a year for 15 years from the year of commercial production. The funding will be in the form of an interest-free loan to be refunded in subsequent 15 years.The project includes a petrochemicals complex too. The proposed refinery will be able to process local crude from Vedanta Ltd’s Barmer oil field in the state as well as imported crude. Vedanta, which recently merged its group company Cairn India Ltd with itself, is planning more investments into enhanced oil recovery from its Barmer assets. Anil Agarwal, chairman, Vedanta Group had last December said the group was committed to investing Rs30,000 crore to add 100,000 barrels of oil and oil equivalent over the next three years, primarily from its prolific Rajasthan fields.For the proposed refinery, the state has already allotted 4,800 acres at Pachpadra in Barmer. The statement said quoting Pradhan that construction work will begin in the current financial year and will be completed in four years. Separately, another deal was signed between Rajasthan State Gas Ltd and GAIL Gas Ltd for creating a city gas network in Kota district. India is at present adding its refining capacity in line with growing energy requirement and with an ambition to emerge as a regional refining hub. State-owned refiners which supply autofuel to neighbouring markets like Bangladesh and Nepal are in the process of expanding their presence in these markets.",2017-04-18,The joint venture HPCL Rajasthan Refinery Ltd will be able to process local crude from Vedanta’s Barmer oil field in the state as well as imported crude,-0.16,22:42,HPCL signs pact with Rajasthan govt to set up refinery +0,"
The Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) stock has gained 27% since its December quarter results. However, the appreciation is attributable less to its performance and more to anticipation that Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (the company’s telecom business) may perform better than expected.When RIL announces its March quarter results too, investors will be keenly watching out for updates on Jio, apart from the company’s downstream projects and its capex plans. Its March quarter results are expected to be good despite the fact that the benchmark Singapore gross refining margin (GRM) has declined about 5% sequentially to $6.4 a barrel. Analysts expect RIL to report better GRMs during the March quarter.According to analysts at Nomura Research, RIL’s premium to Singapore GRM will likely improve (the December quarter had a shutdown of the fluidized catalytic cracking unit; also Brent-Dubai crude spreads were favourable). “Petchem (petrochemical) earnings will likely increase further both as Reliance benefits from higher volumes (new capacities) and firmed up margins particularly in aromatics chain,” pointed out Nomura’s March quarter preview for the oil and gas sector.GRM is the realization from turning every barrel of crude oil into finished products and is an important measure of profitability for refining firms.Even as RIL’s numbers may bring good tidings, expectations from oil marketing companies (OMCs)—Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) and Indian Oil Corp. Ltd—are not rosy. Analysts from Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd expect weaker earnings for OMCs due to inventory losses in both refining and marketing, and lower core GRMs year-on-year. With oil prices declining towards the end of the March quarter, OMCs are expected to report inventory losses. However, “full year consolidated earnings should surprise positively, particularly for HPCL and BPCL, due to strong performance in subsidiaries in FY17 vs FY16”, said Jefferies in a report to clients on 6 April.On an average, crude oil prices rose year-on-year and that will reflect positively in price realizations of upstream companies such as Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd and Oil India Ltd. Investors will have to keep a tab on output numbers and production outlook in the near future. So far, both these stocks have underperformed compared to their peers in the oil sector. Given the muted outlook on crude oil prices over the medium term, there is little to suggest the trend in their stock performance will change for the better.",2017-04-19,"Even as RIL’s numbers may bring good tidings, expectations from oil marketing companies like BPCL, HPCL and Indian Oil are not rosy",0.57,07:27,Mixed outlook for oil firms in Q4 +0,"
India’s clean energy project developers are in talks to merge their portfolios as part of a strategy to achieve scale for selling the assets to overseas investors scouting for large investment opportunities in the country. A case in point is Ravi Jhunjhunwala’s LNJ Bhilwara Group, which is in talks with rivals to merge its wind energy portfolio. Another company following this strategy is Continuum Wind Energy Pte Ltd.Mint reported on 20 February about LNJ Bhilwara Group putting up its wind energy portfolio for sale and hiring Yes Bank Ltd to manage the sale. “The idea here is to create and offer a portfolio which is large and is of interest to big investors,” said a New Delhi-based clean energy projects deal maker aware of LNJ Bhilwara Group’s strategy, requesting anonymity.Another person who also didn’t wish to be named confirmed LNJ Bhilwara Group’s plan and added several firms such as Continuum Wind Energy are exploring a similar strategy. Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners invested $212.03 million in Continuum Wind Energy in 2012.Queries emailed to the spokespersons for LNJ Bhilwara Group and Morgan Stanley remained unanswered. A Yes Bank spokesperson declined to comment in an emailed response.There has been a host of investors such as Australian Government Future Fund, Investment Corporation of Dubai, Singapore’s GIC Pte Ltd, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Development Co. looking to invest in the Indian infrastructure space in sectors such as clean energy. Wind power tariffs have followed the solar route and fell to a record low of Rs3.46 per kilowatt hour (kWh) in a 1 gigawatt (GW) tender by state-run Solar Energy Corp. of India in February. India plans to install 175GW of renewable power by 2022, of which 100GW will be from solar power and 60GW from wind power.Wind is already the mainstay of India’s renewable power. Of about 50,018MW of installed renewable power, about 57.3% (28,700MW) comes from wind alone. Also, India added a record 5,400MW of wind power in 2016-17, exceeding its 4,000MW target.However, a few concerns remain. Payment delays by distribution companies (discoms) to wind and solar projects in India is hurting project costs for companies and posing a challenge to the sector’s growth plans, Mercom Capital Group said in a report earlier this month.",2017-04-19,"There has been a host of investors such as Investment Corporation of Dubai, Singapore’s GIC looking to invest in sectors such as clean energy in India",0.81,05:21,Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-off +0,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",2017-04-23,The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,0.78,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +0,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.",2017-04-22,"HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",0.71,18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +0,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",0.57,22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +0,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ",2017-04-21,"HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",0.91,21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +0,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",2017-04-21,IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,0.08,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +0,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",2017-04-21,RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,0.4,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +0,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",2017-04-21,Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,0.41,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +0,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.",2017-04-21,"Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",0.13,02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +0,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.",2017-04-21,"As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",0.09,00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +0,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.",2017-04-22,"Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",-0.05,01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +0,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.",2017-05-02,"Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",0.35,22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +0,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.",2017-04-20,"Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",0.25,23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +0,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.",2017-04-20,"Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",0.65,23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +0,"
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has a time-tested response every time rupee liquidity swells to an unmanageable surplus or is too deep in deficit and undermines the central bank’s ability to intervene in the foreign exchange market: it intervenes in the forward market.The central bank is back to doing this now, to not just stem the rupee’s rise but also prevent the undesired outcome of adding to an already colossal level of liquidity. For every dollar it buys, RBI releases rupees into the banking system, which is already awash with surplus cash after demonetisation. By buying forward contracts instead, the central bank can postpone such an infusion.RBI’s net outstanding position in the forward market in February trebled to $2.84 billion, according to data from the central bank. Movements in the forward rates ultimately influence the day’s spot market as well. The objective of stemming the rupee’s rise is met while deferring the consequence on liquidity.Of course, RBI turned a net buyer of dollars in February by buying $1.19 billion in the spot market. But this is not a large mop-up in the wake of an inflow of $2.45 billion into local bond and equity markets. Consequently, the rupee gained 1.76% during the month despite intervention.RBI has used the forward market intensively to manage liquidity, outflows and the exchange rate at several times in the last four years. The most recent case was during the redemption of the foreign currency non-resident deposits. A few years ago, when D. Subbarao was governor, it used the forward market whenever an immediate impact of forex intervention on domestic liquidity was not desired. The extent of intervention using forwards increased during Raghuram Rajan’s tenure and continues under current governor Urjit Patel. The reason for this increase in the central bank’s frequency and scale of visits to the forex market lies in a change in RBI’s liquidity stance. Under Rajan, the central bank had adopted the thinking that a liquidity deficit is best for transmission of policy rate changes onto market and loan rates. Now the stance has changed towards a neutral level of liquidity.Given that the problem now is one of plenty, it makes perfect sense for RBI to rely on the forward market to prevent the rupee from appreciating sharply without adding to liquidity on an immediate basis.",2017-04-13,"For every dollar it buys, RBI releases rupees into the banking system, which is already awash with surplus cash after demonetisation",0.24,07:59,RBI mantra: Look forward to deftly manage cash and forex +0,"
Flipkart announced a massive funding round this week, after a gap of nearly two years. Although, at $1.4 billion, it’s the company largest, the backdrop for the funding is markedly different from previous funding rounds. About two years ago, in July 2015, the e-commerce firm had raised $2.4 billion in three funding rounds over a 12- month period. Funds flowed in easily back then, not only for Flipkart, but also for its competitors and all forms of start-ups. Companies used these funds to provide huge discounts and gain customers, which in turn brought in a new set of investors.ALSO READ: Why Flipkart valuation wasn’t hurt by multiple markdownsIn the past 18 months or so, investors have become a lot more discerning. They’ve realized India’s e-commerce opportunity is no longer as big as it once seemed to be. Their focus has shifted to unit economics and other efficiency parameters. Flipkart said in a meet organized by an investment bank late last year that its cash burn has reduced by around 25% from peak levels. The flip side is that growth has faltered in the past year.Among other things, the large funding by Tencent Holdings Ltd, eBay Inc. and Microsoft Corp. can be seen as a sign of approval for this more sensible strategy. As such, unlike previous years, Flipkart will be expected to use its freshly raised funds far more cautiously. According to an analyst at a multinational bank, the new investors may well have included terms where funds are released based on certain milestones being met. With Amazon.com Inc. breathing down its neck with high levels of discounting in the Indian market, Flipkart could be walking a very tight rope, trying to protect market share as well as improve unit economics and reduce cash burn.ALSO READ: Flipkart’s Sachin, Binny Bansal no more billionaires after raising $1.4 billionHaving said that, Flipkart’s latest funding round provides the reassurance that there are still some takers for the Indian e-commerce story. In particular, that there is room for another large company alongside Amazon. While the growth opportunity may not be as big as estimated earlier, it is still clearly big enough to attract some investors. When funding had nearly dried up in the past 18 months, financial investor Morgan Stanley Institutional Fund Trust marked down Flipkart’s valuation to around $5.4 billion, or about 65% lower compared to its valuation in July 2015. The latest funding values the firm at $11.6 billion on a post-money basis. Of the total equity issuance of $1.4 billion, about $200-250 million is estimated to be in exchange for eBay’s India business. The net inflow of $1.2 billion or so should easily suffice in terms of funding cash burn for another two years. If Flipkart manages these funds well, and uses it to gain scale and improve unit economics, it may continue to find new investors; especially since most of its competitors are gradually shutting shop.",2017-04-12,"If Flipkart manages the new funds well, and uses it to gain scale and improve unit economics, it may continue to find new investors",0.36,03:15,Flipkart’s largest funding may also be the trickiest to navigate +0,"
On 10 April, Flipkart announced a new funding round and the acquisition of eBay India. Let us look at this development through the filter of something previously discussed in this column: the winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce.Since there is little differentiation between e-commerce firms, price becomes the sole differentiator. The company with most money to burn wins, while others sell out, usually to the winner. This may be simplistic, but it captures the essence of how e-commerce has played out globally.India is witnessing that scenario right now. Flipkart just announced acquisition of eBay India, and is likely to strike a similar deal with Snapdeal. Does this change the endgame? Can Flipkart outlast Amazon India? Or somehow settle into a stable duopoly beating the global trend? Or is it just delaying the inevitable? And what of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd?The winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce has not changed at all. And it will not until firms find a way to differentiate. Do customers see any real difference between Amazon and Flipkart? Both have great customer service, and similar merchandise. Even the frills are the same: if one has Amazon Prime, the other has Flipkart First. Does this acquisition change the endgame for Flipkart? Let us go through the arguments.Unique positioning of the acquired company: if the acquired company has unique strengths, it probably wouldn’t be up for acquisition. One argument could be that the target is strong in a certain segment such as a product category or geography. That may be true but it does not take that much effort or time to build from scratch. One has to only see how Amazon India has grown.Synergies with the acquired firm: the less said about this, the better, but we would be happy to be proven wrong. Flipkart’s deal-making has always been more about value buying, or common investors triggering a consolidation, than tapping synergies. Making the most of the opportunity of Rocket Internet pulling out of India, Flipkart snapped up Jabong for a song at $70 million. Its acquisition of Letsbuy and Myntra was triggered by common early stage investors. Its next buy Snapdeal, if the deal closes, will happen for similar reasons. With no home-grown mid-stage to late-stage venture funding available in India, Snapdeal is left with no choice but to sell.One oft-heard argument is that by buying everyone else, Flipkart will acquire such scale that it will either be able to survive stand-alone or force either Alibaba or Amazon to buy it. Given that all e-commerce firms are losing money, being bigger may just mean losing more money. Also, scale and customer base are meaningful only when entry barriers exist and there is some sort of customer loyalty. Otherwise, both are just vanity metrics.However, it is true that by acquiring all other rivals, Flipkart’s ability to present itself as the sole alternative to Amazon to investors and customers increases.There are other reasons for investors to back such acquisitions. The incentives of fund managers may not be aligned with those of the company. Many such deals are driven by investors such as Tiger Global and SoftBank, explained a limited partner (an investor in venture capital and private equity firms) from Hong Kong. In Flipkart’s case, Tiger has been an investor in the company for more than seven years and has to start thinking of providing liquidity to its investors. A deal to acquire Snapdeal, with an added deal for money from SoftBank (the single largest shareholder in Snapdeal), may provide this, this person added.ALSO READ: Why Flipkart’s valuation wasn’t hurt by multiple markdownsNew investors may be driven by a different logic, the limited partner explained. This could be strong liquidation preference terms that reduce downside risk. Or it could just be the opportunity to back a winning horse—or, at least, one that has a better chance of at least being there when the last race is run. Shrija Agrawal is Mint’s deals editor. Due Diligence will cover issues in India’s venture capital, private equity and deals space.",2017-04-12,"Flipkart’s $1.4 billion fundraising, acquisition of eBay India and a likely Snapdeal buyout shows the winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce hasn’t changed at all",0.25,01:57,Is Flipkart’s latest fundraising a game changer? +0,"
The Banks Board Bureau has recommended five executive directors of public sector banks for top posts in state-run banks which will fall vacant in coming months. They are Sunil Mehta of Corporation Bank, Dina Bandhu Mohapatra of Canara Bank, Rajkiran Rai of Oriental Bank of Commerce, R.A. Sankara Narayanan of Bank of India and R. Subramaniakumar of Indian Overseas Bank.Within hours of selection, the Bureau put up the names on its website—probably to bring in transparency and ward off any pressure from any quarter to change the names later. In the past, there has been at least one instance where the Bureau’s recommendation was not accepted by the government, the majority owner of these banks.The selection process of these five gentlemen also marks a departure from the past. This is for the first time the so-called assessment centre exercises were conducted to select the CEOs of India’s public sector banks. Assessment centre is a catch-all term which refers to a standardized evaluation of behaviour, based on multiple evaluations, including job-related simulations, interviews, and psychological tests. An assessment centre is defined as “a variety of testing techniques designed to allow candidates to demonstrate, under standardized conditions, the skills and abilities that are most essential for success in a given job”.ALSO READ | A paper tiger called Banks Board BureauOne critical component of this is psychometric tests—a standard and scientific method to measure individuals’ mental capabilities and behavioural style. Such a test helps identify the hidden aspects of candidates that are difficult to extract from a face-to-face interview. The Bureau sought the assistance of Egon Zehnder, a global executive search, talent strategy and leadership development firm, to conduct such tests.Do these five candidates have great leadership qualities? I don’t know about that, but they seem to be the best in the talent pool from which the Bureau had to select the prospective CEOs. Unlike in the past, when the government invited applications from the private sector for the top jobs in state-run banks, this time around the selection was done from among the talent available within the industry.In 2015, two large public sector banks got CEOs from the private sector—P.S. Jayakumar (Bank of Baroda) and Rakesh Sharma (Canara Bank). A former Citibanker, Jayakumar was heading VBHC Value Homes Pvt. Ltd as managing director and CEO while Sharma was running Lakshmi Vilas Bank. Unlike Jayakumar who had worked in the private sector throughout his career, Sharma had spent three decades with the State Bank of India (SBI) before his 18-month stint in the old private bank. The government is still watching the experiment of managing a state-run bank with a private sector executive before opening the doors for more.Indeed, the selection process of the five CEOs is innovative, but no less interesting is the act of swapping the top jobs of two banks last month. The Bureau was not involved in that exercise as its mandate is selection of the CEOs of public sector banks and it doesn’t have a say in lateral entries. The government swapped the top posts of IDBI Bank Ltd and Indian Bank. Kishor Piraji Kharat, the CEO and MD of IDBI Bank since 18 August 2015, has been made the boss of Indian Bank and Mahesh Kumar Jain, MD and CEO of the Chennai-headquartered bank since 2 November 2015, is now heading the Mumbai-based IDBI Bank.Why has this been done? There have been various theories doing the rounds. Many believe that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is instrumental in doing this. This is probably not correct. I understand that the banking regulator expressed concerns about the health of IDBI Bank and wanted the government to strengthen its management bandwidth but did not recommend shifting its CEO to another bank.Yet another theory is Jain has been rewarded for its brilliant performance in Indian Bank and Kharat had to go as he had not managed IDBI Bank well. This is also difficult to believe as neither the top post in IDBI Bank can be a reward for a performer and nor the CEO’s job in Indian Bank is a punishment for a non-performer. IDBI Bank is a much larger bank than Indian Bank, but it’s sick. Indian Bank is roughly half the size of IDBI Bank in terms of assets but in the first three quarters of fiscal year 2017 it recorded a net profit of Rs1,086 crore against a Rs1,958 crore loss by IDBI Bank. It is better capitalised (13.89% capital adequacy ratio) than IDBI Bank (11.29%) and has far less bad assets (4.76% net bad loans and 7.69% gross bad loans) than IDBI Bank (9.61% and 15.16%, respectively). Bad loans of IDBI Bank have doubled since September 2015 when the RBI put in place the so-called asset quality review and its overall stressed assets are more than one-fourth of the loan book.Of course, Jain can take up his new assignment as the biggest challenge in his career and if he turns around the bank, that will be an achievement. Since Indian Bank is in a far better shape than IDBI Bank on every count, its top job can never be a punishment for any professional.Most importantly, if one is not found suitable to manage one particular bank, should the person be given another bank to run—or should she be asked to hang up her boots? Clearly, there is something else behind this development which we do not know. Incidentally, the government took extra care in the appointments of CEOs at five big banks, IDBI Bank being one of them. In 2015 (the Bureau didn’t exist at that time), the government invited applications from the private sector to fill in the top posts at these banks—Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank, Bank of India, Punjab National Bank and IDBI Bank.Jayakumar was picked for Bank of Baroda; Sharma for Canara Bank; Melwyn Rego, deputy managing director of IDBI Bank, for Bank of India; Usha Ananthasubramanian, chairman and MD of Bharatiya Mahila Bank (this has been merged with SBI) for Punjab National Bank; and Kharat, an executive director of Union Bank of India, for IDBI Bank.Kharat had spent only five months as an ED of Union Bank, but in his previous 37 years with Bank of Baroda, he had held several positions in India and overseas, including setting up and heading the bank’s subsidiary in Trinidad and Tobago.The government had appointed global management consulting firm Hay Group (which was acquired by Korn Ferry in end 2015), to identify the candidates for the top jobs in these five banks. Ironically, Jain who has now been called to steer IDBI Bank out of the mess, had applied for the top job at one of these banks at that time but could not make it.Tamal Bandyopadhyay, consulting editor at Mint, is adviser to Bandhan Bank. He is also the author of A Bank for the Buck, Sahara: The Untold Story and Bandhan: The Making of a Bank.His Twitter handle is @tamalbandyo.Respond to this column at tamal.b@livemint.com",2017-04-10,The Banks Board Bureau is conducting—for the first time—the so-called assessment centre exercises to select the CEOs of India’s public sector banks,0.25,20:42,How public sector bank CEOs are selected +0,"New York: It’s light (bulbs) out at General Electric Co.Almost 140 years after GE founder Thomas Edison developed the first practical incandescent light bulb, the industrial giant is considering parting with its consumer lighting business, according to the Wall Street Journal. Frankly, it’s been a long time coming and is more of a symbolic step than anything else: The unit’s reported potential sale price of about $500 million amounts to just 0.2% of GE’s current market value. But symbolism matters at a company like GE, whose long history has included a series of evolutions. It will be sad if GE gets rid of light bulbs. But the business just doesn’t fit anymore: it’s a commoditized industry with weak growth, fewer innovation opportunities and different distribution channels than those used to sell locomotives or parts for a Boeing Co. plane. The unit stood out all the more as GE separated the other consumer-facing parts of its empire including NBC Universal, appliances and the Synchrony Financial credit-card business. Home-bound light bulbs have also become more marginalized within GE’s broader lighting unit, which has shifted its focus to data-driven and energy efficient LED solutions for commercial entities and cities.The potential sale of a business so core to GE’s historical identity and yet so irrelevant to the modern day reality of what the company has become got me thinking: What other legacy consumer-facing businesses are industrial companies holding onto despite a push across the sector toward higher-margin, technologically advanced products? Could these operations also end up out the door?ALSO READ: GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s pay falls 35% to $21.3 million amid weak oil marketSome companies have already been pruning. Illinois Tool Works Inc. sold its Space Bag brand—which makes vacuum-seal storage products akin to those featured on infomercials—to SC Johnson in 2012. GE’s rival across the sea, Siemens AG, spun off its Osram Licht AG lighting division years ago and that business itself just completed the sale of its lower-margin general lamps operations to a Chinese consortium including MLS Co. But there are plenty of holdouts. 3M Co. is the obvious one, with an entire consumer division dedicated to things like Scotch tape, Post-it notes, wall-hooks and soap dishes. Philips Lighting, spun off from Royal Philips NV last year, has vowed to stick with traditional and consumer light bulbs rather than follow in Osram’s divestiture footsteps. In addition to selling jet engines and turbochargers, Honeywell International Inc. has a home-products business that offers humidifiers, doorbells and thermostats. The company also makes Puddletons rain boots for women and children (who knew?) and Muck boots, which sort of kind of maybe fit with its portfolio of professional safety gear. United Technologies Corp. sells elevators to building operators, but it also sells smoke detectors to average Joes. Pentair Plc offers pool cleaners. Ingersoll-Rand Plc has a golf-cart business, which isn’t really a consumer product unless you’re Donald Trump but it’s random for a company that makes HVAC systems.Not all of these are so easily gotten rid of. 3M is highly unlikely to part with its consumer unit. The shorter life cycle of those kinds of products works to 3M’s benefit as a company that’s built a reputation for being an innovator, says Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Joel Levington. The division has had some struggles lately, but it’s generally been a steady, high-margin business and has overlaps with the company’s industrial abrasives and adhesives products. If anything, Philips Lighting’s commitment to light bulbs may actually make it a buyer of GE’s business, barring antitrust concerns. United Technologies’ residential air conditioners and security products aren’t clearly delineated from more-commercial products. Honeywell’s emphasis on home devices that can be controlled via smartphone fits with its new CEO’s software and connectivity push. But a potential sale of GE’s light bulb business raises the question of whether these companies should take a harder look at what all they put under their industrial umbrella. Like that rain boots business—what’s up with that? Bloomberg",2017-04-09,"Almost 140 years after GE founder Thomas Edison developed the first practical incandescent light bulb, GE is considering parting with its consumer lighting business",0.25,17:19,GE without light bulbs puts focus on other industrial spare parts +0,"
The government appears to have disagreed with the sugar industry’s contention on imports. While sugar output is now estimated at 20.3 million tonnes (mt), compared with initial estimates of 23.4 mt, the industry had opening stock of 7.75 mt. Consumption is expected to be lower due to the effect of demonetisation. Also, once crushing in the new season (beginning October) commences, supplies will improve.The government is unwilling to take that chance. A surge in sugar consumption could see a higher-than-expected drawdown of sugar. It does not want prices to crash either, explaining why it has allowed a relatively small limit of 500,000 tonnes. If prices increase even after this measure, it may allow more imports.As of 4 April, sugar prices were up by 8.8% over January; but they fell by 4.5%, as of 6 April, after this announcement. Shares of sugar mills weakened last week at the prospect of lower prices. That may be a premature reaction. One, mills had expected this development. Also, since crushing season is coming to a close, a Crisil Ratings note rightly points out that mills have already benefited from higher prices.The government’s intention is to ensure that speculation does not drive up prices once cane crushing ends in April. In the current season, lower output in Maharashtra and Karnataka and the southern states was the main reason for lower output. Uttar Pradesh mills’ output is higher. However, the new sugar season (starting October) is expected to see higher cane output.Still, a balanced market even in the next season (due to a shortfall in the current season) augurs well for sugar prices and for sugar mills. What are the concerns?India’s interest in imports could send global prices up. Raw sugar prices rose by 4% last week after the import announcement, and could increase further if traders expect India to import more.That is a tricky situation for the government as higher landed costs could mean imports lose their deterrent value. It may then resort to non-tariff measures to quell rising prices, which is a risk for the sugar producers.A new government in Uttar Pradesh is another factor to be watched. It has cracked down hard on mills defaulting on paying arrears to cane farmers. It has also called for a probe into the sale of government-owned sugar mills in 2010-11, according to news reports.The party manifesto had also said it will seek to introduce direct ethanol production from cane. That may reduce cane availability for sugar. Its view on cane pricing will be watched for.UP has traditionally fixed a higher price for cane, compared with the central government-determined price. That creates problems for mills, especially when sugar prices trend lower. If the new government implements a more stable pricing and operational environment, it can improve the longer-term outlook for UP-based sugar mills. But for now, the centre’s stance on sugar pricing is the main risk that investors need to watch out for.",2017-04-10,The government’s intention is to ensure that speculation does not drive up prices once cane crushing ends in April,-0.28,07:59,Government intervention a potential risk for sugar producers +0,"Taipei: After its plan to offer free internet in India was rejected, Facebook Inc. may soon find that the fastest way to consumers’ hearts is through their wallets. Digitally.Its WhatsApp service is preparing to start digital payments in the country, a move that would leverage India’s rush to online transactions after November’s sudden demonetisation, the Financial Times reported. WhatsApp would challenge local players including PayTM, which is backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.The service would probably tap into India’s Unified Payments System, which is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and was set up to facilitate the transfer of funds instantly over mobile devices.More than a third of Indians now access the internet and mobile-phone penetration stands at around 80%, with both figures rising rapidly. Yet only 78% access the internet at least once per week, according to research compiled by consultancy Kepios.Facebook copped a lot of flack for trying to offer a free but scaled-down version of the internet in India as part of a program it has successfully deployed elsewhere. With the abolition of large-denomination banknotes forcing Indians to jump into digital alternatives, Facebook may benefit from a concept known as loss aversion.In their work on the topic, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman discovered that the fear of loss is a more powerful driver of action than the prospect of an equivalent gain. Kahneman went on to win a Nobel Prize in Economics for that research (Tversky died before it was awarded).With much Indian commerce grinding to a standstill because of a shortage of cash, fear of being unable to perform transactions may be a bigger driver of digital-payments adoption than the prospect of gains from efficiency or ease of use.It’s unlikely any offering would be a major profit contributor for WhatsApp, but it would help achieve what Facebook had hoped for in seeking to provide free web access, which is to get more people online regularly and spur consumers to use its services.After a humiliating loss last time, Facebook could be setting itself up for a win in India. Bloomberg",2017-04-05,"It’s unlikely any payments offering would be a major profit contributor for WhatsApp, but it would help Facebook to get more people online regularly",1.0,10:51,WhatsApp payments to be Facebook’s saving grace in India +0,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.",2017-05-04,"DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",0.59,23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +0,"
The last time the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) restrained itself from acting on excessive liquidity, it had to face a double-digit inflation rate in the years ahead. This was the flood of liquidity around September 2009 and the years of double-digit inflation started in 2011. Granted, the situation was not so linear and the rise in inflation was not a mere ignition of demand by excess money. But there are enough history lessons to warn what excessive money can lead to.When the monetary policy committee (MPC) begins its two-day deliberations on policy rates on Wednesday, it will in all probability not just include but highlight the current deluge of liquidity. After all, RBI’s monetary policy stance and the impact of MPC’s decision on interest rates hinges solely on how much money should be allowed to slosh around in the banking system and for how long. The favourite tool to suck out liquidity in the past was the cash reserve ratio (CRR). But it would be a waste to hike the CRR now as a 50 basis point increase would impound only a fraction of the liquidity surplus, which is currently a massive Rs3.5 trillion. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. CRR is also a blunt tool and it affects all banks in the same manner although liquidity is almost always skewed among lenders.While many other tools have been discussed including a new one called standing deposit facility, what matters is that the surplus money should be impounded immediately.Why should the central bank hurry on liquidity? One argument is that investment demand is tepid and as credit growth is unlikely to pick up from its historic lows, there is no way surplus liquidity can fuel inflation. However, corporate bond yields are down more than 50 basis points and the benchmark equity indices have soared more than 20% in fiscal year 2016-17, a year in which corporate balance sheets were under severe pressure. These are evidences enough to show that liquidity has begun fuelling asset prices.Leaving the surplus liquidity problem unattended would lead to money chasing yields and thereby investments into riskier assets. In its worst form, the surplus could find its way into stressed assets at an unwarranted price.MPC voted to put an end to easing the interest rate regime in February to safeguard the medium-term retail inflation target of 4%.This time, the vote should be for changing surplus liquidity conditions that may undermine its inflation management.",2017-04-04,"When the monetary policy committee begins its two-day deliberations on policy rates tomorrow, it will in all probability not just include but highlight the current deluge of liquidity",-0.26,08:06,RBI: Plug the liquidity tap to avoid inflation deja vu +0,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",2017-04-20,Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,0.49,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +0,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",2017-04-20,Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,0.25,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +0,"
Early in the morning of Monday, 3 April, serendipity sat me next to N.R. Narayana Murthy on a long transcontinental flight leaving Bengaluru. As the flight attendants handed out newspapers for the passengers to read while on the journey, I couldn’t help but notice that Murthy had made front-page news, this time for questioning the extent of the raise given to an executive at Infosys Ltd, the company that he founded over three decades ago along with a few of his junior colleagues. I turned to him and we began a conversation. I shall not focus here on the specific comments about Infosys, but there were several parts of the conversation that covered Murthy’s philosophy around topics that I have written about in this column before, and which provide insights into the character of the man. Unsurprisingly, we spoke of the social issues being caused by the changes in the way corporations recruit and retain talent. We spoke of organizations such as TopCoder, now part of an Indian IT services firm after the acquisition of its parent by Wipro. TopCoder is a marketplace for computer programmers, who can get compensated for their work through this marketplace without ever having to be an employee of a services firm. It is like a taxi aggregator among programming firms. I have written in this column before about how marketplaces like these can eventually change the construct of the employer-employee contract now prevalent among many firms and have also mused about whether unionization may be around the corner at some Indian IT services firms as the employer-employee relationship construct begins to disintegrate.Murthy explained that there are circumstances where unions can play a pivotal role in ensuring equity. He said the fact that unions look out for employees’ welfare is inescapable, and proffered the example of the US. According to him, when unionization covered 35% of the American workforce, American labour was better looked after. Now that this figure has slipped to around 15%, the poor have become poorer as corporations and their leaders have followed an Ayn-Rand-esque view of “rational self-interest” and social Darwinism. Pushing crumbs off one’s table and trusting that the aspiring classes in society will have enough is a sure recipe in fomenting labour class unrest, as the recent Brexit and US presidential elections have shown. Murthy’s opinion is that such unrest is also lying dormant and is barely beneath the surface in India, and that leaders of India’s capitalist revolution cannot afford to blithely ignore this.Also read | Infosys strongly defends COO pay hike criticized by Narayana MurthyWe also spoke of the fledgling experiments with universal basic income (UBI) that have begun to pop up in various corners of the earth. UBI is essentially a dole paid out to every citizen, whether they are out of work or not, in a nod to the fact that relentless mechanization and automation will take away many people’s livelihoods in the near- to medium-term future. While classical economics tells us that disruptive changes in labour mechanics such as offshoring and automation only cause a temporary loss in jobs before there is a “job shift” when people start to work in other fields of endeavour so that they may earn a living, the short-term pain caused by the original job displacement is undeniable. UBI is a well-meaning attempt to alleviate some of that pain. It comes with the same plethora of problems around unemployment doles, but Murthy’s view was that societies have a responsibility to their underprivileged or displaced populaces and that he would welcome higher taxes on the IT industry that are meant to go directly to those whose jobs IT displaces. He said that the only society that is stable is one that is seen to be moving, however haltingly, towards an atmosphere of equity and fairness among all its members.Leaders in the IT industry need to be seen as fair by the people under their command. Giving raises at the top that are 10 or even 20 times the rate of the raises being given at the bottom runs the risk of creating an impression that those at the top are greedy opportunists most interested in snatching what they can while the going is good. I have been part of a company where the boss raised his own salary by over 250%, leaving others in his second line like me to explain to the rest of the workforce that they had to make do with a 2% increase. The rationale for the anaemic salary increase for everyone but the boss was that the firm had not reached its (internally set) earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, targets. As an aside, I am sure the boss’s new salary contributed to the company repeating this miss in the next year. That year, even though my own compensation increase was also in the low single digits, I felt great discomfiture at having to justify and explain the boss’s salary increase, which the board had seen right to give him since “he could easily get another job in the industry paying just as much”. To paraphrase the Bard of Avon, all the mouthwash in India has not cured me of the ensuing halitosis from those conversations.Recalling a time when the industry finally saw the light and banded together in the common interest to fight high levels of attrition when companies were blithely poaching talent from one another, I asked Murthy whether Nasscom or some such industry body could now be entrusted with this looming question of “fairness”. He was unequivocal that an ombudsman is needed. Maybe it is time we allow ourselves to be policed.Siddharth Pai is a world-renowned technology consultant who has led over $20 billion in complex, first-of-a-kind outsourcing transactions.",2017-04-04,"In IT firms such as Infosys, giving raises at the top many times the rate of the raises at the bottom risks creating an impression that those at the top are greedy opportunists ",0.55,01:26,"Infosys compensation row: Of executives, programmers and fairness" +0,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.",2017-04-20,"The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said",-0.23,22:12,Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +0,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",2017-04-22,Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,0.21,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +0,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,0.25,10:27,Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +0,"Xiaomi Corp. is going to double down on India. Literally.Chairman and CEO Lei Jun sat down with Bloomberg’s Saritha Rai and Jason Gale in Bangalore this week to explain how he plans to resume rapid growth. The Chinese smartphone maker will spend $500 million in the country over the next three to five years, after spending a similar amount since entering India two years ago.Right now is the perfect time for Xiaomi to make a claim of renewed vigour. It came in second by share of the Indian smartphone market in the fourth quarter, topping all local and international competitors except Samsung Electronics Co., according to IDC data.One great quarter does not a renaissance make, however. Almost 40% of full-year sales came in that single three-month period, according to IDC. That’s not necessarily unusual, because the Diwali shopping season falls in the quarter, but it should be noted that Xiaomi’s share climbed as much because the entire market fell as because of its own growth.Xiaomi’s 2016 India smartphone rankingIDC notes that the higher-priced smartphone segment actually expanded during November because demonetisation saw many customers rush to offload cash. It’s likely Xiaomi was a beneficiary of this, given that it sells premium devices compared with local offerings.For the full year, Xiaomi placed fifth, selling around 7.2 million units. That’s still an impressive 119% growth, according to IDC, but it’s coming off a low base. What should worry Xiaomi is that its old nemeses are approaching fast. Compatriots Oppo and Vivo were just a few percentage points behind in the fourth quarter and they have more growth momentum, again because they’re coming from a low starting point.What’s really seeing renewed vigour is the feature-phone market. The addition of 4G and increasing functionality, coupled with lower prices, has kept this older category relevant. HMD Global reviving the Nokia brand, a popular name in India, adds to the reasons why feature phones will again outsell smartphones this year, and delay migration up the product value chain.In summary: You’ve got competitors closing in fast, demonetisation possibly providing a single-quarter boost, and feature phones remaining a competitive threat. If there’s a time for Xiaomi to assert that rapid growth is ahead, it’s now. They may not be saying it again for a while. Bloomberg",2017-03-31,"What should worry Xiaomi is that its old nemeses are approaching fast. Compatriots Oppo, Vivo are just a few percentage points behind in the Q4 and they have more growth momentum",0.74,11:40,"Enjoy your India moment, Xiaomi, it might not last" +0,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",2017-04-22,Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,-0.12,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +0,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.",2017-04-19,"India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending",0.24,05:21,A short history of extradition from UK to India +0,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.",2017-04-19,"For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",-0.12,07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +0,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",2017-04-20,Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,0.16,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +0,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.",2017-04-22,"A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",0.04,19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +0,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.",2017-04-21,"The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",0.76,19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +0,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.",2017-04-21,"Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",0.6,23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +0,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.",2017-04-21,"Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",-0.15,20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +0,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court",2017-04-19,"A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",-0.36,05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +0,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",2017-04-19,Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,-0.52,05:18,"Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +0,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",2017-04-19,Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,-0.24,05:11,What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +0,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",2017-04-19,Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,0.19,05:15,The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +0,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",2017-04-21,Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,0.24,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +0,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).",2017-04-21,"Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",0.24,02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +0,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",2017-04-21,Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,0.52,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +0,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.",2017-04-21,"Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",1.0,01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +0,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",2017-04-20,World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,0.57,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +0,"
Hindustan Zinc Ltd’s plan to produce 17% more metal in fiscal year 2018 (FY18), even as it expects the global zinc supply position to remain tight, should be good news for investors. Tempering this good news is the recent decline in metal prices.All industrial commodities have come under pressure in the past 30 days. Concerns revolve around China, where economic growth has been better than expected but there are worries around metal-intensive sectors such as construction. This is the main risk that the company’s investors have to keep an eye on.In the March quarter, Hindustan Zinc’s mined metal output rose by 13% sequentially, while that of refined lead and zinc combined rose by 6%. Realizations were in its favour, as zinc prices rose by 10% on an average, while that of lead rose by 5.5%. Revenue rose by 25.5% in the quarter to Rs6,756 crore, while operating profit increased by 34.7%. Net profit rose 12.2% sequentially and by 42.3% over a year ago.Hindustan Zinc plans to tweak its existing smelting capacity so that it can produce more metal. It has carried over 80,000 tonnes of mined metal into FY18, after selling some in the market. The company intends to invest $350-360million in FY18 towards enhancing metal capacity and mine expansion, among others. The more refined metal it sells, compared to selling concentrate, the more money it makes.The first half of FY17 had seen lower mined output, as per Hindustan Zinc’s mining plan. While that will mean the first half financials of FY18 will look good year-on-year, the correct factor to look at will be how the company does on a sequential basis.While metal output is expected to be higher in FY18, it has also cautioned that the cost of production in dollar terms could increase slightly, because of higher coal and input prices. These could be concerns, but only if metal prices don’t recover from their current decline. Zinc prices are nearing their lowest levels seen in 2017 so far, and are down by 14.7% from peak levels during the year. An appreciating rupee against the dollar is not good news either for Hindustan Zinc.The company’s share trades at 14 times its FY17 earnings per share and rose by 4% on Thursday as its results were much better than what the Street was expecting. The projected increase in its metal output puts Hindustan Zinc on a strong footing for FY18 but the shift in the trend in metal prices puts a question mark on earnings growth. Once prices settle into a trend, its share will follow suit.",2017-04-21,"Hindustan Zinc’s plan for to produce 17% more metal in FY18, even as it sees a tight global zinc supply, should be good news for investors",0.47,07:41,Hindustan Zinc: It’s all in the price +0,"
Mindtree Ltd’s shares have fallen 44.3% since it issued a profit warning for the March quarter. Growth at the company has taken a tumble since then, owing to delays in project starts and troubles at its UK subsidiary Bluefin Solutions. In this backdrop, it may come as a relief for investors that for the first time in over a year, Mindtree has beaten the Street’s expectations by a meaningful margin. Revenue grew 2% sequentially in constant currency terms last quarter, compared to estimated growth of less than 1%. What’s more, margins rose by 60 basis points, again ahead of estimates, indicating that the burn at Bluefin has reduced meaningfully. The company said that Bluefin’s revenue increased more than 11% sequentially; although, of course, it makes sense to wait and see if the recovery will sustain. The churn in Mindtree’s top 10 customers continues, and the company said it is in the process of rebuilding its top 10 portfolio. Last quarter, growth in the revenues of top 10 customers rose 0.7%, far lower than the company’s average growth rate. And in a clear sign that Mindtree isn’t exactly out of the woods, year-on-year growth in revenue stood at merely 0.3%. In this backdrop, the company’s assertion that growth in fiscal year 2018 will be in low double-digits seems ambitious at first. Having said that, Mindtree’s strong deal wins in the past few quarters also provide hope that growth will pick up in the new fiscal year. Work has commenced on some of the large deal wins in the December quarter, with on-site effort increasing by 6.1% sequentially last quarter. And while deal wins in the March quarter was considerably lower vis-à-vis December, at $209 million, on a cumulative basis the total contract value won by the company in the past few quarters should help sustain growth. “Even as the overall growth has slipped, Mindtree’s customer relationships and engagement with deal advisory (firms) continues to be strong and could result in an improvement in growth rates starting the June quarter,” analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities said in a recent note to clients. Of course, given the rough ride investors have had with Mindtree shares in the past year, they may do well to be cautious. Besides the fact that it makes sense to wait for the company to deliver consistent performance, it’s also important to remember that valuations aren’t cheap at 17.8 times trailing earnings.",2017-04-21,"While Mindtree shares have fallen 44.3% since it issued a profit warning for March quarter, its better-than-expected Q4 results should come as a relief to investors",0.5,07:41,Mindtree shows signs of a recovery +0,"
The onset of the summer season and rising temperatures have brought shares of consumer electrical product companies back in focus. Shares of Symphony Ltd, Havells India Ltd and Bajaj Electricals Ltd have gained 29-60% so far this calendar year. In the year-ago period, they were up 3-11%. Voltas Ltd, which derives a sizeable part of its revenue from air conditioners, has gained 23%, compared to a 12% loss in the year-ago period.
The gains reflect the business recovery. Channel checks by IIFL Institutional Equities show a rise in demand for fans and air coolers. The business environment is back to pre-demonetisation levels and dealers are said to have begun restocking.According to Himanshu Shah, director (sales and marketing) at Symphony, consumer buying started in February while demand recovery is more gradual in the north and the eastern parts of the country. The January-March quarter results will reflect some benefits of the demand recovery, though the full impact can be gauged only after the current quarter. Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities expects revenues of Whirlpool of India Ltd, Havells and V-Guard Industries Ltd to have grown in double-digits in the quarter gone by.The air cooler industry is seeing increased competition with the entry of new companies. But according to IIFL, the new entrants will help expand the organized market. Symphony, which has the widest range of coolers and good brand recall, is said to be better placed to benefit from summer demand. In fans, new product launches are expected to aid large companies’ market shares. “The fans and coolers segment is expected to grow by 8/15% respectively, wherein the leading brands in each category (Crompton and Symphony) are expected to grow by at least 4-5% percentage points ahead of the market,” adds IIFL.The story is slightly different in air conditioners where after-sales service and dealer margins will have a determining role on sales growth. Even then, thanks to rising mercury levels, air-conditioner sales have picked up.Voltas, with a large market share and wide reach, is expected to benefit from higher demand. But the challenge lies in profitability. There are fears that high competition (both from new products and new entrants) may weigh on Voltas’s margins. “Competition has increased with players such as Daikin, LG, Panasonic, Lloyd Electric and Blue Star eyeing a larger market share,” Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd wrote in a note.Dealer checks by Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd show stable pricing with limited discounts.But as they say one swallow does not a summer make. A clear picture will emerge only towards the end of the season. In the meantime, all hopes are now pinned on a good summer season. A good season, according to Symphony’s Shah, will extend the sales period to July.",2017-04-18,Onset of summer and rising temperatures bring shares of consumer electrical product companies back in focus,0.52,08:20,Summer demand: advantage market leaders in consumer electrical products +0,"
Suresh Prabhu may not have heard of Dave Donaldson, but the Indian railways minister would do well to read an insightful paper by the Stanford University economist who has been awarded the prestigious John Bates Clark medal for American economists under 40.The John Bates Clark medal is a good predictor of future achievement. Twelve of the 39 economists who have won the medal have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in economics. The strike rate increases to almost one in every two if one considers only medal winners before 1993. The more recent winners are obviously too young to be in the running for a Nobel right now, so what happened to the first 25 winners is a better gauge.One of the works by Davidson that is specifically cited by the American Economics Association in their press release last week is his paper on how the spree of railway building by the British Raj impacted the Indian economy. Some 60,000km of track was laid in the 75 years after the first train chugged out of Bori Bunder station in Mumbai in 1853. The military intention is well known. A network of railways was seen as a convenient way to move troops across India by a colonial establishment that had been rattled by the first war of independence in 1857.There were economic benefits as well. Karl Marx wrote presciently in 1853 that the railways would be the forerunner of modern industry. He added that trains would also dissolve traditional social arrangements.The British funded the expansion of the railways network by floating bonds in the London market—at a guaranteed return of 5% a year. The early nationalist critics of colonial economic policy such as Dadabhai Naoroji argued that the high cost of capital was more than the returns from the railways, and hence amounted to a drain of national resources.Donaldson is one of the new generation of development economists who use unique data sets to examine what happened in the past. His research on the economic impact of railways uses some innovative district-level data sets that he has constructed on prices, output, rainfall, domestic trade and international trade. These are based on digitized records of the British Raj. Davidson has also developed a digital map of the railways network. Each 20km stretch is coded with its year of opening.His three key conclusions: railway expansion led to a fall in trading costs, it increased the volume of goods shipped and the economic benefits greatly exceeded the cost of construction.“When observing the railroad network in India, I estimated that in a typical district, the arrival of railroad access caused real gross domestic product in the agricultural sector (the largest sector of India’s economy at that time) to increase by around 17%,” writes Davidson. This estimate was arrived at after taking into account both the positive and negative impact of the train on economic activity in a district.There are two important lessons from the sort of innovative work being done by economists such as Donaldson.First, debates about the past can be enriched if the data is carefully examined. One recent example is a paper published by three scholars on the website Ideas for India. Sriya Iyer, Anand Shrivastava and Rohit Ticku have constructed a geo-coded dataset to examine whether temple desecrations by Muslim rulers in medieval India are better explained by political dominance or religious iconoclasm. Second, there are contemporary policy lessons as well. Railroads of the Raj: Estimating the Impact of Transportation Infrastructure, which Davidson wrote in September 2012, as well as his later work on the expansion of railways in the US, provides ample proof that ramping up investment in railways and roads is one of the best ways to promote development in the hinterland.This lesson should be even more resonant at a time when the new goods and services tax will remove obstacles to internal trade by creating a truly integrated Indian market.",2017-04-21,Economist Dave Donaldson’s paper on Indian Railways shows ramping up investment in railways and roads is one of the best ways to promote development in the hinterland,0.64,02:43,What Suresh Prabhu can learn from Dave Donaldson’s paper on Indian Railways +0,"Jeff Bezos. Masayoshi Son. Jack Ma. Mukesh Ambani. Some of the world’s richest people also happen to be combatants in the expensive war over the future of technology in India.Bezos’s Amazon.com Inc. and Indian rival Snapdeal, backed by Son, are spending billions of dollars to build e-commerce in India. Alibaba founder Ma has splurged on investments aimed at popularizing digital payments. Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd is on track to spend about $30 billion (gulp!) to shake up India’s stodgy mobile internet service. Google, Tencent, Uber, Xiaomi, Apple and Facebook are also betting on growth in India.It’s easy to see why India and its 1.3 billion people are the No. 1 prize in technology. About one-quarter of Indians used the internet in 2015, according to the most recently available data from the World Bank, but the percentage is expected to explode in coming years. And compared with China—a quick-to-digitize country that was quicksand for non-Chinese tech companies—India has been relatively open to companies from outside the country.The battle for supremacy is great for Indians, who will get better and cheaper technologies tailored to their needs. But gobs of money are being spent now for what is a very, very long game with an uncertain toll on both winners and losers.ALSO READ: Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout falls short of what investors needApple CEO Tim Cook has said India is seven to 10 years behind China in technology market potential, and other executives echo that view. Building the future involves many, often low-tech, struggles like dealing with bad and clogged roads to deliver online orders, poor internet access for customers and dinged reputations from fears that foreign companies like Facebook are trying to monopolize internet use in the country. But a couple of recent actions—one by the government, the other by a billionaire—have been important developments in India’s tech market. They show how individual actions can be unexpected sparks for technology use and the tech business in India. Spending by India’s richest person on a new mobile network: About $30 billion. First, the decision last year by India’s government to ban the vast majority of cash in circulation did more for adoption of digital payments than anything a rich techie could have done. That move helped payments services like Paytm, backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, but it also gives a leg up to on-demand ride companies, e-commerce and other services that depend on a shift toward electronic payments in a country with low credit card penetration. (India’s central bank on Thursday also cleared Amazon India to start its own digital payments service.) The second jolt was the launch last fall by Ambani, India’s richest person, of a national mobile network that offered free cellphone calls and cheap, fast mobile web surfing. Competitors complained, but they quickly cut customers’ bills, too, and gave them more data. Ambani’s Reliance Jio mobile network signed up about 100 million customers. That is nearly as many customers on contracts with Verizon, the largest wireless company in the US by that measure. And Verizon didn’t get those customers in six months, as Reliance Jio did.Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc.,’s Google, has said the biggest barrier to technology development in India is affordable, available and high-quality internet access, which like in China is mostly done on mobile phones. Ambani has helped bring down that internet access barrier. Technology development in India will be unpredictable and halting, but the potential payoff is too alluring to ignore. Expect the billionaire battle in India to continue. Bloomberg",2017-04-13,It’s easy to see why India is the no. 1 prize in technology as about one-quarter of Indians used the Internet in 2015 and the percentage is expected to explode in coming years,0.36,21:09,Billionaires and the government shake up tech in India +0,"
Is Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd’s pricing strategy predatory and anti-competitive? Multiple agencies—Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT), the Competition Commission of India (CCI)—and even the Delhi high court are simultaneously seized of the matter. No one seems to be anywhere close to ruling on the issue, although Trai asked Jio last week to withdraw one of its offers which entailed complimentary services for three months.Jio complied, but added that it would do so when it was “operationally feasible”. Its competitors alleged that in the two-three days it took to close the offer, the company and its agents continued to promote it. Those who managed to subscribe before this window closed, availed of the complimentary services. And when Reliance Jio launched new plans this week, competitors such as Bharti Airtel Ltd were quick to point out that the new plans weren’t very different from the one Trai had frowned upon.In this backdrop, a moot question is if Trai is a competent authority to rule on Jio’s alleged predatory pricing; or, to put it bluntly, competent enough to handle the issue.ALSO READ: Reliance Jio is exploiting the gaps left by AirtelFor perspective, Jio’s services were launched free of cost last September, with customers being allowed unlimited voice calls and data usage. Services remained free between January and March, with the difference being that data usage was capped at 1GB/day. The company said it would start charging customers from 1 April, but later changed its mind and said services between April and June would remain free for those who pay in advance for services in July.This offer, called Summer Surprise, is what prompted Trai to finally act. But in what has been a terrible example of regulation, Trai hasn’t made its communication to Jio public. As such, we can only guess what reasons it gave for disapproving of the Summer Surprise offer.Presumably, Trai has come to the conclusion that Jio must stop free/complimentary services and start charging customers. Jio’s new plans avoid the use of the terms free or complimentary. But if one were to use the tariffs it announced earlier this year as a yardstick, the new plan effectively offers three months’ services for the price of one. One way of looking at the Summer Surprise offer is that it offered four months’ services for the price of one.This is the reason incumbents have been crying foul about the new plans, stating that it is essentially a similar plan “masquerading under a different name”. But, it can also be argued that the days of free offers are over and that Trai has been successful in getting Jio to start charging something for its services.Whether the new charges of around Rs97 per month (net of service tax) are higher than the company’s variable cost, and are predatory, is a complex question. As pointed out in this newspaper earlier, this is a question best answered by CCI. Besides, with a sector regulator, there are typically concerns and/or allegations about regulatory capture, and a sector-neutral agency such as CCI is generally recognized as one that doesn’t have any such entrapments. Having said that, the role of a sector regulator such as Trai cannot be underestimated. CCI typically takes two-three years to complete its investigations and hearings before finally passing an order. At best, its measures are remedial; although in some cases the damage in market structure may be too high to rectify.A sector regulator can move much quicker and take preventive steps to ensure that a market’s structure isn’t damaged beyond repair. It has become amply evident, even to Trai itself, that its regulations are woefully inadequate to address issues related to anti-competitive behaviour.While its laws state that pricing of telecom companies must be non-predatory, there are no clear definitions on what this entails. Neither is there clarity about other related issues such as what amounts to market dominance, and what the relevant market is when it comes to ruling on predatory pricing. For instance, Jio’s critics will argue that it has a dominant share in the market for mobile broadband services, while its supporters will say its share in overall mobile services is still small.Earlier this year, Trai issued a consultation paper to help it frame regulations that address these questions. It may be a while before it arrives at a conclusion and frames new regulations. If Trai had been a more nimble regulator and framed regulations in advance, it would have been able to address the Jio situation far better.Still, this is an important exercise, and Trai will do well to complete it sooner than later. Likewise, the example in the telecom market should be a wake-up call for other sector regulators who don’t have clearly defined rules on anti-competitive behaviour. In addition, Trai must also consult CCI while framing its new guidelines and while responding to charges of anti-competitive behaviour. Policy makers must realize such co-operation will be necessary for our regulators to respond reasonably as well as quickly enough to the threat of anti-competitive behaviour.And last, but not the least, Trai should realize that a healthy dose of transparency will do wonders in gaining the trust of regulated entities and customers.",2017-04-13,"It has become amply evident, even to Trai itself, that its regulations are woefully inadequate to address issues related to anti-competitive behaviour",0.3,07:59,Is Trai a competent authority to rule on Reliance Jio’s alleged predatory pricing? +0,"
It is no secret that Indian banks’ treasury income, which contributed handsomely to their profit in calendar year 2016 as bond prices rose and yields fell, has been substantially eroded since January. The yield on the benchmark 10-year paper rose 29 basis points during the last quarter of fiscal year 2017, from 6.4% on 1 January to 6.69% on 31 March. One basis point is a hundredth of a percentage point. Many banks would probably end up booking treasury losses in this quarter. The 10-year yield has risen further in the past fortnight to 6.78% and will probably remain range bound in the first quarter of the current fiscal year.While the focus is on the rise of bond yields and erosion in banks’ treasury profits, many are missing an interesting development—the intense fight between the bulls and the bears in the Indian bond market, aggressive short-selling by some of the foreign banks and primary dealers, and the counter-attack by some of the state-run banks, leading to the so-called short squeeze. The primary dealers buy and sell government bonds while foreign banks, like all other banks operating in India, need to have a mandatory bond portfolio to the extent of 20.5% of their net demand and time liability (NDTL), a loose proxy for deposits. However, unlike the state-owned banks, they buy shorter maturity bonds and continuously trade to make profits.Twice in the recent past—in the first week of March and again in the first week of April 2017—the stability of the market was threatened. But for the banking regulator’s intervention, some of the foreign banks and primary dealers could have defaulted, leading to chaos in the bond market.A short sale is a transaction in which a trader sells a bond which it does not own. So, the trader borrows from others to meet its delivery obligations to the Clearing Corp. of India Ltd (CCIL), which runs the bond market, till it buys the bonds and squares off the position. The banks and the primary dealers resort to short selling when their view is bearish—that is, the prices of the bond will fall and the yield will rise. They make money if the bond prices drop. In contrast to that, those who hold long positions make money when the bond prices go up. A short squeeze happens when there is a lack of supply of the bond which the short sellers need to borrow.In the two instances in March and April, the public sector banks, led by a very large bank, refused to lend bonds to the foreign banks and primary dealers for covering in the Clearcorp Repo Order Matching System or CROMS platform of CCIL, even though the short sellers were ready to pay a hefty price for it. Had the public sector banks, which allegedly formed a cartel to teach the short sellers a lesson, stuck to their stand, then the short sellers would not have been able to cover their short positions and defaulted—something that never happened in the history of the Indian bond market.Before we delve deep, let’s first take a look at how the bond market operates in India. CCIL runs the cash market, where the daily average volume is around Rs30,000 crore. The future market, a much thinner market and a relatively new one, is run by stock exchanges. On the lines of most international markets, CCIL follows the so-called T+1 settlement system—the settlement happens a day after the transaction takes place.One can resort to short selling intra-day (meaning covering the position on the same day) but can also keep it open overnight if the view is that the prices will drop further the next day. Short selling is an accepted market practice but there are limits to what extent one can go short. For instance, for an illiquid bond—which does not see much trading—the limit is capped at 0.25% of its outstanding stock. This means, if the outstanding security stock is Rs10,000 crore, one can short sell up to Rs25 crore. For a liquid security, the ceiling is higher—0.75% or Rs600 crore, the lower of the two.A short seller borrows the security from others in the market through the so-called repo or repurchase deals on the CROMS platform of CCIL. One can borrow the security for one day and keep on rolling it over up to 90 days till one actually buys the security. However, typically, the short sellers do not keep the position open for more than a fortnight. In other words, for two weeks, they keep on rolling over their borrowed security from the repo market.For the repo deal, the bank which lends the bonds gets money in lieu of that and, of course, it needs to pay interest on that money. Typically, the interest rate for such deals is slightly lower than the overnight call money rate, around 4.5% at this time. However, the short sellers—desperate to borrow security—were willing to give the money (and borrow securities) almost free, at an interest of 0.01%! Still, the public sector banks holding the securities were not willing to lend the bonds to them as they felt the short sellers were instrumental in pushing the bond prices down.A drop in bond prices hurts the banks as they need to mark to market (MTM) or value a substantial portion of their bond portfolio in accordance with the market price and not the prices at which they were bought historically. Even though the banks in India need to have a mandatory investment of 20.5% of their deposits in government bonds, many banks, particularly the state-run ones, hold more; the average bond holding in the industry could be around 26%. The mandated holding of 20.5% can be kept in the so-called held to maturity, or HTM segment, which does not need to be marked to market; but the rest of the portfolio can be kept in a combination of the so-called available for sale (AFS) and held for trading (HFT) baskets, and it needs to be valued in accordance with the prevailing market price, or marked to market. Foreign banks too are subject to the same regulations but typically, they mark to market their entire bond portfolio.Indeed, short selling is the lifeblood for the development of any securities market as it creates liquidity and helps in price discovery. Long-only players alone cannot add depth to the market. But, how do we prevent recurrence of such incidents in the future and keep the bond market stable and growing? Is the regulator’s intervention ideal in such a situation? Doesn’t it spoil the spirit of the free market? Similarly, some market players can certainly refuse to lend security to the short sellers but can they do it en masse by forming a cartel? I understand that a deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) held a meeting with some of the foreign banks and primary dealers and told the public sector banks to make the securities available for lending or else face penalty.One way of tackling this could be, allowing more players such as mutual funds and insurance companies in the repo market. If that happens, certain banks cannot dictate terms and there will be more entities to take care of the supply of bonds. Another option could be, allowing repo transactions at negative interest rates. Anyway, the short sellers are taking risks to make profits and they must be prepared to pay a price. They were ready to give money at 0.01% for bonds in the first week of April. Negative interest will make the transaction even costlier for them but there is no harm as they are ready to take risks to make money. RBI can also supply bonds in the repo market to the short sellers if it has the stock. Finally, we need to develop the futures market. Once the futures market is deep and wide enough, the short sellers will be able to arbitrage between the two markets. Right now, stiff stamp duty adds to the transaction costs in the futures market. As a result of this, the futures market—which is meant to attract retail investors—does not even see too many institutional players. I understand that some banks, who have become members of the exchanges, have found ways to avoid payment of stamp duty. Currently, the non-members need to pay stamp duty. Even the members may ultimately have to pay—as and when the Maharashtra government wakes up.Tamal Bandyopadhyay, consulting editor at Mint, is adviser to Bandhan Bank. He is also the author of A Bank for the Buck, Sahara: The Untold Story and Bandhan: The Making of a Bank.His Twitter handle is @tamalbandyoRespond to this column at tamal.b@livemint.com.",2017-04-17,"While the focus is on rising bond yields and erosion in bank treasury profits, many are missing the intense fight between bulls and bears in India’s bond market",0.28,16:57,The untold story of India’s bond market +0,"
Quarterly results of banks this time around would offer both the optical illusion of high profit growth and the harsh reality of a worse bad loan situation. From the looks of how the sector indices and stocks have moved over the last three months, the veneer of profit growth has been factored in. Given that the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2015-16 was horrifying due to the Reserve Bank of India’s asset quality review (AQR), by the sheer low base, profits for the same quarter in 2016-17 would be pleasing to the eyes. But the ground realities over bad loans are still the same. Investors therefore should focus on the five following numbers to judge how deep banks are in the bad-loan cesspool:Provisions: Those who had hoped for a better life after AQR are doomed to be disappointed. The gist of AQR was to identify and provide for all bad loans but lenders had hoped for quick deal-making and faster resolution thereafter. This hasn’t happened and due to ageing of non-performing assets (NPAs), provisions are unlikely to abate. With past mistakes continuing to haunt banks, corporate focused lenders such as ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and most public sector banks will continue to see erosion in profits through higher provisioning. To add insult to injury, the run-up in bond yields would trigger mark-to-market provisioning as well.Slippages: The trend in fresh slippages is perhaps the most awaited from banks because it is a gauge of how non-AQR loans have performed. Here several banks have primed investors with watchlists but past quarters have shown that trouble is brewing outside these watchlists as well. Fresh slippages for most banks had declined in the September quarter, while the impact of demonetization made them rebound in the December quarter. That of the March quarter will be the litmus test.Gross and net NPA ratios: These ratios could be tricky as they could show a decline from the year-ago period and that wouldn’t necessarily mean banks have finally got a grip on their bad loans. There is also a chance that gross and net NPA ratios may worsen because of the collapse in credit growth. Analysts at Icra Ltd expect the gross NPA ratio would hit 10% for FY17 from 7.6% in the previous year. Again, retail-focused banks win hands down here too.Core income: This is one metric that will set apart the bruised from the battered among banks. Lenders such as Kotak Mahindra Bank, Yes Bank, Federal Bank and IndusInd Bank would shine on net interest income or the income generated from core operations. Public sector banks and some private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank and Axis Bank would suffer as there are no takers for loans from the corporate sector. Analysts expect public sector lenders to show core income growth of just 5%, while private sector lenders may show around 10%.Margins: Net interest margins could take a beating simply because banks faced a deluge of deposits in the wake of demonetization and a lion’s share of these deposits have been deployed in low-yielding government bonds due to low credit demand.",2017-04-18,"Given that the Q4 of 2015-16 was horrifying due to RBI’s asset quality review, by the sheer low base, profits for the same quarter in 2016-17 would be pleasing to the eyes",0.02,08:20,Q4 results: Five numbers that distinguish bruised from battered banks +0,"
After having issued licences for new-age payments and small finance banks, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has now published a discussion paper on the need for wholesale and long-term finance (WLTF) banks. The idea is that as the financial sector grows, apart from a number of universal banks, it may be useful to have differentiated banks focusing on different areas and developing competence. This will reduce the cost of intermediation and lead to better economic outcomes. The discussion paper notes that WLTF banks will focus on lending to the corporate sector, small and medium businesses, and the infrastructure sector. They may also offer services in the area of foreign exchange and trade finance. Further, they can act as market makers in instruments like corporate bonds and credit derivatives. There is a gamut of specialized services that these banks can offer to Indian businesses. WLTF banks can raise funds through issuance of debt and equity. They may also be allowed to accept term deposits above a threshold.The idea of WLTF banks is worth trying out. As specialized institutions, they will be in a much better position compared with commercial banks in evaluating and funding long-term projects. It’s not easy for companies to get long-term financing because of the underdeveloped corporate bond market and possible asset liability mismatch in the banking system. One of the reasons for the subdued level of investment in the Indian economy is that the banking system is saddled with non-performing assets (NPAs), and a large portion is concentrated in the infrastructure sector. With specialized banks, such risks could possibly be avoided in the future. It may also help the rest of the banking sector in the case of joint lending, or by simply getting the project evaluation from these banks. Establishment of WLTF banks will also enhance competition, which will lead to more efficient allocation of financial resources.However, there is no guarantee that WLTF banks will succeed. India has tried the development finance institution (DFI) model in the past with limited success. After independence, DFIs were established to increase the level of investment in the economy. Industrial Finance Corp. of India (IFCI) was the first such institution to be established in 1948. This was followed by the establishment of state finance corporations. In later years, other institutions like the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI) and Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) were established. However, DFIs struggled with government interference and changes in the economy, and accumulated high levels of NPAs. ICICI and IDBI have transformed themselves into commercial banks.One of the biggest problems facing long-term finance institutions is competing for funds in the marketplace and being able to lend at competitive rates. A working group of the RBI on DFIs in 2004, for instance, noted: “In a purely market-driven situation, the business model of any DFI which raises long-term resources from the market, at rates governed by the market forces and extends only very long-term credit to fund capital formation of long gestation, is unlikely to succeed…. DFIs are, therefore, crucially dependent for their continued existence on government commitment for continued support.” However, government support is no guarantee of success, as has been the case with DFIs in the past and public sector banks in present times. As the banking regulator mulls over issuing licences for new-age WLTF banks, there are at least three aspects that will need greater attention. First, government participation in setting up WLTF banks should be avoided as it could end up defeating the purpose. Government ownership would lead to the same problems that public sector banks are facing at the moment. Further, these banks will be highly specialized and will need operational freedom, which is not possible with government ownership.Second, licences should only be issued to entities that are able to demonstrate the ability to build such a highly specialized bank, and are in a position to bring in capital to both meet regulatory requirements and run the business on a sustainable basis. The central bank may allow industrial houses to participate to the extent that they are not in a position to influence business decisions.Third, the RBI will need to design a regulatory architecture that will enable growth with adequate safeguards. For example, the regulator may choose to exempt these banks from cash reserve ratio and statutory liquidity ratio requirements. These banks will compete directly with the bond market.WLTF banks will have to be designed well. With the right kind of ownership and regulatory architecture, these banks will help improve efficiency in the financial system and enhance the flow of credit to businesses with large and long-term financing needs.Will long-term finance banks improve efficiency in the financial sector? Tell us at views@livemint.com ",2017-04-20,"As specialized institutions, long-term finance banks will be in a much better position to evaluate and fund long-term projects",0.47,13:50,The case for long-term finance banks +0,"
Wholesale Price Index (WPI)-based inflation for March 2017 came in at 5.7% year-on-year, well below February’s 6.55%. But as the chart shows, one big reason for the slowing of inflation is the fall in metal prices. The group “Basic metals, alloy & metal products” has a weight of 10.75% in the index. The chart shows how the spurt in metals prices has moderated in the last two months, in part due to lower international prices and partly due to a stronger rupee.Has the rise in metals prices run its course? Much depends on China. Gaurav Kapur, chief economist at IndusInd Bank Ltd, says the bulk of the rise in metals prices is behind us and WPI is also likely to remain low in the next four months due to a higher base. It is difficult to predict Chinese policy though and its first-quarter GDP growth came in at a higher-than-expected 6.9%.Lower WPI inflation, however, is unlikely to affect monetary policy, which is now intent on bringing Consumer Price Index-based inflation down to 4% in the medium term.",2017-04-18,"Lower Wholesale Price Index, or WPI, inflation is unlikely to affect monetary policy, which is now intent on bringing Consumer Price Index-based inflation down to 4% in the medium term",-0.13,08:20,Wholesale Price Index-based inflation and metal prices diff --git a/Stock Prediction/main.py b/Stock Prediction/main.py new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c53763f --- /dev/null +++ b/Stock Prediction/main.py @@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ +import quandl +import math +import numpy as np +from sklearn import preprocessing, cross_validation, svm +from sklearn.linear_model import LinearRegression +from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestClassifier +import matplotlib.pyplot as plt + +from interpolation import interpolate +from normalisation import normalize + + +df=quandl.get('WIKI/GOOGL', api_key='pYaKjEHyu4Tje_VTzHu6',start_date='2016-12-22',end_date='2018-03-23') + +df=interpolate(df,list(df)) +df=normalize(df,list(df)) + +result=df.corr(method='pearson',min_periods=1) + +print(result) + +result=df.cov() +print(result) diff --git a/Stock Prediction/merge_NSE.py b/Stock Prediction/merge_NSE.py new file mode 100644 index 0000000..634b1b8 --- /dev/null +++ b/Stock Prediction/merge_NSE.py @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +import numpy as np +from sklearn import preprocessing, cross_validation +from sklearn.linear_model import LinearRegression +from sklearn.svm import SVC +import pandas as pd +import copy +import platform +import sys +from interpolation import interpolate +from normalisation import normalize + +forecast_out=-1 +df1=pd.read_csv('TCS_qs.csv') +df2=pd.read_csv('NSE.csv') +df1=df1.set_index('Date') +df2=df2.set_index('Date') + +company_id="TCS" +df2=interpolate(df2,list(df2)) + +''' +list2=list(df2) +list2=list2.remove('Date') +print(list2) +''' + +df2=normalize(df2,list(df2)) +#df2.reset_index() +df2['shift_close']=df2['Close'].shift(-1) +df2.dropna() +df2['shift_close']=df2['shift_close'].astype(float) +df2['Close']=df2['Close'].astype(float) +df2['p_change']=(df2['shift_close']-df2['Close'])/(df2['Close']) + +print(list(df2)) + +df3 = pd.DataFrame(index=df2.index) +df3['p_change']=df2['p_change'] +#df3=df3.set_index('Date') +print(list(df3)) + +df3.dropna(inplace=True) + +df4= df1.merge(df3,how="inner",left_index=True,right_index=True) +df4=df4.sort_index() +df4.to_csv(company_id+'_qs_NSE.csv',encoding='utf-8',sep=',') +print(df4) + diff --git a/Stock Prediction/merge_quandl.py b/Stock Prediction/merge_quandl.py new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6b6f97c --- /dev/null +++ b/Stock Prediction/merge_quandl.py @@ -0,0 +1,67 @@ +import pandas as pd +import sys +import platform +from interpolation import interpolate +from normalisation import normalize + +company_id='TCS' + + +filenames=[company_id+'_sentiment.csv','NSE-'+company_id+'.csv'] + + +#sentiment csv +df1=pd.read_csv(filenames[0]) +df1=df1.set_index('date') +#print(df1.head(1)) + +#quandl csv +df2=pd.read_csv(filenames[1]) + +#calculate PC_open and PC_close +df2['shift_close']=df2['Close'].shift(-1) +df2['shift_open']=df2['Open'].shift(-1) + +df2['PC_open']=(df2['shift_open']-df2['Open'])/df2['Open'] +df2['PC_close']=(df2['Open']-df2['Close'])/df2['Close'] + +#df2['PC_open']=(df2['shift_open']-df2['Open'])/df2['Open'] +#df2['PC_close']=(df2['shift_close']-df2['Close'])/df2['Close'] +#df2.drop(['shift_open'],1) +df2=df2.set_index('Date') +#print(df2.head(1)) + + +df2=interpolate(df2,list(df2)) +df2=normalize(df2,list(df2)) + + +df3= df1.join(df2,how="inner") +#df3=pd.concat([df1,df2],axis='1',join='inner') +#print(df3.head(1),df3.columns,df3.describe()) +#print(df3.index.values) +#print(df1.shape,df2.shape,df3.shape) + +#splitter=filenames[0].split('/') +#filename=splitter[-1] + +#print(filename[:-3]) +#print(df3[[0]]) + +#fix first col + +#in=df3[[0]] + + +#shape your df +df3.index.name="Date" +df3.columns=['#','open_score','close_score','Open','High','Low','Last','Close','Total Trade Quantity','Turnover (Lacs)','shift_open','shift_close','PC_open','PC_close'] +print(df3.columns) + +df3=df3.sort_index() +df3.to_csv(company_id+'_qs.csv',encoding='utf-8',sep=',') +print(df3.head()) + + + + diff --git a/Stock Prediction/merge_sentiments.py b/Stock Prediction/merge_sentiments.py new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4fa4cfc --- /dev/null +++ b/Stock Prediction/merge_sentiments.py @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +import pandas as pd +import sys +import platform + + +company_id='TCS' + + +filenames=[company_id+'_score_open.csv',company_id+'_score_close.csv'] + +#open.csv +df1=pd.read_csv(filenames[0]) +df1.columns=['date','open_score'] +#print(df1.head(2)) + +#close.csv +df2=pd.read_csv(filenames[1]) +df2.columns=['date','close_score'] + +#df1=df1.set_index('date') + +result=pd.concat([df1,df2],axis=1,join='inner') + +result=result.T.drop_duplicates().T +#result=result.drop(result.columns[0],1) + +print(result) +out=pd.DataFrame(result) +#print(out.head(23)) + +out.to_csv(company_id+'_sentiment.csv',encoding='utf-8',sep=',') diff --git a/Stock Prediction/normalisation.py b/Stock Prediction/normalisation.py new file mode 100644 index 0000000..40b25a7 --- /dev/null +++ b/Stock Prediction/normalisation.py @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +import quandl +import math +import numpy as np +from sklearn import preprocessing, cross_validation, svm +from sklearn.linear_model import LinearRegression +from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestClassifier +import matplotlib.pyplot as plt + +def normalize(dataframe, cols_to_interpolate): + + print(dataframe.shape) + #dataframe.drop(['2017-03-21','2017-03-22']) + #dataframe.drop([80:82]) + + ''' + plt.figure(2) + plt.title('Normalized data') + plt.subplot(2, 1, 1) + plt.plot(dataframe) + ''' + dataframe.fillna(dataframe.mean(),inplace=True) + #dataframe.resample('D') + cols=list(dataframe) + for col in cols: + preprocessing.normalize(dataframe, axis=0, norm='l2', copy=False) + + print(dataframe.shape) + + ''' + plt.subplot(2,1,2) + plt.plot(dataframe) + + plt.show() + ''' + return dataframe diff --git a/Stock Prediction/normalisation.pyc b/Stock Prediction/normalisation.pyc new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1078073 Binary files /dev/null and b/Stock Prediction/normalisation.pyc differ diff --git a/Stock Prediction/normalized.csv b/Stock Prediction/normalized.csv new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6567f5c --- /dev/null +++ b/Stock Prediction/normalized.csv @@ -0,0 +1,1332 @@ +date,body,intro,time,title +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +2017-04-22,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +2017-04-22,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +2017-04-22,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +2017-04-22,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +2017-04-23,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-04-21,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +2017-05-04,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +2017-04-21,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-04-23,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-04-21,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +2017-04-22,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +2017-04-20,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +2017-04-20,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +2017-04-21,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +2017-04-20,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +2017-05-04,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +2017-04-20,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +2017-04-21,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +2017-04-22,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +2017-04-20,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +2017-05-04,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",23:18,How to start an analytics journey +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +2017-04-22,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +2017-04-21,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +2017-05-04,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",23:18,How to start an analytics journey +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +2017-04-21,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +2017-04-22,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +2017-05-04,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",23:18,How to start an analytics journey +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +2017-04-21,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +2017-04-22,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +2017-05-04,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",23:18,How to start an analytics journey +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +2017-04-21,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +2017-04-21,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +2017-05-02,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +2017-04-21,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +2017-04-20,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +2017-04-21,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +2017-04-20,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +2017-04-21,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +2017-04-22,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +2017-05-02,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +2017-04-22,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +2017-04-23,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-04-22,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +2017-04-22,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +2017-04-21,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +2017-04-21,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +2017-04-21,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +2017-05-02,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +2017-04-20,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +2017-04-21,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +2017-05-02,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +2017-04-21,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +2017-04-20,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +2017-04-22,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +2017-04-22,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +2017-04-22,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +2017-04-23,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-04-21,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +2017-04-21,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +2017-04-20,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +2017-05-04,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +2017-04-20,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +2017-04-21,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +2017-04-20,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +2017-04-20,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +2017-04-21,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +2017-04-20,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +2017-04-21,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +2017-04-21,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +2017-05-04,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +2017-04-20,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +2017-04-20,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +2017-04-23,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +2017-04-21,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +2017-04-22,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-04-21,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +2017-05-04,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",23:18,How to start an analytics journey +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +2017-04-21,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +2017-04-22,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +2017-05-04,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +2017-04-20,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +2017-04-20,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +2017-04-21,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +2017-04-21,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +2017-05-02,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +2017-04-20,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +2017-04-22,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +2017-04-22,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +2017-04-22,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +2017-04-23,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +2017-04-21,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +2017-04-21,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +2017-04-22,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +2017-05-04,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",23:18,How to start an analytics journey +2017-04-21,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +2017-04-21,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +2017-04-21,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +2017-04-22,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +2017-04-20,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +2017-04-22,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +2017-04-20,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +2017-04-21,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +2017-04-20,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +2017-05-04,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +2017-04-20,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +2017-05-02,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +2017-04-21,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +2017-04-20,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +2017-04-22,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +2017-04-21,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +2017-05-04,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",23:18,How to start an analytics journey +2017-04-21,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +2017-04-21,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +2017-05-02,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +2017-04-22,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +2017-04-20,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +2017-04-22,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +2017-04-21,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +2017-05-04,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",23:18,How to start an analytics journey +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +2017-04-21,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +2017-04-21,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-05-02,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +2017-04-23,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +2017-04-20,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +2017-04-21,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-04-21,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +2017-04-21,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +2017-04-20,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +2017-04-22,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +2017-05-04,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +2017-04-20,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +2017-04-20,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +2017-04-22,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +2017-04-22,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +2017-04-23,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-04-21,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +2017-04-21,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +2017-04-22,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +2017-04-22,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +2017-04-20,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +2017-04-21,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +2017-04-20,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +2017-05-04,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +2017-04-20,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +2017-04-21,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +2017-05-04,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",23:18,How to start an analytics journey +2017-04-22,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +2017-04-21,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +2017-04-21,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +2017-04-22,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +2017-04-22,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +2017-04-22,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +2017-04-22,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +2017-04-22,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +2017-05-02,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +2017-04-20,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-04-21,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +2017-04-23,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +2017-04-20,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +2017-04-21,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-04-22,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +2017-05-04,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",23:18,How to start an analytics journey +2017-04-21,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +2017-04-21,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +2017-04-21,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +2017-04-21,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +2017-04-20,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +2017-04-20,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +2017-05-04,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +2017-04-20,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +2017-05-02,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.","The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said",22:12,Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +2017-04-21,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,10:27,Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +2017-04-19,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +2017-04-19,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.","India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending",05:21,A short history of extradition from UK to India +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.","The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said",22:12,Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +2017-04-21,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,10:27,Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +2017-04-19,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.","India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending",05:21,A short history of extradition from UK to India +2017-04-22,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +2017-04-19,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,05:18,"Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +2017-04-19,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +2017-04-23,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +2017-04-21,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +2017-04-21,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +2017-04-19,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,05:18,"Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +2017-04-19,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,05:15,The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +2017-04-19,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court","A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +2017-04-19,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,05:11,What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +2017-04-19,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court","A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +2017-04-19,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,05:11,What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +2017-04-19,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,05:15,The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +2017-04-22,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +2017-04-21,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +2017-04-20,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +2017-04-20,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +2017-05-04,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +2017-04-21,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,10:27,Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +2017-04-20,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.","The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said",22:12,Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +2017-04-19,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +2017-04-19,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.","India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending",05:21,A short history of extradition from UK to India +2017-04-22,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +2017-04-22,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +2017-04-23,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +2017-04-21,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +2017-04-21,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +2017-04-22,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +2017-05-04,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",23:18,How to start an analytics journey +2017-04-21,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +2017-04-19,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,05:18,"Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +2017-04-21,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +2017-04-19,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,05:15,The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +2017-04-19,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court","A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +2017-04-19,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,05:11,What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +2017-04-21,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +2017-04-21,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +2017-04-20,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +2017-04-20,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +2017-05-04,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +2017-04-20,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +2017-05-02,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +2017-04-21,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,10:27,Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +2017-04-20,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +2017-04-19,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.","India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending",05:21,A short history of extradition from UK to India +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +2017-04-19,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.","The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said",22:12,Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +2017-04-22,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +2017-04-19,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,05:18,"Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +2017-04-19,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court","A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +2017-04-19,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,05:15,The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +2017-04-19,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,05:11,What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +2017-04-22,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +2017-04-22,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +2017-04-20,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +2017-04-21,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +2017-05-04,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",23:18,How to start an analytics journey +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +2017-04-22,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-04-21,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +2017-04-21,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +2017-04-23,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +2017-04-21,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +2017-04-21,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-05-02,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +2017-04-21,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +2017-04-20,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +2017-04-21,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,10:27,Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.","The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said",22:12,Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +2017-04-19,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.","India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending",05:21,A short history of extradition from UK to India +2017-04-19,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +2017-05-04,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +2017-04-20,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +2017-04-19,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,05:18,"Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +2017-04-20,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +2017-04-19,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court","A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +2017-04-22,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +2017-04-19,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,05:11,What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +2017-04-19,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,05:15,The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +2017-05-04,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",23:18,How to start an analytics journey +2017-04-21,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +2017-04-21,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +2017-04-21,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +2017-04-20,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +2017-05-02,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +2017-04-22,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +2017-04-22,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +2017-04-22,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +2017-04-21,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +2017-04-20,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +2017-04-23,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-04-21,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +2017-04-21,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +2017-04-22,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +2017-04-22,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +2017-05-04,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +2017-04-20,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +2017-04-20,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +2017-04-22,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +2017-04-21,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,10:27,Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.","The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said",22:12,Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +2017-04-19,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +2017-04-19,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.","India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending",05:21,A short history of extradition from UK to India +2017-04-19,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,05:18,"Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +2017-04-20,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +2017-04-21,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +2017-04-22,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +2017-04-22,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-04-21,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +2017-04-23,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-04-21,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +2017-04-19,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,05:15,The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +2017-04-19,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,05:11,What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +2017-04-19,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court","A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +2017-05-04,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +2017-04-20,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +2017-04-22,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +2017-04-20,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +2017-04-21,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +2017-05-04,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",23:18,How to start an analytics journey +2017-04-21,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +2017-04-20,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +2017-04-18,"
Shares of Indiabulls Real Estate Ltd (IBREL) on Monday jumped 40% on Monday after the property developer revealed plans to carve out its leasing and commercial businesses into a separate entity. The IBREL board that met on Monday morning decided to create a new vertical to house the two businesses.The residential business will continue to remain with IBREL.The new entity—Indiabulls Commercial Assets Ltd (IBCAL)—will hold existing leasing and commercial assets, as well as future projects.IBREL expects the new vertical to earn a rental income of Rs692 crore in 2017-18. The board also decided to explore opportunities for bringing strategic investments into the new entity, the company informed the stock exchanges.It proposes to either get a strategic investor for its rental arm or demerge the rental arm from the development arm.A restructuring committee will study the plan and prepare a draft scheme or proposal for the board’s approval.IBCAL will have a separate management team with a chief executive and a new investor is expected to come on board in the next few months, said a person familiar with the company’s plans, who did not want to be named.According to the company’s projections on the basis of accounts as of 31 March, IBCAL will have a net worth of Rs2,311 crore and a debt of Rs3,950 crore, with a potential revenue generation of Rs1,357 crore in 2020-21.IBCAL will have a portfolio of 8.35 million sq. ft of office buildings in Mumbai, Gurgaon and Chennai.“The net debt of IBCAL (post restructuring) will be reduced over medium- to long-term from the annuity revenues. We believe this model will provide cheaper cost of capital to fund the expansion of business after FY2020-21,” the company said in its filing.IBREL shares closed 39.96% higher at Rs148.15 on BSE on Monday, while the BSE Sensex lost 0.16% to close at 29,413.66 points.In the recent past, there have been some large deals in the commercial office space. Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte. Ltd, private equity firm Blackstone Group Lp and Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management Inc., have been buying out some of the largest office parks and acquiring rental portfolios of developers at a time India’s residential market has seen tepid sales and a price correction. “The eventual plan is to create a separate entity for the commercial and leasing business and target listing the stock at a later date. Indiabulls will also be looking at getting a foreign investor or PE fund to participate in the equity of IBCAL. Most large global investors have preferred to participate in the commercial or leasing market in India...,” said Abhishek Lodhiya, senior equity research analyst-infrastructure, capital goods and real estate, Angel Broking Ltd, in a note.","Indiabulls Commercial Assets will focus on the annuity business through rental income of existing office projects, under-development and new projects",03:43,Indiabulls to carve out commercial office business into separate firm +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +2017-05-02,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +2017-04-21,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +2017-04-18,"Mumbai: The Bombay high court (HC) on Monday said it will hear on 27 April a plea against the government and state-run insurers, including Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), for holding shares in cigarette maker ITC Ltd.The petition, which also names the insurance regulator, has argued that the government, which is tackling health issues arising out of tobacco consumption, should not directly or indirectly hold a stake in ITC and other companies in the tobacco business.The insurance companies, Union of India, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, have been asked to file their responses to the petition before the matter is heard next. The government of India, through five state-run insurance companies and Specified Undertaking of Unit Trust of India, owns a 32% stake in ITC.",Petition argues that the government should not directly or indirectly hold a stake in ITC and other companies in tobacco business,03:22,Bombay HC to hear plea on issue of govt stake in ITC on 27 April +2017-04-18,"Mumbai: The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Monday refused to grant a waiver to Cyrus Mistry family firms from the minimum shareholding requirement for filing a petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons Ltd. NCLT also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression. In an oral order, the two-member bench dismissed the waiver petition and main petition . The final order will be available on Friday. The Mistry family firms will now be moving the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) against NCLT’s decision once they receive a copy of the order, said their lawyers.Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd asked the NCLT to waive the requirement that shareholders hold at least 10% of a firm to file a petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.They were seeking the waiver after NCLT on 7 March ruled that their petition was not maintainable because of this technical requirement. While these firms hold 18.4% of ordinary shares in Tata Sons, when preference shares are counted, their ownership comes down to only about 2.17%.Aryama Sundaram, counsel for the Mistry family firms, argued for the waiver citing concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.The spat between the Mistry firms and the Tatas started on 24 October when Mistry was removed as chairman of Tata Sons. He was later ousted from its board.“Tata Sons interprets the ruling by the NCLT as demonstrating that the petitioners failed to make a convincing or compelling case that warranted a hearing on alleged mismanagement, oppression or other actions,” the holding company of the salt-to-software group said in an emailed statement. “We hope this brings to an end a vexatious campaign against the Company, the Tata Trusts and Mr. Ratan N. Tata.”A spokesperson for Cyrus Mistry declined comment.Some legal experts said they were surprised at NCLT’s decision. “They had a valid reason for a waiver because it’s (Tata Sons) not a private company and the holding company holds several public companies,” said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at law firm Advaya Legal. “Therefore, in my view, the option could have been exercised in favour of the petitioner. The tribunal, by dismissing the petition, has adopted a very hyper-technical approach.”That said, the legal battle has not ended as there are several options for the Mistry investment firms, including approaching the high court or civil sessions court apart from NCLAT. Adverse decisions at these forums can be challenged all the way till the Supreme Court depending on either party’s stomach for the fight. NCLAT can refer the waiver plea back to the tribunal only if it finds fault in the order passed by NCLT. It can also dismiss the appeal filed by the Mistry firms. If it does, the Mistry firms can go to the Supreme Court. If NCLAT finds merit in the appeal of Mistry firms, then NCLT would need to hear the main plea, lawyers said, pointing out that so far NCLT has not heard the main petition. J. N Gupta, managing director and co-founder at proxy advisory firm Stakeholders Empowerment Services, said it was highly unlikely that NCLAT will come up with a different interpretation of the law.“I don’t think NCLAT will have a different view. This being a high-profile case, the NCLT would have applied all its wisdom. Nobody writes an order that stands the risk of being overthrown,” said Gupta. Others agreed. “It will be challenging, since the waiver can be sought in compelling circumstances which are beyond ordinary (things), like on account of public interest. This appears to be a little tricky to prove for the Mistry camp,” said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at IC Legal.",NCLT also refused a waiver plea to Cyrus Mistry family firms for filing a petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons,02:35,Cyrus Mistry’s main NCLT petition against Tata Sons dismissed +2017-04-18,"
Mumbai: Till even six years back, R.S. Thakur, who was then the managing director and chief executive of Tata AutoComp Systems Ltd, harboured one niggling grouse. Despite having 18,000 employees, he was finding it increasingly difficult to get “employees to man certain positions that were slightly on the dangerous side”.To address the issue, he “did bounce the idea of making an industrial robot at a couple of board meetings”. The concept, Thakur explained, was to take away “dull, dangerous and monotonous work like welding, etc., from workers who could then concentrate on higher levels of productivity”. However, nothing firm materialized from those meetings.A couple of years passed by and, in 2013, Thakur retired from Tata AutoComp and became non-executive director and chairman of TAL Manufacturing Solutions Ltd, a subsidiary of Tata Motors Ltd. Yet, the thought of making an industrial robot lingered. “After all, it was a subject close to my heart,” Thakur said.In 2014, Amit Bhingurde joined TAL as its chief operations officer (COO). An industrial engineer who also served as president and CEO of Kuka Robotics India before joining TAL, Bhingurde gave shape to Thakur’s dream of manufacturing ‘BRABO’—the first “Made in India” industrial robot. “It was when Bhingurde joined that the actual development work on Brabo began,” Thakur acknowledged.BRABO—short for “Bravo Robot”—has been priced between Rs5 lakh and Rs7 lakh and can even be bought on equated monthly instalments, or EMIs. BRABO comes in two variants that can handle payloads of 2kg and 10kg, respectively.“As per ILO (International Labour Organization) standards, a human should not lift more than 10kg, hence the (maximum) payload for the robot was fixed at 10kg,” Thakur noted, adding that an industrial robot, which can handle a 10kg payload can replace 1-2 operators per shift with a payback of less than two years for a customer.Manufactured at the TAL’s Pune factory, the design of Brabo has been done in house at TAL, styling at Tata Elxsi, and manufacturing of some parts at Tata AutoComp, while Tata Capital provides the finance.Other than the motors and drives for the robo arm, which are sourced from Italy, “all the other parts of BRABO are manufactured in India”, according to Thakur who acknowledges that this “is a challenge we face right now because we don’t have enough good motor and drive manufacturers in India currently”. TAL currently has a strategic collaboration with RTA-Motion Control Systems of Italy to source the motors and drives.BRABO, insisted Thakur, isn’t just an industrial robot—it is the first Indian “conceptualized, designed and manufactured articulated industrial robot”, and is a “unique product” suited to Indian conditions. Articulated robots are those that are fitted with rotary joints, which allow a full range of precise movements and, thus, increase the capabilities of the robot. An articulated robot can have one or more rotary joints, depending on the design of the robot and its intended function.First showcased at the Make in India week in 2016, Brabo was developed by a team of six engineers “whose average age was 24 years”. Today, TAL has around 800 employees. “More than 20% of our team has students with an engineering background who came for a two-month training but have stayed back because of their passion and commitment. We plan to retain them,” Bhingurde said, adding that over the last three years, the development cost “has been very small for us, which is Rs10 crore as we had a small team of extremely passionate people”.BRABO, according to Thakur, is a result of “focused innovation”, and targeted primarily at micro, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), “while also remaining relevant to large manufacturing industries, who have appreciated the positive difference that these robots have made”. “We have 55 happy customers who have already begun using BRABO and have achieved some really great results,” Thakur said.BRABO, which according to Thakur is “30-40% cheaper than any international industrial robot with similar applications”, can be used for varied applications for tasks like pick and placement of materials, assembly of parts, machine and press tending, as a sealing application, and camera and vision-based jobs.“We have made BRABO so user-friendly that anyone without any previous robotics experience can effectively operate it. A majority of Indian MSMEs are yet to realize the advantages of using industrial robots. Our effort is to change the manufacturing ecosystem, where not only large but micro industries can upgrade their operations by deploying robots which would complement the people workforce. We are also committed to offering the most comprehensive on-site customer service at a very reasonable cost,” Thakur said.In a bid to provide the best “customer experience”, TAL plans to have a wide network of service engineers, supported by systems integrators “in practically every major industrial hub in India, to ensure service call response within a few hours”.Five to six months before the actual launch, TAL identified customers and started putting its robots in industries for testing. “Initially, we got an order for 25 robots and later, an order for 30 robots was made. In total, we have supplied around 55 till date—25 were sold and 30 were given on a six-month trial,” Thakur pointed out.TAL’s current customers include Tata Motors Ltd, Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, Larsen and Toubro Ltd, Diebold, CPG Industries, Hydromatik, SGK Industries and BITS Dubai Campus.It takes two days to train the supervisors and workers for programming, running and using it regularly.“Orders received will depend on how fast we deliver solutions to the customers and we are continuously increasing our engineering strength. We are looking at an order size of 500 robots for this year,” said Thakur, adding that the Pune factory has a production capacity of 3,000 units annually.It currently takes TAL about a month to deliver BRABO on the shop floor: about three weeks to manufacture the robot and 3-7 days to deliver it to the site. TAL says it is trying to cut this time to about 15 days.Training programmes for engineers are under way. TAL is also signing more system integrators who manufacture grippers and other parts of the robot. The next focus will be to have a longer arm for the robot. Currently, it is a five-axis, and TAL soon plans to introduce the robot with a six-axis. The firm is also looking at making robots for specific purposes such as welding, as the workforce available for this specific task is reducing given that welding is “dangerous and tiring”. “We should be able to launch robots for welding application by the end of this year,” Thakur said.TAL, according to Thakur, also plans to make significant investments in research and development (R&D) to regularly launch new products (higher payloads and longer reach) and address applications like welding, “for which we are on the lookout for a new partner”.TAL has also applied for an intellectual property (IP) certification for BRABO, “which will represent a degree of protection provided against the entry of foreign objects, especially water in the machine”.BRABO already has four patents in its name and a recently-acquired CE certification that will enable TAL to export BRABO to Europe and the US. However, according to Thakur, “India is a virgin market. Our aim is to populate it first.”The company has also set up a live demonstration centre for its customers at its Pune facility, where the robots perform multiple applications such as sorting with a vision system, press tending, gluing, sealing, machine tending and pick and place. BRABO’s primary focus is on sectors such as automotive, electronics, logistics, food, packaging and pharma.Thakur, of course, has no plans to make humanoids—robots seen in sci-fi movies that think, walk and behave like humans. “For now, our focus is to manufacture industrial robots.” He did admit, though, that in “one of my weaker moments”, he did give in to the temptation of catering to the request of one of our customers who owns a pub in Bandra, a Mumbai suburb.“The customer wanted a prototype for a robot that can pour liquor too. We submitted a plan for the same and the slogan at the pub will be: ‘Your drink untouched by human hands’.” Thakur, though, now has a problem on his hands: this customer now wants the same robot to play music at times when liquor is not being served.Thakur promises not to succumb to the temptation easily. “We have not worked on that as yet,” he says with a laugh. In the interim, as Thakur grapples with these temptations, he believes that BRABO will usher in a ‘Robolution’, similar to an Industrial Revolution 2.0—one that will potentially change the manufacturing scenario of our country.Industrial robots market to hit $79.58 bn in five years
The use of industrial robots, according to MarketsandMarkets Research Pvt. Ltd, is expected to grow exponentially in the future as they help cost reduction, improved quality, increased production, and improved workplace health and safety. The global industrial robotics market is expected to reach $79.58 billion by 2022, growing at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.92% between 2016 and 2022. The main growth drivers, according to the research firm, are the adoption of automation to ensure quality production and meet market demand, and the rising demand from small- and medium-scale enterprises in developing nations.Articulated robots held the major share of the market in 2015, and this market is expected to grow at the highest CAGR between 2016 and 2022. Owing to the structure and operational capabilities of articulated arm robots, they are widely used by various industrial applications in the automotive and electrical and electronics industry among others.The Asia Pacific market (APAC) is expected to grow at the highest CAGR between 2016 and 2022. The main drivers for this growth are the demand for collaborative industrial robots from small- and medium-scale enterprises in China, Japan, South Korea, and India as well as the growing investments in countries such as India to boost manufacturing under projects such as Make in India, according to the research firm.The major firms in this sector are ABB Ltd (Switzerland), KUKA AG (Germany), FANUC Corp. (Japan), Yaskawa Electric Corp. (Japan), and Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd (Japan), the research firm says.","BRABO, according to TAL Manufacturing Solutions, is the first Indian ‘conceptualized, designed and manufactured articulated industrial robot’",03:30,BRABO: How India got its first Made in India industrial robot +2017-04-18,"New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday directed the official liquidator of the Bombay high court to auction Aamby Valley City, Sahara Group’s flagship property in Maharashtra, to recover the money it owes investors.The apex court also directed Sahara India chief Subrata Roy to personally appear before the court at the next hearing in the case on 27 April. “Verify, make an evaluation and proceed with sale,” the court said in a directive to the official liquidator of the Bombay high court.Justices Dipak Misra, Ranjan Gogoi and A.K. Sikri directed the auction of Aamby Valley, located in Pune district, after Sahara failed to deposit Rs5,092.64 crore with the capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India. It owes the money to investors who purchased securities sold by two group companies through schemes that Sebi ruled were illegal.Aamby Valley is Sahara’s flagship project, consisting of luxury resorts, man-made lakes and an airport. It is spread over 4,000 hectares. In January 2012, Sahara valued the property at Rs34,000 crore.“The market valuation of Aamby Valley is over Rs1 lakh crore so auctioning under distress will be an undue benefit for any bidder,” Sahara said in a statement on Monday.“The property...would be saleable only if it is sold in... 50-100 acre parcels instead of trying to sell it to a single buyer,” said a top executive at a property advisory on condition of anonymity. Senior advocate Salman Khurshid, who appeared for Sahara, said the sale of three overseas hotels owned by Sahara Group—two in downtown New York and the plush Grosvenor House in London—will be finalized by 28 May.The court also imposed costs of Rs10 crore on MG Capital Holdings, a US-based real estate company that had moved the apex court seeking to buy Sahara’s stake in the overseas hotels. The US company failed to heed a previous court directive to deposit Rs750 crore as earnest money in Sebi’s dedicated Sahara account.In March 2014, Roy and two associates were placed under judicial custody after Sahara Group failed to comply with the court’s directions to refund investors. In May 2016, Roy and the two were granted parole by the court. This was extended to 17 April in February.Madhurima Nandy in Bengaluru contributed to this story.Sahara has filed a defamation case in a Patna court against Mint’s editor and some reporters over the newspaper’s coverage of the company’s dispute with the Securities and Exchange Board of India. Mint is contesting the case.","Supreme Court orders Aamby Valley auction after Sahara failed to deposit Rs5,092.64 crore with Sebi to secure Subrata Roy’s bail",02:35,"Supreme Court orders Aamby Valley auction, summons Subrata Roy" +2017-03-30,"New Delhi: Telecom gear maker Ericsson AB has signed an agreement with Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi to jointly work on a programme for 5G technology development in India.“Ericsson and the IIT Delhi have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly roll out a ‘5G for India’ programme,” Ericsson said in a statement. Under the agreement, Ericsson will set up a Centre of Excellence with a 5G test bed and incubation centre at IIT Delhi and use this facility to drive the development of the country’s 5G ecosystem. The first series of tests under this programme are due to begin in the second half of 2017 and will place India on par with other developed countries in terms of 5G network and application deployment. ALSO READ: Ericsson sees up to $1.7 billion in costs as revamp beginsGlobally, limited deployment and 5G trials are expected to start by mid-2018 while commercial availability is slated for 2020. “The 5G for India programme is a major step towards understanding the power of 5G technology and how it can help aid Digital India initiatives, including the development of smart cities. The programme will focus on delivering research, innovation and industrial pilots that use next-generation 5G networks as an enabler,” Ericsson’s head of region India Paolo Colella said. This programme has been conceptualised to fast-track realisation of Digital India initiatives and aid application development for Indian start-ups and industries, the statement said. In addition to hosting the Center of Excellence, IIT Delhi will conduct research and development to explore how some of the country’s challenges can be addressed with mobile technologies, it added. “IIT Delhi has been committed to developing the latest technologies in close collaboration with industry. We are glad to be hosting the Ericsson Centre of Excellence and Incubation Centre, providing a big leap forward for 5G technologies ecosystem development in the country,” IIT Delhi director Ramgopal Rao said.","Ericsson and IIT Delhi have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to jointly roll out a ‘5G for India’ programme, the company said in a statement",19:18,Ericsson partners IIT Delhi for 5G technology in India +2017-03-30,"
Defined as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programmes” by the late John McCarthy—one of the founding fathers of the discipline—Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has subtly made inroads into the daily lives of Indian citizens in the form of app-based cab aggregators and digital assistants on smartphones. However, public policy in India has not been able to take much advantage of AI applications, suggests a report published jointly by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) and consulting firm PwC. The report titled Artificial Intelligence and Robotics–2017 believes that national initiatives like Make in India, Skill India and Digital India could immensely benefit from AI technologies. Alternatively, early public sector interest in AI could trigger a spurt of activity in the AI field in India.AI, for instance, can be applied to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s initiatives such as the Digital India initiative, Skill India and Make in India; in large-scale public endeavours ranging from crop insurance schemes, tax fraud detection, and detecting subsidy leakage, and to helping hone the country’s defence strategy.AI, the report states, can also be consumed in traditional industries like agriculture. The department of agriculture cooperation and farmers welfare, ministry of agriculture runs the Kisan Call Centres across the country to respond to issues raised by farmers instantly and in their local language. An AI system could help in assisting the call centre by linking available information. It could pick up soil reports from government agencies and link them to the environmental conditions prevalent over the years using data from a remote sensing satellite. The call centre could, then, provide advice on the optimal crop that can be sown in that land pocket. This information could also be used to determine the crop’s susceptibility to pests. Necessary pre-emptive measures can then be taken—for instance, supplying the required pesticides to that land pocket as well as notifying farmers about the risk. With a high level of connectivity, this is a feasible and ready to deploy solution which uses AI as an augmentation to the system.An enabling infrastructureCompared to the West and front runners of AI adoption in Asia, such as China and South Korea, the culture and infrastructure needed to develop a base for the adoption of AI in mainstream applications in India is in need of an impetus, the report acknowledges.To begin with, Indian academics, researchers and entrepreneurs face a more acute challenge than companies in terms of the less-than-ideal infrastructure available for an AI revolution in India. For example, cloud computing infrastructure, which is capable of storing large amounts of data and facilitating the huge amount of computing power essential for AI applications, is largely located on servers abroad. Hence, an AI-supportive cultural environment will require homegrown infrastructure. India will also require ecosystem-fostering innovation. Fostering a culture of innovation and research beyond the organization is common to global technology giants. To encourage the same level of innovation in AI research efforts in India, initiatives to hold events and build user communities in the field of AI will go a long way, the report notes.The main dichotomy that the regulations will have to deal with relates to who will be liable for the activities of AI systems. These systems are designed to be creative and to continue learning from the data analysed. Hence, designers may not be able to understand how the system will work in the future. For instance, while the US is currently in the process of implementing laws concerning driverless vehicles, India still lags behind. Instead of waiting for technology to reach a level where regulatory intervention becomes necessary, India could be a front runner by establishing a legal infrastructure in advance, the report suggests.Issues of scaleDeep Learning, a part of AI, can be employed to tackle issues of scale often prevalent in the execution of government schemes, the PwC-Assocham report notes. It is essentially a process that can be used for pattern recognition, image analysis and natural language processing (NLP) by modelling high-level abstractions in data which can then be compared with various other recognized contents in a conceptual way rather than using just a rule-based method.The report cites the example of the Clean India initiative, directed towards the construction of toilets in rural India. Public servants are tasked with uploading images of these toilet constructions to a central server for sampling and assessment. Image processing AI, the PwC-Assocham report suggests, can be used to flag photographs that do not resemble completely built toilets. Image recognition capabilities can also be used to identify whether the same official appears in multiple images or if photos have been uploaded by officials from a location other than the intended site. Considering the scale of this initiative, which involves creating more functional toilets, being able to check every image rather than a small sample will actually help increase effectiveness.Ethical, legal and social implicationsLast but not the least, to reap the societal benefits of AI systems, we would need to be able to trust them and ensure that they comply with an ethical, moral and social framework analogous to that for humans, notes the PwC-Assocham report. It urges that research efforts must be concentrated on implementing regulations in AI system design that are updated on a continual basis to respond appropriately to different application fields and actual situations. The design philosophy must be such that it ensures security against external attacks, anomalies and cyberattacks, the PwC-Assochamreport insists, adding that policy initiatives should explicitly touch upon building an incubatory environment for AI-based research and training.",AI can be effectively used in a wide range of government initiatives,04:40,How India’s public policy can take maximum advantage of AI +2017-03-30,"
By 2025, the healthcare industry will face numerous challenges including an ageing population, government policy that will need to keep pace with this population, and making healthcare services and infrastructure more accessible to the masses. The technology-driven world that we find ourselves in has provided us with a great opportunity to incorporate technological tools into the delivery of healthcare. Specifically, Big Data, mobile and the Internet of Things (IoT) can support and facilitate the flow of information for effective care coordination and greater patient and citizen empowerment, according to the Healthcare in 2025 report by videoconferencing, telepresence and communications firm Polycom Inc.
Big Data has immense potential in healthcare, especially when it comes to the consolidation of data to allow for more efficient and effective decision-making. Data collection and utilization through cloud systems will allow better sample sizes for prescription models, access to patient information no matter the location where they seek treatment and better allocation of limited resources.
By 2020, IoT—which is “a scenario in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction”—will likely have 25 billion connected “things”, which includes more than 250 million connected vehicles, according to research firm Gartner.
An Accenture report stated that IoT could add $14.2 trillion to the world economy over the next 15 years. Many believe healthcare will be a prime beneficiary—wearable technology is often cited as one of the tools to support prevention and wellness in IoT, according to the Polycom report.
Mobile 3G and 4G connectivity has truly revolutionized personal connectivity. When mobile integrates with healthcare delivery, the problem of accessibility reduces significantly. Virtual consultations or having surgeons in urban areas assist those in rural areas with surgeries virtually would become more feasible options; touchsurgery.com is one such example, according to the report.
The potential is evident. However, the success of mobile will also depend on how governments shape healthcare policy and distribute funding, revamping the current incentive framework in many of the regions and core markets, and hiring technological experts as employees in healthcare organizations, the report notes.
As collaboration between multiple parties for the future healthcare business model is a critical requirement, having a scalable network and a robust unified communications environment is necessary. The ability to integrate voice, video, content, specific healthcare applications and medical devices to support better and more efficient collaboration among clinicians, healthcare educators, administrators, patients and families will result in better patient outcomes and reduced costs, as long as it’s simple to use and a familiar, consistent experience. The right technology environment should support multiple applications for economies of scale like care team collaboration and administration, medical education as well as telemedicine.",Technology-driven world that we find ourselves in has provided us with a great opportunity to incorporate technological tools into the delivery of healthcare,04:19,Can tech solve the healthcare challenges of 2025? +2017-03-30,"
New Delhi: Chances are, you are already visualizing a self-driving Uber dropping you home after you’ve had one drink too many at a party on a Friday night. With increasing connectivity on the move, integration with your smartphone and smartwatch, sensors and radars for assistance and safety features such as auto-braking and blind spot detection, that dream may soon come true.
“Self-driving vehicles are developing at a rapid pace and such technological advancements can help us reach our destination faster and safer. They will also help us reduce emissions and protect the environment,” said Violeta Bulc, a Slovenian entrepreneur and European Commissioner for Transport, while announcing the European Union’s initiatives around smart and green mobility in 2016.
Chipmaker Intel Corp. is focusing on data, telematics and hardware for smart cars, and is already powering infotainment systems in cars made by Hyundai Motor Co., Kia Motors Corp. and Infiniti Motor Co. Ltd.
“Cars are rapidly becoming some of the world’s most intelligent connected devices, using sensor technology and powerful processors to sense and continuously respond to their surroundings,” said Brian Krzanich, CEO, Intel, ahead of the Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference in July 2016.
Smartphones driving smart car evolution
Smartphones are the very foundation of this change. Research firm Gartner Inc. forecasts that by the year 2020, more than 250 million cars will have Internet access. “Cars are increasingly taking place of a second home and we believe that customers are progressing rapidly,” says Guillaume Sicard, president, Nissan India operations. It is no surprise that tech giants Apple Inc. and Google Inc. are investing heavily in the CarPlay and Android Auto platforms, respectively.
By connecting your smartphone to the car infotainment system and with voice commands, you can make and receive calls, have messages read out to you, and get access to your music library and navigation.
Maruti Suzuki India Ltd was among the first carmakers in India to offer the Apple CarPlay feature, in cars including the Ciaz sedan and the Baleno hatchback. “The major risk associated with Apple CarPlay was the acceptability of the feature by Indian car consumers. However, the initial response has been very encouraging and consumers are valuing this feature a lot,” says C.V. Raman, executive director, engineering, Maruti Suzuki.
But Maruti Suzuki wasn’t really the first mover in India. American carmaker Ford Motor Co. had developed smart in-car systems, along with BlackBerry Ltd and Microsoft Corp. much earlier and the Indian market got its first taste of the Sync platform in 2013 in the EcoSport crossover, which featured voice commands to control phone and music, and emergency assistance which, in the case of an accident, activates the airbags, shuts off the fuel pump and makes a distress call to the helpline number. Sync has since been updated, and now supports third-party apps as well. Indian carmaker Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd allows users of the XUV500, TUV300, TUV100 and Scorpio vehicles to connect to their car using a free app called Blue Sense (Android and iOS), and users can control the air-conditioning and audio functions, and also monitor real-time vehicle information, including tyre pressure, fuel economy and more.
Assisting the driver
Smartness is not just about the smartphone and Internet-driven features for your car. “Globally, we are investing in autonomous drive, electric vehicles, and connected mobility solutions, three forces which are going to change our industry, and our world,” says Nissan India’s Sicard. One of the primary tenets of this smartness is to assist the driver, making the sometimes perilous activity of driving simpler and safer through advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). These include radar-based adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning and autonomous emergency braking.
Car buyers in India are still behind the curve when it comes to the newer technology. Regulations, economics and prevailing infrastructure dictate what car makers can and cannot do in India. Ford Motor, in the US for example, sells the Escape SUV ($23,600 onwards; Rs15.8 lakh approx.) with technology that can alert the driver in case of an unintentional lane drift, if there is another vehicle in your blind spot zone and also auto-manoeuvre you in and out of a tight parking spot. The new Endeavour SUV in India (Rs23.78 lakh onwards) offers only the semi-auto parking assist feature at present. Unfortunately, unique conditions dictate the relevance of some of these features. Says Maruti Suzuki’s Raman, “Bumper-to-bumper traffic is very common in metros, driving habits are a little unusual and there can be abrupt intervention by pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes or even cars and there are infrastructure concerns for detecting unregulated overhanging hoardings, signs on roads and the radar’s own field of vision.”
However, things are slowly changing. “The government’s opening up of radar frequency earlier this year shall see more such features in cars. This is just a start and a step-by-step approach needs to be taken for a long-term benefit,” says Tom von Bonsdorff, managing director, Volvo Auto India. The company’s S90 luxury sedan has semi-autonomous features, which includes Lane Keeping Aid—there is a digital camera in the car which keeps an eye on the lane markers and if the driver does not provide steering input to correct a drift, the steering automatically corrects itself to keep the car within the lane.
The government, on its part, is making basic safety features mandatory in all cars from October 2017. Carmakers will have to provide airbags, vehicle reverse sensors, speed-warning systems and seatbelt reminder systems as standard features from October 2017, according to a draft notification issued on 9 November by the ministry of road transport and highways.
Me time
Self-driving and semi-autonomous cars, just as ADAS features, rely on multiple radars, LIDAR (laser imaging detection and ranging), various sensors, smart algorithms and powerful processors to find their way from point A to point B. The processing speeds are already mind-numbingly fast, with no room for even the slightest error.
The prospect of a self-driven Uber taking you to office every day is a reality that is being constructed rapidly. “It’s still very early. Self-driving Ubers have a safety driver in the front seat because they require human intervention in many conditions, including bad weather. In many cities these will be very hard problems to solve, so there will be some time before we see this technology everywhere,” said an Uber spokesperson.
The company’s self-driving car trials in Pittsburgh, US, involve automaker Volvo. An autonomous vehicle software start-up, nuTonomy, is testing self-driving taxis in Singapore. It started off with six cars, and the fleet is soon expected to double. Moreover, by the year 2020, almost all major car makers, including Audi AG, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, Daimler AG, Ford, General Motors Co., Kia, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd, Renault SA, Tesla Inc. and Toyota Motor Corp., are likely to be selling vehicles that can at least partly drive themselves.
To ensure that autonomous vehicles have a smooth ride, the vehicle-to-vehicle as well as vehicle-to-infrastructure communication with smart road networks, roadside sensors and smart signal systems will prove critical . For example, such infrastructure has allowed Google to do driverless car tests in the US, Volvo in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Volkswagen AG in Braunschweig, Germany. Bonsdorff concludes: “One important factor is to create and develop laws and traffic regulations on self-drive. Till now, India does not have these. Also, car insurance companies need to include driverless cars into their coverage.” India’s policy makers will do well to listen to this.","With increasing connectivity, smartphone integration, sensors and radars for assistance, auto-braking and blind spot detection becoming the norm these days, it seems safe self-driving cars will become a reality soon",04:06,Smart cars: changing lanes +2017-03-30,"
New Delhi: Innovation may not be the forte of every entrepreneur, but everyone must understand its importance and build an ecosystem around it.
“The purpose should never be that everyone must become an innovator at the end of the day, but everyone must understand the ecosystem around their business and try to build something out of it,” said Gourav Jaswal, founder and director, Prototyze, an incubator that claims to turn ideas into businesses.
Speaking at EmTech India 2017, the Mint-MIT Technology Review conference on emerging technology in New Delhi 9-10 March, Jaswal said Prototyze is working in that direction.
“I thought at some point that it would be a great idea to set up an incubator, which is what Prototyze is all about,” Jaswal said.
“We invest and venture out into several start-ups and build their business models,” he added.
Based in Goa, Prototyze has incubated nine companies belonging to sectors as varied as automobiles and fintech.
Jaswal said that in the long run, entrepreneurs who can manage the risks associated with their business models and learn from their experiences will be ones who will be successful.
According to Jaswal, a genius is someone who can “replicate an existing, successful model with excellence”.","Every entrepreneur must understand the importance of innovation and build an ecosystem around it, says Gourav Jaswal, founder and director, Prototyze",03:50,How to foster a culture of innovation +2017-03-30,"
In the world we live in, some technologies are advancing at a breakneck pace, or exponentially. This means that capabilities are doubling or more with every step, often at the same or reduced cost, leading to digitization, democratization and disruption.This has been most evident with Moore’s law in semiconductors (with the transistor density on silicon doubling every 18 months) over two decades, which led to miniaturization and cost efficiencies for electronics. But, it is not limited to this. We have seen similar trends in wireless spectral efficiency and bandwidth doubling every 30 months (Cooper’s law) and an exponential trend in the scale and cost of data storage media like hard drives (Kryder’s law). Swanson’s law talks about a 20% drop in price of solar photovoltaic modules for every doubling of cumulative shipped volume.These examples are all around us. However, the impact and speed of change is probably most visible in what we carry around daily in our pockets and purses—our smartphones. They enable us to routinely do things that even just a few years ago required a completely different approach. Think of how many more pictures you take and how quickly you share them with others.Think of WhatsApp, Facebook, Ola/Uber, Amazon/Flipkart, Paytm or BookMyShow. These technologies not only digitize and democratize services and products, but also (sometimes in a matter of months) disrupt established industries that have stood for decades. Exponential technologies can be deceptive.They don’t seem like they have the power to disrupt—until they do. Artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, machine learning, networks and computing, biotechnology, additive manufacturing, genetic sequencing, nanotechnology and others are all advancing exponentially. In fact, if trends continue at this pace, then by 2025, (as per a McKinsey 2013 study) we will have 150x storage density, 22x solar panels, 27x industrial robots and 95x 3D printers. What does this mean for the world we live in?Consider a few examples:The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of our planet is so vast that in one year it is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from all of the earth’s non-renewable resources of coal, oil and natural gas combined. Will exponential improvements in our ability to capture, store, distribute and utilize solar energy make energy so abundant that it is non-limiting and “free”? What does “free energy” do for the availability of clean water through technologies like desalination? What does unlimited energy and clean water do for the availability of food around the world?How will advances in robotics, AI and machine learning change the way we design, manufacture and service the world’s infrastructure? What will digitization of product development, additive manufacturing and augmented reality do to the age-old established processes of product design, manufacturing, distribution and service? Will factories and shop floors ever look the same again?What happens when self-driving (autonomous) vehicles give back 20-30% productivity to hundreds of millions of people who commute to work every day? Would you own a car if you can buy a ride in any kind of car you want at any time, depending on what you want to do while it’s driving you…work, relax, socialize, travel with family, etc.? What does this, in turn, do to the automobile industry, car financing, insurance and even real estate (where would you choose to live if the duration of your commute mattered less, since you are productive throughout). Interactive virtual and augmented reality can be a game-changer in safety, productivity, and the way people learn and interact. Today we already have “teleportation” technology (suitabletech.com/) that uses sight, sound and movement to “beam” people into other locations using a robotic interface and a high-fidelity sound and visual display. That’s three of the five capabilities we use when we interact with others in person! Last year, I “met” a person who attended a conference remotely using this technology and was moving from one session to the next, asking questions and interacting with others...all while sitting at his desk, hundreds of kilometres away. What does this do to the demand for air travel if it continues to get better over the coming years? What is good enough?“Point of care” technologies have helped significantly reduce the cost and increase the speed of medical diagnostic testing compared with healthcare facilities. Home blood sugar monitors, portable ECG devices, easily accessible genotyping capability are all examples of such technology advancements. Surgical implants and human tissue are already being 3D printed. The confluence of medical technologies and informatics can be a big disruptor: what do AI and deep learning do to medicine when it becomes possible to integrate large amounts of demographic, historical, pathology, imaging, genomic and disease information to develop insights into diagnosis and most effective treatment? What does that mean for the healthcare industry? My intent in sharing these examples—and this is just a sampling of the possibilities— is not to instill fear but rather to inspire curiosity. I hope they excite you about the potential of these exponential technologies, and stress the value of being aware of and watching their trajectories closely. It is important to be proactive and intentionally develop an offensive or defensive position that you believe in. Be an early adopter, disruptor, avid watcher, investor, experimenter, enthusiast, active cynic, disprover—anything but a victim—and most importantly, do it in advance of being forced. The trick is to identify which of these trends are the most relevant to you and do that two to three cycles ahead of when they actually become good enough to unseat the “old way”. At GE, we work on tough stuff—solving problems in energy, healthcare, water and transportation for people and countries around the world. It is both hard and rewarding. It requires years, decades of domain expertise and may sometimes make us feel that we are somewhat protected or insulated from this scale of exponential disruption. Not true. Some time ago, along with a group of colleagues, I had a stimulating discussion on potential ways to identify these disruptors. We are now mapping ecosystems to help us see these disruptions…for example in the energy space we call it “dinosaurs to dining tables”, i.e. the BTU (British thermal unit—traditional unit of heat) flow and revenue/profit flow across the entire spectrum from fossil fuel exploration to consumer consumption. We are embracing and experimenting with several of these technologies in our labs and building use cases to see the possibilities in our domains. These teams are horizontal in their capabilities but with focused missions—balancing domain experts with lateral thinkers. And a couple of our key learnings: the big disruptions happen at the intersection of multiple exponential trends.And leadership matters—breakthroughs come from empowering teams to suspend disbelief, question the sacred cows and not be afraid to unlearn.Does all this sound like science fiction, or are we seeing the future? No matter where you stand, one thing is for sure…we’re in for the ride of our lives. The question is, are we laying the tracks ahead of us or is someone else?Munesh Makhija is chairman and managing director of GE India Technology Center, and CTO, GE South Asia.","The pace at which technology is advancing is resulting in doubling of capabilities, often at the same or reduced cost, paving the way for digitization, democratization and disruption",03:52,Seeing the future: Exploring exponential technology +2017-03-30,"
New Delhi: For the Mahindra Group, the key to digital transformation lies in the use of technology in moving away from legacy models to create new ones.“We have come a long way from the traditional legacy model of Mahindra or that of any established firm... Our current focus is directed towards expanding businesses into rural areas,” said Jaspreet Bindra, senior vice-president, digital transformation, Mahindra Group. Speaking at EmTech India 2017, the Mint-MIT Technology Review Conference on technology innovations, Bindra said digital transformation is not just about creating an app or a website but about creating business models and customer experiences. He further stressed on effective use of technology wherever it is appropriate to foster innovation. “We have used blockchain— one of the newest technologies—in our financial services sector and it has impacted our businesses positively,” Bindra added.As a $17-billion conglomerate with businesses in various sectors and geographies, he said it is the group’s belief that as each sector evolves due to innovation, the impact is felt on all businesses associated with it.Citing an example, he said there is a lot of innovation happening in the agriculture sector and a lot of data about weather conditions and crop patterns gets generated and captured by technology systems. “Therefore, how we target farmers is also changing in tune with the shifts in technology,” he added.The Mahindra Group is incubating start-ups in areas such as financial technology to facilitate digital transformation.","Speaking at EmTech India 2017, Jaspreet Bindra of Mahindra Group says group’s current focus is directed towards expanding businesses into rural areas ",03:48,Digital transformation is about creating business models: Jaspreet Bindra +2017-04-18,"
Private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) investments in India increased 13% to $5 billion in the quarter ended 31 March, Bain & Co. said in a report released last week.Investments rose in the first quarter of 2017 from a year earlier despite a 33% drop in the number of transactions during the period. PE investments stood at $4.4 billion in the year-earlier period.A few large deals contributed disproportionately to overall deal value. The top 15 transactions accounted for about 76% of total deal value in the March quarter from just about 50% in the year-earlier period.Some of the major deals in the quarter included Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) and Caisse de Depot Quebec (CDPQ) buying a 1.5% stake in Kotak Mahindra Bank from Uday Kotak for Rs2,254 crore; Bharti Airtel Ltd selling a 10.3% stake in its tower unit for about Rs6,193.9 crore to a consortium of investors that included KKR & Co. and CPPIB; Apax Partners selling about a 48% stake in GlobalLogic Inc. to CPPIB, among others.The consumer technology sector saw a 21% drop in terms of deal value and a 27.4% decline in terms of deal volume in the first quarter of 2017 from a year earlier.There was, however, a significant increase in large deals (more than $50 million) across key sectors including telecom, consumer technology, financial services and logistics. Besides, the average transaction size rose 69% to $32 million from a year earlier, while deals worth less than $10 million comprised 66% of total activity in the quarter.The number of investor exits rose 26% to 48 in the March quarter from a year earlier. However, the total transaction value of exits dropped 4% to $2.6 billion in the quarter.Consumer tech, real estate and BFSI (banking, insurance and financial services) were key sectors that witnessed exits during the period. Strategic sales were the preferred exit mode and the top 10 exits contributed about 80% of total value. “The first quarter of 2017 saw a strong momentum of exits in line with the trend we saw in 2016. Consumer Tech and Internet world is witnessing consolidation.” said Madhur Singhal, partner at Bain & Co.",Rise in PE and VC Investments in March quarter comes despite a 33% drop in the number of transactions from a year earlier,00:07,"PE, VC investments up 13% in March quarter: report" +2017-04-18,"The Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) on Monday cleared a proposal by Ahmedabad-based Claris Lifesciences Ltd to sell its global generic injectables business to US-based Baxter International Inc. for Rs4,020 crore ($625 million), a finance ministry official said on condition of anonymity.Claris said in December last year that it intends to share a significant majority of net cash proceeds from the sale, post expenses and taxes, with shareholders.Claris operated the global generic injectables business through several wholly-owned subsidiaries. It has a total of 40 abbreviated new drug applications filed with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), of which 16 have been approved, the firm said in a statement. The company markets its products in more than 75 countries.The injectables business has also been one of the fastest growing for Claris, expanding in double digits annually over the last several years driven by new product launches and geographic expansion.There have been a couple of other big deals in this space. In 2013, Strides Arcolab Ltd sold its injectables unit, Agila Specialties, to US-based Mylan Inc. for $1.6 billion. In July last year, Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical (Group) Co. Ltd said it will acquire India’s Gland Pharma Ltd, an injectables specialist, for $1.3 billion (Rs8,700 crore).With the addition of Claris’s portfolio, Baxter plans to launch seven to nine new products annually over the next few years and 10-15 per year beyond 2019.","Claris Lifesciences has a total of 40 abbreviated new drug applications filed with the US FDA, of which 16 have been approved",00:36,FIPB clears Claris Lifesciences’ bid to sell global generic injectables +2017-04-17,"New Delhi: Commuters in Delhi-NCR may find it hard to hire taxis on tuesday as the drivers of two app- based cab aggregators Ola and Uber have threatened to go on strike for a day against “low fares”. This is the second such strike called by the drivers. They had gone on strike in February too, which had lasted 13 days, causing inconvenience to commuters in Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Faridabad. The strike might hit private transport services in Delhi and neighbouring cities as some groups of tourist taxi providers, autorickshaw unions, according to the Sarvodaya Drivers’ Association, have extended their support to it. The Association, which claims to represent around 1.25 lakh app-based taxis in the the Delhi-NCR, is demanding that fares be increased from existing Rs6 per km to around 20 per km. It is also demanding the abolition of 25% commission the drivers are charged by companies. Ravi Rathore, vice-president of the Sarvodaya Drivers’ Association, said drivers will take out a protest march against the Delhi government which, he alleged, is not intervening to resolve the issue. “The protest march will be taken out from Majnu-ka-Tila to the CM’s residence in North Delhi’s Civil Lines area. There is anger among drivers that government is not intervening in raising their issues with Ola and Uber,” Rathore said. He said the association has called for the one-day strike in favour of the demands and if companies and government do not pay heed, they will go on an indefinite strike. According to the association, the app-based cab companies made “tall promises” to drivers—like they would earn as much as Rs1.5 lakh every month. “But the situation is different. They are making us run taxis at Rs6 per km while they charge 25% from us,” Rathore also said.Also Read: Delhi high court stops taxi driver unions from disrupting Ola, Uber services Contrary to the association’s claim that most autorickshaw and tourists associations have decided to lend their support to the strike, Delhi Autorickshaw Sangh and Delhi Pradesh Taxi Union (yellow-black taxis) said they will not participate in it. “We will not support the strike in Delhi,” Rajendra Soni, general secretary of both the associations, said. Earlier in the day, the Delhi high court restrained two taxi drivers’ unions—the Sarvodaya Driver Association of Delhi (SDAD) and the Rajdhani Tourist Drivers’ Union—from disrupting services of cabs run by Ola and Uber in the national capital region. Welcoming the court order, Uber in a statement said it hopes it will enable drivers to stay behind the wheel, without fear or harassment. “We are hopeful that the order will be effectively enforced and that action is taken against any person who attempts to block cars, confiscate devices or harass riders and drivers and that the safety of everyone using the Uber App in Delhi is ensured. “We are committed to keeping Delhi moving and ensuring a reliable experience for riders and drivers,” Uber said.","Some groups of tourist taxi providers and autorickshaw unions are backing the strike by the Ola and Uber drivers, says Sarvodaya Drivers’ Association",21:08,"Ola, Uber drivers in Delhi NCR may go on strike tomorrow" +2017-04-17,"Mumbai/New Delhi: Deutsche Lufthansa AG said starting a domestic airline in India, the world’s fastest growing aviation market, will be a “misadventure” because of high jet fuel taxes and the cost of operations.Lufthansa’s comments come weeks after Qatar Airways Ltd said it plans to start an airline in India with as many as 100 planes, as the Gulf carrier looks for a bigger share of a market projected to sell half a billion domestic tickets in a decade. Singapore Airlines Ltd, Etihad Airways PJSC and AirAsia Bhd. have also bought stakes in local carriers buoyed by an emerging middle-class flying for the first time.“You only go make business when you have business plans which give you hope that you can be very successful,” said Wolfgang Will, a senior director for South Asia at Lufthansa, “And I did not hear up to now of any domestic airline in India making a lot of profit.”Lufthansa has a history of running an Indian airline. It was part of a partnership that ran ModiLuft, which was grounded in 1996 after disputes over payments with the German carrier, creditors, oil companies and the Airports Authority of India. The airline’s permit was later used by two entrepreneurs to start SpiceJet Ltd, now India’s second-largest budget carrier.Lured by an expanding market, more airlines are coming up in India. At least 43 businesses have applied to Indian regulators in the past two years to start some form of passenger air transport service in what’s projected to be the world’s third-biggest aviation market by 2020 and the largest by 2030. The increase in local traffic—estimated to reach half a billion in a decade—has outpaced all other markets for 23 straight months.Fuel costsStill, the nation is home to some of the world’s costliest jet fuel, mainly due to provincial taxes of as much as 30% and cut-throat competition that forces airlines to sell tickets below cost. Aviation turbine fuel in India costs 70% more than it does abroad, and has led to the shuttering of as many as 17 airlines in the past two decades, according to a research paper by KPMG and The Associated Chambers of Commerce of India.Indian carriers lost money every single year for a decade before posting a combined profit of $122 million in the year ended March 2016, helped by a crash in oil prices, according to Sydney-based CAPA Centre for Aviation. The industry is set to report losses of as much as $750 million in the two years ending March 2018, according to CAPA estimates. Bloomberg",Lufthansa’s comments come weeks after Qatar Airways Ltd said it plans to start an airline in India with as many as 100 planes,19:24,Lufthansa says starting local airline in India a ‘misadventure’ +2017-04-17,"Mumbai: Jet Airways Monday said it has expanded its codeshare agreement with Virgin Atlantic between India and the US.Starting 19 April, flyers can combine flights from Jet Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Delta Air Lines in a single booking. Jet Airways passengers travelling between India and the US can connect through London Heathrow on to nine US destinations operated by Virgin Atlantic; Atlanta, Boston, Newark, Washington (IAD), New York, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco and Seattle.Codeshare for the Seattle airport opens for travel effective 1 May 2017.There is an existing agreement between Jet Airways and Virgin Atlantic in place since 2009—enabling Virgin Atlantic passengers to travel on Jet Airways operated services between Mumbai and London Heathrow in addition to its own direct Delhi to London service. In 2015, this codeshare was extended to Jet Airways domestic services allowing Virgin Atlantic guests to travel between London Heathrow and five destinations across India via Delhi or Mumbai.Gaurang Shetty, whole-time director, Jet Airways, said the new codeshares build on the success of Jet’s ongoing cooperation with Delta Air Lines and Virgin Atlantic over London Heathrow and provide its passengers with more connectivity to and within the US. In October, Delta Air Lines and Jet Airways announced a codeshare cooperation between India and US over London Heathrow, where Delta guests flying between North America and India can connect on flights operated by Jet Airways to 20 destinations within India.",Jet Airways passengers travelling between India and the US can connect through London Heathrow on to nine US destinations operated by Virgin Atlantic,19:31,Jet Airways and Virgin Atlantic expand codeshare agreement +2017-04-21,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,10:27,Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.","The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said",22:12,Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +2017-04-19,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.","India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending",05:21,A short history of extradition from UK to India +2017-04-19,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +2017-04-19,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,05:18,"Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-03-30,"
Design thinking is an area which calls for a lot of research, said G.V. Sreekumar, head of Industrial Design Centre (IDC), School of Design at IIT Bombay. He defines it as “creative strategies that designers utilize during the process of designing”.
At EmTech India 2017, Sreekumar said, “Designing is a conscious and intuitive effort to impose order with a clear goal. Design thinking is also an approach that can be used to consider issues and find solutions for professional commitments, business and social issues.”
Emphasizing the importance of creativity and aesthetic brilliance in design thinking—which set a designer apart from an engineer—he said, “An industry designer will have to be an expert about the manufacturing processes involved, the raw materials required, the context of the product being manufactured, along with creativity and aesthetic brilliance.”
According to him, design thinking is a method of meeting people’s needs and desires in a technologically feasible and strategically viable way. “The study of the product has to be done in detail, i.e., the context of the product launch and the kind of solution that the company is looking at—articulation of all the desired qualities or parameters of the final product is a very important step in the designing process. The form of the product emerges from the articulation and the knowledge of the product,” he said, explaining the methodology and steps involved in designing a product.
Sreekumar is of the view that the relatively new concept of design thinking is a form of solution-based thinking, with the intent of producing something constructive.","G.V. Sreekumar, head of Industrial Design Centre, School of Design at IIT Bombay, can be used to consider issues and find solutions for professional commitments, business and social issues",03:44,EmTech India 2017: Why India needs design thinking +2017-03-30,"
New Delhi: EmTech, an emerging technology conference organized by Mint and MIT Technology Review in Delhi on 9-10 March, saw presentations and demonstrations of some cutting-edge technologies that are set to change the way manufacturing is done in India, how automation in logistics will impact businesses and how people will communicate or travel in future.
One such company that made a presentation at the event is Imaginate Technologies, which operates in the domain of mixed reality—an amalgamation of virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR). Hemanth Satyanarayana, the chief executive of Imaginate, had the audience watch in wonder as he gave a live demonstration of what it is like to interact with a given environment through AR.
The demonstration was set up so that the audience saw on the large screen what Satyanarayana saw on his AR headset: he could interact with the hologram of a virtual machine or any other object he wanted to place, watch videos, and even interact with the “avatar” of his colleague, who too wore a headset and connected with Satyanarayana from the hall next door.
The demonstration provided not only a sneak peek into how people would interact or “virtually teleport” in the future but also how they would conduct businesses.
Financial company MetLife, for instance, is using Imaginate’s technology to offer a virtual customer experience wherein customers can talk to an avatar of a customer service agent, Satyanarayana said.
He pointed out two major limitations to mixed reality. “Two big bottlenecks would be availability of good content (of objects and people to create holograms, which is integral to experiencing AR and VR) and the fact that while Imaginate’s technology is compatible with all kinds of headsets, not many people have an AR/VR headset yet,” he said.
Another technology that has gained momentum in the past decade is three-dimensional (3D) printing. “3D printing has cut across industries--be it healthcare, fashion, packaging for FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) companies, architecture, automotive or aerospace,” said Guruprasad Rao, director and mentor-leadership team, Imaginarium.
He added that 3D printing is a green technology: it is faster, efficient, produces less scrap (waste) and uses less energy than conventional manufacturing.
The Mumbai-based company, which initially started 3D printing of jewellery, has over the years entered healthcare and many other industry segments.
Among others that made presentations at EmTech were GreyOrange, which deploys robots in the warehouses of e-commerce logistics firms as well as those of many FMCG companies for making their supply chains faster, and Boltt, which is building an artificial intelligence-based health assistant to improve lifestyles.
And then there was Team Indus, part of Bengaluru-based aerospace start-up Axiom Research Labs, which is in contention to send a spacecraft to the moon as part of the Google Lunar X Prize. It plans to do so on 28 December this year. “We are trying to build a spacecraft that can soft-land on the moon,” Rahul Narayan, one of the co-founders of Team Indus, told the audience at EmTech. The company is building a nine-foot craft that can carry up to 25kg of weight on a journey of over 400,000km.
“With the aim to land on the Mare Imbrium crater of the moon—a crater as big as Europe—we plan to make two orbits around the Earth and four rounds of the moon,” he said.
In order to engage India at large, the organization plans to launch several campaigns, including competitions for engaging students in rural India and creating awareness about Team Indus through a bus dubbed Moonshot Wheels.","Hemanth Satyanarayana, Imaginate CEO, demonstrated at EmTech organized by Mint and MIT Technology Review what it is like to interact with a given environment via augmented reality ",03:46,"Augmented reality, 3D printing and a shot at the moon" +2017-03-30,"
New Delhi: Companies can derive value from big data by effectively managing customer relationships and safeguarding their trust, said John Rose, senior partner and managing director, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), New York, at EmTech India 2017, a conference on emerging technologies organized by Mint and MIT Technology Review in New Delhi on 9-10 March.
Addressing the event, Rose said, “Half or more customers do not trust the companies or entities they bank or shop with, in the context of their personal data.”
Rose, who is the former global leader of technology, media and telecommunications practice at BCG and became a BCG Fellow in 2014, has been working on helping companies foster trust among their consumers in order to gain access to—and unlock value from—the ever-widening stream of complex, fast-moving Big Data that is generated online.
His presentation at EmTech focused on how customer trust matters in Big Data and how the misuse or perceived misuse of customer data can lead to financial and reputational damage for brands.
“Trust is not a generational issue; it is important for consumers of all ages,” said Rose.
According to a study he cited, the lack of alignment between companies and consumers about data privacy has real consequences. When consumers perceive data misuse—when they are unpleasantly surprised by the collection or new use of personal data—they either reduce their spending drastically or boycott a company’s products and services altogether, the study noted.
“There is around 33% drop in spending during the first year when US consumers perceive a data misuse. Out of the 33% customers, 18% totally stop spending whereas the remaining 15% reduce spending,” he cited from his findings.
Explaining the consumers’ perspective on privacy and data usage, Rose said, “Consumers take a wider and much less legalistic approach to these issues.”
“They want to be informed about how companies gather and safeguard data about them, and they want to understand the different ways in which companies use personal data. Additionally, they want that information delivered in clear language,” she added.","Companies can derive value from big data by effectively managing customer relationships and safeguarding their trust, says John Rose of the BCG",03:42,EmTech India: Unlocking value from Big Data +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: Cement maker ACC Ltd on Friday reported an 8.9% fall in net profit for the quarter ended 31 March, hurt in part by higher costs. Consolidated net profit for the quarter fell to Rs211.06 crore from Rs231.70 crore a year earlier. Consolidated sales in the quarter rose 9.1% to Rs3,556.70 crore from Rs3,259.95 crore a year earlier. The company follows a January-December financial year.The results, however, beat analyst estimates, helped by higher sales. Four analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected ACC to report consolidated net profit of Rs166.4 crore on sales of Rs3152.5 crore. Revenue in its largest cement business rose 9.3% to Rs3,401.27 crore, helped in part by a price hike, while those in its ready-mix concrete business rose about 10% to Rs285 crore. During the quarter, the company launched two cement products ACC Suraksha and ACC HPC (high performance cement). The company said its total expenses during the March-ended quarter rose 11.8% to Rs3,404.41 crore. Increased government spending on infrastructure development, housing, roads, railways, and irrigation is likely to boost cement demand in the rest of 2017, ACC said in a statement.Separately, ACC said it has appointed Surendra Mehta as company secretary and head of compliance with immediate effect. ACC’s shares closed down 1.03% to Rs1,496.75 a share on the BSE on Friday.","ACC’s net profit for the quarter fell to Rs211.06 crore from Rs231.70 crore a year earlier while its sales in the quarter rose 9.1% to Rs3,556.70 crore from Rs3,259.95 crore a year earlier",21:57,ACC profit falls 8.9% but sales beat estimates +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company on Friday reported an increase of 38.3% in net profit at Rs 701.9 crore for the fiscal ended March 2017. The company’s net profit in the preceding fiscal 2015-16 stood at Rs507.5 crore. The gross domestic premium income of the company rose by 32.6% to Rs 10,725.90 crore, a company statement said. “The robust performance was delivered on the back of increase in policies serviced at 1.77 crore in 2016-17 compared to 1.58 crore policies in 2015-16,” it said. “As we progress through the year, we shall...further expand our insurance solutions proposition as well as enhance our customer service and claim leadership stature backed by innovative technology,” ICICI Lombard, MD and CEO, Bhargav Dasgupta said. ICICI Lombard GIC Ltd is a joint venture between country’s largest private lender ICICI Bank and Canada-based Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited. The general insurance subsidiary of the bank is a non- listed entity though the life insurance joint venture— ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Co—is a listed firm. Shares of ICICI Bank closed 1.34% down at Rs 269.15 apiece on BSE today.",ICICI Lombard’s net profit in the 2015-16 fiscal stood at Rs507.5 crore,16:36,ICICI Lombard net profit grows 38% to Rs 702 crore in fiscal 2017 +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: Rating agency Crisil has reported a muted net profit at Rs 73.34 crore for the March quarter, largely due to adverse forex movement and subdued growth in the mid-corporate and MSME segments. Its March 2016 net profit stood at Rs 73.15 crore. Net was impacted by Rs 11.9 crore due to adverse forex movement against a gain of Rs 3.31 crore in the year-ago period. Its consolidated income grew 12% to Rs 402.23 crore, the company said in a statement. “Growth for the quarter was driven by our research segment on account of opportunities in risk & analytics such as model validation, stress testing and regulatory change management,” the company said, adding the ratings business witnessed modest growth despite a continued weak investment climate and soft credit growth.",Rating agency Crisil has reported a muted net profit in March quarter at Rs 73.34 crore while its March 2016 net profit stood at Rs73.15 crore,17:09,Crisil Q4 profit stays flat at Rs 73 crore +2017-04-20,"Bengaluru: India’s biggest zinc miner Hindustan Zinc Ltd posted a 42% jump in fourth-quarter net profit on Thursday, topping street estimates, helped by higher income from zinc production and an increase in metal prices.Net profit rose to Rs3,057 crore for the January-March quarter from Rs2,147 crore a year earlier. The profit growth is the biggest in at least nine quarters. Analysts on average had expected a net profit of Rs2,852 crore, according to Thomson Reuters data.Total income rose 72.4% to Rs7,237 crore. The LME zinc prices have risen about 53 percent from March-end 2016 to March-end 2017.Income from zinc operations rose over two fold to Rs5160 crore, said the company, which is a subsidiary of billionaire Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Ltd. The Indian government has a 29.5% stake in Hindustan Zinc.Hindustan Zinc shares rose as much as 5.5% after the results.","Hindustan Zinc’s fourth quarter net profit rose to Rs3,057 crore from Rs2,147 crore a year earlier",16:54,"Hindustan Zinc Q4 profit jumps 42% to Rs 3,057 crore " +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-04-20,"Bengaluru: Information technology company Mindtree Ltd said consolidated net profit fell 27% in the fourth quarter hurt by a foreign exchange loss and fewer client additions. The lower-than-expected profit came in at Rs97.2 crore ($15.04 million) for the three months ended 31 March, marking the fourth consecutive quarterly profit decline.Analysts on average were expecting consolidated profit at Rs105 crore, Thomson Reuters data showed.Mindtree incurred a consolidated foreign exchange loss of Rs28.8 crore in the quarter, against a gain of Rs3.1 crore a year earlier. Clients added in the fourth quarter dropped 46% to 20. Reuters","Mindtree’s lower-than-expected profit came in at Rs97.2 crore for the fourth quarter ended 31 March, marking the fourth consecutive quarterly profit decline",16:52,"Mindtree Q4 profit plunges 27%, misses estimates" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +2017-04-23,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-04-21,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +2017-04-21,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +2017-04-19,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court","A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +2017-04-19,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,05:11,What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +2017-04-19,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,05:15,The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +2017-04-06,"Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is expected to keep policy interest rates unchanged for a third straight meeting, shifting focus to the tools it will use to mop up excess cash in the banking system that threatens to stoke inflation.The RBI will keep the repurchase rate at 6.25% on Thursday, according to all 52 economists in a Bloomberg survey; 42 of 44 see the cash reserve ratio held at 4%. However, two see the CRR raised to 5% and some analysts flag the potential creation of a new deposit window.If governor Urjit Patel raises the proportion of deposits banks need to maintain as cash, it will continue a string of surprises that culminated in February with a shift to a neutral stance, ending a two-year easing cycle. Money market levers offer the RBI more flexibility than policy rates to control borrowing costs in a world where inflation is accelerating though investment stays slow.“Despite the increase in currency in circulation, liquidity at around 3 trillion rupees through the first-half of the financial year will strengthen the case for near term RBI action,” said Madhavi Arora, an economist at Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd in Mumbai.The monetary authority will announce its decision at 2:30pm in Mumbai followed by a press conference 15 minutes later. It will also release growth and inflation forecasts for the financial year started 1 April.Sticky depositsKey to the RBI’s decision will be whether it believes banks will be able to retain deposits that poured in after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s November clampdown on cash. Excess funds are limiting the central bank’s ability to intervene in the foreign-exchange market to rein in the rupee’s rally.The currency is among Asia’s top performers, advancing 4.7% this year as Modi consolidates power following important state election wins. While a stronger rupee stands to lower India’s import bill and contain price pressures, runaway gains could threaten a recent export recovery.Liquidity toolsThe RBI has been using a slew of instruments such as reverse repo auctions and cash management bills to absorb excess funds, but these bear interest costs. The CRR however is interest-free and any increase would be the first since 2010.To lower effective interest rates and encourage productive lending, policy makers may also consider capping the amount of funds banks can park with it under the reverse repo window while creating a new tool called the Standing Deposit Facility. Banks that park cash with the RBI under the SDF will be paid a lower-than-policy-rate without any accompanying collateral, which could prompt them to opt for riskier lending instead.Establishing the SDF would however need parliament to amend the RBI Act, so Patel on Thursday will probably lay out a road map to introduce the facility, said Indranil Sen Gupta, chief economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.“Though the RBI has been strategically intervening in both spot and forward markets, unless it tightens its belt on the sterilization tools, liquidity and FX management could get more complex,” Kotak’s Arora said.V-shaped recoveryLiquidity management is essential because policy rates can take as much as three quarters to transmit through Asia’s third-largest economy. That’s a luxury Patel doesn’t have: private investment is near a decade low and inflation accelerated in February for the first time in seven months. Core inflation—the RBI’s choice measure that strips out volatile food and fuel costs—is seen as uncomfortably high for too long, imperiling the inflation target.Investors will also be awaiting a reiteration of a sharp rebound forecast for domestic demand after the cash-ban dip, and more clarity on how the RBI foresees the impact of a planned 1 July roll out of a national sales tax as well as an expected increase in house rent allowances for state staff. Bloomberg","RBI will keep the repurchase rate at 6.25% on Thursday, according to all 52 economists in a ‘Bloomberg’ survey; 42 of 44 see the cash reserve ratio held at 4%",09:29,RBI monetary policy guide: Cash tools in focus as rates unchanged +2017-04-06,"Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to slash clearance time for National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) in an attempt to enhance efficiency of the electronic payment system and add to customer convenience.In line with the document on Vision-2018 for Payment and Settlement Systems, the NEFT settlement cycle will be reduced from hourly batches to half hourly batches, the RBI said in the first bi-monthly monetary policy for 2017-18.“Consequently, 11 additional settlement batches will be introduced at 8.30am onwards, taking the total number of half hourly settlement batches during the day to 23,” the newly appointed deputy governor B.P. Kanungo said. This will enhance the efficiency of the NEFT system and add to customer convenience, he said.The starting batch at 8am and closing batch at 7pm shall remain the same and the return discipline will also remain the same, that is B+2 hours (settlement batch time plus two hours) as per the existing practice, it said.Also Read: RBI governor Urjit Patel says farm loan waiver a ‘moral hazard’On promoting financial inclusion and literacy, it said the RBI is initiating a pilot project on financial literacy at the block level to explore innovative and participatory approaches to financial literacy.The pilot project will be commissioned in nine states across 80 blocks by non-government organisations (NGOs) in collaboration with sponsor banks, it said.Six NGOs registered with the Depositor Education and Awareness Fund, viz. CRISIL Foundation, Mumbai; Dhan Foundation; Swadhaar Fin Access, Mumbai; Indian School of Micro Finance for Women (ISMW); Samarpit, Chhattisgarh and the PACE Foundation have been selected to execute the pilot project in collaboration with banks, it said.The pilot project will be executed with the following broad objectives — active saving and good borrowing; financial planning and goal setting and going digital and consumer protection.The Centres for Financial Literacy (CFL) will be set up under a common name and logo, Money-wise Centre for Financial Literacy.“The sponsor banks will enter into contracts with the identified NGOs within three months, that is, by June 30, 2017. Thereafter, the NGOs will start operating the CFLs within three months of entering into contracts with banks,” it said.",The RBI cuts clearance time for NEFT in an attempt to enhance efficiency of the electronic payment system and add to customer convenience,20:32,NEFT transfers to be faster as RBI cuts clearance time +2017-04-06,"Shanghai: China’s central bank is expected to resume cash injections to the financial system this month as tax demands on commercial lenders spur another round of tight liquidity.The need for lenders to park corporate tax payments with the central bank could drain hundreds of billions of yuan in the second half of April, ending a period of relative calm in China’s money markets. The People’s Bank of China has refrained from adding cash to the system for nine days, the longest stretch since it started daily open-market operations at the beginning of last year, citing a relatively high level of liquidity.“The central bank will probably have to resume the reverse-repurchase operations in the middle of this month on a cash shortage,” said Shen Bifan, an analyst in Shenzhen at First Capital’s fixed income department. “Of course it can now tolerate a more volatile funding market, but when it really tightens, it will respond to it to avoid a cash crunch.”Skipping reverse-repo auctions is part of the PBOC’s campaign to reduce leverage in China’s financial system. The pause in adding cash covered the quarter-end period — a time when interbank liquidity usually tightens as lenders hoard funds to meet regulatory checks. That said, China’s seven-day repo rate has fallen 57 basis points over the first two trading days in April, after surging to an almost two-year high on 31 March.Also Read: RBI keeps repo rate unchanged at 6.25%“The liquidity won’t be loose in April, but it’d also be difficult to see persistent tightness as well,” analysts led by Tang Yue at Industrial Securities wrote in a note Thursday.Since 24 March, when the PBOC stopped injecting cash, policy makers have withdrawn a net ¥420 billion ($60.9 billion) from the system, data compiled by Bloomberg show. China’s markets were closed 3-4 April for a holiday.The seven-day repo, a gauge of of interbank funding availability, rose 15 basis points to 2.74% on Thursday, according to weighted average prices. The cost of one-year interest-rate swaps, the fixed payment to receive the seven-day repo rate, climbed one basis point to 3.58%. Bloomberg",China’s central bank is expected to resume cash injections to the financial system this month as tax demands on commercial lenders spur another round of tight liquidity,14:58,China tipped to boost liquidity again as bank tax payments loom +2017-04-06,"The Reserve Bank of India’s monetary policy committee (MPC) on Thursday voted unanimously to raise the reverse repo rate—the rate at which sucks out excess liquidity from the system—by 25 basis points to 6%. The repo rate, however, has been kept unchanged at 6.25%. Here is the full text of the first Bi-monthly monetary policy statement of the Monetary Policy Committee.First Bi-monthly Monetary Policy Statement, 2017-18Resolution of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC)Reserve Bank of IndiaOn the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:1. Keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment2. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter.Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or underachievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six-year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger. 3. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.4. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.5. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements. Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March. EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.6. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly yearon-year after two consecutive years of sub-one per cent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.7. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).8. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broad-based turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted.The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.9. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and threewheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.10. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 –February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.11. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month.Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.12. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March. Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.13. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.14. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7% of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook15. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0% for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4% readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half. Chart 1 16. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around JulyAugust, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12- 18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by secondorder effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST.The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers. Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation.Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.17. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4% in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced. See Chart 2.18. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains.Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.19. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly,external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.20. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year.Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.21. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.22. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.23. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on 5 and 6 June 2017.Jose J. Kattoor(Chief General Manager)(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the first bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee,21:48,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy statement +2017-04-06,"Mumbai: By virtue of being the first monetary policy of this financial year, the upcoming announcement of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will be a signal of the way the central bank views various macroeconomic parameters and the pace at which it expects the gross domestic product (GDP) growth to come back. While a majority of the economists surveyed by Mint expect the RBI to hold the repo rate at 6.25% and continue with its neutral stance, they also expect more announcements around excess liquidity. Here are five things that might be on the radar of the monetary policy committee:Growth: Ever since demonetisation took away the buying power of a large number of people, there have been concerns around the impact it could have on growth numbers for financial years 2016-17 and 2017-18. The RBI itself had revised its GDP growth expectations in February, when it said that the expected rate of growth for financial year ending March 2017 would be 6.9%, as opposed to 7.1% earlier, owing to demonetisation. For the new financial year, the RBI has estimated a growth rate of 7.4%, which is only 50 basis points (bps) higher than what it had estimated earlier, despite the central bank expecting a bounceback in growth as the impact of demonetisation wears off. In the last policy, the regulator had adopted a neutral stance due to hardening inflation numbers, which may make rooting for fast-paced growth a little difficult.Inflation: The banking sector regulator’s change in stance in the last monetary policy announcement came as a surprise to many who felt that it was being needlessly hawkish. However, wholesale inflation soared to a 39-month high of 6.55% in February, while retail inflation inched up to 3.65% due to rise in food and fuel prices, signalling that hardening inflation rate was still a legitimate concern for the regulator. It is unlikely that the RBI would change its stance in just two months. However, since this year is expected to be about economic growth and a bounceback in general, it would be interesting to note the central bank’s commentary around how it would balance its monetary policy around this.Excess liquidity: The banking sector regulator is widely expected to announce special measures to take out the additional liquidity in the system to further support its neutral stance on interest rates. The excess liquidity which entered the banking system due to large amount of deposits by the people during the two months of demonetisation has still been lying around in bank accounts as the restrictions on withdrawals were only removed recently. Moreover, as banks struggle with lack of credit growth, they will need to find avenues to deploy the liquidity available with them. Clarity around deposits: The RBI is yet to give a clear picture on the amount of deposits that have returned to the banking system owing to demonetisation in November and December. While it has been three months since the regulator closed the window to deposit the old Rs500 and Rs1,000 currency notes for most people, it has always maintained that collection of data was still work in progress. Once it clarifies the amount of currency notes that has returned into the system and the level of new currency notes pumped in, market watchers would be able to determine the true level of remonetisation in the economy.Bad loans: Over the last few weeks, the government, the RBI and chiefs of large banks have had multiple meetings to discuss ways and means to deal with the stressed loan situation in the Indian banking system. The high level of bad loans in the public sector banking space and low credit growth has resulted in many banks fully focussing their efforts on recovery of bad loans, rather than growing their business. The RBI is expected to make some announcements around a new scheme around dealing with bad loans or introduce some vital changes into the scheme for sustainable structuring of stressed assets (S4A) and strategic debt restructuring (SDR) scheme.",RBI’s monetary policy will be a signal of the way the central bank views macroeconomic parameters and the pace at which it expects GDP growth to come back,12:36,RBI monetary policy: Five things to watch out for +2017-04-06,"Mumbai: British chancellor of the exchequer Philip Hammond on Wednesday said the United Kingdom and India can become strong partner nations in the financial technology (fintech) industry as UK is keen to make its market truly global after its exit from European Union, while on the other hand, investments into India’s fintech sector have been rising over the past year.Hammond is on a three-day tour called FinTech Trade Mission to India to engage in dialogue with the Indian finance ministry, financial regulators and other industry bodies in order to strengthen UK’s e-conomic and trading relations with the country.“The vote for the UK to leave the EU was clear. It reflected a desire for Britain to make its own decisions and to determine its own destiny. But it wasn’t a vote for isolation…British companies have invested more in India since 2000 than the United States or any other European nation has done. And investment from UK companies accounts for 1 in 20 Indian jobs in the organised private sector. Indian companies, meanwhile, invest more in Britain than in the rest of the EU put together,” Hammond said while speaking at a conference in Mumbai.ALSO READ: India, UK to jointly invest £240 million in green energy sectorHammond said Indian companies such as the Tata Group are among the biggest employers in the UK, transforming British businesses with their focused management and long-term investments.“In the last year we’ve seen the creation of a whole new market, with the world’s first masala bonds issued in London – raising over $1.5 billion. To date, almost 80% of all masala bonds have been issued in London. And we will see even more, very soon from the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency and the National Highways Authority of India…the UK and India can collaborate to our mutual advantage – in FinTech,” said Hammond.There are at least 15 India-headquartered banks which are engaged in international banking businesses in the UK. On the other hand, there are several British financial services firms that are present in India’s insurance, asset management, fintech and banking industries.Hammond hinted that strengthening ties with UK may fulfil India’s appetite for investments, particularly in infrastructure.ALSO READ: India, Britain talk up post-Brexit trade prospects“India has 220 million active smartphone users–over three times the entire UK population. What’s more, India’s demonetisation programme means its financial services sector is undergoing a significant transformation…New fintech payment firms, small finance lenders, and insurance players are entering the market. These firms will be crucial in helping the RBI achieve its target of 90% of the population having access to banking services by 2034,” said Hammond.",Philip Hammond says UK and India can become strong partners in the financial technology industry as it is keen to make its market truly global after its exit from EU,01:04,UK exchequer chancellor Hammond urges strong ties with India in fintech +2017-02-09,"Mumbai: Fertilizers and chemicals maker Tata Chemicals Ltd posted Wednesday a 12% decline in consolidated revenue for the third quarter, hurt by shrinking fertilizer sales as the company switches focus to its consumer business.Profit after tax, however, rose 31.6% to Rs318.39 crore in the quarter ended 31 December, from a year earlier. Revenue fell to Rs3,494.80 crore with fertilizer sales dropping 31% to Rs913.8 crore year-on-year. Sales from the inorganic chemicals business fell marginally by 0.05%.Mint had in April reported that Tata Chemicals intended to shift its focus away from fertilisers as it did not want to continue investing in a “regulated and subsidy-ridden business” and wanted to free up working capital.The company is now focusing on its higher-margin “living essentials” consumer business comprising five brands of table salt, Tata Sampann that sells pulses and spices, and Tata Swach non-electric water purifiers. Tata Sampann was launched in October 2015.“The company is seeking to move away from soda ash production to cater more to the demand for salt,” managing director R. Mukundan said at a press conference in Mumbai on Wednesday. Tata Chemicals is the world’s second largest manufacturer of soda ash, which is largely used to manufacture glass. Tata Chemicals has also announced it is selling its urea business to Yara Fertlisers for Rs 2,670 crore. “We are in the process of completing this deal, we have already received approval from the CCI (Competition Commission of India) for the deal,” Mukundan said.Tata Chemicals’ consumer business now comprises around 12-15% of the company’s total revenue, Mukundan said. “We are currently focused on our spices and pulses categories and we have always said we will wait for one of these two to turn profitable before moving to another category,” he added.“We are going steady in the north and west and are looking at the east. South is an extremely different region with (products) like sambar masala and rasam masala among others. So we’re waiting to stabilize in these three regions.”Tata Chemicals pared its consolidated debt by 33% to Rs 5,833 crore in the last three quarters. The company has been paying off debt with cash generated from operations and anticipates it would have zero standalone net debt in the next six to eight quarters. Current standalone debt fell 55% to Rs 1,318 crore in the last three quarters.","Tata Chemicals’ income from operations fell to Rs3,494.8 crore in the third quarter from Rs3,991.25 crore in the corresponding period of previous year",01:24,Tata Chemicals Q3 net profit rises 32% to Rs318 crore +2017-04-05,"New Delhi: Ban on cash transaction in excess of Rs2 lakh will not be applicable to withdrawals from banks and post office savings accounts, the income tax department said on Wednesday.Through the Finance Act 2017, the government has banned cash transactions of over Rs2 lakh and said a penalty of an equal amount would be levied on the receiver. In a clarification on the newly inserted Section— 269ST—in the I-T Act, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said the restriction shall not apply to withdrawal from banks and post offices.“It has also been decided that the restriction on cash transaction shall not apply to withdrawal of cash from a bank, co-operative bank or a post office savings bank,” the statement said. It said necessary notification in this regard would be issued. In the 2017-18 Budget, finance minister Arun Jaitley had proposed to ban cash transaction of over Rs3 lakh. This limit was lowered to Rs2 lakh as an amendment to the Finance Bill, which was passed by the Lok Sabha last month. The said restriction is also not applicable to any receipt by government, banking company, post office savings bank or co-operative bank, the CBDT said. The move to ban cash transaction above a threshold was aimed at curbing black money by discouraging cash transaction and promoting digital economy. According to the rule, no individual can deal in cash in excess of Rs2 lakh on a single day, in respect of a single transaction or in respect of transactions relating to one event or occasion from an individual. The Finance Act also provides that any capital expenditure in cash exceeding Rs10,000 shall not be eligible for claiming depreciation allowance or investment-linked deduction. Similarly, the limit on revenue expenditure in cash has been reduced from Rs20,000 to Rs10,000. In order to promote digital payments in case of small unorganised businesses, the rate of presumptive taxation has been reduced from 8% to 6% for the amount of turnover realised through cheque/digital mode. Also, it has restricted cash donation up to Rs2,000 for political parties for availing exemption from Income-tax. “Further, it has also mandated that any donation in cash exceeding Rs2,000 to a charitable institution shall not be allowed as a deduction under the Income-tax Act,” the CBDT statement said.",Income tax department said ban on cash transaction in excess of Rs2 lakh will not be applicable to withdrawals from banks and post office savings accounts,23:41,"Ban on cash transaction above Rs2 lakh not applicable for bank, post office withdrawals" +2017-02-09,"Bengaluru: United Breweries Ltd (UBL), the maker of Kingfisher beer, late on Wednesday asked Vijay Mallya to step down as non-executive chairman of the company, effective immediately.The decision was taken at the company’s board meeting on Wednesday.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had last month barred Mallya and six former United Spirits Ltd executives from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud.Mallya and the others have also been barred from holding directorships in any listed company.“I am directed by the board to convey that in order to comply with the Sebi order and in the absence of any stay or vacation of the said order, the board is compelled to request you to step down from the board of United Breweries Ltd with immediate effect,” Govind Iyengar, UB’s secretary and senior vice-president, legal, said in an email to Mallya that was filed with BSE on Wednesday.The board has deliberated this matter and also reviewed the legal opinions in this regard, the company said.The board had also resolved on 6 February not to send notices and agenda relating to board meetings and/or other privileged information to Mallya till such time as he obtains a stay of the Sebi order, and the same was conveyed to him.On Wednesday, UBL also reported a 31.94% fall in net profit to Rs48.49 crore for the December quarter. Revenue rose 1.2% to Rs2230.86 crore.United Breweries said unfavourable market conditions, together with the impact of demonetisation, excise duty increases in several states and raw material price pressures, resulted in a drop in its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) and profit after tax in the quarter.Sales volumes were flat for the nine months ending 31 December 2016 and declined in the western region on a year-to-date basis while growing in almost all other regions.Input costs continued to be under pressure during the period with price increases in barley and sugar, which were in part offset by “improved efficiencies.”",United Breweries’s move comes after a Sebi order barred Vijay Mallya from holding directorship in any listed company,00:05,United Breweries asks Vijay Mallya to step down as non-executive chairman +2017-02-08,"Mumbai: Union Bank of India on Wednesday reported a 32% increase in net profit in the December quarter on increase in other income.Net profit for the quarter increased to Rs104 crore compared with Rs78.54 crore a year ago. According to estimates of 14 Bloomberg analysts, the bank was expected to post a net profit of Rs227.40 crore.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 7.01% to Rs2,136.62 crore in the December quarter from Rs1,996.51 crore last year.ALSO READ: NPA norms to keep exerting pressure on banks’ profit, says RBI’s S.S. MundraOther income increased 50% to Rs1,339.67 crore in the third quarter from Rs892.69 crore in the same period last year.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) at Union Bank rose 3.07% to Rs32,402.74 crore at the end of the December quarter from Rs29,862.05 crore in the September quarter. As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were 11.7% at the end of the December quarter compared with 10.73% in the previous quarter and 7.05% a year ago.Provisions and contingencies increased 27.22% to Rs1,581.85 crore in the third quarter from Rs1,243.30 crore a quarter ago. Net NPAs rose to 6.95% in the December quarter compared with 6.39% in the previous quarter and 4.07% in the same quarter last year.ALSO READ: United Bank of India posts net profit of Rs64.10 crore in Q3Shares of Union Bank lost 1.13% to close at Rs166.75 per share on Wednesday on the BSE, while the benchmark index, Sensex lost 0.16% to close at 28289.92 points.","Union Bank of India’s net interest income rose 7.01% to Rs2,136.62 crore in the December quarter from Rs1,996.51 crore last year",19:39,Union Bank of India Q3 profit rises 32% to Rs104 crore +2017-02-08,"Mumbai: Reliance Power Ltd on Wednesday said net profit in the December quarter rose 14.4% as its plants performed better, but the earnings failed to meet market expectations.The Anil Ambani-led power producer reported a consolidated net profit of Rs275.70 crore, against Rs241.06 crore a year ago. Net sales rose 14.2% to Rs2,456.31 crore in the quarter from Rs2,150.49 crore a year earlier.Both profit and sales missed analysts’ estimates. Five analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected Reliance Power to report a consolidated net profit of Rs354.8 crore on net sales of Rs2,715.40 crore.ALSO READ: Power companies tap smart meters to change consumer behaviour patternReliance Power’s 3,960 megawatt (MW) Sasan ultra mega power plant (UMPP) in Madhya Pradesh generated 7,718 million units during the quarter, operating at a plant availability factor of 89%, while the Rosa power plant in Uttar Pradesh generated 2,165 million units at 96%.The Butibori power plant in Maharashtra generated 1,032 million units at availability of 97%, the company said in a statement. The rest of generation was contributed by the 40 MW Dhursar Solar PV plant in Rajasthan, a 45 MW wind capacity in Maharashtra, and a 100 MW concentrated solar power project in Rajasthan.Total expenses in the quarter rose about 18.2% to Rs1,891.23 crore from Rs1,600.24 crore a year earlier.ALSO READ: SC grants relief to discoms over payment of dues to Reliance Group’s Sasan PowerReliance Power operates nearly 6,000 MW of power capacity across its projects based on coal, gas, hydro and renewable energy.Reliance Power shares closed up 0.55% at Rs46.05 on the BSE on Wednesday. The results were announced after market hours.Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.","Reliance Power’s net sales rose 14.2% to Rs2,456.31 crore in the December quarter from Rs2,150.49 crore a year earlier",20:02,Reliance Power profit rises 14.4% to Rs275.70 crore +2017-02-08,"New Delhi: Homegrown pharma major Cipla Ltd on Wednesday reported 43.85% jump in consolidated net profit at Rs374.83 crore for the third quarter ended 31 December 2016. The company had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs260.57 crore in the same period last fiscal, Cipla said in a BSE filing.Net sales during the quarter under review stood at Rs3,550.02 crore as against Rs3,069.89 crore in the corresponding period last fiscal, up 15.63%. The company’s profit was boosted by other income of Rs153.49 crore during the quarter as compared to Rs67.53 crore in the third quarter last year. On plans to raise Rs4,000 crore via issue of securities in both domestic and global markets, Cipla said its Board of Directors at their meeting held on Wednesday has decided “to seek approval of the shareholders in future at an appropriate time depending upon the funding requirements and investment opportunities”. It also said that as part of a planned transition, company secretary, key managerial personnel and compliance officer Mital Sanghvi will relinquish his post and is moving into a senior business finance role within the company. Subsequently, Rajendra Chopra will be the new company secretary and key managerial personnel with effect from 9 February 2017, the company said.","Cipla’s net sales during the third quarter under review stood at Rs3,550.02 crore, up 15.63% from the corresponding period last fiscal",18:35,Cipla Q3 net profit jumps 43.85% to Rs374.83 crore +2017-04-20,"Bengaluru: EBay Inc. on Wednesday forecast second-quarter profit that fell short of analysts’ estimates, as it spends heavily on revamping and marketing its e-commerce platform amid stiff competition from much larger rival Amazon.com Inc.Shares of the company fell 2.5% to $33 in trading after the bell. San Jose, California-based eBay has been making changes to its platform to lure more shoppers as well as better compete with Amazon. That has meant a shift away from online auctions towards fixed-price sales and product landing pages, which are easier to navigate than the dozens of listings sellers would generate for a single good.EBay has also increased its marketing spending, running a rare TV campaign ahead of last year’s holiday shopping period.Sales and marketing costs climbed 4.5% to $562 million in the first quarter ended 31 March, while product development expenses jumped 16.3% to $278 million. The company’s profit in the second quarter would be affected by “increased investment to drive improved user experiences and to market our brand,” eBay’s finance chief Scott Schenkel said on a call with analysts.EBay said it expects second-quarter adjusted profit of 43 to 45 cents per share. Analysts on average were expecting a profit of 47 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The company, however, stuck to its earlier forecast for full-year adjusted profit of $1.98 to $2.03 per share, expecting more growth in the second half of 2017.The first quarter “showed some early indication that their efforts are beginning to bear fruit,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Aaron Turner, citing more active buyers coming to the site. “We’re still waiting to see” the outcome, he added.EBay said gross merchandise volume—the total value of all goods sold on its websites—rose 2.4% to $20.95 billion in the first quarter. But the result fell short of analysts’ average estimate of $21.06 billion, according to research firm FactSet StreetAccount.The company’s net income rose to $1.04 billion, or 94 cents per share in the quarter, from $482 million, or 41 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, the company earned 49 cents per share, beating analysts’ average expectation of 48 cents per share.Revenue rose 3.7% to $2.22 billion. Analysts on average had expected $2.21 billion. Reuters","EBay’s Q2 profit forecast fell short of analysts’ estimates, as it spends heavily on revamping and marketing its e-commerce platform amid stiff competition from Amazon",11:19,EBay Q2 profit forecast falls short of estimates +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: New RBI guidelines on standard asset provisioning and disclosure of details regarding non-performing assets (NPAs) may create difficulties for Indian banks, thanks to additional provisioning requirements, analysts estimate. Public sector banks are likely to see a 5-15% impact on their earnings going ahead, while private sector lenders would see their earnings hurt by 1-2% due to the new norms, Credit Suisse said in a report on Wednesday. Prior to this advisory, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) required banks to set aside 0.4% as provision against standard assets. The RBI on Tuesday had advised banks to consider setting aside higher provisions even for good loans in stressed sectors.According to Credit Suisse analysts, the hit on profitability has been calculated on a 50 basis points (bps) increase in provisioning owing to the RBI guidelines. The central bank specifically red-flagged the telecom industry, and asked bank boards to review their exposure to the sector by 30 June and consider making provisions at higher rates “so that necessary resilience is built in the balance sheets should the stress reflect on the quality of exposure to the sector at a future date”. According to data available with the RBI, bank exposure to the telecom sector was Rs82,200 crore at the end of February.In a report that Nomura released on Wednesday, analysts note that the risk on the telecom sector is likely to be limited owing to the expected consolidation, with the merger of Vodafone Group Plc and Idea Cellular Ltd. Weaker companies like GTL Infrastructure Ltd have already been classified as non-performing assets. In the case of Reliance Communications Ltd, most of the debt is from foreign banks which limits the impact on Indian banks, while in case of Aircel, even though the research firm sees risk, it is not big enough to change much for the sector. “This, in our view, would lead to faster recognition of future asset quality issues and will help avoid the cliff effect of large and lumpy provisions,” Kotak Institutional Equities Research said in a report on Wednesday.“This approach is closer to Ind-AS (to be applicable from April 2018 CHK onwards) which requires a dynamic approach to provisioning based on expected credit losses, instead of the current system based on days-past-due,” the Kotak report said.In addition to these norms, the regulator has also asked banks to disclose any major divergence in reporting of NPAs, when compared with what it had asked banks to do under the supervisory processes. In situations like the asset quality review (AQR), the central bank had asked lenders to classify certain accounts as NPAs even though the banks had classified them as standard.These norms have already started having an impact on bank results for the quarter ended 31 March. Private sector lenders IndusInd Bank and Yes Bank both reported increased provisions owing to the RBI directions on NPA disclosure.",Credit Suisse report says PSU banks are likely to see a 5-15% and private banks 1-2% impact on quarterly results due to new RBI rules on bad loans and provisions,04:40,"New RBI rules on provisioning, bad loans seen taking a toll on banks" +2017-02-08,"Bengaluru: Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd, which runs the Café Coffee Day (CCD) chain, on Wednesday said net profit in the December quarter jumped 146% to Rs12.34 crore from the same period a year ago. Revenue rose 13% to Rs763.32 crore during the same period.Sales from its coffee and related businesses segment rose 12.54% to Rs415.33 crore. The company’s outlet count rose to 1,654 from 1,586, while its vending machine count rose to 40,013 from 33,742 during the period.Coffee Day, which went public in October 2015, recorded same-store-sales growth of 6.08% in the December quarter and an average sales per day (ASPD) of Rs14,815.“Specifically on demonetization, we did see some impact in our cafe sales in the first and second week post the announcement of demonetization but subsequently our sales recovered with the ASPD approaching the Rs15,000 mark,” V.G. Siddhartha, chairman and managing director, Coffee Day Enterprises said in a filing with the BSE.“Our mobile app downloads stood at 18.46 lakh as at December 2016 vs. 7.78 lakh as at September 2016. We are seeing a significant increase in the number of transactions through non-cash means (digital wallet, credit cards etc) at our cafes. We are working towards making significant improvements in the app to enhance the consumer experience. Our Freshly Made food category, ice cream range and recently launched Magical Brews are being well received by our customers and are being rolled out across our network in a phased manner,” he added.Coffee Day’s shares gained 1.81% to Rs202.95 per share on the BSE, while the Sensex gained 0.08% to 28,356.89 points on Wednesday afternoon.","Sales from Coffee Day Enterprises’s coffee and related businesses segment rose 12.54% to Rs415.33 crore in December quarter, revenue rose 13% to Rs763.32 crore ",16:59,Coffee Day Enterprises Q3 net profit jumps 146% to Rs12.34 crore +2017-02-08,"New Delhi: State-owned power producer NTPC Ltd on Wednesday reported a 7.5% fall in net profit in the December quarter to Rs2,469 crore from the same period a year ago on account of higher fuel and finance costs and tax liability relating to previous accounting periods.NTPC informed stock exchanges that total income rose 11% to Rs19,396 crore on improved gross power generation and higher capacity utilisation of plants, in spite of adding more generation capacity. The company declared an interim dividend of Rs2.61 per equity share for the current fiscal. NTPC’s profit from ordinary activities before finance costs and exceptional items rose 9.4% to Rs4,016 crores. The company reported a tax liability of Rs613 crore for the quarter, up from Rs121.3 crore for the same period a year ago. Fuel cost went up 14% in the quarter from a year ago, while finance cost rose 7.9%.NTPC produced 61.4 billion units of electricity in the December quarter, a tad higher than what it did a year ago. NTPC Group’s installed generation capacity stood at 48,028 MW as on 31 December 2016, compared to 45,548 MW a year ago.","NTPC’s total income in third quarter rose 11% to Rs19,396 crore on improved gross power generation and higher capacity utilisation of plants",17:31,"NTPC Q3 net profit falls 7.5% to Rs2,469 crore" +2017-04-22,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +2017-04-20,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +2017-04-19,"New Delhi: Network18 Media and Investments Ltd, the media company controlled by Reliance Industries Ltd, on Wednesday said its consolidated loss widened to Rs33.3 crore in the March quarter, from Rs25 crore in the year-ago period. The company, which has interests in television, films and online retailing, generated revenue of Rs3,471.1 crore, up 5% from Rs3,321 crore last year. For the full year to 31 March, the company swung to a loss of Rs233.5 crore from a profit of Rs25.4 crore in the previous year. A decline in advertising spending following demonetization of high-value currency notes, operating losses from new initiatives in regional and digital broadcasting, and losses in the digital commerce businesses contributed to the overall net loss.“The media industry is still facing impact of deferment of advertising spends that kicked in from November-December 2016 on likely slowdown in consumer spending. Further, the revival of advertising spends has been witnessed at a much faster clip for national channels, while regional markets are still recovering with a lag,” Network18 said in a statement. Revenue from TV18 Broadcast Ltd, a unit of Network18 that operates news channels CNN-News18 and CNBC TV18, rose 7% in the year to Rs2,677 crore from Rs2,494.8 crore in the previous year. Net profit declined 90% to Rs19.1 crore. Network18 also runs digital news websites moneycontrol.com, news18.com and firstpost.com as well as the movie and events ticketing website BookMyShow.“The digital space in India continues to become more and more vibrant, as bottlenecks around connectivity and cost reduce substantially. We see the emergence of new formats and services, and rapidly evolving business models and aim to be at the forefront of this change. Our strength in linear media provides us the edge, helping us leapfrog in our aspiration to be a channel-agnostic provider of top-drawer content,” said Adil Zainulbhai, chairman of Network18.","For the full year to 31 March, Network18 swung to a loss of Rs233.5 crore from a profit of Rs25.4 crore in the previous year",21:08,Network18’s net loss widens to Rs33.3 crore in March quarter +2017-04-20,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +2017-05-04,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +2017-04-21,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +2017-05-04,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",23:18,How to start an analytics journey +2017-04-21,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +2017-04-18,"Washington: Unfazed by the possible changes to the H1B visa regime, chief executive officer (CEO) of India’s IT major TCS, Rajesh Gopinathan has said the current discourse on the issue in the US is driven by emotions rather than economy and the best way to tackle it is through greater engagement. Gopinathan favoured a policy of engagement with various stake holders on the issue of H1B visas in the US. He noted that the discourse is currently driven by emotions rather than economy. “The best way to tackle that is greater engagement. Because the way, sometimes, companies like us get characterised is very different from the reality of what we bring to the table,” Gopinathan, who is in his mid-40s, said. “Some of these engagements actually help get that message out also. People will understand us better for who we are, and I think engagement, communication and collaboration is the best way to deal with the political lack of understanding which comes. Democracy ought to deal with the emotional response that you see and you have to get over it and engage positively,” Gopinathan said. He said the US has been a “very welcoming market” for the IT major and has provided it with a fair, open and competitive environment. “All said and done, the US has been a very welcoming market for us. So you keep aside the immediate issues, it’s been a market that has been fair, it has been an open, competitive environment,” Gopinathan told PTI, exuding confidence that TCS would be able to successfully compete in any environment. Gopinathan said TCS has competed and has won against the best in the country. “We have competed and we have won against the global best in this country, on equal footing. So, it has been a market that has helped us grow in confidence as we have gone,” he said but repeatedly refrained from having any complaint from the present system or the possibility of a new executive order that would adversely have an impact on his company’s performance due to any action by the Trump Administration on H1B visas. US President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order that would tighten the process of issuing the H1B visas and seek a review of the system for creating an “entirely new structure” for awarding these visas. Gopinathan was appointed as the new CEO of TCS this January after his predecessor N. Chandrasekaran was elevated to the post of chairman of Tata Sons. Responding to questions on a potential executive order or legislations being talked about by lawmakers, Gopinathan asserted that there is no law currently in the US that is discriminatory. “There are many that are being discussed, which if they were to get passed, in their extreme form would be discriminatory. So we should actually give credence to the system here, that is, as I said, it is fair. It has been fair in the past, there is no reason for us to assume that it will not be fair in the future. So, let’s deal with what’s on the ground and let’s go step by step,” he said. “More importantly, we have very active STEM education engagement in the US. We work with colleges, high school students, we reach out, we have touched close to 20,000 plus students already, and significantly we are accelerate that into what we call Ignite My Future Campaign. We just target to touch one million students all in the next five years,” he said. Noting that the technology market is actually under supplied, he said the sheer demand of technical skills far outstrips the supply. “What we’ve been successful in India is to actually increase the world supply, often generating graduates way beyond what the governing systems actually provided. So we capitalised the emergence of a private sector education complex that served to provide us the talent required for our growth,” he said. PTI","The current discourse on the H1B visa issue in the US is driven by emotions rather than economy and the best way to tackle it is through greater engagement, says Gopinathan",18:08,TCS unperturbed by possible changes to H1B visa regime: CEO Rajesh Gopinathan +2017-04-18,"New York/San Francisco: Toshiba Corp. temporarily cancelled all meetings and decisions related to the sale of its memory chip business to address concerns raised by an industry partner, people familiar with the matter said.Toshiba is trying to sell the business to raise much-needed cash, and the company has been narrowing down the field of interested buyers. That hit a snag after joint-venture partner Western Digital Corp., based in San Jose, California, said a sale may violate the companies’ contract. Toshiba’s spokeswoman Kaori Hiraki denied the sale process has been put on hold.Western Digital chief executive officer (CEO) Steve Milligan wrote a letter to Toshiba’s board members on 9 April advising them that they should negotiate exclusively with his company before any sale. He also argued that the rumored bidders were unsuitable and the reported prices offered were above the fair and supportable value of the chip business, according to a person familiar with the process, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.Toshiba and Western Digital are joint owners of certain chip business facilities. Shares of Toshiba fell as much as 8.1% in Tokyo on Friday, while Western Digital was little changed at the close in New York.Western Digital’s contentions raise another potential roadblock in the troubled process. The Japanese company needs to shore up finances hurt by losses from its Westinghouse nuclear business and has warned that its very survival is at risk. Analysts cautioned that Western Digital does have legal rights that will bear on the sale process.‘Consent to approve’“We believe that WDC has rights surrounding the JV including the consent to approve/disapprove of any transaction involving the joint venture,” Amit Daryanani, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a research note. “WDC has the legal wherewithal to veto or approve a winning bid.”Toshiba disagrees with Western Digital’s assertion that a sale would violate the agreement between the two companies, Toshiba executives said when contacted by Bloomberg News.Last year Western Digital, one of the largest makers of computer hard drives, made a $15.8 billion bet on technology that’s making its core business obsolete, with its purchase of SanDisk Corp. SanDisk was a manufacturing partner of Toshiba, a role that Western Digital has assumed.That purchase piled debt onto its balance sheet and may restrict its ability to match some of the bids that other companies reportedly made for Toshiba’s chip unit. In January, Western Digital said it had cash and cash equivalents of $5.2 billion. The company said in January it had “liquidity available” totaling $6.2 billion. In December, Western Digital reported net debt of $8.9 billion.Toshiba has narrowed the original group of contenders for the chip business after a first round of bidding. Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. has indicated its willingness to pay as much as 3 trillion yen ($27 billion), Bloomberg has reported.Toshiba’s board is trying to balance the need for a quick sale with concerns that such a deal would mark the end of Japan’s chance of restoring its once-leading role in the $300 billion chip industry and potentially aid China’s push to enter that important market, Bloomberg News has reported.Milligan’s letter, which was earlier reported by the Nikkei Asian Review, cautioned in particular against accepting a bid from Broadcom Ltd, a company that has led the wave of consolidation in the chip industry over the past two years. Bloomberg","Toshiba is trying to sell the business to raise much-needed cash, and the company has been narrowing down the field of interested buyers",19:25,Toshiba said to put chip sale process on hold for now +2017-04-18,"New Delhi: Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN), a global digital marketing major headquartered in London, UK, has acquired Indian marketing services group SVG Media Pvt. Ltd in an all-cash deal, the two companies announced Tuesday.While both firms declined to comment on the deal size, two people privy to the development said it was in the range $100-120 million. Smile Group owns majority stake in SVG Media, which counts Xplorer Capital as an institutional backer.SVG Media was founded in 2006 as a business owned by Smile Group, that runs a slew of e-commerce and internet businesses. SVG Media has four business units, namely DGM (focussed on banking, financial service and e-commerce clients), Komli (premium digital marketing through Facebook and Twitter), SeventyNine (mobile-focussed advertising platform) and Tyroo (ad-tech platform similar to InMobi), together reaching over 150 million unique viewers in India. It has offices in Gurgaon, Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru.As part of the deal, Smile Group, promoted by media entrepreneurs Manish Vij and Harish Bahl, has sold DGM, Komli and SeventyNine (under SVG Media) to DAN. Tyroo, which is retained, is transferred to a separate legal entity and will continue to be owned by Smile Group.SVG Media had acquired Komli Media and SeventyNine in August 2015 and December 2014, respectively, and DGM in 2010.As per the deal, DAN will take control of the offices and about 280 specialists housed in the three units. Anurag Gupta, the chief executive officer of DAN, will take over as CEO of SVG Media replacing Bahl and Vij, the outgoing chairman and CEO, respectively. Gupta will report to Ashish Bhasin, chairman and CEO of DAN South Asia.Business vertical heads Chirag Shah and Deven Dharamdasani from SeventyNine, Akshay Mathur from Komli and Ashwani Mehta will join the board at SVG Media.According to Vij, SVG Media, including all its business, generated operating profit of Rs14 crore on revenue of Rs200 crore in the year ending March 2016. Post the acquisition, Smile Group will focus on growing Tyroo and continue to invest in and incubate media start-ups, he added.This marks the second successful exit by Vij and Bahl in the digital media space, after having sold ad firm Quasar Media to WPP Digital in 2007. Separately, Letsbuy, an electronics retail venture e-commerce platform setup by Vij, was sold to Flipkart for $25 million in 2012.“At Smile we are proud to have continuously built successful JV (joint venture) partnerships or exits with large global firms as Airbnb, Yahoo, WPP Digital, Scan Group-Africa etc. SVG’s market leadership and exit to DAN is another feather in the cap for Smile,” Smile Group’s Bahl said.For DAN this comes as their 10th acquisition in India since 2012, according to data shared by the company. Some of these include Fractal Ink Design Studio, Happy Creative, WATConsult, Webchutney and Taproot. Just recently, it closed the acquisition of Grant Group, a 59-year old family run advertising services company in Sir Lanka, Mint reported in March.“India is a significant market with rapid growth potential in its mobile and performance marketing business, and Dentsu Aegis Network India has a strong track record in the search and performance space to deliver this,” DAN’s Bhasin said in a statement.DAN was formed in 2012 through the acquisition of Japanese advertising giant Dentsu by British media buying Aegis Media in 2012.Part of Dentsu Inc., DAN is made up of 10 global network brands: Carat, Dentsu, Dentsu media, iProspect, Isobar, mcgarrybowen, Merkle, MKTG, Posterscope and Vizeum. Headquartered in London, it operates in 145 countries worldwide with more than 38,000 dedicated specialists.","Dentsu Aegis Network, a global digital marketing firm, acquires Indian marketing services group SVG Media in an all-cash deal",12:19,Dentsu Aegis acquires SVG Media in all-cash deal +2017-04-18,"Mumbai: Future Retail Ltd, India’s biggest department store chain that gained from the government’s surprise demonetisation move, still has room to extend the rally that’s more than doubled its market value this year.The shares of the food-to-fashion retailer are set to rally 22% in the next 12 months, according to the average analyst price target compiled by Bloomberg. The stock has surged 128% since 1 January, beating returns from rivals such as billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla-controlled Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd and Tata group’s Trent Ltd.A shortage of cash hit purchases of soaps to cars after Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November junked high-value currency bills, driving shoppers to large-format stores like Future Retail that accept credit cards. Sales may jump 25% this year as the company adds to its chain of 1,000-plus stores, India’s biggest, group chief executive officer Kishore Biyani said in an interview.“Demonetisation was one big tailwind in recent months and the single goods-and-services tax will be the next big push,” said Himanshu Nayyar, Mumbai-based analyst at Systematix Shares & Stocks Ltd, referring to the sales tax regime that will help retailers buy materials seamlessly from across states after it is rolled out from 1 July. His one-year price target of Rs345 is 18% higher than Monday’s close.Investors are warming up to India’s brick-and-mortar retailers at a time when their online rivals face an intense discount war and eroding valuations. Shares of billionaire Radhakishan Damani-owned Avenue Supermarts Ltd, which sells staples at knockdown rates, have more than doubled from their IPO price in March. The stock hasn’t been added to a popular index yet because of its short trading history. Trent, which sells branded clothes, has advanced 32% since 1 January. Aditya Birla Fashion has climbed 26%.Credit card spends at Future Retail’s Big Bazaar and Easy Day stores, which stock food and household items, saw non-cash billings surge 86% in the November-March period, the company said. The surprise currency recall was announced on the night of 8 November.Turnaround“Demonetization has in fact helped us clock more revenue,” Biyani said by phone. “We’re also looking to add 2 million square feet this financial year” that began April 1, he said.Future Retail swung to a profit in the nine months ended December, reporting a net income of Rs245 crore versus a loss of Rs89.8 crore in the year earlier period. Revenue jumped almost fourfold to Rs12,600 crore, according to its website. The turnaround isn’t just because of Modi’s currency policy change.In recent years, the company has exited non-core businesses and hived off its supply chain infrastructure to a group firm as part of efforts to lower debt. At the same time, it bought smaller chains, including a dairy products retailer Heritage Foods (India) Ltd, to expand in the convenience stores segment. This area is expected grow 43% annually in the next five years, according to Mumbai-based Antique Stock Broking Ltd.Earnings outlookFuture Retail’s after-tax profit could swell to Rs895 crore by March 2020, compared with an estimated 3.3 billion in 2017, driven by a 31% yearly growth in revenue from convenience stores in the period and a decline in inventory levels, Antique’s analyst Abhijeet Kundu wrote in a March report. An expected return on equity of 20% for 2018 is higher than the global mean of 15.8%, he said. Antique has a price target of Rs387.“What’s left in Future Retail is very scalable, asset-light and has been delivering growth in the past three quarters,” Systematix’s Nayyar said. “Heritage, Nilgiris, Easyday are high potential convenience formats. These could be the big story contributing to the company’s bottomline in the future.” Bloomberg","Future Retail shares are set to rally 22% in the next 12 months. The stock has surged 128% since 1 January, beating returns from rivals ",14:43,Future Retail gains as Kishore Biyani rides demonetisation +2017-04-18,"New Delhi: South Korean consumer electronics giant LG is looking at making India its export hub, banking on good ties between the two countries at a time when its overseas shipments from China are declining. According to LG Electronics India Managing Director Ki Wan Kim, one of the main reasons for the company to look at making India an export hub is due to tension prevailing between South Korea and China. LG, which has two manufacturing units in India, exports to the Middle East and countries in the eastern coast of African continent. Around 10% of sales of the company’s Indian arm—LG Electronics India (LGEI), are currently from exports. Last year, LGEI had sales of Rs22,000 crore. “On the other hand ties between South Korea and India have improved. All Korean (companies) have started to see India as a strategically important manufacturing base not only for India but for other areas,” Wan said. When asked if LG is scouting for more global markets for exports from India, he replied in the affirmative saying it is looking for countries where there is little or no manufacturing. Earlier, LG used to serve such markets from China but “it is declining gradually”, Wan added. “Already we are exporting from Noida and Pune to Middle East mainly in Saudi and Iran and African countries on (the eastern coast of the continent),” he said. Another major factor for seeing India as a major hub for exports is that the country is becoming more competitive economically and there will be secured and transparent taxation regime with the expected implementation of goods and services tax (GST). “India is becoming more competitive economically. With GST coming up, its secured and transparent taxation regime along with a stable political system would help in project as a bigger manufacturing hub,” Wan added. LG can increase its manufacturing capacity whenever required, he said. He said the company, which is celebrating its 20 years of operations in India this year, has witnessed very high growth rate in the last couple of years. India is among the top five global markets for LG in consumer durables category with the USA, Korea, Brazil and Russia. Reflecting on the company’s two decades of journey in India, Wan said: “It is an achievement in itself. We have seen many brands come and go in India. Not only have we sustained but we have become number one .” On LG’s success in India, he said: “We have been able to serve the needs of different consumers here. India is not one country as far as consumer requirements are concerned.” The demand from consumers from South India is different from those of the North or the East, he said, adding, “therefore we have a strong local R&D team, which helps in identifying the specific needs of consumers so that we can deliver it to them.”",LG Electronics India MD Ki Wan Kim says one of the main reasons for the company to explore making India an export hub is due to tension prevailing between South Korea and China,17:36,"LG plans to make India export hub amid Korea, China tensions" +2017-04-18,"
Mumbai-based construction company Capacit’e Infraprojects Ltd on Monday filed its draft prospectus with the market regulator for an initial public offering (IPO) to raise up to Rs400 crore. The company will use the proceeds for working capital requirements, purchase of capital assets and general corporate purposes.Capacit’e Infraprojects undertakes construction of residential, commercial and institutional buildings, primarily in the Mumbai metropolitan region, the National Capital Region and Bengaluru. The company had an order book of over Rs4,000 crore as of 31 January, comprising 51 ongoing projects. Last month, it received orders worth Rs1,500 crore from leading real estate developers such as the Oberoi, Wadhwa, Rustomjee and Kalpataru groups in Mumbai, Emaar in Gurgaon and Ozone in Bengaluru.The company’s consolidated revenue grew from Rs214 crore in 2013-14 to Rs853 crore in 2015-16 and Rs847 crore for the nine-month period ended 31 December, 2016.Axis Capital Ltd, IIFL Holdings Ltd and Vivro Financial Services Pvt. Ltd are the book running lead managers.According to a quarterly report by EY, India emerged as one of the most active regional markets for IPOs with 26 such offerings in the first three months of 2017. Delhi-based education services provider CL Educate Ltd, Shankara Building Products and Avenue Supermarts Ltd, the owner of D-Mart supermarket chain, were some companies that raised money through IPOs in the first quarter of 2017.","Capacit’e Infraprojects to use IPO proceeds for working capital requirements, purchase of capital assets and general corporate purposes",04:32,Capacit’e Infraprojects files for Rs400 crore IPO +2017-04-05,"New Delhi: State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday unveiled its new brand identity, designed to position the bank as technology savvy, modern and ready to meet financial needs of all.In recent years, SBI has accelerated its efforts towards developing digital products and services, SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said in a statement. “Also along with the merger...we felt the need to position SBI as a contemporary brand, ready to connect with a diverse audience in a world that is rapidly going digital,” she said. While the legendary SBI monogram has been the de-facto symbol of SBI, combining it with the abbreviated SBI word mark is pivotal to the new identity, it said.It makes the brand more concise, modern and approachable, infusing new energy, while retaining its core values, it added.“The monogram has been refined for greater clarity and ease of use. The iconic SBI Blue has been refreshed, and the family of colours expanded for scale of usage and approachability. The overall visual language has been designed to ensure consistency and recall across all touch-points,” it said. Beginning this month, SBI merged six lenders catapulting the country’s largest lender to among the top 50 banks in the world. State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur (SBBJ), State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH), State Bank of Mysore (SBM), State Bank of Patiala (SBP) and State Bank of Travancore (SBT), besides Bharatiya Mahila Bank (BMB), merged with SBI with effect from 1 April.","While the legendary SBI monogram has been the de-facto symbol of SBI, combining it with the abbreviated SBI word mark is pivotal to the new identity",22:52,SBI unveils new branding after merger of 6 entities +2017-04-05,"
The board of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has cleared a proposal to introduce banknotes of Rs 200 denomination, two people aware of the development said. The decision was taken at the RBI board meeting in March, these people said. They didn’t want to be identified as they aren’t authorized to speak to the media.The process of printing the new Rs 200 notes is likely to begin after June, once the government officially approves this new denomination, said one of the two people cited earlier.An RBI spokesperson declined to comment.Also read: Govt asks companies to disclose details about scrapped notesThe move to introduce lower denomination notes comes against the backdrop of the government’s move to rework the currency mix.On 8 November, it announced the withdrawal of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, amounting to around 86% of currency in circulation of Rs 17.9 trillion. Since then, RBI has replaced these with the new Rs 2,000 and redesigned Rs 500 bank notes. As on 24 March, currency in circulation was Rs 13.12 trillion, still around 27% off pre-demonetization levels. The government is encouraging digital payments and may not increase currency in circulation to the pre-demonetization level.On 13 March, RBI lifted all cash withdrawal caps. ATM operators, however, say that there is a paucity of lower denomination banknotes.So far, the central bank has not revealed how many of the old currency notes it has got back from the public. The window for Indians who were out of the country between 8 November and 30 December ended on Friday. The RBI board has 14 members. Apart from governor Urjit Patel and four deputy governors, the board also has economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das and financial services secretary Anjuly Chib Duggal.","RBI is likely to start the process of printing the new Rs 200 notes after June, only after the government officially approves this new denomination, says an official ",20:59,RBI clears proposal to introduce Rs 200 notes +2017-04-05,"New Delhi: The Monetary Policy Committee, headed by RBI governor Urjit Patel, began its 2-day meeting on Wednesday amid experts saying that the central bank is likely to hold the rate on Thursday while unveiling the first bi-monthly review of 2017-18 in view of hardening inflation.Rising interest rate in the US provides sufficient indication that benchmark policy rate of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is not going to go down but may increase in the future depending on domestic and external factors, experts said.They were of the view however that RBI could announce some measures including standing deposit facility (SDF) to absorb additional liquidity in the system following demonetisation, announced on 8 November 2016. According to various informal estimates about Rs14 lakh crore has come back into the banking system. HDFC Bank chief economist Abheek Barua said RBI is likely to keep the repo rate unchanged in its upcoming monetary policy review. “In our view, the main focus of the central bank is likely to be on liquidity absorption in order to signal a neutral policy approach and for gaining additional headroom to intervene in the currency market,” he said.This will be the fourth bi-monthly policy based on the recommendations of the 6-member MPC. The government nominees on the Committee are Chetan Ghate, professor at the Indian Statistical Institute; Pami Dua, director, Delhi School of Economics and Ravindra H Dholakia, professor at IIM-Ahmedabad, while RBI nominees are the governor, deputy governor in-charge of monetary policy Viral A Acharya and executive director.“I think that RBI will hold on to the interest rate in the upcoming policy,” Kotak Mahindra Bank vice chairman Uday Kotak told PTI. Going forward, he said, the tinkering could be plus or minus 0.25% depending on the evolving condition. According to the head of another private sector lender, the central bank may not change rates on 6 April. In the last policy review on 8 February, RBI had kept key interest rate on hold at 6.25%.Patel had said he would wait for more clarity on the inflation trend and impact of demonetisation on growth before making change in the key policy rate.Wholesale inflation soared to a 39-month high of 6.55% in February while retail inflation inched up to 3.65% due to rise in food and fuel prices, leading to speculation that RBI will keep interest rate unchanged again in its April policy.“Although the CPI inflation is likely to significantly undershoot the March 2017 target, we do not expect a repo rate cut in the upcoming policy review in April 2017, with the Monetary Policy Committee firmly focused on the medium term target of 4%,” rating agency Icra’s managing director Naresh Takkar said.Crisil said that sharper-than-expected fall in inflation over the past few months has already started correcting as remonetisation gains currency and food price pressures could build anew if El Nino disrupts the south-west monsoon this year.“To boot, core inflation, which has been sticky, could edge up if domestic demand. Given the predicament, we foresee CPI inflation averaging 5% in fiscal 2018, 0.3% higher than in fiscal 2017,” it said.Monetary policy might have to clearly articulate the glide path to the 4% CPI target in the medium term, it said. Also, while fiscal policy and structural reforms, will be as crucial to quelling incipient inflation, it will take time for the benefits to work through an enduringly lower inflation,” it said.Apart from the challenge of getting inflation down to 4%, which was flagged by the RBI Governor at the last review, one of the biggest factors influencing the analysts seems to be the shift in the policy stance to neutral.“The RBI surprised with a shift to a neutral stance in February. Rates will remain on hold at April’s review,” analysts at Singaporean lender DBS said.In Patel’s first policy review as RBI governor in October, which was also the maiden review of the MPC, the repo rate was reduced by 0.25% to 6.25%. Since then, the repo rate has been retained at 6.25%. However, RBI has cut repo by 1.75% since January 2015.",Monetary Policy Committee begins its 2-day meeting amid experts saying that RBI is likely to hold rate while unveiling the first bi-monthly review of 2017-18 in view of hardening inflation,20:54,"Monetary Policy Committee meet begins, RBI likely to hold policy rate" +2017-04-18,"
Private equity (PE) investors, who are struggling to sell their investments in India’s food and beverages (F&B) companies, have seen their exit plans thwarted again because of a ban on liquor sales near highways. The Supreme Court’s ban on liquor sales within 500 metres of highways has hit PE investors who have failed to sell their F&B sector investments in the past couple of years. According to Grant Thornton data, PE investments in F&B fell 82% to $29 million (nine deals) in 2016 from $159 million (19 deals) in the previous year.“PE investors need to extend the maximum possible support to companies at this point in time as the alcohol ban is a black swan event completely out of the control of the industry. Interim results will be impacted, but investors will do well to work on strategizing with company managements to ensure minimal disruption,” said Ritesh Chandra, executive director, head-consumer, FIG and business services group at Avendus Capital Pvt. Ltd. Several India-focused PE funds have been looking to exit their four-to-five-year-old investments in F&B, but have been unable to find a buyer for their assets.New Silk Route Partners LLC (NSR), an Asia-focused PE firm, has been planning an exit from Moshe’s Fine Foods Pvt. Ltd. NSR had been in talks with several buyers since November 2015, Mint reported in May last year. NSR acquired a majority stake in Moshe’s in September 2013. Its holding in Moshe is 58% and the remaining stake is held by its founder Moshe Shek, an Indian entrepreneur. The company runs a chain of restaurants and cafes that specialize in Mediterranean cuisine under the brand name Cafe Moshe’s.NSR’s other portfolio companies in the F&B segment in India—Bengaluru-based Vasudev Adiga’s Fast Food Ltd—is also in trouble. Following a dispute with NSR, promoter K.N. Vasudeva Adiga approached the Company Law Board, which appointed an administrator in 2015 to run the food chain.PE firm Everstone Group has also been looking to sell its fine-dining business platform Pan India Foods Solutions Pvt. Ltd, also known as Blue Foods, Mint reported in May last year. Pan India Foods’ loss have doubled to Rs38.8 crore in 2014-15 from Rs19.8 crore in 2011-12, according to Registrar of Companies (RoC) data. Set up in September 2000, Pan India Food Solutions (Blue Foods) runs F&B operations through its brands Spaghetti Kitchen, Copper Chimney, Gelato Italiano, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Bombay Blue, Noodle Bar, Food Courts, Food Talk and Spoon.The performance of PE-backed listed firms has not been different. Shares of Speciality Restaurants which operates Mainland China, Oh! Calcutta, Sigree and Sigree Global Grill, Haka, Machaan and Flame & Grill brands, fell about 40% as on 13 April since its listing at a price of Rs150 in May 2012.SAIF Partners, investors in Speciality Restaurants Ltd, sold a 2% stake this month and another 2% last month. SAIF India IV FII Holdings Ltd held 8.26% in Speciality Restaurants for the quarter ended 31 December 2016. Spokespersons for Everstone and SAIF Partners declined to answer queries for this story.“It is a fact that many QSRs (quick service restaurants) and fine dining restaurants struggle after a few years as their USP or their value proposition to the customer wears off. This is more in the case of fine dining,” said Dhanraj Bhagat, partner, consulting firm Grant Thornton India LLP. So there should be a constant endeavour on the part of the promoters and the PEs to continuously innovate to ensure that customer interest is retained. There are recent government regulations like liquor ban and service charge issues which have acted as a dampener on the restaurant business, Bhagat added.However, there are some investment bankers who are optimistic about the deal flow in F&B sector. “The liquor ban definitely has affected a number of players and large F&B companies would each have one or two outlets affected by this ban. PE funds looking to invest in these companies may adjust valuation to the extent revenues/profits are likely to be affected but they may not choose to disengage from these conversations as the bigger picture would still be intact,” said Siddharth Bafna, partner and head, corporate finance at Lodha & Co., a Mumbai-based boutique investment bank.",Supreme Court’s ban on liquor sales within 500m of highways has hit PE investors who have failed to sell their food and beverages investments in the past couple of years,04:32,Supreme Court’s liquor ban hits F&B exit plans for PE investors +2017-04-01,"Bhubaneswar: India on Saturday made a formal launch of Bharat Stage-IV (BS-IV) grade fuel across the country to keep carbon emission in check and set a target of ushering in BS-VI fuel by April 2020. The launch came days after the Supreme Court banned sale and registration of BS-III vehicles from 1 April. Union petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan formally launched the BS-IV grade transportation fuel in Bhubaneswar on the occasion of Utkal Diwas, the state foundation day.Pradhan symbolically commenced sale of the eco-friendly and low-emission fuel from 12 different locations across the country through live video links. The cities were Varanasi, Vijayawada, Durgapur, Gorakhpur, Imphal, Bhopal, Ranchi, Madurai, Nagpur, Patna, Guwahati and Shillong. “Today, we begin a new era of clean transportation fuel that will benefit 1.25 billion citizens of our country by substantially reducing pollution levels everywhere,” Pradhan said while complimenting oil marketing companies for working in unison to set up refining infrastructure and logistics in a record time for BS-IV grade fuel. The oil marketing companies (OMCs) are incurring an expenditure of Rs90,000 crore for phase-wise upgradation of the fuel quality. “Migration to BS-IV fuels shows India’s resolve to cut down emissions. The next step is to usher in BS-VI fuels by April 1, 2020, to be at par with global standards,” the oil minister said. Though India is not a major polluting country, “we shall stand by the Prime Minister’s commitment at COP-21 in Paris that India will substantially reduce carbon emissions and greenhouse gas emissions in coming years”.",The launch of BS-IV fuel comes days after the Supreme Court banned sale and registration of BS-III vehicles from 1 April,21:50,India formally launches BS-IV fuel to make environmental statement +2017-04-01,"Bengaluru: Royal Dutch Shell Plc plans to double the capacity of its liquefied natural gas import facility at Hazira on India’s west coast to 10 million tonnes a year, a top company executive said on Friday.Shell Gas B.V, a unit of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, owns a 74% stake in Hazira LNG Ltd, while Total Gaz Electricite France, a unit of France’s Total SA, holds the rest.“We’ve done all the work, now it’s sort of taking a look at when is the right timing in terms of demand that’s available,” Nitin Prasad, chairman of Shell Companies in India, told Reuters, without giving a timeline for the expansion.A government panel said in a report in April 2015 that Hazira LNG will look to expand the capacity of its LNG terminal in the western state of Gujarat by 50% to 7.5 million tonnes per annum in the fiscal year to March 2017. Shell on Friday opened a new technology centre in Bengaluru, the capital of the southern state Karnataka. The technology hub, Shell’s third in the world, is aimed at expanding the company’s research and development activities in Asia.India aims to raise the share of natural gas in its energy mix to 15% in the next three years from about 6.5% at present, as it attempts to achieve energy security while keeping pollution levels down. India’s gas imports in April 2016-February 2017 rose 16.4% to 22.53 billion cubic metres, according to government data. Reuters",Shell’s India head Nitin Prasad says the firm plans to double the capacity of its liquefied natural gas import facility at Hazira to 10 million tonnes a year,11:15,Shell plans to double Hazira LNG plant capacity: India head +2017-04-01,"New Delhi: The European Investment Bank (EIB) has okayed Rs1,400 crore (€200 million) loan to State Bank of India to fund solar power projects. The long-term loan will support total investment of €650 million in five different large-scale photo-voltaic solar power projects, EIB said in a statement. This will contribute to India’s National Solar mission and reduce dependence on fossil fuel power generation. Four solar power projects at a generation capacity of 530 MWac have already been identified under this funding, it said.“The new cooperation between the State Bank of India and the European Investment Bank will scale up investment in large scale solar power generation across India,” said B Sriram, managing director, State Bank of India. Also Read: Ex-servicemen will require Aadhaar to avail pension benefits: GovtClose cooperation between technical and financial teams from both institutions will ensure that world class projects are supported, he said.“This new project reflects the shared commitment of India and the European Union to tackle climate change and implement the Paris Climate Agreement,” said Andrew McDowell, vice president of the European Investment Bank.The 20 -year long-term EIB loan will support individual projects. Projects in Tamil Nadu and Telangana are among those to be funded under this agreement.This funding will be in addition to financing from Indian banks and project promoters. One of the largest lenders in renewable energy investment, EIB has financed projects of €1.7 billion (about Rs11,900 crore) in India since 1993.Owned by the 28 member states of the European Union, it is the world’s largest international public bank.","The SBI gets Rs1,400 crore long-term loan from European Investment Bank to fund five different solar projects in Tamil Nadu and Telangana",10:32,"SBI gets Rs1,400 cr loan from European Investment Bank to fund solar projects" +2017-04-01,"
New Delhi: The Union cabinet on Friday gave a five-year extension to 25 large power projects to ink long-term power purchase deals and avail the promised customs and excise duty benefits on equipment procured under the Mega Power Policy of 2009.An official statement issued after the cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the extension of incentives to ink deals would increase power availability and ensure that consumers did not have to pay more. The statement said projects will get tax breaks on a pro rata basis against the quantum of power purchase deals they sign with utilities.The 25 projects were given provisional mega power project status in 2011 and had five years to sign power sale deals, which they failed to do. Now, they have another five years to do so. Former power secretary Anil Razdan said supporting these projects is necessary in view of the expected power demand increase on account of the Make in India drive, rural electrification and the shift to electricity from fossil fuels for transportation and cooking. The move will provide about Rs10,000 crore of benefits to the 25 projects with about 32,000 megawatts (MW) in capacity and help ease the stress some of them pose to the banking sector. Only 11,000 MW in capacity has been commissioned, with the remaining in various stages of implementation. The total cost of these projects is estimated to be about Rs1.5 trillion.GMR Chhattisgarh Energy Ltd, Monnet Power Corp. Ltd, Lanco Power Ltd, Essar Power Jharkhand Ltd, Jindal India Thermal Power Ltd, Hinduja National Power Corp. Ltd, IL&FS Tamil Nadu Power Co. Ltd and Torrent Energy Ltd are among companies that are eligible for the benefits.Further, in a bid to promote organic farming among farmers and augment their incomes, the cabinet approved unrestricted export of organic farm produce. It also enhanced the ceiling on export of organic pulses from 10,000 tonnes a year currently to 50,000 tonnes.In a move to boost indigenous production of urea, the cabinet cleared an amendment to the New Urea Policy, 2015 which will enable companies to produce beyond the re-assessed capacity. The move is expected to boost local production of the plant nutrient, the statement said.The cabinet also approved a new air services agreement between India and Serbia.In another decision, it approved extension of grant-in-aid support to the network of 12 Agro Economic Research Centres and three agro economic research units for another year (2017-18). Further, to eradicate child labour, the cabinet approved ratification of the Minimum Age Convention, 1973 and Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 of the International Labour Organization (ILO). The cabinet also cleared an understanding between the forum of state electricity regulators and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners on large-scale integration of clean energy into the electricity grid.","Extension of incentives to ink deals would increase power availability and ensure consumers do not have to pay more, says government statement",10:32,Govt gives 25 mega power producers extra time for tax breaks +2017-04-01,"New Delhi: Indian state refiners will cut oil imports from Iran in 2017/18 by a fifth, as New Delhi takes a more assertive stance over an impasse on a giant gas field that it wants awarded to an Indian consortium, sources familiar with the matter said.India, Iran’s biggest oil buyer after China, was among a handful of countries that continued to deal with the Persian Gulf nation despite Western sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear programme.However, previously close ties have been strained since the lifting of some sanctions last year as Iran adopts a bolder approach in trying to get the best deal for its oil and gas.Unhappy with Tehran, India’s oil ministry has asked state refiners to cut imports of Iranian oil.“We are cutting gradually, and we will cut more if there is no progress in the matter of the award of Farzad B gas field to our company,” one of the Indian sources said.Indian refiners told a National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) representative about their plans to cut oil imports by a fifth to 190,000 barrels per day (bpd) from 240,000 bpd, officials present at the meeting said.Indian Oil Corp and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Corp will reduce imports by 20,000 bpd each to about 80,000 bpd. Bharat Petroleum Corp and Hindustan Petroleum Corp will together cut imports by about 10,000 bpd to roughly 30,000 bpd, they said.In turn, NIOC threatened to cut the discount it offers to Indian buyers on freight from 80 percent to about 60 percent, the officials added.No comment was available from the Indian companies or NIOC.Cutting imports from Iran amid an OPEC-led supply cut aimed at propping up the market exposes India’s refiners to the risk of struggling to find reasonably priced alternatives.“We expect that the market is currently undersupplied and that the draws in inventory are coming,” U.S. investment bank Jefferies said in a note to clients this week, adding it expected crude prices of around $60 a barrel by the fourth quarter.Despite this, Indian oil industrials said they saw no major impact from cutting Iranian imports, mainly due to their specific requirements.“Their main requirement is lighter oil, and light oil will remain in oversupply despite OPEC cuts, as OPEC cuts are mainly medium heavy sour,” said Ehsan ul Haq of KBC Energy Economics.Prices of light crude have fallen recently, thanks largely to soaring output in the United States, which is not involved in the production cuts led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.From April last year to February 2017, India imported 542,400 bpd from Iran, compared to 225,522 bpd a year earlier. Average oil volumes supplied by Iran over this period were the highest on record.INDIA’S GAS PLANAt the heart of the spat is that a group of Indian oil companies headed by Oil and Natural Gas Corp wants to develop Iran’s Farzad B gas field.Iran has yet to hand out a concession that would allow its development.ONGC Videsh has submitted a $3 billion development plan to Iranian authorities to develop the offshore field estimated to hold reserves of 12.5 trillion cubic feet, with a lifetime of 30 years.Under sanctions, Iran was banned from the global financial system, preventing the field’s development.India was one of a few countries still supplying Iran with goods, devising a complex payment mechanism to help Tehran access non-sanctioned items including medicines.As new options have opened up for Tehran since the lifting of sanctions, Iran may now be awaiting better bids for Farzad B.“They (Tehran) are playing hardball ... We don’t see any forward movement on that (Farzad B)... So we have reduced (crude) imports,” the Indian official said.(Editing by Dale Hudson)","Unhappy with Tehran, India’s oil ministry has asked state refiners to cut imports of Iranian oil gradually, before cutting more if there is no progress on award of Farzad B gas field ",01:32,India to cut Iranian oil purchases in row over gas field +2017-02-08,"
Mumbai: Tata Steel Ltd on Tuesday posted its first profit in five quarters as a strong performance by its Indian business, a rebound in demand and higher pricing helped counter weak sales in Europe.The steel maker reported a consolidated net profit of Rs231.90 crore in the quarter to 31 December, compared with a net loss of Rs2,747.72 crore a year ago. Revenue rose 14% to Rs29,391.60 crore from Rs25,766.89 crore a year earlier.Fifteen analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected Tata Steel to report a consolidated net profit of Rs130 crore; two analysts had expected revenue of Rs29,436 crore.Global steel mills have seen profits jump after prices of the alloy advanced because of government stimulus in China, the world’s biggest consumer. At the same time, a ramp-up in capacity in India saw volumes increase, boosting sales of local mills.At Tata Steel, India business revenue rose 39% to Rs14,106.04 crore in the quarter to December. Revenue at Tata Steel Europe fell 6.3% to Rs12,537.08 crore.Over the past two years, Tata Steel has cut jobs and shuttered some of its plants in Europe, blaming competition from cheap Chinese imports, a strong pound and high costs.Total costs in the quarter rose 3.9% to Rs27,232.08 crore. Finance costs alone rose 40.5% to Rs1,387.40 crore.The company said that its steel deliveries in the December quarter stood at 6.11 million tonnes. As of 31 December, Tata Steel’s net debt stood at Rs76,680 crore.In India, Tata Steel said its deliveries rose 27% year-on-year, at a time when the domestic markets contracted by 2%. Its automotive sales grew by 20% year-on-year, sales in the industrial products, projects and exports vertical rose 47% while those in branded products grew 13%, Tata Steel said in a statement.ALSO READ | Tata Steel to seek board nod to raise Kalinganagar plant capacity to 8 million tonnes“While the broader market was affected by lower rural sales and adverse consumer sentiments, we were able to increase overall volumes by 14% sequentially and register strong growth across all our target customer segments. Further, our focus on cost improvement initiatives and our integrated operations helped us to contain the impact of rising raw material prices,” said T.V. Narendran, managing director, Tata Steel India and South East Asia.The third-quarter performance was primarily driven by healthy domestic price realizations, which increased by about Rs3,500 per tonne on a quarter-on-quarter basis, ICICIdirect.com Research said in a note to clients.“Tata Steel’s sales volume from the Indian operations came in at 3 million tonnes (mt), higher than our estimate of 2.7 mt, while the sales volume from the European operations came in at 2.4 mt, higher than our estimate of 2.3 mt,” said the note.In December, subsidiary Tata Steel UK reached an agreement with trade unions to replace its defined benefit pension scheme British Steel Pension Scheme (BSPS) with a defined contribution plan.ALSO READ | Tata Steel aims 20% revenue from service, solutions business“The strategic initiatives in the UK on the pensions continue to be an important priority for the company and we welcome the Union’s recommendation to its members to support the ballot process that is currently on to close the BSPS to future accruals,” said Koushik Chatterjee, group executive director (finance and corporate).In a separate BSE filing on Tuesday, Tata Steel said it had elected N. Chandrasekaran as chairman of its board and appointed Peter Blauwhoff as an additional independent director effective immediately. Chandrasekaran, who was appointed as a member of the steel maker’s board on 13 January, is chief executive and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and is the chairman designate of Tata Sons Ltd, the group holding company, where he will replace the ousted Cyrus Mistry.","Tata Steel’s net profit was Rs230 crore in the December quarter from a loss of Rs2,750 crore in the corresponding period of last year",02:03,Tata Steel registers first profit in 5 quarters +2017-02-08,"Mumbai: United Bank of India on Friday said it registered a net profit of Rs64.10 crore in the December quarter against Rs17 crore a year ago, thanks to higher income and a substantial tax credit.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 68.45% to Rs608.09 crore in from Rs360.98 crore last year. Other income more than doubled to Rs814.08 crore from Rs357.21 crore. The bank also reported a tax credit of Rs122.49 crore.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) at United Bank fell 2.59% to Rs10,845.31 crore at the end of the December quarter from Rs11,134.47 crore in the September quarter. As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were 15.98% at the end of the December quarter compared with 16.26% in the previous quarter and 9.57% a year ago.Provisions against bad loans and contingencies tripled to Rs1,380.85 crore in the third quarter from Rs401.03 crore the preceding quarter. Net NPAs rose to 10.62% in the December quarter compared with 11.19% in the previous quarter and 5.91% in the same quarter last year.United Bank closed 14.02% higher at Rs28.05 on the BSE, while the benchmark Sensex lost 0.35% to 28340.28 points.","United Bank of India’s net interest income, or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 68.45% to Rs608.09 crore in from Rs360.98 crore last year",01:52,United Bank of India posts net profit of Rs64.10 crore in Q3 +2017-04-01,"Petrol prices have been cut by Rs3.77 per litre and diesel prices by Rs 2.91 per litre from midnight tonight. State-owned oil retailers Indian Oil Corp., Bharat Petroleum Corp. and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. cut fuel price sharply, passing on to consumers benefits of the softening global prices and of the strengthening rupee against the dollar. A statement from Indian Oil Corp. said that with effect from 1st April, petrol price has been cut by Rs 3.77 a litre and diesel price by Rs 2.91 a litre, excluding state levies. “The current level of international product prices of petrol and diesel and rupee-dollar exchange rate warrant decrease in selling price of petrol and diesel, the impact of which is being passed on to the consumers with this price revision. The movement of prices in the international oil market and currency exchange rate shall continue to be monitored closely and developing trends of the market will be reflected in future price changes,” the statement said.","State-owned oil retailers have cut petrol and diesel price, passing on to consumers benefits of softening global oil prices and of the strengthening rupee against the dollar ",01:24,"Petrol price cut by Rs3.77 per litre, diesel price by Rs 2.91, as rupee strengthens " +2017-02-08,"Bengaluru: Watches and accessories maker Titan Co. Ltd on Tuesday reported a 13.08% rise in net profit to Rs255.75 crore in the December quarter on strong festive and wedding season sales. Revenue rose 14.38% to Rs3,925.95 crore during the period.Both net profit and revenue beat estimates of Rs244.20 crore and Rs3,675.10 crore, respectively, in a Bloomberg analysts’ survey.Sales of watches, jewellery, eye-wear and other businesses, including precision engineering and accessories, rose from a year ago.Revenue from Titan’s jewellery business, run mainly under the Tanishq brand, grew 15.41% from a year ago to Rs3,255.00 crore. Sales from this segment typically accounts for a major portion of overall revenue. Its watches segment revenue grew 5.05% to Rs508.26 crore.“Despite initial headwinds on account of demonetization, the company clocked a growth of over 14% and a PBT (profit before tax) growth of 21%. The festival season was very good for both our jewellery and watches business. Our effort continues, therefore, to be one of generating demand, through new product introductions and network expansion, while retaining our focus on cost control,” managing director Bhaskar Bhat said.Early last month, Titan had warned in a stock exchange filing that the third quarter that had kicked off on a high note due to the festive season, was dented somewhat by demonetization. Titan also said sales had recovered in the modern and dedicated retail channels and that the only cause for worry was sales of watches through trade or multi-brand retail outlet channels.The company has since repeatedly said it expects demonetization to give its jewellery business a boost as customers migrate from the large informal space, which most consumers traditionally tap for their jewellery purchase, to the organized segment of the market.Titan’s shares closed up 0.52% at Rs393.4 a share on BSE on Tuesday.The company started the process of merging its Gold Plus brand with the larger Tanishq during the quarter and estimates that the merger will be completed in 5-6 months. It launched the Favre-Leuba watch brand in a few stores in India and is planning to launch it in Taiwan. Favre-Leuba watches are currently sold in India, UAE and Japan.“Jewellery has been exceptionally good with 20% top line and 15% same-store growth. After a long time we are seeing 15% same-store growth and it was aided by a lot of work we’ve done in the jewellery business, especially on new consumer launches and consumer schemes. Studded (jewellery) ratio was lower. Coin sales have grown by 40%,” Bhat said on a call with analysts.“Our online brand CaratLane has had a good quarter, after two not-so-good quarters, despite demonetisation. Watch division after a long time has shown retail growth after long. It is the trade (channel) where the effect of demonetization was more severe. The launch of the Sonata ACT watch, a smartwatch basically for women’s safety has been received very well and has brought excitement back into the trade,” Bhat added.Company executives said they have withdrawn helmets under its Fastrack youth accessories brand. Titan had launched Fastrack helmets in 2013.","Titan reported a 13.08% rise in net profit to Rs255.75 crore in the December quarter with revenue rising 14.38% to Rs3,925.95 crore during the period",01:24,"Titan Q3 profit rises 13.08% on strong festive, wedding season sales" +2017-04-20,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +2017-05-02,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +2017-04-21,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +2017-04-22,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +2017-03-11,"
Harry Banga always thought he would retire from a career in trading commodities when he turned 60. Much to his own relief, however, things didn’t go according to plan or he would have been at a loss for things to do. He tells me he has no hobbies.
Banga, now 66, is immersed at work when we meet. His office is where he is happiest. It probably helps that it has a breathtaking view of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, dotted with ships.
The Amritsar-born, Hong Kong-based Harindarpal Banga—“Harry” to everyone who knows him—is the chairman and chief executive officer of The Caravel Group. “It’s a start-up,” Banga chuckles. But one with grey-haired managers, an experienced team, and a billion-dollar balance sheet. “We created something new,” Banga demurs. “That’s what a start-up is.”
A diversified global conglomerate, Caravel was founded in 2013 by Banga and his two sons, Guneet (37) and Angad (33). The Bangas own all of it. He says his sons, who were working elsewhere, forced him to start his own venture, promising they would join him if he did. Though both have leadership roles within Caravel, Guneet, who is the executive director, is currently on a sabbatical, working on philanthropic projects in Thailand. Angad, the group’s chief operating officer, plays an active role in the day-to-day operations and heads the asset manage-ment division.
Harry Banga made a name and fortune for himself over two decades at Noble Group, a commodity trading company based in Hong Kong. As group vice-chairman, he was widely credited with turning the company into one of Asia’s biggest business successes.
He had joined Noble in 1989 to head its new shipping division. It was the perfect match: Noble could trade commodities and transport raw materials from suppliers to buyers. The timing was fortuitous. China’s economy was regaining momentum and the government was spending liberally on domestic infrastructure projects. It had a voracious appetite for raw materials. Banga quickly realized the impact an emerging China would have on the world stage, so that’s where he focused his attention.
“I pretty much lived there, not in five-star hotels but in dirty, filthy, smelly guest houses,” he says, remembering the years he spent travelling to remote corners of China. “And the food was terrible.” It was rough, but he persisted, even picking up Mandarin during those years of travel and establishing key contacts within China.
“For an Indian national to be so respected, to have such ‘guanxi’(relationships) within China, is very rare,” says Sam Chambers, editorial director of Asia Shipping Media, which controls global maritime news portal Splash.
Banga left Noble in 2010. He doesn’t say much about why he stepped down, except that the way Noble was growing (“too fast”) and diversifying (“becoming asset heavy”) didn’t match his sensibilities. He continued with them as vice-chairman emeritus till their 2013 annual general meeting to enable a smooth transition.
His exit was well timed. Noble has been plagued by accounting problems, several high-level departures, and a downturn in the commodity market. The company is nowhere near the darling of the stock market it once was.
Rich with experience and cash from selling his stake in Noble, Banga set up Caravel. It is named after a small, nimble, 15th century sailing ship developed by the Spanish and Portuguese to explore uncharted waters. The business has three verticals: logistics, which includes maritime services such as ship management, commodities trading, and asset management. Asset management was introduced to attract Angad, who has a background in private equity.
In a little over three years, Caravel has put Banga back on the list of Hong Kong’s 50 Richest People, with a fortune of $1.02 billion (around Rs6,800 crore), according to Forbes magazine. Caravel, which posted a revenue of $80 million in its first year of operation, estimates a jump to $1.8 billion last year. Banga looks embarrassed when I talk to him about his wealth. “What means more to me is when they compare Caravel to companies that have been around for 50 or 80 years,” he says, adding, “At this age, if I have more than three drinks, the doctor’s bill is bigger than the drinks bill, so where will you spend the money?”
Later, I understand where the money goes—well, some of it at least. “I don’t fly commercial, I have my own plane,” Banga says in a matter-of-fact tone. “Sometimes I say, why should I go in my own plane? I worry about my carbon footprint. But Angad says, Dad, just enjoy your life.”
As we speak in his office, I can’t help but notice that the view makes a perfect backdrop to Banga’s story. He began his life on the seas. He was not really interested in an engineering or medical degree, the traditional career path for most Indian men with his kind of family background at the time, and a chance meeting with a family friend who worked for the Indian Merchant Navy piqued his interest. Growing up in landlocked Punjab, Banga had never seen the sea. Without telling his father, he applied for a position with the Indian merchant navy. An exam and an interview later, he was accepted as a cadet.
Banga loved his life as a seafarer. “It was the lure of seeing the world. You went to a port and stayed there for months. I loved it. Seeing new places, meeting new people. It was amazing.”
He went on to become a master mariner (a qualification that allows you to become the captain of a ship) and at 28, the youngest captain in the navy.
It was during his time on the sea that the young Sikh cut his hair. It was impractical, with all that travel and being on a ship, he says. Banga’s father didn’t allow him into the house for three years. “Three years,” he emphasizes. Even after they made their peace, Banga had to grow a beard and put on a turban before going to meet his father.
I meet Banga for a second time at a gurdwara in Hong Kong on a chilly Saturday morning. He is there with his family to attend an akhand path (continuous recitation of religious hymns). “I believe in god and god for me is Sikhism,” Banga says. “Being Sikh defines who they are, it’s a big part of their identity,” Angad says of his parents. I learn that Banga has donated $1.2 million to the gurdwara for a new building and is closely involved in the design as well.
I watch Banga mingle easily with others from the local Indian community. He’s a slight man with a towering personality, the recipient of the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman (the highest award given to overseas Indians) conferred by the then president, Pratibha Patil, in 2011.
Over the years, he has also developed a fiercely loyal inner circle of colleagues. The senior management at Caravel came with him from Noble. His secretary has been working with him for 30 years; the head of iron ore, for 25 years; and the head of his China unit, for 20 years. Perhaps his most endearing quality is his friendly disposition. He’s affable. Every morning, he walks the floor of his office at 10.30 and greets people personally. He has done this for 20 years. He has a monthly list of birthdays on his desk and doesn’t miss wishing an employee.
“It’s a we and us culture, never you, never me. At our Monday morning meetings, there’s no finger-pointing. If someone did something that cost the company, it’s we made a loss, never you made a loss,” says Angad. He credits his father’s leadership style—based on developing trust—for creating a family-like atmosphere in the office.
For Banga, nothing in the world is more important than family. I understand that within minutes of meeting him. He talks often of his father, a former civil servant, now 95 and ailing. Banga returns to New Delhi frequently to visit him. His wife of 37 years, Indra, goes through the day’s schedule with him before he comes to office. She has chosen all the art that is displayed in the office. His daughter-in-law Dana (Angad’s wife) works at the Caravel Foundation with Indra.
The family gets together for Sunday-night dinners. It’s not just a tradition, but one that is “sacred”, Angad says. If anyone can’t make it, there had better be a very good reason for it. It doesn’t matter that they have seen each other in office every day, all week.
Sometimes, he’s kind of old fashioned, laughs Angad. “There’s so much pressure on my wife and I to have children. He’s like, all my friends have grandchildren, I am the only one who doesn’t!”
Speaking about the next generation (and a potential third), I ask Banga what he would like his legacy to be. He seems puzzled. I haven’t really thought about it, he responds. I rephrase the question. How would he like to be remembered? Banga pauses. Finally, he says, “I think I would just want someone to say, I miss him having a drink with me.”
In case you are wondering, that would be single malt whisky.","The master mariner, who founded a start-up after two decades at one of Asia’s biggest commodity trading firms, on Chinese hotels, Sunday dinners and god",00:00,Harry Banga: The commodities captain +2017-03-09,"New York: American International Group Inc. chief executive officer (CEO) Peter Hancock is stepping down after posting four losses in six quarters, results that hurt investors including activists Carl Icahn and John Paulson.Hancock, 58, will remain CEO until a successor is named, the New York-based insurer said on Thursday in a statement. The company’s board said it will conduct a comprehensive search for a new leader, after meeting on Wednesday as part of an annual review into the firm’s performance.“Without wholehearted shareholder support for my continued leadership, a protracted period of uncertainty could undermine the progress we have made and damage the interests of our policyholders, employees, regulators, debtholders and shareholders,” Hancock said in the statement.ALSO READ: GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s pay falls 35% to $21.3 million amid weak oil marketAIG shares rose 1.7% to $64.50 at 8:41 am in early trading in New York. The stock declined 2.9% this year through Wednesday, while the S&P 500 Index rallied 5.6%. Icahn applauded the board’s decision in a Twitter post on Thursday.‘Significant positive’The move is a “significant positive,” Meyer Shields, an analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said in a note to clients. “Of course, there aren’t too many candidates with the skills needed to turn around this troubled global company, but several successful turn-arounds” have occurred in the industry.Hancock’s successor will be the seventh CEO of AIG since 2005. The company’s complexity bedeviled one leader after another as they struggled to manage a global insurer that was built through decades of acquisitions by former leader Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, and then shrunk through dozens of asset sales after a near collapse during the financial crisis. Doug Steenland, the insurer’s chairman, thanked Hancock for his work in helping repay a bailout that swelled to $182.3 billion.Hancock “tackled the company’s most complex issues, including the repayment of AIG’s obligations to the US Treasury in full and with a profit, and is leaving AIG as a strong, focused and profitable insurance company,” Steenland said in the statement.ALSO READ: Viacom said in talks with former Fox executive to lead ParamountIcahn announced his stake in AIG in October 2015, faulting Hancock for failing to meet return targets and pushing the insurer to split into smaller companies, saying it was too big to manage. He and Paulson won board representation in February of 2016. Paulson’s hedge fund has since been selling some of its stock.Management turnoverIcahn lauded Hancock when the CEO reached a deal in August to sell a mortgage guarantor to Arch Capital Group Ltd for $3.4 billion. Hancock has been exiting assets around the world to shrink the insurer, striking reinsurance deals to limit volatility and reducing headcount, partially to reduce costs. The CEO reshaped AIG management, replacing executives including longtime chief financial officer David Herzog and Seraina Maag, who oversaw regional operations.Still, ratings firm A.M. Best has been reviewing AIG’s financial strength score after the latest losses prompted Hancock to pay about $10 billion to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. to assume risks on insurance contracts that were initiated by his company. The CEO has said that a downgrade could jeopardize relationships with some customers.“This was the board reacting to the poor news from the fourth-quarter results,” Paul Newsome, an analyst at Sandler O’Neill & Partners, said by phone. “The broader question is how is the management team totally going to change?” he said. “I suspect that the strategy will change, we just don’t know how yet.”AIG has endured more than a decade of management turmoil. Greenberg stepped down as CEO in 2005 amid regulatory probes and was replaced by Martin Sullivan, who was ousted in 2008 after he underestimated the risk of a housing market collapse. Robert Willumstad held the post for just months until the insurer’s bailout, ceding the job to Robert Liddy who lasted less than a year in what he called “the most stimulating job in America.”The late Robert Benmosche ran AIG for more than five years, starting in 2009. He brought on Hancock, a former J.P. Morgan & Co. executive, in 2010 and assigned him the next year to run property-casualty insurance, the company’s biggest business. They repaid the government rescue in 2012. Bloomberg",Peter Hancock’s successor will be the seventh CEO of AIG since 2005 as the company’s complexity bedeviled one leader after another as they struggled to manage the global insurer ,22:10,AIG CEO Peter Hancock to quit as swelling losses hurt investors +2017-03-10,"New Delhi: In a surprise move, Reliance Capital’s long serving CEO Sam Ghosh will leave the company on 31 March, after spending nine years at the financial services arm of Anil Ambani-led business conglomerate. Ghosh had joined the company in April 2008 as group chief executive officer of Reliance Capital, while he was elevated to the board in May 2015. The company, which is present across insurance, mutual fund and a host of other financial services sectors, said in a regulatory filing that Ghosh will be completing his term of office on 31 March 2017, and the appointment of a new CEO will be announced in due course.“During this entire period (of nine years), Ghosh has served Reliance Capital with great passion and commitment, and contributed towards building up a strong portfolio of businesses across asset management, life and general insurance, commercial and housing finance, broking and distribution among others,” the company said. It also said that Reliance Capital is on track to complete its transition towards becoming a CIC (Core Investment Company) by end of 31 March, as per RBI guidelines. All operating businesses will be housed in wholly or majority owned subsidiaries, each led by the respective CEOs of those businesses and their respective full-fledged independent organisations. Ghosh, a Chartered Accountant from England, has been instrumental in several deals and alliances signed by Reliance Capital during his tenure. He played a key role in expansion of core businesses as also in divestment of non-core assets to beef up its resources. Besides, he was said to be deeply involved in mentoring of Anil Ambani’s elder son Anmol, who joined Reliance Capital board last year after two years of training at the company. Welcoming him on the board, Ghosh had said at that time, “Anmol has been a fast learner, active participant in all reviews and displayed sharp business acumen in various decision-making processes,”. Before joining Reliance Capital, he was the Regional CEO of Middle East and India Sub Continent region of Allianz, a German insurance company. He has also served as CEO of Bajaj Allianz’s India operations. Prior to that he was involved in setting up operations for Allianz in South East Asia. He spent ten years in Australia in various capacities with Allianz from CFO to managing subsidiary companies as well as operations in the Pacific Rim. The company did not disclose any particular reason for his departure, while immediately it could not be ascertained where he is headed to. “The Board of Directors of Reliance Capital and all its people thank Ghosh for his service, and wish him the very best in his future endeavours,” the company said. (Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.)","Sam Ghosh had joined the company in April 2008 as group CEO of Reliance Capital, while he was elevated to the board in May 2015",20:25,Reliance Capital’s CEO Sam Ghosh to leave company after 9-year stint +2017-03-09,"New York: General Electric Co. chief executive officer (CEO) Jeffrey Immelt’s compensation fell 35% to $21.3 million last year, as an oil and gas slump suppressed demand for industrial equipment and the company’s shares underperformed the market.Immelt, 61, received a $3.8 million salary last year, unchanged from 2015, according to a proxy statement from the Boston-based company Wednesday. His $5.94 million in cash awards, $2.14 million in stock options and $4.67 million in restricted and performance-linked shares were all down from the prior year.The weak oil and gas market, coupled with slow demand for locomotives, weighed on growth efforts last year after a sweeping transformation that tilted the company from finance and strengthened its manufacturing operations. GE returned 4.6% in 2016 including dividends, compared with 12% for the S&P 500 Index. The shares have continued to trail the index this year.ALSO READ | Jeff Immelt is the source of strategy around digital: GE’s William Ruh“Normally, we expect our diversified model to shrug off headwinds in one market and continue to achieve our goals,” Immelt wrote in a letter to shareholders dated 24 February. “In 2016, we simply couldn’t outrun pressure in the resource markets. Consequently, our compensation plans only paid out at 80% of target. This gives us more motivation for 2017.”GE in October struck a deal to combine its oil and gas unit with Baker Hughes Inc., creating the world’s second-largest oilfield service provider and equipment maker. GE, which also makes jet engines and power-generation equipment, recently announced the acquisition of a turbine-blade manufacturer and majority stakes in two 3-D printer companies.ALSO READ | GE boss Jeffrey Immelt sees new era of globalization as protectionism growsImmelt’s cash awards are split between an annual bonus tied to financial and strategic goals, and a three-year plan that’s linked to metrics including operating cash flow, return on total capital compared to peers and money returned to investors through dividends and share repurchases. The $5.94 million combined payout is less than half of the $13 million he received for 2015.The accounting value of the CEO’s pension has fluctuated in recent years due to actuarial changes, resulting in big swings in his reported compensation. Immelt, who’s been at GE since 1982 and became CEO in 2001, had amassed $81.7 million in pension benefits at the end of 2016.Vice-chairman John Rice got a $15.2 million package in 2016 and chief financial officer (CFO) Jeff Bornstein received $9.91 million. Bloomberg","GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s $5.94 million in cash awards, $2.14 million in stock options and $4.67 million in restricted and performance-linked shares were all down from the prior year",19:44,GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s pay falls 35% to $21.3 million amid weak oil market +2017-03-09,"
Geneva: Carlos Ghosn, 62, is the global auto industry’s most charismatic and, some would say, best performing chief executive officer (CEO). He is also the chairman and CEO of French auto maker Renault SA, chairman of Japan’s Nissan Motor Co. Ltd, and chairman of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. He has turned around the fortunes of the first, rescued the second from near oblivion, and now wants to do the same with the third.
ALSO READ | India is a big market for any carmaker: Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn
On 23 February, Nissan announced Ghosn would step down as CEO, and focus on managing the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi alliance. On the sidelines of the Geneva Motor Show, Ghosn spoke to Autocar India on the alliance, his plans for Mitsubishi in India, and how he took inspiration from Tata Motors Ltd’s Nano. Edited excerpts:
You have kind of relinquished your position as CEO in Nissan and are going to be focusing on the alliance specific to Mitsubishi. In India, Mitsubishi’s problem was no scale, no investment and no appropriate product. Suddenly these problems matter no more because of the alliance. Will it be logical to assume that with the alliance there’s a big market out there for Mitsubishi to tap? Without any doubt because, in India, the most important step and our key for success—not sufficient but necessary—is the product. If you don’t have the product, you better not try your chance in India. It takes a lot of time to find a product. I think, with the A-platform (the second of the so-called common module family, or CMF, jointly developed by Renault and Nissan, a sort of modular manufacturing system for cars), particularly with the Kwid and all the products that are going to follow that, we think we have found our entry level (car) in the Indian market. But this platform is an alliance platform. Today, you are having a Renault product, tomorrow you are going to have a Nissan product. This platform will be open to Mitsubishi.
So Mitsubishi could use it and you could go all the way up and bring the Lancer back for example? Yes, but Mitsubishi has so many opportunities to grow that the management of Mitsubishi is going to have to prioritize what they are going to do first, second and third. So I cannot tell you in what time frame this will happen, but without any doubt, this is a very big market for (the) future for any carmaker and for Mitsubishi in particular.
So what you are confirming is that it’s not a question of if but a question of when Mitsubishi will come to India with all guns blazing? We are not limited to the short term; it is going to obviously mean mid- or long-term. Everybody expects India to be in the top 3-4 markets in the future. So you can expect that what happened in China, where all the carmakers are present, is also going to happen in India, with (the) exception that the Indian market is very tough for the foreign carmaker because of the specificity of the product and market.
Do you think you have an edge with Kwid? It is doing well and has already got a lot of things like design and the touch-screen and a lot of things.Yes, we do; and we are improving and we are listening to what the customers are saying in India. Not only to improve our offer for the Kwid in India but also to improve our offer for the Kwid outside India because you know a version of the Kwid is going to be launched in Brazil as a second step of the A platform. So, for the Indian market, this is very important because it is very competitive, and if you are going to make it in India, you are going to make it in many emerging markets, and that’s why for us, testing and being successful in India and having a very strong acceptance of the product, a very competitive product in India, is a guarantee that these are going to do well in other markets.
Are you making money in India? Is this the tipping point?We are starting to make money now after selling 100,000 Kwids. We struggled at the beginning because it was the new plant and a new car, so when you have so much innovation accommodated, you struggle with profitability. When you are going to a new emerging market with a new product, you have to be patient for your returns.
In future, is the CMF-B (for cars slightly larger than those on the CMF-A platform) also expected?Obviously, the volume you expect from a car based on that platform is not going to be very big, so it can be an additional product but you can’t have a strategy on this platform.
So is there a lesson learnt by Nissan on the performance of its V platform (cars such as the Sunny and Micra that did not do well in India)? That you fundamentally cannot bring a European platform into India because the cost is too high and the customers may not pay for it? You can bring copy and paste platform and product but that has to be a niche product. Don’t expect big volume coming out of it. If you want big volume in India and contribute to the core market, you will have to really tailor it, even the platform.
On Renault’s strategy, you are selling around 10,000 vehicles every month and are the No.1 European carmaker in India. You’ve even rattled Suzuki. So, that is saying something. What is the aim? Were you expecting this level of success?I think this is all due to the attractiveness of the product. I think we have some improvement that we can make in terms of competitiveness of our plant because the plants are filled, then we have much better industrial performance, but we are not there. We will have a lot of improvement that we can make into this plant. Yes, after we have seen that the CMF-A and the CMF-A+ platforms are really adequately addressing the needs of the Indian market, we should be much more ambitions, in terms of contribution.
You previously mentioned Tata Motors’ Nano is really an inspiration for the Kwid. What are your thoughts on that and Ratan Tata’s vision for the Nano. When Ratan came with the Nano, I congratulated him and he said I was the only one who congratulated him because a lot of people said it’s a bad idea. No, it’s a good idea. We came with the Kwid at the end of the day and the Kwid was inspired by the Nano.","Renault-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn on his plans for the Mitsubishi acquisition, that brand’s future in India and how he took inspiration from Tata Nano",04:32,"Renault making money in India now after selling 100,000 Kwids: Carlos Ghosn" +2017-04-18,"New Delhi: Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo Ltd on Monday opposed the sale of an 80% stake in Religare Health Insurance Co. Ltd by Singh brothers—Malvinder and Shivender—to a group of investors led by private equity firm True North.Daiichi Sankyo told the Delhi high court that the sale violated a previous order which required them to take court permission to part with unencumbered assets.“We have been taken for a ride. They (Singh brothers) are going against the assurance given by them to the court that they would not alienate unencumbered assets. Their assets should be attached to prevent such a situation,” said Daiichi’s counsel C.A. Sundaram.The Singh brothers have been repeatedly asked by the Delhi high court to disclose the value of the unencumbered shareholding they in have in various entities. The brothers in 2008 sold Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd to Daiichi Sankyo, which has since sold the company to Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.On 20 March, the court permitted Daiichi to inspect documents submitted by the Singhs including copies of several affidavits by the brothers and the reports of the chartered accountants of RHC Holding Pvt. Ltd, a firm in which the Singhs have significant shareholding, and its subsidiary companies. Subsequently, Daiichi sought the appointment of a third-party auditor to assist in the inspection process.The case relates to enforcement of an arbitral award in proceedings initiated by Daiichi Sankyo against the Singh brothers in relation to its 2008 purchase of a majority stake in Ranbaxy.ALSO READ: Shivinder, Malvinder Singh want to sell some assets, but the timing isn’t rightIn 2008, the Singh brothers exited the pharmaceuticals business by selling their controlling stake in Ranbaxy Laboratories o Daiichi Sankyo Ltd for $4.6 billion. The original arbitral award came after the Japanese company alleged that the Singh brothers had concealed crucial information while selling Ranbaxy to it.In response, a Singapore tribunal had ordered the brothers to pay a sum of Rs. 2,562 crore. The Singh brothers are contesting this in the Delhi high court.The case will be heard next on 24 April.",Daiichi Sankyo tells Delhi HC that Religare Health Insurance sale by the Singh brothers violates an earlier court order on selling of unencumbered assets,04:29,Daiichi Sankyo opposes Singh brothers’ bid to sell Religare Health Insurance +2017-03-09,"
New Delhi: For a man considered to be the poster boy of the multiplex revolution in Indian cinema, Ajay Bijli is decidedly uncomfortable being photographed. He poses slightly self-consciously at his posh Gurugram office with the several chair designs the entertainment company is currently trying out to fit its auditorium and audience requirements. As he celebrates 20 years of running PVR Ltd, India’s largest movie theatre chain that operates 569 screens across 123 locations in 48 cities, his motto remains the same: the customer must never feel short-changed by the theatre operator. In an interview, the chairman and managing director of PVR talks about the multiplex chain’s evolution and why movie theatres in India should survive the advent of digital platforms. Edited excerpts:
How accepting are you of being tagged the pioneer of the multiplex revolution in India?I’m very uncomfortable with it. There were a lot of people trying to build a multiplex at that time and I could tell it was going to happen soon. I was just lucky to be the first one off the block. I found the property and was able to get a joint venture in place (between Bijli’s then single-screen owned Priya Exhibitors Pvt. Ltd and Australian mass media and entertainment company Village Roadshow Ltd). I was also very fortunate because PVR Anupam (the first multiplex theatre in India) was in south Delhi, a catchment that I understood very well and the Delhi government was very supportive in permitting me to convert a single-screen cinema into a four-plex. All the building by-laws were only written for single-screen cinemas but they allowed me to rewrite the cinematograph rules. So I was just fortunate, I never carry that (tag) because thinking about it means you’re looking back and I want to look ahead.
Why did you see multiplexes as an opportunity for India?I was running a single-screen theatre, Priya, and I could sense the volatility—without blockbusters, which you anyway couldn’t have all 52 weeks, the cinema used to run empty. Multiplexes were prevalent internationally and there were 4-5 films getting released every week. I was very keen that we should be able to give people the choice of all the movies that get released one week with good sound, projection and hospitality under one roof. But there were a couple of things bothering me; one, that ticket prices would be incrementally higher than what balcony tickets were at that time—we opened at Rs65-70 compared to Rs40-50. Secondly, two cinemas were still large, 300 seats each but the other two were 150 seats each and I didn’t know how people would take to the small screens. But God is kind, when we opened the doors, there were queues outside. It was quite exciting to see the experiment had worked.
Do you think the death of the single screen took something away from the movie-viewing experience?No. You have a lot of cinemas that offer a big-screen experience, our biggest auditoriums are 350-400 seaters. And now, compared to where people are watching films (hand-held devices), even the 200 seaters are big-screen experiences. I never differentiate between single screens and multiplex cinemas, I just think all cinemas have to be of a certain quality because people in India take their movie-going experience very seriously. You should have good sound and projection system and air-conditioning and then it’s a price-point adjustment that needs to be done because India is such a disparate market.
What have been the major changes in the film industry and exhibition market in 20 years?Content is improving a lot. You have films that can be played in fewer cinemas, say Pink, or Tanu Weds Manu Returns and the Salman, Aamir and Shah Rukh Khan-starrers that release in 4,000 screens. Consumers have changed, as have their tastes. English movies always used to do well but now they do much better and penetrate into smaller towns by getting dubbed. The big change is now there is real estate available to build world-class multiplexes. Tax regulations are a very big disappointment for me—nowhere across the world do cinema tickets get as heavily taxed as in India. Now we’re waiting for GST (goods and services tax); if it comes in at a palatable rate, it’ll be a big change.
There was a lot of talk of PVR being acquired by the Chinese group Wanda.I have no idea where that is coming from. I thought this Warburg Pincus deal would at least put those rumours to rest (In January this year, private equity firm Warburg Pincus bought a 14% stake in PVR for Rs820 crore).
How would you address the whole crisis of declining footfall and the advent of digital platforms in India?Actually, footfalls have not been declining. Theatres still represent 60-65% of revenues and any content maker would want to completely monetize the movie on the big screen. To that extent, cinemas have exclusivity for at least two to three months, depending on how big the movie is. Secondly, I believe people love going out and watching movies, it’s still a great social outing.Plus the budget of some films runs into some $100-150 million. How do you recover if you go straight to digital? There is commitment from studios internationally and even in India to make movies that are larger-than-life and meant to be seen on the big screen. Then there are efforts by the technology providers, so many movies are being made in IMAX and 3D. So if you look at all these things, I think we should survive. Currently, 66% of the revenue comes from theatricals, 22-23% is food and beverage, 10-12% is advertising and marketing.
What are your most important lessons in these 20 years?There are so many, you learn everyday. After diversifying into film production, I realized I’d rather do one thing but do a good job of it. I think integrity is very important, you’re running a listed company, you should be transparent. Every unit that you build should be profitable. Out of the 130 cinemas that we have, only three are Ebitda-negative, most make money (Ebitda is short for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, an indicator of operating profitability). There was a lot of talk in between about screens but I was fortunate I had Renuka Ramnath (earlier with ICICI Ventures) who invested in my company in 2003. She wasn’t looking at screens but at the returns on capital employed. The other lesson is you have to remain restless and keep improving. Twenty years have definitely taught me that all your stakeholders—employees, shareholders, investors, developers, film fraternity—are equally important and there’s no harm in being nice and cordial with people.
Have you responded to the Securities and Exchange Board of India show-cause notice? (In November 2016, the markets regulator had asked PVR to explain a profit-sharing deal struck with private equity investors that was not disclosed to its shareholders, alleging that its promoters had violated listing and disclosure regulations)I have and it’s being handled by my lawyers. I’ve been advised not to say anything and they will give you the correct answer. But my conscience is extremely clear.
Where does film exhibition in India stand at the moment?We’re really under-screened and need more cinemas in main cities as well as tier-two and tier-three towns. But there are other issues too. If taxes and rentals don’t get rationalized, it could be a problem of too many screens. In the US, they make money even at 15-20% occupancy. That’s because the tax is zero and the rental is not more than 10% of your total revenue. Here the rental is going up but you can’t blame the real estate developers because the supply is limited. I don’t think GST should be more than 18%, the real estate cost has to be controllable, developers and cinema exhibitors should be given incentives by the government the way we were given when the tax exemption was announced to build multiplexes.The volatility of content also has to get better, you can’t have too many flops and just one Dangal helping you out, there has to be a little more effort on the script and execution and knowing what the consumer wants. When a massive filmmaker delivers a flop with a big cast, it worries you because you’ve allocated so many screens and shows.","In an interview, PVR CEO Ajay Bijli talks about the multiplex chain’s evolution and why movie theatres in India should survive the advent of digital platforms",04:32,PVR’s Ajay Bijli: Nowhere do movie tickets get as heavily taxed as in India +2017-04-18,"Mumbai: Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank, which is set to roll out a fully functional branch by the first half of this year, is relying on scale and brand name to lure customers. The payments bank is a 51:49 joint venture (JV) between Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd (ABNL) and telecom major Idea Cellular, respectively.The bank will start operations with over 1.5 lakh touch points, an in-inbuilt United Payment Interface (UPI) solution and will look at distributing loans of other financial institutions. According to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) norms, payment banks can accept deposits and open current and savings accounts, but are not permitted to lend or issue credit cards.“It is clearly a scale game unlike traditional banking. In traditional banking you can put up one branch and still do well. Here, it is scale since technology platform is the same which has to accommodate many transactions. So more the transactions you accommodate, more benefit you can give to the customers,” said Sudhakar Ramasubramanian, chief executive officer (designate), Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank. Unlike other companies like payments banks of Airtel and Jio, Idea is yet to announce a tie-up with any financial institution. It is currently exploring partnerships with institutions depending on the “intensity of transaction and size of population”. The Aditya Birla payments bank is, however, confident that with a network of 180 million telecom customers, its reach is unparalleled.According to Sudhakar, Idea has both online and offline scale. Out of its total customer base, 60-70 % have feature phones. Not everyone except State Bank of India has this customer base. “India Post has access to people, but does not have as many customers. We are the organisation where we have done the Know Your Customer (KYC) and two million retailers is the network which we have. Also 15% of India is our existing customer base and 200 million of 8 billion is like 3% of the world’s population,” added Sudhakar. Also Read: Aditya Birla Group gets RBI licence to start payments bankAditya Birla Idea Payments bank is one among seven companies to get a final approval from the banking regulator. Airtel Payments Bank Ltd was the first payments bank to start operations in January followed by India Post. FINO PayTech, Jio Payments Bank, PayTM and National Securities Depository Ltd are the other companies who have received the final licence for payments banks.“Aditya Birla will ultimately convert lot of their conglomerate business into e-commerce on retail side. They will leverage the ecosystem that they have across various businesses and do payments through its bank,” said Abizer Diwanji, partner and head-financial services at EY.Having had the first mover advantage, the Airtel Payments Bank has already added more than 1 million customers since its launch in November. The bank offers a rate of interest of 7.25% on its savings account compared to 3-4% offered by conventional banks. However, Sudhakar is not quite sure if this model is sustainable.“It is simple logic. Money can be invested in government securities… Company that has big credit rating which is given lower interest rate and other company that has low credit rating that is giving higher interest rate. What is the trust level? Do you want same level of interest for different levels of bank,” he added.",Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank is a 51:49 joint venture between Aditya Birla Nuvo and telecom major Idea Cellular,04:29,Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank to open first branch by first half of 2017 +2017-03-31,"Washington: An influential group of nine Democratic Senators has urged President Donald Trump to not let a Canadian company use foreign made steel, in particular from India and Italy, in the trans-national multibillion controversial Keystone oil pipeline. “Your memorandum explicitly covers new and expanded pipeline projects so we were confused and disappointed to learn that the Keystone XL pipeline would not be required to use 100% American-made steel,” the nine Democratic Senators wrote in their joint letter to Trump, a copy of which was released to the press on Thursday.“Further, we are deeply concerned that by allowing this Canadian firm to use foreign steel from countries like India and Italy, which have a history of dumping steel products in the US market at unfair, illegal prices, you are establishing a precedent that will have the effect of costing US jobs and undermining the spirit of your Presidential Memorandum,” the Senators wrote.Led by Senators Chris Van Hollen and Tammy Duckworth the Democratic lawmakers urged Trump to protect American jobs by ensuring all new pipelines–if approved–are constructed and maintained with American made products and equipment. Other signatories to the letter are Cory A. Booker, Thomas R. Carper, Al Franken, Christopher S. Murphy, Debbie Stabenow, Joe Donnelly Claire McCaskill, Robert Menendez, and Gary C. Peters.“As champions of expanding Buy American requirements to make sure taxpayer-supported projects contract with American companies to the greatest extent possible, we were initially encouraged by this memorandum,” they said. “We were disappointed, however, when we learned that your administration would exempt the Keystone XL pipeline project from this Buy American policy,” the letter added.On 24 January, Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum to the secretary of commerce directing the secretary to “develop a plan under which all new pipelines, as well as retrofitted, repaired, or expanded pipelines, inside the borders of the US, including portions of pipelines, use materials and equipment produced in the US, to the maximum extent possible and to the extent permitted by law.”However, Trump has exempted Keystone pipeline from this. “We request that you reconsider your decision to allow a foreign company to use foreign steel in the Keystone XL pipeline and urge you to secure a firm commitment to source 100% American-made steel for this project,” the Senators wrote.“Doing so would be a strong statement of support for American manufacturers and the hard working women and men who fuel our national economy,” they said. The $8 billion pipeline that TransCanada wants to build would carry crude oil from Canada through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, where it would connect with an existing Keystone pipeline network that would take the oil to Texas Gulf Coast refineries. Several environmental groups filed lawsuits against the Trump administration on Thursday to challenge its decision to approve construction of controversial Keystone pipeline. The environmental groups contend in their lawsuit filed in Montana that the 2014 report on the project’s impact “downplays or ignores other significant environmental impacts of Keystone XL, including harms to land, air, water, and wildlife.”Former President Barack Obama, rejected the pipeline, saying it would lead to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and do nothing to reduce fuel prices for US motorists. The pipeline that was first proposed in 2008 has drawn strong opposition from environmental groups and some landowners who worry about potential contamination of ground and surface water.",Nine Democratic Senators wrote to Donald Trump asking him to reconsider his decision to allow a foreign firm to use foreign steel in the Keystone pipeline,18:33,"Don’t use steel from India, Italy in Keystone XL pipeline, Senators tell Donald Trump" +2017-03-31,"New Delhi: Lenders are planning to cut working capital finance to Rajasthan’s power distribution companies which have failed to meet the financial targets set under the Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY), a discom bailout package.Rajasthan’s state-owned utilities have not revised power tariffs as previously agreed, two bankers aware of the matter said.“The scheme was implemented with the promise that these distribution companies will revise their tariffs on time. However, that is not happening,” said the first of the two bankers quoted above, speaking on condition of anonymity.According to the banker, this has forced bankers to rethink their strategy on funding state government-owned utilities. Under UDAY, banks can fund up to 25% of a state’s //discom’s?// previous year revenues as working capital.“If there are no revisions in tariffs, the ability of the state electricity boards to generate necessary cash flows is limited. Unless this is taken care of, we have decided not to extend any working capital loans,” said the second banker quoted above, also speaking on condition of anonymity.A spokesperson at the central power ministry did not respond to an email sent on Friday. Sanjay Malhotra, power secretary in Rajasthan did not answer several calls made to him.Before the state electricity board (SEB) turnaround plan was implemented in November 2015, Rajasthan was the biggest defaulter with a total debt of over Rs 80,000 crore, of which short term liabilities were about Rs 50,000 crore.With UDAY, 75% of the debt as on 30 September 2015, was to be taken over by states, which could in turn issue long-term bonds to the banks with state guarantee. This took care of the majority of the debt pile at these state utilities; however, future funding was linked to performance.The first 14 states that signed up for UDAY were Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Bihar, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur and Andhra Pradesh.According to power ministry data, a total of 15 states (including Tamil Nadu) have so far issued bonds worth Rs 1.83 trillion under the UDAY scheme, which accounts for 63% of the total debt of all the utilities in these states. Rajasthan alone has issued bonds worth Rs 70,525 crore, the highest among all states.UDAY is not the first bailout plan for power distribution firms. This is the third such bailout for the Indian distribution sector in around 13 years; the first two failed to incentivize the states to act.“Under the government’s scheme of loans being converted to bonds, the SEBs were to make a lot of interest savings. However, for this to be useful, the tariffs have to change accordingly, so that cost can be reduced. In the absence of bank support, the states would have to borrow on their balance sheet, or the discoms will have to reach out to state-owned power finance agencies,” said Sabyasachi Majumdar, senior vice president, ICRA Ltd.","Rajasthan’s state-owned power discoms have not revised power tariffs as previously agreed, which can affect the bank funding they receive uder the UDAY scheme",15:14,Banks may cut funding to Rajasthan discoms missing UDAY targets +2017-03-31,"New Delhi/Moscow: The acquisition of Indian refiner Essar Oil by a consortium led by Russian oil company Rosneft is expected to be completed in the next few weeks, Essar said in written comments to Reuters on Friday. “The parties are working towards obtaining the requisite approvals to complete the transaction. We are hopeful that the deal will be completed in the upcoming few weeks,” Essar said. All the parties, which include Rosneft and commodities trader Trafigura along with Russian private investment group United Capital Partners, have previously said that the deal was expected to be completed within the first quarter. A Rosneft spokesman confirmed on Friday that the timing of the deal’s completion had moved. UCP declined to comment.","Essar says Rosneft , Trafigura are working towards obtaining the requisite approvals to complete the transaction in next few weeks",17:38,"Rosneft-led deal to buy Essar delayed, seen closing in April" +2017-03-31,"New Delhi: Natural gas price was on Saturday cut marginally to $2.48 per million British thermal unit (mmBtu), the fifth reduction in two years. Rate of natural gas produced from existing fields of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC) and Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has been cut to $2.48 per mmBtu for a six-month period from 1 April, from $2.5 per mmBtu currently. As per the new gas pricing formula approved by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in October 2014, gas prices are to be revised every six months. The reduction in natural gas prices would mean lower raw material cost for compressed natural gas (CNG) and piped natural gas (PNG), and that would translate into reduction in retail prices. It would also mean lower feedstock cost for power generation and manufacturing of fertilizers. Rates were last cut by 18% with effect from 1 October, 2016. That had followed a 20% reduction to $3.06 last April. The price of gas between 1 October, 2015 and 31 March, 2016 was $3.81 per mmBtu and $4.66 in prior six-month period. “The price of domestic natural gas for the period 1 April, 2017 to 31 October, 2017 is $2.48 per mmBtu on gross calorific value (GCV) basis,” said a notification issued by the oil ministry’s petroleum planning & analysis cell (PPAC). The reduction will hit producers like ONGC. Every dollar dip in gas price results in Rs4,000 crore hit in revenue of the public sector undertakings (PSUs) on an annual basis. Government however hiked the cap price based on alternate fuels for undeveloped gas finds in difficult areas like deep sea which are unviable to develop as per the existing pricing formula. The cap for 1 April, 2017 to 31 October, 2017 will be $5.56 per mmBtu, up from $5.3 per mmBtu, PPAC notification said. ONGC is the country’s biggest gas producer, accounting for some 60% of the 90 million standard cubic meters per day current output. All of its gas as well as that of Oil India Ltd and private sector RIL’s KG-D6 block are sold at the formula approved in October 2014. This formula, however, does not cover gas from fields like Panna/Mukta and Tapti in western offshore and Ravva in Bay of Bengal. The government had in October 2014 announced a new pricing formula that calculated local rates by using prevailing price in gas surplus nations like the US, Russia and Canada. As per the mechanism approved in October 2014, the price of domestically produced natural gas is to be revised every six months using weighted average or rates prevalent in gas-surplus economies of US/Mexico, Canada and Russia. Indian gas prices are calculated by taking weighted average price at Henry Hub of the US, National Balancing Point of the UK, rates in Alberta (Canada) and Russia with a lag of one quarter. So, the rate for April to October this year is based on average price at the international hubs during 1 January to 31 December, 2016.","Rate of natural gas produced from existing fields of ONGC and RIL has been cut to $2.48 per mmBtu for a six-month period from 1 April, from $2.5 per mmBtu currently",18:08,Natural gas price cut marginally to $2.48 mmBtu +2017-04-18,"New Delhi: New Delhi Television (NDTV) Limited which runs news channels like NDTV India and NDTV 24x7, on Monday said that it is considering potential sale of certain strategic assets by one or more of its subsidiaries.In a filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange, the company said, “...board meeting of the company that is being convened to consider, inter alia, potential sale of certain strategic assets by certain material subsidiary(ies) of the company.” In the process, the trading window for dealing in the securities of the company will remain closed from 17 April 2017 till the conclusion of 48 hours from the date of the board meeting, the company added in the filing.Currently, NDTV operates news channels NDTV India and NDTV 24x7, business news channel NDTV Profit/NDTV Prime, lifestyle channel NDTV Good Times and e-commerce verticals in ethnic wear (IndianRoots.com), automobile (CarAndBike.com), gadgets (Gadgets360.com), health foods (SmartCooky.com) and wedding preparation (BandBaajaa.com) sectors.However, the company did not elaborate on the properties/ assets it is looking to sell. An e-mailed query to K. V. L. Narayan Rao, executive vice-chairperson at NDTV remained unanswered even as he was unavailable on the phone.Media experts, however, said it was difficult to predict the assets that the broadcaster may be looking to sell as they could be either in its e-commerce vertical or some of the TV channels in its broadcasting business.“The last few months have seen unprecedented consolidation in the media and entertainment space. Companies are increasingly exiting businesses they may not have the appetite to scale up. The idea is to focus on core businesses and upscale with efficiency rather than spread thin horizontally,” said Priyanka Chaudhary, regional media and entertainment spokesperson for Grant Thornton and a director at Grant Thornton India LLP.NDTV had reported a consolidated net loss of Rs18 crore in the quarter ended 31 December, up from Rs13 crore in the year-ago period, following a dip in advertising revenue due to demonetization of high value currency notes. NDTV’s television news business generated revenue of Rs108 crore, down from Rs130 crore in the same period last year. As per the data released by television viewership ratings agency Broadcast Audience Research Council (Barc) India last week, NDTV’s flagship English-language news channel NDTV 24x7 ranked third after Times Now and India Today television. The channel had garnered 3.28 lakh impressions","In a filing with the BSE, the NDTV said that the company is considering potential sale of certain strategic assets by certain material subsidiary",04:19,NDTV looks to sell assets +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +2017-03-08,"New York: In January, CJ Prober took on a challenge that has become frustratingly common in techdom: turning around a publicly traded hardware company whose products are no longer hits. Prober is GoPro Inc.’s new chief operating officer (COO), a position that had been vacant for about two years. His promotion followed a rocky 2016, during which the action-camera maker suffered production delays for one product, recalled another and abandoned efforts to turn itself into a media company. Sales tanked, GoPro cut its forecast, and investors bolted. The rout continued this week when the shares slid to a record low after Goldman Sachs became the second firm in two days to recommend selling the stock.Prober, who joined GoPro in 2014 after holding various positions at Electronic Arts, brings solid accomplishments to the new gig, having already rebuilt his employer’s engineering operations and improved clunky editing software. Even so, he’ll struggle to revitalize GoPro.The 15-year-old company is trying to grow beyond a niche market of action junkies keen to capture their exploits on video. Much like Fitbit trackers, many GoPro cameras are used a few times and then relegated to the junk drawer.ALSO READ | Make time travel with time-lapse video appsIn his first interview since becoming COO, Prober pledged to hold the line on costs, make the cameras easier to use and chase international growth. “From a product perspective we had an amazing 2016, but from a financial perspective we had a tough 2016,” he said. “So we’re rebuilding on that. There’s a lot of positive momentum behind the changes we’re making.”Like any consumer hardware company, GoPro must regularly upgrade existing products and create new ones to keep shoppers happy. Even big players like Apple, with a deep engineering bench and billions to spend on research and development, struggle to pull that off consistently. For small companies like GoPro, it’s even harder—especially when low-cost competitors from China quickly copy their best product features and the likes of Apple and Samsung keep improving their smartphone cameras.With sales slowing in 2015, chief executive officer (CEO) Nick Woodman bet on a new drone called Karma and a upgraded version of the popular Hero camera. Trying to rush the new products to market backfired.After the Karma debuted in September, a small number of consumers began complaining that the batteries were failing. Prober says vibrations from the drone’s motors were the culprit. The fix was simple enough. GroPro engineers placed springs inside the battery compartment to stabilize the power cells. But the company was forced to recall the drone, and it took months before the gadget was back in stores. Meanwhile, Chinese drone maker DJI used the time to further consolidate its domination of the market. ALSO READ | How to get the GoPro experienceThe new Hero5 was to be the first update to GoPro’s flagship line of cameras since 2014. It would be the easiest yet to use, feature a touch screen and let users upload content to the cloud. The Hero5 also would be waterproof, and Prober says that’s where the trouble began. Late in the process, GoPro discovered that pulling this off was harder than anticipated. As a result, the company had a shortage of devices until November. That meant GoPro missed sales during the crucial Christmas shopping and had to pull a number of planned marketing initiatives.Prober, who in early in his career worked as a management consultant at McKinsey, partly blames a siloed organization for the unforced errors. He says teams were isolated from one other and focused on a specific agenda rather than working together. Ultimately, he says, the company’s ambitious product pipeline overwhelmed a management team with too many layers and sign-offs.Prober vows to avoid future mishaps with a smaller, flatter organization. Late last year, the company shuttered its entertainment unit and eliminated 15% of its employees, a third of whom were vice-presidents or higher. “A lot of times when you reduce complexity in a business, it helps you make the jobs of teams better,” Prober says. “It’s less stuff to worry about, more clarity.” His mantra for 2017: “Do more with less.”Besides launching a new version of its Hero camera this year, GoPro is expanding its lineup of accessories, including a remote control called the Remo that lets users control the camera with voice commands, and the Karma grip, a handheld camera stabilizer. The aim of the accessories strategy is to make the cameras useful in as many settings as possible and attract new consumers to the GoPro ecosystem.Another big focus is making GoPro cameras easier to use. The gadgets have long been criticized for a clunky user-interface and editing tools. GoPro has tried to make the process of shooting and sharing videos easier, with new mobile and desktop editing products and its new cloud-connected cameras. But to capture users beyond its core base of action enthusiasts, GoPro needs to make that process even simpler.“They’re going to keep on fighting the battle of improving the software,” says Brad Erickson, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities. “I don’t fault GoPro. I think the amount of people in this world willing to sit and edit videos from a purpose-built camera is very low. We all have smartphones that have decently good editing apps.”International expansion is one of the few bright spots for GoPro. Though demand in the US has declined, sales in Asia doubled in the fourth quarter from a year earlier. The company plans to work with local companies to get bigger reach without spending a ton of marketing dollars. Just last month, GoPro partnered with Huawei Technologies Co. to integrate GoPro’s mobile editing app into Huawei’s new P10 smartphones. But GoPro faces stiff competition in places like China, where the market is flooded with cheaper options.Winning back Wall Street will take some doing. When Goldman Sachs analyst Simona Jankowski recommended selling the stock on Monday she warned clients that GoPro’s core market is largely saturated and that the company has failed to attract a more mainstream audience. In a note to clients she wrote: “We expect GoPro to continue to struggle fundamentally.” Bloomberg","With GoPro’s shares near record lows, chief operating officer CJ Prober pledges to do more with less and turn the page on product recalls",23:03,Can CJ Prober save GoPro? +2017-04-20,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +2017-04-21,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +2017-03-08,"
Mumbai: Magnus Ewerbring is the chief technology officer of Asia-Pacific group function technology at telecom and network equipment and services company Ericsson AB, where he is responsible for driving technology alignment as well as long-term technology strategies in the region. A PhD in electrical engineering from Cornell University, New York, Ewerbring will be speaking at EmTech India 2017, an emerging tech conference organized by Mint and MIT Technology Review. In an email interview, he talks about the status of 4G deployments, the impact of upcoming 5G technology and how telcos can face the challenges of burgeoning data traffic. Edited excerpts:
Have 4G deployments matured in India? Where does India stand when compared to other countries in this context?Only 40% of people in the world have data connection and the proportion in India is around 15%. It’s not as if India is lagging significantly behind in Internet coverage. If you take out the US, Japan, Korea and China, then the average will be less than 40% because China distorts the number. So, there’s a significant part of the world that is still to be covered by LTE (long-term evolution). Although a lot of innovation is happening on 5G, but even more innovation and R&D (research and development) investment goes into 4G as an industry today. What we and our other competitors are investing in is to prepare the LTE network for a smoother 5G migration. Because if you look at the 2G, 3G, 4G networks, they were overlay networks. But 5G will not be an overlay network. 5G will have to work with 4G. If you look at India, they need to make the LTE networks ready for 5G whenever it comes.ALSO READ | Potential for using Li-Fi in India is simply enormous: PureLifi’s Harald HaasPost the spectrum auctions in India last year, we have witnessed an upswing in terms of 4G deployments with enhanced focus on modernization and densification of the networks. According to the Ericsson Mobility Report, the population coverage of 4G LTE networks in India is expected to reach 45% by the end of 2021.
What will be the compelling reasons for consumers to move from 4G to 5G technology when it becomes available around 2020? How easy will it be for operators to recoup their 5G investments?Better network quality and a host of new use cases will be the drivers for 5G among consumers.5G can be used to offer fixed wireless broadband service, since you don’t have ubiquitous access to fibre connection in the country. However, even without 5G in India with 1GB/sec and LAA (license assisted access) where operators can use licensed and unlicensed combined, fixed wireless could be used in areas where there is no fibre. On the 5G devices front, CPE (customer premises equipment) will appear first, followed by tablets and the terminals.ALSO READ | Mobile technology will drive Internet of Things: Qualcomm’s Raj TalluriFor 5G to be possible, 4G has to attain a good level of maturity. Operators around the world—and in India as well—are looking at developing a strong LTE footprint in a bid to provide better coverage to the consumer. 5G will not be an overlay network, it will work in tandem with 4G. So, for operators to be relevant in 5G, they would need to have a very good quality 4G network. We are working for a seamless transition from 4G to 5G.
How will the emerging IoT (Internet of Things) ecosystem benefit from the deployment of 5G technology? To what extent will the success of IoT hinge on 5G?5G is the foundation for realizing the full potential of the networked society. Like the transitions to 2G and 3G, the move to 5G will add a new element—the industrial Internet. And, like the transition to 4G, it will be much higher performance than the previous generation. But it will be much more than that.With 5G, we will see connectivity-as-a-service based on network slicing. 5G will enable organizations to move into new markets and build new revenue streams with radically new business models and use cases, including IoT applications.ALSO READ | Putting your data in the cloud could actually be more secure: Raimund GenesThe new capabilities of 5G will span several dimensions, including tremendous flexibility, lower energy needs, greater capacity, bandwidth, security, reliability and data rates, as well as lower latency and device costs. Hence, IoT will only become mainstream on a 5G footprint, using network slicing.
Ericsson has predicted that there will be 7 billion mobile broadband subscriptions in 2021. How will telcos cope?High video traffic volumes require efficient network management and cost-efficient delivery. Here, video optimization is needed to meet high quality of experience demanded by consumers, especially considering the high traffic demands occurring at peaks. With the rising user expectations and the growing focus on videos, apps and social media, operators would be required to ensure that their networks remain a relevant and vital part of users’ everyday experience. Operators are looking at network optimization solutions to accommodate the growing amount of video. We have a suite of mobile broadband products for optimization and compression, which helps operators get best-in-class spectral efficiency that provides enhanced capacity in the network to handle a sudden surge in data with excellent user experience.
Companies like yours are betting on the development of smart cities in India. Other than providing telecom network equipment and smart meters, what are the other solutions that Ericsson is working on to take advantage of Digital India?We have end-to-end solutions for smart and sustainable cities. Globally, we are working with multiple cities across many countries to help them become not only smart but sustainable. In India, we have been innovating and coming up with solutions which could meet varied demands of various cities/villages in the country.For example, we recently implemented Ericsson Connected aquaponics at Mori Village in Andhra Pradesh. The solution enables substantial savings on production cost through optimized use of raw materials for maximum yield as well as recycling 70% of the water, and additional revenue through organic farming. Besides, we have even deployed Ericsson smart water grid management systems at Mori Village, which offers real- time information on the quality of water, flow of water and levels of water in the water tanks via a cloud-based application which is accessible to everyone in the hierarchy.","Ericsson’s Magnus Ewerbring on status of 4G technology, impact of upcoming 5G technology and how telecom firms can face challenges of data traffic",03:15,Ericsson’s Magnus Ewerbring: 5G tech will enable firms’ move into new markets +2017-03-08,"The Indian market looks expensive at current levels, according to Sanjeev Prasad , senior executive director and co-head of Kotak Institutional Equities. In a telephone interview, Prasad said the best of India’s macroeconomic scenario was behind us, but earnings could see a significant improvement going ahead, due to a very low base for sectors like banking and commodities. Edited excerpts: How do you view the Indian market at this point of time, with benchmark indices at two-year highs? Do you think there is froth building up, or is there value in the market?It is not a cheap market. If we get 5-6% returns from here for the rest of 2017 for the frontline indices, we should be happy. The mid-cap and small-cap space, however, is very expensive. We may find one or two names here and there, but largely, they are pricey.Most parts of the market are quite fully valued. In some cases such as consumer staple and discretionary sectors, they are even discounting fiscal year 2019 earnings. There is value only in parts of the market.There is value in a few sectors such as corporate banks and IT service companies, assuming potential positive developments in those sectors. For example, the corporate-focused banking sector could see a re-rating if there is some resolution on the NPL (non-performing loans) problem. Similarly, IT stocks are inexpensive given the market’s concerns regarding immigration and taxation issues in the US. If these issues play out with limited impact for the IT companies, the sector could see a re-rating. What is your take on the pharmaceutical sector at this point of time?There is some value selectively in stocks such as Cipla Ltd, Aurobindo Pharma Ltd... Aurobindo is cheap at 13 times FY19 P/E (price-to-earnings ratio). Cipla is also at 16.5 times FY19 earnings. Even Lupin is not looking too bad at 17.5 times FY19 earnings. The issue with this sector at large is that there is a fair amount of uncertainty on the pricing environment in the US. The uncertain pricing environment stems not so much from regulatory-led pricing challenges as market-led pricing challenges.In many of the generic products or segments where these companies operate, they have started to see a lot more competition. Clearly, profitability which had been very high on these molecules has and will start coming down. At the same time, because of the US FDA-related issues, these companies have not been able to introduce new molecules in their ANDA (abbreviated new drug application) pipelines in the US market. The current portfolio has started to see price erosion, and introduction of new products has got delayed at the same time. When do we see a significant recovery in corporate earnings?The funny thing about India’s earnings is that when we look at the top 50-100 large cap names, a disproportionately high share comes from global sectors such as IT and pharma, global commodity sectors and regulated sectors such as power utilities. So, irrespective of level of activity in the domestic economy, the earnings numbers can move in a different fashion. That has exactly what has happened over the last two-three years. Since early 2015, we have seen a very big improvement in India’s macroeconomic parameters—Inflation came down significantly and current account deficit has also declined sharply. However, earnings growth between FY14 and FY16 has been flat, if you look at Nifty-50 companies. One of the reasons for this was the collapse of global commodity prices – oil and metals, which hurt the earnings of upstream oil companies and metal producers. Also, we saw a slowdown in earnings for IT companies, and we also had company-specific USFDA issues affecting the profits of the pharma companies.Lastly, while banking should have done better with the economy improving, we had the problems of bad loans in the banking sector, which relates to the rapid expansion in wholesale credit in the last economic cycle. That is the dichotomy of India’s economy and earnings.Going forward, I do not see much of improvement in India’s macroeconomic parameters from where we are. Inflation has bottomed out, and will go higher from here to about 4-5%. If you look at interest rates, they have bottomed out too. Current account deficit may gradually widen, but may still be manageable. However, we could potentially see a big jump in earnings numbers and the reason for that is the very low base for sectors such as the banking and commodities. We expect credit costs for the banks to decline from 2HFY18, which will result in higher profits of the corporate banks. Also, the improvement in global commodity prices and implementation of anti-dumping duties on steel will lead to a sharp increase in the profits of the upstream oil & gas companies and the metals sector in FY18.What is your take on GDP numbers that came out last week? The issue is that the proxies that are used to make these estimates are largely from the formal sectors. It is not very clear how much of the impact on the informal sectors is captured in this data. So, it is possible that once more data points come out, we will a have more informed view on the third-quarter GDP data and we may even see some downward revision to the current numbers. However, it appears that the impact of demonetisation is not as high as was originally feared by the market.In recent times, we have seen the Tata–Mistry spat and some issues also spiking up at Infosys Ltd between founders and the management. What impact do you think such instances can have on the reputation of Indian companies?I would not want to comment on specific companies, but I think as a general fact, there may be challenges when there is a generational change in a way. Most of the Indian companies have founder-promoters or very long-serving professional managers who play a huge role in building the company and more importantly, the culture of the firm. The firm gets largely identified with the founder-promoter or with the professional manager, and these individuals typically have a very dominant influence on their companies. Some of the companies have put in a proper succession plan while some others have been somewhat lagging on this aspect. I would think a proper succession plan under which the successor is identified early enough and works with the incumbent for a longish period will address the issue of any discontinuity and discord. Finally, the boards of companies have to play a far bigger role in ensuring a smooth transition of power.How viable is it to run the telecom business in India?I think the telecom business model has changed dramatically in that companies will have to offer much higher data capacity to the customers, which can meet all the telecom requirements of the customer. Companies will have to work out the ARPUs (average revenue per user) that can financially support a much higher capacity usage by customers. The traditional model of pricing every service individually to the customer is dead. What Reliance Jio is trying to do is to up the game in terms of offering a lot of capacity to customers at a competitive ARPU, which makes sense to it based on its business plan and strategy. There is a paradigm shift that is happening in the telecom sector in that it will entail much higher investment by the companies in data capacity.","Irrespective of the level of activity in the domestic economy, the earnings numbers can move in a different fashion, says Kotak Institutional Equities’s Sanjeev Prasad",07:57,"Indian market expensive currently, value in corporate banks, IT: Sanjeev Prasad" +2017-03-08,"Los Angeles: Viacom Inc. is in talks with former 20th Century Fox studio chief Jim Gianopulos to run its Paramount Pictures unit and with Oscar-nominated producer Michael De Luca to become his second-in-command, people familiar with the situation said.Gianopulos is being considered to run the film and fledgling TV operations of the studio, which produced Mission: Impossible and Transformers, but no deal has been struck yet with either executive, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the negotiations are private. The talks could still fall apart, the people said.Paramount and Viacom declined to comment. Variety reported earlier that Paramount was homing in on hiring Gianopulos and De Luca.Viacom has been looking for new leaders to repair a studio coming off a disastrous year in which it lost money and finished last among its peers in box office market share. The company ousted Brad Grey last month, not long after he dismissed his top lieutenant, Rob Moore. The new hires are part of Viacom chief executive officer Bob Bakish’s plan to revamp the company’s flagging entertainment businesses.At an investor conference Tuesday, Bakish said that the company was “well along’’ in the hiring process at Paramount. The new management will need to rebuild the studio’s film slate for years to come. Besides long-in-the-works sequels and spinoffs this year and next for Mission: Impossible and Transformers, there is very little scheduled for release for 2019 and beyond, according to Box Office Mojo. The studio’s bombs over the past year included Monster Trucks and Ben-Hur.Bakish plans to devote about half of Paramount’s movie slate to projects based on TV series from cable networks like Nickelodeon and MTV. Stars of some of Viacom’s biggest shows, like comedians Amy Schumer and Jordan Peele, have gone off to make movies for other studios instead, to Bakish’s chagrin.Veteran film executive Gianopulos, 64, was one of the industry’s longest-running studio chiefs when he left 20th Century Fox last September. He’s known for rolling the dice on two films that today still rank as Hollywood’s biggest-ever movies: Titanic and Avatar. He spent 25 years at Fox, including 16 as chairman in charge of all film production, marketing and global distribution of film and TV content. He was replaced by Stacey Snider on 1 September.De Luca has been co-producing the hit Fifty Shades of Grey film franchise at Comcast Corp.’s Universal Pictures. He was previously head of production at Sony Corp.’s Columbia Pictures and at DreamWorks SKG and was chief operating officer at New Line Cinema, where he started his film career. He was nominated three times as a producer of the Oscar for best picture, for Captain Phillips, Moneyball and The Social Network. Bloomberg",Viacom is in talks with former 20th Century Fox studio chief Jim Gianopulos to run its Paramount Pictures unit and with Michael De Luca to become his second-in-command,13:08,Viacom said in talks with former Fox executive to lead Paramount +2017-02-10,"
Drug maker Lupin Ltd’s December quarter results are reason for optimism tinged with caution. Sales growth trends are looking good, especially in the crucial US market, which makes up 45% of formulation sales. Other markets did well and profitability is up too. President Donald Trump wants lower drug prices in the US. Billionaire investor Rakesh Jhunjunwala asked Lupin, on a conference call, how it could get affected. As of now, it’s not a worry was the company’s response. Lengthening drug approval times in the US are a more immediate worry. More competition in some key products is another concern for the drug maker.The real surprise in the company’s numbers was the sharp jump in profitability, with its Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) rising by 43.7% from a year ago. Its Ebitda margin rose by around three percentage points, with a similar gain sequentially.Healthy sales growth of 26.4% over a year ago meant that the drug maker’s operating costs were spread over a higher base. Growth was good across markets, with the US market growing by 57.6% and by 8.9% sequentially. Sales from products such as generic Glumetza, a diabetes drug, and ramp-up in sales of Methergine, a drug to treat postpartum haemorrhage, and sales from smaller products all contributed to growth. Lupin faced some competition in generic Fortamet, a drug to treat diabetes. Other regions did well too (see chart), with India growing despite demonetization and Lupin expects sales to revert to normal levels next quarter onwards.On a sequential basis, however, the company’s gross margin was a tad lower as sales increased by 4.6% but costs rose by 4.7%. Still, a slower increase in employee costs and a decline in margins boosted profitability. Also, research and development costs as a percentage of sales declined while favourable foreign exchange effects in the December quarter also helped.Lupin’s profit rose by 20.5%, as depreciation and interest costs rose sharply but other income increased as well. Net profit declined by 25.7% sequentially, chiefly due to a sharp increase in its tax incidence this quarter. Taxes can be lumpy across quarters. The company said it expects its effective tax rate to be at 28% and profitability to sustain at current levels.The company is expecting that US market growth will continue to benefit from an improving flow of launches, including from the Gavis acquisition. A ramp-up in sales in the controlled substances portfolio is also expected. More competition in generic Glumetza and Fortamet in fiscal year 2018 are risks that will play out. Lupin also has a large pipeline of products, and getting final approvals to launch should also be good for growth. Not getting them likewise will pull down growth. The company remains on the lookout for acquisitions, stating that it has cash to repay debt but wants to hold spare cash for any buyouts.Jhunjunwala, who holds a 1.8% stake in Lupin, asked the management about the risks of drug price controls in the US. The management said this will affect innovator firms and not generic companies. The new government’s emphasis on faster approvals may actually benefit generic companies, it said. But there is a risk. Any erosion in the value of the innovator drug’s market size reduces the potential market for a generic too.Lupin’s shares are down by a fifth from a year ago and trade at 20 times FY18 estimated earnings per share, based on the mean of estimates compiled by Reuters.","The real surprise in Lupin December quarter results was the sharp jump in profitability, with its Ebitda rising by 43.7% from a year ago",13:47,Lupin’s FY18 health chart flags risks to growth +2017-02-09,"New Delhi: Energy explorer Cairn India Ltd on Thursday said profit after tax in the December quarter jumped nearly 15-fold to Rs604 crore on account of better price realisation and lower expenses, up from a restated profit of Rs41 crore a year ago.Crude oil price realisation jumped 31% to $46 a barrel, the company informed stock exchanges. The profit for the last comparable quarter was restated as required under the new accounting standards IndAS, which is based on fair valuation of assets and liabilities.Net revenue jumped 5% in the quarter under review to Rs2,149 crore from a year ago. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda), a measure of profitability, stood at Rs1,067 crore, 51% up from a year ago. During the quarter, Cairn produced 16.7 million barrels of oil equivalent across all its assets. “We have made use of the challenging oil price environment to achieve competitive returns even at Brent $40 a barrel for planned projects. We are in active discussions with world class oil field services companies to partner for the end to end outsourcing of certain projects,” the company stated, quoting acting chief executive officer Sudhir Mathur. The idea is to optimise cost and expedite project execution.Cairn said that its proposed merger with Vedanta Ltd. is expected to be completed in the first quarter of calendar year 2017 and the extension of its production sharing contract for the Barmer oilfield in Rajasthan was subjudice in the Delhi high court. The oil ministry is currently working on a new policy for extending the lease of 28 oil and gas blocks under terms that will let companies to invest more and add more revenue to the exchequer.","Cairn India Ltd’s net revenue jumped 5% in the December quarter under review to Rs2,149 crore from a year ago",20:51,Cairn India Q3 profit soars nearly 15-fold to Rs604 crore +2017-02-10,"
ABB India Ltd has earned favour in the eyes of investors with the capital goods maker churning out a decent operating performance for the December quarter along with robust growth in new orders. The December quarter’s fresh order pool of Rs5,628 crore was a record 173% higher than a year ago. With this, ABB India’s order book at the end of 2016 is at a historic high of Rs11,841 crore. This leaves the company in a comfortable position with more than 12 months’ revenue visibility.Interestingly, the quarter’s revenue growth was just 2.7% year-on-year. What’s important, however, is that most of its business divisions have grown respectably from where they stood a year ago. The discrete automation and electrification products divisions’ revenue grew by about 9-10%, the power grids segment was flat and only that of the process automation division declined.Further, ABB India’s profit margin continued the upward trajectory of the last few quarters into the December quarter. The operating margin of 11.3% was about 50 basis points higher than a year back even as it shot past the Street expectation of 9.9%. Operating profit, therefore, expanded by 7.2% year-on-year, with discrete automation and electrification products being the best contributors of profit to the kitty.The better-than-expected performance also extended to ABB India’s net profit that jumped by 13.4% from the year-ago period.The company’s tightly managed costs and robust order book should see both revenue and profits trend higher from current levels. Of course, ABB India’s shares trade at expensive valuations of 49 times average estimated earnings for calendar year 2017. But then, the times are surely getting better for the company, what with its presence in power transmission, railways and Metros, besides other infra segments—all of which are northbound in the medium term. This gives ABB India an edge compared to some of its peers, who have a higher exposure to the private sector, which may take longer to look up.","The December quarter’s fresh order pool at ABB India of Rs5,628 crore was a record 173% higher than a year ago",08:28,ABB India’s surge in orders may underpin high valuations +2017-02-09,"Mumbai: State-run Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) has posted a 47% jump in net profit for the third quarter of this fiscal on higher market sales and crude throughput. Net profit came in at Rs2,271.9 crore against Rs1,545.5 crore registered in the third quarter of last fiscal. A Bloomberg poll of 19 analysts had pegged the net profit at Rs2,212.7 crore. BPCL recorded sales of Rs64,095.65 crore, an increase of 20%, against Rs53,237 crore reported in the third quarter of last fiscal. A Bloomberg poll of 16 analysts estimated the sales figures to come in at Rs54,110.2 crore. ALSO READ: Oil companies’ merger can be challenging yet beneficial: FitchDuring the quarter, crude throughput in its refineries was higher at 6.78 MT against 5.87 MMT in the corresponding quarter previous fiscal. The company reported increase in market sales mainly in segments of liquefied petroleum gas (12.42%), petrol (8.9%), re-gasified liquefied natural gas (52.43%) and aviation fuel (22.76%).The average gross refining margin (GRM) during the quarter stood at $5.90 per barrel against $7.67 per barrel for the October-December 2015. Gross refining margin is what a refining company makes from turning every barrel of crude oil into fuel.ALSO READ: BPCL’s market value crosses Rs1 trillion-markBPCL’s stock ended at Rs725.25 on BSE, up 0.85% from the previous close while India’s benchmark Sensex rose 0.14% to 28,329.70 points.BPCL on 25 January, saw its market value cross Rs1 trillion-mark. It is the second oil marketing company after Indian Oil Corp. Ltd and 26th overall to cross the milestone.","BPCL recorded sales of Rs64,095.65 crore in the third quarter, an increase of 20%, against Rs53,237 crore last fiscal",21:44,"BPCL Q3 profit jumps 47% to Rs2,271.9 crore" +2017-02-09,"Mumbai: Power and automation technology company ABB India Ltd on Thursday reported a higher-than-expected 13.4% rise in net profit for the fourth quarter ended 31 December, helped by better operational performance.ABB India reported a standalone net profit of Rs146.79 crore for the fourth quarter compared with Rs129.40 crore in the year-ago quarter. Net sales rose about 3.3% to Rs2,440.95 crore from Rs2,364 crore a year earlier, missing average analysts’ estimate. The company follows January-December fiscal year. Ten analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected ABB to report standalone net profit of Rs137.40 crore on net sales of Rs2,599.50 crore for the fourth quarter.For the full-year ended 31 December, ABB’s standalone net profit rose 25.5% to Rs37,625 crore and net sales were up 6.2% to Rs8,515.56 crore.The company said its full-year order book rose to Rs12,466 crore while orders received in the December quarter stood at Rs5,628 crore. It has an order backlog of Rs11,821 crore as on 31 December.The company has posted its biggest growth in orders in recent years, ABB India said in a statement. “The investments in power transmission based on cutting edge technology, renewables, increased spend in infrastructure and transportation provided ABB India ample opportunities,” it said.ABB shares closed 1.38% up at Rs1,225.00 on the BSE on Friday while the benchmark Sensex index was up 0.14% to 28,329.70.",ABB India reported a standalone net profit of Rs146.79 crore for the fourth quarter compared with Rs129.40 crore in the year-ago period,15:41,"ABB India Q4 net profit up 13.4%, beats analysts’ estimates" +2017-02-09,"Mumbai: Lupin Ltd reported a 20.7% year-on-year rise in consolidated net profit for the quarter ended December, beating market expectations, as sales in its biggest market, the US, increased significantly.The pharmaceutical major’s consolidated net profit was Rs633.11 crore during the quarter up from Rs524.56 crore a year ago. The company’s sales rose 31.5% to Rs4,404.94 crore from Rs3,350.33 crore in the same period last year.According to a Bloomberg poll of 25 analysts, Lupin’s net profit for the quarter was estimated to be Rs619.7 crore.Sales in North America soared 57.6% to Rs2,175.5 crore. The region accounted for 49% of the company’s total sales. US sales grew 53.4% to $316 million. The company received marketing approval for 11 generic drugs and launched four products in the US during the quarter. India sales were up 11.9% at Rs991.2 crore. Lupin’s sales in Japan, Latin America and Germany also grew on a year-on-year basis.The company’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda), an indicator of its operating performance, was up 44.6% at Rs1,319.4 crore.Even as operating performance was strong, growth in net profit was capped by a sharp jump in tax expense and interest costs. The company’s tax expense increased 60.1% to Rs409.5 crore, while interest cost jumped to Rs45.93 crore from Rs9.89 crore. At 3.04pm, Lupin Ltd was trading at Rs1,499.40 on the BSE, up 0.79% from its previous close, while India’s benchmark Sensex index fell 0.09% to 28,312.53 points.",Lupin’s consolidated net profit was Rs633.11 crore during the third quarter up from Rs524.56 crore a year ago,16:47,"Lupin Q3 profit rises 20.7% to Rs633.11 crore, beats estimate" +2017-02-09,"San Francisco: Twitter Inc. reported quarterly revenue that fell short of estimates after the struggling social-media company restructured its advertising sales force and pared staff. The shares tumbled.Fourth-quarter revenue was $717 million, missing the $740 million average analyst estimate, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Sales growth of 1% slowed dramatically in the period from the 48% gain a year earlier. Twitter added 2 million new users, bringing the total number of people who log in monthly to 319 million, the San Francisco-based company said Thursday in a statement. That was in line with analysts’ projections.Twitter has had trouble persuading advertisers to spend more money on its social-media platform as fewer people join. Pressure on the company mounted in the fourth quarter when its search for a potential buyer failed, forcing chief executive officer Jack Dorsey to focus on reaching profitability as an independent business. Twitter cut 9% of its staff, sold its Fabric developer business to Google and shut down its Vine short-video app. It also lost both its chief operating officer and chief technology officer, increasing the load on Dorsey, whose time is divided because of his other job—as CEO of Square Inc.“The fact that they’ve tolerated having a shared CEO is remarkable given the situation they’re in,” said Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group. “Unfortunately, it’s a situation of investor indifference—everyone is used to Twitter’s troubles by now.”ALSO READ | Twitter plans to hide abusive tweets, block repeat offendersTwitter fell as much as 10.2% to $16.81 before the start of trading in New York. The stock closed at $18.72 on Wednesday.Twitter’s profit excluding certain items was $119 million, or 16 cents a share, compared with the 12 cents per share analysts estimated on average. The company’s net loss widened to $167 million, or 23 cents a share. Twitter has said it is aiming for profitability this year.The company has been relying on live video partnerships, as well as video advertising, to jump-start user additions and revenue growth. With video, Twitter aims to appeal to a wider audience, including those people who may have decided its basic service—which lets anyone post 140-character updates to a feed that others can follow—wasn’t appealing. Meanwhile, to retain the users it does have, the company has made a push to address abuse and harassment on its service, which caused several high-profile departures from its social network last year.Video and curbs on abuse may not be enough to boost excitement about Twitter’s product, said James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co—even though the company is mentioned nearly daily in news reports about President Donald Trump.“It’s still in an identity crisis,” he said. “People that use Twitter get it, the world conceptually gets it, but your average potential user doesn’t.” Bloomberg",Twitter shares fell as much as 10.2% to $16.81 before the start of trading in New York. The stock closed at $18.72 on Wednesday,19:43,Twitter shares drop as pace of growth slows to 1% +2017-02-09,"Milan: Italian lender UniCredit fell to a heavy loss of €13.6 billion ($14.5 billion) in the fourth quarter as its new CEO moved to clean up the bank’s bad loan portfolio and fortify the bank’s financial health.Italy’s largest bank by assets, UniCredit said Thursday that it incurred €13.2 billion in one-off expenses, which included a previously announced €8.1-billion write-off on bad loans plus other charges including contributions to an Italian fund to save weaker banks.The loss was in line with analyst forecasts of €13.56 billion, as surveyed by data provider FactSet. The bank said that without the one-offs, the loss would have totaled €352 million, citing lower revenues.UniCredit said full-year losses totaled €11.8 billion, exceeding forecasts of €10.5 billion.","UniCredit said that it incurred €13.2 billion in one-off expenses, which included a previously announced €8.1-billion write-off on bad loans plus other charges",20:45,Italy’s UniCredit bank posts massive $14.5 billion loss +2017-02-09,"Mumbai: Bank of India swung to a surprise profit in the December quarter from a loss in the year earlier as asset quality improved.Net profit was Rs101.72 crore in the three months ended 31 December compared to a Rs1,505.58 crore loss in the year-ago period. The bank was expected to post a net loss of Rs11.19 crore, according to estimates of 14 Bloomberg analysts.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 5.7% to Rs2,862.61 crore in the December quarter from Rs2,708.04 crore last year.“Government has decided to infuse Rs1,784 crore as equity capital in our bank out of which Rs1,338 crore was received in September and balance amount Rs446 crore is expected to infuse this quarter… During this quarter we are planning to raise between Rs1,000-1,500 crore additional tier one capital and equal amount would be raised by way of tier two bonds,” said Melwyn Rego, managing director and chief executive of Bank of India.In the September quarter, the bank had sold its 18% stake in Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance to Life Insurance Corp. of India, earning Rs495 crore pre-tax profit.Other income increased 69% to Rs1,769.25 crore in the third quarter from Rs1,047.27 crore in the same period last year.Slippages for the December quarter stood at Rs3,210 crore whereas recovery stood at Rs3,700 crore.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) at Bank of India declined 0.92% to Rs51,781.06 crore at the end of the December quarter from Rs52,261.95 crore in the September quarter. As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were 13.38% at the end of the December quarter compared with 13.45% in the previous quarter and 9.18% a year ago.Provisions and contingencies increased marginally to Rs2,302.57 crore in the third quarter from Rs2,296.22 crore a quarter ago. Net NPAs rose to 7.09% in the December quarter compared with 7.56% in the previous quarter and 5.25% in the same quarter last year.","Bank of India’s net interest income rose 5.7% to Rs2,862.61 crore in the December quarter from Rs2,708.04 crore last year",20:32,Bank of India posts Rs101.72 crore profit in December quarter +2017-02-09,"
Delhi: Cost-cutting efforts and lower raw material prices helped India’s largest two-wheeler company contain the impact of demonetization on its net profit, which declined 2.67% in the December quarter from a year ago, but beat analyst estimates handsomely.For the third quarter of 2016-17, Hero MotoCorp Ltd’s net profit declined from Rs793.23 crore in the year ago period to Rs772.05 crore. A Bloomberg poll of 28 analysts had projected a profit of Rs711.1 crore.Net sales declined to Rs6,898.64 crore from Rs7,807.77 crore and the company sold 1.4 million scooters and motorcycles in the quarter, down from 1.69 million a year ago. Hero’s chairman and managing director Pawan Munjal struck an optimistic note. “The industry did witness some negative sentiments during the October-December quarter, but with the agility shown by the government in bringing about a slew of measures to aid citizens at large, the market scenario has begun improving,” he said in a statement.Hero shares fell 1.07% to Rs3,223.80 on BSE. The benchmark Sensex declined 0.16% to 28,289.92 points. The earnings were announced after the end of trading on Wednesday. The company said that its ongoing margin rationalization programme and softening of material costs helped it post better numbers amid the circumstances.The results come on the back of a strong September quarter, when Hero posted its highest ever profit for a quarter at Rs1,004.22 crore with good rains in the monsoon season boosting consumer demand in the run up to the festive season.Hero’s numbers were subdued in the December quarter after the Narendra Modi-led government invalidated older high-value currency notes in early November. The move hit sales of scooters and motorcycles, some of which, especially in smaller towns and rural areas, are bought on cash. In December, sales of two-wheelers and three-wheelers saw the sharpest decline in monthly sales in 18 years. Sales of other products, including consumer packaged goods, were also hit. Rating agency Crisil expects the situation to return to normal by the end of the fourth quarter, although it says not all affected businesses will rebound equally. “The outlook for fiscal 2018 will be shaped by how long the cash crunch-led disruption lasts. In our base case, we have taken it as a 2-quarter phenomenon—Q3 and Q4 and normalization after that. In this scenario, growth will start approaching the 8% mark in the next fiscal if the monsoon is normal,” Crisil said in a 7 January report.The government says the impact of currency ban will not spill over to the next financial year.Munjal claimed the government’s move, along with measures unveiled in the Union budget, and the implementation of the goods and services tax from 1 July, would help the cause of long-term growth. “2017 may well turn out to be a turning point for the industry as well as the country’s economy.”",Hero MotoCorp’s net profit in the December quarter declined to Rs772.05 crore from Rs793.23 crore in the year-ago period,04:53,"Hero MotoCorp’s Q3 profit declines, but exceeds estimates" +2017-03-20,"
New Delhi: Air India chairman and managing director Ashwani Lohani, 59, took over the reins of the national carrier in August 2015. Since Lohani took over, Air India has seen improved industrial relations and continued expansion. In an interview, Lohani comments on the airline’s priorities in 2017. Edited excerpts:
What is Air India’s focus area this year?The key objective is expansion and consolidation. About 35 planes would come this year and we have to fly them. Of these, six will be long-haul planes which will go international with one return flight a day. We are participating aggressively in government’s regional connectivity scheme Udan. We have ordered 10 ATRs and we are ordering 10 more this year so our ATR fleet would become 30 by end of 2017. In the next two years, we are looking to add 20-25 planes so I will have a 50-plane airline in the country. Some more international connections are being planned—Washington, Scandinavian countries. Israel is under consideration. We will be increasing frequency to Australia on existing routes. Then we are working to improve our services still further. We will improve our food further, staff should become more aggressive—in marketing, we have become very aggressive. And we want to keep on earning higher operating profits. Air India has almost come on track, we just have to find a solution to the huge debt we have.
You have been very vocal on several issues including massive debt burden piled onto the airline?We have to run the organization openly. If you are working with honesty and commitment and not looking for a single illegal penny, then why should we not speak openly? I will. How do I compete with private carriers when our people are afraid of decision-making because of so many processes, while others can take decisions so quickly? The problems have to be accepted and brought in the public domain. The reasons have to be known—Rs50,000 crore debt and the fact that we are bound by a lot of rules and procedures.
There are things in the works to defuse debt issues?We have to do financial restructuring. It’s a question of life and death. We will also have to inject fresh blood.ALSO READ | Govt’s plan to list Air India is a chimera
But you have also moved a proposal to increase age limit from 58 to 60 in Air India?Yes, because till the time we induct new people—following the long approval and induction process laid down by the government—we need experienced people to work in several areas.
Does the lack of independent directors on the board of the airline for almost a year hamper decision-making as some board members becoming wary of decision-making?That’s something that the ministry is looking into. The decision for additional planes (major decision) was taken while they were there.
Even though there is no move towards Air India privatization, do you have a view on it? My job is to run the airline. Privatization is subject to the government view.
Banks led by State Bank of India seem to have said no to conversion of their debt to equity in Air India?There is nothing like they have said no to it. We are still talking to banks to convert some of the debt into equity; some way has to be found out. Discussions are going on. We want it to closed at the earliest but it’s not something in our hands.
Does it worry you that while you’re the biggest international airline out of India with a 17% share, your domestic market share has been shrinking?One thing I have to remember is that we are an international airline. That is our market. Domestic we went down because our capacity remained fixed, while others’ increased a lot. So our domestic market went down because of inaction on our part. And the second reality is that while private airlines can place a 300-400 plane order, we can’t do it. I will not be able to get it past the system. There would be bribery allegations. So, market share will fall; we won’t be able to stop unless I can also order planes, run it like an owner, which I am not. So, we have to brand Air India more and more as an international airline. And we have to tap the untapped tier-2 and tier-3 cities where there is little competition.
Does IndiGo’s 40% market share in the domestic market impact you, your pricing?It’s not very good for the ordinary passengers for somebody to have such a large market share. It will almost become monopolistic if it crosses 50%.
You have been benevolent in giving staff access—everyone from the top to the bottom can meet and seek help. Has that really helped the airline?The staff are more aggressive, more responsive. We are supporting our staff. It is highly beneficial for the airline. The chairman of the company has to be attached to the ground. Those days are gone when we can run it like a maharaja. Air India chairman cannot be like a maharaja. I have to know what’s happening on the ground, I have to know my staff, I have to know my territory. If you are not involved, you will make wrong decisions, wrong assessments and you will always have an HR (human resources) issue. That’s why we never blame our staff; it’s our systems, our processes, our past that has to be blamed. In any airline, the number one focus has to be HR, the number two focus has to be HR and the number three focus has to be HR, then comes the rest. If staff is happy, we will serve the passenger well, the cleaner we will keep the planes.
You had plans to have an alliance with the Railways?We did try but it did not work out. The plan was to have (the) wait list passengers of the Railways come to us so we could fly them last minute. It would have worked very well.
One hears how in the past some private airlines would often complain to the aviation ministry when Air India dropped fares and then Air India had to back off and keep fares up. How has it been for you when it comes to similar interference?Yes, but in this government, one thing is very clear—there is no interference, there are no dalals (middlemen), there is no expectation to do anything wrong. So, we have absolutely no issue on this regard. We are running Air India—besides the bottleneck of processes that comes with being a government organization— impeccably.
Do you expect to get a big chunk of the Rs500 crore subsidy the government is giving to all those planning to fly regional routes. In RCS (regional connectivity scheme) you can’t really fly big planes and people don’t have small planes . So, we have the first mover advantage. We will be able to connect 40-50 cities within the next 18 months. My thinking is that a lot of places, routes will be viable on their own—like Delhi-Kanpur we have started, it’s doing well. Then let’s say Lucknow-Dehradun we are planning, it will work on its own. In some places, it will not work on its own. So, it will be a blend of both. We have not worked out how much subsidy we will be able to get.
There were plans to bring a strategic investor for Air India’s Nagpur aircraft maintenance facility?There is no demand. That we have given up. We will run it ourselves. You will see a total turnround of Alliance Air in 2017-18. I expect it to be a profitable airline. So, our Alliance Air will become profitable, Air India Air Transport Services Ltd (ground handling subsidiary) is profitable, Air India Express is profitable. Air India Engineering and Air India will take time.
You were initially very unhappy with Air India’s Star Alliance relationship?Star Alliance is necessary. Now that our airline is becoming alright, it will get substantial advantage from Star Alliance. We will maintain the Star relationship.
Qatar wants to set up an airline in India. What’s your stand?We don’t have any position. We are basically running our own airline. It’s for the government to decide, there is no airline’s role there.
But in the past, you have opposed such moves, even written to aviation ministry against giving any bilateral rights to Qatar?The call has to be taken by the ministry. Air India has no locus standi in the matter. We will not oppose it, we will leave it to the government.
In the end, what more can a consumer look forward from the airline this year?Good food, good cabin and WiFi should start soon in domestic flights from around June this year.","In an interview, Air India boss Ashwani Lohani talked about the Udan scheme for regional aviation, competition from IndiGo, privatization and debt issues",08:11,Air India won’t oppose Qatar Airways bid to set up airline in India: Ashwani Lohani +2017-03-20,"
Bengaluru: Almost 400 feet from the ground, businessman Vijay Mallya’s mansion in the sky in Bengaluru is getting ready. The mansion-style penthouse is mounted on a giant cantilever slab on the top of Kingfisher Towers—residences at UB City, which is being built on a 4.5-acre land parcel that once housed his ancestral home.Sprawled over 40,000 sq. ft across two levels (34th and 35th) with a helipad on the top, the penthouse is surrounded by an open deck that offers a 360-degree viewing platform. There’s an infinity pool to boot. The penthouse is part of a skyscraper, but it is as exclusive as a private villa with its two elevators; it shares nothing with the rest of the residences.The $20-million (that’s the rough value of the penthouse) question: will Mallya, a fugitive from justice who left for the UK in March 2016 as lenders and investigating agencies closed in on him, ever get to live in his white house in the sky?The skyscraper, which will be the fanciest address in the city once ready, is being developed as an extension of UB City, the luxury retail and office space built under a joint development agreement between United Breweries Holdings Ltd (UBHL) and Prestige Estates Projects Ltd. UBHL owns 55% and the developer 45%. Prestige Estates, which is also constructing the building, has 42 apartments—8,000 sq. ft each with four bedrooms and five car parks—of which it has sold 34 and kept the remaining eight to sell once the building is fully done. The last sale was for around Rs.25 crore.UBHL, which has the penthouse and 39 of the apartments, sold and issued allotment letters for seven, for a little over Rs150 crore, according to the company’s 2016 annual report. The sales were probably completed in 2012 and 2013. Since 2014, UBHL has been barred from selling the flats.Prestige has sold some of the apartments as shells while some of them have their interiors designed by its interior design firm Morph Design Co. “It was a challenge to construct the mansion on a huge cantilever at that height, but we have ensured we build it exactly the way it was conceived. It’s a complex structure and the finishing work is going on,” said Prestige Estates’ chairman Irfan Razack. “We will finish the project as per contract and hand it over,” Razack said.In January, the debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru ruled in favour of State Bank of India (SBI) and allowed it to start the process of recovering the Rs6,203.35 crore it is owed by Mallya’s companies. Mallya, chairman of UBHL, and his companies Kingfisher Airlines, UBHL and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money which, along with interest, adds up to more than Rs9,000 crore. In its application, Kingfisher Towers is listed under other known assets of UBHL, which means it (the apartments owned by the firm) can be sold by the recovery officer to pay the dues of the bank. In September 2016, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) attached Rs6,630 crore worth of properties belonging to Mallya in the ongoing money laundering probe that included flats in Kingfisher Tower, Bangalore (Rs565 crore), along with the Mandwa Farm House, Alibaug (Rs25 crore), and shares of UBHL and United Spirits Ltd.Indeed, it isn’t inconceivable that the penthouse could soon be up for sale. “Only the external structure of the penthouse is being constructed. The interiors will remain pending since there isn’t any clarity on the matter on who the claimant is,” said a person familiar with the development who didn’t want to be named. When contacted, a UB spokesperson declined to comment. While the developer Prestige is gearing up to finish the project and hand over the homes to the respective buyers by this year-end, uncertainty clouds the fate of UBHL’s share of apartments and, of course, Mallya’s mansion.“Under the money laundering Act, an order of conviction will result in confiscation of property by the government,” said S.S. Naganand, senior counsel appearing for the lenders consortium.“If money laundering is not proven, the debt remains and what will happen to this property is they (banks) will try to recover dues. There will be an attempt to sell off and recover dues and any sale proceedings will be realized and appropriated towards his dues. If after this anything remains, it will be given to him,” Naganand added. Mallya would have liked to keep the penthouse.“The mansion is what Mallya always wanted. His family home on the same plot of land was like a British colonial bungalow and he wanted to replicate that (in the penthouse),” said a prominent architect, who didn’t want to be named.",It isn’t inconceivable that the mansion-style penthouse in Bengaluru could soon be up for sale to recover dues that Vijay Mallya owes to banks,17:11,Vijay Mallya’s $20 million ‘sky mansion’ in Bengaluru is almost ready. But will he get to live in it? +2017-03-20,"New Delhi: Snapdeal, run by Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd, has named Jason Kothari as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Freecharge, the e-commerce marketplace said on Monday. It has also committed to invest $20 million in the payments services arm.Kothari, the former CEO of Housing.com, joined Snapdeal as its chief strategy and business officer in January, following the merger of SoftBank-backed Locon Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which runs Housing.com, with PropTiger (Elara Technologies Pte. Ltd).Kothari will continue in his role at Snapdeal and will take up the additional charge at Freecharge, Snapdeal said. He is also accorded a seat in the board of directors of Freecharge.Kothai’s appointment was anticipated after former Freecharge CEO Govind Rajan resigned last month. Kothari had stepped in to manage the operations at the wallets firm, as part of his larger responsibility to oversee operations at Snapdeal’s portfolio companies.“We remain committed to the success and vision of Freecharge. Jason is a strong, strategic and versatile business leader and entrepreneur who has already been the CEO of two successful companies. We are delighted to announce his leadership role at Freecharge,” Snapdeal CEO Kunal Bahl said in a statement.Kothari, who led Housing.com as CEO from August 2015 to January 2017, was earlier the CEO and vice-chairman of US-based entertainment company Valiant Entertainment. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.“The digital payments space in India is forecasted to be over $1 trillion by 2025. I’m excited to join the talented team at Freecharge at such a high-growth and dynamic time in the industry and expect Freecharge to continue to play a key role in this digital payments revolution,” Kothari said in a statement.Freecharge, which was acquired by Snapdeal at a valuation of around $450 million, is one of leading wallet firms in the country alongside Paytm and Mobikwik. It was founded by Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon in 2010.The announcement comes at a time when parent Snapdeal is pitching to investors for a fresh funding round.Mint reported in January that Snapdeal, which posted Rs3,316 crore in losses on sales of Rs1,457 crore in the fiscal ending March 2016, was in talks with SoftBank Group Corp. to raise funds at a valuation of $3-4 billion, significantly lower than the $6.5 billion peak it touched in its previous round. It had also held talks with strategic and financial investors to part-sell Freecharge, but the deal did not go through over an expectation mismatch in valuations, Mint reported.",Jason Kothari will continue in his role as chief strategy and business officer at Snapdeal and will take up the additional charge at Freecharge,14:41,"Snapdeal to invest $20 million in Freecharge, names Jason Kothari as CEO" +2017-03-18,"Hong Kong: Arundhati Bhattacharya is the first woman to head State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender.In 2016, she was listed as the 25th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.Bhattacharya was one of the key business leaders tasked with the implementation of the demonetisation exercise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Her role was significant as she heads a state-owned financial services company with assets worth $460 billion, and more than 14,000 branches spread across the country.“The job to remonetize India has been an enormous task,” explains Bhattacharya. “Nowhere has an economy taken out 86% of its currency in circulation. And, specifically, not an economy of 1.3 billion people which is as cash-intense as India is. Coupled with the fact that we, in the banking system, did it without any notice and preparatory time. We were just pushed off the deep end and expected to swim. And, I can say with some pride, that we did it, and did it very well.”Speaking at the Asia Society in Hong Kong this month on the opportunities and challenges in India, Bhattacharya noted that there had been a lot of concern that India’s third-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) numbers would take a beating because of demonetisation. But this has not come to pass.“Despite demonetisation, India’s GDP growth is 7%. India is on track,” she says, with some degree of satisfaction.The five state election results in India this week has also doubly endorsed this view of the SBI chairman.“Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned the narrative around on demonetisation very quickly by promoting the move as one way of ending systemic corruption in the country. Where his critics assailed him and questioned the economic logic behind the move, he managed to convince the people that, for the first time, someone was targeting the corrupt and rich sections of the nation,” she explains.Bhattacharya claims that India is on the right track today because it has a stable and trusted political leadership that has effectively put into action its vision for a corruption-free digital economy that a majority of the nation buys into.“Had it not been for the groundswell of support by the people of India, we would not have seen such a huge exercise of demonetisation bounce off without a single riot or a single law and order issue.”The 60-year old Bhattacharya was born in a well-educated Bengali family.She was raised in Bhilai by Prodyut Kumar Mukherjee, who was working with the Bhilai Steel Plant as an engineer, and Kalyani Mukherjee, who was a homeopathic doctor.With a degree in English literature, Bhattacharya was determined to pursue the path of journalism; but as it happens often, life took her on a detour.In 1977, she decided to sit for the SBI probationary officers exam and nailed it. She entered the banking sector and has not looked back since. Bhattacharya has become a role model for women in India today.She credits her husband, Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur professor and engineer Pritimoy Bhattacharya, and her extended family, which stepped in to help raise her daughter, Sukrita, who was born in 1995.Bhattacharya says she was also guided along the way by her mentor and former chairman of SBI, M.S. Verma, who advised her “to never give up” even when the going gets rough. She made this her mantra.Today, Bhattacharya has become the first chairperson, in the 210-year long history of SBI, to get an extension after the retirement age of 60.“I know Miss Indra Nooyi, the head of PepsiCo, has been credited with saying ‘you can’t have it all’. But, I think, that depends on what your definition of ‘all’ is. If you can define it in a way that is practical and pragmatic then it is possible to have it ‘all.’” The SBI chairperson says many women regularly fall off the workforce ladder because they think they will not be able to properly take care of the responsibilities of the family and the workplace.“Women being women, they are very sincere, committed and honest in what they do. If they feel they are short changing some segment of their responsibility, they have a tendency of holding themselves back. What I would like to tell them is that it is not necessarily true that you will short-change one or the other.”She often gives this analogy that when one is driving in a tunnel on a dark night on a highway and can only see up to the point where the headlights go; beyond that, your vision sees sheer darkness.“But, what lies ahead is a matter of your belief,” she explains. “Most of the time, women believe that what lies ahead is a precipice. Whereas, if you continue to drive, and stay on the path, the road will open up in front of you, and you will reach your destination. You don’t need to turn around and abandon the journey.”Bhattacharya’s journey has been defined by hard work, optimism, and steely persistence. It has led her to be at the forefront of India’s economic successes in the past few decades. In her own modest way, she has also helped shape it.Looking at the future, the SBI chairperson believes that one of the critical ways that India’s growth will leapfrog will be when “we get eight to ten really good chief ministers”.In her view, this trend has already taken hold as most chief ministers today realize that if they don’t bring about development in their state, they are not going to last long.“Earlier, the idea was to keep people poor, keep people illiterate, pay them just before the election, and you’ll get the votes,” she explains.“Now they have realized that the people are taking the payment from every party, and then simply electing who they want. And who they want to elect are the candidates and party that delivers maximum growth and good governance.”A lesson that was clearly on display this week in the results of the Indian state elections.Edited excerpts from an interview:
Do you think India is set to become a digital economy in the near future or is this still a distant dream?India is definitely set to leapfrog using digital in a manner that is not used anywhere in the world. Today, for instance, India has the largest biometric database in the world. So, out of 1.3 billion people, 1.1 billion people have what is called an Aadhaar number, a unique identification number, given on the basis of 10 fingerprints and retina scans. So, there’s no way of mistaking one person for the other. The government has now asked this number to be linked to each person’s bank account. Very soon, we will have a system where Indian citizens will be able to operate their bank account using only the unique identification number.They don’t need a card, or a signature, or anything else, just their unique identification number will suffice. This is unprecedented in India and elsewhere.Second, the country has recently also created what is called a UPI, or Unified Payment Interface. It is a payment system that allows money transfer between any two bank accounts by using a smartphone. UPI allows a customer to pay directly from a bank account to different merchants, both online and offline, without the hassle of typing credit card details, IFSC (Indian Financial System Code), or net banking/wallet passwords. These huge digital innovations are a sure indicator that India is well on its way to becoming a 21st-century digital economy.
Has demonetisation worked to achieve the goal of a digital India?Yes, I think one of the biggest benefits of this exercise has been the boost given to the digital economy. The fact that UPI has come in very quickly is indicative of this trend. Necessity is the mother of invention. Because there was a necessity to create such a payment system, it’s already a reality.
In what way has demonetisation helped with accounting for black money and reducing corruption in your view?Because of demonetisation, there is much more focus today on the shell companies that were used to channel black money. And the government has already indicated that they will look at closing down those companies. This is important because these shell companies have been there for the past 100 years! But nobody had really done anything about closing them down and closing that loophole. Money that was in the cupboards is now in the banking system. The government, thus, has a much better handle on where the revenues are, and how they can be included in the tax net.
While foreign investment into India has grown significantly in the past three years, what are the remaining barriers to foreign direct investment (FDI)?One, is, of course, the ease of doing business itself. India has to continue to become much more transparent so that if a foreign investor makes an application, they should have clarity, and be able to predict ahead of time if and when they are going to get approval. Second, the time it takes to get these approvals needs to be reduced. Third, a single window clearance is necessary, and, fourth, a better centre-state coordination. This is already underway. Finally, more predictability on government policies will help in boosting foreign investment so that the investor’s risk is properly balanced.The government is trying to make these models more robust by giving the kind of assurances that were earlier not available.","‘Stay on the chosen path, don’t abandon the journey’ is SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya’s advice to women in the workforce",00:43,Arundhati Bhattacharya: Women can have it all +2017-03-17,"Mumbai: A magisterial court in Mumbai issued Friday a non-bailable arrest warrant and an extradition order against businessman Vijay Mallya in a service tax default case.The court also issued a non-bailable warrant against Sanjay Agarwal, former chief executive of Mallya-owned, and now grounded, Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.“The Esplanade metropolitan magistrate’s court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya, to be executed through the Ministry of External Affairs, and also an extradition order,” said service tax department counsel Advait Sethna. Mallya owes over Rs100 crore to the department as of now, he added. India has an extradition treaty with the UK (where Mallya is believed to be staying) and therefore the court’s order can be executed by the concerned authorities, the lawyer said. The service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore in 2011-12. The airline collected service tax from passengers but did not deposit it with the department, it said. “Mallya and Kingfisher CEO Sanjay Agarwal admitted the demand, but the company did not pay up the dues,” said Sethna. The department then moved the court for issuance of an non-bailable warrant and an extradition order. In April 2016, a special court for Prevention of Money Laundering Act cases too had issued an arrest warrant against Mallya, while in January this year a CBI court issued an non-bailable warrant against the beleaguered liquor baron in an IDBI loan default case.",The service tax dept’s non-bailable arrest warrant and extradition order pertains to unpaid dues of the grounded Kingfisher Airlines,22:26,"Vijay Mallya served non-bailable warrant, extradition order in service tax default case" +2017-03-18,"
If Amit Agarwal, 42, had decided to pursue his initial ambition of becoming a primary-school teacher and starting his own school, the landscape of India’s booming e-commerce business may have looked a little different.
For it’s possible that Flipkart, the Indian e-commerce juggernaut, would have continued to enjoy a monopoly over India’s $15 billion (around Rs98,000 crore) e-commerce market. The Tiger Global Management-fuelled funding frenzy that gripped India’s nascent start-up ecosystem during 2014 and the better part of 2015 may have lasted longer and Indian “unicorn” start-ups with frothy valuations may have never witnessed a reckoning.
Instead, India’s consumer Internet business witnessed the staggering rise of Amazon, and a chain of events that led to a correction in the valuations of Internet businesses in the country.
Spearheading Amazon’s multi-billion-dollar bet on India was Agarwal, who has been with the company for 18 years, having joined the Internet behemoth after a friend at Stanford prodded him to.
“Teaching was always the career (I had) in mind. I landed up here by accident,” says Agarwal, country manager at Amazon India, who has just got promoted to global senior vice-president.
Agarwal joined Amazon in 1999 in Seattle, at a time when it was only selling books. Since then he has been part of almost every single large bet that the retailer has made—starting from Amazon’s core online marketplace business to Amazon Web Services (AWS, the company’s cloud-computing business), to Amazon’s march into India.
Even by Amazon’s exacting benchmarks, Agarwal’s career trajectory stands out—he is one of the youngest members of Amazon chief executive officer (CEO) Jeff Bezos’ core team of top executives and insiders believe he is being groomed for a bigger role.
I’m meeting Agarwal early evening on a weekday at the five-star Sheraton Grand, which overlooks Amazon’s India headquarters in a towering skyscraper in west Bengaluru. Dressed in a fitted mauve shirt, dark blue jeans and casual Italian leather shoes, he appears media-savvy and articulate.
As we order green tea, Agarwal tells me how he came to join Amazon. “When I was at Stanford (studying computer science), pretty much every adviser that you wanted to work with was working with a start-up.” Google started in a basement; you could see Yahoo and other start-ups on campus. So it seemed logical to join one of these places, he says.
Agarwal hails from Mumbai, where his father worked as a chemical engineer. He cracked the Joint Entrance Exam and had the option of going to the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, which was close to his house. He chose IIT, Kanpur, instead. Stanford and Amazon followed.
It was during his early days at Amazon that Agarwal met his future wife, an architect. They married in 2003, shortly before Agarwal returned to India to head the AWS team. The couple have an 11-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son.
Before joining Amazon, Agarwal had dabbled in a couple of early-stage technology ventures—starting off at Cambridge Technology Partners in Silicon Valley and moving to Informatica (also in the valley) a few months later. But he began to grow restless “sitting in a corner, writing codes”. Amazon had approached him a couple of times, and when it did so again, Agarwal decided it was time to move.
Unusually, he says his love for mountaineering made the decision easier. “It was a phase of my life when I wanted to be in the outdoors and I wanted to hike, so I thought Seattle was a good place. So, I was like, if Amazon is going to pay me to get to Seattle, let me join the company. That’s how I landed up at Amazon,” says Agarwal.
He started working at Amazon as a programmer in a team that would eventually roll out Amazon’s now famous online marketplace.
As fate would have it, his first proper face-to-face meeting with Bezos happened within a year of his joining the company. “I had an idea and I don’t know why, but I sent an email to Jeff, saying I wanted to discuss it with him,” says Agarwal. Bezos replied immediately, saying, “Come down in 15 minutes and tell me what the idea is.”
It was about creating an online rental marketplace. “Now I would think differently about that idea—but the fact that he was so supportive and humble about it was very touching,” says Agarwal.
He worked in the marketplace team for five years before moving on to Amazon’s highest-margin business till date, AWS. In 2004, Agarwal shifted to India to lead what was one of AWS’ first teams, technically starting Amazon’s journey in the country.
The project, shrouded in secrecy, was code-named “Subway”—a reference to the fact that it was a payments system that allowed machines to pay each other, a core part of billing at AWS. Three years later, he moved back to Seattle as technical adviser to Bezos, when Kindle was being launched.
His biggest role till date, however, has been to lead Amazon’s push into India, which is expected to become a $50 billion e-commerce market over the next five years.
When Amazon first launched operations here in June 2013, not many expected it to pose a serious challenge to Flipkart. Even smaller rival Snapdeal was gaining investor traction. To put it simply, many expected Amazon to meet the same fate it had in China, where it came off second-best to Alibaba.
How wrong the critics would prove to be.
In July 2014, a day after Flipkart announced that it had raised $1 billion, Bezos committed to investing $2 billion in the India business.
Amazon grew at a faster pace during the last quarter of 2015 than it had in all of 2014. Sales at Flipkart began stagnating—for at least six months since November 2015, its monthly sales remained flat. In fact, Amazon briefly overtook Flipkart’s monthly sales on a stand-alone basis in mid-2016—Flipkart did about Rs2,100 crore in monthly sales in both July and August, while Amazon’s numbers were just a little over Rs2,100 crore, driven by strategically timed discounts and a sale event.
Under Agarwal, Amazon launched initiatives such as Chai Cart, deploying three-wheeled mobile carts to navigate a city, serve tea, water and lemon juice to small business owners and teach them about selling online; introduced cash on delivery; and began Project Udaan, which aims to teach offline shoppers how to shop online through Internet-equipped physical stores.
“If you had told me that this is where we would be in three-and-a-half years, I think we would have had people laugh at us. It’s unbelievable for anybody out there,” says Agarwal.
Fortunes change quickly in the e-commerce business, however. Amazon has continued to grow strongly over the past year, but Flipkart too has witnessed an upswing in fortunes over the last six months, reclaiming its pole position during the Diwali festive season sale when it pulled in monthly sales of Rs5,000 crore, about 10% higher than Amazon’s numbers in October.
“Each quarter is like a year,” agrees Agarwal.
It’s almost 7pm, and Agarwal is restless. His day starts early—he wakes up by 5.30am to go for a run. “I try to spend whatever time is left with family. My office knows that when it’s 6pm, it’s hard to hold me back,” he says.
I try to prod him into talking about Amazon’s intense, even public, rivalry with Flipkart. After the Diwali sale in October, Flipkart’s then CEO Binny Bansal had said the American retailer had inflated sales by including low-priced items such as hing (asafoetida) and churan (digestive powder). A couple of days later, Agarwal responded, saying Amazon had accomplished in three years what Flipkart hadn’t, though it had launched earlier and acquired companies such as Myntra and Jabong.
“I’m a runner. When you run (a marathon), you don’t check after 10m and see if you’re ahead. If you do, then it’s going to be a very long race for you because you might trip,” says Agarwal. “You can’t get satisfied or depressed with a relative metric.”
I ask him if he ever regrets not becoming a schoolteacher.
“You’re saying this as if I’m about to retire. We’ll get to it (teaching). Let’s make India big and then we’ll get to it,” he quips.",The newly promoted global senior vice-president on the challenges of staying at the top of the game and his dream of becoming a schoolteacher,00:34,Amit Agarwal: Making Amazon amazing +2017-03-15,"
Mumbai: Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in India rose to a record $69.75 billion across 1,195 transactions in 2016, fuelled by a wave of consolidation across sectors. Consolidation as a driver for M&A activity is expected to continue in the near- to mid-term as available dry powder, both foreign and domestic, steadily accumulates. Barclays Capital was at the forefront of some of the largest deals in India last year.In an interview, Pramod Kumar, Barclays India managing director and co-head of banking, talks about the various factors that are likely to drive M&A deals in the coming quarters. Edited excerpts:
Going ahead, what are the trends you are observing that will drive M&A activity in India?I think what we will see, and what has been evident from the activity in the past year as well, is the continued consolidation and rationalization of businesses. This will lead to some of the existing players selling off parts of their businesses or monetizing them at attractive valuations. We will see that accentuated in a large way by strong private equity interest in these businesses and the willingness and ability (of private equity funds) to own these businesses with large stakes.These are businesses which are fundamentally not bad, but which have been either under-invested in or haven’t got the attention they deserve and can show significant improvement. There are several instances of that if you look back at the past 12-24 months.For example, Crompton Greaves’s consumer business falling out of leverage issues that the group was facing. We have seen several other industrial assets being divested, a lot of cement assets get sold, primarily a result of leverage issues that the owners have faced.More corporates are taking a view around rationalization of their businesses. All that has led to M&A activity.
What is the level of interest you are seeing from strategics, especially foreign strategics?Surprisingly, in all of this, we may not have seen a large amount of foreign strategic action yet, with the exception of a few such as American Towers, Yokohama and Fosun. This is something that will change going forward. I am hoping that you will see more interest from them, and that would be primarily on account of them becoming more and more comfortable about India. It has certainly improved from what you saw say two years ago or going back to the previous government’s last two years. But I think more can happen.
Any particular sectors where strategic interest is higher?There is interest in financial services, there is interest in renewables, interest in some areas of industrials; even in health-care services, we are seeing some conversations.
In private equity, the general feeling is that the interest is more around buyouts. How do you think PE activity will pan out this year?Private equity feels more comfortable, and increasingly so now, of being able to own the business and then control it, change management, bring about improvements, etc., which wasn’t the case a few years ago.In a way, they have also felt that owning a minority stake in an environment where there is no huge earnings growth, their ability to really do much with the business is limited and I would say that in many situations a lack of trust factor is also playing. Some of the experiences of private equity with the existing promoters hasn’t really been great, so they would prefer to have a larger stake and then the ability to bring about improvement where they can.
What impact will some of the geopolitical situations such as Trump coming to power in US and all the noise around changes in policies for sectors like IT and pharma, have on deal making in these sectors?For pharma, the US is still the largest market. Several Indian firms will continue to look to consolidate their positions in the US. So I don’t rule out activity on that front, though it may be a little more cautious around what policy changes the Trump government implements. There will be some bit of caution.As far as M&A is concerned, tech companies were not doing very big acquisitions. Pharma in the US will be more cautious until they get clarity around the policies.
We saw several overseas bond issuances and refinancing activity last year. How is that market looking like in 2017?The markets are quite liquid. Everyone’s counting on two rate hikes this year in the US. So, people are certainly taking advantage of the high amount of liquidity that is there in the market and that the credit spreads have compressed. People do see this as an opportunity where they can refinance their existing debt and term out the maturity.Interestingly, we also have some other companies which are looking to access the bond market to replace their rupee funding—we have seen Renew Power do such a bond and earlier Greenko had done that.The driver there is again strong liquidity in the market, ability to get good pricing, coupled with the fact there is a huge growth opportunity here in the renewables space, and that this frees up their bank lines, allowing them to go and borrow incrementally from the banks to grow their portfolio.",Barclays India managing director Pramod Kumar on the various factors that are likely to drive M&A deals in the coming quarters,03:48,M&A interest may grow as buyers get more confident about India: Barclays India MD +2017-03-14,"New Delhi: Design and lifestyle brand Good Earth, also one of India’s top décor labels, has completed 21 years in India. Simran Lal, daughter of Anita Lal who founded the brand in 1996, is the chief executive officer at Good Earth and clearly loves what she does. Both the mother and daughter are hands on and deeply involved with the product design at Good Earth. In the last 15 years, the company’s turnover has gone from Rs5 crore in 2001 to over Rs150 crore in 2016, with its clothing brand Sustain being the big money spinner in terms of volumes. Lal, who was a speaker at the LyFe Symposium, a two-day luxury conference in New Delhi, spoke to Mint about changing consumption trends in India, her one-year old clothing sub-brand Nicobar and being a second generation woman entrepreneur. Dressed in her own label, not surprisingly, Lal admitted that she isn’t a big shopper. Luxury for Lal is spending time with her children and talking walks in Delhi’s Humayun’s Tomb. Her company now has 700 employees and at Good Earth, she says, it’s always brand first and revenue later.Edited Excerpts:So far in your journey, what are some of the surprising consumption trends that have emerged from India. What is India really buying from Good Earth?When we launched (21 years ago), we were possibly ahead of time, pioneering in our space, like there was craft but not in the way that we wanted to put it out there. We wanted to celebrate colour, celebrate Indian motifs and heritage. Today, we don’t have to educate the consumer that much, we take that for granted actually. So, that’s the difference, the Indian consumer, in all, is very confident with being Indian. And that’s the big difference, it was really very different 21 years ago. This shift has happened over the last 10 years, organically. I think shifts like these happen when the economy of the country is performing better, there is a sense of hope. I think these are things which are important, it’s not just about our brand. Good Earth helps as a small catalyst in shaping that culture, where the Indian consumer feels a sense of pride and confidence in celebrating Indian clothes, here and internationally.In your session you said that Good Earth stands for passion, tradition and women. What is it like to be a second generation woman entrepreneur in present times?It’s fabulous, I think we are very lucky. I think it’s become much easier to be a woman entrepreneur today. I can speak for myself, I feel like I have had it relatively easy (compared to my mother) but it’s because our organisation is very welcoming of women. And because it’s a design-led organisation, somehow it’s more acceptable when women are leaders compared to say in other fields like technology. Our CFO, head of operations, head of finance are all women. So overall, I do see more women in the work space across fields. They are more successful case studies today than there have been before.Last month, the legal notice sent to Fabindia rekindled the debate on the authenticity of khadi. As an invested stakeholder, what is your take on it?I think for me, it’s about the bigger picture and what’s important is that khadi is being treated with so much respect now. And while it’s important to know, is it real khadi or not? It’s a good debate to have, it’s crucial to understand there is a handloom version, there is a non-handloom version and mixed fabrics like khadi cotton etc. As important as those technicalities and semantics are, I think it’s really important and a bigger thing to ask what has it done? People are proud to start wearing khadi, using khadi products. Earlier, it was for the politicians, today it is pop culture. So, I look at this debate slightly differently.Your company’s revenue grew from Rs5 crore to Rs150 crore in 15 years. Where is the growth coming from and what’s been the money spinner?Our clothes (label)—Sustain—gave us a big boost. We started with clothes in 2010 seven years ago. It’s 100% craft led, it is about sustaining the craftsmen’s tradition. The sales for our brand really picked up because of a couple of reasons. One, there was a need gap in terms of design and detail that we filled, that resonated with people. They loved it, it was comfortable. And it brought us volumes as compared to our home decor segment. For instance, how many dinner sets can one buy? But clothes women can’t get enough of.Tell us about the consumer response to your new sub-brand Nicobar?Me and my husband started Nicobar, under the big Good Earth family and umbrella, but it exists as its own brand now. It has a distinct design language of its own. We wanted to make Nicobar accessible in terms of price points because with Good Earth, we can’t do that, it is a luxury brand and is viewed as aspirational by many Indian consumers. With Nicobar, we have just turned one, and the response so far has been fantastic.","Simran Lal speaks about changing consumption trends in India, her one-year old clothing sub-brand Nicobar and being a second-generation woman entrepreneur ",12:08,"Consumers are now confident with being Indian, says Simran Lal" +2017-03-11,"San Francisco: Tom Moore, a satellite veteran brought in to lead Google’s Project Loon unit, has stepped down after about six months. Alastair Westgarth, head of wireless antenna company Quintel, is taking the spot.The transition is the latest turn in the company’s ambitious attempt to create a communications service with balloons floating in the stratosphere. X, the research division of Google parent Alphabet Inc., recruited Moore in August after the unit’s earlier leader, Mike Cassidy, stepped down. Moore started in mid-September. “Alastair’s vision for Project Loon aligns with X’s philosophy of approaching huge problems, at scale, to improve the lives of millions or billions of people,” a spokeswoman for X said. Moore will stay on at X in an advisory role, she added.At the time, Moore’s hiring was positioned as a key part of turning Loon into a proper business. Giving Google’s experimental projects more independence and paths to revenue was a key rationale behind the creation of Alphabet in 2015. “Tom’s valuable industry experience will help launch us into the commercial stage,” Astro Teller, the head of X, said when Moore joined. ALSO READ: Alphabet leads investment in UK payments startup CurrencycloudUnlike Cassidy, who primarily worked as an internet entrepreneur before running Loon, Moore had specific industry expertise. He created a satellite-based broadband service provider called WildBlue Communications Inc., which was acquired by satellite company ViaSat Inc., where Moore served as senior vice president. Over the past year, a string of executives have departed Alphabet’s divisions outside the main Google internet business. Those who have left include Tony Fadell, who ran Nest, and Craig Barratt, who ran Access, the division that oversaw Google Fiber. Moore declined to comment through an X spokeswoman.X began testing Loon balloons in 2013, working with wireless operators like Vodafone NZ in New Zealand and Telefonica in South America. Loon announced partnerships with three Indonesian carriers in late 2015, but has not updated the status of those deals.Last month, X invited reporters to its headquarters to demonstrate the latest advancement of Loon. Its engineers had deployed machine learning to improve flight patterns for the balloon, limiting the numbers needed to provide internet coverage. Originally, the project was conceived to create a global network, blanketing the globe with the massive balloons. The tweak meant Loon could reach commercial service sooner, executives said.Moore did not attend the session. Teller told reporters that Moore was travelling. Bloomberg","Tom Moore, a satellite veteran recruited in August, is being replaced by Alastair Westgarth",11:42,Google’s Project Loon loses CEO after about six months +2017-03-17,"New York: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. reduced chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein’s annual compensation 27%, awarding him $22 million for 2016 after eliminating a long-term incentive award.Blankfein, 62, received $16 million in performance shares and a $4 million cash bonus, in addition to his $2 million salary, the New York-based firm said Friday in its annual proxy filing. Unlike past years, all of the CEO’s equity-based awards were linked to performance.Goldman Sachs redesigned its compensation structure for 2016 after investors told the company that the long-term incentive part of the package was overly complex. The bank also changed the performance-based awards to reflect the bank’s relative performance.Blankfein received $30 million for 2015, including a $7 million long-term incentive award that pays out over eight years. Gary Cohn, Goldman Sachs’s president before leaving to become President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, received $20 million for 2016, as did chief financial officer Harvey Schwartz.Performance sharesThe bank increased the share of Blankfein’s compensation that’s tied to performance to 80% of his variable pay by linking all of his stock awards to absolute and relative return on equity, compared with eight other global banks. In prior years, a portion of the shares had been tied only to a requirement that he remain in the job.The change also was made for Schwartz, 53. The awards will pay out half in cash and half in stock. In prior years, the performance-based awards were paid out solely in cash.Proxy adviser Glass Lewis & Co. raised concerns about the long-term incentive plan in a report last year, calling it “troubling both in its design and lack of transparent disclosure” and that it could “generate excessive payouts.”Goldman Sachs received about two-thirds support from shareholders for its 2015 executive compensation decisions, the lowest result since the bank introduced annual advisory votes on pay in 2009. In response, the bank sought feedback from investors holding about 40% of its stock. Bloomberg",Goldman Sachs increased the share of Blankfein’s compensation that’s tied to performance to 80% of his variable pay by linking all of his stock awards to return on equity,21:44,Goldman Sachs cuts Lloyd Blankfein’s pay 27% to $22 million for 2016 +2017-04-01,"San Francisco/New York: In the sixth grade, Austin Russell turned a Nintendo gaming handset into a cell phone. At 15, he built a holographic keyboard. By 17, he’d filed for a patent. Now at 22, he’s running a start-up at the heart of Silicon Valley’s latest technology mania.As founder and chief executive officer of Luminar Technologies Inc., Russell and his team are building lidar, a hyper-accurate laser sensing technology crucial for self-driving cars. Google parent Alphabet Inc. is suing Uber Technologies Inc. for allegedly stealing lidar designs, while start-ups Velodyne Lidar Inc. and Quanergy Systems Inc. have raised at least $150 million apiece from giants like Ford Motor Co., Baidu Inc., Daimler AG and Samsung Electronics Co.Russell has raised a similar amount, according to people familiar with Luminar’s finances. The company, founded in 2012, had sought a valuation above $1 billion when it was raising money last year, one of the people said. It’s unclear who invested—Luminar is in “stealth” mode, meaning it hasn’t announced itself to the world yet. A spokeswoman declined to comment, as did Russell’s father Michael, a commercial real estate veteran who serves as chief financial officer. A message sent to Austin Russell through his LinkedIn profile was answered by his assistant, who declined to comment.Also read: How Anthony Levandowski went from Google star to foe at UberPeter Thiel awarded Russell a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship when he was 17, letting him quit Stanford University. The billionaire venture capitalist is a regular visitor to a sprawling Portola Valley ranch, 40 miles south of San Francisco, where Luminar tinkers and tests lidar systems while employees and guests crash on the couch, according to someone who has been there. Car companies, including BMW AG and General Motors Co., have also dropped by.When it was occupied by a previous tenant, the five-acre space was featured in a TechCrunch video showing a pool, trampoline, room for more than 20 people to live, and space for the world’s largest organ. The property, with sweeping views of San Francisco Bay, was listed a few years ago for $22,000 a month.That a relatively unknown college dropout of barely drinking age can raise millions of dollars shows the appetite for lidar. “It’s a gold rush and we’re selling pickaxes,” said Velodyne President Mike Jellen, who graduated college years before Russell was born. Several car companies want autonomous vehicles on the road by 2020 or 2021, which means they’re starting to order lots of lidar systems. Velodyne expects to ship 12,000 units this year, 80,000 in 2018 and 1.7 million by 2022.Luminar’s rise also says a lot about Silicon Valley’s past and present. It’s still the place where prodigies can find generous backers for audacious plans. The ideas used to be mobile apps or web software. Now, it’s increasingly technology that interacts with the physical world—cars, robots, drones and software for automation. Russell is part of this new era.In January, in the up-scale Nob Hill section of San Francisco, a gangling Russell attended a party for 1517 Fund, a VC firm partly backed by Thiel. Towering above the crowd, he lingered in the corner near the entrance, speaking in a booming voice, and avoiding eye contact with a reporter. He was mostly immersed in his phone, which he showed occasionally to a small group gathered close to him, while more than 100 up-and-coming entrepreneurs and older mentor types chomped pizza and sipped beer.Some of Luminar’s money has been used to buy a small fleet of Tesla Model S electric cars, which it uses for testing, said one of the people who has visited. It’s also funding research and development to solve challenges that have plagued the nascent lidar market.A top-of-the-range lidar from Velodyne sells for more than $50,000. It offers cheaper lidar, which generates lower-definition 3-D images, for about $8,000, while Quanergy has a product that sells for some $4,000. Autonomous cars often require two or more lidar sensors, so having a capable system can get expensive.Russell is trying to develop a lidar priced significantly less than $1,000, according to people with knowledge of Luminar’s planning. Quanergy aims to have one that sells below $100 in three to four years.Whereas radar uses radio waves to detect objects, lidar uses laser beams, helping it produce more accurate 3-D images. It’s an essential ingredient for autonomous driving because it generates a real-time image of passing and surrounding objects and helps a vehicle accurately locate itself. Satellite navigation systems are only accurate to within about 16 feet—not enough for a driverless future.In a recent demonstration, the images generated by Luminar’s lidar system were higher-definition than those produced by competing equipment made by Velodyne or Quanergy, according to someone who saw the equipment first-hand, but was not allowed to discuss it publicly. Another version generated even sharper images, but the information was processed with a slight delay—because of a lack of computing power to crunch all the data rather than a problem with the core technology, the person said.Luminar may have bigger plans. A trademark filing from 30 June described a “vehicle collision avoidance system” with ultrasound sensors and radar apparatus, not just the optical technology used in lidar. In recent weeks, it posted 19 jobs online, seeking engineers, attorneys, a “Fiber Laser Production Manager” and a vehicle integration specialist.Russell has the ability and drive to make Luminar successful—as long as he focuses his prodigious brain, according to Tony Jordan, his physics teacher at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, about 50 miles south of Los Angeles.“The kid’s mind is so broad that he literally always had 50 ideas going at one time,” Jordan said. “My only thought was if he ever slows down enough to see one idea all the way to completion.”ALSO READ: Uber’s self-driving unit quietly bought firm with tech at heart of Alphabet lawsuitRussell showed early promise, working as a consultant software engineer at age 10, according to a 2014 interview posted on YouTube. A year later, when his parents refused to buy him a mobile phone, he hacked a Nintendo DS portable gaming console into a handset. In 2013, he filed a patent for a “three-dimensional imager and projection device.”His parents’ garage in Newport Beach, California, was the hub for his early inventions, said Jordan. “They had a hard time ever parking their cars in the garage because he had absconded with the Ping-Pong table and made that his lab table,” said Jordan, “That’s where some of his best thinking was done.” (He’s a fan of the sport too, attending the launch of a SPiN Ping-Pong social club in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood last year).A 15-year-old Russell came to a school staff meeting one morning to demonstrate a system that beamed a holographic keyboard onto a table top and typed words. “That blew most people’s minds,” Jordan said. Other early inventions included a laser that could detect whether a mole was cancerous, and a theoretical framework to charge electrical devices by beaming energy down from satellites.In June 2013, the Orange County Register named the then 17-year-old Russell a top graduate, noting his interest in photonics—the use of electromagnetic energy—and his plans to attend Stanford that fall. “You should push yourself to the limit at least, ultimately,” Russell told the newspaper. “That’s what you have to do if you want to make an impact on the world.”In 2014, Russell led Luminar in a digital health care competition sponsored by Qualcomm Inc. In a video about their entry, the young, mop-haired CEO described his lidar system and another technology called a “real-time hyperspectral camera system” that measures the molecular structure of objects well beyond what a human eye can see. Such cameras cost tens of thousands of dollars and were the size of a small fridge at the time. Russell said Luminar had built one as small as “a few pennies.”He exhibited a competitive streak in high school, where he led a robotics team to the national championships, Jordan recalled.Also read: Google and Uber are fighting over lidar technology. What is it?“You’ve never seen someone more upset when they lost, or the robot went down, or the person handling the robot mishandled one of the feats that they had to do to win,” said Jordan. “I really enjoyed watching someone who was usually so cool and so on nine different planes that you were never sure he was with you, he also had this single-minded focus and competitiveness.”Russell will need those qualities because the window to make the most of the lidar business may be closing quickly. Current systems are too expensive for production cars, yet bringing prices below $100 may make it hard to generate significant profit.“It’s going to go the same way as radar has and become commoditized,” said Sebastian Thrun, CEO of online learning specialist Udacity Inc. and the former head of Google’s driverless car project. “Radar used to be $60,000 apiece and now it’s like $80 apiece. There’s no reason lidar can’t cost $80 apiece.”BloombergMark Bergen also contributed to this story. ","Luminar Technologies founder Austin Russell and his team are building lidar, a hyper-accurate laser sensing technology crucial for self-driving cars",20:50,Austin Russell: The 22 year-old at the wheel of the self-driving car craze +2017-04-03,"London: Apple has given Imagination Tech notice that it will stop using its graphics technology in iPhones and other products in up to two years’ time, dealing a major blow to the British company.Imagination said Apple, its biggest customer, had not presented any evidence to substantiate its assertion that it will no longer require Imagination’s technology, without violating Imagination’s patents, intellectual property and confidential information.It said on Monday that Apple’s notification had triggered talks on alternative commercial arrangements for the current licence and royalty agreement. Reuters",Apple has given Imagination Tech notice that it will stop using its graphics technology in iPhones and other products in up to two years’ time,12:22,Apple sparks row with pledge to drop Imagination Tech graphics +2017-04-03,"
Infosys Ltd’s promoters continue to be unhappy with some decisions made by the board of India’s second largest software services company. A majority of the promoters did not vote for a resolution seeking a salary increase for chief operating officer U.B. Pravin Rao. According to filings by Infosys with stock exchanges, only 24% of promoter votes were cast in favour of the resolution seeking a 35% rise in Rao’s compensation to Rs12.5 crore. The remaining abstained. This mirrored the promoters voting 12 months ago on a resolution seeking a two-year extension and a revised compensation of $11 million for chief executive Vishal Sikka. The latest show of promoter disenchantment, according to people familiar with the development, suggests that the truce reached between the founders and the company’s board after an open confrontation in February may only have resulted in an uneasy and temporary calm.The resolution was one of three Infosys sought to pass through electronic voting or postal ballots by 31 March. The remaining two resolutions—an amendment to its articles of association allowing Infosys to consider a share buyback, and the appointment of D.N. Prahlad as independent director—received overwhelming approval from promoters and other shareholders. Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy clarified that the decision of some of the founders not to vote in favour of the proposed salary increase for Rao was because of their belief in compassionate capitalism. “This abstention has nothing to do with Pravin,” Murthy said in an emailed response to a questionnaire from Mint. “I have lots of affection for Pravin. Let me state you the facts. I believe in striving towards reducing differences in compensation and equity in a corporation. I have always felt that every senior management person of an Indian corporation has to show self-restraint in his or her compensation and perquisites. This is necessary if we have to make compassionate capitalism acceptable to a majority of Indians who are poor. Without compassionate capitalism, this country cannot create jobs and solve the problem of poverty. Further, giving nearly 60% to 70% increase in compensation for a top level person (even including performance-based variable pay) when the compensation for most of the employees in the company was increased by just 6% to 8% is, in my opinion, not proper.”“Finally, given the current poor governance standards at Infosys, let us also remember that these targets for variable pay may not be adhered to if the board wants to favour a top management person,” said Murthy. Also read | Questioning the Infosys shareholdersStill, the proposal to increase Rao’s salary found majority shareholder support as 75% of institutional investors voted in favour of the proposal, even though 67% of non-institutional investors voted against it. Institutional investors, which include foreign institutional investors and insurance companies, hold 59% of shares in Infosys while non-institutional investors, which include retail shareholders, hold 28.1%. Five of the seven original co-founders, Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, S.D. Shibulal, Kris Gopalakrishnan and K. Dinesh are categorized as promoters of the company, and the founders together hold a 12.75% stake. None of the founders are on the board of Infosys. “No previous resolution in the history of the company has received such a low approval,” said Murthy. In April last year, Nilekani and Sudha Murty, Narayana Murthy’s wife and chairperson of the Infosys Foundation in India, approved Sikka’s reappointment until 2021 and a higher salary, as other founders abstained. A similar voting result this time suggests that both Nilekani and Sudha Murty voted in favour of Rao, too. Gopalakrishnan declined to offer a comment while emails sent to Nilekani and other founders went unanswered. An Infosys spokesperson declined to comment on how the five promoters voted. “More than 50% of the public and small institutions voting against the increase in COO’s salary is unprecedented and as far as I recall never happened in the history of Infosys,” said Venkatraman Balakrishnan, a former chief financial officer at Infosys. “It is clearly a vote of no-confidence on the practices followed by the current board to excessively compensate senior management without any direct linkage to shareholder wealth creation. The board should listen to the founders, increase transparency, improve corporate governance, restructure the board and lastly, announce a large buyback to protect shareholders’ interests.”",Most of Infosys’s promoters did not vote for resolution seeking a salary hike for chief operating officer Pravin Rao,16:53,"Infosys promoters, board at odds over Pravin Rao’s salary hike" +2017-04-01,"
Digital-native innovators, armed with radical business models, have relentlessly raised consumers’ expectations. Such companies—including the quintessential Apple, Uber, Netflix, Amazon and Google—deliver a simple, yet intuitive experience, real-time information, and personalized advice for customers.
Traditional incumbents know that to stay competitive, they must “get on the digital train”—speedily developing new tech-based offerings and adopting digital business approaches. Many understand the need to execute competitive strategies faster through rapid experimentation and prototyping, invest in innovation including reworking business models, and remove complex processes and structures so employees can collaborate to put customers first.
Yet, only a few incumbents have met the speed imperative. Instead, they have made digital a storefront add-on to their business, or have done only the bare minimum to connect with customers digitally.
What explains their hesitations?
Many have overly complex IT systems, misaligned talent, siloed functions that discourage collaboration, and management that squelches innovation.
Incumbents’ failure to act has cost them—and the toll will only get heavier, if companies do not address the situation soon. The reason: Tailwinds shaping previous decades are losing momentum. For instance, growth in the number of internet users and the number of smartphones shipped has slowed since 2015, along with GDP and population growth in many countries. Consequently, companies can no longer count on an ever-expanding customer base. Perhaps reflecting these developments, 2016 was the first year that non-technology incumbents dominated the $1 billion-plus acquisition market, as CB Insights noted.
These trends are not universal. In India, for example, the number of internet users is expanding, while most markets face an overall slowdown or contraction (see chart).
Speed+scale+value: Getting the what right
BCG analysis of 1,000-plus businesses undergoing digital transformation shows that to succeed today, companies must master two imperatives in addition to speed:
• Scale: Companies must replicate success from new digital introductions across their business. For instance, an apparel retailer draws on digital capabilities to initiate “ship from store” and “collect from store” service for customers in several stores. Dedicated processes support the service. To get the most from the service, the company must implement it across all its stores.
•Value: Businesses must use digital to create new forms of value for customers and themselves. For customers, value comes from combining information sources. To illustrate, at a train station, an app notifies you that your train will be late—and that a nearby coffee shop has a special offer. Businesses that provide the best value to customers will capture their time, attention and money. Companies can also use data gathered from customers to develop new products and craft effective advertising campaigns.
To meet the scale and value-focus imperatives, companies need to look beyond now-mature technologies such as the almost clichéd SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud computing) and embrace a new wave of technologies.
Consider AI. Thanks to new kinds of data now accessible, AI applications today include natural language processing and speech recognition, pattern recognition and real-world mobility, predictive maintenance, and advanced analytics. Companies are leveraging such applications to transform processes like hiring talent, enhancing customers’ experiences and empowering their sales force.
For instance, a financial services firm uses machine learning software and a private cloud network to review commercial-loan agreements—which used to consume hundreds of thousands of hours of work annually by lawyers and loan officers. Results have included fewer loan-servicing mistakes, most of which had previously stemmed from human error.
AI has been around for a while, but multiple uses of the technology are now surfacing. Today, there is a sharp distinction between robotics and various AI types, including deep learning. The same pattern of exponential advancement characterizing other technologies is now happening with AI.
Augmented reality (AR) also offers potential, as a home furnishings brand discovered. The company had launched a B2C (business-to-consumer) solution featuring high-quality digital photography, to help shoppers choose products online and minimize the need for “tactile”. But B2B (business-to-business) is the core of its business, so the company then introduced a “store salesman” app. It shipped iPads to its retailers to help sales reps select from among 20,000 SKUs (stock keeping units) for their end customers. To further enhance the experience, the company also introduced AR in select exclusive brand outlets, so potential buyers can easily visualize their chosen fabrics in room layouts or furniture coverings. These efforts have already begun improving the company’s growth in India and its export market.
Only by augmenting speed with scalability and value can digital solutions like those described above deliver sustainable competitive advantages—including the ability to respond to ever-changing customer requirements, achieve cost-saving efficiencies, and attract and retain top talent.
But excelling simultaneously at speed, scale and value is tricky. To do so, companies must get the “how” right: creating a digital workforce to support the digital technologies they adopt.
Digital technology+digital work workforce: Getting the ‘how’ right?Given the enhanced pace of technology change, companies need to back the technologies they adopt with an agile, test-and-learn digital workforce. A digital workforce comprises people who can systematically craft solutions to dynamic business challenges, show early minimum viable products to internal and external customers, and use feedback to refine them.This requires employees with relevant technical expertise who also operate comfortably amid uncertainty and change. And they need leaders who can elicit promising ideas from anywhere in the organization while uniting them behind solutions in development. In short, companies must put technical know-how front and centre. In previous decades, technical prowess was the coin of the realm. Then technology costs declined with commercialization, and companies began outsourcing and offshoring technical work. Commoditization resulted. The mantra became, “Technology is easy; success is all about change management.”We disagree. While effective change management matters, success still hinges tightly on technology. Those who understand technology create more valuable digital solutions that deliver a sharper competitive edge. Companies must therefore make technology a key element in their business transformation. That means hiring the best talent, designing the right incentives for them, and giving them the autonomy and challenging work they demand. To further equip technical talent for success, companies can merge their traditional “business requirements” and “IT development” silos into a unified set of activities focused on product development and engineering—and organizing these workers in a new way. The traditional pyramid shape, containing numerous management layers, should give way to a diamond shape, characterized by many senior engineers, fewer juniors and even fewer managers. A product development/engineering group structured in this agile way will churn out releases much faster than one built on the pyramid model. Other business functions (sales, marketing, supply chain, back office) will also show improved speed and adaptability. Result: Traditional incumbents will score as much success as their “new- age” rivals.Mastering the “what” and “how” of succeeding in today’s digital age takes courage and commitment. But companies cannot afford to shy away from this work. Those that embrace it will stand the best chance of pulling ahead of rivals in the future—and staying ahead.Ralf Dreischmeier is a senior partner and global leader of the technology advantage practice at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) London, Marc Schuuring is a partner and managing director at BCG Amsterdam, Rajiv Gupta is a partner and leads the technology advantage practice at BCG New Delhi, and Shrikant Patil is a project leader at BCG Mumbai.",Firms that speedily develop new tech-based offerings and adopt digital business approaches stand the best chance of pulling ahead of rivals in the future—and staying ahead,18:14,The next wave of digital +2017-04-01,"Tokyo: Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Google have joined bidding for Toshiba’s NAND flash memory unit, vying with others for the Japanese firm’s prized semiconductor operation, the Yomiuri Shimbun daily reported on Saturday.Toshiba shareholders on Thursday agreed to split off its NAND flash memory business, paving the way for a sale to raise at least $9 billion to cover US nuclear unit charges that threaten the conglomerate’s future.The Yomiuri newspaper said bidding prices from Apple, Amazon or Google, owned by Alphabet Inc, were not known.The Nikkei business daily reported on Friday that US private equity firm Silver Lake Partners and US chipmaker Broadcom Ltd have offered Toshiba about ¥2 trillion ($18 billion) for the unit.About 10 potential bidders are interested in buying a stake in the microchip operation, a source with knowledge of the planned sale told Reuters earlier.Suitors include Western Digital Corp, which operates a chip plant with Toshiba in Japan, Micron Technology Inc , South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc and financial investors.Toshiba officials were not immediately available for comment. Reuters","Apple, Amazon and Google have joined bidding for Toshiba’s NAND flash memory unit, vying with others for the Japanese firm’s prized semiconductor operation",11:03,"Apple, Amazon, Google join bidding for Toshiba chip unit: report" +2017-03-31,"
Mumbai: For information technology (IT) and pharmaceutical companies that earn much of their revenue in dollars, the strengthening rupee threatens to be an additional headache on top of existing ones on visas, outsourcing, pricing and regulatory issues in the US.The rupee on Wednesday touched 64.9137 to the dollar, a level last seen on 23 October 2015. For export-oriented companies, such as those in the information technology and pharmaceutical sector, a stronger rupee means lower earnings in local currency terms.While its near-term impact is sentimentally negative, analysts say they would wait to see if the rupee’s strength is here to stay.The Indian rupee: Flirting with overvaluation“While the frenetic legislative bill filings related to visa reform seems to have cooled off, investors also await cues as to whether this headline risk is impacting client decision making and deal flow—a concern highlighted in certain quarters,” Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd said in a note on Thursday.Continued foreign investments in the local equity and bond markets have buoyed the rupee. So far this year, the BSE IT index and BSE healthcare index have risen 2.18% and 3.77%, respectively, underperforming the benchmark 30-share Sensex, which has gained 11.35% in the same period.Around 48 of the 56 IT companies and 46 of the 67 healthcare companies in the respective sectoral indices have underperformed the benchmark Sensex so far this year. A stronger rupee is luring foreign funds to Indian bondsThe underperformance has sustained for a while. In 2016, while the BSE IT and BSE healthcare indices lost 8% and 12.9% respectively, Sensex gained nearly 2%.“Recent sharp INR strength is also beginning to emerge as an irritant and needs to be monitored especially in the context of traditional margin levers having limited force going forward,” Emkay Global analysts Manik Taneja and Ruchi Burde said in the note on Thursday.The latest round of regulatory troubles of Divi’s Laboratories Ltd and Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd indicate Indian drugmakers also face a long and uphill struggle to meet quality standards set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the US, which is the world’s largest drug market, Mint had reported on 22 March.“Rupee has gained because all EM (emerging market) currencies, with the exception of China have rallied. It is more to do with broader emerging market currencies rally. Whether it is here to stay, it is difficult to say for now,” said Vaibhav Sanghavi, co-chief executive officer of Avendus Capital Public Markets Alternative Strategies Llp, a hedge fund.“However, the development is not exciting for IT and pharma sectors, which are already reeling under pressure,” added Sanghavi.Apart from persisting regulatory hurdles, pharmaceutical companies are also taking a beating due to pricing pressures in the US.The issue gains prominence because of the magnitude of the impact it could have on thee revenue of these companies. For most leading pharmaceutical companies, the US market accounts for at least half of their revenues.","A strengthening rupee against the dollar has emerged as a fresh headache for IT and pharma firms battling H1B visa, outsourcing and regulatory issues in the US",17:26,"Strengthening rupee adds to IT, pharma companies’ woes" +2017-03-31,"San Francisco: Twitter on Thursday began rolling out changes to let people pack more into tweets, subtracting from the character count names of those being replied to in posts. The latest software modification at the one-to-many messaging service comes about a year after Twitter set out to relax a 140-character limit set due to mobile phone text messaging constraints in place when Twitter launched in 2006.Twitter first announced plans to relax the limit a year ago, as part of an effort to bring in more members and make the platform easier to use. “Remember how we told you we were working on ways to let you to express more with 140 characters?” Twitter product manager Sasank Reddy said in an online post.“Now, when you reply to someone or a group, those @usernames won’t count toward your tweet’s 140 characters.”Providing more room in tweets is seen as a way to encourage more use and sharing of pictures, videos and links. The move is part of a push by Twitter to increase its user base and engagement, which have sputtered to the chagrin of investors.“Our work isn’t finished,” Reddy said.“We’ll continue to think about how we can improve conversations and make Twitter easier to use.”Twitter faces competition from Facebook and Instagram, and a trend of people opting to share content in video or picture formats instead of text.",The move is part of a push by Twitter to increase its user base and engagement,10:34,Twitter makes room for more characters in tweets +2017-03-31,"Bangalore: A feature film about the difficulties facing an Indian temporary work-visa holder waiting for permanent residency will be screened in 25 US cinemas on Friday, with backing from Silicon Valley investors, fuelling an already heated immigration debate.The film, “For Here or To Go?” was written and produced by San Francisco-based Rishi Bhilawadikar, 33, one of the estimated million-plus H1B visa holders in the country. The title is a play on the ubiquitous question at coffee shops and fast-food outlets that often flummoxes new arrivals.The movie is being shown on the eve of the annual lottery for the three-year visas, which are awarded to foreign workers in specialty occupations ranging from software engineers to fashion models. President Donald Trump is trying to tighten the immigration system and his administration’s efforts to monitor H1B visas were revealed in a leaked executive order. Applications flood in on the 1 April opening date for the 65,000 annual quota of H1B visas. Tens of thousands of additional visas are granted for special cases such as advanced degree holders. Employers can sponsor H1B holders to apply for a Green Card that gives the right to permanent residence, but the approvals process is backlogged and caps on country of birth mean that applicants from nations like India and China may wait a decade or more. “A person with my level of skills from Sri Lanka would get a Green Card in six months whereas I could be waiting 15 years,” said Bhilawadikar, who helps improve customer interaction and e-commerce as a user experience designer for Gap Inc.VC fundingFunded by investors including venture capitalist Brad Feld of Foundry Group, the movie tells the story of Vivek Pandit, a Silicon Valley-based software professional, and his friends, who struggle to navigate the US immigration system. As a “temp worker,” Pandit is unable to make long-term life decisions like founding a company, buying a home or starting a family.Also Read: PPF, Kisan Vikas Patra, Sukanya Samriddhi interest rates slashed by 1%“It’s the untold story of hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants who drive a nice-enough car but avoid buying expensive furniture for fear of having to leave it all behind,” said Bhilawadikar. “I set about making this film to humanize my story and the story of a million others like me.”There could be up to 2 million Indian workers in the Green Card backlog, according to David Bier, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute think-tank. Advocates of immigration often cite H1B success stories like Sundar Pichai of Google and Satya Nadella of Microsoft. But the work visas are controversial and critics say companies that use them the most — information technology services companies with the bulk of their operations in India — are hurting American workers by undercutting salaries and taking away jobs.Workers who want to gain permanent residence are treated like indentured labor, said Vivek Wadhwa, Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering. If they change jobs or take a promotion, they lose their turn in line, so they end up doing menial jobs during the most productive years of their lives, he said.“I call this one of Silicon Valley’s darkest secrets,” said Wadhwa, who is also a director of research at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering.The movie was first shown in the US at the Cinequest Film Festival in California in February 2015 and has been screened at festivals in Melbourne, Toronto and Mumbai. It has also had a special screening at Rayburn House, a congressional office building for the US House of Representatives on Capitol Hill, according to Bhilawadikar.Bhilawadikar, who came to the US as a 22-year-old computer engineer to get a master’s degree from Indiana University, has been on a skilled-worker visa for 11 years — those accepted into the Green Card queue can extend their H1B visa while waiting for approval. He says he could be 40 by the time he gets his Green Card. Bloomberg",Rishi Bhilawadikar’s film ‘For Here or To Go?’ depicts about the difficulties facing an Indian H1B visa holder waiting for permanent residency in the US,15:04,"Ahead of H1B lottery, Silicon Valley’s ‘darkest’ immigration secret hits cinemas" +2017-03-31,"Meet the 10 winners of the Mint-MIT Technology Review competition for innovators below the age of 35 from across India in different cutting-edge domains. The winners were selected after a rigorous judging process. The innovators were felicitated on 9 and 10 March at EmTech 2017, the second edition of the emerging technology conference organized in Delhi by Mint and MIT Technology Review.Akash DongreOrganization: Indus OSDesignation: Co-founder and chief product officerInnovation: A multilingual operating system available on over 50 mobile devicesEducation: BTech in mechanical engineering from IIT BombayAkash Dongre—along with co-founders Rakesh Deshmukh and Sudhir Bangarambandi—has always believed that “Indian problems require indigenous solutions”. No wonder their eponymous innovation, touted as the “world’s first regional operating system”, is blazing a trail in the Indian smartphone ecosystem. “In our short journey, beginning in 2015, we have already partnered with five domestic smartphone brands (Micromax, Intex, Karbonn, Celkon and Swipe) and built a user base of more than six million, which is consistently growing at a rate of 500,000 OS activations per month,” says Dongre. Indus OS, which is available in 12 Indian regional languages, boasts innovative features such as Indus Swipe (translation from English to a regional language and vice versa with just a swipe), Indus Keyboard (with built-in word and matra (a unit of metrical quantity in Indian languages) prediction) and Indus Reader (which can convert an English text into audio in eight regional languages). Besides, there’s a marketplace called App Bazaar, where over 50,000 apps are available in local languages.Dongre recalls one of his foreign trips when his lack of understanding of the local language made him feel handicapped: “Everything around me was in a language I did not understand.” Dongre also realized how digitally less connected the Indian heartland is and how alien English is to a lot of Indians. “After spending some more time to understand the Indian digital landscape and brainstorming with my team, we decided to start building an ecosystem for Indian consumers.” The team built Indus OS on three core pillars: simplicity, innovation and localization. “At the heart of our story lies the desire to equip anyone who is using a smartphone with a holistic ecosystem of their choice,” says Dongre.Indus OS, which introduced Indus OS 2.0 in July 2016, will introduce Indus OS 3.0 in 2017. “In 2017, we intend to continue to work with the Government of India and app developers alike to build a smartphone ecosystem of choice for the emerging markets population,” Dongre says.Ankit JhanwarOrganization: Pluss Advanced TechnologiesDesignation: Vice-president, corporate planning and strategyInnovation: A packaging box for vaccine transportation that uses phase change materials and a unique design for precise temperature controlEducation: BTech in polymer science and technology from IIT Roorkee; certificate in entrepreneurship, management and global leadership from London School of Economics and Political ScienceAn optimist by nature, Ankit Jhanwar was not put off by the disinterest displayed by some packaging companies in developing a temperature-controlled shipping solution using phase change materials (PCMs)—a domain in which his company, Pluss Advanced Technologies, had been working since 2005. Such a temperature-controlled solution could prove very useful in cutting down the 30% wastage of vaccines in the existing cold chain system in the country. So what Pluss did was develop a complete shipping solution using its own proprietary PCMs, which could not only provide better temperature control but also address the challenging Indian ambient conditions of 40°C. “A range of products were planned to address the gaps at each leg of the supply chain right from manufacturer to the depot to the distributor to chemist and finally to the patient,” says Jhanwar.The shipping solution that he developed was branded Celsure—which uses the PCM technology to provide precise temperature control. “It is the only shipping solution which provides temperature control for more than 72 hours even at ambient temperature of 40°C,” he says. Thanks to this innovation, all the current pharmaceutical shipments which happen by air can now be done by road using Celsure—something that can lead to huge savings in freight cost, thereby making it possible to lower the prices of medicines.According to Jhanwar, Celsure also addresses the unique challenge of shipping from a hot environment (say, India) to a cold environment (like Europe) or vice versa. What’s more, the solution has brought in simplicity in the packaging, removing human errors. Jhanwar says that it’s available in sizes as small as one vial to as large as 10,000 vials and can provide temperature control for as low as 2 hours to as high as 120 hours. Pluss has a goal of reducing medicine wastage due to ineffective cold chain to as low as 0.1% in the next three-five years. The firm is constantly working on scaling up and commercializing the innovation. Celsure was launched in April 2016 with only one variant; eight more variants have been added within a year. Logistics firms such as Blue Dart and DHL have adopted Celsure as one of their preferred modes of shipping temperature-sensitive pharma products. Successful trials have also been run with various pharmaceutical firms. Besides commercializing it in India, Pluss plans to go global with the launch in Singapore and the Middle East in 2018 and in the US and Europe in 2019. “We are also keen on tie-ups with the government, World Health Organization (WHO), Unicef and other related organizations for last-mile delivery of vaccines. Customized products are being planned to address the last mile challenges,” says Jhanwar. Anusha RammohanOrganization: General Electric Global ResearchDesignation: Lead engineerInnovation: Flow analytics for multi-phase flow metering in oil and gas industryEducation: BE (Hons.) in electronics and instrumentation from BITS-Pilani; MS in electrical engineering from Arizona State University, USAnusha Rammohan believes that the intersection of the digital and physical worlds is the ideal space for disruptive innovations. And that’s exactly what attracted her to the esoteric domain of flow analytics for multi-phase flow metering in the oil and gas industry.As the lead engineer at GE Global Research’s John F Welch Technology Center in Bengaluru, Anusha got the opportunity to combine physical sensors with advanced analytics to develop a solution capable of radically transforming the processes of the entire industry. “As the global energy demand continues to increase, there is an urgent need in the oil and gas industry to be more efficient with resources, people and investments to reduce the cost of producing oil while doing so safely with reduced environmental impact,” says Rammohan. Her innovation addresses this need by combining sensor and device data in the field using intelligent analytics to provide accurate and reliable information in real time about oil production. For instance, she says, timely information about well and field level production of oil, water and gas allows operators to make critical decisions related to optimizing pumps, allocating resources and energy to each well, shutting down or stimulating wells, and preventing leakage and blockage of pipes, etc. By transforming data into actionable insights, her analytics solution enables increased oil recovery, reduced human intervention and improved resource planning.Not merely restricting her innovation to a single industry, the next stop for Anusha is to extend it to applications in industries such as aviation, power and transportation. The applications include performance optimization of assets, health monitoring of safety-critical components and their increased reliability and reduced downtime—all of which can significantly improve productivity and bring down costs. Rammohan has been granted patents related to her work in image mapping, sensor positioning and flow measurement; she has filed for more. She dreams of a world powered by analytics and technologies such as artificial intelligence—one in which “autonomous decision making” would greatly reduce the ambiguity, uncertainty and human subjectivity that are currently proving to be bottlenecks in all industries.
Kshitij Marwah
Organization: Tesseract Imaging
Designation: Founder
Innovation: Virtual reality (VR) camera to create and share high resolution VR/holographic content; holographic augmented reality headset
Education: MTech in computer science from IIT Delhi; MS in media arts and sciences from MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts, US
Kshitij Marwah says virtual reality and augmented reality (VR and AR) are the new mediums for human beings to tell their stories in a much more “experiential and immersive manner”. It marks a natural progression, as he says: “From the spoken word to the written word, from photos to videos—we have always found new ways and tools to tell our stories.”The power of his belief in VR and AR, backed by the rigour of his technical education (never mind that he dropped out of his PhD at MIT Media Lab), led Marwah to his innovations: Quark VR camera and the Holoboard AR viewing headset. Says he, “The Quark VR camera will democratize mixed reality content creation and the Holoboard AR headset will allow for its viewing in a truly immersive and unique manner.”Marwah has a simple way of explaining his innovation. “Imagine the next time when you are watching a cricket match in your house. Rather than sitting in front of your television, with our Quark camera streaming the match live in VR and the Holoboard headset, you can feel as if you are sitting right in the stadium but in the comfort of your couch,” he says.His current company, Tesseract Imaging (in Norse mythology, Tesseract is said to be a cosmic cube of immense power; in geometry, the tesseract is a four-dimensional hypercube), was spun out of MIT Media Lab’s India arm, a unit that Marwah had co-founded to promote and spread inter-disciplinary learning among students in India. He is credited with growing the Lab initiative from a platform of 50 students to 500 students selected from hundreds of thousands of applicants across the country. He headed the India arm of the Lab from 2012 to 2015.Marwah believes that the innovations coming out of Tesseract will revolutionize “the way we capture, consume and see content and media”. On the anvil are plans to begin shipping the Quark VR cameras in mid-2017 and Holoboard AR headsets by the end of the year. “With our technology, we believe we can make sure that our society can capture, share and consume their daily experiences and share stories across generations with an experience that is immersive and powerful.”Nishant KumarOrganization: Embryyo Technologies Pvt. LtdDesignation: Founder and CEOInnovation: Sensor and mobile app-based drug adherence monitoring system for tuberculosisEducation: Dual degree in mechanical engineering from IIT Bombay Nishant Kumar, the founder and chief exec of Embryyo Technologies, a medical technology and research start-up incubated at Pune’s Venture Centre, was troubled by the way tuberculosis (TB) treatment was left midway by a large number of patients in India. There wasn’t an effective way of ensuring patients stayed the course. “This was because the TB medication involves a drug regimen of about 6 months where the patient is required to take a total of about 400 pills,” he says. There are several reasons why treatment is left incomplete, including side effects, forgetfulness, poor counselling and duration of the regimen. The enormity of the problem—as many as 2.5 million people in India were affected by TB in 2015 as per a World Health Organization report—inspired Kumar to do something about it. He visited the local district level hospitals and direct observation treatment (DOT) centres to interact with the clinicians, healthcare workers and patients, which helped him in “collecting more insights” and further strengthened his resolve to address this problem. He says that it demanded an easy-to-use, affordable solution which could fit seamlessly in an already established public health infrastructure in the country. The result was BoxRx, an electronic medical event monitoring system that has currently been piloted for drug adherence monitoring in TB patients. According to Kumar, most people with TB are cured by a strictly followed, six-month drug regimen but any interruption to it can cause drug resistance.That is where the innovation behind BoxRx comes in handy. The solution comprises a specially designed electronic pill box which carries the TB blister pack as prescribed by the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP). A tearable paper with conductive ink tracks printed corresponding to each pill is placed beneath the blister pack before closing the box. Whenever a pill is removed from the blister pack, the conductive track gets broken and this activity is logged and transmitted from an in-built Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) circuit to a central server in the form of an SMS. The server processes the information in the SMS and updates the mobile application of the doctor/health worker assigned to that particular patient.To scale up the innovation, Kumar plans to work very closely with the national and international organizations that are leading the TB control programmes. Also on the cards is large-scale manufacturing and on-field implementation of the innovation so that it reaches the maximum number of patients. Kumar envisions a society that is centred on harmonious and sustainable co-existence. “I believe that good health is the primary signature of prosperity for an individual, a family, a nation and the world at large,” he says.Pankaj AgarwalDesignation: Creative leaderOrganization: Samsung ElectronicsInnovation: A button-type device that connects to toys and a mobile app to enable intuitive interactions for kidsEducation: BTech in electrical engineering from IIT Kanpur; MS from Seoul National University; MBA from Harvard Business SchoolWhenever Pankaj Agarwal saw his son Anant play alone with his toy blocks, a question often nagged him: “Why does he have to play alone? Is there something I can do to make play-at-home social and interactive for him?” He was also inspired to change the status quo when he looked at the many expensive toys gathering dust around his house. Agarwal thought of the millions of middle-class homes that just couldn’t afford all those high-tech toys with pricey tags.So he added a simple and interactive, yet relatively inexpensive, tag of his own: TagPlus. The innovation comprises a button-type smart tag, a smart app (for phones/tablets), and, above all, content created and shared in the cloud by kids as young as 7-year-olds. A key benefit of TagPlus is that it can increase the repeat play value of toys. An important feature of the innovation, says Agarwal, is that there is no set-up required. “No device pairing, no logins, no passwords!” When kids buy toys that have this smart tag, they can start playing on the TagPlus platform immediately after unwrapping it. Kids can “click”, “long press”, “shake” and “bump” their smart tags and the smart app will respond accordingly. A “click” on the smart tag activates the TagPlus app on a nearby digital device to show toy-related content. A “long press” action will bring on a social media interface where kids can easily upload their creations and also see the creations of other kids playing with the same toy. “Think of this as a ‘mini Facebook for kids’,” says Agarwal. A “shake” action on the smart tag will help kids find and connect with children playing with an identical toy who could be anywhere in the world. Also, when kids “bump” two tags from two different toys, the connected app shows multiple ways in which the toys can be combined to create something entirely new. Agarwal and his other TagPlus team members at Samsung believe that this patent-pending technology platform has the potential to make kids’ playing experiences more serendipitous, socially engaging and creative “by seamlessly bridging their virtual and physical play environments”. Agarwal and his colleagues did multiple pilot tests of TagPlus in South Korea and they are also in discussion with many toy makers to adopt the platform. “The response has been very positive,” he says. Agarwal plans to continue his innovative work in the creative domain and believes that “members of our society should be educated and imbibe a culture of creativity”.Prasant MisraDesignation: ScientistOrganization: TCS Research and Innovation, Tata Consultancy Services LtdInnovation: Auditory sensing for micro unmanned aerial vehicles Education: PhD in computer science and engineering from the University of New South Wales, Sydney; postdoctoral fellowship from the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, StockholmPrasant Misra has been focusing his research efforts around building “spatially intelligent systems”. His current work pertains to the auditory sensing technology for micro unmanned aerial vehicles (MUAVs, more popularly known as drones). It’s like “growing the ears” for intelligent things, as he puts it. “It is part of a grand vision to equip this category of flying robots with a sensory gamut that is on par with humans,” he says. This will not only enable such “things” to derive better spatial intelligence, but also drive cognition to a better level of autonomy by combining auditory sensing with vision.There are, however, fundamental challenges in developing such robust auditory capabilities, especially in capturing the spatial dimensions of a sound scene and analysing its acoustic signature. “The signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio is extremely low due to the presence of (near-field) wideband acoustic interference (i.e., self-noise) from the MUAVs’ spinning rotors and motors, which is both strong and non-stationary,” he explains. Theoretically speaking, building an acoustic array with a large number of acoustic elements can overcome such high levels of noise, but the space, payload and energy limitations of an MUAV come in the way of meeting such exhaustive system requirements and computational needs.Misra is now investigating both lightweight acoustic sensing system design, and low-power (but efficient) computation paradigms to overcome this challenge. The initial results, he says, are quite promising.The impact of the work Misra is doing is far-reaching. It will not only force us to rethink the current model of aerial sensing (which is primarily vision dominated), but will also open up newer applications and usage scenarios for the betterment of society. It is now quite common to talk of aerial drones, especially tiny ones with multiple rotors that can hover mid-air, in applications ranging from e-commerce deliveries and inspection of industrial machinery to wildlife monitoring and search-and-rescue operations. Nevertheless, their sensing technology is predominately vision-centric. “While the advantages are clearly obvious in visual inspection and monitoring applications, on the flip side, they become unusable in camera-obstructed or low-light conditions, or in scenarios that offer non-visual clues such as those based on sound. In fact, these conditions are a norm in high-stress environments (dense canopy or fog, structures on fire, underground mines, etc.),” he says.Misra is working towards taking the MUAV technology from its existing level to “cognitive autonomous systems”. He believes that as spatial intelligence and cognitive technology mature, the lines between machines and humans would blur, enabling both to live together in the same society as companions. In the future, cognitive aerial drones will take up roles such as aerial cars and taxis, pick up and escort agents, search and rescue bots, and ears and eyes for the disabled. In short: anything you want them to be.Sandeep Senan Designation: Founder and directorOrganization: Evobi Automations Pvt. Ltd (Bibox Labs)Innovation: A toolkit-based approach to learning so that kids can learn through experiments by making things like a robotic toy or a fire alarmEducation: BE in computer science from Visvesvaraya Technological University, Karnataka; MBA in international business from Edith Cowan University, AustraliaWhen it comes to innovation and creativity, Sandeep Senan is as excited as the young kids he wants to empower with the innovative tools at his disposal. His innovation, Bibox (short for Brain-in-a-box), is like an “electronic brain which can be instructed by a kid using a graphical software, which can run on a tablet or smartphone or PC or even with cards”, he says. Senan is of the view that the realm of innovation must be extended to children rather than remain mostly confined to the adult world. There’s a need for a huge change in the way children are taught and allowed to be creative, he feels.“The task of making adults creative is a humongous task, but if we think about kids, they are naturally curious and thus it’s easy to instill an innovative thinking process in them,” says Senan. So when he discovered that there was a lack of tools and curricula designed for instilling the habit of innovation in kids, he decided to do something about it.“The innovation Bibox was originated out of that need to give kids the tools to change the world and thus the confidence to keep innovating and make it a habit so that when they become adults, they can go out and make large-scale impact because the thinking is ingrained into their minds,” he says.Bibox doesn’t have a definite shape or size but is basically a set of tools—processors, switches, sensors, battery and software, among others—using which children in different age groups can try their hand at innovation. This “brain”, says Senan, can be connected to a variety of accessories, including toys, lights and TV sets, and children can come up with stuff like walking robotic dogs, automatic TV and even connected health products using the Internet of Things.“Because Bibox responds to kids’ logic in the physical world, they can see what the logic means and correct themselves when required—making the learning experience truly experiential,” he says. Besides providing them such toolkits, Senan’s organization also provides them some structured mentoring to enable them to use their creative freedom and confidence to innovate more and more in any field they choose to be in. “We are just getting the process started a little early,” he says. Through Bibox Labs, he has enrolled more than 25,000 students in over 100 schools in India.To take his innovative ways to a much larger base of students, Senan and his team are digitizing the process of mentoring the kids to be innovators. Once this is in place, he says, any student anywhere in the world would be able to go through the same process that Bibox Labs follows in its affiliate schools. They also plan to partner with private firms, non-governmental organizations and various government bodies to scale up the programme.Subham Banerjee Designation: Young scientistOrganization: Centre for Biodesign and Diagnostic, Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, department of biotechnologyInnovation: Transdermal patch against neurotoxin poisoningEducation: Master of pharmacy from West Bengal University of Technology; PhD in pharmacy from Birla Institute of Technology, MesraSoldiers fighting in hostile territories often have to shield themselves against harmful or poisonous gases and chemical substances. One often hears of deadly strikes such as the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system (1995), the nerve gas attack in Syria (2013) or the recent attack in Iraq by Islamic State militants in which they set fire to a sulphur mine, spreading sulphur dioxide plumes.Subham Banerjee’s innovation concerns protecting people against neurotoxic poisoning resulting from such attacks. “The exposure of humans to neurotoxins is a major risk factor in severe mortality in chemical or biological warfare situations, as neurotoxins are one of the most potent toxins,” he says. His innovation, a transdermal patch that can provide protection against neurotoxin poisoning, comprises an inert adhesive matrix system with active pharmaceutical ingredients. The patch can be applied to intact or even burnt or blistered skin. It works by releasing a combination drug (eserine and pralidoxime chloride) through the skin in what is called a “controlled or sustained release” mechanism.According to Banerjee, the new patch has “an excellent safety profile”, can be “self-administered”, and has positive environmental as well as economic impact. “Apart from conventional dosage forms, no novel sustained release prophylactic transdermal patches are currently available in the market,” he says. Which is why this innovation has huge socio-economic benefits and the potential to achieve product dominance in the market.In order to sustain this project and take it to the next level of successful commercialization, however, Banerjee says that some studies have to be carried out. For one, process parameters have to be optimized to scale up the capability of manufacturing these patches in bulk quantities. Also, a preclinical toxicity study in rodents needs to be done, followed by a full-fledged pilot for the bioavailability study in human subjects as per the guidelines of the Drug Controller General of India.Banerjee believes that this innovation has the potential to make an “extra value-addition” to the existing measures for biological warfare protection available with India’s Armed Forces.Vinay Kumar Designation: Co-founder, director and CEOOrganization: PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. LtdInnovation: A single device that can diagnose multiple parameters related to diabetes managementEducation: MTech in microelectronics and VLSI design and MSc in electronic science from Kurukshetra University; PhD from Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science BangaloreAt age 14, when Vinay Kumar was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, his doctor told him he would have to take insulin injections. The look of disappointment on his face prompted the physician to lie that it was only for 10 days that injections were needed. Later on, when Kumar realized that he was stuck with the needle for a lifetime, he became determined to put the hurt and discomfort behind and do something about it. Over the years, diabetes took a bigger and bigger toll on his body, with episodes of hypoglycemia (abnormally low level of sugar in the blood) and even fainting—but all this only strengthened his resolve.In addition to struggling with a debilitating condition like millions in the world do, Kumar constantly thought about how a diabetic can manage his condition better and, at the same time, persisted with his studies. “These two aspects of my life merged when I decided to pursue a PhD at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc Bangalore),” he says. Besides working on novel ways to diagnose diseases and acquiring multiple patents, he also co-founded (along with Navakanta Bhat and Gautam Sharma) PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. Ltd, a start-up incubated at IISc that is focused on medical device research and development.Kumar’s innovation is a hand-held point-of-care device which, as a single unit, can measure eight different parameters related to diabetes management and early detection of its complications. “With a tiny drop of finger-pricked blood samples, patients can test HbA1c (which gives 90 days blood glucose control profile), glycated albumin (which gives 15 days blood glucose control profile) and instant blood glucose as well,” he says. The device can detect very early damage in the kidney by measuring the microalbuminuria, creatinine and ACR (albumin to creatinine ratio) in the urine samples. Apart from these, he adds, it can measure the haemoglobin level for anaemia and chronic kidney disease. “The device can measure serum albumin, an important blood marker for kidney and liver. So the single device can take care of full diabetes glycaemic management and early detection of complications such as diabetic nephropathy,” explains Kumar.The road ahead for PathShodh is well-defined. “The device is ready and regress clinical validation for most of the tests has been completed on real patient samples in collaboration with major pathology labs and hospitals in Bangalore. We also have the manufacturing line setup at IISc to manufacture the disposable test strips for these different tests,” says Kumar. The commercial launch of the device can happen any time now. That would certainly move the needle in a positive direction for PathShodh’s mission of making healthcare diagnostics affordable and available to all.",Meet the 10 winners of the Mint-MIT Technology Review competition for innovators below the age of 35 from across India in different cutting-edge domains,17:26,EmTech 2017: Innovators under 35 +2017-04-19,"Kenosha, Wisconsin: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered federal agencies to look at tightening the H1B visa programme used to bring high-skilled foreign workers to the US, as he tries to carry out his campaign pledges to put “America First”.The move is a deterrent to Indian IT companies which send hundreds of software engineers to the US on H1B visas. Trump signed an executive order on enforcing and reviewing the H1B visa, popular in the IT industry, on a visit to the headquarters of Snap-On Inc. a tool manufacturer in Kenosha, Wisconsin.In the document, known to the White House as the “Buy American and Hire American” order, Trump also seeks changes in government procurement that would boost purchases of American products in federal contracts, with one aim being to help US steelmakers.The moves show Trump once again using his power to issue executive orders to try to fulfil promises he made last year in his election campaign, in this case to reform US immigration policies and encourage purchases of American products. Senior officials gave few details on implementation of the order but Trump aides have expressed concern that most H1B visas are awarded for lower-paid jobs at outsourcing firms, many based in India, which they say takes work away from Americans. They seek a more merit-based way to give the visas to highly skilled workers. “Right now, widespread abuse in our immigration system is allowing American workers of all backgrounds to be replaced by workers brought in from other countries,” Trump said.As he nears the 100-day benchmark of his presidency, Trump still has no major legislative achievements. With his attempts to overhaul healthcare and tax law not bearing fruit so far in a Congress controlled by his fellow Republicans, Trump has leaned heavily on executive orders to seek changes to the US economy.The venue for Trump’s visit on Tuesday is a nod to his voter base in the manufacturing centres of the American heartland. Wisconsin unexpectedly voted for the Republican last year, partly due to his promises to bring back industrial jobs. H1B visas are intended for foreign nationals in occupations that generally require higher education, including science, engineering or computer programming. The government uses a lottery to award 65,000 visas every year and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.Critics say the lottery benefits outsourcing firms that flood the system with mass applications for visas for lower-paid information technology workers. “Right now H1B visas are awarded in a totally random lottery and that’s wrong. Instead, they should be given to the most skilled and highest paid applicants and they should never, ever be used to replace Americans,” Trump said. Reuters",Donald Trump orders a look at tightening regulations on H1 B visa used by Indian IT companies to bring high-skilled foreign workers to the US,13:19,Donald Trump signs H1B visa order to tighten rules on foreign workers +2017-04-19,"The chief executive officer (CEO) of United Airlines says no one will be fired over the dragging of a man off a plane—including himself.CEO Oscar Munoz said on Tuesday that he takes full responsibility “for making this right”, and he promised more details later this month after United finishes a review of its policies on overbooked flights.Company executives said it’s too soon to know if the incident is hurting ticket sales.United has been pummeled on social media — #BoycottUnited is a popular hashtag — and late-night television. Through Tuesday afternoon, its shares had fallen 4.3% since Flight 3411, wiping out nearly $1 billion in market value, although several other airline stocks declined in the same period.After the market closed Monday, United reported a $96 million first-quarter profit, down 69% from a year earlier largely because of higher costs for fuel, labor and maintenance. The revenue picture was looking better — evidence was growing that after two years of falling average fares, United will be able to push prices higher this year.On a conference call to discuss those results, Munoz started by apologizing again for the 9 April scene on a United Express plane at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. David Dao, a 69-year-old Kentucky physician, was bloodied and dragged off the plane by Chicago airport officers who had been summoned by United employees when Dao wouldn’t give up his seat. The three officers have all been suspended.Munoz and other executives vowed to treat customers with dignity, and said that what happened to Dao will never happen again.Munoz’s early statements on the incident were widely criticized. He initially supported employees and blamed Dao, calling him “disruptive and belligerent.” On Tuesday, he was asked if the company ever considered firing anyone, including management.“I’m sure there was lots of conjecture about me personally,” said Munoz. He noted that the board of United Continental Holdings Inc. has supported him.“It was a system failure across various areas,” Munoz continued. “There was never a consideration for firing an employee.”Dao’s lawyers have taken steps that foreshadow a lawsuit against the airline and the city of Chicago, which operates O’Hare Airport.United announced two rule changes last week, including saying that it will no longer call police to remove passengers from overbooked planes. It is not clear whether United oversold Flight 3411, but the flight became overbooked when four Republic Airline employees showed up after passengers had boarded and demanded seats so they could commute to their next assignment, a United Express flight the next morning.Some politicians and consumer advocates have called for a ban on overselling flights. Munoz declined to address that or other possible changes until the airline finishes a review by 30 April.Even in normal times, airlines closely—even daily—scrutinize numbers such as advance sales and occupancy levels on planes. Yet United officials said they couldn’t measure whether the dragging has affected their business.“It’s really too early for us to tell anything about bookings and in particular last week because it was the week before Easter, that’s normally a very low booking period,” said United President Scott Kirby. He said that United’s forecast for the April-through-June quarter has not changed.Limited competition at many major airports could blunt any nascent boycott of United. Wall Street analysts have been mostly silent about the Dao incident, perhaps believing that it won’t have a noticeable impact on United profits. They did not ask United management any questions about it on Tuesday’s call.Barclays analyst Brandon Oglenski told Munoz that “accidents happen... hopefully, we can put this behind us.” Back in December, the analyst had called United Continental the “most compelling stock” in the airline sector. The consensus estimate of 17 analysts surveyed by FactSet for United’s full-year earnings has risen by 3 cents a share since the Dao incident.Munoz said he has received “a lot of support” from United’s high-end customers, although “obviously a lot of people have ideas and thoughts about how we can make things better.”",CEO Oscar Munoz promises more details later this month after United finishes a review of its policies on overbooked flights,11:53,United CEO Oscar Munoz says no one will be fired for dragging incident +2017-03-31,"
Mumbai: IT services firm Zensar Technologies said on Thursday that it has acquired US-based supply chain management firm Keystone Solutions for an undisclosed amount. Zensar will retain Keystone’s brand and team of around 220 people.Keystone Solutions, based in Atlanta, Georgia, in the US, offers solutions to digitally manage orders and warehousing for large retail firms. It “will augment Zensar’s existing retail management portfolio”, Zensar Technologies CEO Sandeep Kishore said in a phone interview. Retail brings in about one-fourth of Zensar’s total business, and with the Keystone acquisition, this will increase to 27%, Kishore said. Zensar reported revenues of Rs700.9 crore in the December quarter, up 4% from a year ago.Keystone’s revenue in 2016 was $12.7 million and its technology will be also used to provide back-end management to Zensar’s manufacturing clients who make up 50% of its business, added Kishore.This is Zensar’s second acquisition in five months. In November, the firm bought UK-based user design firm Foolproof for its front end user experience design. Analysts said that the acquisition will help make Zensar a complete digital retail solutions provider. “Retail business constitutes 25% of revenue for Zensar”, an analyst with a brokerage firm said, requesting anonymity. “Foolproof gave them the UX (user experience) design and digital commerce front end. Now with the Keystone acquisition, they have the technology piece for the back-end management. With this, they are present across the value chain of retail businesses.”Zensar has been on an acquisition and investment spree to reorient its business from a provider of traditional IT services to a firm focused on digital services.“Zensar has been focusing on investments in organic business growth”, the analyst said. “Under Sandeep Kishore, the company has been taking a more strategic view and investments. “Zensar Technologies’ stock rose 2.4% to Rs922.05 on BSE, on a day the Sensex gained 0.39% to 29,647.42 points.",Zensar will retain Keystone’s brand and team of around 220 people,04:41,Zensar Technologies acquires retail tech firm Keystone Solutions +2017-04-19,"New Delhi: Konoike Transport of Japan has formed a joint venture called Trac1 Logistics with India’s Associated Container Terminals Ltd to run private container trains in India. Konoike is the first Japanese company to enter the private container trains business in India. Associated Container chairman R.R. Joshi said the company is set up with an investment of around Rs100 crore, which will initially run four trains between Faridabad and Gujarat. Trac1 Logistics is the 17th firm licensed by Indian Railways to run private container trains.",Konoike Transport formed a joint venture called Trac1 Logistics with Associated Container Terminals to run private container trains in India,00:21,"Japan’s Konoike Transport, Associated Container Terminals form JV" +2017-04-19,"
India-focused Lighthouse Funds is readying to raise its third and largest private equity (PE) fund, a top executive said.“Following the success of our last two funds, we are looking to raise $200 million for our third fund,” said Mukund Krishnaswami, founding partner of Lighthouse.Set up by Krishnaswami and Sean Novak, Lighthouse typically invests in the range of $5-20 million per transaction in consumer-facing firms. The fund inducted Sachin Bhartiya as a partner in 2007.Lighthouse Funds currently has a corpus of approximately $235 million. The PE fund has raised two funds of $100 million and $135 million. It has invested in 17 companies since it raised its first fund in 2009.“From the first fund we have made 11 investments and exited six, and have made one partial exit in a company called XSEED Education. At the time of investment, XSEED, which developed specialized academic programmes for its member schools, had close to 50,000 students enrolled and will end this academic year with approximately 1.6 million students,” Krishnaswami said.In the past year, Lighthouse exited its 2010 investment in agro-chemicals formulation firm Dhanuka Agritech Ltd, and its investment in premium biscuit maker Unibic Foods, in which it sold its stake to Peepul Capital for an undisclosed sum.Early this year, Lighthouse also sold its stake in Kolkata-based diagnostic chain, Suraksha Diagnostics, the details of which weren’t made public.“We exited Suraksha at a range of exit multiples between 2.5x-7x on invested capital… Overall, Lighthouse has returned 1.7x of invested capital, with four assets still to exit,” Krishnaswami said.Lighthouse closed its second fund in 2015 at $135 million, receiving a $42 million investment commitment from the US government’s development finance institution Overseas Private Investment Corporation. From the second fund, Lighthouse has made six investments till date.In March, the PE fund picked up a stake in Delhi-based non-banking financial company Capital Trust Ltd. It invested in Indian ethnic apparel and home accessories brand Fabindia in the previous month.The fund’s other notable investments include leading snack foods firm Bikaji Foods International and personal care brand Kama Ayurveda.To help its portfolio firms scale up, the PE fund has created an operating executive council, comprising a team of industry veterans including Ravi Chaturvedi, a former global president of Procter and Gamble Co. He works directly with the companies in Lighthouse’s portfolio.According to the India private equity 2017 report by Bain India, capital-raising is expected to be top priority for funds in 2017. However, investors surveyed also believe that the fund-raising environment will get more challenging this year. “A majority of funds reported greater participation from LPs (limited partners) in the form of passive co-investment rights in their current portfolio. Funds expect LPs to play a more active role in 2017 and will likely offer more co-investment opportunities,” the report said.India continued to be an attractive destination for investments. Fund allocations to India in 2016 increased by 8% over the previous year. The PE firms in the country were sitting on a dry powder of $9 billion, which was similar to 2015, reaffirming the potential for investments in the Indian market.",Lighthouse Funds currently has a corpus of approximately $235 million,05:18,"Lighthouse Funds plans $200 million third fund, its largest so far " +2017-04-19,"New Delhi/Singapore: Want to buy a stake in an aircraft-carrier builder? How about a fighter-jet maker?India is about to start an $11 billion sale of government assets, including holdings in the shipyard and factories that supply India’s military, offering investors a share of some of the region’s more profitable manufacturers that are benefiting from soaring defence spending.India is the world’s largest arms importer and Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to change that while at the same time raising money to reduce the fiscal deficit. Among the biggest stakes to be sold are in Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., or HAL, which is trying to build a domestic fighter, and Cochin Shipyard Ltd., currently building India’s first home-made aircraft carrier. The shipbuilder has seen profit almost double in the last five years, while earnings at most big global shipyards have slumped.As India builds its status in the region, “it will find it even more essential that it becomes self-sufficient in designing and manufacturing high-tech weapon systems,” said Deepak Sinha, a consultant with the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation. Non-state investors can help make the arms-makers more efficient and focused, he said.Modi has pledged to spend $250 billion by 2025 on weapons and military equipment for a nation that has territorial disputes with Pakistan and China. India makes about 70% of its defence purchases abroad and has topped the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s list of the largest defence importers for the last seven years.Economic growth in Asia in the past decade is spurring countries like India, China and Indonesia to upgrade their armed forces in the face of geopolitical tensions. That’s pushed Asia-Pacific to the forefront of the growth in defence spending. The region’s military outlay rose 5.4% to around $436 billion in 2015, compared with a 1.7% increase in Europe and a drop across Africa and the Americas, according to SIPRI, although spending, as a percentage of GDP, has been in line with economic growth in these countries.India is also asking private equity funds to invest in profitable state-controlled companies such as helicopter maker Pawan Hans Ltd. and BEML Ltd., which makes military and mining vehicles and rail cars.Modi’s administration has budgeted for a 35% increase in earnings from asset sales in the current year, taking advantage of a stock market that just had its best three months since 2014. Modi has pledged to shrink Asia’s widest budget deficit to 3.2% of GDP in the year starting this month, from an estimated 3.5%.“The timing seems good as the market has started making new highs,” said Deepak Mohoni, founder of market strategy firm Trendwatch India Pvt., who coined the term “Sensex” for the Mumbai stock exchange index. “Funds will pick them up.”India has met or beaten its so-called annual disinvestment target only five times since 1998.India has traditionally relied on Russian weapons, with Sukhoi and MiG fighters forming the backbone of its air strike capability. It has recently moved towards buying defence equipment from the US. HAL has been developing the Tejas home-made fighter jet for more than three decades, but it has yet to produce a version that plays a major role in the air force. The aircraft carrier that Cochin Shipyard is building for the Indian Navy forms a “significant part” of the company’s current order book, according to regulatory filings. The nation’s only existing carrier in service is a former Soviet vessel that was decommissioned by the Russians in 1996 and refitted for India a decade later.Cochin Shipyard filed regulatory papers for an IPO last month. HAL would be ready by July or August, according to Chairman T Suvarna Raju. Finance ministry spokesman D.S. Malik declined to comment.India opened its defence manufacturing to private companies 15 years ago, but a lack of infrastructure for niche military manufacturing and a government preference for imported products mean the sector effectively remains a monopoly of state-run firms. Modi raised the cap on foreign ownership of defence contractors to 49%, from 26%, after he took power in 2014 with special dispensation for full ownership if the deal would bring India advanced military technology.“It’s long been the aim of successive Indian governments to raise a self-sufficient, globally competitive indigenous defence industry,” said Shashank Joshi, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. The increased cap on foreign stakes in private Indian defence firms should help bring the private and state-run Indian firms and foreign technology closer together, he said.The Indian government aims to raise another Rs47,000 crore selling stakes in companies in the year ending March 2019, and Rs40,000 crore the following year. Bloomberg","India is about to start an $11 billion sale of government assets, including holdings in the Cochin Shipyard and factories that supply India’s military",10:10,Cochin Shipyard leads sale of stakes in Indian arms spree +2017-04-19,"
New Delhi: More Indians living in the US want a job back home after Donald Trump became the president of the world’s largest economy. The number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has gone up more than 10-fold between December and March, according to an analysis by consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Pvt. Ltd, shared exclusively with Mint .There were approximately 600 US-based Indians seeking jobs in India in December 2016. By the end of March 2017, the number had gone up to approximately 7,000, Deloitte analysis said.ALSO READ: Donald Trump orders review of H-1B visa norms, in deterrent to Indian IT companiesThis data comes amid a crackdown by the Trump administration on job visas for skilled workers, including software engineers from India. US Citizenship and Immigration Services said employers seeking H-1B work visas—a non-immigrant visa allowing American firms to employ foreign workers—for 2018 declined for the first time in five years.The surge in the number of applicants has been triggered by Trump’s vows to protect jobs for locals. A Bloomberg report on Tuesday said Trump will take aim at information technology outsourcing companies when he orders a review of H-1B visa programmes to favour more skilled and highly paid applicants. The report also cited companies such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. and Mphasis Corp. as examples of outsourcing firms that would likely have fewer visas approved once the changes are adopted. The H-1B work visa programme channels thousands of foreign workers to the US technology industry.“While US companies will find some tech talent in the US, the numbers might be less than what are required to meet their needs. Add to that, the wages they need to pay to US employees will be much higher than what they pay to H-1B visa holders,” said C.K. Guruprasad, a consultant with executive search firm Spencer Stuart.On Tuesday, Australia abolished the 457 visa programme used by over 95,000 temporary foreign workers, the majority of them Indians, to tackle unemployment.Experts see global in-house centres (GICs) as a viable option for companies to not only retain Indian talent but also address the anticipated shortage in the required volume of workers in the US.According to Parag Saigaonkar, Principal at consulting firm Deloitte in India, while the initial thrust of GICs was on moving job roles from a high-cost to low-cost centre to get a competitive edge, companies are now looking at non-linear values that GICs can add to the business—new things that Indian GICs can produce—and supporting the parent organization.“With the seemingly shifting dynamics towards options between outsourcing and local hiring, companies with GICs in India could move Indian talent from the US to India and also hire locals into the GICs and thus sidestep the restrictions of outsourcing to third party companies,” Guruprasad said.According to K.S.Viswanathan, vice-president for industry initiatives at lobby group Nasscom, while the purpose of GICs so far has revolved around cost and skills arbitration advantages and talent consideration, it is now expected to change.“We are seeing a lot of companies looking at building newer competencies around newer technologies like machine learning, AI, automation, UI/UX, product management, DevOps etc,” said Anand Subramaniam, engagement manager and delivery head (GIC Accelerator Platform), Zinnov, a consulting firm.On an average, GICs add 50,000 to 70,000 people in India every year and due to the volume requirements, this number is expected to go up, according to Nasscom. According to the lobby group, there are over 1,000 GICs in India. Of these, around 67% of them are of US origin. Around 65% of the total workforce of 750,000 employed by these GICs are for US origin companies.",The number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has surged 10-fold since December as Donald Trump moved to tighten US visa policy,11:07,"As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come back" +2017-04-18,"Mumbai: Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd on Tuesday said it has combined the sales and marketing functions of the automotive division, re-designating Veejay Nakra as the senior vice-president sales and marketing, with effect from 1 May 2017. Nakra will take over from Vivek Nayer, who has now moved to a strategic role at the group level within the organisation. The move is aimed at reducing complexity and simplifying the organisational structure. “The long term strategy for our automotive sector is one of simplicity,” said Rajan Wadhera, president – Automotive Sector at the firm. This is a process under which Mahindra will strive to provide best products and services while keeping the systems and processes simple and lucid. A mechanical engineer and an MBA in marketing, Nakra started his career with Mahindra in 1994. Over the decades, he has held a range of positions in sales and customer care, corporate planning, project development, new product implementation and establishing and heading businesses in new geographies. With marketing added to his portfolio Nakra would also be responsible for planning Mahindra’s future product pipeline, gathering consumer insights and creating and managing the portfolio of both personal and commercial brands.","Mahindra & Mahindra re-designates Veejay Nakra as the senior vice president sales and marketing, with effect from 1 May 2017 ",19:37,Mahindra consolidates sales and marketing functions +2017-04-18,"Mumbai: Improved profitability is likely to lower the funding of corporate dividends by external borrowings. According to an India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) report released on Tuesday, the debt component of dividend funding is likely to reduce to around Rs5,800 crore each year during fiscal 2017-18 from an average of Rs9,000 crore in 2014-16. The rating agency said that debt-funded dividends (DFDs) as a proportion of the total dividends paid between 2017-18 may reduce to 13% from an average of 22% in 2010-16. “This is under the assumption that debt reduction remains minimal and continues to get refinanced,” the report said. ALSO READ: Geopolitical tension weighs on markets, earnings keyHowever, Ind-Ra added that DFDs in auto, telecom, infrastructure, power and real estate sectors is estimated to increase to 77% by 2018 from 42% during 2010-16. Improved profitability of the metals and mining sector may lead to a significant decline in DFDs to 1.4% by fiscal 2018 from 44% in 2016.","The debt component of corporate dividend funding is likely to fall to around Rs5,800 crore each year during fiscal 2017-18 from an average of Rs9,000 crore in 2014-16, said India Ratings report",20:27,Funding of corporate dividends by external borrowings may fall in FY17: India Ratings +2017-04-09,"New Delhi: Over 2,000 fresh accounts were opened in a Bareilly branch of State Bank of India (SBI) post- demonetisation till 31 December to allegedly channelise black money in which at least Rs8 crore were deposited in old notes, a CBI probe has found. The CBI has now registered an FIR against unknown bank officials and unknown persons for criminal conspiracy, cheating and corruption. Based on source information, the CBI had carried out a surprise check in the Civil Lines branch of SBI in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly on 2 January. During the operation, the CBI detected that a huge amount of cash was deposited in the bank after 8 November last year, when the notes ban was announced, in newly-opened accounts and the dormant accounts which had been activated. Also Read: Large banksThe CBI had found that 2,441 new accounts were opened by bank officials between 8 November and 31 December. Out of these accounts, 667 were savings accounts, 53 were current, 94 were Jan Dhan accounts, 50 PPF, 1,518 FD, 13 festival accounts, two senior citizen accounts and one government account.The probe found that there were 794 instances at the bank when cash of over Rs1 lakh and more was deposited. In certain cases huge cash deposits were also made but the sources refused to disclose the amount. These accounts were opened by bank officials allegedly in connivance with private persons which enabled deposits of huge cash and currency conversion without keeping proper records.“It is observed that 267 dormant accounts have been activated after declaration of demonetisation by the bank officials in connivance with private persons in order to facilitate the deposit of old currency notes,” the FIR said. It said in order to cover up the alleged misdeeds of the officials, complete teller reports, details of receipt of old currency notes and its exchange with new currency notes was not maintained by them, though it was the responsibility of the concerned branch to maintain the teller reports. The CBI alleged that vault register and other records maintained by cash department of the branch containing details of inward and outward movement of notes was made “casually” and a lot of alterations were made in a number of pages. “By the acts of commission and omission, the bank officials in connivance with private persons have conspired to defeat the purpose of demonetisation and facilitated exchange of black money and deposit of bank accounts without maintaining proper records,” it alleged.","Out of these SBI accounts, 667 were savings accounts, 53 were current, 94 were Jan Dhan accounts, 50 PPF, 1,518 FD, 13 festival accounts, two senior citizen accounts and one government account",13:44,"SBI branch opened 2,000 accounts to channelise black money" +2017-04-19,"
Motilal Oswal Real Estate, the real estate-focused investment arm of Motilal Oswal Private Equity Advisors Pvt. Ltd, plans to invest around Rs800 crore this fiscal year and will raise a new fund once it closes the current one, said a top executive. The firm is currently raising capital for India Realty Excellence Fund III (IREF-III), a Rs1,250 crore fund, of which it has raised Rs940 crore so far, and plans to close it in the next three months or so, after some delay caused by demonetization last November. Motilal Oswal has so far deployed Rs450 crore from the money it has raised, far below the Rs600-700 crore it had planned to invest last year. “Fundraising was impacted by demonetization temporarily and took longer than we anticipated but it is back to normal now,” said Sharad Mittal, director and head, real estate investment, Motilal Oswal Real Estate.IREF-III is a residential-focused fund that also selectively invests in commercial office projects, in deals that are typically in the Rs80-100 crore range. It undertakes structured equity and mezzanine investments and focuses on mid-income residential projects with some amount of approval certainty. Mittal said investments slowed during the November-January period because most developers did not want to launch or undertake new projects, and there was no early-stage money to give. Plans are on to launch a fund later this year, once the current fund is fully deployed. The new fund will be larger—around Rs1,500 crore in size—and will do structured equity deals.From the current fund, Motilal Oswal has invested Rs90 crore across three commercial office projects of Phoenix Infratech Pvt. Ltd in Hyderabad, Rs130 crore in Mumbai-based Rajesh Lifespaces’ residential project and around Rs90 crore in ATS Infrastructure Ltd’s residential and office projects in Noida, among others.“It is getting difficult to underwrite deals in Mumbai from the cost structure perspective. We like investing in the price bracket of Rs4,000-6,000 a sq. ft in tier I cities, except Mumbai where we look at around Rs14,000 a sq. ft for decent margins and good demand. Investing in NCR (National Capital Region) is a big challenge, where finding good developer partners is tough,” Mittal said. Going forward, it plans to do more deals in Hyderabad and strike deals with existing partners and add a few new partners. Four years into the slowdown, real estate funds that invest in residential projects have slowed investments as property prices remain stagnant, sales tepid and the same set of projects come up for multiple rounds of refinancing.“Demonetization caused a short-term blip but both fundraising and deployment of capital have been challenging for real estate funds for a while now. While fundraising has slowed down considerably due to uncertainty in the property market here, deployment has also been a challenge due to the lack of good quality deals, weak project cash flows and stretched balance sheets of developers,” said Rajeev Bairathi, executive director and head of capital markets, Knight Frank India.","Motilal Oswal Real Estate is currently raising capital for IREF-III, a Rs1,250 crore fund",00:15,Motilal Oswal Real Estate to invest Rs800 crore in current fiscal +2017-04-18,"New Delhi: Tata Housing on Tuesday announced plans to expand to the African property market and will invest Rs1,000 crore to develop two projects in Kenya and Tanzania. The real estate arm of the Tata group plans to raise $200 million through private equity to fund the overseas operations. It recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Housing Bank and a private real estate firm to develop more than 4.5 million square feet of mixed use townships in Kenya and Tanzania. The two mixed use development projects are expected to be launched by January 2018 in a price range of $75,000 – 1,00,000 per unit, catering to the mid-income segment. “The investment in both projects is expected to be more than Rs1,000 crores across both the phases over the next 3-4 years,” the company said in a statement. “Our early success in Sri Lanka and the Maldives gave us the impetus to further expand our international footprint. Starting with Kenya and Tanzania, we will cater to the mid-income segments and fulfil their demand for superior quality housing,” said Tata Housing MD & CEO Brotin Banerjee. With 60% of the urban population living in informal housing, there is consistent growth in demand for housing across both Kenya and Tanzania. Tata Housing has recently handed over the government housing project to the government of Maldives and launched two high-end projects at Odeon and Nadhee in the capital city, Male.",Tata Housing plans to raise $200 million through private equity to fund the overseas operations in Kenya and Tanzania,21:04,"Tata Housing to invest Rs1,000 crore on projects in Africa" +2017-04-09,"New Delhi: No deadline has been set for introduction of Sharia or interest-free banking in India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said. Islamic or Sharia banking is a finance system based on the principles of not charging interest, which is prohibited under Islam. The RBI had earlier proposed opening of “Islamic window” in conventional banks for gradual introduction of Sharia-compliant banking. Responding to an RTI application, the RBI said it has not taken any step to introduce Islamic window in banks for gradual introduction of Sharia-compliant interest-free banking in India. “RBI has not set any deadline for introduction of interest-free banking,” the central bank said in response to the RTI query filed by PTI. However, on the instruction of the central government, an inter-departmental group (IDG) set up in RBI has examined the legal, technical and regulatory issues for introducing interest-free banking in India and has submitted its report to the government, it said. The RBI had in February last year sent a copy of the IDG to the finance ministry.“In our considered opinion, given the complexities of Islamic finance and various regulatory and supervisory challenges involved in the matter and also due to the fact that Indian banks have no experience in this field, Islamic banking may be introduced in India in a gradual manner,” the central bank had told the ministry in a letter. In late 2008, a committee on Financial Sector Reforms, headed by former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, had stressed on the need for a closer look at the issue of interest-free banking in the country. “Certain faiths prohibit the use of financial instruments that pay interest. The non-availability of interest-free banking products results in some Indians, including those in the economically disadvantaged strata of society, not being able to access banking products and services due to reasons of faith,” the committee had said. PTI",The RBI said it has not taken any step to introduce Islamic window in banks for gradual introduction of Sharia-compliant interest-free banking in India,10:08,No deadline for introduction of Sharia banking in India: RBI +2017-04-07,"
Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday released a discussion paper seeking comments on a new category of banks—wholesale and long-term finance banks that will fund large projects. The regulator has been trying to bring in new types of lenders into the banking system in an effort to introduce new ideas and develop niches to ensure that more segments are covered. In 2015, RBI allowed 11 payments banks and 10 small-finance banks.According to the discussion paper, these wholesale and long-term finance banks will focus primarily on lending to the infrastructure sector and small, medium and corporate businesses. They will also securitize assets for banks and financial institutions which do priority-sector lending. RBI’s proposal comes at the time when the banking sector is saddled with stressed assets worth Rs7 trillion, overall credit growth is languishing at around 4.5% and bank credit to industry is shrinking at a rate of 5% year-on-year. “Due to asset quality impacts on banks’ balance sheets, there is an overall declining trend in bank credit, primarily towards services sector, industrial segments, and small and medium enterprises,” the paper said.The paper said loans to the infrastructure sector, at the end of the December quarter in FY15, accounted for 13% of non-performing assets in the banking sector. “The concept of differentiated banking is very welcome. However, to put small and medium enterprises and infrastructure portfolios together, perhaps, is not a bright idea,” said Ashvin Parekh, managing partner, Ashvin Parekh Advisory Services Llp. “The existing and established universal banks may not necessarily take the reform with excitement. They are presently evolving approaches to ensure payment banks do not run away with their fee income or customer base,” he added.Since wholesale and long-term finance banks will not acquire savings deposits, they will focus on corporate bonds, credit derivatives, warehouse receipts and take-out financing, as sources of funds, the paper said. They may also offer services related to equity or debt investments, and foreign exchange trade finance to their clients, similar in nature to investment banks. Term deposits above Rs10 crore might be considered for these banks with restrictions on premature withdrawals, the paper said.Since these banks will have large credit exposure, a minimum equity capital of Rs1,000 crore might be required, according to the discussion paper.For universal banks, the minimum equity capital stands at Rs500 crore while for differentiated banks such as payments banks and small finance banks, it is Rs100 crore.The regulator has asked for comments to be sent in by 19 May.",RBI has released a discussion paper on a proposal to set up ‘differentiated banks’ in the form of wholesale and long-term finance banks to fund large projects,23:07,"RBI paper seeks views on wholesale, long-term finance banks" +2017-04-08,"Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has strongly defended its monetary policy committee’s (MPC) unanimous voting record by arguing that this was the norm across many countries. One constant criticism that the MPC has had to face was that all members were reading from the same page and there was no dissenting voice. Thursday’s monetary policy review was the fourth under the new framework where rate decisions are decided by a committee; it was also the fourth straight instance of unanimous voting.That, critics said, defeated the reason why India moved to the MPC framework in the first place: to encourage diverse views and debates over the setting of policy rates through a voting structure. Even the minutes of the MPC members are mere statements justifying their position, revealing very little about the debate that could have taken place. While the minutes of the April meeting are awaited, a look at the last MPC meeting held in February shows that two out of six members did not share their view on the change in RBI’s stance from being accommodative to neutral.However, RBI believes that it might be too early for such criticism. In the Monetary Policy Report, the bi-annual in-depth study of inflation and growth by RBI, the central bank said that rate committees in the UK, Sweden, Thailand, Czech Republic and Hungary have seen full consensus decisions between October 2016 and February 2017.However, others such as US Federal Reserve Open market Committee (FOMC) and Bank of England’s MPC have seen many differences while setting policy. But these differences were over the size of the change in policy rate and not the overarching policy stance, said the report.According to the RBI, typically divergences stem from MPC members’ policy preferences—the relative weight on price stability and output stabilization and also their assessment of expected economic conditions, and the evolution of inflation and output gaps.Going by this trend, one could argue that RBI is simply trying to align itself with global central banking standards which follow “material differences in views but marginal differences in votes”.This is not the first time that the RBI has compared its MPC functioning with other similar panels around the world. In October 2016, RBI had done a survey of 15 countries on the number of MPC meetings and the press conferences that usually follow these meetings, explaining the rationale behind the decision.“A survey of country practices suggests a central tendency among major central banks to hold four press conferences a year, although the number of MPC meetings may be higher,” the statement had said.",RBI strongly defends monetary policy committee’s unanimous voting record by arguing that this was the norm across many countries,01:04,RBI defends monetary policy committee’s unanimous voting record +2017-04-09,"New Delhi: A parliamentary panel has asked the labour ministry to conduct special inspection or audit of private Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) trusts that have been found to be investing their workers’ retirement savings in own firms through mutual funds. The private trusts, regulated by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organization (EPFO), maintain Provident Fund (PF) accounts and retirement savings and are required to invest these funds as per the investment pattern approved by the government. These trusts are called exempted establishments because they do not deposit EPF contributions of their employees with the EPFO. “Investing in own business is improper and is being done to serve their own interest,” the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour said in its report tabled in Parliament on 7 April . The panel further said, “There is need to have special inspection or audit of all such companies and the EPFO should take early action on the requisite process for restricting investment through this route and take immediate corrective steps and re-divert such investments in other... instruments.” It further observed: “From the list of 317 such firms, on whose board of trustees surcharge was levied (for deviating from the investment pattern), most of the establishments were closed against which the cancellation orders were issued... such futile exercise needs to be tackled with regular physical inspection.” As per the EPF scheme, the violation of not sticking to the investment template is only limited to three instances, and beyond that, the exemption granted to the firm can be cancelled. The panel suggested that the exemption given to these private EPF trusts should be reviewed after a prescribed period so that the EPFO is aware of the exact financial status of the firms, which will help in protecting the interest of employees. Also Read: Govt may hike salary threshold to Rs21,000 for mandatory PF coverageIt also suggested that it should be made mandatory to check the demat account of these trusts to verify the pattern of investments as well as the returns received by these trusts during the compliance audit. The panel noted that as on December 31, 2016, the total corpus of these trusts was around Rs2.57 lakh crore, including the unclaimed EPF amount of Rs5,475 crore. It also called for a suitable amendment in the scheme without delay so that not just the name of the worker for whom unclaimed amount is available gets reflected in the annual account statement of the PF fund, but the funds get transferred to the EPFO after a specified period. It also asked the ministry to explore the possibility of depositing the unclaimed amount so revived in the special reserve fund (SRF).","The private trusts, regulated by the EPFO, maintain Provident Fund accounts and retirement savings and are required to invest these funds as per the investment pattern approved by the government",12:29,Conduct special audit of PF trusts: parliamentary panel to labour ministry +2017-04-04,"New Delhi: Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), the welfare scheme brought by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government akin to the previous regime’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, promising energy security to the poor, has covered more than 2 crore households within 11 months of launch. The scheme, which offers liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) connections to women below poverty line without upfront charges, exceeded its target for the 2016-17 fiscal of 1.5 crore connections in eight months since its launch last May and is gathering pace as access to clean energy has been set as a priority in the hydrocarbon sector.The budget for the scheme was revised to Rs2,500 crore for the first year, up from Rs2,000 crore earmarked originally.The scheme aimed at giving rural folks relief from smoke in the kitchen and the ailments it brings, bolstered Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) pro-poor pitch in the recent assembly polls including in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state accounting for about 30% of the Ujjwala beneficiaries.BJP created history by winning 312 of the 403 assembly seats in UP, while the Samajwadi Party (SP) was reduced to just 47 seats. SP leaders concede that the Ujjwala scheme may have had a part to play in BJP’s victory.“Even though the SP government had also launched many welfare schemes like the Samajwadi Pension Yojana, the Ujjwala Yojana resonated well with people as the Central government was quick in distributing cylinders to the beneficiaries and the people had the product in front of them in no time,” said an SP leader from Lucknow, on the condition of anonymity.Besides UP, the other major beneficiaries include Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar. Priority is given to states where LPG penetration is below the national average of 61% of households.An oil ministry statement said that in FY17, three fuel retailers Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd have issued a total 3.25 crore new connections, the highest number of connections given in any year ever, including the connections under the Ujjwala scheme.As a result, LPG coverage in the country has jumped to 72.8% with 19.88 crore active consumers as on 1 April. Universalization of clean cooking fuel is being supported by oil companies by setting up more LPG production and bottling units, transportation facilities and recruiting more dealers across the country.“Our first year target for the scheme launched last May was 1.5 crore, which we managed to achieve by December. It is a phenomenal social transformation programme. By providing access to clean energy, we are also preventing people from using firewood which pollutes the air and leads to ailments. It also frees up time for women, a part of which could be used for productive purposes like starting a cottage industry,” said B. Ashok, chairman, IOC, the largest refiner. Expanding LPG use and the government’s rural lighting programme also help in reducing the requirement of kerosene, a part of the supply of which through state-level public distribution channel is believed to be diverted for adulteration of diesel.",The Ujjwala scheme exceeded its target for the 2016-17 fiscal of 1.5 crore connections in eight months since its launch last May,23:44,"Ujjwala scheme exceeds target, covers over 2 crore households in first year " +2017-04-04,"Mumbai: Payment delays by distribution companies (discoms) to wind and solar projects in India is hurting project costs for companies and posing a challenge to the sector’s growth plans, Mercom Capital Group said in a report on Tuesday.Payment delays by discoms to these projects is hurting their liquidity and payment to lenders. Discoms in Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Jharkhand have so far found it difficult to pay renewable energy producers on time due to their own weak financial health, according to the report.Discoms in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have delayed payments to generators of wind and solar power by as much as 8-10 months, putting their cash flows under tremendous pressure and sending negative signals for developers and investors, Mint had reported in October 2016. Tariffs, both in wind and solar, have come down significantly in the past year. Average solar tariffs in India have fallen by about 73% since 2010, almost in line with Chinese spot module prices.In February, solar tariffs fell to a record low of a levelized tariff (the value financially equivalent to different annual tariffs over the period of the power purchase agreement) of Rs3.30 per unit in a reverse auction at the Rewa solar park. Similarly, wind tariffs fell to Rs3.46 a unit in a recent auction held by the Solar Energy Corp. of India.“With these extremely low tariffs, developers are looking at best-case scenarios with margins for error nearly non-existent. Payment delays are adding to project costs as banks charge higher interest rates due to projects being built in high-risk states known for payment issues, stymying investment into the sector,” the report said.Payment issues persist in some states despite progress of the government’s Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY) scheme, where 25 states and one Union territory have joined the program, the report said.Of the Rs488 billion discom debt, about Rs239 billion loan amount was repaid till the third quarter of FY17 under the UDAY scheme and another Rs90 billion was repaid by Tamil Nadu recently—resulting in 65% of discom debt being repaid, Edelweiss Securities analysts Kunal Shah, Nilesh Parikh and Prakhar Agarwal wrote in a 30 March report.","Payment delays by discoms to wind and solar projects is hurting their liquidity and payment to lenders, says Mercom Capital report",12:41,Payment delays pose risk to wind and solar projects: Mercom Capital report +2017-04-07,"
The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) monetary policy committee (MPC) on Thursday decided to raise the reverse repo rate, at which it drains excess liquidity from the banking system, by 25 basis points, reflecting its steadfast pursuit of inflation management.The unanimous decision by the six-member committee to raise the rate to 6% is largely to ensure that banking system liquidity is consistent with the neutral monetary policy stance RBI adopted in February. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.RBI reiterated that it would use the many tools at its disposal, such as cash management bills and market stabilization bonds, to ensure that liquidity is brought close to a neutral (neither surplus nor deficit) level. It also said another tool, the so-called Standing Deposit Facility, under which banks can park their funds with RBI without receiving bonds as a collateral, was being examined by the government. Average surplus liquidity in the banking system was Rs4.4 trillion in March as the invalidation of high-value currency notes in November led to a flood of deposits, prompting economists to express concern that this would fuel inflation in the days ahead.“When it comes to inflation, the MPC is choosing to be conservative,” said Gaurav Kapur, chief economist at IndusInd Bank. “It has reiterated 4% inflation in the medium term as a core objective. Raising the reverse repo rate is a step towards ensuring that the liquidity management is in line with the neutral stance.”While the committee noted that risks to inflation are “evenly balanced” currently, it also listed several threats. The main upside risks come from the uncertainty surrounding the monsoon, the implementation of the house rent allowance component of the seventh pay commission award and one-off effects from the goods and services tax. “The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers,” said the monetary policy statement. Wholesale inflation soared to a 39-month high of 6.55% while retail inflation too inched up to 3.65% in February, signalling that inflation continues to be a concern for the regulator. Many economists expect no further rate cuts this financial year. “The policy has highlighted the upside risks to inflation despite the fact that global risks have subsided. This means the central bank is keeping a close watch on domestic risks. We are therefore looking at a prolonged pause before any action is taken this year,” said Upasna Bhardwaj, senior economist at Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. In a separate report , RBI’s staff economists have projected 4.9% consumer price inflation in the quarter ending March 2018 and 4.6% in the three months ending March 2019, both higher than its medium-term target. Two other facts highlight this risk. One, household inflation expectations continue to rise. The March round of RBI’s survey of urban households showed an increase of 20-50 basis points in inflation expectations over the December round, when they had declined. Two, the central bank has projected gross value added growth of 7.4% for the current financial year and 8.1% for fiscal 2018-19. “The output gap (the gap between potential output and what the economy is actually producing) is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory,” the policy statement said. What does this mean for lending rates? RBI has kept the repo rate, at which it infuses liquidity into the banking system, unchanged, while it has reduced the marginal standing facility rate (at which banks borrow from RBI beyond what is allowed under the repo window) by 25 basis points to 6.5%. “Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates,” the statement said.","RBI’s monetary policy committee raised the reverse repo rate to 6%, largely to ensure that banking system liquidity is consistent with the neutral stance adopted in February",02:27,RBI targets excess liquidity in continuing focus on inflation +2017-04-03,"Mumbai: GMR Infrastructure Ltd on Monday said its unit GMR Energy Ltd has tied up with Malaysia’s TNB Repair and Maintenance Sdn Bhd (TNB Remaco) to set up an operations and maintenance (O&M) joint venture for the power sector.TNB Remaco, a specialist in power plant repair and maintenance, is a unit of Malaysia’s largest electricity utility Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB). GMR Energy had in May 2016 agreed to sell a 30% stake in its “select portfolio” of assets to Tenaga Nasional Bhd for $300 million (around Rs2,000 crore). The O&M JV between GMR Energy and TNB Remaco will provide operation and maintenance services, performance improvement services, testing and diagnostic services, repair and refurbishment services for power plants in India, GMR Infrastructure said in a statement.The JV plans to set up a refurbishment facility in India in what is TNB Remaco’s first investment outside Malaysia.GMR Energy and TNB Remaco will “identify business opportunities in the high-potential Indian market and provide operation and maintenance services to the power plants,” the statement said.Tenaga Nasional, one of the largest power companies in Southeast Asia, has a presence across the power generation, transmission and distribution segments. It has a total installed power capacity of 10,818 megawatts (MW) and controls 50% of the Malaysian grid’s generation capacity.GMR Energy has power capacity of over 4,600MW across coal, gas and renewable energy-based projects.“This (venture) would provide a renewed impetus to our energy portfolio and strengthen our relationship with our strategic foreign partner Tenaga Nasional Bhd,” G.B.S. Raju, chairman, GMR Energy said in a statement.","The JV between GMR Energy and TNB Remaco will provide operation and maintenance services, testing and diagnostic services among others for power plants in India",20:08,GMR Energy forms JV with investor TNB Remaco +2017-04-03,"Doha: Qatar Petroleum plans to start a new development in the offshore North Field, ending a 12-year ban on new projects that allowed the company to assess how its current rate of extraction affects the giant reservoir it shares with Iran.The patch, in the southern section of the field, will have a capacity of 2 billion cubic feet per day, or 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent, and should start production in five to seven years, chief executive officer Saad Sherida Al Kaabi told reporters Monday at Qatar Petroleum’s headquarters in Doha.Boosting natural gas production at home and searching for similar assets abroad signals Qatar Petroleum’s confidence in the longevity of gas demand, and its ability to remain a low-cost supplier in a market that has slumped amid a glut driven by output from US shale and Australia. “Global demand for gas is expected to rise,” Al Kaabi said. “There are no analysts who can say when demand for gas will wane. For oil, there are people who see peak demand in 2030, others in 2042, but for gas, demand is constantly growing.”Qatar Petroleum’s decision is a sign that it wants to increase its LNG market share, Giles Farrer, research director, global LNG, at Wood Mackenzie Ltd, said in an email. It’s “also a threat to other developers of new capacity worldwide, as Qatar can add new capacity at a lower cost than anybody else.”The North Field, and the connected South Pars in Iran, is the world’s biggest reservoir of non-associated gas. Qatar Petroleum was quicker to exploit it, becoming the world’s top exporter of liquefied natural gas and, thanks to a boost in condensate output, the fourth biggest energy company in terms of oil and gas production. Iran is catching up, extracting gas from its portion mainly for domestic consumption and to re-inject into oil fields to boost crude production.By ending the moratorium and earmarking new volumes for exports, QP is giving itself the fuel necessary to reclaim the top spot among LNG exporters it will relinquish to Australia in 2019, if it wants it. Al Kaabi said the company hasn’t decided if exports will be in the form of LNG, or other products. If it goes for the super-chilled fuel, the new production can be converted to 15.3 million tonnes of LNG a year. Qatar currently produces about 77 million tonnes annually.“We will remain the dominant force for LNG in the world for a very long time, and this basically solidifies that position,” Al Kaabi said. Bloomberg","Qatar Petroleum’s project in North Field will have a capacity of 2 billion cubic feet per day, or 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent, and should start production in five to seven years",20:50,Qatar to drill in biggest gas field after 12-year freeze +2017-04-04,"New Delhi: India will power close to 900 remote villages in Arunachal Pradesh bordering China using advanced off-grid renewable energy kits that will bring electricity to about 16,000 households, power minister Piyush Goyal said here. The government will later this week invite price bids from companies for the project which also involves installing more than 4,000 off-grid street lights. The falling cost of renewable energy makes this a better power supply option in far flung areas than laying transmission lines for grid connected power which could be time consuming. Energy efficient bulbs, fans and battery back up for eight hours are part of the package. Small off-grid solar power systems for individual consumers and micro-grids supplying solar power with a few commercial enterprises as anchor customers are gaining currency as the preferred way of lighting remote villages in India. This complements the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojna, a village electrification programme announced by Prime Minister Modi for powering 18,452 villages by 1 May 2018. So far, 13,002 villages have been electrified under this scheme since its launch in 2015. The adoption of off-grid power supply systems is improving as many private project developers get low cost international finance for tapping the rising rural power demand in India. The power minister said that the central government will make sure that state distribution utilities comply with their obligation to meet a part of the power demand with renewable energy. One way could be to disallow defaulting utilities from buying power from exchanges, said the minister.Goyal said the central government will seek to bring more transparency in the electricity sector by creating a national power portal which will have links to all the existing applications giving realtime data in the power sector. Besides, states will be urged to disclose the merit order of their power purchase--the ranking of various power sources available at a particular time and the energy cost--to bring more transparency in how states procure power starting with the lowest cost supply. “We will urge states at the next power ministers’ conference to disclose details of the merit order, the power they purchase and the price, in the proposed portal,” said Goyal.","Government to power close to 900 remote villages in Arunachal Pradesh using advanced off-grid renewable energy kits that will bring electricity to about 16,000 households",00:54,Solar power to light up remote Arunachal Pradesh villages +2017-04-04,"London: Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp. and venture capitalists at Allotrope Partners set up a facility to finance energy access projects in Indonesia, India and East Africa.The Microgrid Investment Accelerator, or MIA, will seek to mobilize $50 million from 2018 to 2020, according to an emailed statement. It will tap grants and loans from foundations and development banks to attract private capital into projects that help to transmit renewable energy over small electricity networks.“MIA will test the commercial opportunity for microgrids and demonstrate how concessionary finance can unlock progressively larger proportions of private capital as risks are discovered, priced, and mitigated,” chief executive officer Alexia Kelly said.A microgrid is a miniature power system that operates independently of a national grid. The International Energy Agency estimates that more than 1.2 billion people don’t have access to electricity, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia. As renewable energy technologies such as solar panels become cheaper, microgrids have emerged as an option to more people.Helping provide energy access is a method to tie corporate social responsibility together with business development at companies peddling electronic services and devices. Providing power to people off the grid could eventually open up large new markets for computers and social networks.MIA has signed up more than a dozen implementing partners and observers. It will start to request plans for pilot projects from in the third quarter this year and expects to begin disbursing funds in 2018.“The Microgrid Investment Accelerator will not only be a powerful tool in driving much-needed capital into projects, but will also help to bring down costs, build a stronger ecosystem, and catalyze innovation,” said Microsoft’s Kevin Connolly, the director of energy affordable energy access initiatives at the software company. Bloomberg","Facebook, Microsoft and venture capitalists at Allotrope Partners set up the Microgrid Investment Accelerator which will seek to mobilize $50 million from 2018 to 2020",09:03,"Facebook, Microsoft helping to finance clean power microgrids" +2017-03-23,"New Delhi: Replacing the traditional way of making payments through plastic cards with a unique digital identifier for processing mobile and online payments could go a long way in protecting digital transactions, T.R. Ramachandran, group country manager, Visa India, and South Asia, said in an interview. Edited excerpts: What is the Visa Token Service (VTS)?Visa token service is the underlying foundation for most of the new stuff that is going to happen in the payments space. It will be as important as the magnetic stripe was 25 years ago or chip technology was 10 years ago. It effectively converts your 16 digit personal account number (PAN) into a digital token. So when something is being transmitted, the PAN credentials are not transmitted but a digital token that is native to your device.This will protect data but more importantly it will devalue the data. Even if the information falls into the wrong hands, it will be useless as you cannot decrypt it.Will this help in preventing the recent data breaches that the Indian banking system saw?It will go a long way in avoiding that. The beauty is that it can be hacked but what will you get when you hack it? It devalues the entire data.It strengthens and augments the security layer especially when customers’ credentials pass from one form factor to another or when they use more than one device.Most of the devices are going to be connected devices in the world. The fundamental foundation for all these connected devices to have invisible convenient payments will be something like VTS. It is safer than the magnetic stripes.How do you see this technology growing vis a vis cards?In a country like India, both will grow hand in hand.Everyone has a payment credential. The challenge is how to make it ubiquitous---increasing the acceptance points and how do you make sure that it is being used in non-discretionary categories.In India, digital penetration among discretionary categories is pretty high. Whether it is restaurant or hotel bills, shopping or movies, air and train bookings, it is about 50-60% digitized. But when you talk about non-discretionary spending---buying rice and atta (flour), (paying) dentist bills, chemists or transport (except rail), digital spends are still less than 10%.So any form factor that allows this share to increase to 20-30%, they will all coexist for some time. Then the market will settle and then probably it will become completely mobile or something else happens. We don’t know what will happen.Samsung Pay is the first in the country to use this technology, what next?It can be used anywhere related to mobile payments. For example, in the US, each bank has their HCE or Host Card Emulation wallet which is like Samsung Pay but is used by them to store only their card details and make payments, most of this ride on VTS. In the US, Apple Pay also rides on VTS. India’s acceptance infrastructure is still not ready for digital payments, do you agree?Yes, absolutely. I think India needs a lot more digital acceptance points but I would say that we have seen arguably more progress in the last five months than in the last five years put together. The number of terminals in the market was around 1.6 million till 7 November 2016 and from 8 November (the date of demonetisation) to March, there has been around 800,000 new terminals installed and by June there will be a million more.",Visa India boss T.R. Ramachandran says the visa token service is the underlying foundation for most of the new stuff going to happen in the digital payments space,06:27,Visa token service will protect and devalue data: T.R. Ramachandran +2017-03-23,"New Delhi: India is the 12th country where Samsung launched its digital payment solution Samsung Pay on Wednesday. The launch is expected to give Samsung the first-mover advantage in the world’s second-largest smartphone market where the South Korean handset maker has been the leader for quite a few years. ALSO READ | What is Samsung Pay?Asim Warsi, senior vice president (mobile business), Samsung India Electronics Pvt. Ltd, spoke about the handset maker’s latest bet, and how the Indian unit worked for about a year to customise Samsung Pay for the Indian market by including transactions through debit cards and mobile wallets for the first time. Edited excerpts:Samsung Pay was first launched in Korea in July 2015. Despite India being one of the key markets for Samsung, why did you not launch it earlier?In the last few months, we noticed a particular change in trend for digital and mobile based payments in the country. We tried to understand the reason for new preference and got trends of other nations as well. We focused mainly on the barriers which were holding back people from going digital. We picked up the key themes centric to the Indian consumers — technical issues, security concerns and the lack of acceptability presence, and then integrated mobile wallets, UPI (Unified Payments Interface) and debit cards to Samsung Pay. The idea was to make in India for Indian consumers.For a service like Samsung Pay, you need to have regulatory approvals. Samsung, as a provider of the technology platform, does not need any approval. The issuers and payment gateways got the required approvals from Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The regulator works with them, not us. Some of the banks and payment gateways have launched Samsung Pay in other countries as well so they were familiar with the regulatory requirements such as the tech standards and the use cases.So, what are the customizations that you have made to Samsung Pay just for Indian market?In the last 10 months, or so, we have stretched much beyond credit cards; we have built the app around debit cards, wallets and UPI. These are not incorporated globally.What about net banking?Presently, it is not there in the first phase of the launch. However, we do have online payment service (or net banking transactions) in Korea and might later consider it for India as well.Mobile wallets require credit cards or debit cards or net banking to load money in it. What is the reason you added wallets to Samsung pay?It’s about what the consumer prefers. If you look at the rapid digital adoption, there is credit/debit cards on one side and there is wallets on the other and in the most recent times UPI; all these are on mediocre rise. In fact while these are anyways doing well, we know some recent policy changes which have only further fuelled in this direction. India is the second-largest mobile wallet transacting economy so it makes a central use case to integrate wallets with our platform.Are payments using quick response (QR) codes possible on Samsung Pay?Closed loop wallets have their own QR and since Paytm is the first wallet to be integrated with the platform so payments using its QR code is possible.Will BharatQR also work?BharatQR is a very recent development and if in future it becomes a popular means of payments we will definitely look at it.Do we see Samsung Pay integrating face recognition and iris recognition features for Indian users in the near future?I would say India is the market for all new technology. As a smart phone and technology manufacturer every time we have got new technology, India has been the fastest in terms of adoption.What about services? Will there be over-the-top services such as utility bill payments that you would include?That may be a possibility. In Korea, Samsung Pay can be used to take out cash from ATMs. So, if Indian consumers demand any particular service, we can look at incorporating that.Samsung Pay will be available on your top-end devices. Why did you leave the mass market smartphones?This is the first step of the full-scale launch. We will keep observing and keep our hands and eyes open to expanding our devices and offerings from Samsung. As of now, only eight devices will be supporting the app. To get Samsung Pay on the mass market smartphones, there may be a need for customization of the firmware.How many users are you targeting in the first year?We have not tied ourselves down to any numeric goal; our entire effort so far has been to get the service right. Our sense is that we have got a whole new payment platform with us and the adoption will be good. The numbers will aid device sales especially for those customers who were at a cusp of not having this device but wanting to use this kind of service will upgrade.So, you hope to get the first mover advantage, and want Apple users to shift who have been waiting for Apple Pay?I would not comment on any other handset company. It is our belief that more consumers use mobile payment applications on any device, the better it is for the economy and the country of course but also better for the consumers to get into digital payments. Once they start getting accustomed to different apps and passwords, only then will they realize that Samsung Pay actually puts all of it into a unified platform with greater ease and security.",Senior VP Asim Warsi on how Samsung Pay was customized for Indian users by including transactions via debit cards and mobile wallets for the first time,05:24,Idea behind Samsung Pay was to Make in India for Indians: Asim Warsi +2017-03-22,"Beijing: The chief scientist helping drive Baidu Inc.’s push into artificial intelligence (AI) is quitting the Chinese search giant, putting at risk its efforts to put AI at the center of a business revival.Andrew Ng, a Stanford University academic who worked on deep learning at Alphabet Inc. before joining Baidu in 2014, said he’s leaving the business next month. Ng doesn’t plan to join another technology company and will seek to bring AI into sectors such as healthcare and education around the world.The departure comes at a crucial point for the Beijing-based company as it attempts to revive its fortunes by embracing machine intelligence across all of its business units. His decision to leave comes after Qi Lu was hired in January as Baidu’s group president and chief operating officer (COO) with a mandate to reshape the business, whose online-ad business is under threat from rivals including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd. Prior to joining, Lu was an executive at Microsoft Corp. leading efforts to develop artificial intelligence.ALSO READ | Baidu fires head of group-buying arm citing ethics violations“It’s all very amicable,” Ng said, adding that he’d discussed the move with Baidu’s co-founder Robin Li for several months. “I’m very confident the team will thrive. In China Baidu is so far ahead and AI is not easy.”Ng doesn’t expect his departure will derail or slow down Baidu’s AI efforts, pointing out that he’s still chief scientist until the handover at the end of April. Ng oversaw the growth of Baidu’s research team to 1,300 people scattered across research labs in Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Sunnyvale, California, a group that will increase by several hundred more this year, he has said. Of the over 20 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) Baidu has spent on research and development over the past two and a half years, most has been on AI, according to Li.But Ng was a founding father of deep learning—a stream of AI recently popularized by tech giants around the world—and the public face of Baidu’s AI efforts.ALSO READ | China’s Baidu plans a spin-off of robot cars“With him there, investors and analysts got more confidence about Baidu’s AI investments since he was quite well-known in the field and at Google before,” said Marie Sun, an analyst with Morningstar Investment Services. “If there’s no other well-known person from his field replacing his role, I think it could be negative news to the market.”A co-founder of web-learning firm Coursera Inc., Ng said he will reduce the amount of time he spends in China, as his wife is based in the US. Ng said he’s been looking at the health-care sector and is keen to help develop AI, for example, that can act as assistants for doctors or create customized pathways for education.While Baidu hasn’t named a replacement for Ng as chief scientist, other executives are taking on some of his responsibilities. Yuanqing Lin, the head of the company’s Institute of Deep Learning, will run Baidu Research’s labs both in China and the US with machine translation expert Wang Haifeng to become the new head of Baidu’s AI Group. The search provider will continue its AI efforts, employing its user data to build products that take advantage of the technology.Baidu’s revenue growth slowed to 6% last year, after several years of growth ranging from 35% to 55%. The search business, which fueled Baidu’s 70.6 billion yuan in 2016 sales, is under siege from local rivals: Alibaba has taken the lead in digital advertising, according to consultancy EMarketer Inc. Bloomberg",Baidu chief scientist AndrewNg doesn’t plan to join another technology company and will seek to bring artificial intelligence into sectors such as healthcare and education,19:23,Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng to depart in setback for artificial intelligence push +2017-03-22,"
New Delhi: With rapid urbanization, Coca-Cola India sees a big opportunity for its products in small towns. With a clutch of new product launches, Venkatesh Kini, president of India and South West Asia for the soft drinks maker, spoke about the company’s expansion in the non-carbonated drinks category, goods and services tax (GST) and the problems it faced in Tamil Nadu. Edited excerpts from an interview:
Which summer products have you launched?We just launched Aquarius which is one of my favourite products in the portfolio. I do a lot of running. It’s great for replenishing. It’s actually a brand that originated in Spain and Japan and now sold in other parts of the world. We have also expanded Minute Maid in multiple flavours and introduced the coconut water Zico.
This is the first year when you have launched multiple products in the non-carbonated products segment. Is the consumer turning away from carbonated beverages?To be honest, the pace of launch of beverages has increased. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that the speed at which the government approvals come now is much faster. Earlier it was a very complex system. But the new government has done a great job revamping the FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) and the way it works. It’s a much more progressive dispensation. Earlier it used to take two years to get an approval for a product launch. Now it takes a few months.
But are consumers going for non-carbonated drinks? The reality is globally we have announced our intent to become a total beverage company. It’s also recognising that consumers have multiple needs through the day—from juice to soft drinks to coffee. We have actually got the widest range of beverages worldwide. In India, we first had to build both the front-end capability and the backend manufacturing capabilities. We have put up five new factories in the last five years and multiple new lines in existing factories and most of them to produce juices and still beverages. With the infrastructure ready now, we are able to accelerate the pace of launches. So one is where the consumer is going, second is where our infrastructure capability is and the third is the regulatory environment that’s enabling and supporting that.
Do you expect revenue from non-carbonated drinks to exceed that from carbonated drinks?If that’s where consumer goes, we will be perfectly happy with it. If consumers vote with their wallets for products like Aquarius, then that is what we will sell and expand. And if they vote for juices, then we will sell that. So we are going to follow the consumers as opposed to saying that we want to sell one product or the other. Today we are not making a choice for consumers. There is place for all of these products but personally speaking, there’s nothing to beat a chilled refreshing Coke, Thums Up or Sprite on a hot day but that doesn’t mean there is no role for everything else . If there is a big role for carbonated drinks then there is an equally big role, if not bigger, for a variety of non-carbonated drinks. Today, about 35-40% of our business is from non-carbonated portfolio.
So you are building a non-fizzy drinks portfolio.What percentage of our business do you think comes from brand Coca-Cola today? Less than 10%. We have a diverse portfolio in India. Sprite is our largest brand. It is lime and lemon, no artificial flavours.
But it’s still sugar.We have a Sprite zero also if sugar is a concern. Though I want to point out that the amount of sugar in our beverages is not as high as you may think. A can of 180ml ThumsUp has less than 80 calories. You get more calories than that from most packaged foods. Our all beverages put together make for about 1% of total sugar consumption in India. So sugar from our beverages is not really a major concern in consumer’s mind.
Are you happy with the 15% cap on soft drinks in GST?GST is the best thing that could happen to the country in terms of reforms. As far the beverage industry is concerned, what we are looking forward to from the government is a taxation policy and GST which makes it a level-playing field based on the content of the product. So the higher the sugar content, the higher the tax rate and the lower the sugar content, lower the tax rate. This is what we would hope and expect from the government. So, the cess of 15% on top of 28% will be applied to certain products. And products with lower sugar or zero sugar should be at a lower rate.
Which market are you betting on urban or rural?Rural has always been growing faster for many years. The last two years, in 2014 and 2015, we saw a dip in rural demand because of poor monsoon. Last year, the monsoon was good but demonetization effect outweighed the monsoon effect. We are optimistic that rural demand will pick up now.The big growth that we see is in small towns or the mid-tier markets, which are neither rural nor metro. Those towns are showing tremendous growth potential. As urbanization in India continues to accelerate, the biggest beneficiaries will be tier-II towns. As metros are becoming more expensive to live in and crowded, and as states invest more in their development, there’s a lot of other urban centres that are beginning to pick up in terms of growth. There’s a steady stream of people moving into urban areas and that is consistent with the global trend. World over, urbanization is a trend and even in India, it is a natural trend. Also, the quality of life for new urbanites is improving a lot in the tier-II towns.
What is the progress in Tamil Nadu where foreign soft drinks brands have been boycotted by traders?The concerns in the minds of traders in Tamil Nadu regarding their state and the issues they face are genuine. Unfortunately they associated those concerns with our industry. We engaged with them and tried to understand why they have concerns with our industry. I think it’s not enough just to be a good corporate citizen. You need to get far more involved with the local issues faced by local communities. We have invested significant amount in water projects across the country and even in Tamil Nadu we buy 50,000 tonnes of mangoes from Tamilian farmers. There’s a lot of things that we do. We have not done a good job of communicating that with the stakeholders. And when we engaged and started communicating that look this is what we are and this is the role we play, the dialogue started and it is actually a positive dialogue.I won’t say that the issue is completely resolved but there is a much better appreciation of the role we play in the local economy. Ninety-five per cent of what we produce in India is made in India.
How big is the India market for you?India is the sixth largest market for Coca-Cola globally in volume terms. Ten years ago, it was No. 19. Our aim is to make India one of the biggest markets over the next decade. Our declared vision is for it to be among the top 5 by 2020. We think we’ll beat that and want to be more aggressive going forward. India has the potential to be the growth engine of the global economy and all industries will benefit from that.","Coca-Cola India and South West Asia president Venkatesh Kini on the company’s expansion in non-carbonated drinks, GST and problems in Tamil Nadu",13:03,Non-fizzy drinks make up 35-45% of Coca-Cola’s business: Venkatesh Kini +2017-03-22,"New Delhi: Private sector lender Axis Bank on Wednesday said its managing director and chief executive officer Shikha Sharma is not resigning. “...The news appearing in section of social media stating the impending resignation of the MD and CEO of the bank, which please note is false, speculative and is being circulated with the mala fide intention of misleading the investors and the general public,” Axis Bank said in a clarification to the BSE. Axis Bank has been under pressure over a sharp fall in third quarter profits along with Income Tax Department raids on some of its branches post-demonetisation. There is also a buzz about the bank’s merger with Kotak Mahindra Bank. Axis Bank had reported 73% decline in net profit to Rs580 crore for the October-December quarter on account of rise in bad loans. Shares of Axis Bank were trading 2.07% higher at Rs498.10 on BSE.",Axis Bank says the matter of CEO resignation is speculative and being circulated with the mala fide intention of misleading the investors and the general public,11:49,Axis Bank dismisses CEO resignation buzz +2017-04-07,"India’s economy is set to grow at 7.4% in the current fiscal year 2017-18 against 7.1% in the previous year, on the back of pick-up in consumption demand and higher public investment, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Thursday.In its latest Asian Development Outlook (ADO) 2017 report, ADB said while the recent gross domestic product (GDP) data for 2016-17 did not fully capture the effects of demonetisation, the slowdown did reflect a continued slump in investment. “Dragging on growth were excess production capacity, problems that past overinvestment left on corporate balance sheets, and new bank lending inhibited by too many stressed assets. Moderately higher growth is projected as consumption picks up and government initiatives boost private investment,” it said.“An array of important economic reforms has propelled India’s economic success in recent years. A continued commitment to reform—especially in the banking sector—will help India maintain its status as the world’s fastest growing major economy,” Yasuyuki Sawada, ADB’s chief economist, said.The ADO expects consumption to pick up as more new bank notes are put in circulation after the shock withdrawal of high-value currencies on 8 November and as planned salary and pension hike for state employees are implemented. “The public sector will remain the main driver of investment as banks continue to wind down balance sheets constrained by high levels of stressed assets. Exports are forecast to grow by 6% in the coming year,” it said.Among potential risks for the Indian economy, the assessment notes risks from higher oil prices as Indian imports nearly 80% of it fossil fuel needs. “A rapid increase in the price of oil could undermine the country’s fiscal position, stoke inflation and swell the current account deficit,” it warned.ADB projected inflation to accelerate to 5.2% in 2017-18 and 5.4% in 2018-19 as the global economy recovers and commodity prices rebound.The report estimates of a $1 increase in oil prices raises the import bill by nearly $2 billion. In 2016-17, rising oil prices resulted in a 37.6% increase in India’s import bill. To mitigate India’s vulnerability to oil price swings, the government has proposed reducing dependence on imported oil by 10% over the next five years through more efficient domestic production and increased private investment into the sector, the report noted.","Indian economy is set to grow at 7.4% in 2017-18 on the back of pick-up in consumption demand and higher public investment, says ADB",02:01,Indian economy to grow at 7.4% in FY18: ADB +2017-04-07,"
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) plans to allow market participants to substitute collateral under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) window to give them more flexibility and improve the liquidity of these instruments.This facility will be available from 17 April, the regulator said on its website. Under the repo window, banks have to place government bonds as collateral to borrow from the central bank. Separately, the regulator said that it will continue using methods such as open market operations, cash management bills, treasury bills and variable rate repo and reverse repo securities to drain excess liquidity from the system. It also laid out several other regulatory proposals for the banking and financial system. For one, the regulator plans to introduce a new and improved prompt corrective action (PCA) framework for banks with weak balance sheets. Typically, when a bank breaches the lower limit of its capital base during any quarter, along with a build-up of large amount of bad loans and fall in return on assets, RBI initiates this action to limit the bank’s lending activities and help it fix its affairs. Banks under PCA would be required to conform to mandatory and discretionary actions that the central bank would decide. RBI said the revised framework would be issued by mid-April 2017. Speaking on the asset quality problems in Indian banking after RBI’s monetary policy announcement, deputy governor S.S. Mundra said the regulator, and banks in general, are cognizant of the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all approach while attempting resolution of stressed loans. Mundra said that the regulator is considering new measures to deal with bad loans while also tweaking existing stress resolution tools if necessary.The Rs7 trillion bad loan problem in the Indian banking sector is led by public sector banks, which are struggling with recovery and resolution of stress on their books.RBI has also decided to increase the entry barrier for asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) by mandating a net owned funds base of Rs100 crore compared with Rs2 crore earlier. Detailed guidelines in this matter would be released later this month, the regulator has said. Separately, the regulator is also planning on allowing banks to invest in Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs). RBI has also decided to not activate the countercyclical capital buffer as of now, which would have forced banks to set aside a certain portion of their capital as a buffer for difficult times.The central bank plans to introduce steps to improve the national electronic funds transfer (NEFT) infrastructure, rationalize the merchant discount rate (MDR) and issue renewed guidelines on the issuance and operation of prepaid payments instruments (PPIs), it said.RBI said that it is initiating a pilot project on financial literacy at the block level to explore innovative and participatory approaches to financial literacy. A pilot project will be commissioned in nine states across 80 blocks by non-government organizations (NGOs) in collaboration with the sponsor banks. The sponsor banks will enter into contracts with the identified NGOs by 30 June. Thereafter, the NGOs will start operating the centre for financial literacy within three months of entering into contracts with banks.","RBI also said that it will continue using methods such as open market operations, cash management bills and treasury bills to drain excess liquidity from the system",01:32,RBI to allow banks to substitute collateral under LAF window +2017-03-22,"
Mumbai: The listing of Avenues Supermarts Ltd, the parent of retailer D-Mart, lived up to its hype, adding to the Midas-like reputation of its founder Radhakishan Damani. Its shares opened 102% higher than the issue price, before closing the day at Rs640.75 apiece, up 114.3%. At the end of trading, D-Mart became India’s most valuable listed retailer and helped the Damani family barrel past Anil Ambani, Ajay Piramal and Adi Godrej in the country’s billionaire rankings.
The effect of the stellar listing was such that other stocks where Damani has significant holdings (either through investment firms or his brother Gopikishan Damani) also rose on a day when the broader market closed 0.11% down.For instance, shares of VST Industries, where Damani owns 25.95% through his firm Bright Star Investments Pvt. Ltd, jumped as high as 9.9% on Tuesday before closing 3.8% higher. Apart from VST, Damani owns stakes of at least 1% in 16 other firms across sectors such as cements, television and logistics.Avenue Supermarts listing: Lessons for retailers from stellar market debutOn Monday, Forbes had calculated the Damani family’s net worth at $2.3 billion. At Tuesday’s closing prices, the family’s 82% stake in D-Mart alone is worth Rs32,871.75 crore, or $5.03 billion. Its stake in other listed entities is worth another Rs3,000 crore, besides a property portfolio that includes the 156-room Radisson Blu Resort in Alibag, according to Forbes.Investors started betting on VST Industries on expectations that Damani’s magic will work on it, said Prakash Diwan, a director at Altamount Capital Management Pvt Ltd. “However, Damani is just a stakeholder in VST Industries whereas he is a promoter of D-Mart. He is a non-operational investor and not running business of VST Industries. That’s the difference,” warned Diwan.The Damani effect had shown up in the demand for the D-Mart stock when it had opened for subscription. The initial public offer was subscribed 103 times when it opened earlier this month. Damani, considered to be the mentor to billionaire stock market investor Rakesh Jhujhunwala, is known to look at fundamentals and have the patience to see his investments through. “The shares were in high demand as it was a (Radhakishan) Damani stock and a profitable retail, which led to huge oversubscription,” said independent market analyst Ambareesh Baliga. “The company’s model is superb, and the best amongst other retailers, and they stuck to their model through the year.”ALSO READ | Irrational exuberance in D-Mart sharesD-Mart’s success has lessons, not only for rivals in the brick-and-mortar space, but also for e-commerce companies, which are struggling to make profits, said experts.The firm has been focused on what it wants, and its expansion has been measured. In the first nine years of its existence, till 2010, it had just 25 D-Mart stores. Only after perfecting its business model did the company re-expand to around 118 stores—this too, largely in Western India. The company intends to spend the proceeds from the IPO to repay debt of Rs1,080 crore, fund new stores to the tune of Rs366.6 crore, and on general corporate expenses. Its numbers are good because the retailer does the small things repeatedly and consistently, chief executive officer Neville Noronha has said in the past.D-Mart has been choosy about the products it stocks; it doesn’t have the widest product assortment. It eschews discounts, the bane of both brick-and-mortar retailers and e-commerce marketplaces. It does not intend to follow a discount model in the future either, its prospectus said.“D-Mart’s big strength is its product assortment, competitive pricing and a well-managed supply chain which ensures the product is always available on the shelf,” said Rajat Wahi, partner and head of consumer, retail and agri sectors at KPMG in India.The D-Mart listing on Tuesday hit other listed retailers. Shares of rival V-Mart fell 11% while those of Shoppers Stop and Future Retail were down 2-3%.That said, with its 114% rise, the stock is trading at a rich 80 times its estimated earnings for fiscal 2017.“The stock definitely looks expensive right now. But then, it is the story of new India, and the potential for growth is limitless,” said Raamdeo Agrawal, joint managing director of Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd.",The stellar rise in share prices of D-Mart parent Avenue Supermarts also boosts other holdings of Radhakishan Damani such as VST Industries,02:45,"D-Mart listing bolsters Radhakishan Damani’s wealth, reputation" +2017-04-07,"
Private sector lender DCB Bank Ltd is looking to raise as much as Rs400 crore through a qualified institutional placement (QIP) in the later half of the current quarter, said two people aware of the development. QIP is a capital-raising tool through which listed companies can sell shares, fully and partly convertible debentures, or any securities other than warrants that are convertible into equity shares to qualified institutional buyers.“DCB Bank has started meeting investment banks for its proposed QIP and they are expected to hire at least a couple of banks to manage the QIP soon. The bank’s management is keen on tapping the market before the end of this quarter,” said one of the two people cited above, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity as the talks are private. The DCB stock has surged since the start of 2017 and this will allow the bank to raise capital at an attractive valuation, the person added.DCB Bank’s stock has risen by 57% to Rs169.75 year to date. The bank reported a 25% profit growth to Rs51 crore in the third quarter of 2016-17. Net interest income grew 31% to Rs209 crore. In its board meeting on 7 March, directors of the private sector lender approved a resolution to raise as much as Rs400 crore through a QIP. The bank is currently in the process of seeking an approval for the same from its shareholders through a postal ballot. Emails sent to DCB Bank on Wednesday were not answered.DCB Bank last raised capital through a QIP in 2014, when it raised almost Rs250 crore. DCB Bank’s plans come at a time when QIP issues have seen a revival after a lacklustre 2016. Seven companies have raised Rs9,108 crore through QIPs so far this year, according to data from primary market tracker Prime Database. The quantum of capital raised through QIPs in the first three months of the year is already almost twice as much as that raised in the whole of last year. In 2016, 16 companies raised Rs4,712 crore, data shows. “The stock market has performed well since the start of the year, rising by more than 10% so far. That movement in the market has resulted in investors again looking at QIP issuances. There is also a lot of liquidity available with domestic investors such as mutual funds,” said the second person cited above, also requesting anonymity. Since the start of the calendar year, the benchmark Sensex has gained 12.5% to 29,927.34 points, as of closing on 6 April. The increased QIP activity in 2017 has been boosted by large issuances such as those of private sector lender Yes Bank Ltd and Hindalco Industries Ltd. Yes Bank raised Rs4,907 crore through its QIP in March. In April, Hindalco raised close to Rs3,300 crore. Other companies that have raised funds through the QIP route this year include auto parts maker Minda Industries Ltd, state-owned lender United Bank of India, Sagar Cements Ltd and Mercator Ltd.",DCB Bank is currently in the process of seeking an approval for the QIP from its shareholders through a postal ballot,02:08,DCB Bank looks to raise Rs400 crore via QIP +2017-04-03,"
New Delhi: India added a record 5,400 megawatts (MW) of wind power in 2016-17, exceeding its 4,000MW target.“This year’s achievement surpassed the previous higher capacity addition of 3,423MW achieved in the previous year,” the ministry of new renewable energy said a statement on Sunday.Of about 50,018MW of installed renewable power across the country, over 55% is wind power. In India, which is the biggest greenhouse gas emitter after the US and China, renewable energy currently accounts for about 16% of the total installed capacity of 315,426MW.During 2016-17, the leading states in the wind power capacity addition were Andhra Pradesh at 2,190MW, followed by Gujarat at 1,275MW and Karnataka at 882MW.In addition, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Telangana and Kerala reported 357MW, 288MW, 262MW, 118MW, 23MW and 8MW wind power capacity addition respectively during the same period.At the Paris Climate Summit in December, India promised to achieve 175GW of renewable energy capacity by 2022. This includes 60GW from wind power, 100GW from solar power, 10GW from biomass and 5GW from small hydro projects. It also promised to achieve 40% of its electricity generation capacity from non-fossil fuel based energy resources by 2030.In the last couple of years, India has not only seen record low tariffs for solar power but wind power too has seen a significant drop in tariffs. In February, solar power tariffs hit a record low of Rs2.97 per kilowatt hour (kWh)and wind power tariff reached Rs3.46 kWh.Even though wind leads India’s renewable power sector, it has huge growth potential. According to government estimates, the onshore wind power potential alone is about 302GW. But there are several problems plaguing the sector.For instance, the government has been concerned about squatters blocking good wind potential sites, inordinate delays in signing of power purchase agreements, timely payments and distribution firms shying away from procuring electricity generated from wind energy projects. In January, the ministry held a meeting with the states to sort out these issues.The ministry has also taken several other policy initiatives, including introducing bidding in the wind energy sector and drafting a wind-solar hybrid policy.It has also come out with a ‘National Offshore Wind Energy Policy’, aiming to harness wind power along India’s 7,600 km coastline. Preliminary estimates show the Gujarat coastline has the potential to generate around 106,000MW of offshore wind energy and Tamil Nadu about 60,000MW.","Of about 50,018MW of installed renewable power across the country, over 55% is wind power",10:44,"India adds record 5,400MW wind power in 2016-17" +2017-04-03,"Tel Aviv: Italy, Israel, Greece and Cyprus pledged on Monday to move ahead with the world’s longest undersea gas pipeline from the eastern Mediterranean to southern Europe, with support from the European Union.If carried out as planned, the long-discussed $6.2 billion (€5.8 billion) pipeline will take gas from Israel and Cyprus’s recently discovered offshore gas reserves to Europe, potentially reducing European dependence on Russian energy at a time of ongoing tensions.In a joint news conference in Israel’s commercial capital Tel Aviv, energy ministers from the four nations and the EU’s Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Canete pledged their commitment to the project.Feasibility studies had been completed, they said, adding that they hope to develop a full plan for development by the end of the year. They said construction of the pipeline would not begin for several years and it would likely go online in 2025.“This is going to be the longest and deepest sub-sea gas pipeline in the world,” said Israeli energy minister Yuval Steinitz.ALSO READ: Philip Hammond, Mark Carney seek a passage to India in the wake of BrexitGas prices have fallen, however, and the pipeline’s financial feasibility is based on expectations they will rise again, Elio Ruggeri, head of IGI Poseidon—one of the companies developing the plan—told AFP.Both Israel and Cyprus have started to extract gas from their offshore fields in recent years, with far larger projects expected to come online in the future. Officials have sought to market that gas to Europe as an alternative to dependence on Russian imports.Canete admitted it would help limit reliance on the Nord Stream pipeline via Russia, which he said “adds nothing to the security of supply”. “Cyprus and Israel are very reliable suppliers,” he said. “We highly value gas supply from the region as a vital source of our gas supply that can make a valuable contribution to our strategy to diversify sources, routes and suppliers.“This is a pipe that unites and will have the full support of all the members of the European Union.”The four ministers agreed to meet every six months over the coming years. Italy’s minister of economic development Carlo Calenda said a reliable and affordable gas supply was a “crucial challenge” for the country, making the pipeline a “top priority”.“We need to foresee the phasing out of coal and carbon in electricity production and therefore gas supply is fundamental for us,” Calenda said. Amit Mor, head of the Israeli consultancy EcoEnergy, said while the ministers’ commitment was positive, that did not guarantee the project would go ahead.“At this stage this is still a pipe dream but it is important to realise that international trade projects sometimes take decades to develop,” he told AFP. “A depth of three kilometres would be unprecedented,” he added, saying high infrastructure costs would mean that producing gas at a price to rival that of Russia would be “very challenging”.",The $6.2 billion undersea gas pipeline will take gas from Israel and Cyprus’s recently discovered offshore gas reserves to Europe,18:39,"EU nations, Israel eye longest undersea gas pipeline" +2017-04-07,"Digital transactions reached a peak in terms of overall value during March, according to provisional data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The volume of digital transactions also rose in March and was the second highest in a month since the government announced demonetization of high value currency notes in November last year, according to the RBI data released late on Wednesday.Transactions worth about Rs149.52 lakh crore (Rs149.5 trillion) were conducted through digital modes such as credit/debit cards, unified payments interface (UPI), unstructured supplementary service data (USSD), prepaid payment instruments (PPIs) and mobile banking in March. ALSO READ: Ban on cash transaction above Rs2 lakh not applicable for bank, post office withdrawalsDigital transactions worth Rs104.05 lakh crore (Rs104.1 trillion) were recorded in December, the month during which the impact of demonetization was the strongest.Data has been collated until 2 April.Usage of PPIs such as mobile wallets and UPI also peaked in March. The volume of PPI transactions in March was 90 million as compared with 87.8 million in December. The volume of UPI transactions recorded in March was 6.2 million as compared with 2 million in December and 4.2 million in January.UPI transaction volumes rose about 214% in March, from December, according to the data.ALSO READ: How to turn your investments and payments digital Transactions through UPI received a major stimulus from the government after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) app on 30 December. The latest payment mechanism based on UPI is UPI@PoS — or, point-of-sale (PoS) machines that are configured to enable payments without swiping cards.Debit and credit card usage at PoS machines rose by 6.29% in March to 225.7 million transactions from 212.3 million in the previous month. Transactions had declined by 14.6% in January from December and 20% in February from January.Mobile banking transactions increased by 7.68% in March to 60.5 million from 56.2 million in the previous month. They had declined by 7.61% in January from December and 13.42 % in February from January.Meanwhile, transactions through USSD fell by 6.03% in March compared with February.Payments using National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) and Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) rose by around 26% and 66.23%, respectively, in March from February.ALSO READ: RBI governor Urjit Patel says farm loan waiver a ‘moral hazard’“Most of the B2B payments are done during March; corporations are trying to make collections which come mostly through NEFT/RTGS. In case of surge in retail payments, especially the UPI, the government’s effort to popularize it has a major role to play,” said Dewang Neralla, chief executive of Atom Technologies Ltd, a payment services provider. A whole new range of apps based on UPI is being launched, Neralla added.“Now, people do not see any reason to hoard cash at home, instead they prefer to deposit it in bank accounts and make payments through digital modes,” he added.According to a recent research report by the State Bank of India (SBI), the cash withdrawals have not picked up even though the limits on withdrawals were removed from 13 March. The report suggested this may be the result of the move towards digital payments.","Digital transactions volume also rose in March and was the second highest in a month since the announcement of demonetization, shows the RBI data",00:07,Digital transactions peaked at Rs149.5 trillion in March: RBI data +2017-04-02,"New Delhi: Aviation turbine fuel (ATF) price has been cut by over 5%, reversing a two-month rising trend, while rates of subsidised LPG were hiked by Rs5.57 per cylinder. Also, the rate of non-subsidised cooking gas (LPG) has been cut by Rs14.50 per cylinder in line with international trends. Price of jet fuel or ATF was cut by Rs2,811.38 per kilolitre, or 5.1%, to Rs51,428 per kl with effect from 1 April , oil companies said. The reduction comes on the back of a marginal hike of Rs214 kl effected on 1 March and a 3% increase on 1 February.Simultaneously, price of non-subsidised LPG, bought by those who have either given up their subsidies or exhausted the quota of 12 bottles of 14.2-kg in a year at below market price, was cut to Rs723 per 14.2-kg cylinder from Rs737.50. The reduction comes on back of a steep Rs86 per cylinder hike in rates from 1 March .That was the steepest hike in recent times and came on the back of Rs66.5 per cylinder increase effected from 1 February. Rates had been on the upswing since October, 2016. A non-subsidised LPG cylinder was priced at Rs466.50 in Delhi in September and had risen by Rs271 per bottle or 58% in six instalments. Oil firms, however, raised price of subsidised cooking gas by Rs5.57 to Rs440.5 per 14.2-kg cylinder. This hike came as the state-owned oil firms on previous two occasions—1 February and 1 March —did not effect any significant raise in prices in view of assembly elections in states like Uttar Pradesh. Prior to that, they had raised rates by nearly Rs2 per cylinder for eight months in line with government decision to cut subsidises through calibrated increases every month. Oil firms revise rates of ATF and cooking gas on 1st of every month based on oil price and foreign exchange rate in the preceding month.",Price of subsidised cooking gas raised by Rs5.57 to Rs440.5 per 14.2-kg cylinder,13:19,"Subsidised LPG cylinder price hiked by Rs5.57, ATF cut by 5%" +2017-04-03,"Atrauli: A dusty plastic sheet covers a large diesel generator in a corner of a petrol station in Atrauli, a village in Uttar Pradesh, a modest but telling sign of progress.The gas station used to shut at 7pm every day because the lights would often go off, and there was no way to know when they would come back on, said Sudhakar Singh, the manager. “The main power supply was very irregular, and operating the generator was expensive, so we could not afford to stay open beyond 7pm,” Singh told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, as motorbikes and trucks lined up for petrol and diesel.Last year, the pump got a connection to a solar mini-grid, a local power network not connected to the national grid, which guarantees six hours of electricity every day. The pump has since stayed open all night. “Now, our expenses are lower and we earn more because we can stay open all night. We have not used the generator once since we got the ... connection,” said Singh.Power paradoxAtrauli’s electricity revolution is a symbol of the energy paradox dogging India, one of the world’s fastest growing economies, where power cuts are rampant and per capita electricity consumption is about a third the global average.Fast-dropping costs for solar power, combined with plenty of sun and a huge need for electricity in a country where about 300 million people—a quarter of the population—are still without it means solar energy has huge potential in India.Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pledge to supply power to every citizen by 2019 and a surge in solar production, reaching remote villages remains a challenge, with distribution losses as high as 30% on antiquated lines, low tariffs and limited use.Most of those without electricity live in the 99% of villages the government deems to be electrified because at least 10% of households and public places have electricity. But at least half the electrified households do not get at least six hours of electricity a day.“While the grid has expanded and we generate enough power, distribution companies are not in a position to take that power, and are not interested in going into rural areas,” said Aruna Kumarankandath at the Centre for Science and Environment. “When the supply is so unreliable, people use it sparingly, making it an unattractive proposition to invest in,” said Kumarankandath, a renewable energy researcher.Lights, fans, actionThe situation is particularly dire in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state where only 37% of households are electrified, compared with 67% nationwide.Help has come from private mini-grids like the one in Atrauli operated by OMC Power, a company with 67 grids in the state. Renewable energy is key to India’s electrification plan, and mini-grids with a capacity of 10 to 500 kilowatts (KW) are playing an increasingly important role.“Mini-grids use the potential of untapped renewable energy and manage demand efficiently by generating power at the source of consumption,” said Kumarankandath.A base home package from OMC Power costs Rs110 a month and comes with a switchboard with an LED bulb and a socket for charging a mobile phone. Additional lights, fans and even a television can be added.A 50 KW solar grid with battery storage and a distribution reach of 5km can power small businesses, schools, two telecom towers and over 500 homes, said Sarraju N. Rao, chief technology officer at OMC Power. “There is enough demand in rural areas. If the supply is reliable and good, people are willing to pay more,” he said.Local jobsUttar Pradesh is the only state with a policy for mini-grids. It aims to power nearly 20 million households, about a tenth of its population. The state offers a 30% subsidy for these grids, which may also be powered by wind, biomass or water, and must guarantee at least eight hours of electricity to homes, and six hours for commercial needs.Importantly, the policy offers exit options when the areas have adequate grid supply: either the distribution company can receive energy from the mini-grids at an agreed tariff, or the project may be transferred to the distribution company.India’s ministry for renewable energy released a national draft policy for mini- and micro-grids last June.It aims to deploy at least 10,000 renewable energy projects in the next five years in “unserved and underserved parts of the country”, with an average capacity of 50 KW per project.The ambitious targets come at a time when renewable energy is at a turning point in India, as generating electricity from renewables costs nearly the same as from conventional sources.Coal still provides the lion’s share of energy, but as a signatory to the Paris Agreement on climate change, India is committed to ensuring at least 40% of its electricity will come from non-fossil-fuel sources by 2030.A 10-year blueprint predicts 57% of India’s electricity capacity will come from non-fossil sources by 2027. Solar energy is a particular focus and will contribute 100 gigawatts (GW) of the renewable energy capacity target of 175 GW by 2022.“Renewable energy-based mini-grids will boost small businesses, create local jobs and build economies. This will improve living standards in villages,” said Kumarankandath. “That in turn will ensure women’s empowerment, better health and education. There cannot be a better development agenda for the country,” she said.In Atrauli, OMC’s mini-grid is just off the main road, next to the telecom tower it also helps to power. OMC has 280 customers in Atrauli, 60% of them commercial, Rao said. One of OMC’s first customers in the village was Anita, a widowed mother of two, who didn’t have an electricity connection and used kerosene lamps for lighting in her shack. From one base package of a single light, Anita now has three lights, one each in her room, her son’s room and the kitchen. “Earlier, the children would have to go search for a light to study by. But now they study at home, and I can do housework even at night,” she said. “I would like to add a fan next.” Thomson Reuters Foundation","Renewable energy is key to India’s electrification plan, and mini-grids with a capacity of 10 to 500 KW are playing an increasingly important role",09:38,"In energy starved Indian villages, solar mini-grids light the way" +2017-03-21,"Mumbai: The government on Tuesday announced Madhabi Puri Buch as new whole time member of Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). This appointment also marks a departure from the regular practise of hiring Sebi board members, who typically were men coming from the public sector. This is the first time that a women and a person from private sector has been chosen for a key post with the market regulator. Buch, who is currently serving at the New Development Bank in Shanghai has been appointed for a period of three years, the department of personnel and training (DoPT) said in a notification. She has been appointed at a salary of Rs375,000 per month. While, under the corporate governance standards issued in 2015, Sebi had mandated one women to be a part of the board of a listed company, the same did not happen at the board of the regulator. Till now, the highest post occupied by women at the market regulator was the position of executive director. “Sebi or its board does not appoint its own board members, the board members of Sebi are appointed by the government,” former Sebi chairman, U.K. Sinha had said in an industry event in October. “But we have already taken up with the government that we must have at least one woman member on Sebi board although there is no such legal requirement. The Sebi Act does not prescribe it but as a good measure we have asked the government to do it,” he added.So far, members and chairman at Sebi were mainly appointed from public sector, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Administrative Services (IAS). Buch, a management graduate from Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad in a career spanning over 20 years has served at various roles in private banks. She started her career with ICICI Bank and went on to become the managing director and chief executive officer at ICICI Securities Ltd from February 2009 to May 2011. In 2011, she left for Singapore were she joined Greater Pacific Capital LLP. Buch is also founder-director of Agora Advisory Pvt Ltd.","Madhabi Puri Buch has been appointed as new whole time member of Sebi for a period of three years, says the department of personnel and training",21:46,Madhabi Puri Buch appointed as Sebi whole time member +2017-03-21,"New York: India is home to world’s fourth highest number of billionaires with Reliance Industries chief Mukesh Ambani leading the club of more than 100 super-rich Indians, according to a new list released by Forbes magazine. The Forbes list of the ‘World’s Billionaires’ 2017 consists of 2,043 of the richest people in the world who have a combined net worth of $7.67 trillion, a record 18% increase over the past year. The list has been topped by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for the fourth year in a row. He has been the richest person in the world for 18 out of the past 23 years. Gates has a fortune of $86 billion, up from $75 billion last year, followed by Berkshire Hathaway chief Warren Buffet with a new worth of $75.6 billion. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos added $27.6 billion to his fortune; now worth $72.8 billion, moving into the top three in the world for the first time, up from number five a year ago. US President Donald Trump is ranked 544th on the list with his net worth of $3.5 billion. India is home to 101 billionaires, the first time it has more than 100 super rich individuals. The US continues to have more billionaires than any other nation, with a record 565, up from 540 a year ago. China is catching up with 319, Germany has the third most with 114 and India has the fourth highest number of billionaires. Also Read| Patanjali’s Acharya Balkrishna enters Forbes rich list; Flipkart’s Bansals outThere are nearly 20 people of Indian-origin who have made fortunes in various nations across the world, led by UK-based Hinduja brothers ranked 64th with $15.4 billion net worth, Indian-born tycoon Pallonji Mistry, who controls the 152-year-old Mumbai-headquartered engineering giant Shapoorji Pallonji Group at the 77th spot with $14.3 billion net worth and petrochemicals major Indorama co-founder Sri Prakash Lohia at the 288th spot with $ 5.4 billion net worth. Mistry’s younger son Cyrus is embroiled in a legal battle with the Tata Group after he was suddenly ousted as chairman of Tata Sons, a position he had held since 2012.Ambani, 59, leads the pack of Indian billionaires, coming in at the 33rd position with a net worth of $23.2 billion. Forbes said the “oil and gas tycoon” sparked a price war in India’s hyper-competitive telecom market with the launch of 4G phone service Jio last September. His younger brother Anil is ranked 745th with a net worth of $2.7 billion. The younger Ambani sibling “orchestrated the merger of his Reliance Communication’s telecom business with that of rival Aircel, controlled by Malaysian billionaire Ananda Krishnan. The combine, which awaits regulatory approvals, will be the country’s fourth-largest mobile phone operator,” Forbes said. Next on the list of Indian billionaires is ArcelorMittal Next on the list of Indian billionaires is ArcelorMittal chairman and CEO Lakshmi Mittal on the 56th spot with a net worth of $16.4 billion. Forbes said the Indian steel baron regains his status as the world’s second richest Indian on an uptick in steel prices and demand. “The world’s biggest steelmaker also got a reprieve from import tariffs on steel imposed by the US and Europe and a one-time $832 million saving from a new labour contract signed last year with its US workers,” it added. The list includes only four women billionaires from India, led by Savitri Jindal and her family at the 303rd position with a net worth of $5.2 billion.Also Read| How much the richest 1% earn and spend“After declining last year, the fortune of steel and power clan, whose matriarch Savitri Jindal chairs the OP Jindal Group, rose as steel prices recovered,” Forbes said. Smita Crishna-Godrej from the Godrej clan is ranked 814th followed by Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (973) and Leena Tewari (1030), chair of USV India which specialises in diabetic and cardiovascular drugs. Also making the list is Wipro chairman Azim Premji (72), Adani group founder Gautam Adani (250), Bajaj Group chair Rahul Bajaj (544), investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala (939), Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy (1161), chairman emeritus of Dabur Vivek Chand Burman (1290), Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani (1290), Wockhardt chair Habil Khorakiwala (1567), Mahindra group chief Anand Mahindra (1567), property tycoons Niranjan and Surendra Hiranandani (tied at 1678) and Yes Bank head Rana Kapoor (1795).Founder of mobile wallet Paytm Vijay Shekhar Sharma is ranked 1567 with his net worth of $ 1.3 billion. Forbes said Paytm was “one of the biggest beneficiaries of the government’s decision to demonetise 86% of India’s rupees and move to a cashless economy”, notching up 200 million registered users and five million transactions daily. Making his debut on the list at 814th spot is Acharya Balkrishna, friend of yoga guru Baba Ramdev, who holds 97% stake in the fast-growing consumer goods firm Patanjali Ayurveda. His net worth is $2.5 billion.Forbes said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg moved up to number five for the first time, after his fortune rose $11.4 billion in 12 months. Meanwhile Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico, once the world’s richest man, fell to number six, the first time he’s been out of the top five in a dozen years. There were 195 newcomers.China had the most new ten-figure fortunes with 76. The US was second with 25. The list has 56 billionaires under age 40, down from 66 last year, after some aged out and others dropped below the $1-billion mark. Seventy-eight people fell off the list, including 33 from China, 7 Americans and 9 who are still super wealthy but share their wealth among extended family members and therefore are not eligible for these ranks. PTI","As per the Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires, Mukesh Ambani is again the richest Indian. The list consists of 2,043 of the richest people in the world ",10:49,Forbes list: Mukesh Ambani ahead of other 100 Indian billionaires +2017-03-21,"
New Delhi: As firms across the world go digital, job cuts are inevitable. How can employees ensure their job is secure? Jean-Marc Laouchez, global managing director (solutions) of US-based consulting firm Korn Ferry Hay Group Solutions, says employees will have to invest in gaining digital proficiency just as they would in learning a new language. Edited excerpts from an email interview:
Companies across sectors are trying to go digital. Do Indian firms have the know-how?Yes, most traditional organizations around the world are going digital. Some were born digital, others are just starting the journey. India Inc. is on the same continuum as elsewhere, with some Indian companies shaping the digital world while others “react” to digitization and focus on low-hanging fruits, such as e-commerce, automation or cost cuts.
Does digitization necessarily mean extensive job cuts?Korn Ferry research has identified five impacts of digitization with various degrees of risk and value creation: cost reduction, customer/employees experience, product/technology innovation, employees empowerment and networks activation, and new business models. The less digitally mature organizations see digitization as an extension of their current business: how to be more efficient and enhance clients’ and employees’ experience. More digitally mature organizations leverage their assets to develop new technologies, fundamentally rethink their relationships with clients and employees (e.g., active networks), and build disruptive business models. The development of Amazon.com from a low cost online bookstore to an open digital Web, logistics and retail marketplace illustrates these different stages, and how they radically impact the value of the company.
How can companies cut costs by destroying minimum jobs?Recruit or develop leaders with the mindset and skills to digitalize for higher value creation. Beyond the expected understanding of digital economics and business models, these digital leaders should have the influence and courage—risk-taking is a distinctive trait of successful digital leaders—to: •Invest in re-schooling /re-skilling their employees (e.g., assessment of potential, continuous development, emotional support),•Empower their front-line talent to identify and execute new solutions and businesses,•Enter into innovative and fair work and pay incentive arrangements (e.g., structured contingent workforce, individualized pay strategies).
Should companies have a re-skilling budget? What is the best way to estimate the cost?Yes. Even if the company is only looking for labour cost reduction, a number of employees with valuable “legacy” knowledge will have to be trained for the digital era. Korn Ferry is reinventing Hay Group Job Grading—an industry standard work measurement system—to better quantify the intangible (e.g., digital) value of work (e.g., know-how, problem solving, agility, relations, experience) beyond the tangible job accountability. The investment in re-skilling—or lack of—should be assessed against this additional intangible value. As an example, the “value of an employee” who is able to fully harness years of customers’ insight or specialized expertise in a digital context is often a “multiple of the value of a new employee” who has digital training but less relevant business experience. It is important to note that companies will often get into creative arrangements to reskill employees (e.g., provide an education account as a benefit). Increasingly, the employees themselves will have to anticipate and invest in their own digital proficiency, as they would do for learning a new language.
India is among the countries to jump onto the digital bandwagon. What can we learn from the Western countries?I am not sure that India is lagging behind other countries in terms of corporate digitization. I understand that Internet penetration is lower than in many countries. But India Inc., in a number of sectors (e.g., technology firms, BPO), is probably ahead. As per Rebuilt to Last—The Journey to Digital Sustainability—a recent Korn Ferry research white paper with some learning based on the analysis of our proprietary databases and on our observation of best practices, the best digital performers implement disruptive business models or new digital practices by developing five critical capabilities:•Discipline and focus•Agility—Agile leaders and organization is a must•Connectivity—both internal and external•Openness and transparency—probably one of the most difficult capabilities to develop as it challenges traditional command-and-control cultures •Empowerment and alignment
Which sectors will see job cuts due to digitization?On the short term, the sectors with repetitive physical work (e.g., manufacturing with robotization—already a mature trend) and repetitive intellectual work (e.g., services and decisions that can be performed through data and algorithms, with limited need for human experience and judgement). Digitization will also create new industries and jobs, providing attractive opportunities for the “reskilled digital worker”.
Most companies appoint marketing heads for digital initiatives, as you mentioned. Is that the right way to drive digital growth?Companies need leaders that will inspire and drive the digital transformation of their organizations. IT or marketing heads bring a lot of the capabilities required for such transformation. Strategy professionals, CFOs, COOs, HR professionals or front-line sales and delivery talent can also lead and bring new perspectives to create and execute digital businesses or activate digital partnerships and networks.Having the right leader is key, but the enabling ecosystem (like focused structure, digital learning culture, speed to market, analytics, partnerships) is as important, as legacy practices and infrastructure often inhibit digitization.","Even if the company is only looking for labour cost reduction, a number of employees with valuable ‘legacy’ knowledge will have to be trained for the digital era, says Jean-Marc Laouchez",03:18,Employees have to invest in their own digital proficiency: Jean-Marc Laouchez +2017-02-10,"Mumbai: Tata Power Co Ltd on Friday posted a 38.3% rise in consolidated net profit for the quarter ended 31 December, helped in part by a lower tax rate and expenses, and higher other income.Consolidated net profit rose to Rs599.20 crore in the third quarter from Rs433.25 crore a year earlier, the power producer said in a statement. Net sales fell about 8.7% to Rs6677.89 crore from Rs7312.88 crore a year earlier.Twelve analysts polled by Bloomberg expected a consolidated net profit of Rs375 crore, while 13 analysts expected net sales of Rs7672 crore.Tata Power said revenue in its largest power business rose 1.4% to Rs6,254.85 crore from Rs6,166.09 crore a year earlier. Other business revenue rose 32% to Rs807.51 crore from Rs611.78 crore a year earlier.Total expenses fell marginally to Rs5,812.69 crore from Rs5,841.16 crore a year earlier.Together with its subsidiaries, Tata Power generated 13022 million units of power from all its plants.In a separate filing, Tata Power said it appointed N. Chandrasekaran chairman and additional director effective 11 February.Chandrasekaran is chairman designate of Tata Sons Ltd and currently the chief executive and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services.",Tata Power’s consolidated net profit of rose to Rs599.20 crore in the third quarter from Rs433.25 crore a year earlier,23:42,Tata Power net profit jumps 38.3% in Q3 +2017-02-10,"New Delhi: State-owned gas utility Gail India Ltd on Friday reported a 46% rise in its third quarter net profit on back of turnaround in petrochemical business. Net profit of Rs983 crore in the October-December quarter of the current fiscal was higher than Rs676 crore in the same period of 2015-16, Gail said in a statement. The rise in net profit was “buoyed by a turnaround in petrochemicals segment and increase in profitability of liquid hydrocarbons segment”, Gail said. The company also registered growth in physical performance in all segments—petrochemical sales were up by 8%, liquid hydrocarbon by 4% and natural gas marketing and transmission volumes were up by 3% and 2%, respectively. During April-December period of 2016-17, Gail’s net profit was up 133% to Rs3,243 crore.",Gail India reported a 46% rise in its third quarter net profit at Rs983 crore on back of turnaround in petrochemical business,23:42,Gail Q3 profit up 46% at Rs983 crore +2017-03-21,"New York: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates once again topped the Forbes magazine list of the world’s richest billionaires, while US President Donald Trump slipped more than 200 spots, the magazine said on Monday.Gates, whose wealth is estimated at $86 billion, led the list for the fourth straight year.He was followed by Berkshire Hathaway chief Warren Buffett among the top 10 billionaires, a group heavily dominated by Americans, many of whom work in the technology sector. Buffett’s wealth was estimated at $75.6 billion.Others in the top 10 included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at number three, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg at number five and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison at number seven.The global billionaire population jumped 13% from last year to 2,043, the biggest annual increase in the 31 years since the magazine began compiling the list, Forbes said.The US led countries with the most billionaires with 565, a product of the swelling value of the American stock market since Trump’s November 2016 election.China was second with 319 billionaires, and Germany was third with 114.Trump himself slipped 220 spots on the list to number 544 with an estimated $3.5 billion. Forbes attributed Trump’s drop to sluggishness in the Manhattan real estate market which is responsible for a disproportionate amount of his wealth.“Forty percent of Donald Trump’s fortune is tied up in Trump Tower and eight buildings within one mile of it,” Forbes said. “Lately, the neighbourhood has been struggling (relatively speaking).”Among others in the Forbes top 10, Amancio Ortega of Spanish apparel chain Zara was fourth, Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim was sixth, the Koch brothers, Charles and David, were eighth and ninth and former New York City mayor and Bloomberg News founder Michael Bloomberg was 10th.This year it took at least $3.7 billion in wealth to make it onto the list, but only in a tie for 501th place, a group that included Hollywood director Steven Spielberg.",Donald Trump slipped to the 544th rank on the Forbes rich list with an estimated fortune of $3.5 billion as Bill Gates remained the world’s richest man ,03:28,Donald Trump slips 220 places in Forbes rich list as Bill Gates tops rankings again +2017-02-11,"
A few quarters ago, a press conference on the financial results of State Bank of India (SBI) paused comically after a chunk of plaster fell on the stage from above. Smirks in the audience indicated they had taken this as a metaphor for the deteriorating bad loan situation. Stretching that metaphor, can we say SBI’s book is on the mend like the auditorium—the venue for that conference—that is under renovation now?On the face of it, the numbers for the third quarter resemble a chess board as for every positive metric, there is a negative one. The largest lender’s slippages remained around Rs10,000 crore, unlike many of its peers, which showed a decrease. But upgrades surged, indicating stress has eased. Note that this improvement is despite the demonetisation blow to the asset side. Of course, the bad loan ratios, both gross and net, rose simply because of the measly 4.2% loan growth.But for ugly bad loan ratios, two heartening numbers are the sequential reduction in stressed assets ratio (which is gross bad loans plus restructured standard assets) to 9.54% and a fall in credit costs to 1.92%. Further, more than 70% of slippages are from the watchlist that SBI put out in March, which means the lender has got its diagnosis right on toxic assets. The list itself is down 31% to Rs17,992 crore, which represents just 2.66% of the total corporate loan book.The management’s outlook for its asset book is anything but sanguine and the stock movement this year suggests even investors have not abandoned caution. SBI shares have risen 12% this year; but so have the benchmark indices. Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairman of the bank, hopes loan disbursals will grow 6.5% in 2016-17. The loan growth for FY18 is pegged at 11% and that, too, on the base effect, given this year’s limited growth.Bhattacharya also pointed out that demonetisation has set the bank back by a quarter in mending its bad loans. Its mid-corporate and small and micro enterprise customers were the worst hit by the currency withdrawal, and bad loan ratios rose sharply. Moreover, as Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd points out, SBI used the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) special dispensation to classify loans worth Rs2,000 crore as standard in the wake of demonetisation.Ignore the one-time relief and SBI’s already formidable stock of bad loans at Rs1.08 trillion would have increased further. The bank highlighted that fresh loans disbursed by it are to corporate entities having a rating above ‘A’ and that a slow but sure pick-up in economic activity would eventually translate into higher credit growth. But for FY17, asset quality will look nasty, and the only saviour for the stock is that it currently trades at 1.27 times the estimated book value of FY18 earnings, which is cheap.","But for ugly bad loan ratios, two heartening numbers at SBI are the sequential reduction in stressed assets ratio to 9.54% and a fall in credit costs to 1.92%",02:32,December quarter results indicate SBI limping back to normalcy +2017-02-10,"Mumbai: Bank of Baroda (BOB) Ltd on Friday reported a net profit for the December quarter helped by an increase in net interest income and other income.Net profit for the third quarter stood at Rs252.67 crore compared with a loss of Rs3,342.04 crore a year earlier. According to estimates of 20 Bloomberg analysts, BOB was expected to post a net profit of Rs636.50 crore.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 15.85% to Rs3,134.36 crore in the December quarter from Rs2,705.34 crore last year.Other income increased by 60% to Rs1,774.96 crore in the third quarter from Rs1,112.91 crore in the same period last year.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) at BOB decreased marginally to Rs42,642.40 crore at the end of the December quarter from Rs42,949.25 crore in the September quarter. As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were 11.40% at the end of the December quarter compared with 11.35% in the previous quarter and 9.68% a year ago.Provisions and contingencies increased 15.79% to Rs2,079.50 crore in the third quarter from Rs1,795.84 crore from the previous quarter. Net NPAs rose to 5.43% in the December quarter, compared with 5.46% in the previous quarter and 5.67% a year earlier.The results were announced after market close.On Friday, BoB shares closed up 2% at Rs188.05 on the BSE, while India’s benchmark Sensex Index rose 0.02% to closed at 28334.25 points.","Bank of Baroda’s net profit for the third quarter stood at Rs252.67 crore compared with a loss of Rs3,342.04 crore a year earlier",22:18,Bank of Baroda reports a net profit of Rs253 crore in Q3 +2017-02-10,"Mumbai: Wind turbine maker Suzlon Energy Ltd on Friday reported a profit for the quarter ended 31 December, compared with a year-earlier loss.Consolidated net profit was Rs274.34 crore compared with a net loss of Rs121.84 crore in the year-ago period.Revenue rose about 57℅ to Rs3,311.38 crore from Rs1,884.64 crore a year earlier.Revenue in its largest wind turbine generator business rose to Rs2,837.59 crore from Rs1,436.07 crore a year earlier. Revenue in the foundry and forging business rose and in the operation and maintenance (O&M) business fell.“Wind energy in India delivered highest installation of over 3,400 MW (megawatt) in FY16 and is expected to grow beyond that in FY17,” the company said in a statement.Suzlon’s consolidated net term debt (excluding foreign currency convertible bonds) stood at Rs6,538 crore while its order book stood at 1,231MW, valued at Rs7,523 crore.Suzlon said during the quarter it reached 10,000 MW of installed capacity, making it the largest renewable energy company in India.“The domestic market is likely to grow in size, mainly due to the State Feed in Tariff (FIT) programs, Inter State Transmission System (ISTS) with non-windy states, and the demand to meet the Renewable Purchase Obligations (RPO). The competitive bidding process held recently will drive volume growth in the industry,” said J.P. Chalasani, group CEO, Suzlon.",Suzlon’s consolidated net profit was Rs274.34 crore compared with a net loss of Rs121.84 crore in the year-ago period,23:13,Suzlon posts net profit of Rs274.34 crore in third quarter +2017-02-10,"New Delhi: Broadcaster New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV) on Friday said consolidated net loss widened to Rs18 crore in the quarter ended 31 December from Rs13 crore in the year-ago period, primarily due to a dip in TV advertising revenue following demonetisation.The company, which operates NDTV 24X7, NDTV Prime, NDTV India and NDTV Good Times channels, reported a drop in revenue to Rs133 crore in the quarter from Rs150 crore a year ago.The company’s television news business generated revenue of Rs108 crore, down from Rs130 crore in the same period last year.The company led by Prannoy Roy said it had initiated steps to rationalize costs and increase productivity with the aim of improving overall efficiency of operations.The company said its flagship website ndtv.com crossed over 90 million monthly unique visitors in the December quarter.",NDTV’s consolidated net loss widened to Rs18 crore in the quarter ended 31 December from Rs13 crore in the year-ago period,23:06,NDTV net loss widens due to impact of demonetisation +2017-02-10,"New Delhi: Reliance Capital on Friday reported a consolidated net profit of Rs209 crore for the third quarter of the current fiscal, a drop of 11% from the year-ago period, as it made provisions to beef up reserves in general insurance business. However, the company’s total income increased to Rs 3,964 crore in the October-December quarter of the current fiscal, from Rs2,353 crore in the year-ago period, Reliance Capital said in a statement. The firm has set aside Rs43 crore for Reliance General Insurance. Excluding this amount, Reliance Capital’s third quarter profit rose 8% to Rs252 crore. As on 31 December 2016, the company’s net worth stood at Rs16,149 crore, a surge of 10% from the same period last fiscal. Reliance Mutual Fund’s profit before tax stood at Rs152 crore in the third quarter of the current fiscal, a growth of 8% from year-ago period. Reliance Commercial Finance reported a 2% growth in profit before tax at Rs80 crore, while the profit before tax of Reliance Home Finance too climbed 3% to Rs35 crore and Reliance General Insurance registered an increase of 20% in its profit to Rs18 crore. The company’s broking and distribution business profit stood at Rs14 crore in the October-December quarter, 2016-17 as against marginal profits in the corresponding previous period. Reliance Capital, a part of the Reliance Group, is one of country’s leading private sector financial services companies. The Group has a presence across financial services, telecom, energy, power, infrastructure and defence. Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.","Reliance Capital reported a consolidated net profit of Rs209 crore for the third quarter of the current fiscal, a drop of 11% from the year-ago period",23:41,Reliance Capital Q3 profit drops 11% to Rs209 crore +2017-02-10,"New Delhi: Pharmaceuticals firm Alkem Laboratories on Friday reported 24.89% increase in consolidated net profit at Rs233.4 crore for the third quarter ended 31 December 2016.The company had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs186.89 crore in the same quarter last fiscal, Alkem Laboratories said in a BSE filing.Total income from operations during the period under review stood at Rs 1,481.92 crore as against Rs1,287.84 crore in the same quarter last fiscal, up 15%. Total expenses during the third quarter were higher at Rs1,240.17 crore as against Rs 1,074.74% in the year ago period.Shares of Alkem Laboratories were trading at Rs1,811 apiece in the afternoon trade, up 0.03% from the previous close on the BSE.","Alkem Laboratories total income from operations during third quarter stood at Rs 1,481.92 crore as against Rs1,287.84 crore in the same quarter last fiscal, up 15%",14:53,Alkem Laboratories Q3 profit rises 24.89% at Rs233 crore +2017-02-10,"New Delhi: Shares of Steel authority of India Limited (Sail) tumbled 6% on Friday after the company reported a standalone net loss of Rs794.8 crore for the third quarter ended 31 December 2016. The stock tanked 5.99% to end at Rs61.95 on BSE. During the day, it plunged 6.60% to Rs61.55. On NSE, it lost 6% to settle at Rs61.90. Even though the company’s net loss narrowed in the quarter ended December, it failed to lift investors sentiment. On the volume front, 14.36 lakh shares of the company were traded on BSE and over one crore shares changed hands at NSE during the day. India’s largest steelmaker Sail’s standalone net loss narrowed to Rs794.8 crore for the quarter ended 31 December 2016, helped by higher gross sales. The company’s standalone net loss in the corresponding quarter of previous fiscal stood at Rs1,481 crore, Steel Authority of India Ltd (Sail) said in a BSE filing on Thursday. Sail’s gross sales on standalone basis in the October-December quarter was at Rs12,490 crore, registering an increase of 25.8% from year-ago period.",Steel Authority of India’s (Sail) shares fell 6% after it reported a net loss of Rs794.8 crore for the third quarter ended 31 December ,16:54,SAIL shares tank 6% after Q3 earnings +2017-02-10,"London: ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steelmaker, reported a 20% increase in annual profit on rising steel and iron ore prices, and forecast higher demand this year.The company decided not to reinstate its dividend and stopped providing earnings guidance.Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) rose to $6.26 billion last year, the Luxembourg-based company said in a statement Friday. The figure beat the $6.14 billion average of 18 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Ebitda in the fourth quarter was $1.66 billion, 51% higher than a year ago.Steelmakers’ earnings have been bolstered by a rally in prices as Chinese stimulus stabilized the economy and policy makers around the world pledged to back growth. European steel prices surged 82% last year, while benchmark rates for iron ore and coking coal, which ArcelorMittal also mines, almost doubled and tripled, respectively.ArcelorMittal has also benefited from increased efforts to protect US and European markets from record Chinese exports that producers have argued are at unfairly low prices. The company estimates that global steel consumption will rise 0.5% to 1.5% this year.The company decided not to reinstate its dividend, preferring instead to pay down debt in an effort to return to an investment-grade credit rating. Net debt decreased by $4.6 billion to $11.1 billion at year-end, the company said.“EBITDA was comfortably in excess of initial expectations and, furthermore, we have delivered on our commitment to prioritize debt reduction, significantly strengthening our balance sheet and ending the year with the lowest level of net debt since the creation of the company,” chief executive officer Lakshmi Mittal said in the statement.The shares settled at 7.518 euros on Thursday and have more than tripled in the past year. Bloomberg",ArcelorMittal decided not to reinstate its dividend and stopped providing earnings guidance,13:58,"ArcelorMittal profit jumps 20% as steel, iron prices rally" +2017-04-05,"San Francisco: Apple Inc’s decision to stop licensing graphics chips from Imagination Technologies Group Plc is the clearest example yet of the iPhone maker’s determination to take greater control of the core technologies in its products—both to guard its hefty margins and to position it for future innovations, especially in so-called augmented reality.The strategy, analysts say, has already reduced Apple’s dependence on critical outside suppliers like ARM Holdings Plc, now owned by SoftBank Group Corp. Apple once relied heavily on ARM to design the main processor for the iPhone, but it now licenses only the basic ARM architecture and designs most of the chip itself.More recently, when Apple bought the headphone company Beats Electronics, part of a $3 billion deal in 2014, it ripped out the existing, off-the-shelf communications chips and replaced them with its own custom-designed W1 Bluetooth chip.“Apple clearly got rid of all the conventional suppliers and replaced about five chips with one,” said Jim Morrison, vice president of TechInsights, a firm that examines the chips inside electronics devices. “Today we do much more in-house development of fundamental technologies than we used to,” Apple chief financial officer Luca Maestri said at a February conference. “Think of the work we do on processors or sensors. We can push the envelope on innovation. We have better control over timing, over cost and over quality.”Most vendors of consumer electronics products rely on outside suppliers for chip design and development, primarily because it is extremely expensive. That has created huge opportunities for companies like ARM, Qualcomm Inc. and Nvidia Corp, which have developed core technologies for processing, communications and graphics that are used by scores of vendors.Now, though, Apple is so big that it can economically create its own designs, or license small pieces of others’ work and build on it. As with ARM and Qualcomm, the actual manufacturing of the chips is still contracted out to a semiconductor foundry, such as those run by Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd.Move fast, save money Bringing more of the design work in-house cuts complexity, people familiar with the processes say. Instead of managing one or more design teams and then a fabricator, Apple has only to manage the fabricator.It may also help the company move faster—and save money—as it focuses on new technologies such as virtual and augmented reality. Apple CEO Tim Cook has indicated that Apple plans to integrate augmented reality into its products, which makes 3-D sensors and graphics chips like Imagination’s especially important.Even before formally cutting off Imagination, Apple had given hints that it was preparing to design its own graphics processors. Specifically, it introduced a piece of its own code called Metal for app developers. App developers use Metal to make their apps talk to the graphics chip on the iPhone.By putting a piece of Apple-designed code between app developers and the phone’s chip, Apple has made it possible to swap out the chip without interrupting how the developers work. That could also make it easier to bridge the gap for developers between the graphics chips on Apple’s phones and its desktop computers, which currently require some separate coding.“By promoting Metal instead of relying on other existing standards, Apple is not only able to control what graphics chip functionality is exposed at its own pace, but also blur the line for developers between coding for desktop and mobile GPUs,” said Pius Uzamere, the founder of a virtual reality startup called Ether.Taking control of the iPhone’s chips can also help Apple keep costs down, which is especially important as it gears up for a feature-laden new iPhone this fall. Timothy Arcuri of Cowen & Co said in a research note that he thinks the curved screens expected on the new phone could add as much as $50 in cost, for example. Shebly Seyrafi, an analyst at FBN Securities, estimates that the average price of an iPhone increased only 1% to $695 last quarter, while costs increased 8% to $420, resulting in an iPhone gross margin of 39.6%. That is down from the 44% average gross margin for iPhones in 2015, according to Seyrafi’s estimates.Apple spends only $75 million a year on licensing fees for Imagination’s chips. But licensing fees to chip designers, taken together, are a significant cost for the iPhone. Apple recently sued Qualcomm for $1 billion over licensing terms for its communications chips—which Apple would have trouble designing in-house because of patent issues. Reuters",Apple’s decision to stop licensing graphics chips from Imagination Technologies is the clearest example yet of its determination to take greater control of core technologies,10:07,"Apple aims for more control, less cost as it accelerates in chip design" +2017-04-05,"
San Francisco: A former Google engineer at the centre of a fight over self-driving car technology made more than $120 million, according to a legal filing on Monday, highlighting the intense competition among tech companies and carmakers for talent in the nascent sector.The autonomous vehicle unit, now called Waymo, claimed in an arbitration demand against the former employee, Anthony Levandowski, that he breached his contract by recruiting from its ranks for his rival company, Otto,—while collecting more than $120 million in incentive payments from the search giant.Waymo and Levandowski’s current employer Uber Technologies Inc. are locked in a contentious legal battle over autonomous vehicle technology. The ride-hailing company is trying to persuade a court that Waymo’s February lawsuit should be resolved in private arbitration. Waymo had earlier filed an arbitration action against Levandowski.Google’s self-driving car project had initially structured its compensation to create specific incentives for the robotics engineers working on the futuristic technology. As the project progressed and evolved into a potential business capable of upending transportation, several early team members got huge payments, as Bloomberg News earlier reported.Uber and Waymo representatives declined to comment on Monday, and Levandowski didn’t respond to a request for comment.Google also alleged that, in addition to Otto, Levandowski helped found two other companies developing laser-based sensor technology that ran afoul of his non-compete agreement with the search giant. Odin Wave LLC and Tyto Lidar LLC were merged by February 2014 and Levandowski had been involved in Odin Wave since at least the previous year, when he was also developing competing technology for Google, according to the legal filing.Google at one stage investigated acquiring the merged company, which was run under the Tyto moniker, and Levandowski took part in that process without disclosing any role at the company, Google said. By May 2016, Tyto had been folded into Otto.","Waymo claimed in an arbitration demand against Anthony Levandowski that he breached his contract by recruiting from its ranks for his rival company, Otto",01:11,Former Google self-driving car engineer made over $120 million +2017-04-05,"
Infosys Ltd’s chief executive officer (CEO) Vishal Sikka is assured of $10 million in annual compensation, irrespective of the company’s performance, because a clause in his employment contract makes him eligible to earn at least 90% of his total $11 million salary.
Infosys doesn’t deny the existence of the clause, although it doesn’t explain how this fits in with the company’s disclosure to BSE on 24 February last year that Sikka’s compensation could fall to $3 million in 2016-17 if Infosys’s growth fails to meet the internal targets set by the board.
Of Sikka’s $11 million compensation, $8 million is variable pay, the component based on Infosys’s performance. Infosys has not disclosed the annual targets upon completion of which Sikka stands to get full variable salary.
Also read: Infosys compensation row: Of executives, programmers and fairness
According to his employment contract, Sikka, if need be, can use a so-called “good reason” clause to terminate his existing employment agreement with Infosys, if his annual compensation of $11 million falls by more than 10%.
Effectively, what this means is that Infosys is beholden to pay him at least $10 million if it wants to retain him as CEO.
To be sure, he can choose not to use the clause—which means he can, if he wants to, accept a $3 million salary—but the existence of this clause does put him on a strong footing.
“Good reason”, in the employment contract, is defined as “Executive’s resignation within 30 days... following the occurrence of one or more of the following, without executive’s express written consent: a material reduction (with 10% reduction deemed to be material) in executive’s aggregate target compensation comprised of base pay, target variable pay and target value of stock compensation (except, where there is a substantially similar reduction applicable to senior executives generally, provided that such reduction does not exceed 10%).”
Also read: Forget compassionate capitalism, just some fairness will do
Infosys filed a copy of this employment agreement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on 18 May last year. By then, shareholders had already given their nod to Sikka’s higher compensation, making at least one proxy advisory firm question whether “Infosys deliberately did not share complete information”.
“In light of the fact that there is asymmetry of information in the information provided in the notice that was sent to Indian shareholders when an approval was sought and in the SEC disclosure, this is bad corporate governance,” said Shriram Subramanian, founder and managing director of proxy firm InGovern Research.
An Infosys spokesperson said the clause was also part of an earlier agreement with Sikka that was filed with the SEC on 20 May 2015.
“Your interpretation of the clause in the CEO’s contract is completely wrong,” the spokesperson said in response to emailed queries from Mint if Sikka’s minimum salary is $10 million on account of the “good reason” clause. The spokesperson refused to elaborate.
“We have publicly addressed questions on the CEO’s contract and we stand by that,” the spokesperson said. The spokesperson maintained that Sikka’s salary was variable. “As stated before, the nominations and remuneration committee (NRC) will evaluate the CEO’s variable compensation at the end of the fiscal year based on the company’s performance. Dr. Sikka’s compensation is linked to the company’s aspirational goal to achieve $20 billion in revenues by March 2021,” the spokesperson added.
A lack of clarity on Sikka’s $11 million salary was one reason for the souring of the relationship between the founder-promoters, led by N.R. Narayana Murthy, and the company’s board, Mint reported on 10 February.
A majority of the promoters also did not vote for a resolution seeking a salary increase for chief operating officer U.B. Pravin Rao. According to filings by Infosys with stock exchanges, only 24% of promoter votes were cast in favour of the resolution seeking a 35% raise in Rao’s compensation to Rs12.5 crore. The remaining abstained.
On Sunday, in response to a questionnaire from Mint, Murthy said that the promoters believe the pay increase was “not proper” as the increase is a lot higher than what was awarded to rank-and-file employees. “Every senior management person of an Indian corporation has to show self-restraint in his or her compensation. This is necessary if we have to make compassionate capitalism acceptable to a majority of Indians who are poor,” said Murthy in an email. Infosys, in its defence on Monday, said that the increase in salary to its senior leaders is in line with global standards, and followed a comprehensive survey of best practices and benchmarked senior management compensation with key Indian and global companies.",A clause in Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka’s contract lets him terminate his employment if his annual compensation falls by more than 10%,14:56,Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka guaranteed 90% of $11 million salary +2017-04-05,"Bangalore: Xiaomi Corp. says it’s misunderstood. Once compared with Apple Inc. for its sleek smartphones and charismatic leadership, the Chinese start-up is seeking an image makeover as it tries to recover from a sales-growth slide.And the brand its billionaire co-founder Lei Jun wants to be compared with: Costco Wholesale Corp., the Issaquah, Washington-based warehouse retailer that sells everything from wine and diamond rings to bulging boxes of cereal and fruit at knockdown prices. Xiaomi’s revenue will probably reach $15 billion this year as the Beijing-based maker of products ranging from pens and air purifiers to TVs and smartphones adopts a new business model and fine-tunes operations, Lei, 47, said in a recent interview.“We are not Apple,” Lei, clad in a black polo shirt and blue jeans, said at Xiaomi’s Bengaluru office in India, its biggest overseas market. “We have the same value system as Costco. We want users to enjoy better products at an affordable price.”While Apple commands premium prices and enjoys the highest margins in the brutally competitive $425 billion global smartphone industry, Costco sells merchandise at razor-thin profits while fuelling earnings from its 35 million annual memberships. As Xiaomi embraces a new strategy to fuel growth, Lei’s goal is to pull in more revenue from apps and services, which delivered $1 billion in sales from 10 million-plus monthly active users last year.It’s a far different strategy than the one it used to claim the top spot among China’s smartphone makers and a valuation of $45 billion that made it, briefly, the most valuable startup in the world. Instead of the online flash sales and inexpensively-sourced components that it used to disrupt the mobile industry, Lei wants to bring internet-inspired efficiency to offline commerce. He’s also turning to India to revive Xiaomi’s fortunes as China grows more competitive.‘Make history’Here, 20-something workers in denim jeans and T-shirts huddle in groups or sit behind shiny white desks separated by foot-high red, yellow and green partitions. Exposed-brick support columns and tube lights suspended below bare pipes and air-conditioning ducts make the office feel more like it’s inside a Brooklyn loft than an industrial park.Dozens of circular mobiles swing from the lights, with phrases encouraging staff to “Let’s make history together.” A scattering of motivational cartoons sketched on whiteboards promote Xiaomi’s aims and achievements. Now six years old, Xiaomi’s meteoric rise has been usurped in recent quarters by competitors replicating— and succeeding at—the very model that enabled it to vault ahead of Apple and Samsung Electronics Co. in its home market.The risk for Xiaomi in India is that it will go the same way as China: toppled by rival brands such as Oppo, Huawei and Vivo.Tarun Pathak, associate director at Counterpoint Research, said Xiaomi is taking a risky approach. The company’s rivals have been able to sell the same number of phones in India, even though their products cost as much as three times more. As Xiaomi seeks to expand sales volumes, it will have to sell more of its high-end models. “Their margins are thin and when they go offline, their expenses will shoot up,” he said.Modi meetingDuring his third visit to India—a week-long trip that included a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi—Lei summoned a town hall-style staff meeting to rally a team he praised for making Xiaomi the No. 1 online-selling smartphone company in the country the past two quarters. Their goal now, he said, was to cement that position in the next three to five years.In India, “incomes are low and everyone wants good products,” Lei said in a glass-walled conference room, flanked by several of his top executives. Lei is trying to reignite the buzz in the offline or “new retail” market, he said. “Everyone realizes the online market is very limited.”In China, Xiaomi accounts for only a 10th of total smartphone sales, Lei estimates, leaving bigger opportunities in the traditional bricks-and-mortar approach. Lei aims to have 1,000 so-called MiHome retail stores with sales topping $10 billion annually in next three years, he said. MiHome stores will offer just two dozen Xiaomi products, according to Lei. Pointing to a single line of $1 apiece writing pens, two types of air purifiers, and three kinds of smartphones, he says he envisages selling no more than 100 product types in coming years, versus the hundreds, or even thousands of stock-keeping units maintained by some manufacturers.New beginning?“Our toughest times have passed starting this year, and our main strategy now is to bring the internet way of thinking to offline in China,” Lei said. The plan is to integrate multiple links in offline commerce and avoid the bottlenecks that can occur as products move along the supply chain through manufacturing and repair to logistics and sales.But even the “new retail” strategy risks being copied. Lei spoke publicly about it one morning and the head of an e-retailing behemoth used the same term hours later, he said. Competitors have in the past paid the ultimate price of copying Xiaomi’s approach, Lei said, declining to give names. “One company lost $1 billion last year, maybe even more,” he said. “Game over.”Microsoft rivalLei’s ideas were shaped by past ventures. He previously ran Kingsoft Corp., a software maker that competes with Microsoft Corp.’s enterprise software sales in China, and his e-commerce company Joyo.com was acquired by Amazon.com Inc. and renamed Amazon China. Lei is convinced his retail plan will revive the growth prospects that helped earn Xiaomi its lofty valuation.Sales began to stagnate in 2015 and shipments plummeted in China last year, with the company refusing to release 2016 numbers. In January, former international head Hugo Barra left for Facebook Inc., raising questions about Xiaomi’s ability to navigate its way through what Lei had described as “unforgettable” challenges.In India last week, Lei insisted that revenue never slowed during the past two years, and that “Xiaomi has resumed rapid growth.” Suggestions that the company’s value had sunk to $4 billion “hurt us a lot,” he said, refusing to be drawn into a discussion on its current value.“It was never as bad as it was made out to be,” he said. “Our investors are not worried. I have explained to them clearly. And to our users, we say, ‘It takes 10 to 15 years. We need time. Trust Mr. Lei.’”Enough cashThere is no pressure on cash flow and no need to raise funds, he said, adding: “We have more than enough cash.” Lei declined to comment on whether Xiaomi has any immediate plan for an initial public offering. Right now, he’s focusing on India, including the potential to open physical stores in the nation with the world’s largest youth population.Xiaomi is planning a third factory in India, where Lei says he’s prepared to take more risks, including doubling investments to $1 billion over the next few years.“In the next two years, we want more and more influence in India,” Lei said. How he will do that plays on his mind constantly he says, as he reaches for a black backpack and fishes for one of 10 phones inside.“I keep thinking about how to perfect my products,” Lei says, clutching a phone with a metallic, pale blue finish. “For instance, how come Indians don’t like this ‘Tiffany blue’ colored phone?”That’s just one of many things that perplexes Lei about the India market. But he’s determined to figure it out: “This is what keeps me awake at night.” Bloomberg","Once compared with Apple for its sleek smartphones and charismatic leadership, Xiaomi is seeking an image makeover as it tries to recover from a sales growth slide",09:34,"Forget Apple, Xiaomi CEO now wants to be more like Costco" +2017-04-04,"New Delhi: Handset maker Motorola on Tuesday launched the fifth generation of its best-selling Moto G series —- Moto G5 — in the Indian market for Rs11,999.The company had launched the higher-end Moto G5 Plus last month in India. The Moto G5 — which will be available on Amazon.in — features a full metal design, faster processor and better camera functionality. The device will compete with handsets from Xiaomi, Micromax as well as those from the stable of its parent Lenovo.“Moto G is our biggest franchise and the fastest selling as well. We had launched the Moto G5 Plus a few weeks back and now we are bringing the Moto G5. India is an important market and we want to offer the best from our portfolio to consumers here,” Motorola Mobility India managing director Sudhin Mathur told reporters in New Delhi. Over 6 million units of the Moto G (first four generations) have been sold in India so far. The Android Nougat-based Moto G5 features a 5-inch display, 1.4Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon octa-core processor, 3GB RAM, internal storage of 16GB (expandable up to 128GB), 13MP rear and 5MP front cameras and 2,800 mAh battery. At the end of 2016, Lenovo and Motorola had 8.9% share of the Indian smartphone market, as per research firm IDC.The Indian smartphone market has seen a significant shift in the last few quarters with homegrown brands being pushed out of the top five positions by Chinese firms like Lenovo, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo.","Android Nougat-based Moto G5 features a 5-inch display, 1.4Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon octa-core processor, 3GB RAM, internal storage of 16GB (expandable up to 128GB)",18:58,"Motorola launches Moto G5 in India for Rs11,999" +2017-04-04,"San Francisco: Cohesity Inc., a startup that specializes in data storage, landed funding that valued the company at more than $500 million, according to a person familiar with the matter, giving it fresh resources to bolster growth.GV—the venture capital arm of Google parent Alphabet Inc.—and Sequoia Capital co-led an investment round of more than $90 million. That’s the third major funding round for Cohesity, bringing the total investments in the company to more than $160 million. The new infusion will help the startup expand internationally while also improving its lineup with more engineers, according to Mohit Aron, chief executive officer and founder.Cohesity is expanding its reach to attract more businesses looking for new ways to handle the growing reams of data being produced every day. While the company doesn’t disclose sales, the startup said it has been roughly doubling the number of customers every quarter. Its products became publicly available in late 2015.Cohesity is targeting the “secondary” part of the storage industry that takes care of data that needs to be available for projects that might include analytics—but not necessarily at the highest speeds. This storage, which also aims to reduce complexity, is offered via gear that looks like flat boxes and includes computing and networking capabilities, often referred to as hyperconverged products. The startup also has agreements to let its technology work with major cloud providers Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. “There’s a lot of market demand,” said Bill Coughran, a partner at Sequoia Capital and a Cohesity board member.GV participated in an earlier funding round and Sequoia co-led Cohesity’s initial funding. New participants included Cisco Systems Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and Foundation Capital. Among the other investors are Accel, Battery Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures.Aron declined to comment on the funding round’s valuation. He founded Cohesity in 2013 and previously was a co-founder of Nutanix Inc., another storage company, which went public last year and now has valuation of about $2.6 billion. He said the funding announced Tuesday will help the startup as it attracts corporate customers, which include Shutterstock and Ultimate Software.“We’re seeing this big uptake,” Aron said. The funding “means that I can kind of press on the gas a little bit.” Bloomberg","This is the third major funding round for Cohesity, bringing the total investments in the company to more than $160 million",20:59,Storage startup Cohesity Inc. said to attract valuation of over $500 million +2017-04-04,"
Early in the morning of Monday, 3 April, serendipity sat me next to N.R. Narayana Murthy on a long transcontinental flight leaving Bengaluru. As the flight attendants handed out newspapers for the passengers to read while on the journey, I couldn’t help but notice that Murthy had made front-page news, this time for questioning the extent of the raise given to an executive at Infosys Ltd, the company that he founded over three decades ago along with a few of his junior colleagues. I turned to him and we began a conversation. I shall not focus here on the specific comments about Infosys, but there were several parts of the conversation that covered Murthy’s philosophy around topics that I have written about in this column before, and which provide insights into the character of the man. Unsurprisingly, we spoke of the social issues being caused by the changes in the way corporations recruit and retain talent. We spoke of organizations such as TopCoder, now part of an Indian IT services firm after the acquisition of its parent by Wipro. TopCoder is a marketplace for computer programmers, who can get compensated for their work through this marketplace without ever having to be an employee of a services firm. It is like a taxi aggregator among programming firms. I have written in this column before about how marketplaces like these can eventually change the construct of the employer-employee contract now prevalent among many firms and have also mused about whether unionization may be around the corner at some Indian IT services firms as the employer-employee relationship construct begins to disintegrate.Murthy explained that there are circumstances where unions can play a pivotal role in ensuring equity. He said the fact that unions look out for employees’ welfare is inescapable, and proffered the example of the US. According to him, when unionization covered 35% of the American workforce, American labour was better looked after. Now that this figure has slipped to around 15%, the poor have become poorer as corporations and their leaders have followed an Ayn-Rand-esque view of “rational self-interest” and social Darwinism. Pushing crumbs off one’s table and trusting that the aspiring classes in society will have enough is a sure recipe in fomenting labour class unrest, as the recent Brexit and US presidential elections have shown. Murthy’s opinion is that such unrest is also lying dormant and is barely beneath the surface in India, and that leaders of India’s capitalist revolution cannot afford to blithely ignore this.Also read | Infosys strongly defends COO pay hike criticized by Narayana MurthyWe also spoke of the fledgling experiments with universal basic income (UBI) that have begun to pop up in various corners of the earth. UBI is essentially a dole paid out to every citizen, whether they are out of work or not, in a nod to the fact that relentless mechanization and automation will take away many people’s livelihoods in the near- to medium-term future. While classical economics tells us that disruptive changes in labour mechanics such as offshoring and automation only cause a temporary loss in jobs before there is a “job shift” when people start to work in other fields of endeavour so that they may earn a living, the short-term pain caused by the original job displacement is undeniable. UBI is a well-meaning attempt to alleviate some of that pain. It comes with the same plethora of problems around unemployment doles, but Murthy’s view was that societies have a responsibility to their underprivileged or displaced populaces and that he would welcome higher taxes on the IT industry that are meant to go directly to those whose jobs IT displaces. He said that the only society that is stable is one that is seen to be moving, however haltingly, towards an atmosphere of equity and fairness among all its members.Leaders in the IT industry need to be seen as fair by the people under their command. Giving raises at the top that are 10 or even 20 times the rate of the raises being given at the bottom runs the risk of creating an impression that those at the top are greedy opportunists most interested in snatching what they can while the going is good. I have been part of a company where the boss raised his own salary by over 250%, leaving others in his second line like me to explain to the rest of the workforce that they had to make do with a 2% increase. The rationale for the anaemic salary increase for everyone but the boss was that the firm had not reached its (internally set) earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, targets. As an aside, I am sure the boss’s new salary contributed to the company repeating this miss in the next year. That year, even though my own compensation increase was also in the low single digits, I felt great discomfiture at having to justify and explain the boss’s salary increase, which the board had seen right to give him since “he could easily get another job in the industry paying just as much”. To paraphrase the Bard of Avon, all the mouthwash in India has not cured me of the ensuing halitosis from those conversations.Recalling a time when the industry finally saw the light and banded together in the common interest to fight high levels of attrition when companies were blithely poaching talent from one another, I asked Murthy whether Nasscom or some such industry body could now be entrusted with this looming question of “fairness”. He was unequivocal that an ombudsman is needed. Maybe it is time we allow ourselves to be policed.Siddharth Pai is a world-renowned technology consultant who has led over $20 billion in complex, first-of-a-kind outsourcing transactions.","In IT firms such as Infosys, giving raises at the top many times the rate of the raises at the bottom risks creating an impression that those at the top are greedy opportunists ",01:26,"Infosys compensation row: Of executives, programmers and fairness" +2017-04-03,"London: Shares in Imagination Tech crashed more than 70% on Monday after the British company said its biggest customer, Apple, would stop using its graphics technology in iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches.Imagination said Apple, which accounts for about half its revenue, had notified the British firm it was developing its own graphics chips and would no longer use Imagination’s processing designs in 15 months to two years time.Shares in Imagination, in which Apple holds an 8% stake, plunged to 76 pence, their lowest level since 2009 and about a 10th of their record of 734 pence hit in 2012.“The biggest risk to Imagination’s business model was realised this morning,” analysts at Investec said. “The loss of this revenue stream will have a material impact on the financials of the company.”ALSO READ | Apple sparks row with pledge to drop Imagination Tech graphicsImagination’s shares were trading down 61% at 105 pence by 0915 GMT, giving the company a market value of £298 million ($372 million), or £463 million less than it was worth on Friday. The technology company has licensed its processing designs to Apple from the time of the iPod and receives a small royalty on every graphics chip used in a device.Imagination, however, said it doubted Apple could go it alone without violating Imagination’s patents, intellectual property and confidential information, and analysts said legal battles could lie ahead.“This evidence has been requested by Imagination but Apple has declined to provide it,” said the British company, which was founded in 1985 and listed in 1994.Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Imagination’s shares rose sharply between 2009 and 2012 as sales of smartphones boomed and Apple and Intel bought stakes. The company was valued at more than €2 billion ($2.5 billion) in April 2012.It struggled, however, to reduce its reliance on Apple, and has faced increased competition from the likes of chipmaker Qualcomm and British rival ARM, which developed its own graphics to complement its core processor blueprints.Imagination says it has 50% of the high-end smartphone market, but only 7% of mid-tier devices, where it has been trying to regain market share, including in phones made by Chinese manufacturers.It said that Apple’s notification had triggered talks on alternative commercial arrangements for the current license and royalty agreement.Analysts said there could be room for a compromise, and it could be a bargaining move by Apple to reduce royalties.Apple paid Imagination licence fees and royalties totalling £60.7 million for the year to end-April 2016, half of its total revenue, and is expected to pay about £65 million for this year, Imagination said.Most of its costs are incurred designing new technology years ahead of when it appears in devices, and it said there were minimal direct costs associated with the Apple revenue. Reuters",Imagination Tech’s shares crashed more than 70% after Apple said it would stop using its graphics technology ,19:42,Imagination Tech shares plunge as Apple abandons the firm +2017-04-04,"US President Donald Trump and members of Congress from both parties have vowed to overhaul the visa programmes used by corporations to bring overseas workers to the US. That’s left companies that rely on such workers and those that source them bracing for change. A first step came at the end of March, when the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) department issued guidelines making it harder for companies to bring foreign technology workers to the US using the H-1B visa programme.What’s the H-1B programme do?It allows companies to recruit 85,000 employees from abroad each year for specialty positions in fields including technology, science, medicine, architecture—even fashion modelling. It took less than a week for applicants to exhaust that allotment in 2016, and technology companies including Facebook Inc., Google Inc., Intel Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. have sought to increase the number available. People from India receive more H-1B vis’s than any other nationality.What changes were made? For H-1B visas given out in the 2017 lottery beginning 3 April, the government now requires additional information for entry-level computer programmers, to prove the jobs are complicated and require advanced knowledge and experience. Computer programmers made up about 12% of all H-1B applications certified by the department of labour in 2015. Also Read: H-1B visas to become harder to get as Donald Trump starts crackdownIn March, the immigration department suspended a program that expedited visa processing for certain skilled workers who paid extra, which some analysts saw as a first step to dismantling the H-1B program altogether.Which other programs are under scrutiny?Apart from the best-known H-1B visa, companies use a variety of visas to bring in workers from abroad, including the B-1 for temporary business visitors and the L-1 for managers, executives and specialized workers of international companies.Why does the US have these programmes?They were designed to allow US companies to hire temporary workers from other countries when they couldn’t find qualified people domestically. These temporary visas were established under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. The programs have morphed over the years, and many of the visas now go to companies that pay foreign workers less than their American counterparts would receive. The total number of visas issued for temporary employment-based admission to the US grew to more than 1 million in 2014 from just over 400,000 in 1994, according to the Congressional Research Service. Those numbers included some unskilled and low-skilled workers, plus accompanying family members.Do the programmes need reform?It’s pretty clear the H-1B program and others have been used in ways that contradict their original intent. There have been allegations of abuse and at least one big settlement: In 2013, a Bangalore-based outsourcing company, Infosys Ltd., agreed to pay a record fine of $34 million to settle US allegations that it sent employees to the US with B-1 visitor visas to sidestep the caps on H-1Bs.What does Trump propose?During his presidential campaign, he said the H-1B program is a “cheap labour program” that takes jobs from Americans. He hasn’t yet detailed his ideas as president, but based on a draft executive order, his administration may push companies to try hiring American workers before turning to foreign ones—a step that isn’t necessary now. He’s also asked that the programmes prioritize giving visas to the most highly paid workers from abroad. Who gets priority now?Currently, H-1B visas are allocated by random lottery, with no priority given to companies that pay workers more. The biggest recipients of the visas are outsourcing companies, including India’s Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Wipro Ltd. and Infosys. They pay workers in the programme an average of about $65,000 a year, while Apple Inc., Google and Microsoft Corp. pay their H-1B employees more than $100,000.Can Trump act on his own?An executive order can begin the reform process, but Trump lacks the broad powers of Congress. For example, he can’t change the number of H-1B visas that are given out each year, but he probably can change the way they’re allocated. So he could order that priority be given to higher-paid workers.What might Congress do?Congress has tried many times in the past decade to change the work visa programmes, with limited effect. Bills offered in the House by two California lawmakers, Republican Darrell Issa and Democrat Zoe Lofgren, aim to do so by raising the wages for some H-1B workers.Also Read: H1B visa: Computer programmer won’t qualify as specialty occupation , says USIn Lofgren’s proposal, companies that are the heaviest users of the programme would have to pay salaries of at least $130,000, up from the current $60,000, or attest that they are not displacing American workers and making a good faith effort to recruit US workers if they pay less than that. The legislative push has spooked India’s tech companies, weighing on their stocks. There’s also a bipartisan proposal in the Senate, long pushed by Republican Chuck Grassley and Democrat Richard Durbin, that would forbid replacing US workers with H-1B hires and prioritize visa applications from people who earned degrees at American colleges.Will Silicon Valley be hurt by the changes?It depends on the details, of course, but the US tech industry may well come out on top. Because so many H-1B visas go to outsourcing firms, American employers like Apple, Google, Microsoft Corp. and Facebook haven’t been able to get as many as they would like. They could be benefit if outsourcers face more restrictions. Bloomberg",The USCIS has issued guidelines making it harder for companies to bring foreign tech workers to the US using the H-1B visa programme. Here are the implications of the guidelines,16:15,H1-B visa: What the USCIS guidelines mean for tech workers and companies +2017-04-10,"
Mumbai: Mobile payments services provider Mswipe Technologies Pvt. Ltd has initiated talks to raise as much as $40 million (around Rs250 crore) in a new round of funding, two people aware of the development said.The firm which provides merchants with mobile point of sale (PoS) terminals to enable digital transactions, has appointed investment bank Avendus Capital to help it raise funds, said one of the two people cited above, seeking anonymity as the talks are private.“The firm recently mandated Avendus to run the fundraising process and has initiated conversations with investors for the same. It is looking raise $30-40 million in this new round. Funds will be used majorly to enrol larger number of merchants for its PoS devices,” he said.The fundraising comes at a time when the number of cashless transactions in the country has increased after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the withdrawal of Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes on 8 November. These two currency notes formed the bulk of the currency bills in circulation in the country. Credit and debit card transactions at PoS terminals saw a 106% year-on-year growth in December, according to Reserve Bank of India data.“Demonetisation has been a shot in the arm for payments firms. Mswipe’s business was growing strongly before demonetization, but post November, the numbers have seen a sharp increase, which will make the company more attractive to investors,” said the second person cited above, also requesting anonymity.Emails sent on Friday to Mswipe were not answered. A spokesperson for Avendus Capital declined to comment on the development.The last fund-raising at Mswipe was in July 2015, when it raised Rs160 crore in a Series C round from new investors such as Falcon Edge Capital, Ola Cabs and Meru Capital. Existing investors Matrix Partners India, Axis Bank Ltd and DSG Consumer Partners also participated in the round.Mswipe was founded in 2012 by Manish Patel, a doctor by education, who previously co-founded an alcoholic beverages distribution firm called Milestone Merchandise. Mswipe provides a mobile payment solution with a card reader, which can be attached to any mobile phone’s audio (headset) jack. The firm also provides similar card payment solutions for smartphones.It works closely with smaller banks such as Corporation Bank, RBL Bank Ltd, Shamrao Vithal Co-operative Bank Ltd and large banks such as Axis Bank Ltd.It is also present in West Asia, the US and South-East Asia through partnerships. Its clients include small and medium enterprises.In the payments services market, Mswipe competes with companies such as Ezetap and Paynear.In August 2015, Ezetap raised Rs150 crore from Social+Capital, Helion Advisors and Berggruen Holdings, Horizons Ventures and the Capricorn Investment Group.In December 2015, Paynear raised Rs16 crore from a high net-worth individual investor.The latest round of funding could additionally see existing investor Axis Bank Ltd make an exit from the company. On 15 November, Mint reported that the private sector lender was exploring the sale of its entire stake of approximately 8% in Mswipe. Axis Bank first invested in the company in early 2013.","Mswipe, the maker of mobile PoS devices to enable digital transactions, has appointed investment bank Avendus Capital to help it raise funds",21:22,Mswipe in talks to raise up to $40 million +2017-04-10,"New York: An investigation into sales practices at Wells Fargo released on Monday has blamed the bank’s top management for creating an “aggressive sales culture” that led to a scandal involving millions of unauthorized accounts being opened.The bank’s board of directors also clawed back another $75 million in pay from two former executives, CEO John Stumpf and community bank executive Carrie Tolstedt.Wells’ board said both executives dragged their feet for years regarding problems at the second-largest US bank and were ultimately unwilling to accept criticism that the bank’s sales-focused business model was failing.The 110-page report has been in the works since September, when Wells acknowledged that its employees opened up to 2 million checking and credit card accounts without customers’ authorization. Trying to meet unrealistic sales goals, Wells employees even created phony email addresses to sign customers up for online banking services.“(Wells’ management) created pressure on employees to sell unwanted or unneeded products to customers and, in some cases, to open unauthorized accounts,” the board said in its report.Many current and former employees have talked of intense and constant pressure from managers to sell and open accounts, and some said it pushed them into unethical behaviour. The report backs up those employees’ accounts.The bank has already paid $185 million in fines to federal and local authorities and settled a $110 million class-action lawsuit. The scandal also resulted in the abrupt retirement last October of longtime CEO John Stumpf, not long after he underwent blistering questioning from congressional panels. The bank remains under investigation in several states, as well as by the Securities and Exchange Commission, for its practices.The board’s report recommended that Stumpf and Tolstedt have additional compensation clawed back for their negligence and poor management. Tolstedt will lose $47.3 million in stock options, on top of $19 million the board had already clawed back. Stumpf will lose an additional $28 million in compensation, on top of the $41 million the board already clawed back. Along with the millions clawed back from other executives earlier this year, the roughly $180 million in clawbacks are among the largest in corporate history.The board found that, when presented with the growing problems in Wells’ community banking division, senior management was unwilling to hear criticism or consider changes in behaviour. The board particularly faulted Tolstedt, calling her “insular and defensive” and unable to accept scrutiny from inside or outside her organization.The board also found that Tolstedt actively worked to downplay any problems in her division. In a report made in October 2015, nearly three years after a Los Angeles Times investigation uncovered the scandal, Tolstedt “minimized and understated problems at the community bank.”Tolstedt declined to be interviewed for the investigation, the board said, on advice from her lawyers. Stumpf also received his share of criticism. In its report, the board found that Stumpf was also unwilling to change Wells’ business model when problems arose.“His reaction invariably was that a few bad employees were causing issues ... he was too late and too slow to call for inspection or critical challenge to (Wells’) basic business model,” the board said.Stumpf, however, did not seem to express regret for how he handled those initial weeks after the bank was fined, including where he initially levied most of the blame on low-level employees for the sales practices problems instead of management, said Stuart Baskin, lawyer with Shearman & Sterling, the firm that the board hired to investigate the sales scandalThe investigation found that Wells’ corporate structure was also to blame. Under Stumpf, Wells operated in a decentralized fashion, with executives of each of the businesses running their divisions almost like separate companies.While there is nothing wrong with operating a large company like Wells in a decentralized fashion, the board said, the structure backfired in this case by allowing Tolstedt and other executives to hide the problems in their organization from senior management and the board of directors.When the scandal broke, Wells said it had fired roughly 5,300 employees as a result of the sales practices, the vast majority of them rank-and-file employees. But when that figure was announced it was the first time that the board of directors had heard the sales practices problems were of such a large size and scope. According to the report, as recently as May 2015, senior management told the board that only 230 employees had been fired for sales practices violations.Wells has instituted several corporate and business changes since the problems became known nationwide. Wells has changed its sales practices, and called tens of millions of customers to check on whether they truly opened the accounts in question.The company also split the roles of chairman and CEO. Tim Sloan, Wells’ former president and chief operating officer, took over as CEO. Stephen Sanger, who had been the lead director on Wells’ board since 2012, became the company’s independent chairman.Sanger has shown little in the way of mercy to management responsible for Wells’ unethical sales practices. Under his chairmanship, Sanger clawed back tens of millions of dollars in stock awards and compensation due to Stumpf and Tolstedt. In January, the board took the unusual action of publicly firing four executives whom the board said had major roles in the bank’s sales practices at the centre of the scandal. It also cut bonuses to other major executives, including Sloan.However, the board’s report concluded that Sloan had little direct involvement in the questionable sales practices.",An investigation at Wells Fargo has blamed the bank’s top management for creating an ‘aggressive sales culture’ that led to millions of unauthorized accounts being opened,20:50,Wells Fargo claws back $75 million from top executives in sales scandal +2017-04-03,"New Delhi: Essar Group said on Monday that it had entered into a definitive agreement to sell its business process outsourcing (BPO) unit Aegis Ltd to private equity (PE) firm Capital Square Partners.“This transaction is in line with our strategy of incubating, building and operating world-class businesses, and being open to monetizing them at a premium value when the market conditions are favourable,” Uday Gujadhar, director at AGC Holdings Ltd Mauritius, a holding company of Aegis, said in a statement.Capital Square Partners has deep domain expertise and understanding of South-East Asia to ensure that the company continues to grow, Gujadhar added.Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Net proceeds of the sale will be used to retire Essar Group’s debt, the company said. The transaction is expected to close in the current quarter, subject to receipt of regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions Financial.Aegis has clients in multiple sectors such as telecom, technology, media, banking, financial services and insurance, travel and logistics, retail and e-commerce.The company employs 40,000 people across 47 offices worldwide, offering services including lifecycle management, technology services, back-office services and social media analytics. Its annual revenue is around $400 million.Essar’s advisors in the transaction included Axis Capital as financial advisor, and Platinum Partners and Sidley Austin as legal advisors. Shearman & Sterling and Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas acted as legal advisors for Capital Square Partners.Capital Square Partners has in the past invested in technology services and BPO sectors, including its acquisition of Minacs Ltd in early 2014; Minacs was subsequently acquired by Synnex Corp. in 2016 and merged with Cocentrix.The Aegis sale comes close on the heels of Essar Group selling Essar Oil Ltd in a $13 billion transaction with Rosneft PJSC, Russia’s biggest listed oil producer, and a consortium of Trafigura and United Capital Partners. The deal marked the biggest foreign direct investment in India till date.The transaction was a fallout of debt-related stress in the Essar Group, which at the time of Essar Oil’s sale in October had debt of Rs.1.3 trillion, according to an estimate by Kotak Institutional Equities.",The Aegis sale marks Ruias-led Essar’s complete exit from BPO business,18:39,Essar sells Aegis BPO to Capital Square Partners +2017-04-10,"Frankfurt am Main: The European Central Bank judged Monday that it had a successful 2016, arguing in its annual report that it had warded off deflation and nurtured economic recovery in the eurozone.“Though the year began shrouded in economic uncertainty, it ended with the economy on its firmest footing since the crisis,” President Mario Draghi wrote in a foreword.In March last year, the ECB had responded to alarmingly low inflation by boosting its massive bond-buying scheme, lowering interest rates and extending cheap loans to banks.The ECB’s moves were designed to pump in cash through the financial system and into the real economy, making it easier for businesses and households to borrow for spending and investment, thus powering growth and ratcheting up inflation towards the ECB’s target of just below 2%.By December, the eurozone economy looked healthy enough for the Frankfurt institution to scale back its bond-buying from the €80 billion ($85 billion) per month set in March to its previous level of €60 billion.“This reflected the success of our actions earlier in the year: growing confidence in the euro area economy and disappearing deflation risks,” Draghi judged.ALSO READ: What we learned about Brexit from EU president Donald TuskBut the central bank sees its task as far from done.The 19-nation eurozone faces political risks at home from elections in France and Germany, while weak global growth and political uncertainty sap overseas demand for the region’s products.Meanwhile, though inflation briefly spiked past its target in February thanks to higher oil prices, it fell back in March and is far from the “self-sustaining” level the ECB strives to reach as growth in prices and wages remains sluggish.For now, Draghi and his colleagues in the bank’s governing council believe that economic recovery is still dependent on their massive support.The report repeats familiar calls on governments to step up reforms, especially loosening labour laws, and to redirect spending to more growth-friendly areas.And it takes aim at the European Commission, arguing that “a more forceful application of the fiscal rules would have been welcome” in cases such as Brussels’ decision not to fine Spain and Portugal for exceeding deficit targets.With Brexit one of the major risks to the eurozone economy in the near future, the ECB reiterated that preserving the integrity of the EU’s single market and the “homogeneity of rules and their enforcement” are “imperative” as London’s and Brussels’ negotiators settle in for two years of wrangling. AFP",The European Central Bank’s (ECB) annual report argues that it warded off deflation and nurtured economic recovery in the eurozone in 2016,20:59,ECB boss Mario Draghi judges 2016 as best year since European debt crisis +2017-04-10,"New Delhi: Nearly four crore members of retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) will soon be able to settle their claims like employees’ provident fund (EPF) withdrawal through mobile application UMANG. “The EPFO is developing online claims settlement process by receiving application online,” labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha. The minister also said, “The application will be integrated with Unified Mobile App for new-age governance, (UMANG) App, to receive the claims online. However, the timeframe to roll out the same has not been finalised.” The EPFO receives close to 1 crore applications manually for settlement of EPF withdrawals, pension fixation or getting group insurance benefit by the deceased. A senior official said over 110 regional offices of the EPFO out of 123 field formations have already been connected with the central server. The official explained that it is a technical requirement for connecting all regional offices with the central server for rolling out the facility. ALSO READ: EPFO asks banks to treat banking correspondents as staff, extend benefitsEarlier in February this year, EPFO central provident fund commissioner had said, “The process of connecting all field offices with a central server is going on. We may introduce the facility for online submission of all types of applications and claims like EPF withdrawal and pension settlement by May this year.” The EPFO has an ambitious plan to settle the claims within a few hours after filing of the application. For instance, it has plans to settle the EPF withdrawal claim within three hours of the filing. As per the scheme, the EPFO is required to settle all claims within 20 days from filing of the application for settlement of pension or EPF withdrawal. The minister also told the House that the EPFO has engaged the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, as its technical consultant to upgrade its technology and the body is installing latest equipment at its three central data centres in Delhi, Gurugram and Secunderabad. An official spoke of the requirement of seeding Aadhaar and bank accounts with the Universal (PF) Account Number (UAN) for settling EPFO claim online. In a separate reply to the House, the minister said that out of the 3.76 crore contributing members as on March 31, 2016, as many as 1.68 crore have linked their Aadhaar numbers with UAN. The EPFO has already made it mandatory to provide bank account numbers with IFSC codes and Aadhaar of subscribers.",Labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya says EPFO is developing online claims settlement process by receiving applications online which will be integrated with the UMANG App ,16:46,EPF claims can be settled through mobile phone soon: Bandaru Dattatreya +2017-04-10,"
Fulfilling his poll promise, chief minister Yogi Adityanath has announced a farm loan waiver scheme in Uttar Pradesh. The scheme will cover small and marginal farmers with debts of up to Rs1 lakh and is expected to cost the state government Rs36,359 crore. How effective can the scheme be in tackling farmers’ woes in India’s largest state?
Including only small and marginal farmers in the loan waiver scheme is an attempt to ensure that only the most vulnerable benefit from this expensive move. However, there are two factors which undermine the progressive intent behind such policies. The poorest farmers often rely on non-institutional sources of credit due to lack of credit-worthiness and related factors. Even if the government wanted to, it cannot provide relief to those who have taken loans from non-institutional sources as anybody could queue up for relief due to the absence of a verifiable paper trail. Also, as is the case with any loan waiver, those who paid back their loans despite facing hardships would end up as losers.
The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to issue Kisan Rahat (farmers’ relief) bonds to pay for this move. Although the details of these arrangements are awaited, it would put significant pressure on the state government’s finances throughout its term, and probably even after that.
ALSO READ | The politics and economics of farm loan waivers
Assuming an interest rate of 6.5-7.5%, the bonds would cost anywhere between Rs2,363.2 crore and Rs2,726.8 crore in annual interest payouts. According to the latest Reserve Bank of India study of state budgets, Uttar Pradesh’s capital expenditure on agriculture and allied activities and rural development (economic services category) in 2015-16 was Rs6,221.2 crore.
The report also shows that the share of agriculture and rural development in development expenditure (capital) in Uttar Pradesh has been less than the national average. An additional squeeze on the state budget due to the farm loan waiver could widen this gap.
As pressure on land increases in India, the only way to keep the rural economy afloat is to promote crop yield growth and diversification away from cultivation activities. For both these goals, public sector investment is of immense importance, as it complements rather than crowds out private investment.
Uttar Pradesh fares badly in terms of share of income from non-cultivation activities and share of investment in total agricultural income, according to the latest farm situation assessment survey of the National Sample Survey Office conducted in 2013.
This is a reflection of a stagnant and bearish farm economy, which is more vulnerable to exogenous shocks such as a crash in prices or monsoon failure. It is unlikely that farm-loan waivers would help Uttar Pradesh’s farmers in meeting these long-term challenges. What Uttar Pradesh, and the rest of the country, needs is smart public investments that help raise farm and rural incomes sustainably.
Data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy shows net irrigated area in Uttar Pradesh has come down from 14.49 million hectares in 2000-01 to 13.43 million hectares in 2010-11. However, the ratio of net irrigated area using tube wells has increased from less than two-thirds to a little less than three-fourths of the total irrigated area. The proliferation of tube wells, if left unchecked, will deplete groundwater resources drastically, and seriously jeopardize sustainability of farming. This is not a problem unique to Uttar Pradesh but, as in most other parts of the country, very little has been done to stem the depletion of groundwater resources.
None of this is to deny the widespread agrarian distress in India, which has become systemic in nature. Farm loan waivers, like the one announced in Uttar Pradesh, would provide limited relief where none was available. However, it is also a fact that farm loan waivers are at best a palliative for India’s crisis-ridden agrarian economy.
A 2014 World Bank study on the farm loan waiver announced in 2008 by the United Progressive Alliance government found that the scheme had no significant effect on productivity and investment in agriculture, and, in fact, worsened loan allocation in districts with greater exposure to the debt waiver.
Unless farmers are given the right incentives to shift to more remunerative and sustainable farming and non-farming options, Indian agriculture will not be able to overcome its current crisis.
In recent years, the livestock sector has emerged as an important source of non-farm income in many parts of the country. Uttar Pradesh has emerged as the biggest exporter of buffalo meat in recent years but that sector is unlikely to grow in an environment of irrational hysteria around cattle protection.
The Uttar Pradesh government’s policy of providing palliatives such as loan waivers on the one hand, and its disruption of the cattle economy on the other, suggests that despite an overwhelming majority in the state assembly, the government is more interested in populism than radical reforms to boost farming and rural livelihoods in the state.",The farm loan waiver announced by CM Yogi Adityanath is at best a palliative that is unlikely to address the challenges faced by Uttar Pradesh’s rural economy,20:41,Uttar Pradesh’s farm loan waiver: Neither egalitarian nor productive +2017-04-10,"Mumbai: RBL Bank Ltd, formerly known as Ratnakar Bank, on Monday entered the list of India’s 10 most valuable banks.With a market capitalisation of Rs22,043.18 crore, the bank has replaced IDFC Bank Ltd in the elite club. IDFC Bank has a market value of Rs20,530 crore, according to Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) data.HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s most profitable bank, is the most valuable bank in India with a market cap of Rs3.68 trillion, followed by state-run State Bank of India (Rs2.34 trillion) and ICICI Bank Ltd (Rs1.62 trillion). Kotak Mahindra Bank is No.4, followed by Axis Bank Ltd, IndusInd Bank Ltd, Yes Bank Ltd, Bank of Baroda and Punjab National Bank.RBL Bank’s stock closed at a fresh record high of Rs587.50 on the BSE, up 5.52% from its previous close.The bank listed on 31 August at a premium of 33% to its issue price. The Rs1,211 crore initial public offering received a demand for over 69 times the shares on offer. Since then, it has surged over 161.1% and so far this year it has gained 75.22%.“Given the robust loan growth trajectory and well maintained asset quality coupled with healthy margins, improving cost-income ratio gives a positive outlook for the bank,” said Praveen I., research analyst with Cholamandalam Securities.The bank reported a net profit of Rs128.69 crore in the December quarter, up 58.8% from Rs81.05 crore a year ago. Gross non-performing assets were 1.06% from 1.08% in the same quarter last year. As of December 2016, total advances were Rs26,773 crore, up 46% from a year ago, while deposits surged 44% to Rs30,005 crore. RBL Bank has 215 branches and 374 ATMs across 16 states and Union territories.Among the analysts covering RBL Bank’s stock, 11 have a “buy” rating and two have a “hold” rating and no one has a “sell” rating, according to Bloomberg data.IDFC Bank Ltd closed at Rs60.40 on the BSE, unchanged from its previous close, while India’s benchmark Sensex index fell 0.44% to closed at 29,575.74 points.","With a market capitalisation of Rs22,043.18 crore, RBL Bank has replaced IDFC Bank to enter the most valuable banks’ list",17:31,RBL Bank now among India’s 10 most valuable banks +2017-04-10,"
India’s retirement fund manager has asked banks to treat banking correspondents (BCs) as their employees and extend all benefits due to them, three people familiar with the matter said, a move that could hurt lenders.BCs are individuals authorized by banks to act as their representatives in places where they are not physically present. The central analysis and intelligence unit of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation, EPFO, in February wrote to banks and corporate BCs in this respect. “The central government is serious about increasing the social security net for all kinds of workers,” said a senior EPFO official, seeking anonymity. “If construction workers can be brought under provident fund benefit, why can’t BCs of banks?”Typically, banks follow a three-tier structure with banks at the apex level, corporate BCs as intermediary, and individual agents providing service to customers at the third level. In some cases, banks engage with agents directly. This model enables a bank to expand reach and offer banking services at a low cost, as setting up a physical branch may not be viable in all cases. According to latest data with the Banking Correspondent Federation of India (BCFI), there are 70 corporate BCs and 285,000 individual agents working for banks. BCFI is an association representing all banking correspondents.Bringing individual BCs under the ambit of the Employees‟ Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952, will make them eligible for benefits including minimum wage, gratuity, bonus and leave entitlements, besides provident fund. “Currently, BCs get paid a minimum remuneration of Rs5,000 in addition to a commission amount which is dependent on the number of transactions,” said Anand Shrivastav, chairman, Banking Correspondent Federation of India. “With BCs coming under EPFO, a minimum wage will be fixed as per the Minimum Wages Act for skilled workers at Rs12,000. Other additional benefits including PF will be over and above this,” Shrivastav said.The Indian Banks Association (IBA) and BCFI have since written to the Prime Minister’s Office, labour ministry, finance ministry and the Reserve Bank of India, arguing why this move will make the banking correspondents model an unviable business.“EPF & MP Act 1952 is not applicable to BCs as well as corporate BCs as they are independent entrepreneurs with an agreement to operate BC services,” BCFI wrote to the Prime Minister on 31 March.“Bringing BCs under the ambit of EPFO will, inter alia, make them as de jure employees of banks/corporate BCs and raise other problems for the banks/corporate BCs and government as well,” the BCFI letter noted. The content of the IBA letter, according to an IBA official who did not want to be named, was similar.The Reserve Bank of (RBI) India too has written to the labour ministry to exempt BCs appointed by banks from provident fund coverage, said one of the three people cited earlier.In January 2006, RBI permitted banks to engage BCs as intermediaries for providing financial and banking services. Initially, only individuals were allowed to act as BCs, which was later expanded to include for-profit companies to provide door-step delivery of services. Currently, 126,000 of the total 285,000 BCs are engaged only for activities under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) programme. According to recent Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) data, public sector banks engage nearly 79,826 active BCs for opening accounts, cash withdrawal through Rupay cards and Aadhaar authentication, while regional rural banks engage 29,807 BCs. Private sector banks engage only 2987 BCs.Any change in regulation to bring BCs under EPFO will therefore severely affect the profitability of government-owned banks, the person mentioned above argued. Viability of the BC model has also been a challenge due to the high transaction cost for banks and customers. According to the BCFI report, BCs receive only 0.5% of the transaction value for providing services under PMJDY, where as banks receive 1%.",Banking correspondents are individuals authorized by banks to act as their representatives in places where they are not physically present,15:31,"EPFO asks banks to treat banking correspondents as staff, extend benefits" +2017-04-09,"New Delhi: The finance ministry has asked the heads of public sector banks (PSBs) to finalise the modalities for timely implementation of the next pay revision from November. There are 21 public sector banks, post merger of six lenders with State Bank of India (SBI), in the country. They together employ about 8 lakh people. In a communication to CEOs and MDs of the state-owned banks, the ministry advised them to initiate the steps for smooth conclusion of next wage revision of the employee within the time-frame. “However, it is seen that several banks are yet to proceed in the matter,” it said, requesting the PSBs to “look into the matter and conclude the next wage revision prior to the effective date of 1 November 2017”. The wage revision of public sector bank employees takes place every five year. The last revision was effected in November 2012. In the last wage negotiation between PSU banks employee unions and bank management, Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) had settled at 15% hike. Recently, Banks Board Bureau chief Vinod Rai had made a case that the compensation package across the board of public sector banks needs to be improved.“Maybe, we are not able to do much with the fixed part of compensation package but (with) variable part we are hopeful that in the next financial year (2017-18), we will be able to introduce a far more attractive package which do have bonuses, ESOPs and other performance linked incentives as part of the package,” he had said. Rai has also suggested that managing directors of the public sector banks should be appointed for minimum 6 years.","In a communication to CEOs and MDs of the state-owned banks, the finance ministry advised them to initiate the steps for smooth conclusion of next wage revision",14:57,Govt asks public sector banks to finalise next wage revision before 1 November +2017-04-10,"London/New York: Barclays PLC chief executive officer Jes Staley will be reprimanded and the bank will cut his pay as regulators begin to investigate how he tried to unmask a whistleblower last year.The UK Financial Conduct Authority is investigating both Staley’s individual conduct relating to the complaint and the bank’s responsibilities and controls in connection with whistleblowing, the bank said in a statement on Monday. Staley has admitted his error and formally apologized to the board, Barclays said.Staley tried to unmask a tipster who alerted the bank to a personal matter involving a senior executive, the bank said, confirming what a person with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg. An investigation by law firm Simmons & Simmons LLP concluded that Staley “honestly, but mistakenly” believed that it was permissible to identify the author of the letter. The case is also under scrutiny by the Department of Financial Services in New York, the person said.“I have apologized to the Barclays board and accepted its conclusion that my personal actions in this matter were errors on my part,” Staley said in the statement. “I will also accept whatever sanction it deems appropriate. I will cooperate fully with the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulatory Authority, which are now both examining this matter.”Stock slipsBarclays shares dropped as much as 1.2% in London trading and were down 0.4% at 214.6 pence as of 8:05 am. The stock has fallen about 4.1%this year, giving the company a market value of £36 billion.Barclays has made excellent progress under Staley and his removal at this stage would hurt the bank’s prospects for further improvement, Shore Capital analyst Gary Greenwood wrote in a note to investors. Given the bank’s history of regulatory misdemeanours, the latest investigation is a “very significant embarrassment” for the board as it tries to rebuild Barclays’s reputation, he said.Staley has revamped his management team and refocused on the bank’s priority markets since he assumed leadership of Barclays in late 2015. He also rebuffed calls to spin off or radically shrink the investment bank, instead opting to speed up business sales and sell down the firm’s African banking stake.Bank turnaroundThe CEO has slashed about 6,000 jobs in the last six months and cut dividends after fourth-quarter profit fell. The Barclays’s chief ascended to the top job after more than three decades at JPMorgan Chase & Co.The attempt to identify the whistleblower came to the attention of the Barclays board early this year after an employee raised concerns. The board notified the FCA and the PRA and other authorities.“The board has concluded that Jes Staley, group chief executive officer, honestly, but mistakenly, believed that it was permissible to identify the author of the letter and has accepted his explanation that he was trying to protect a colleague who had experienced personal difficulties in the past from what he believed to be an unfair attack, and has accepted his apology,” Chairman John McFarlane said in the statement.US law enforcementStaley requested that the bank’s Group Information Security team identify the author and the team asked for and received assistance from US law enforcement agencies, according to the statement. The attempt to identify the author wasn’t successful, the bank said.Barclays has taken a more aggressive posture toward government allegations than some of its rivals. While other lenders settled similar claims, Barclays balked at paying the amount the government sought to resolve allegations that it deceived investors who purchased $31 billion of mortgage-backed securities a decade ago, before the housing bubble popped. The bank is now defending a lawsuit brought by the US justice department in December over the matter.The bank has called those allegations “disconnected from the facts.”If found to have violated whistleblower laws, Barclays could face penalties from regulators.In an unrelated matter, Barclays has been accused of unfairly dismissing an employee who levied a complaint. Richard Boath, who was Barclays’s chairman of financial institutions, said in a UK lawsuit that he was interviewed by the Serious Fraud Office in 2014 as part of its investigation into the bank’s £7 billion fund-raising at the height of the financial crisis. Boath said he was dismissed from the bank in 2016 as a “direct result” of the SFO giving a transcript of the interview to the bank, his lawyer, Jonathan Cohen, said to an employment tribunal last year. Barclays declined to comment at the time. Bloomberg","Barclays could face penalties from regulators, if it is found to have violated whistleblower laws",14:34,"Barclays CEO Jes Staley faces probe, bonus cut over whistleblower " +2017-04-10,"New Delhi: The monetary policy committee of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is expected to cut policy rates by 25 basis points (bps) in August on weak growth and benign inflation, says a Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofAML) report.“We estimate that old series GDP growth, at 4.5-5%, well below our estimated 7% potential/trend. Not surprisingly, core CPI inflation has slipped to 4.2% from 4.8% in October. It is statistically difficult to work out potential growth in the new GDP series without past data,” BofAML said in a research note.Moreover, all related metrics—industrial production, credit growth, earnings—are running well below their medium—term averages. “We continue to expect the RBI MPC to cut policy rates 25 bps on 3 August on weak growth, benign inflation and the need to recoup forex reserves by attracting FPI equity flows by supporting growth,” it said.At the 6 April policy review meet, the RBI kept repurchase or repo rate—at which it lends to banks—unchanged at 6.25% but increased reverse repo rate to 6% from 5.75%. RBI said given the upside risks to inflation and excess liquidity in the system, the repo rate has been retained at 6.25%. According to the global brokerage firm lending rate cuts are the key indicator for recovery. “As lending rates come off, they will revive demand, close the output gap, exhaust capacity and spur investment,” it said. “We expect bank lending rates to come off by 50-75 bps in the April-September, ‘slack’ industrial season, with RBI governor Urjit Patel stressing the need for lower borrowing costs again,” the report noted. PTI","The RBI’s monetary policy committee is expected to cut policy rates by 25 bps in August on weak growth and benign inflation, says a Bank of America Merrill Lynch report",14:08,RBI may go for 25 bps rate cut in August: BofAML report +2017-04-19,"New Delhi: Several companies, including the Tatas, Godrej, Adani and Patanjali, have shown interest in buying embattled Sahara group’s 30 properties estimated to be worth about Rs7,400 crore. The properties, mostly land parcels being auctioned by real estate consultant Knight Frank India, have also generated interest from several real estate developers including Omaxe and Eldeco, as also from high net worth individuals (HNIs) and at least one public sector firm, Indian Oil, people familiar with the process said.Besides, Chennai-based Apollo Hospital has shown interest in acquiring Sahara Hospital in Lucknow. These people, however, said that the sale process and the valuation could get impacted due to a hurry in getting the deals closed within a short time because of an urgency on part of Sahara to get the money and deposit the same with the regulator Securities and exchange Board of India (Sebi) as per Supreme Court directions. All prospective buyers are asking for 2-3 months for due diligence, which is considered to be the normal period in high-value real estate transactions, these people added. When contacted, a Sahara group spokesperson declined to disclose the names of prospective buyers, saying “deals are in process and will materialise soon”. He also said the details have been submitted to the Supreme Court. ALSO READ: Supreme Court orders Aamby Valley auction, summons Subrata RoyGodrej Properties’ executive chairman Pirojsha Godrej said, “We are looking at part of one of the Pune land parcels for which Knight Frank is running the bidding process. It is still at a preliminary stage.” Omaxe’s CMD Rohtas Goel also confirmed that his company was interested in some properties. “As a prudent business organisation, we always keep exploring growth opportunities,” he said. Eldeco’s managing director Pankaj Bajaj said they are interested in some properties but would not be like to share the exact details at this stage. An Apollo Hospitals spokesperson said, “The Apollo has submitted an expression of interest for Sahara Hospital and (we) are conducting our evaluation and due diligence process.” Tata Housing declined to comment, while there were no replies to specific queries made to Adani Group and Patanjali. “The advertisement got an overwhelming response. Over 250 expressions of interest (EOIs) have been received. EOIs have been received for all sites with majority of sites having multiple EOIs,” Knight Frank India said in response to queries from PTI. “Process is an intense process that constitutes due diligence, site inspections, financial bids (pricing to be on as-is-where-is-whatever-it-is basis) and shall culminate on finalisation of successful bidder. Due diligence and site inspections are either completed or underway in most cases. We expect to receive the final bids shortly,” it added. People familair with the matter said there were a large number of individuals as also some educational institutions who have submitted expressions of interest for the properties. The shortlisted entities are now being asked to submit their financial bids. The group is expecting to get the first instalment from the sale of these properties by June 17 and get all the money, estimated at around Rs7,400 crore, in three months. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court also directed the sale of Sahara group’s Aamby Valley township in Lonavala, which the group estimates to be worth over Rs1 lakh crore and fears that a hurried sale will favour only those wanting to “grab Aamby Valley cheaper”. The Sahara spokesperson said the group had committed to deposit the directed amount of Rs10,500 crore by July-August 2017, including Rs7,400 crore from sale of the 30 properties being auctioned and payments from other deals, but the court declined and asked for the Aamby Valley auction which will take much longer. “We committed around Rs 1,500 crore from overseas hotels, expected to reach India within 45 days. Also we informed about Vasai land where we are going to get around Rs 800 crore (and) also around Rs 800 crore from Ghaziabad,” he added. On February 28, the Supreme Court had allowed Sahara to sell certain properties after market regulator Sebi found it difficult to auction them even with the help of specialised agencies. Sahara sought six months’ time for the sale, but the court asked them to complete the sale in six weeks weeks for properties worth about Rs 5,092 crore. Sahara subsequently appointed Knight Frank for carrying out the sale process and advertisements were issued in newspapers twice to invite prospective buyers. Knight Frank was asked to complete the sale by April 13 to meet the Supreme Court deadline, but it was found to be difficult because of the time demanded by the prospective buyers for going through various stages of such high value transactions to ensure optimal value realisation. People familiar with the matter said that Indian Oil, which was interested in one property in Bihar, sought extension of time for submitting bid on the grounds that the project called for approvals and reports from various departments and agencies. Apollo also sought extension of time for carrying out the due diligence, inspections and evaluation of the property. Replying to specific queries, the Sahara group spokesperson said, “We twice advertised in various newspapers all over the country for selling around 30 properties. In response, we have received 163 Expressions from 59 prospective buyers and the deals are in process and will materialise soon.” Asked about the details of the prospective buyers, the spokesperson said, “We have submitted the details to the Court. It will not be possible to comment on each prospective buyer and share details of the buyers and the deals at this level as it might not be conducive when the deals are in process.” In reply to another query on the due diligence process and whether the court direction to close the deal faster and submit money could affect the sale and the valuation, he said the real estate deals undergo multiple processes. “The said deals are under various stages. The buyers have asked for 2-3 months for completing due diligence and other processes, which is the industry-accepted minimum required time for such deals, even if all processes are expedited. “On February 28, 2017, the Court ordered to sell 14 properties and to deposit the total sale proceeds of Rs 5,090 crore by April 17, meaning in 46 days we had to sell and get the money. “On April 17, we also presented to the Court our commitment of getting first instalments out of all sales by June 17, and in three months we said we shall get all the money which is around Rs 7,400 crore,” he said. On the ordered sale of Aamby Valley, the group said, “The court’s insistence to sell Aamby Valley whose value is more than Rs 1 lakh crore will only be a big favour to those one- two corporates who want to grab it cheaper”. The 30 advertised properties are located across India -- including in Delhi, Pune, Indore, Lucknow, Coimbatore, Chandigarh, Bhopal, Guna, Kolkata, Haridwar, Aligarh, Bareilly, Dewas, Faridabad, Guwahati, Gwalior, Jhansi, Kanpur, Kurukshetra, Noida/Greater Noida, Patna and Porbandar. Sahara lawyer Gautam Awasthy separately said the group has deposited around Rs 12,000 crore in last four years, which comes to an average of Rs 250 crore per month deposited in the SEBI-Sahara account. The interest component takes the deposited amount to close to Rs 15,000 crore. This account was created for the money Sahara group was asked to deposit with the regulator for further refund to the bondholders from which the group had raised money, though the conglomerate claims to have already refunded more than 93 per cent money directly to the investors. Awasthy further said, “By any Indian corporate standard, Rs 250 crore every month for 48 months is a huge amount and Sahara could have been appreciated for obedience of the Honourable Court’s order. “The most commendable point is that Sahara could pay Rs 250 crore every month on an average after Sahara having already repaid more than 93 per cent of its liability of OFCD of the two companies -- Sahara India Real Estate Corporation Limited and Sahara Housing Investment Corporation Limited. “Meaning more than Rs 22,000 crore of liability Sahara has already been paid and this Rs 12,000 crore is in addition, that is duplication of payment.” Sahara has filed a defamation case in a Patna court against Mint’s editor and some reporters over the newspaper’s coverage of the company’s dispute with the Securities and Exchange Board of India. Mint is contesting the case.","Several companies including Tatas, Godrej, Adani and Patanjali, have shown interest in buying Sahara group’s 30 properties estimated to be worth Rs7,400 crore",21:48,"Tata, Godrej, Adani show interest in buying Sahara properties: report" +2017-04-20,"Mumbai: The National Aviators Guild (NAG), a union of Jet Airways pilots of Indian nationality, have alleged that some of the expat pilots have been making disparaging, inappropriate and racist comments against the pilots of Indian nationality and the carrier has been giving the local pilots a “step-motherly treatment”. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the NAG demanded swift action by the management. On its part, the Naresh Goyal- promoted airline maintained it has a strict code of conduct for all its employees. “The Jet Airways management is expected to respond swiftly and ought to disallow training and flying of these expat pilots and ought to issue a diktat to said expat pilots to apologise or else leave forthwith,” the statement said.The carrier has around 60 expat commanders, who mainly operate its Boeing 737 and ATR fleet. On 15 April, NAG issued a directive to all its members not to fly with the foreign pilots from 1 May.Stressing on the need for collective action, the guild said the airline’s reputation cannot be “tarnished by racist and hateful comments made by certain misguided foreign nationals.”In an email response, a Jet Airways spokesperson said the carrier is “an equal opportunities employer and endeavours to employ the best human capital irrespective of race, gender, caste, creed or religion.” He further added that all its employees, regardless of nationality, are governed by a strict and common code of conduct. “As part of its open door policy, the airline encourages all employee groups to engage in consultative processes and arrive at amicable solutions,” he said.",Jet Airways Indian pilots union alleged that some of the expat pilots make disparaging and racist comments and the airline has been giving local pilots a ‘step-motherly treatment’,00:25,Jet Airways Indian pilots allege expat pilots make racist comments +2017-04-19,"
New Delhi: Nissan Motor Co. plans to work with “government bodies” and “private sector firms” to see if there is a market for its electric car Leaf in India, a top executive at the Indian unit of the Japanese auto maker said.“We will start a pilot project involving the Nissan Leaf this year, which will help us in assessing the viability of electric vehicles (EV),” Guillaume Sicard, president, Nissan India operations, added.Sicard claimed that Leaf is the world’s best-selling all-electric vehicle, with over 250,000 units sold so far. In India, the pilot runs are scheduled for later this year with the objective of testing the car’s (and especially its battery’s) performance in Indian roads and weather conditions, said a person familiar with the developments.ALSO READ: Transport ministry sweetens bid conditions for hiring electric carsThis person added that Nissan may seek incentives to promote sales of the car and then look for ways to localise it. The idea is to stimulate demand and then assess whether the car can be assembled, or parts made for it, locally.Local assembly of such vehicles will be a shot in the arm for the Indian government, which has plans to have an all electric fleet by 2030. Transport minister Nitin Gadkari wooed Tesla Inc. to manufacture EVs, but the Palo Alto-based company has been cool to India’s offer of land near a major port to facilitate exports, and other incentives.Sicard of Nissan did not comment on localization. “Through our experience as pioneers in developing EVs in markets around the world, we have learned that government support for infrastructure and supporting demand for EVs is crucial,” he added.ALSO READ: Government eyes leasing of electric vehicles in clean energy pushAccording to a government official familiar with Nissan’s plans, the Japanese company’s biggest concern is the functionality of its battery in Indian conditions.“How will it function in a city like Delhi, where temperature shoots up during summer?” the official asked, speaking on condition of anonymity.Deepesh Rathore, co-founder of London-based Emerging Markets Automotive Advisors, said Nissan should rather look at forming a consortium, and then approach the government to create the infrastructure for electric cars.ALSO READ: Mahindra, SsangYong working on an electric SUV, launch likely in 3 years“Incentives can come in at a later stage. Today, people don’t even consider buying an electric car because we don’t see a charging station anywhere,” Rathore added. Spokesmen for the department of heavy industries, and the ministry of new and renewable energy did not respond to emails.","Nissan India boss Guillaume Sicard says will start a pilot project for Nissan Leaf in 2017, which will help assessing the viability of electric cars in the country",18:44,"Nissan explores Leaf electric car for India, pilot runs later this year" +2017-04-19,"New Delhi: Honda Motor Co. Ltd on Tuesday launched the 25th anniversary edition of the Honda Fireblade superbike in India with prices starting at Rs17.61 lakh, ex-showroom Delhi.The 2017 Honda CBR 1000RR, popularly known as the Honda Fireblade, will be imported as completely built unit (CBU) in India and will be available at Honda’s exclusive Wing World outlets located in Mumbai and Delhi.Bookings for the superbike also commenced Wednesday.The Honda Fireblade will be available in two variants—CBR 1000RR Fireblade and CBR 1000RR Fireblade SP, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI) said in a statement.The Fireblade, will be “the most powerful, faster and lighter CBR 1000RR from Honda’s stable and we are very excited to add another chapter to the success story with its introduction in India,” HMSI senior vice-president (sales and marketing) Yadvinder Singh Guleria said.","The 2017 Honda CBR 1000RR, or the Honda Fireblade, will be imported as CBU units Wing World outlets located in Mumbai and Delhi",22:32,2017 Honda CBR 1000RR Fireblade launched in India at Rs17.61 lakh +2017-04-19,"Dubai: Emirates will cut flights to five of US cities as demand deteriorated after US restrictions on travel and on-board electronics affecting Middle East carriers and passengers.The world’s biggest international airline will reduce capacity to Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale in the coming weeks, the Dubai-based company said in a statement. Emirates will re-deploy the capacity to serve demand on other routes across its global network.“The recent actions taken by the US government relating to the issuance of entry visas, heightened security vetting and restrictions on electronic devices in aircraft cabins, have had a direct impact on consumer interest and demand for air travel into the US,” the company said in the statement. “Over the past three months, we have seen a significant deterioration in the booking profiles on all our US routes, across all travel segments.”The move could be seen as a victory for moves by President Donald Trump’s administration to tighten travel policies. Emirates and other state-owned Gulf carriers have been a frequent target of US rivals who accuse them of competing unfairly by taking government subsidies. Emirates’ Dubai hub was one of the 10 airports impacted by a ban on electronics in carry-on luggage on US flights. Services to Seattle, Boston and Los Angeles will drop to daily from twice daily, while Fort Lauderdale and Orlando will get five flights a week, compared with daily services now. The changes will be phased in starting on 1 May.Emirates, which serves 12 US cities as part of its network of more than 150 destinations worldwide, will “closely monitor” the situation with the “view to reinstate and grow” its US operations as soon as viable, it said. Bloomberg","Emirates will reduce capacity to Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale in the coming weeks",22:57,Emirates trims US flights after Trump administration curbs +2017-04-06,"
Enthused by the market potential for electric vehicles (EV) in India, state-owned Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd (PGCIL), the power transmission utility responsible for establishing green energy transmission corridors, is considering setting up charging stations for EVs.The public sector unit is also exploring commercially viable energy storage solutions such as batteries that would help with grid stability—the balance between production and consumption.“We are working on developing an EV business. The idea is to store the surplus electricity generated by solar in these batteries. We are exploring setting up charging infrastructure which will help the national grid,” said a senior Power Grid executive, requesting anonymity.“The next big play is EV and storage. Our role is to be of a catalyst. We are exploring entering the EV charging business,” the executive added.Power Grid’s proposed electric vehicle programme would help with grid balancing, besides complementing the government’s push for solar power, which is generated during the day and can be stored in EV batteries.Power Grid is the third state-owned utility eyeing the EV business after NTPC Ltd and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (Bhel). NTPC has been working to help create demand for the electricity generated by its plants, Mint reported in March. (bit.ly/2mrPfsO) Bhel, India’s largest power generation equipment maker, wants to manufacture electric vehicles such as buses, cars, two-wheelers and boats. (bit.ly/2kPf03a)“We are looking at three different battery technologies—advanced lead acid, lithium ion and flow ion and how they behave in the Indian conditions along with being economical. We are technology agnostic. It can be another business area,” added the Power Grid executive quoted above.India plans to generate 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 100GW is to come from solar power projects. With storage being the next frontier for India’s clean energy push from sources such as solar, the batteries in EVs offer a solution.A PGCIL spokesperson confirmed the development and said, “We are exploring the possibilities.”With 134,750 circuit kilometres and 217 substations, Power Grid caters to national grid’s inter-regional electricity transmission capacity of 75,000MW. Power Grid also owns and operates around 36,500km of telecom network. The PSU has gross fixed assets of Rs1,65,757 crore and posted a net profit of Rs5,604 crore for the first nine months of the current financial year.Piyush Goyal, India’s power, coal, mines and new and renewable energy minister, said on Monday that battery storage efforts are being helped through the government’s EV policy.Experts believe EVs are a good business opportunity. “Electric vehicles, or clean transportation, is the need of the hour in the polluted Indian cities,” said Reji Kumar Pillai, president and chief executive officer of India Smart Grid Forum, a public-private partnership of the power ministry.Pillai said large fleets of EVs connected to the electric grid can be aggregated as virtual power plants for managing supply-demand imbalances on the grid. “Another very interesting option is the secondary use of retired batteries from electric vehicles for building GW scale energy storage to support the grid with increasing share of renewable,” Pillai said.Any shift to electric vehicles will help reduce pollution and fuel imports. India’s energy import bill is expected to double from around $150 billion to $300 billion by 2030. The government has been trying to push sales of electric vehicles and has set an ambitious target of selling six million by 2020.","Power Grid, responsible for establishing green energy transmission corridors, is considering setting up charging stations for electic vehicles",01:51,Power Grid eyes electric vehicle play +2017-04-06,"New Delhi: Indian Railways could draw up to 25% of its power needs from renewables and would need an investment of $3.6 billion to meet the 5GW target of solar energy by 2025, according to a study released on Wednesday.The Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) study, funded by UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), identifies key policy and regulatory challenges that developers face while supporting the Railways’ renewable energy push.A potential 5GW target provides a unique opportunity for solar developers, with an estimated 1.1GW coming from rooftop and 3.9GW from utility scale projects. The Indian Railways is a guaranteed consumer and has a growing electricity demand, which should mitigate any perceived counter-party risks for project developers or investors.“We want Indian Railways to become a green engine of growth. Decarbonisation is extremely important for Railways. We have set up a target of electrifying the entire network of Indian Railways in next 10 years with at least 90% of track electrification in next five years,” said railway minister Suresh Prabhu. “We are looking to add 1,000MW of solar and 200MW of wind energy out of which 36MW has already been commissioned,” he said.Based on railway operations and land availability, 12 states have been identified across India, wherein rooftop and utility scale projects could be taken up to meet the 5GW target for solar.The study ranks these 12 states in terms of the ease of doing business for developers, and finds that Madhya Pradesh ranks the highest for utility-scale projects, while Karnataka ranks highest in the case of rooftop projects. Minister of state (IC) for power, coal, new and renewable energy, and mines Piyush Goyal said, “Railways have come out with a commendable plan called Mission 41K where they are looking at a saving of Rs41,000 crore through the electrification of railway lines.”“The decision to domestically source equipment is another positive move from Railways and will largely benefit the domestic industry,” said Goyal.The Indian Railways announced its 1GW solar target in 2015 and had achieved about 37MW of wind and 16MW of solar across railway operations until March 2017. The Railways has also tendered close to 255MW of rooftop solar projects, of which 80MW had already been awarded. In addition, the Railways is in the process of tendering about 250MW of land-based solar projects, of which 50MW have been awarded.Arunabha Ghosh, CEO, CEEW, said, “Indian Railways’ ambitious renewable energy push will not only lower energy bills for the Railways but will also advance India’s climate goals and serve as a role model for low-carbon public transportation across the world.”“The Railway Board needs to pursue stronger collaboration with state governments and electricity regulators to establish a robust ecosystem for ensuring developer and investor confidence in its renewable project,” he added.","Railways could draw up to 25% of its power needs from renewables and would need an investment of $3.6 billion to meet the 5GW target of solar energy by 2025, a CEEW study says",00:37,Railways could draw 25% of electric power through renewables: study +2017-04-06,"New Delhi: Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, is interested in picking a stake in India’s biggest oil refinery being planned to be set up in Maharashtra at a cost of Rs1.8 trillion. State-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) together plan to set up a 60-million tonnes a year oil refinery on west coast to meet the rising fuel needs of the country. “Saudi Aramco and Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (Adnoc) are talking to us for investments in the Indian oil sector,” Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said at the Global Natural Resources Conclave.Later talking to reporters, he said Aramco is interested in picking a stake in the west coast refinery while Adnoc is keen on petrochemical projects. “Aramco is talking of stake in the refinery,” he said. He, however, did not go into how much stake the Saudi national oil company will pick. “Let’s see,” is all he said. IOC holds a 50% stake in the project while BPCL and HPCL have 25% each. The 60-mt a year refinery will be set up in two phases, along with a mega petrochemical complex. The phase-1 capacity will be 40 mt together with an aromatic complex, naphtha cracker unit and a polymer complex. This will cost Rs1.2-1.5 lakh crore and will come up in 5-6 years from the date of land acquisition. The mega complex will require 12,000-15,000 acres and land on the Maharashtra coast has been identified, he said. The second phase, involving a 20 mt refinery, will cost Rs 50,000-60,000 crore. IOC has been looking at the west coast for a refinery as the company found it tough to cater to requirements in West and South with its refineries mostly in the North. HPCL and BPCL too have been looking at a bigger refinery because of constraints they face at their Mumbai units. The mega west coast refinery will produce petrol, diesel, LPG, ATF (aviation turbine fuel) and feedstock for petrochemical plants in plastic, chemical and textile industries in Maharashtra. A top official at one of the state refiners said the project will be funded with 60% debt and 40% equity.The three refiners will chip in Rs72,000 crore in equity. Fifteen mt a year is the biggest refinery any public sector unit has set up at one stage. IOC recently started its 15 mt unit at Paradip in Odisha. Reliance Industries holds the distinction of building the biggest refinery in India till now. It built its first refinery at Jamnagar in Gujarat with a capacity of 27 mt, which was subsequently expanded to 33 mt.It built another unit adjacent to it for exports, with a capacity of 29 mt. The refinery being planned by the state-owned firms will be bigger than that. The phase-1 itself will be bigger than any one single unit. India has a refining capacity of 232.06 mt, which exceeded the demand of 183.5 mt in 2015-16. According to the International Energy Agency (EA), this demand is expected to reach 458 mt by 2040.","Saudi Aramco shows interest in buying a stake in west coast refinery project, wherein Indian Oil holds a 50% stake, while BPCL and HPCL have 25% each ",17:10,"Saudi Aramco keen to take stake in west coast refinery, says oil minister" +2017-04-19,"New Delhi: Electronics giant Samsung on Wednesday unveiled its latest flagship smartphone, Galaxy S8, that will be available in India for Rs57,900 onwards. The handset will be available in two versions - Galaxy S 8 and Galaxy S8 Plus (Rs64,900). The devices will be available at select retail outlets and online exclusively on Samsung Shop and Flipkart from 5 May. Pre-booking for the phones begins on Wednesday. These two premium devices will compete head-on with Apple’s iPhone as well as products from the stables of Sony, LG and Asus. “These two devices are among the most awaited smartphones and are already receiving great response worldwide. These push the boundaries of traditional smartphones with their design, technology and services,” Samsung India senior vice-president, mobile business, Asim Warsi said. Coupled with Samsung DeX, users can transform their smartphone into a full desktop-like experience, he added. Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus buyers will also get a double data offer from Reliance Jio. On a monthly recharge of Rs309, users will get 448 GB of 4G data over 8 months. The response to Galaxy S8 will be crucial for Samsung following reports last year of its big-ticket flagship, Galaxy Note 7, catching fire. The entire episode cost Samsung billions of dollars in losses. ALSO READ : Xiaomi prepares comeback with Mi6 marquee phone to rival Samsung, AppleSamsung is the world’s largest smartphone maker with 21.2% market share in 2016. In India too, it led the market with 24.8% share at the end of the December 2016 quarter, as per research firm IDC. The company has said the pre-orders for Galaxy S8 have exceeded those of its predecessor—S7; a sign that consumers remain unfazed by what has been described as one of the world’s worst product safety failures. As per reports, one million pre-orders have been booked in South Korea alone, where the device goes on sale from 21 April. It will also go on sale in the US and Canada on the same day. Analysts are of the view that Galaxy S8 could play a major role in the comeback of Samsung in the premium high-end smartphone market. In India, Samsung has 10 handsets in its portfolio, priced above Rs25,000. This includes the two new devices, Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, Galaxy C9 Pro, Galaxy C7 Pro, Galaxy A series (A5 and A7) 2017, Galaxy A9 Pro and Galaxy Note 5. The S8 will have a 5.8-inch display with no physical phone button, rather an invisible home button, while the S8 Plus will have a 6.2-inch screen. The S8 features a 1.9GHz octa-core Samsung Exynos 8895 processor paired with 4GB of RAM. It will be available with 64GB storage on board along with 256GB expandable memory. It also features a 12MP rear and 8MP front camera, 3,000 mAh battery. The S8+ has a 3,500 mAh battery. Samsung has done away with the physical home button and replaced it with a touch sensitive button underneath the screen. Both the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus will come with an AI-based voice assistant, Bixby, that is similar to Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri. These devices also have integrated Iris scanner, fingerprint scanner, Samsung Knox and Samsung Pay. Samsung Pay - a payment platform -now works with Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI Cards, Citibank and Standard Chartered Bank in India.",Samsun Galaxy S8 will be available at select retail outlets and online exclusively on Samsung Shop and Flipkart from 5 May,18:34,"Samsung unveils Galaxy S8 priced up to Rs64,900" +2017-04-05,"New Delhi: ReNew Power Ventures Pvt. Ltd on Wednesday said it has doubled its power generation capacity in a single year to cross 2,000 Megawatt (MW).In 2016-17, the renewable energy firm made investments of about Rs6,700 crore (approximately US $1 billion) to add 430 MW of solar and 626 MW of wind capacity.“In April 2016, we were the first company in India to achieve 1 GW of commissioned renewable energy capacity. The doubling of our capacity to 2 GW within a year by March 2017 is a result of great teamwork coupled with our commitment to contributing approximately 10% to the government of India’s renewables target,” chairman and CEO Sumant Sinha said in a statement. ALSO READ: India’s solar power sector is getting commoditized: First Solar“This milestone acquires special significance due to several reasons–our growth is organic, the capacity has doubled on a significant base of 1 GW, and we are committed to delivering high quality projects to add value for all our stakeholders,” Sinha added.ReNew Power is among one of India’s largest renewable energy companies. Over the last six years, the company has increased its capacity from 200 MW in 2011-2012 to 2,000 MW on 31 March 2017.The Indian government has set a target of 175 GW of renewable power by 2022 which includes 100 GW of solar power and 60 GW of wind power.","ReNew Power made investments of about Rs6,700 crore in 2016-17 to add 430 MW of solar and 626 MW of wind capacity",23:06,ReNew Power doubles capacity to 2 GW in a year +2017-04-05,"New Delhi: Coal India Ltd is actively looking to acquire coking coal assets in Australia, a senior company official told Reuters, as the country looks to beef up its foreign coal assets.The state-controlled company, which in January also listed the United States, Columbia, Canada and Indonesia as target destinations for investment, is currently zeroing in on Australia and South Africa, the Coal India official said.The world’s top coal miner is looking at investing in coking coal assets in Australia “a little more actively,” the official said.India’s coal minister Piyush Goyal said in February the company planned to acquire coking coal assets abroad as India lacked technology to economically develop local reserves, and that a rise in coking coal prices was encouraging for foreign acquisitions.Coal India has also asked Mozambique if it can explore for coal in a new area, after surrendering two mining licenses in the African country, the official said. The coal miner was one of 59 companies excluded by Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, from its portfolio in March, as the company derived most of its income from thermal coal.When asked about the impact on the company, the official said the company was not short of investments and that institutional and foreign investors were looking at investing in Coal India. Reuters",Coal India is actively looking to acquire coking coal assets in Australia as the country looks to beef up its foreign coal assets,21:34,Coal India actively looking to invest in coal assets in Australia +2017-04-05,"Mumbai: Royal Dutch Shell, is planning to expand its gas marketing business in India, said Shaleen Sharma, the company’s head of upstream development in India. Sharma, who spoke on the sidelines of an energy conference in Mumbai, said the downstream segment is the most attractive one currently in the gas market and the company plans to supply natural gas directly to buyers including power plants, fertilizer and petrochemical units and city gas distributors.“Indian LNG market is in good shape. That is the future. There are some new initiatives going on to see how we can access new downstream markets,” said Sharma, adding that Shell has set up a team in Singapore to boost the India gas market. Shell operates Hazira LNG Ltd, a five million tonnes per annum liquefied natural gas (LNG) import facility at Hazira, Gujarat. The company plans to double the capacity to 10 million tonnes a year, Reuters had reported on 31 March. ALSO READ: Shell plans to double Hazira LNG plant capacity: India headShell Gas B.V., a Royal Dutch Shell Plc unit, owns a 74% stake in the terminal while Total Gaz Electricite France, a unit of Total SA, holds the balance.Sharma also said that the company has dissolved the joint venture for an LNG terminal that it was planning with its consortium partners at Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh. “That was a joint venture with a number of companies including Gail. But we very recently expressed that we cannot carry on with that. This is due to lack of a secure market. We need some surety on the off-take. The joint venture agreement is no longer there,” added Sharma. The A.P Gas Distribution Corporation Limited (APGDC), Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) and Shell and Engie Global LNG had in September 2015 signed two joint venture agreements for the establishment of an LNG Floating Storage and Re-gasification Unit (FSRU) at Kakinada deepwater port.","Shell India plans to supply natural gas directly to buyers including power plants, fertilizer and petrochemical units and city gas distributors",22:46,Shell India to expand natural gas marketing business +2017-04-19,"Beijing: Xiaomi Corp. is trying to get back in the game. The Chinese electronics maker unveiled a new flagship smartphone, days after Samsung’s Galaxy S8 hit stores, hoping to regain lost ground even as Apple prepares to introduce its most anticipated device in years.Xiaomi took the wraps off the Mi6 at a college gymnasium on the outskirts of Beijing on Wednesday. The phone sports flourishes now familiar to users of premium devices including the S8—curved glass, virtually non-existent bezels, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor and 6 gigabytes of memory. It also features dual cameras on the back. In a nod to Apple Inc.’s latest iPhone, Xiaomi also dropped the headphone jack. The Mi6 goes on sale 28 April, starting at 2,499 yuan ($363).The company has moved away from its roots as an online purveyor of cheap devices, since local rivals—from Oppo to Huawei Technologies Co.—began to dominate the Chinese market with higher-end gadgets. Co-founder Lei Jun is going after his rivals not just with increasingly tricked-out phones, but also by adopting the nationwide store networks that super-charged the Oppo and Vivo brands. The company remains on track to open 1,000 stores within three years across China, and expects to chalk up 70 billion yuan of sales through that physical network in five years.ALSO READ: Review: Xiaomi Redmi 4A is a budget smartphone that comes close to being the best“Xiaomi has faced some growth pressure over the past years because of our online-only model,” Lei told his launch audience. “I’m excited to say we’ve made a breakthrough.”The billionaire co-founder is overhauling his company’s approach to regain its perch atop the world’s largest smartphone arena—it was ranked No. 5 in China in 2016 according to researcher IDC (International Data Corporation). Since becoming the country’s largest start-up in 2014 with a valuation of $45 billion, the company began to slide the next year when it missed shipments targets. While taking a pounding at home, Xiaomi began to expand globally. Lei said the brand is now No. 2 in India, behind only Samsung Electronics Co. It’s also begun to deepen research into areas as diverse as artificial intelligence and online finance. It applied for 7,071 patents last year, and total patents will ‘soon’ exceed 10,000,” Lei said.For now, the company still gets much of its revenue from its home market. In January, former international head Hugo Barra left and then joined Facebook Inc., raising questions about Xiaomi’s ability to navigate its way through what Lei had described as “unforgettable” challenges. Bloomberg","Xiaomis’ new flagship model Mi6 goes on sale 28 April, starting at $363",17:46,"Xiaomi prepares comeback with Mi6 marquee phone to rival Samsung, Apple" +2017-04-19,"New Delhi: The PSU disinvestment for the current fiscal year took off on Thursday, with 5% stake sale in National Aluminium Company Limited (Nalco), which could fetch about Rs640 crore to the exchequer. Of its total holding of 74.58% in Nalco, the government is selling 5% or over 9.66 crore shares at a floor price of Rs67. The floor price is at a discount of 8.78% over the previous closing of Rs73.45. The two-day offer for sale (OFS) began on the bourses on Wednesday with over 7.73 crore shares being sold to institutional investors. Over 1.93 crore have been reserved for retail investors who will also be offered additional discount over the issue price.Retail investors are defined as individual ones who place bids for sales of total value of not more than Rs 2 lakh in aggregate. The Nalco shares fell 7.76% to close at Rs67.75 on the BSE. The share sale on Wednesday will continue till close of the market.In the secondary market, the Nalco scrip was trading at Rs67.95, down 7.49%, on the BSE at 3,10pm. Nalco is the first disinvestment of the current fiscal, which began on 1 April For this fiscal, the government has set a target of Rs46,500 crore through minority stake sale and Rs15,000 crore from strategic disinvestment. In 2016-17, the government had raised over Rs 46,247 crore from disinvestment.","Of the total holding of 74.58% in Nalco, the government is selling 5% or over 9.66 crore shares at a floor price of Rs67",15:45,Nalco shares fall over 7% amid OFS +2017-04-19,"Mumbai: Everstone-backed IndoStar Capital Finance Ltd on Wednesday said R. Sridhar will join them as executive vice-chairman and chief executive officer, taking over from Vimal Bhandari who has led the firm since 2011, according to a company statement.Bhandari will remain on IndoStar’s board and stay as a shareholder. Sridhar, who has been associated with the Sriram Group since 1985, will be investing a significant amount of his own capital in IndoStar.Sridhar will oversee IndoStar’s growth across its lending businesses, including corporate lending, small and medium enterprise (SME) lending, a 100%-owned housing finance subsidiary, IndoStar Home Finance Pvt. Ltd, and other asset financing businesses.“I am excited to lead IndoStar Capital at this phase of its journey. The strong sponsorship of Everstone and other shareholders, combined with a well-capitalised balance sheet and a highly profitable business provide an excellent base for the next level of growth,” said Sridhar.At the end of March, the company had a net worth of Rs1,542 crore.",IndoStar Capital says R. Sridhar will taking over from Vimal Bhandari who has led the firm since 2011,13:57,"R. Sridhar to join IndoStar Capital as CEO, executive vice-chairman" +2017-04-19,"Mumbai: Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd (JISL) on Wednesday said it has agreed to acquire 80% stake in two entities in the US with an investment of $48 million. JISL will acquire the two micro-irrigation companies through its multi-generation wholly-owned subsidiary in US, it said in a BSE filing. The two micro-irrigation dealers, Agri-Valley Irrigation Inc. (AVI) and Irrigation Design and Construction Inc. (IDC), have entered into an agreement with JISL to merge ownership of their businesses into a newly-formed distribution company, JISL said. This new organisation will provide a platform to help growers implement irrigation technology. AVI and IDC have been long-tenured stable companies with operations in the US. “We have invested $48 million for this acquisition. The transaction gives us the capability to provide focused, end-to-end project solutions, consistent with our global solutions and capabilities. With the newly-formed company, we’ll be able to deliver agriculture technology and irrigation solutions from our recent investments,” Jain Irrigation Systems CEO Anil Jain said. No government or regulatory approvals are required to complete the transaction, the BSE filing said. The transaction is expected to be completed in the next few weeks.","Jain Irrigation will acquire two micro-irrigation companies through its wholly-owned subsidiary in US, it said in a BSE filing",16:34,Jain Irrigation buys two US firms for $48 million +2017-04-05,"New Delhi: India will use domestic coal for its proposed 4,000 megawatt power project in Tamil Nadu, instead of importing it, coal minister Piyush Goyal said on Wednesday, as the south Asian nation seeks to cut its overseas purchases.He said the state power minister has agreed for use of domestic coal for the project. Reuters","India to use domestic coal for its proposed 4,000 MW power project in Tamil Nadu, instead of importing it, says coal minister Piyush Goyal ",12:54,"India turns to local coal for planned 4,000 MW power project in Tamil Nadu " +2017-04-05,"
Ten years after Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) entered fuel retailing in South Africa, the wheel has turned full circle.India’s largest private sector company bought a 76% stake in fuel retailer Gulf Africa Petroleum Corp. (Gapco) in August 2007 and hoped to expand its footprint further in the continent. At a time when RIL was struggling with its fuel retailing in India, the move helped RIL deploy its expertise in fuel retailing overseas and find a market for its products outside India.That affair lasted a decade, almost.Last June, RIL announced its intention to sell Gapco to France’s Total SA. On 29 March, the Indian company said it has obtained all approvals to complete the sale of its Gapco stake. “RIL was happy with Gapco’s performance. Though it was not as huge as its India operations, for 10 years, Gapco did provide RIL with a reason to keep operating in the fuel retail segment. RIL had plans to expand in the neighbouring markets in Africa too,” said a person familiar with the decision to sell Gapco, on condition of anonymity.With subsidiaries in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda engaged in petroleum products import, trading and marketing among others, Gapco’s revenue for 2015-16 stood at Rs11,723 crore, according to RIL’s annual report for the year. Currently, Gapco operates 104 fuel retail outlets in the East African region — 65 in Tanzania; 30 in Uganda and nine in Kenya. So, why has RIL dropped a subsidiary that seemed to be doing well? The first person cited above and another close to the company said, after India allowed market pricing of fuel, RIL’s fuel retailing business has recovered and the company wants to put all its energy into expanding in India, the world’s third-largest crude oil consumer. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), India beat Japan as the world’s third-largest crude oil consumer in 2016. India will also become the world’s third-largest-refiner in 2022, surpassing Russia. “RIL has always been bullish on the India market. And its management now wants to focus on India. Gapco happened when India operations were down. Then, RIL had decided to put its management bandwidth to use in Gapco. With all international petroleum retailers eyeing the India market, it makes sense to divest in Africa and focus back home,” said the second person familiar with RIL’s move. RIL did not reply to an email sent on Friday. RIL’s interest in the Indian fuel retailing segment was rekindled in October 2014 when the government freed diesel prices. Petrol was deregulated in June 2010. Like state-owned oil marketing companies, for RIL too, diesel has been the key product, bringing in the maximum volume. Diesel deregulation meant a revival of its fuel outlets. RIL’s Diesel sales accounted for 14.3% of the total diesel sales in the country, while its petrol sales accounted for 7.2% of total petrol sales in the country in 2005-06, RIL’s fuel retailing heydays.Since 2008, when crude oil prices rose to $150 a barrel, diesel retail was the monopoly of Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL), which managed to sell fuel below cost with government support, something not available for RIL. In May 2008, RIL closed its fuel pumps. The company, which at one point explored tying up with oil marketing companies to stay afloat, abandoned the plans after fuel price deregulation. RIL, which had a 12% market share in fuel retailing in 2005, slipped to less than 0.5% in 2014. Since then, it has clawed back to around 3-4%. RIL had spent Rs5,000 crore in setting up 1,470 retail outlets, of which around 1,151 were operational till the third quarter of 2016-17. The company planned to reopen all its fuel retail outlets by the fourth quarter of 2016-17. Last fiscal, RIL also began reporting its fuel retailing figures. Its retail outlets, which are company-owned and company-operated, are now included in its organized retail business.","After India allowed market pricing of fuel, RIL’s fuel retailing business has recovered and the company wants to put all its energy into expanding at home",08:15,What next for Reliance Industries after Gapco sale? +2017-04-05,"Mumbai: India’s ailing power distribution companies (discoms) have narrowed their losses and improved their operations because of Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY), a government bailout package, analysts said.Improvement in operations of certain discoms is already visible via reduction in AT&C (aggregate technical and commercial) losses, power purchase cost, narrowing gap between cost and revenue and interest cost savings, Edelweiss Securities analysts Kunal Shah, Nilesh Parikh and Prakhar Agarwal said in a 30 March report.Out of the Rs48,800 crore discom debt, about Rs23,900 crore was repaid till the third quarter of FY17 under UDAY and another Rs9,000 crore was repaid by Tamil Nadu recently, resulting in 65% of discom debt being repaid, the analysts wrote in the report. In the 18 months since its inception, the scheme has been “undeniably successful” in achieving its objective of restoring financial health of discoms by transferring almost 75% of their debt to the state governments and reducing their interest cost burden on the remaining 25% debt, consultant Bridge To India said in a note on Monday.“Discom financials were in a spectacular mess back in 2015 with aggregate debt of Rs4.3 trillion and annual losses of Rs60,000 crore at the end of March 2015. Out of the total debt of Rs3.8 trillion attributable to the 26 UDAY states and union territories, 61% has been already transferred to state governments and/or refinanced in the form of state government guaranteed bonds,” Bridge to India said in the note. “Another 10% is expected to be similarly restructured shortly. These measures alone are expected to reduce annual aggregate interest cost burden by Rs16,000 crore ($2.4 billion) (down 65%).”With improved cash flows, the power sector may witness revival in demand by the discoms, but incremental benefits could accrue over the next two-three years, Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd said in a 3 April note.“The determined efforts by few states to improve its operational and collection efficiency in order to bring down losses and improve its financial health are showing results with majority of the states (barring Rajasthan) have managed to bring down AT&C losses over FY16,” the Emkay note said.Karnataka, Haryana and Rajasthan have shown remarkable improvement in their operations as they have managed to magnify the benefit of interest cost reduction by sharp operational improvement, ICICI Securities analysts Prakash Gaurav Goel and Apoorva Bahadur wrote in a 28 March report.So far, 25 states and one Union territory have joined UDAY, with West Bengal and Odisha yet to join. State discoms had collectively borrowed more than Rs4 trillion till the end of March 2015. The government in 2015 launched UDAY for operational and financial turnaround of power discoms.","UDAY scheme has helped transfer almost 75% of discoms’ debt to state governments and reduce interest cost burden on the remaining 25% debt, says an analyst",08:16,Discoms starting to show improvement under UDAY: analysts +2017-04-05,"Mumbai: The overseas arm of India’s biggest oil and gas explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC) intends to spend more than $3 billion on Iran’s Farzad-B natural gas block.ONGC Videsh Ltd last month submitted a revised plan to the Iranian government for the block, which the company will be able to develop within five years, managing director N.K. Verma told reporters in Mumbai on Tuesday. The Indian oil company is now waiting for feedback from Tehran, Verma said.India has been weighing investments in Iran worth up to $20 billion. In addition to oil and gas exploration, the South Asian nation has considered petrochemical plants, gas-processing facilities and port expansions, including the industrial hub of Chabahar, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said last year during a visit to Tehran.Iran is seeking foreign investment to revive its oil, gas and petrochemical industries since international sanctions on its economy were removed last year. Output from Farzad-B could range from 1 billion to 1.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, Verma said.Parent company Oil & Natural Gas Corp., which is up 34% in the past year, rose 0.4% to settle at Rs185.80 on Monday. Markets were closed on Tuesday for a public holiday. Bloomberg",ONGC Videsh expects to produce between 1 billion and 1.6 billion cubic feet per day of gas in five years from the start of development of Farzad B gas block ,01:47,ONGC Videsh to spend over $3 billion on Iran gas block +2017-04-07,"San Francisco: First fact-checking came to Facebook Inc. Now it’s coming to Google. The world’s largest search engine is rolling out a new feature that places “Fact Check” tags on snippets of articles in its News results. The Alphabet Inc. unit had already run limited tests. On Friday, it extended the capability to every listing in its News pages and massive search catalog. This is the latest sign Google is responding to mounting pressure to police content it hosts online after criticism the company, and other internet firms, help spread misinformation.Google isn’t entirely giving up its usual hands-off approach: The company is letting others do the fact-checking. The approach is meant to legitimize or question claims online, Google said in a blog post. Checked search results list the name of the person or group making the assertion and the determination of the fact-checker. Although Google is working with established fact-checking organizations, like PolitiFact and Snopes, it’s also opening up the system to publishers including The Washington Post and The New York Times. In theory, media organizations could use the new feature to fact-check each other. Or publishers could give different verdicts on the veracity of the same article. “These fact checks are not Google’s and are presented so people can make more informed judgments,” Google said. “Even though differing conclusions may be presented, we think it’s still helpful for people to understand the degree of consensus around a particular claim and have clear information on which sources agree.”While any publisher can apply to add fact-check labels to content, Google search algorithms will determine whether they appear in results, a spokeswoman said.The company plans to reserve the label for search results about addressable public claims of fact, rather than opinion. Publishers can write the labels that appear next to results. Examples include “True,” “Mostly False,” or “Pants on Fire!” (a favourite of PolitiFact). Outcry over the influence of misinformation, or “fake news,” began after the US Presidential election. Facebook, a leading driver of online traffic to publishers in the US, took the brunt of criticism. On Thursday, the company introduced new features in its flagship social network designed to show users how to detect false news. (Listen to Bloomberg’s Decrypted podcast on how fake news blew up into a political crisis for Facebook.)But Google has not been immune to scrutiny. Critics have pointed to several instances of inaccurate and misleading articles surfacing in search results. Such examples are particularly stark when Google delivers what it finds in the form of tiny snippets, a priority for the company in recent years.“From our perspective, there should just be no situation where fake news gets distributed, so we are all for doing better here,” Google chief executive officer Sundar Pichai told BBC News shortly after the US election.Google is not paying publications or fact-checking organizations. A spokeswoman for Google said articles that used the new fact-check label would not be ranked differently in search results. Bloomberg",Google is rolling out a new feature that places ‘Fact Check’ tags on snippets of articles in its News results,14:00,Google brings fake news fact-checking to search results +2017-04-07,"San Francisco: Alphabet Inc.’s Access division, which houses its broadband service Google Fiber, has removed two prominent executives from its ranks, the latest sign of the business pulling back from ambitious, expensive goals.Milo Medin, a vice president at Access, and Dennis Kish, a wireless infrastructure veteran who was president of Google Fiber, are leaving the division but staying at the Alphabet holding company. Gregory McCray, who was appointed head of Access in February, told staff about the management changes at a Thursday meeting. An Access spokesman confirmed the changes, but declined to comment further.Kish joined Google Fiber in 2014 from Qualcomm Inc. and worked closely with fellow transplant Craig Barratt, who previously led the Access group. Barratt suddenly exited in October, when Alphabet also announced it was halting Google Fiber expansions in eight major urban markets and laying off around 10% of its staff.The Access division has continued to shrink. About 600 employees are currently being reassigned to the Google internet business and other Alphabet divisions, according to sources familiar with the plans.A Google veteran since 2010, Medin was a chief advocate for the company’s high-speed Fiber service in Washington. He has also been leading some of Alphabet’s more experimental efforts to tap wireless spectrum for better internet delivery. It’s unclear if that effort will move to another part of Alphabet.Also Read: Donald Trump hails ‘friendship’ with China’s Xi Jinping on 1st day of summitOn Thursday, Medin was named as a member of the Federal Communications Commission’s new Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee.Medin and Kish didn’t respond to emailed requests for comment.Under Barratt, Alphabet pushed to bring Fiber to more than a dozen US cities. It hit some hurdles, including increased competition and legal challenges from telecommunications firms. Google Fiber also grew into one of the costliest efforts for the company, outside of the dominant Google internet business.After halting its expansion, some analysts praised Alphabet for implementing cost-cutting measures. Last month, Google Fiber cancelled some planned installations in Kansas City, its first market. Bloomberg","Alphabet ’s Access division has removed two prominent executives from its ranks, the latest sign of the business pulling back from ambitious, expensive goals",09:48,Alphabet moves 2 top Google Fiber executives off project +2017-04-07,"San Francisco: President Donald Trump wants to know who’s behind the rogue federal employee Twitter accounts slamming his administration’s policies. Twitter Inc.’s suing to keep him from finding out.Twitter alleges that the Trump administration’s subpoena for information to identify the users behind accounts critical of the president would violate their constitutional rights to free-speech. The social media giant contends users are entitled to their anonymity unless they’ve violated a law that would warrant unmasking and the government has failed to make such a case.The Trump administration’s sensitivity to criticism on the so-called ALT Twitter feeds that mimic those of federal agencies began with the president’s 20 January inauguration. When the official Twitter account of the National Park Service re-tweeted an image comparing that day’s crowd size to the larger one at president Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, Trump personally called the acting park service director to complain, according to a Washington Post report cited in the complaint.An official park service apology on Twitter for the unflattering comparison spawned the activation of the “rogue” alternative accounts.Trump, who frequently uses Twitter to lambaste public officials and private citizens alike, embraced the site as a tool for political warfare during his campaign. As president, Trump continues to deploy tweets, sometimes in the early morning hours, to attack political foes, judges and media outlets.Twitter said in its lawsuit on Thursday that handles such as @ALT_USCIS, @alt_labor and @BadlandsNPS are among a “new and innovative class” of users who provide views that are “often vigorously opposed” to the actions of the administration. The government issued an administrative summons to Twitter on 14 March demanding that the company turn over records to identify the user or users behind @ALT_USCIS, according to the complaint.Jenny Burke, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, declined to comment on the lawsuit against that agency and US Customs and Border Protection. Some Trump supporters have complained that a so-called deep state of Obama holdovers is embedded throughout the federal bureaucracy and is trying to undercut the president.Travel banSome of the alternative accounts are the work of people claiming to be current or former federal employees seeking to challenge the views of the government. @ALT_USCIS has been critical of the new administration’s immigration policies, including the president’s travel bans and executive order to build a wall along the US border with Mexico.Two days before Twitter received the summons, @ALT_USCIS tweeted about the department’s “waste, inefficiency and poor management” as it attempted to create an automated system to process immigration applications, according to the complaint. A US Customs and Border Protection agent faxed a summons to Twitter demanding disclosure of the account holder under a US customs statute for the examination of books and witnesses.Twitter is required to produce all records related to the account to comply with an ongoing investigation to “ascertain the correctness of entries,” according to a copy of the summons included in the lawsuit. In the summons, the government threatened legal action if Twitter didn’t comply by 13 March, which was the day before the company got the subpoena.Suing ObamaTwitter has historically been willing to go to court to protect user data—a position that has sometimes led to its service being temporarily blocked in other countries. The company releases a global transparency report for its users, where it details how many data requests came from each government and whether they were fulfilled. It sued the Obama administration after being blocked from disclosing exactly how many times the US government made surveillance requests.The company has disclosed the identities of criminal suspects. In March, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested a man accused of sending a link on Twitter that included a flashing light intended to trigger an epileptic seizure, which it did, according the New York Times. In that case according to the Times, Twitter disclosed information that led to the arrest of man in Salisbury, Maryland.In Thursday’s lawsuit, Twitter contends the government failed to demonstrate that the rogue users have committed a crime that would prompt the release of their personal information. The statute cited by government to demand the data, Twitter claims, covers only a narrow class of records related to importing merchandise. @ALT_USCIS doesn’t import merchandise into the US, according to the complaint.‘Chilling effect’“Permitting CBP to pierce the pseudonym of the @ALT_USCIS account would have a grave chilling effect on the speech of that account in particular and on the many alternative agency accounts that have been created to voice their dissent to government policies,” according to the filing.Attorneys for Twitter claim the US Supreme Court has long recognized that “anonymity is often essential to fostering” political speech, especially when the speaker could “face retaliation or retribution” for his or her comments. Bloomberg",Twitter alleges that the Trump administration’s subpoena for information to identify users behind accounts critical of the president will violate their constitutional rights to free speech,08:34,Donald Trump sued by Twitter over bid to unmask @alt-agency handle +2017-04-07,"Digital adoption in India has been growing rapidlyRecent disruptions in the telecom space have given a strong impetus to digital adoption in India, accelerating the rate by at least a few years. While the total number of mobile Internet users is expected to grow to almost 650 million by 2020, users with high-speed Internet access is expected to be around 550 million. This can prove to be a huge boost for the Internet economy. Data consumption is set to expand to around 7-10 GB per month per user by 2020 from the current 700 MB per month per user.Three key forces are coming together to unlock the latent digital demand By 2020, 4G-enabled devices are expected to grow six-fold to 550 million devices, constituting about 70% of devices in use. At the same time, reliable high-speed data is becoming both ubiquitous as well as affordable (data rates have reduced to less than one-third in just 4-5 months). The proliferation of digital content is also driving consumption. Mobile Internet users are expected to nearly double from 391 million today to 650 million by 2020 while data consumption per user is estimated to grow 10-14 times to reach 7-10 GB/month.India’s Internet economy expected to double to become $250 billion by 2020The Internet economy in India is becoming a major contributor to GDP, and is expected to grow to about 7.5% of the country’s GDP by 2020 from 5% now. E-commerce and financial services are projected to lead the growth. For instance, share of digital payment transactions could increase to 30-40% of all transactions by 2020 from 13% in 2015.TiE and BCG will launch The $250B Digital Volcano report on India’s Internet economy in 2020, at TiE’s India Internet Day 2017 on 7 April in New Delhi.","India’s Internet industry is expected to double by 2020 from today’s $125 billion, growing to 7.5% of GDP",10:48,India’s Internet industry to double by 2020: report +2017-04-06,"Sydney: Australia’s consumer watchdog has sued Apple Inc. alleging it used a software update to disable iPhones which had cracked screens fixed by third parties.The US technology giant “bricked”—or disabled with a software update—hundreds of smartphones and tablet devices, and then refused to unlock them on the grounds that customers had the devices serviced by non-Apple repairers, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said in a court filing.“Consumer guarantee rights under the Australian Consumer Law exist independently of any manufacturer’s warranty and are not extinguished simply because a consumer has goods repaired by a third party,” ACCC chairman Rod Sims said in a statement.An Apple spokeswoman did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.The regulator said that between September 2014 and February 2016, Apple customers who downloaded software updates then connected their devices to their computers received a message saying the device “could not be restored and the device had stopped functioning”.Customers then asked Apple to fix their devices, only to be told by the company that “no Apple entity ... was required to, or would, provide a remedy” for free, the documents added.Apple engaged in “misleading or deceptive conduct and made false or misleading representations to consumers” about its software updates and customers’ rights to have their products repaired by the company, the commission said.As well as fines, the ACCC said it was seeking injunctions, declarations, compliance programme orders, corrective notices, and costs.The lawsuit was filed late on Wednesday, a week after the consumer watchdog granted Apple a win by denying Australia’s banks the right to introduce a mobile payment system to rival its Apple Wallet. Reuters",Australian regulator says Apple alleging it used a software update to disable iPhones which had cracked screens fixed by third parties,14:10,Australian regulator sues Apple alleging iPhone ‘bricking’ +2017-04-06,"
Mumbai: Girish Chaturvedi, group vice-president of digital marketing firm Netcore Solutions, firmly believes that mobile phones are the best medium to target audiences on a large scale. So when the ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship needed a plan to reach the unemployed and school/college dropouts for its flagship programme, a skills training and certification initiative termed Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), Chaturvedi’s team at Netcore Solutions decided that mobile messaging would be the best channel. Netcore Solutions got involved in this campaign when it was brought in as a technology partner by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), who took this initiative to help the PMKVY. Netcore Solutions was a finalist in the government and citizen engagement category at the mBillionth 2016 awards, organized by the Digital Empowerment Foundation.The PMKVY initiative aims to impart vocational training and certify skilled persons to enhance employability and help grassroots entrepreneurs raise funds via formal channels. Marketing skills training at traditional formats, such as kiosks and fairs, are less effective at reaching bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers, and also cannot be scaled up to reach millions of India’s unemployed youths. Radio and cinema are also not effective at reaching the poor who may lack access to such media. But mobile phones have a wide reach. “We decided to use an SMS campaign to generate interest in PMKVY,” Chaturvedi explains.A month ahead of the PMKVY’s launch on 15 July 2015, Netcore Solutions’s team launched a pilot campaign in Bihar, sending out bulk SMSes in partnership with Airtel. Using keywords such as ‘sarkari’, ‘naukri’, and ‘muft’, they sent the message out that individuals looking for skills training and certification should give a missed call to a designated number. Those who did, received an automated voice call that recorded the caller’s age, gender, location, employment status, and according to the location, directed them to the nearest skills training centre for counselling and enrolment. “Though our campaign initially reached only Airtel customers, the missed call number became very popular and within a week we had Idea and Vodafone customers calling in,” Chaturvedi says.What were the key takeaways from the pilot programme? “For location profiling, we initially used to ask for the caller’s STD code, but were surprised to learn that people were more aware of their pincode than the STD code. So we changed this input variable. We were able to enrol 25,000 people for skills training in less than a month, meaning one out of eight people we targeted ended up enrolling,” he says.The campaign tied up with all the major telecom companies such as Bharti Airtel Ltd, Vodafone India Ltd and Idea Cellular, who offered their services for free. In total, 440 million text messages were sent out, while 16 million missed calls were received. The campaign received responses from 7.5 million people, of which 2.73 million profiles were compiled. What explains the wide gap between the responses received and actual enrolment? Chaturvedi is not sure, but he thinks it may have to do with poor mobile literacy. “Several times, the callers entered invalid responses, and we were thus unable to record their profiles or could only capture the data partially,” he explains.Netcore Solutions’s campaign was aided by its partnership with the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), while in Bihar they tied up with a skills training company called Centum. Netcore Solutions has also recommended setting up online portal for PMKVY, not unlike online marketplaces for job searching. “We created an online platform for NSDC (National Skill Development Corporation), so that different training companies could access job-seeker data classified according to various districts, constituencies and states. However, the NSDC has not yet implemented our suggestion. Such a platform has the potential to act as a marketplace whereby employers can look for skilled workers. Moreover, such a platform could also be used for real-time monitoring of the tasks being carried out at the 230 training centres across India,” Chaturvedi adds.Chaturvedi points out that the biggest learning was an assessment of the extent of mobile literacy in the country. Actual enrolment fell far short of the missed calls received due to callers entering invalid responses. While Netcore Solutions’s campaign has won it several awards, Chaturvedi clarifies that the company is not involved with the second chapter of PMKVY that is expected to run until 2020. Mint has a strategic partnership with Digital Empowerment Foundation, which hosts the Manthan and mBillionth awards.",Netcore Solutions’s project sends SMSes to spread word about the centre’s skilling initiative and direct applicants to the nearest training centres,01:41,Leveraging mobile phones to boost skilling initiative +2017-04-05,"New Delhi: IT industry body Nasscom on Tuesday said the US’ latest memo on H1B visas would have “little impact” on Indian IT firms as they have already started applying for visas for higher-level specialised professionals this year. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has recently come out with a policy memorandum saying companies applying for visas must provide “evidence to establish that the particular position is one in a specialty occupation”. The new H1B guideline rescinds a memorandum issued in December, 2000. Seeking to play down the impact on outsourcing companies, Nasscom said the memorandum “reinforces existing practice by adjudicators and clarifies requirements for certain computer professionals”. ALSO READ | H1-B visa: What the USCIS guidelines mean for tech workers and companies“The clarifying guidance should have little impact on Nasscom members as this has been the adjudicatory practice for years and also as several of our member executives have noted recently, they are applying for visas for higher level professionals this year,” Nasscom said in a statement. Nasscom counts IT outsourcing firms like TCS, Infosys, Wipro as well as American firms like Cognizant, Microsoft, and IBM as members. It added that the demand for additional evidence showing that the said job is complex/specialised and requires professional degrees mentioned in the memo has been the de facto requirement for years. India accounts for a significant portion of the H1B visas, which are non-immigrant visas used by American firms to employ foreign workers that require specific expertise. USCIS—a government agency that oversees lawful immigration to the US—has emphasised that the H1B visa programme should help US companies recruit highly-skilled foreign nationals when there is a shortage of qualified workers in the country. ALSO READ | H-1B visas to become harder to get as Donald Trump starts crackdownUSCIS issues about 65,000 H1B visas in general category and another 20,000 for those applicants having higher education (Masters and above) from US universities in the field of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Nasscom said the H1B visa system exists specifically because of the “persistent shortage” of highly-skilled domestic IT talent in the US. The US accounts for over 60% of the export revenues of the Indian IT industry. “Nasscom member companies have and will continue to provide skilled talent and solutions to fill that gap and keep US companies competitive globally,” it added.ALSO READ | H1B visa: Computer programmer won’t qualify as specialty occupation , says USHowever, industry watchers believe that coupled with immigration pushbacks being seen in other geographies like the UK and Singapore, the overall impact would make movement of labour difficult and operation costlier in the short term. During his election campaign, US President Donald Trump had promised stricter immigration laws and protection of local jobs. An US legislation (Lofgren Bill) was introduced that proposed doubling of the minimum wages of H1B visa holders to $130,000. Indian firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro—on their part—have been reducing their dependence on H1B visas, ramping up local hiring to meet requirement.",Nasscom says the latest H1B visa memorandum from the USCIS reinforces existing practices by adjudicators and clarifies requirements for certain computer professionals,19:01,Nasscom says USCIS H1B visa memo to have little impact on Indian IT firms +2017-03-27,"New Delhi: Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India Pvt Ltd (HMSI), the local two-wheeler unit of the Japanese automaker, has appointed Minoru Kato as president and chief executive officer, the company said in a statement on Monday.Kato, who replaces Keita Muramatsu from 1 April, has 29 years of experience working at Honda Motor Co. He has expertise in production control, motorcycle planning, and sales across Europe, Japan, and South-East Asia. He started his career in Honda Japan in 1988 in the production control division of automobile operations at the Saitama plant. Kato has served as CEO of Honda Vietnam Co. Ltd since 1 April, 2014.Muramatsu, who led Honda’s Indian two-wheeler operations for six years, will now become executive vice president at American Honda Motor Co Inc. Under his leadership, India became the number one contributor to Honda’s two-wheeler sales globally for the first time in 2016. Under Muramatsu, HMSI doubled its market share from 13% to 27% and rose from fourth position to becoming the second largest two-wheeler company in India in six years.","Minoru Kato, who replaces Keita Muramatsu as HMSI’s CEO from 1 April, has 29 years of experience working at Honda Motor s",19:21,Honda Motorcycle names Minoru Kato as India President and CEO +2017-03-27,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank managing director Aditya Puri’s name has featured in the list of world’s 30 best CEOs, published by American financial magazine Barron’s. “Puri, 66, has transformed HDFC Bank from a start-up into one of the world’s highest-quality banks, generating eye-popping returns by maintaining lending standards while expanding beyond corporate loans into a full-service retail bank,” Barron’s said. According to the magazine, a 2014 trip to Silicon Valley made Puri a digital evangelist. In hallmark style, the banker swiftly set out to remake India’s second-largest private-sector bank into the digital spot for anything money-related, it said.“That’s proving to be a bigger competitive advantage than even he imagined, as India’s surprise demonetisation in November, which voided 86% of the country’s cash, catapulted demand for digital payments,” Barron’s said.","Aditya Puri has transformed HDFC Bank from a start-up into one of the world’s highest-quality banks, generating eye-popping returns, says ‘Barron’s’",22:48,HDFC Bank MD Aditya Puri features in Barron’s 30 best CEOs list +2017-04-05,"New Delhi: IT industry body Nasscom on Wednesday appointed Quatrro CMD Raman Roy its chairman for 2017-18. It has also named Rishad Premji, Wipro chief strategy officer and son of technology czar Azim Premji, as the vice chairman. Roy, who served as the vice chairman in the previous fiscal, will take on the new role from 6 April. He takes over the mantle from C P Gurnani, managing director and CEO of Tech Mahindra. “Nasscom is playing a critical role in evangelising the digital opportunity for the sector and I would like to support the industry in facilitating the skilling and reskilling effort of the industry through disruptive models,” Roy said.He added that building India’s innovation edge is another key priority and the industry body plans to scale up start-ups and centre of excellence initiatives to the next level. The announcement comes at a time when the over $140 billion Indian IT industry faces a number of headwinds like growing protectionism from various countries and business shifts towards digital. R Chandrashekhar, president of Nasscom, said: “A new-age leader like Rishad, with his vast exposure, will bring fresh ideas to the table, helping the industry tap new domains and opportunities globally.” Roy, along with Rishad and Chandrashekhar, will lead Nasscom to carry out its diverse array of priorities. The leadership team will also work towards further strengthening various sector councils and focus on enhanced member outreach and involvement.","Quatrro CMD Raman Roy will take over as the Nasscom chairman while Rishad Premji, Wipro chief strategy officer and son of Azim Premji, will step in as vice chairman ",18:02,"Nasscom appoints Raman Roy as chairman, Rishad Premji vice chairman" +2017-03-24,"
Mpower, a Mumbai-based mental healthcare initiative by Neerja Birla, wife of Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla, has grown bigger in its second year. It now has a diagnostics centre providing physiological and psychiatric services. In November, Birla also launched the MPower Foundation under the aegis of the corporate social responsibility initiative of Idea Cellular Ltd, an Aditya Birla Group company, to reach out to the economically challenged and create awareness.Ahead of their annual awareness-building cycling event, Ride to Mpower (15km and 35km), Birla talks about the challenges and expansion plans. Edited excerpts:
What are the plans for Mpower?The expansion plans include opening three-four more centres (of which two would be in Mumbai) in the coming year, whereas with the foundation we will reach out to schools, colleges and corporates.
The centre is located at Khareghat Colony, Hughes Road, which is one of the most privileged neighbourhoods in Mumbai. Is that by design?Mental health has an impact on a large part of the urban population. Yes, (at our centre) we are reaching out to a certain section of society. It is well known that a lot of high achievers have mental-health concerns. We are trying to create dialogue around this subject to normalize it.
Are schools and colleges open to discussions on mental health?We have reached out to 100-120 schools in Mumbai since the foundation started. Everybody knows that this is a serious topic. Look at the statistics. The incidence of suicides is highest in the age group of 15-29. The sad part is that schools are just not open to talk about it. Only four schools have allowed our team to reach out to parents. Our programme encompasses reaching out to students, teachers and parents—all key stakeholders. For teachers, we look at how to identify a child going through an issue, how to deal with it. For parents, we discuss how to deal with issues at home and how to identify (problems), and for the students, it is about making them aware of the symptoms. We are really struggling as there are very few takers, and this even as we offer the first workshop, which is an introduction to mental healthcare, free. The response has been really appalling.
Why do you think the schools are so unreceptive?Like I said earlier: It is about bringing about a cultural shift in perception. Mental health or mental well-being is always on the back-burner, something that is not important.Ride to Mpower, the second edition of the cyclathon, will be held on Sunday. Registration is open today, 11am-8pm, at the High Street Phoenix mall, Mumbai. For more details, visit Mpowerminds.com.","Neerja Birla, founder of Mpower, talks about the need for a change in the perception of mental health",19:36,Neerja Birla: Mental health is always on the back-burner +2017-02-13,"7What is it? Number of people killed in a gun-battle in Kashmir on Sunday.Why is it important? The violence in the state, rekindled in 2016, continues with four terrorists killed in the fight. With two Indian soldiers dead, J&K security forces’ death toll increased. Avalanches had claimed lives earlier this year, which succeeds a year with the highest death count of 82 among the forces since 2008.Tell me more: A civilian was also killed and three soldiers injured in the incident. In civilian deaths, three road-workers had been killed by militants last month.Rs 385.6 croreWhat is it? The first-ever loss reported by India’s third-largest telecom player, Idea Cellular in the third quarter financial year 2017 (Q3 FY17).Why is it important? While it was expected Idea would report a loss, the amount was more than the forecast. A quarter of free voice and data promotional offers by Reliance Jio has dented financial performance of all the three (including Airtel and Vodafone) major players, with the smallest, Idea, being hit the hardest. Tell me more: Idea says the sector can hope to recover only when Jio starts charging for its pan-India mobile services. Idea’s income fell from a profit of Rs 764.2 crore in Q3 FY16 and Rs 90 crore in Q2 FY17. The operator waited for the official confirmation of a merger with Vodafone India before sharing its financial results this quarter.$200 millionWhat is it? The amount Oil and Natural Gas Corporation’s (ONGC) overseas arm, ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), is said to have overpaid in acquiring Videocon Group’s 10% stake for $2.5 billion, in a large natural gasfield in Africa’s Mozambique in 2013.Why is it important? If proved, this could mean a big lapse in judgement for the public sector company and India’s largest oil and gas explorer by revenue. What was allegedly on the market for $2.3 billion, was acquired for $2.475 billion by it, and since has faced a writedown in asset value as crude energy prices fell. The payment to Videocon is now being investigated by the oil ministry.Tell me more: OVL later bought stake in the same area from another energy player, the US Anadarko Corp, for $2.64 billion in 2014 that the latter calculated was a gain of over 62% of the purchase price. 310 milesWhat is it? The distance travelled by a North Korean intermediate-range ballistic missile before it landed in the Sea of Japan on Sunday.Why is it important? By testing the missile, North Korea has violated United Nation’s restrictions, even as many observers commented that it was to provoke Donald Trump, the newly elected president of United States, a long time ally of Japan. Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe, who is on a visit to US, and was with Trump, called it “absolutely intolerable.”Tell me more: Just a day before the launch, Trump and Abe had urged North Korea not to test ballistic missiles and to drop its nuclear programme. It comes about two weeks ahead of the largest ever joint military exercise between the US and South Korea.43,512What is it? The number of housing units sold in the quarter ended December 2016 in top nine cities in India, according to a report by PropTiger.Why is it important? The sales are down 20% from the previous quarter, one of the expected impacts of demonetisation, which took away 96% of currency in circulation. The monthly average sales during November and December when demonetisation was in full flow, dropped by 40% and 49% respectively, PropTiger said in a report. Tell me more: Gurgaon, Noida and Ahmedabad saw 30-40% decline in sales, while Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai saw 20% drop in sales. howindialives.com is a search engine for public data","In other news, ONGC Videsh Ltd is said to have overpaid $200 million in acquiring Videocon group’s 10% stake for $2.5 billion in a large natural gasfield in Mozambique, Africa, in 2013",11:05,"News in Numbers: Idea posted Rs385.6 crore loss in Q3, thanks to Reliance Jio" +2017-02-13,"Mumbai: Allahabad Bank on Monday reported a net profit in the December quarter as compared with a loss in the year-ago period, owing to lower provisions against bad loans and higher other income.The state-owned lender reported a net profit of Rs75.26 crore in the third quarter as compared with a loss of Rs486.14 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the difference between interest earned on loans and that spent on deposits, fell 16.44% on a year-on-year basis to Rs1,183.31 crore. Other income, though, rose by 77% from a year-ago period to Rs729.87 crore.The bank made provisions worth Rs795.82 crore against bad loans in the third quarter, down 50% from Rs1,593.57 crore made during the same quarter a year ago. In October-December FY16, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had conducted a asset quality review (AQR), where the regulator asked banks to classify a large number of stressed accounts as non-performing and make higher provisions against them.The bank’s asset quality condition stabilized as gross non-performing assets (NPA) came down slightly on a quarter-on-quarter basis. As on 31 December, Allahabad Bank reported gross NPA worth Rs19,091.89 crore, down marginally from Rs19,094.53 crore in the quarter ended 30 September.As a ratio of gross advances, the bank’s gross NPAs were at 12.51% at the end of the third quarter, as compared with 12.28% in the second quarter. The lender reported a net NPA ratio of 8.65% in the October-December period as compared with 8.59% as on 30 September.At 3:17pm, Allahabad Bank stock was trading at Rs73.05 on the BSE—down 1.15% from its previous close.",Allahabad Bank’s third-quarter profit rises on lower provisions against bad loans and higher other income,15:26,Allahabad Bank Q3 net profit at Rs75.26 crore +2017-03-25,"New Delhi: Japanese auto firm Toyota Motor Corp. on Friday announced the launch of its luxury brand Lexus in India with three models—the ES 300h hybrid sedan, the RX Luxury hybrid sports utility vehicle (SUV)and the RX F Sport hybrid SUV—priced between Rs55.27 lakh and Rs1.09 crore (ex-showroom, Delhi). It also showcased the LX450d SUV and fifth-generation Lexus LS sedan but did not reveal their prices. In an interview, Yoshihiro Sawa, president, Lexus International said that he wants the brand to be seen differently from German brands BMW AG, Audi and Mercedes-Benz. Edited excerpts:What took you so long to come to India?Lexus is a young brand compared to European brands like Mercedes, which has an over 100-year history. In order to make Lexus competitive, we decided to be different from them. We started with the Lexus brand in 1998 in the US. In the beginning it was very successful there but not in other nations. So, after we introduced the Lexus brand in Japan, Europe and China, in the first decade, people’s expectations were not so good. Sometimes people said Lexus is a boring brand. It is fantastic but it becomes boring. That was the perception about Lexus. So, three years ago, we decided to change the Lexus brand in order to become more aggressive. Earlier, we were very focused on the US market. Now, it is time to think about other key markets.What you are essentially saying is that you have made the brand appealing to younger customers. Do you think you will find enough such buyers in India?We can’t just start thinking about sales volumes because we have just started with four dealerships. It is very difficult to expect big numbers. So, we will focus on the Lexus brand positioning in India. This is our aim.The age group that you plan to target prefers an Audi or a BMW...We don’t follow our competitors even though they are successful. We decided to be unique. Even though in India, many young people appreciate a BMW or an Audi, we don’t fear that because though the percentage may be small, people do love the Lexus. In the US, we enjoy a big share. In Europe, our share is very small. So, Europe is a kingdom for BMW, Audi and Mercedes. In order to survive in India, we have to be very unique.How would you differentiate yourself?Most important thing is to be completely different from the Germans, which is visible in our design. Because people first look at the appearance and then they see the interiors. So, they judge on that basis.Do you think Lexus has brand recall in India?No, I don’t think so. We have just started.Jeep has also entered India and there is a recall value associated with the brand. You don’t seem to have that.You have to understand that our history goes back 20 years while Jeep is more than that. Also, people see a lot of Jeeps in the movies and on websites. We, on the other hand, started lifestyle activities only 3-4 years ago. So, we have to continue doing such activities to build a history.","The most important thing is to be completely different from the Germans—Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, says President Yoshihiro Sawa on Lexus India launch day",01:06,Lexus has to be very unique to survive in India: President Yoshihiro Sawa +2017-03-24,"
New Delhi: Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd won’t mind losing money on its electric vehicles (EVs) business till such time as the EV game picks up, Pawan Goenka, managing director of the firm, said. M&M is pursuing its electric dream on two fronts, he explained, with the first being mass market and the second, luxury under the Pininfarina brand, which will largely be modelled on the lines of Tesla Inc. Edited excerpts from an interview:
You have big plans for electric vehicles...Yes. If you put bits and pieces of what we have been talking about together, we will be playing at two ends. One end, we hope, will become mass market once the floodgates open.
Do you think there will be more subsidies?I don’t think so. Subsidy also becomes a drain on the exchequer. Subsidy has to be such that it makes the offering viable for consumers. Consumers will not buy just because it is an electric vehicle. They will buy because it makes sense to the wallet. Today, we are just short of that. Another Rs40,000-50,000 difference will get us there. If the pressure is on us to bridge that gap by working on reduction of costs and we are not making money otherwise, that pressure is much higher than if you start making money. So, it is okay for us to be under some pressure to reduce the price of electric vehicles but not to the extent that we give up. I am on the side that says let me work on filling the gap.ALSO READ | Mahindra pitches Verito sedan as a successor to the AmbassadorBut what needs to be done first is push volumes. Without volumes, I cannot fill the gap. What the government needs to do is not (think) how do you incentivize the financial part of it, but how do you create a condition for more volumes. In places like Delhi, it is very easy where they can say that in peak time, you cannot ply small commercial vehicles, except if it is electric. I don’t need anything else. Then the volume will come.
And, what are your plans for the higher end?Pininfarina started as a dream but we still have to worry about financial viability. Unlike many other electric car companies which are supported by investors who are looking to make it big in the future, we will have to ensure that it makes prudent business sense. The company that has made electric vehicles respectable is Tesla. Before Tesla, electric cars were seen as something that got you from point A to point B uncomfortably. Tesla made them a matter of pride. So, that’s the difference that they have made, but at a cost. They are not making money. We would like electric vehicles to become a matter of pride not because they are electric but because they are great cars. That’s what Tesla has done. Pininfarina is the brand that we have and with Indian expertise in electric, it becomes a natural way for us.ALSO READ | Mahindra to build a sub-4 metre SUV targeted at the global market
Two-wheelers have not really done well for you. It has not worked out in the manner that we wanted it to. But we have sort of completely changed the direction in the two-wheeler business. There are three businesses that were not making money for us—two-wheelers, trucks and electric vehicles. EVs are a long-term bet and we will continue to remain in the game till there is a game remaining. Frankly, it is one business where if we can make a difference, we don’t mind losing money. In CVs (commercial vehicles), we are over the hump. Next year becomes very important with BS IV coming in. Two-wheelers was the only area where we did not see a possibility of a quick turnaround.
Mahindra announced that it will create a manufacturing base outside India. Is that on?What we said is that we need to be expanding outside India as every global company has significant manufacturing capabilities outside India, and we don’t. In the tractor business, we do, but in automotive we do not and, therefore, we are looking for a second home market, which will become an export base for us... We are in the process of deciding what that would be.ALSO READ | Mahindra to set up another base outside India: MD Pawan Goenka
Are there any specific geographies that you are looking at?We are looking at the Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) region. Basically, there are four clusters of markets for our kind of vehicles—Latin America, African nations, Asean and China. Volume is in Asean. So, that’s what we are looking at.
Are you considering acquisitions?If an opportunity comes up, we will do what makes more business sense. Today, in the auto industry, there is an abundance of capacity. Therefore, it is possible for us to find a brownfield plant where we can invest some money to do what we want to do. So, that would make more financial sense than to taking the greenfield route.How do you plan to synergize your two-wheeler business with PMTC (Peugeot Motorcycles) and BSA?There are a lot of back-end synergies in terms of sourcing from India. More or less, PMTC is a stand-alone business. What is CLPL?It is Classic Legend Pvt. Ltd. That is the name of the company that will make BSA and Jawa bikes. That is the company that we have set up.","MD Pawan Goenka says Mahindra is pursuing its electric cars dream on two fronts—mass market and luxury under Pininfarina, largely modelled on the lines of Tesla",20:03,Mahindra seeks to make luxury electric cars under Pininfarina brand +2017-02-11,"New Delhi: Videocon Industries Ltd on Saturday reported a standalone net loss of Rs509.7 crore for the fourth quarter ended December. The company had reported a net loss of Rs84.42 crore in the same period a year ago, Videocon Industries said in a BSE filing. The company’s total income on a standalone basis during the quarter declined to Rs2,097.7 crore as against Rs3,357.5 crore in the year-ago period.The company follows January-December fiscal year.","Videocon Industries fourth quarter total income on a standalone basis declined to Rs2,097.7 crore as against Rs3,357.5 crore",23:04,Videocon Industries Q4 loss widens to Rs509.7 crore +2017-02-12,"New Delhi: Stating that a stable import policy has helped in the sales of exclusive super sports cars in India, Lamborghini expects the category to clock double digit growth this year. The Italian luxury carmaker, which had earlier this month launched Huracan Spyder convertible with rear-wheel drive in India priced at Rs3.45 crore, has also lined up two more product launches for this year, including the new Avendator. It is gearing up to cash in on the emergence of a new breed of customers—first generation entrepreneurs; those from tier II and III cities and women buyers. “I expect that in 2017, the segment should continue with the double digit growth that it had last year,” Lamborghini India head Sharad Agarwal said. He said since 2011 the exclusive super sports car segment, which includes those with import price of Rs2.25 crore upwards such as Mercedes AMG GTS, Audi R8 and Ferrari was declining. In 2015, the segment saw a marginal growth which was followed “up by a good double digits growth” last year, with industry estimate putting the total number of cars sold to around 70 units. Explaining reasons behind the growth, Agarwal said: “A lot of it has to do with the stability in policies because between 2011 and 2015 there were lot of changes in the import duties and structures, which were always creating disruptions in the market.” “Now things are stabilised. Once things get stabilised, the market starts growing. It is more about consistency and stability.” Commenting about the company’s sales last year, he said: “We had a healthy double digit growth in 2016. The segment in India is still evolving and what is important for us is the trend.” There were more first generation entrepreneurs buying Lamborghini cars. Also, more people from tier II and III cities also bought these cars, Agarwal said. “We also had the first woman buyer of a Lamborghini in India in 2016 and post that we sold more to women in this country,” he added. On how the emergence of new set of buyers has helped, Agarwal said: “In previous years if sales were coming from these segments, say around 12-15%, it is now moving to 20-25%. This segment is growing much faster, primarily the growth is coming from these segments.” These are trends which define how the segment will grow in future, he added. With the overall economy and sentiment upbeat in India, Agarwal said the conversion cycles of potential customers are becoming shorter. “Earlier customers were taking pretty long time to decide on the final purchase. The cycles are getting shorter by about 25% if I have to compare with previous years,” he said.",The Italian luxury carmaker Lamborghini is gearing up to cash in on the emergence of a new breed of customers,13:20,Super sports cars sales growth to continue in 2017: Lamborghini +2017-03-24,"New Delhi: Madhukar Kamath, group chief executive and managing director, DDB Mudra Group, has announced his retirement from the advertising agency. He also announced a new leadership team that includes Vineet Gupta (currently chief digital officer, DDB Mudra Group) who will take over as the group chief executive and Aditya Kanthy (chief strategy officer) who will be appointed as managing director. Effective 1 July, Gupta and Kanthy will formally take over their new roles while Kamath will continue to work closely with them as executive chairman of the group till December.“My life has been at Mudra and I have committed to finish all the assignments ensuring successful transition. I have always been a firm believer in empowering young talent and seeing them deliver beyond expectations. Vineet and Aditya have exemplified this in their respective careers so far. As a team, they bring together the best of business, technology, strategy and an appreciation of creativity,” said Kamath who has spent the last 25 years at the DDB Mudra Group.He said there are no immediate plans for any entrepreneurial venture. “My immediate plan is to learn and experience and travel all the 29 Indian states.” Speaking on his new role, Gupta said, “My aim is to utilize the current strengths of the Group and position it well enough to leverage the future. We will be utilizing our strengths of huge talent pool and diverse business to align our businesses so that people in the agency can do future-ready works for clients. The idea is to build an organization that is relevant in a digital world.” Gupta was a part of the founding team at 22feet Tribal, a digital marketing firm acquired by the DDB Mudra Group. Post the acquisition, he continued to lead 22feet Tribal as its managing director. He has also worked with Café Coffee Day, Microsoft and Star TV earlier. Aditya Kanthy, meanwhile, has spent 14 years at DDB Mudra Group creating strategies for brands such as Emirates, Future Group, Johnson&Johnson, Nestle, Twitter and Volkswagen, among others. DDB Mudra Group is a part of the Omnicom Group operating out of 15 cities. It offers services in the fields of advertising, media planning and buying, digital and data-driven marketing, technology, OOH, Retail Design among others.",Vineet Gupta will take over as the group chief executive of DDB Mudra Group and Aditya Kanthy will be appointed as the group’s managing director,18:33,Madhukar Kamath announces retirement from DDB Mudra Group +2017-02-13,"
Mumbai: The pace of deterioration in asset quality of Indian banks slowed in the December quarter after four straight quarters of sharp increases in bad loans, although analysts say banks’ asset quality may worsen before it gets better.Thirty-nine of the 41 listed banks have reported earnings for the December quarter, posting a 59% rise in aggregate gross non-performing assets (NPAs) to Rs6.81 trillion from a year earlier, according to data compiled by Mint. The latest quarterly numbers are still 4.12% higher than those reported in the preceding September quarter.While the slowing pace of asset quality deterioration may have come as a respite for Indian banks, their troubles are far from over. The Reserve Bank of India’s March deadline for banks is about a month away, and any unrecognized bad loans are likely to crimp banks’ lending ability further. With high provisions to cover bad loans and limited capital, weaker banks have slowed or stopped making new loans.“It will not be surprising if reported NPAs go further up in the coming quarter,” said Karthik Srinivasan, senior vice-president at rating agency Icra. “Resolution is taking time because of large NPAs which are causing the bulk of the problems.” While the scale of the bad-loan problem is much bigger for state-run banks, gross NPAs at public sector banks grew at a slower pace in the December quarter than those lenders that are outside government control. Public sector banks’ gross NPAs rose 2.76% to Rs5.95 trillion in the December quarter from the preceding three months. In comparison, bad loans at private sector lenders gained 14.5% to Rs85,904.94 crore at the end of December.“Growth in incremental slippages has come down substantially but overall asset quality has not changed between September and December quarters. Currently, the major problem is in large accounts; in the first or second quarter of the coming financial year, we may see resolution on that,” said an analyst from Reliance Securities.“Whenever resolution comes, slippages will be very high in that quarter as banks need to take a deep haircut. Results for the banks in the coming fourth quarter will be much lower than the last quarters. The major change for banks in the last two quarters was treasury profits,” the analyst said, requesting anonymity.The central bank’s asset quality review in September 2015 forced banks to report previously unrecognized stressed assets as bad loans. The deadline for the clean-up has been set at March this year. Twenty-eight of the 39 banks that have reported earnings have also seen gross NPAs rise from the preceding September quarter, according to the data compiled by Mint.Indian Overseas Bank’s asset quality was the worst among Indian banks in the December quarter. It reported a gross NPA ratio of 22.42%, compared with 21.77% in the September quarter. Other public sector banks that saw a jump in gross NPAs include UCO Bank, where gross NPAs rose to 17.18% in the December quarter from 16.51% at the end of the September quarter. At United Bank of India, the gross NPA ratio improved to 15.98% from 16.26%.Among private sector banks, Jammu and Kashmir Bank had the highest gross NPA ratio at 11.84% in the third quarter, against 11.33% a quarter ago. “Gross NPA numbers will go up in the coming quarter partly driven by the last bit of clean-up exercise due to the FY17 deadline approaching. There is room for rate cuts if a large part of deposits are retained. If large lenders reduce rates, others will follow,” said Saswata Guha, director, Fitch Ratings.After demonetization, many banks saw a surge in their deposit base, followed by a drop in the marginal cost of lending rate (MCLR). State Bank of India cut its MCLR by 90 basis points in January, the steepest in several years. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.sahib.s@livemint.com","39 of the 41 listed banks have reported earnings for the December quarter, posting a 59% rise in bad loans or NPAs to Rs6.81 trillion from a year earlier",03:49,Pace of decline in banks’ asset quality slows in December quarter +2017-03-24,"
Mumbai: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has charged 20 entities and some of their officials for cheating state-owned commodities trading firms PEC Ltd and MMTC Ltd in connection with the Rs5,600 crore payments fraud that surfaced in 2013 at the National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL).The entities include NSEL, its parent Financial Technologies India Ltd (FTIL), PD Agro Processors Ltd, Dunar Foods Ltd and Mohan India Ltd. CBI, in a chargesheet filed with a special court in Mumbai in December, accused Jignesh Shah, former chairman of FTIL, of cheating and criminal conspiracy, and breaching the prevention of corruption act. Mint has a copy of this chargesheet. Shah and FTIL, now known as 63 Moons Technologies Ltd, denied these charges. Hearing in this case is scheduled on 3 May. The December chargesheet made CBI the third agency to file a chargesheet in the NSEL case. The Economic Offences Wing of Mumbai police filed a chargesheet in 2014, and the Enforcement Directorate in 2015.According to the 150-page chargesheet, CBI has found a fund trail that led to losses of Rs120 crore for PEC and Rs105 crore for MMTC. CBI had first registered a first information report in the case in February 2014, alleging that a “conspiracy was hatched” by the accused to cheat PEC and siphon off its funds by floating “accommodative and fraudulent paired contracts”. Paired contracts entail investors, through brokers, buying a spot contract and selling a futures one for the same commodity, and pocketing the difference. Paired contracts violate the Forward Contracts Regulation Act (FCRA) as they are financial transactions. NSEL was allowed to deal only in spot delivery contracts to be exempt from FCRA. In the chargesheet, CBI has alleged that FTIL was the major beneficiary of the revenue earned by NSEL and that paired contracts were the major source of income for the commodities bourse.“All the minutes of the board meetings of NSEL were vetted and approved by FTIL before issuance,” said the CBI chargesheet.In an emailed response sent on 10 March through its lawyers, FTIL said that it is yet to receive a copy of the chargesheet.“However, assuming your information is correct, our client strongly denies such charges, which have no legal or factual basis. Our client is confident to come out clean through the judicial process,” said Manik Joshi from Crawford Bayley and Co, the lawyers representing FTIL, in an emailed response.The email added that NSEL was a separate company with its own board of directors. It said NSEL became a “material subsidiary” of 63 Moons only from April 2011. “The duly approved board minutes of any such material subsidiaries for all listed companies for compliance purpose are required to be placed on a ‘post-facto’ - ‘for your information’ basis before the board of the parent company. In any event, none of these board minutes of NSEL raised any red flags,” the email said.FTIL also said that it did not derive any benefits as NSEL never declared any dividends or issued bonus shares.The CBI chargesheet highlighted that FTIL received a sum of Rs90.69 crore from NSEL as software maintenance charges during 2011-13. The specific allegations against Shah pertain to his presence in board meetings where launch of contracts was approved. The CBI also alleged that Shah was also named as a key management personnel (KMP) of NSEL during 2008-12 when the concept of paired contracts was introduced. The chargesheet said that Shah had also made a presentation to the Forward Markets Commission (FMC) and consumer affairs ministry on adequacy of stocks a mere 20 days before the settlement crisis erupted. The mail from FTIL lawyers said that Shah was never a KMP at NSEL and he had just delivered the presentation that was prepared by NSEL executives.“Shah has informed that he has never met or interacted with any officials of PEC or MMTC, therefore the question of connivance does not arise. Shah was non-executive vice-chairman of NSEL. He never received any compensation nor any salary and not even the sitting fees from NSEL,” the mail said.To be sure, CBI also mentions that Shah was briefed by Anjani Sinha, former CEO of NSEL, before the presentation was made. According to CBI, Sinha was responsible for creating paired contracts—a “financing mechanism”. Sinha also devised a system which encouraged parties to engage in financial transactions without underlying stocks.“He was the sole approving authority for all the limits granted to the defaulters PD Agro Processors and Mohan India and others who subsequently siphoned off the huge public money without having sufficient collateral/ commodities,” CBI said in the charge sheet.Sinha did not respond to an email sent to him by Mint.A spokesperson for Mohan India and its group companies Tavishi and Brinda told Mint that the companies never interacted with the government entities directly.“Interactions were limited to NSEL only. We are ready to refund the dues of investors by selling assets which are not attached by enforcement agencies and some assets that are being released by the income tax department,” said the spokesperson. PD Agro and PEC did not respond to emails sent to them.","CBI has charged 20 entities, including Jignesh Shah’s FTIL, for cheating state-owned firms PEC and MMTC in connection with the NSEL payments scam",08:16,"NSEL scam: Jignesh Shah accused of cheating, criminal conspiracy" +2017-03-24,"
When Falguni Nayar walks into a brightly lit Nykaa store in Mumbai’s Infiniti Mall, where I’m waiting to interview her, I scan her face quickly for make-up. After all, that’s why we are meeting—to talk beauty. Clearly, I am less subtle than I think. “I love make-up but I don’t have time to put it on any more!” she laughs loudly. The 54-year-old founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Nykaa, a Rs280 crore cosmetics and wellness retailer, is simply wearing a nude lipstick and kajal.
Founded in April 2012, Nykaa started as a multi-brand online beauty retailer but has since extended its presence through a mobile app and brick-and-mortar stores. Think of it as India’s Sephora (the French multi-brand cosmetics retailer). At present, Nykaa has four stores, one each in Delhi and Bengaluru and two in Mumbai. To go pan-India, it plans to open one store every month from next year.
Nykaa is a young company but Nayar herself has been a force in the Indian business world for more than two decades. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, she spent the bulk of her career—over 18 years—at Kotak Mahindra Capital Co. When she left in 2012, she was the managing director and head of its institutional equities business. But, Nayar says, “I have always been an entrepreneur first.”
Nayar was born and raised in Mumbai, where her father ran a small bearings company, assisted by her mother. The household chatter revolved around investments, the stock market and trade. “Plus, I’m Gujarati,” she deadpans. Entrepreneurship is in
her blood.
Straight out of business school, Nayar started her career as a management consultant. Her husband Sanjay Nayar, whom she met at business school, took a job in finance. He is now the CEO of global investment firm KKR India. Nayar says taking the professional route was easier since it allowed both of them to have transferable jobs.
But the entrepreneurial bug kept gnawing at her.
A few years ago, when her children (twins Anchit and Adwaita) left to study in US colleges, Nayar found herself with time on her hands. “Once I turned 50, I thought I would become complacent,” she said. It was very hard to quit the job at Kotak, “where everything was going right”, but with the self-imposed deadline of 50 looming, Nayar did just that.
Later, as we settle down for coffee at a Starbucks outlet, Nayar—dressed in a grey sari with gold accents (saris are a weakness) and delicate diamond earrings (another weakness)—relaxes into a corner couch and I start getting a sense of what drives her. “I’m an adventurer,” she says. “I was never a good swimmer but I would always be the first to jump in. The thought, what if I break a leg?, doesn’t occur to me.”
So when all the naysayers (and there were plenty) said India wasn’t ready for an e-tailer selling, of all things, beauty products, Nayar chose not to see the risks. Instinctively, she knew what women wanted. And she knew the number of Indians shopping online was about to explode.
According to management consultancy Technopak, though e-tailing currently accounts for only 1.5% of the overall retail market in India, it is growing at breakneck speed and will make up over 5% of Indian retail by 2021.
“Full marks to her for getting the retail story of India right,” says Ankur Bisen, senior vice-president, retail, consumer products and e-tailing division of Technopak. The principles of retail are simple, he says: Curate your products and know your products. And Nykaa appears to have done both really well.
Nykaa sells more than 35,000 products from 650 brands, both international and Indian, luxury and mass, and is constantly adding new labels to its stock. Last year, it brought global premium brand Estée Lauder on board, making MAC cosmetics available online in India for the first time. “It took a call on the personal care category and went deep into it. It didn’t get distracted. That’s how a retailer succeeds,” says Bisen.
Two years ago, Nayar introduced her own brand—and it has gone on to become a best-seller.
The company’s revenue has grown 350% in the last two years. In 2016, it raised a total of Rs104 crore from investors and the company hopes to break even by the end of this summer. An initial public offering is planned for 2020.
According to the company, it receives 15,000 orders a day, mostly from consumers between the ages of 22 and 35, who have disposable income and an interest in good grooming. Another attraction is the content—online make-up tutorials and product reviews are a great draw. But let’s face it, the main reason for shopping at Nykaa is accessibility.
“There was a time when women would come down to Delhi from Punjab just for a beauty shopping trip. Or they would ask a cousin to bring back a particular lipstick from a trip abroad. Now they can just order it online,” says Vasudha Rai, a former beauty director at Harper’s Bazaar, now a blogger at Vbeauty.co and columnist with The Hindu.
For those who know her, Nayar is a role model. For those who don’t, hers is an inspiring story. She’s a woman with a formidable career path and a closely knit, supportive family. It leads me to the inevitable question: Does she believe in the philosophy that a woman must “lean in” to be successful?
“Yes,” she replies. “I don’t think there is any glass ceiling. Women need to commit,” says Nayar.
Aware of the push and pull of family life many working women face, she
says there’s no race. “If you need to
take a few years off, you can come back. But when you come back, you need to be committed because you reap what you sow.”
Her daughter Adwaita, 26, recalls the early years of elementary school and says it wasn’t always easy to have a working mum. “I missed her! I would call her non-stop and disturb her in meetings,” she says.
As Adwaita grew older, she understood the choices her mother had made. “Today she’s my most important source of inspiration. She never really dwelt on whether one part of her life was being underserved and in the end it definitely all balanced out,” she says. Adwaita, who helped her mother launch Nykaa, is going to resume work there after she graduates from Harvard Business School this summer.
“Enough” and “done” aren’t words in Nayar’s business vocabulary, says Pratima Bhatia, a brand consultant who has worked with Nykaa, adding, “She never stops, even when she has exceeded expectations.” Once Nykaa had established itself as a multi-brand beauty retailer, Nayar decided to tweak the business model by introducing her own brand, Nykaa, in 2015. First up was a line of nail enamels. The range has since expanded to include kajals, lipsticks, body mists and lotions, among other items.
“It was a response to gaps in the market,” she explains. The beauty salon she frequented did not stock the popular OPI nail-polish range she liked. “They would have four colours of one brand, some from another. The whole experience was terrible,” she says. Research showed that part of the problem was with Indian import regulations, which made registering new colours a lengthy and tedious process. Nayar realized a domestic manufacturer didn’t need to go through that process, so if she made nail enamels, she could get them to the market quickly.
The strategy worked. Nykaa’s own nail colours sell 8-10 times more than the next best-selling nail brand on its website. According to Rai, it’s because of a “combination of good rates and cool colours”.
As we stand in front of a kaleidoscopic display of 120 nail colours at a Nykaa store, I’m drawn to a neon-green one. It’s called Key-Lime Slush. A coral-colour one is named Cherry Pop. I ask Nayar if she chooses the names. Yes, she says, it’s fun.
She shows me the top-selling nail enamel. It’s a charcoal-grey one called Squid Ink Mousse, which retails for Rs199.
And no, she doesn’t have Squid Ink Mousse at home. She prefers floral shades.
All of a sudden, Nayar pauses. She’s found a bottle of ink-blue nail varnish. The Nykaa branding in black is indistinguishable against the dark background. I can see it bothers her. She immediately asks a sales associate to notify someone in her office to fix it. “Retail is all about the detail,” she says, and when you are Nayar, every detail is a big deal.
Before we part, I ask her one last question: Why did she name the company Nykaa? “Because nayika means you are the actress of your life,” she says, smiling. I have no doubt Nayar is relishing her current role.","The banker-turned-businesswoman and Nykaa CEO on nail enamels, taking risks, and how she built a Rs280 crore cosmetics and wellness company",18:23,Falguni Nayar: The beauty entrepreneur +2017-03-24,"New Delhi: With 65 public sector undertakings (PSUs) failing to appoint at least one woman director, the government has asked Registrars of Companies (ROC) to take up the matter with the ministries concerned and initiate penal action against 1,355 private listed firms in default.A Securities Exchange Board of India (Sebi) directive and the Companies Act, 2013, mandate all listed firms to have at least one woman director on their boards from April 1, 2015. These rules are aimed at ensuring gender diversity in boardrooms. A total of 1,355 private listed companies are without a woman director while 292 unlisted firms have not appointed any woman on their boards, minister of state for corporate affairs Arjun Ram Meghwal said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha. The minister said the Registrars of Companies (RoC) have been directed to take up the matter with the ministries concerned in the case of PSUs. They have been asked to initiate appropriate penal action in case of other firms. According to Meghwal, 4,558 listed companies, 1,009 unlisted ones and 134 PSUs have representation of women at the board level.","Government has asked Registrars of Companies to initiate penal action against 1,355 private listed firms for failing to appoint women directors",16:32,"No woman director at 65 PSUs, govt asks RoC to act against companies" +2017-04-11,"
Matthieu Riou is founder and chief technology officer of BlockCypher Inc., a company that enables blockchain applications to be built easily and reliably. Riou is also a member and former vice-president at Apache Software Foundation, and has founded and mentored several open source projects. In an email interview, Riou—who was a speaker at the two-day SingularityU India Summit (held on 7-8 April in association with INK, which hosts events like INKtalks, a platform for the exchange of cutting-edge ideas and inspiring stories)—shared his thoughts on cryptocurrencies and blockchains. Edited excerpts:
You describe BlockCypher as a cloud-optimized blockchain platform powering cryptocurrency applications reliably and at scale. How does it work?Regardless of the protocol (e.g. Ethereum, bitcoin, etc.), all blockchains use what is called a reference client which is used to interact within the peer-to-peer network. Such a blockchain client is designed for individual or desktop use. None of the clients are designed for enterprise use. Developers quickly find how hard it is to start running their own blockchain infrastructure. And it becomes even harder when they try to move into production. ALSO READ : Blockchain is second only to artificial intelligence: Brock PierceTo enable scalable, enterprise-ready applications, BlockCypher broke down all the individual parts of the blockchain client architecture and rebuilt an infrastructure that is modular. BlockCypher is completely blockchain agnostic. As a result, developers find it much easier to build applications across multiple blockchains. Hundreds of developers have used BlockCypher, resulting in thousands of transaction per hour and over two million API (application programming interface) calls per day. To support this continued volume, BlockCypher continuously refines and improves its APIs, adding new services for Ethereum and analytics.
Do you believe that this will solve issues regarding the scalability and security of cryptocurriencies like bitcoin?Cryptocurrencies are actually very secure but the price to pay for it is scalability. As they evolve in an open environment, where anyone can run the software on their laptop, they have to apply very conservative limits on the amount of data and bandwidth required. These limits are not representative of what the technology can do, but more of the surrounding environment.ALSO READ : Bitcoin’s existential crisisBlockCypher can’t change these limits as they’re embedded in the protocol. However we still help in multiple ways. As a “supernode” on the network, we pool resources together and allow many companies to benefit from our very high-performance infrastructure. We power private or permissioned blockchains that do not have to abide by the limits of open chains, and can therefore scale to much higher capacities.
More than bitcoin, it is the underlying technology—blockchain—that is showing much more promise. Besides firms, governments too are warming up to the potential of this technology across sectors. What, in your opinion, is the future of blockchain?I can’t predict the future of the blockchain as a technology, the same way that 50 years ago no one thought that so many people would have a phone in their pocket that could connect them to the rest of the world through a wide variety of apps. But what I can say is that the blockchain is going to permeate our lives in a very similar way.
Give us an example of how blockchain is promising to change the payments’ world.One of our customers, BitPesa, is located in sub-Saharan Africa. About 75% of the population does not have a bank account. Many use mobile apps in lieu of traditional bank accounts. For Africans, transferring cash through a bank or a money transfer operator like Western Union or MoneyGram can be costly. While there is much opportunity in Africa, it can be difficult for companies outside of Africa to work with people and businesses across the continent. BitPesa sought to reduce the costs and wait times for Africans to receive payments by using the blockchain. By quickly, safely and cheaply making a market between African and global currencies, BitPesa provides an alternative to inefficient banking channels. Thanks to the time and cost savings of using the blockchain and our services, BitPesa has gone from prototype to live product in six markets—in only two years.
Blockchain technology is now being powered by artificial intelligence too. What other trends do you see?Smart contracts, or the possibility to capture contracts of law in software code on a blockchain, may have very far-reaching consequences. They can automate how we deal with our legal system, reduce bureaucracy and corruption, and even improve democracy and voting. I think there’s also a real opportunity in bringing the price of banking down dramatically, allowing everyone to benefit.","Matthieu Riou, founder and chief technology officer of BlockCypher Inc., shared his thoughts on cryptocurrencies and blockchains",21:13,Blockchain is going to permeate our lives: Matthieu Riou +2017-04-11,"New Delhi: Banks are more likely to look at credit card holders in a favourable light after a report said India has the highest percentage of consumers who make payments in excess of the minimum amount due on their credit card bills each month.India has around 92% of credit card holders that often pay more than their minimum due on their revolving debts each month as compared to 89% in the US, 88% in Canada and Hong Kong, 52% in Colombia and 44% in South Africa, TransUnion CIBIL, a credit information agency said in its research report.“Leveraging trended data and the insights derived from it could also significantly help Indian credit institutions better identify borrower risk trends across portfolios and ultimately create greater access to credit for consumers. This can only happen when financial institutions utilize trended data in real time,” said Harshala Chandorkar, chief operating officer of TransUnion CIBIL.TransUnion CIBIL said the findings are based on a survey across eight metro cities in India. The research findings indicate a higher usage of credit cards in Delhi, Ahmedabad, Pune and Mumbai as compared to Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad. Delhi has the optimal utilization of credit cards across all possible usage points, said the report.The agency surveyed 1,100 consumers in India, 92% of whom indicated that they more often make payments in excess than their minimum due on their credit card bills each month. Yet a significant number (33%) are uncertain about the importance or benefits of paying more than the minimum amount due on their credit card bills.In Colombia, 56% are uncertain about the benefits of paying more than the minimum amount due on their credit card bills as compared to 41% in Hong Kong, 39% in Canada, 25% in the US and 21% in South Africa.","In India around 92% of credit card holders often pay more than their minimum due on their revolving debt each month, TransUnion CIBIL survey shows",21:15,Indians top credit card holders who pay in excess of minimum due amount: CIBIL +2017-04-11,"
Mumbai: Brock Pierce, founder and managing partner of Blockchain Capital and chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, is a venture capitalist and entrepreneur. Pierce pioneered the market for digital currency in games and has raised more than $200 million for companies he founded. A faculty at the Singularity University, Pierce is also the founder of IMI Exchange (the world’s leading digital currency marketplace for games), ZAM (one of the world’s largest media properties for gamers) and IGE (the pioneer of digital currency in online games). In an email interview, Pierce—who was a speaker at the two-day SingularityU India Summit ((held on 7-8 April in association with INK, which hosts events like INKtalks, a platform for the exchange of cutting-edge ideas and inspiring stories)—spoke, among other things, on why companies would want to invest in blockchains. Edited excerpts:
Many governments including India remain non-committal and neutral to bitcoin. Is it that governments fear that a cyrptocurrency could destabilize a highly regulated banking system?Bitcoin is still very early in its development so I would expect governments to be non-committal.
We have had instances of the bitcoin ecosystem being compromised—the Mt. Gox episode being a case in point. What are the measures that stakeholders need to put in place to make bitcoin secure?The bitcoin/blockchain protocol has never been compromised. Businesses building applications on top of it run the risk of making mistakes.
More than bitcoin, it is the underlying technology—blockchain—that is showing much more promise. Besides companies, governments too are warming up to the potential of this technology across sectors. What, in your opinion, is the future of blockchain?The blockchain is going to change everything more than the internet has. It’s the second most important technology, second only to artificial intelligence (AI).ALSO READ : Bitcoin’s existential crisis
How do you plan to use blockchain in the venture capital sector?We intend to disrupt and democratize the venture capital industry by doing the following: by creating the first liquid venture fund, allowing access to a broader group of investors, investing in the new economy of start-ups doing ICOs (initial coin offerings) and showing these start-ups how to do it compliantly.
Through Blockchain Capital, you also believe that you are “democratizing” access to an asset class traditionally only available to elite institutional investors…Historically venture capital funds have only allowed elite investors in. Our ICO is going to allow small investors from all over the world to participate.
Bitcoin and blockchain start-ups face competition from big firms like Accenture, IBM and Microsoft in this space. Your thoughts.These large incumbents are generally working with many of our start-ups so we are pleased to have them working in the space.
Do you have plans to invest in Indian bitcoin and blockchain companies too?Blockchain Capital has a global investment mandate so it is very possible that we make an investment in India at some point.","Brock Pierce, founder and managing partner of Blockchain Capital and chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, on why companies would want to invest in blockchains",21:12,Blockchain is second only to artificial intelligence: Brock Pierce +2017-03-23,"
Mumbai: If Radhakishan Damani passed by you in the corridor, perhaps you wouldn’t notice. And if you buttonholed him, he would probably listen to you rather than talk. The grocery billionaire in white wears his wealth and wisdom lightly.Damani’s Avenue Supermarts Ltd, which runs D-Mart, India’s most profitable retail chain, doubled its investors’ wealth on Tuesday, when its stock debuted on the stock exchanges at a nearly 115% premium to its issue price. His family’s stake in the firm is now valued at over $5 billion, but the media-shy magnate who started a ball bearings business before becoming an ace stock and property picker and founding D-Mart, remains as low-profile as ever.D-Mart listing bolsters Radhakishan Damani’s wealth, reputationDamani, 61, attended a bachelor’s degree programme in commerce at the University of Mumbai (then Bombay University) but did not continue after his first year examination. So, the next time someone lectures on the value of a college degree, ask them to google Damani.On Monday, a day before Avenue went public, Forbes had pegged Damani’s net worth at $2.3 billion. At Wednesday’s closing prices, the family’s 82.43% stake in D-Mart alone is worth Rs32,903.12 crore, or nearly $5.03 billion.Damani holds stakes in a range of companies such as tobacco firm VST Industries Ltd, logistics provider Blue Dart Express Ltd and cement maker India Cements Ltd. He also holds an impressive portfolio of real estate, including the Radisson Blu Resort in Alibag close to Mumbai. All these investments add up to more than Rs3,000 crore or nearly half a billion US dollars.“He did not come from a very well-educated family, and himself was not that educated as well, but he could still build the empire,” said a person close to Damani.ALSO READ | Irrational exuberance in D-Mart shares“People shouldn’t give up. You have a great idea. Education is not necessary to make it big,” this person added on condition of anonymity.After dabbling in the family business of ball bearings, he entered stock trading and registered as a stock broker in 1992. In 1999, in his 40s, Damani diversified into retail, according to the final offer documents of the Avenue Supermarts share sale.Damani has three daughters, and one of them, Manjri Chandak, is a director at Avenue Supermarts. His brother Gopikishan Damani and his wife are also promoters of Avenue Supermarts.“He spoke less and listened more. One thing very striking about him was he was never flashy. He was extremely down-to-earth,” said Kisan R. Choksey, chairman of Kisan Ratilal Choksey Shares and Securities Pvt. Ltd, who has known Damani since the early 1990s when brokers haggled in a trading ring on the floor of Bombay Stock Exchange, now known as BSE Ltd.Damani was an investor as well as a trader, according to people who have known him for long. “There were many of us, including Mr Damani and Rakesh Jhunjhunwala,” said Choksey.People vouch by his quiet nature.“He is extremely low profile and very quiet. Chances are that if he passes by, you might not notice him except for his specific white-and-white attire,” said Alok Churiwala, managing director of Churiwala Securities.“The earliest memory I have of the gentleman is when I had just joined the trade in 1988-89, while there used to be very hectic activity and cacophony. Here was this gentleman who was totally unfazed, very calm and very collected; that set him apart,” recalls Churiwala.According to Churiwala, the ability to see beyond numbers is what distinguishes him as one of India’s biggest stock pickers.Deena Mehta, managing director at Asit C. Mehta Investment Intermediates, also recalls him as the “man in the trading ring with a poker face, and one could not make out any of his trades from his expressions.”“He was an extremely good listener,” said Mehta.“He also went out of the way to help out people. I remember one time when Videocon shares were continuously hitting lower circuits. He helped a lot of brokers by taking positions, and helping brokers square off their positions,” recalls Mehta.“He has two nicknames “white-and-white” and “silent operator”. This sums him up in a fairly good manner,” said Arun Kejriwal, director of Kejriwal Research and Financial Services Pvt. Ltd. “He is very approachable but refrains from giving tips. He will prefer silence over giving wrong advice,” added Kejriwal.“He is a large-hearted guy who has given his friends and associates—which are a considerable number—D-Mart shares at par a couple of years ago,” added Kejriwal.For now, Avenue Supermarts’ market capitalization stands at Rs39,916.44 crore, more than the aggregate of all of its key listed rivals including Future Retail Ltd, Shoppers’ Stop Ltd and Trent Ltd, which total to Rs36,631.79 crore. But the man who made it possible, as always, stays in the back room.","Radhakishan Damani, who started a ball bearings business before becoming an ace investor and founding D-Mart, remains as low-profile as ever",12:24,Radhakishan Damani quiet as ever after stellar D-Mart listing +2017-04-11,"India is considering turning to the private sector to help plug a chronic shortage of capital for infrastructure projects.The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is proposing Asia’s third-largest economy offer licences to private companies to set up infrastructure banks. That could help finance $1.5 trillion in roads, ports, power and other projects over the next 10 years and bridge a gap that ratings agency Standard & Poor’s says is shaving off almost 5% of the country’s gross domestic product.“Specialized banks could cater to the wholesale and long-term financing needs of the growing economy and possibly fill the gap in long-term financing,” the RBI said in a discussion paper released from Mumbai on 7 April.With commercial banks saddled with huge non-performing loans and credit growth languishing at decade lows, lenders have been reticent to invest in projects that involve a long waiting period before returns kick in. That bodes ill for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government which is trying to spark investment, including clearing a backlog of billions of dollars of stalled projects.Governments around the world are searching for ways to finance public projects. State-backed lending, led by the China Development Bank, drove infrastructure construction in China last year along with funds raised by local governments through bond sales. Canada is hoping to attract pension funds and global money managers to a new infrastructure bank it plans to set up this year with C$35 billion ($26 billion) in funding, and US President Donald Trump has promised $1 trillion in spending.India appears to be considering a different approach. According to the RBI’s paper, the banks would source their funds from wholesale and long-term deposits, bond issuance, borrowing and asset securitization, rather than retail deposits. The paper doesn’t mention whether the central bank or government would back the new banks.India has used government-owned financial institutions to fund long-term projects in the past. The Industrial Finance Corp. of India was set up in 1948, a year after the country won independence from the British, while the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India—parent company of ICICI Bank Ltd, and Industrial Development Bank of India—parent of IDBI Bank Ltd—were set up in 1955 and 1964 respectively. Over a period of time, they transformed themselves into banks, often leaving a void for infrastructure financing.‘Vertical depth’In recent years, the RBI has been letting businesses enter niche banking areas, with companies like Bharti Airtel Ltd allowed to set up electronic payment banks and others let into micro financing.Credit Suisse Group AG analysts expect companies like SREI Infrastructure Finance Ltd, Power Finance Corp., Rural Electrification Corp., to apply for infrastructure-bank licenses. “In the near term, this may be a drag for new banks, but they should benefit in the medium term as they scale-up current deposits and fee streams,” Credit Suisse said in a note.While large industrial houses wouldn’t be allowed to take more than a 10% stake in these banks, individuals with a decade of experience in banking and finance can tie up with business groups to apply for a license. The infrastructure banks would be exempted from opening branches in rural and semi-urban areas and wouldn’t be forced to lend to the agriculture sector.“The idea is to increase vertical depth and specialized institutional capabilities to take informed decisions as and when a particular sector is getting technically complex,” New Delhi-based Vinayak Chatterjee, chairman and co-founder of infrastructure advisory firm Feedback Infrastructure Services Pvt. Ltd, said. Bloomberg","Specialized banks could cater to the wholesale and long-term financing needs of the growing economy , the RBI said in a discussion paper ",17:01,RBI mulls bank licences to private firms to fund $1.5 trillion infrastructure gap +2017-02-11,"
Mumbai:
Auto maker Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) Ltd on Friday announced a 33.29% increase in its profit after tax for the quarter ended December, riding on a 20.3% rise in farm equipment sales, including the high-margin tractors business. M&M saw profits rise to Rs1,112.27 crore, from Rs834.47 crore the year before. The company’s third quarter revenues increased 1.47% to Rs11,777.98 crore. This, despite a 7% decline in revenue from the automotive segment—its largest line of business—to Rs7,453.08 crore. This includes utility and commercial vehicle sales. “Demonetization affected rural and semi-urban spending but we still saw only a single-digit drop in revenue,” V.S. Parthasarathy, chief financial officer, M&M, said at a press conference. The automaker saw an 8.3% decline in vehicles sold in the domestic market year-on-year to 112,852 units and an 11.7% decline in utility vehicles sold, at 51,772 vehicles. The drop in farm produce prices affected rural incomes, which in turn hurt M&M’s sales, Parthasarthy said.According to the company’s numbers, staples like onions, potatoes and tomatoes saw a 20-60% drop in prices during the quarter, severely restricting rural households’ purchasing power along with the cash crunch that demonetization brought in. “Overall, the results were weaker than our estimates”, Nitesh Sharma of Philip Capital India said. “We saw that 7-8% decline in the automotive segment. We believe that net-net, the positive gains from the farm equipment division will be negated by the loss of market share in the automotive segment. We continue to believe that this has largely been due to a weaker product pipeline, especially in the SUV (sports utility vehicle) segment, as compared to competition.”However, the company’s sales of farm equipment, of which tractors is the largest business, grew 21% in volume (consolidated results), helping keep margins up. “We saw a phenomenal 60% growth in volume in October and actually saw negative growth in the November-December period,” Parthasarathy said. “This has given us a 44% market share, which is the highest ever.”“Although tractor sales grew in this quarter, the pace of growth has declined substantially,” Sharma said. The company sold 72,363 tractors, up 20.8% year-on-year.M&M also registered a Rs363.78 crore exceptional net profit from the sale of “investment in subsidiary companies and a joint venture”, as per the company’s statement.","Mahindra saw a 7% decline in the company’s revenue from the automotive segment—its largest line of business—to Rs7,453.08 crore",13:05,"Mahindra Q3 profit rises 33% to Rs1,112 crore" +2017-02-11,"New Delhi: Mumbai-based telecom service provider Idea Cellular Ltd on Saturday said it has registered first quarterly loss due to increased rivalry in the sector that impacted its revenues.Idea reported a net loss of Rs384 crore during the quarter ended 31 December as against a net profit of Rs660 crore in the year-ago period. Revenues declined 3.7% to Rs8,661 crore. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) declined 24.4% to Rs2,165.5 crore.“The unprecedented disruption in the Indian mobile industry, primarily due to free voice, mobile data promotions, and the lure by the new entrant in the sector has adversely impacted performance,” an Idea spokesperson said, adding that revenue KPIs and financial parameters for all mobile operators have sharply declined, and for the first time in its history the flourishing Indian wireless sector is trending towards an annual revenue decline of 3 to 5% in FY2017 (vs FY16). “The sector can expect to recover revenues only once the new operator starts charging for its pan India mobile services. Please review Idea’s performance in the light of these happenings,” the spokesperson said.To be sure, Idea and Vodafone India are in merger talks. The proposed merger will create the nation’s largest telecom firm with combined revenue of Rs78,000 crore and a 43% share of the market hitherto dominated by Bharti Airtel Ltd, which reported annual revenue of Rs50,008 crore from local telecom operations in the last financial year.Also read: Kumar Mangalam Birla may head telco created by Vodafone-Idea mergerThe consolidation has been triggered by the entry of Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, in which parent Reliance Industries Ltd has invested a staggering $25 billion.Since the launch of its services in September, Jio has offered free voice and data and signed up more than 72 million users, forcing rivals, including Vodafone India and Idea, to slash tariffs in response.",Idea Cellular posts its first quarterly loss due to increased rivalry in the telecom sector after Reliance Jio’s entry,19:59,Idea Cellular posts Q3 loss of Rs384 crore as Reliance Jio disrupts sector +2017-02-11,"New Delhi: Realty firm Parsvnath Developers Ltd on Saturday reported a net loss of Rs15.06 crore during the third quarter of this fiscal on lower sales. Its net loss stood at Rs3.93 crore in the year-ago period, the company said in a regulatory filing. Income from operations fell to Rs55.15 crore during the December quarter from Rs67.83 crore in the year-ago period.“Focusing on the strategy of execution of the projects, the company offered approximately 200 units in the quarter,” the company’s chairman Pradeep Jain said. The government’s initiative of granting infrastructure status to the affordable housing segment in the Union Budget 2017-18 would be helpful in lowering the cost of funds for the developers.“This will certainly boost developers to come up with more affordable housing projects and make Housing for All a reality,” he added. Jain said the infra status along with other policy reforms like real estate regulatory law and demonetisation would bring transparency in the system and reinstate the trust of the end users in credible real estate developers.",Parsvnath Developers’ third quarter income from operations fell to Rs55.15 crore during from Rs67.83 crore in the year-ago period,18:52,Parsvnath Developers Q3 loss at Rs15 crore +2017-02-11,"New Delhi: The world’s largest coal miner Coal India Ltd (CIL) on Saturday reported a 22% decline in consolidated net profit at Rs2,884.4 crore for the third quarter ended December.Net profit came in at Rs3,718 crore in the same quarter of the previous fiscal, Coal India said in a regulatory filing. However, the company’s total income rose to Rs21,531.2 crore in the quarter from Rs20,928.4 crore in the year-ago period. Net sales during the quarter rose to Rs19,704 crore compared to Rs18,971.5 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal. At the same time, total expenses also increased to Rs17,260 crore as compared Rs15,407.5 crore. On a standalone basis, the company has posted a loss of Rs39 crore as compared to a profit of Rs672.6 crore in the year-ago period. Total income declined to Rs257.1 crore in the quarter from Rs880 crore.","Coal India’s third quarter total income rises to Rs21,531.2 crore from Rs20,928.4 crore in the year-ago period",20:40,"Coal India Q3 profit falls 22% to Rs2,884 crore" +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: Diversified conglomerate ITC Ltd is looking to capture 18-20% of India’s juice market through its brand B Natural by focusing on regional flavours and offering premium versions of juices available in the market, a senior company official said.“The challenge for us is looking at local Indian fruits and making it more accessible to the rest of the country,” said Hemant Malik, head of the ITC Foods Division. The company, which acquired B Natural in 2014 from South Indian firm Balan Natural Food, is looking to launch at least two variants by October this year, including Bel (Wood Apple) and Falsa (Grewia asiatica berry), Malik said.B Natural has branded itself as a 100% fruit juice brand that can be part of a healthy diet and also offers regional flavours in addition to common juices such as orange and mixed fruit. The marketing plank is similar to what other rapidly growing niche brands such as Raw Pressery and Paper Boat have been offering to their largely urban consumers.ITC has been positioning B Natural at a premium to the largest competitors in India’s Rs2,500 crore juice market, PepsiCo (Tropicana) and Dabur (Real).“Most (1 litre tetra pack) juices are (priced) at Rs140-145. The juice market has nectars priced at Rs99, and they have stayed at that price now for the last couple of years,” Malik said. Nectars are fruit-based juices that contain other ingredients such as sugars.“For the longest time, there was a mindset of ‘should we cross the Rs99 mark?’,” he said. “If you have a distinctive proposition, then it can be done.”While B Natural’s 1 litre tetra packs start from Rs84-99, its pomegranate juice debuted at Rs 199 a litre. B Natural is also available in 200ml tetra packs starting at Rs20. ITC says it has kept its juices priced such to target both the mass and premium segments.“We believe growth in the juice market will come from the number of consumers growing and as people who are already consuming will consume more,” Malik said.An analyst said that although the juice market in India is ripe for more competition, ITC may have to focus more on mass categories.“ITC is present in FMCG segment at a niche level with all their premium products,” the analyst from an equities brokerage firm said, requesting anonymity. “In every category they are in premium segments. They need to start targeting the lower mid-segment.”Dabur’s Real currently controls over 50% of India’s juice market share, while PepsiCo’s Tropicana has 28%, according to data from AC Nielsen from January 2017.Now, Malik says ITC is looking to ramp up B Natural’s production while it also expands its distribution network.“Today our manufacturing is in Bangalore, and we are soon going to run short (of capacity),” Malik said. “Our next factory is already under construction in Kapurthala in Punjab. It will be ready in April 2018, in time for the new summer season.”ITC has added around 60,000 retailers in its distribution network for B Natural.“Penetration of juice is much lower in the south and we don’t understand why,” Malik said. “Fresh fruit consumption is a lot higher in south India than here in (north) India. I would say a lot more growth (in distribution) is in the south region right now.”",ITC Foods Division boss Hemant Malik says will focus on regional flavours and push premium products through B Natural to gain in the juice market,08:47,ITC aims to capture 18-20% of India’s juice market through B Natural +2017-04-11,"$1.4 billionWhat is it? The amount e-commerce firm Flipkart raised from eBay, Microsoft and Tencent.Why is it important? It’s the biggest amount raised in a single funding round by an Indian start-up. It came at a pre-money valuation of $10.2 billion, signalling the confidence investors have showed in the company that saw a series of markdowns in the last couple of years. The funding—and acquisition of eBay India, that was a part of the deal—will strengthen Flipkart as it fights its aggressive and better endowed competitor Amazon.Tell me more: There have also been talks that Snapdeal, the third largest e-commerce firm in the country, will be merged with Flipkart, along with additional funding from SoftBank. 21%What is it? The share of the Europe, Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA) region in global IPOs (initial public offerings) in the first three months of 2017.Why is it important? India with 26 IPOs accounted for nearly 34% of the region’s activity that ranked it second to Asia-Pacific in IPO numbers. EMEIA ranked third with 15% share in global proceeds, behind Asia-Pacific and the Americas. Tell me more: The EMEIA region had 77 IPOs, raising $5.2 billion in all in January-March 2017.2.5 millionWhat is it? The number of point-of-sale (PoS) machines at merchant establishments/shops. Why is it important? PoS machine availability in India trails that of BRIC nations such as Brazil and China where per capita PoS availability for swiping plastic money is higher. Demonetisation had brought the scarcity into focus as people had to do less cash transactions. The numbers inched from 1.5 million swipe machines in October 2016 to 1.7 million in December, 2.2 million in February 2017, to over 2.5 million now. SBI has led with installation of 124,000 machines.Tell me more:The count, shared by a National Payments Corp. of India official, is a little less than Niti Aayog’s estimate of 2.8 million PoS machines in February. 17 daysWhat is it? The time the UK-to-China freight train would take to reach its destination in Zhejiang, travelling along the ancient ‘Silk Road’ route. Why is it important? The time taken by the train between the two countries, spanning a route along seven other countries, is still half the duration at sea. It is also cheaper than sending goods by air. While the train brought household items, clothes and consumer fashion goods from China, it is transporting soft drinks, baby products and pharmaceuticals on its maiden return journey.Tell me more: Chinese premier Xi Jinping’s 2013 “One Belt, One Road” policy to revive land routes for trading with the West has made London the 15th European city with a direct rail connection. $50.9 billionWhat is it? Tesla’s market cap at the end of trading on MondayWhy is it important? It is now the most valued car company in the US, beating General Motors, the 108-year-old giant, by $64 million. Tesla’s position is seen more as a reflection of investors’ faith in Elon Musk’s vision for the future of electric cars, than the present financials of the companies. GM earned $9 billion in 2016 and Tesla lost $674 million. GM sold nearly 10 million vehicles, and Tesla sold 80,000 globally.Tell me more: Toyota, with its $172 billion market cap, is the biggest carmaker by market value at present. Volkswagen, with a sale of 10.31 million vehicles in 2016, is the largest carmaker by sales volume, closely followed by Toyota. howindialives.com is a search engine for public data.","In other news, e-commerce firm Flipkart raises $1.4 billion funding from eBay, Microsoft and Tencent",15:37,"News in numbers: Over 2.5 mn PoS machines at shops now, says NPCI" +2017-04-11,"
Mumbai: As bank deposit rates fell and stock markets rose, mutual funds in 2016-17 received the highest net inflows in at least 11 years, led by income and liquid schemes.Net inflows in the fiscal year ended March rose 155.66% from a year before to Rs3.43 trillion, the highest since at least 2005-06 when the equity market was gaining traction, data from the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) showed. Data prior to 2005-06 was not available.India’s benchmark index Sensex rose 16.88% during the financial year, and was the third best-performer among its Asian peers. The index has delivered a compounded annual return of 13.48% from 2005-06 to 2016-17.ALSO READ | Smart strategies to invest in debt and equity mutual funds“A rise in systematic investment plans (SIPs) is the most important factor contributing to the rise in inflows into mutual funds. Investors are also more aware and disciplined in investing from a long-term perspective,” said Gopal Agrawal, chief investment officer (equities) at Tata Asset Management.Mutual fund SIPs allow investors to regularly invest small amounts that go into equities instead of making lump sum investments at various points of time. Such investments are mostly made on a monthly or quarterly basis, although it is possible to make them even every week.Income and liquid schemes received maximum net inflows during the period, AMFI data showed. Net inflows in income schemes rose more than seven-fold to Rs1.2 trillion, while that in liquid funds grew more than four times to Rs95,826 crore.“Income and liquid schemes have surged and such rise is triggered due to low interest rates from bank deposits,” said Raghvendra Nath, managing director of Ladderup Wealth Management Pvt. Ltd. He pointed out that in the last three to four years, average returns from corporate debt is in the range of 9-9.5%.ALSO READ | Choosing mutual funds is getting complicatedNath added that currently, bank fixed deposits return 3.5-4%, which is below inflation rates.Vidya Bala, head of mutual fund research at Fundsindia.com, agreed.“For the liquid schemes, it is largely the institutional flows. It is mainly meant for parking institutional money,” said Bala.“People have flocked to income funds after the drop in fixed deposit (FD) rates. A number of investors have switched to debt funds from FDs, and that trend will continue for a while,” said Bala, adding that many of these were first-time mutual fund investors who prefer this option to traditional bank FDs.“The more conservative investors would prefer income funds to equity-oriented funds,” added Bala.ALSO READ | A long-term view on mutual fundsNet inflows into equity schemes in 2016-17 dropped 4.94% to Rs70,367 crore from a year before. However, interest in equity funds is growing, say asset managers, pointing to the near-92% rise in inflows since 2005-06.“Investors are aware that the Indian economy is on a strong footing. Relative attractiveness of equities as an asset class has increased as other alternatives cease to be as attractive as before,” said Agrawal of Tata Asset Management, pointing to the decline in the rates of bank deposits.“The long-term outlook on the economy and the markets looks positive,” added Agrawal.Nath of Ladderup said the outlook for equity inflows was positive and he expects a deluge of inflows into the asset class over time.","Net inflows in FY17 rose 155.66% from a year before to Rs3.43 trillion, the highest since at least 2005-06 when the equity market was gaining traction, AMFI data showed",02:57,Net inflows into mutual funds in FY17 highest in at least 11 years +2017-04-11,"
If you trade in bitcoins, or even are a bitcoin enthusiast, it’s unlikely that you would have missed the raging debate around the cryptocurrency. Known as the bitcoin “fork”, the controversy potentially threatens to split the bitcoin currency, whose price is currently around $1,200, into two.For the uninitiated, there are two factions at the heart of the debate, which is primarily about how to scale up the bitcoin to handle more transactions. The two current camps are: Bitcoin Unlimited and Segregated Witness (SegWit). Bitcoin Unlimited aims to remove the block size limit altogether, thereby allowing the miners to reach a consensus on their own. SegWit offers a moderate increase of the block size to up to 4 megabytes (MB), moving some non-critical data out of the blocks.The reason: Bitcoin currently has a 1MB block size limit. This implies that, on average, a network bitcoin can only process 1MB of transaction data every 10 minutes—about seven transactions per second as compared to the thousands of transactions per second that credit card firm Visa can process. The problem first surfaced around 2014-15, and bitcoin users are now increasingly experiencing long wait times as the mempool, or the buffer of yet-unconfirmed transactions, is showing more spikes.ALSO READ : Blockchain is second only to artificial intelligence: Brock PierceBrock Pierce, founder and managing partner at Blockchain Capital and chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, believes that bitcoin has the “high class” problem of experiencing rapid growth. “Users and entrepreneurs building new business models off the blockchain means that there are competing interests on how best to scale the network. Linux, also an open source software project, had similar growing pains. It is possible that Bitcoin will fork at some point. The question is whether or not it’ll be a contentious fork. This process is a good thing in the long term, though potentially disruptive in the short term,” he said.Pointing out that “there have been multiple attempts to alter bitcoin away from the core developers that have created bitcoin as we know it today (Bitcoin Classic etc.)”, Pierce said, “To date, caution regarding a contentious hard fork has prevailed and bitcoin has thrived. If it (the split) were to happen, we may see two currencies, though I suspect one would be the dominant currency/chain.”Earlier attempts at fixing this problem comprised the BIP 100 and BIP 101 proposals—BIP stands for bitcoin improvement proposal. They were introduced in 2015 by Bitcoin Core developers Jeff Garzik and Gavin Andresen, respectively. BIP 100 was about making miners decide the block size limit while BIP 101 was a one-time increase from 1MB to 8MB. Both are known as hard-fork solutions, which means that had they been implemented, older versions of bitcoin software would become incompatible with the new network.According to Cointelegraph.com, the abolition of the block size limit proposed by Bitcoin Unlimited could lead to an “uncontrolled Blockchain bloat”. Currently, the size of the entire blockchain exceeds 100 gigabytes. ALSO READ : Blockchain is going to permeate our lives: Matthieu RiouIf the block size limit is increased, the blockchain could grow to several petabytes, if not more, which “would lead to increased centralization of Bitcoin; only big companies would be able to afford the storage space, computing power and bandwidth necessary to process such huge amounts of data, phasing small-scale node operators out of the network. That runs contrary to the very idea of Bitcoin as the money governed by each of its users”, the article in Cointelegraph.com explains. Similar with SegWit, where the limit will be reached again, and the capacity will have to be increased.At a roundtable held in February 2016 in Hong Kong, representatives of Bitcoin Core, the authors of SegWit, and several major mining companies agreed to move forward with “a safe hard-fork based on the improvements in SegWit”, proposing an increase in the block size limit to 2MB “with the total size no more than 4MB” but the bitcoin community refused to adopt it, and the stalemate continues.Benson Samuel, co-founder and chief technology officer and co-founder of Secure Bitcoin Traders Pvt. Ltd that runs trading platform Coinsecure.in, says while Indian users have been concerned about the fork, “there is far less discussion in the community in India compared to outside. Since a huge number of users in India store their funds on exchanges and Web wallets, they expect to have a more seamless experience as the service operators themselves should be able to take care of some of the steps involved in the fork. The chances are slim for a majority to vote into a hard fork like Bitcoin Unlimited at this moment, however soft forks like Segregated Witness seem a lot more practical to implement on a decentralized distributed network,” he adds.The bitcoin code was first released on 9 January 2009, by a person who assumed the name, Satoshi Nakamoto. Ever since, the digital currency has been adopted for everything from international money transfers to online narco-trafficking. If you have installed a bitcoin wallet on your computer or mobile phone, it will generate your first bitcoin address and you can create more whenever you need one. You can disclose your addresses to your friends so that they can pay you or vice versa. Bitcoin users can buy and sell the currency among themselves. A shared public ledger called the “block chain” contains every transaction ever processed, allowing a user’s computer to verify the validity of each transaction of this virtual currency. The authenticity of each transaction is protected by a digital signature corresponding to the sender’s address, allowing users to have full control over sending bitcoins from their own bitcoin addresses. Hence, the digital money is also known as a “cryptocurrency”. Anyone can process transactions using the computing power of specialized hardware and earn a reward in bitcoins for this service—a process known as mining. Japan may soon become the first country to recognize bitcoins as legal tender. Some countries such as China could go a step further to issue their own version of the digital currency. In India, the Reserve Bank of India has not declared bitcoin illegal but simply cautioned users, holders and traders of virtual currencies, about the potential financial, operational, legal and security-related risks that they are exposing themselves to.On 27 February, bitcoin start-ups Zebpay, Unocoin, Coinsecure and SearchTrade jointly launched the Digital Asset and Blockchain Foundation of India (DABFI) for the “orderly and transparent growth of virtual currency market”. DABFI will lay down self-regulatory regimes for trading of bitcoins and other blockchain-based digital assets.",Bitcoin Unlimited and Segregated Witness are locked in row over how to scale up bitcoin to handle more transactions which may split the cryptocurrency,01:38,Bitcoin’s existential crisis +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: Rural Electrification Corp. (REC), a state-owned backer of India’s power sector, plans to lend billions of rupees to clean-energy projects and equipment makers this fiscal year as part of an expanded push into renewables that will also see it issue green bonds overseas.The non-banking financial company is aiming to triple its clean-energy lending and is expecting to set aside nearly Rs10,000 crore ($1.5 billion) for renewable energy in the financial year ending 31 March, chairman P.V. Ramesh said in an interview.“We’re not only financing projects but also evacuation infrastructure and have been talking with manufacturers of equipment like wind turbines, solar panels and storage batteries,” Ramesh said in an interview in New Delhi where the lender, which has a loan book of Rs2 trillion, is based.REC’s renewables strategy underscores a push by companies associated with conventional power to shift resources toward clean energy. The move, which supports Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s climate goals, also comes as some coal-fired electricity generators struggle to service debts.The lender could issue clean-energy bonds outside India by the end of June, Ramesh said.Lending shift“We are also looking at mobilizing resources from raising green bonds in Europe and social impact bonds in Scandinavia,” he said.Tesla Inc., the maker of electric vehicles, is another company that REC would be interested in backing should it decide to establish a presence in India, Ramesh added. Tesla founder Elon Musk tweeted in February that the company may enter the Indian market this summer.With demand from equipment manufacturers largely unknown at the moment, lending to the sector would be separate from what REC wants to set aside for renewable projects, Ramesh said.The shift in lending at REC takes place against a backdrop of an expansion in clean energy led by Modi and his promise to install 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable capacity by 2022.Between April 2016 to February, India added 8 GW of new renewable energy, reaching total installed capacity of 51 GW, according to government data. Meanwhile, thermal capacity grew by 8 GW in the same period, 36% lower than the previous year.Saddled with power plants running under their maximum capacity, India’s thermal-energy producers like NTPC Ltd and RattanIndia Power Ltd have been considering setting up solar-power projects on land initially intended for coal-fired facilities.REC, which has traditionally financed large-sized power and related infrastructure projects, is customizing products to suit the needs of clean-energy projects, which are often small compared with conventional plants and much quicker to set up, Ramesh said.“We’re customizing products for each project so it’s tailor-made for each of them because not everyone wants a standard product,” Ramesh said, adding that his company needs to be agile in the new market because the days of lending a billion dollars to a single big project are nearing an end.REC has been appointed by India’s government as the central agency responsible for implementing two nationwide power reform projects aimed at increasing electricity coverage in rural areas through the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana and the financial turnaround of state-owned power retailers through the Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojna (UDAY). Bloomberg","Rural Electrification Corp. (REC) is aiming to triple its clean-energy lending and is expecting to set aside nearly Rs10,000 for renewable energy in this fiscal",08:34,"Rural Electrification eyes Rs10,000 crore renewables lending push" +2017-04-20,"
New Delhi: Legal changes to enable housing development in airport land are in the works, the chairman of India’s state-run airport development authority said. Currently, airport housing in India is permitted only for airport employees.The Airports Authority of India (AAI), which operates 125 airports, has a land bank of 55,800 acres, which has so far been used only for aviation and passenger-related activities.That will change soon.“We want to make it market-driven,” AAI chairman Guruprasad Mohapatra said in an interview.The Union aviation ministry will soon move a cabinet note to amend the law governing AAI to permit use of airport land for housing and other areas which are currently not allowed, Mohapatra added. “Housing is an attractive thing to develop in and around airports. Currently, you can’t develop housing as part of the land restriction,” he said.As cities have grown, Mohapatra said, they have reached the fringes of airports, which were once far from the city centres. “Urban housing is now a requirement. Housing close to the airport receives the most premium—you see advertisements saying 20km from the airport and so on.”Mohapatra said prime housing may not be required in very small towns, but in places where land is very expensive, there could be very strong demand.Once the legal changes are through, airports could also use the available land to build malls and convention centres, among others.Like mass housing, airports are currently not allowed to build convention halls, Mohaptra said. ""That probably is a requirement in many cities now. India is hosting many conventions now,” he said, adding AAI would survey each city and based on the demand, decide what would fetch the best price for its land, which will be leased out accordingly.The change will also benefit airports that have been leased out to private operators like the ones in Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad.AAI has identified city-side development of airports at Lucknow, Raipur, Tirupati, Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Varanasi, Kolkata and Amritsar in a phased manner, junior aviation minister Jayant Sinha told Parliament on 16 March.Finance minister Arun Jaitley announced in the Union budget earlier this year that rules would be amended to “enable effective monetization of land assets” for AAI and the resources raised from the land would be used for upgrading airports.Airports typically earn revenue from aeronautical activities such as navigation charges from airlines and non-aeronautical charges like car parking and hotels. Globally, non-aeronautical revenue makes up 40-45% of the total mix while in India this figure is only 25%.To be sure, living near an airport will come with its own set of challenges. To start with, housing will have to be made sound-proof, said a former AAI board member, asking not to be named.Airport housing will also have height restrictions to avoid interference with flight paths. They will also have to be far from the runway and 45m above a defined level of the airport, which will allow 4-5 floors to be built, former AAI board member said.AAI will also have to consider other questions.“Will it be for the rich or middle classes or the poor? Will AAI provide for all the services and utilities and do maintenance or some other party? Will AAI sell the land also or only the houses? Can they (houses) be freely traded by their owners?,” the former AAI board member asked, adding, “Importantly, AAI must make sure that they have excellent planning inputs so that all the land required for serving future growth of aviation demands is protected, and then and only then, the ‘excess land’ put to non-aviation use.”","Airports Authority of India chairman Guruprasad Mohapatra wants airport land to be market-driven, hence the plan for residential projects",08:34,AAI working on plan to allow housing projects on airport land +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: Dell Technologies, the company that was formed when Dell Inc. acquired EMC Corp. for $67 billion, remains bullish on its “long-term” growth prospects in India, which is the company’s third-largest market.“I think we are on track to hit the $3 billion revenue mark in this country in a couple of years,” Thomas Sweet, executive vice-president and chief financial officer (CFO), Dell Inc., said in an interview last week.Explaining why he is bullish on the Indian market, Sweet reasoned that the country now had “a government that is pro-growth, pro-development, and which is also pro-technology in helping to enable that growth and the government’s mission”. Further, he claimed that the Dell-EMC combine in India is growing faster than the domestic IT market growth. According to Nasscom’s Strategic Review 2017 report, in FY2017, India’s domestic IT-BPM (information technology-business process management) market is likely to grow 8.5% year on year to reach $38 billion (excluding e-commerce).To accelerate the pace of growth globally, Dell rolled out a distribution, or the so-called channel strategy in February. According to Sweet, half of the company’s revenue is routed through its distributors and his company hopes to increase their output with the recent reorganization it initiated to bring together the distribution partners of the erstwhile Dell and EMC companies.What the company did two months back, according to Sweet, was to merge the EMC and Dell sales forces (which existed as separate entities before the merger) into two units. One is an enterprise sales unit that would now focus on the top 3,000 customers, and the second is a commercial sales organization that will focus on an estimated 500,000 clients. Sweet said he is “pretty pleased” with how the combined sales units have shaped up so far.The company also plans to sharpen its focus on its digital transformation push. Dell Technologies breaks up digital transformation into three parts, according to Sweet: IT transformation-how IT can support what the business needs; security transformation-how a company can tackle multiple threats; and workforce transformation-how an organization makes its employees more productive in a mobile environment.In the past couple of years, most large technology solution providers such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE), International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Accenture Plc., Oracle Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others have been competing fiercely for the increasingly lucrative digital transformation pie. According to research firm International Data Corp. (IDC) forecasts, global spending on digital transformation technologies is projected to be more than $1.2 trillion in 2017—an increase of 17.8% over 2016.“There is clearly a greater focus among our customers on digital, but most of them are currently focused on IT transformation,” said Sweet. According to him, companies are looking to modernize their IT infrastructure to support cloud-native applications. In cloud computing, companies can consume IT services and only pay for the applications or infrastructure they use rather than buy the equipment upfront, thus reducing capital expenditure (capex).One change in the way technology adoption occurs in companies, according to Sweet, is the growing involvement of top management, especially when it comes to digital. “We are seeing more C-suite executives, particularly the chief executive officers (CEOs), chief operating officers (COOs) and CFOs, participating in the conversation on digital as, increasingly, they are seeking business solutions and business model evolution,” he said. The focus for CFOs, he said, continues to be on return on investment, even as most of them are also ready to bet on emerging technologies that are still not mature in order to future-proof their organizations.Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst of Greyhound Research, said that while the Dell-EMC combine has done a good job of “integrating the channel network” of both the organizations, managing the reskilling of the partners and introducing customised solutions tailored for specific industry segments may require an intensive focus, especially in the short term. “If they can manage this aspect well, they can have an edge in the digital transformation infrastructure market, where companies such as HPE and Lenovo have been showing renewed aggression of late,” he concluded.",Dell Inc. CFO Thomas Sweet claims that the Dell-EMC combine in India is growing faster than the domestic IT market growth,08:34,Dell on track to hit the $3 billion revenue mark in India: CFO Thomas Sweet +2017-04-20,"
New Delhi: He’s the son of a man who was a rebel in a rather conservative business family, became a charismatic sports entrepreneur and is now a fugitive. Ruchir Modi, 22, is the son of Lalit Modi—who is best known for conceptualizing the Indian Premier League (IPL), the T20 cricket tournament that changed the way the game was viewed and played in India. Lalit Modi moved to London in 2010, shortly after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) launched an investigation.Ruchir Modi was still in school then. In March 2016, soon after he graduated from Regents University, London, Ruchir was appointed director of the estimated $2.8-billion K.K. Modi group’s flagship tobacco business Godfrey Phillips India Ltd (GPI), holding company Modi Enterprises, networking marketing arm Modicare and restaurant business Peyotito in London. Ruchir is currently in India for a couple of reasons. He is in the race for the post of president of the Rajasthan Cricket Association (RCA). The election is on 26 April. This post was held by his father between 2005 and 2009 and again since 2014 to date.Secondly, he wants to expand GPI’s tobacco business in new markets such as Africa and enter new businesses, real estate development and micro-finance. The last is important because Modi says he is keen to build his own empire. Ruchir is currently better known as Lalit Modi’s son, K.K. Modi’s grandson, and for his flashy lifestyle. He drives a Ferrari when in London (cricket is written on its licence plate), and either an Aston Martin or a Mercedes Benz in Mumbai (where he is accompanied by bodyguards). He travels in private jets, has often been spotted in Page 3 parties, and puts it all out on Instagram. He became the president of the Alwar Cricket Association in August 2016. In the run-up to the RCA election later this month, Ruchir met the members and office-bearers of RCA, which has been facing a suspension from the Board of Control for Cricket in India as a punishment for electing Lalit Modi as its president, in Jaipur last month. “They haven’t met or spoken to Lalit Modi, so they needed someone to hear them out and understand their concerns. So, I went to hear them out and present my own vision,” he says.Ruchir is clearly interested in cricket, but some say he is just serving as a front for his father’s re-entry into Rajasthan and Indian cricket. “It is obvious that Lalit Modi wants to get back to cricket through a 22-year old with no prior experience (in this); he will be the guiding force behind his son’s strategy and process,” said a member of RCA on condition of anonymity.Ruchir, naturally, denies being a front. “I feel like I owe something to cricket in Rajasthan, it has suffered for the last four years. I believe cricket needs to be brought back to the state. My family owes that,” he says, adding that he speaks to his father at least 10 times a day over the phone. Not too many people buy that. “It is absolutely ridiculous that a 22-year-old without any prior experience is even being considered for a post like this. This is clearly the worst form of nepotism and should not be encouraged. Lalit Modi may be an excellent administrator but that doesn’t mean he can get away with using a proxy,” says Indranil Das Blah, chief operating officer at sports marketing agency Kwan Entertainment and Marketing Solutions.Still, to give Ruchir his due, he isn’t a novice at business. He has been involved with the K.K. Modi Group for years, and has plans for it. “We need to take the Modi Group to the next level. Everyone in Modi Group has built a brand, they have made a success story of something. I would like to create not just one brand but multiple brands, grow the existing portfolio, and make it one of the largest business houses in India through diversification, digitization, effective management and transparency in organization,” says Ruchir.He plans to start by monetizing the group’s existing real estate assets. “But we will not end there. We will look at mixed developments across multiple sectors in Mumbai and Thane for now. Most of our real estate assets (land) are held by family businesses. We will compete with the likes of Lodha group and Raheja group,” he adds. Through Modi Ventures, the investment arm of the group that he founded in 2015 while studying in Regents University, London, Ruchir also plans to enter micro-finance this year. He declined to provide more details on this business. He has also taken on the responsibility of expanding the group’s international businesses and taking its tobacco and tea products to international markets, including Africa. He will also work with his uncle Samir Modi on expanding the group’s chain of Twenty Four Seven Convenience Stores to at least 200 outlets within a year, from 50 currently. Ruchir wants GPI to be seen as more than just a tobacco company; it will be known for real estate, tobacco, consumer packaged goods, and retail, he adds. He works closely with grandfather and uncle but says his father is his “idol”. “All of my life, I have been very close to my father and learnt more from him than from school,” says Ruchir.“He is his father’s shadow,” adds an old-timer at the group on condition of anonymity. Vidhi Choudhary contributed to the story","Ruchir Modi is in the race for the post of president of Rajasthan Cricket Association (RCA), a post held by his father Lalit Modi since 2014",08:34,Lalit Modi’s son Ruchir Modi pads up for Rajasthan Cricket Association elections +2017-04-10,"Mumbai: A cyber attack on Union Bank of India last July began after an employee opened an email attachment releasing malware that allowed hackers to steal the state-run bank’s data, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.The attempt closely resembled the cyber theft last year of more than $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank’s account at the New York Federal Reserve, the paper reported.The opening of the email attachment, which looked like it had come from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), initiated the malware that hackers used to steal Union Bank’s access codes for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a system that lenders use for international transactions.The codes were used to send transfer instructions for about $170 million to a Union Bank account at Citigroup Inc. in New York.Union Bank had traced the money trail and blocked the movement of funds.SWIFT late last year said that some banks using its system had been attacked after the Bangladesh heist, the Journal said, but did not specifically name Union Bank of India.Union Bank Chairman Arun Tiwari told the newspaper that SWIFT officials had been working with the bank since the day of the cyber attack. SWIFT declined to comment. Reuters",Hackers initiated malware through an email attachment to steal Union Bank of India’s access codes for SWIFT to transfer funds to a bank account at Citigroup in New York,23:00,Cyber attack on Union Bank of India similar to Bangladesh heist: Report +2017-04-10,"New Delhi: Private sector lender HDFC Bank said it will raise Rs50,000 crore within a year by issuing debt instruments. The Bank proposes to raise funds by issuing perpetual debt instruments (part of additional tier I capital), tier II capital bonds and senior long-term infrastructure bonds up to a total amount of Rs50,000 crore, the bank said in a regulatory filing. Perpetual bonds carry no maturity date, so they may be treated as equity, not as debt. The bank did not mention what purpose it will utilise the funds to be raised. It said the money will be raised in the period of next 12 months through private placement mode. The board of directors of the bank would consider the proposal at its board meeting to be held on 21 April. HDFC Bank stock closed 0.36% down at Rs1,433.60 on BSE.","HDFC Bank proposes to raise funds by issuing perpetual debt instruments, tier II capital bonds and senior long-term infrastructure bonds up to a total amount of Rs 50,000 crore",22:38,"HDFC Bank to raise Rs 50,000 crore in the next 12 months" +2017-02-11,"Mumbai: State Bank of India’s net profit more than doubled in the December quarter from a year earlier, helped by a one-time gain from the sale of a stake in its life insurance venture, but improvement in asset quality fell short of the lender’s own expectations.India’s largest lender said Friday that net profit rose to Rs2,610 crore in the fiscal third quarter, up 134% from Rs1,115.34 crore a year ago. The profit was slightly higher than the estimate of Rs2,509.70 crore in a Bloomberg poll of 18 analysts.The profit increase was largely on account of a one-time gain of Rs1,755 crore from the sale of a 3.9% stake in SBI Life Insurance Co. Ltd.Provisions against bad loans dropped to Rs7,244.55 crore in the quarter from Rs7,644 crore a year ago and Rs7,669.66 crore in the July-September period. SBI also set aside in the quarter Rs1,400 crore against standard assets that are at risk of turning bad.Also Read| What to expect from SBI’s Q3 resultsAsset quality improved a shade with SBI recovering Rs3,994 crore of loans and upgrading Rs2,434 crore more. The improvement fell short of the bank’s own expectations—a fact chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya blamed on the 8 November invalidation of high-value currency notes, which made it tough for cash-dependent borrowers to repay debt. “We were very hopeful of seeing most of the resolutions come in during this quarter. However, demonetization has actually pushed this by another quarter,” Bhattacharya said.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rose marginally by 2.3% to Rs1.08 trillion at the end of the December quarter from Rs1.06 trillion in the September quarter. On a year-on-year basis, gross NPAs jumped 48.61% from Rs7,2791.73 crore. Gross NPAs made up 7.23% of total assets at the end of the December quarter compared to 7.14% in the previous quarter and 5.1% in the year-ago quarter.Loans worth Rs10,185 crore slipped into the NPA category, of which, Rs 10,069 crore were on the bank’s corporate loan book. Of the corporate loan slippages, 73%, or Rs 7,341 crore, were from the bank’s so-called watchlist. SBI pared its watchlist, which consists of loans at risk of turning bad, to Rs17,992 crore as of 31 December, from Rs25,951 crore in the September quarter.According to Bhattacharya, the bank’s numbers will start looking better in the next financial year, once demand for credit revives.SBI’s net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose by 7.7% to Rs1,4751.54 crore in the December quarter from Rs13,697.01 crore a year ago. Non-interest income, which includes fees, commissions and investment gains, rose 58.73% to Rs9,661.92 crore from Rs6,086.97 crore a year ago. The figure includes the one-time stake sale gain.“No major negatives in the SBI result, most developments have been in line with expectations,” said a banking analyst at a domestic securities house, requesting anonymity. “Owing to its position in the banking sector, whenever the asset quality cycle starts reversing and recoveries happen, the bank will benefit the most. As of now, the only concern is around containing fresh slippages, which the bank feels it can do. We maintain a BUY call on the SBI stock.”The government’s demonetization drive led to higher accumulation of low-cost deposits. Total deposits rose 22.1% from a year ago to Rs20.41 trillion while advances were up 4.1% to Rs14.48 trillion.On Friday, SBI shares rose 0.15% to Rs276.25 on BSE, on a day the benchmark Sensex barely budged at 28,334.25 points.","State Bank of India reported a net profit of Rs2,610 crore in the third quarter against Rs1115.34 crore a year ago",13:05,"SBI Q3 profit rises 134% to Rs2,610 crore " +2017-04-09,"New Delhi: Within weeks of Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) upholding levy of retrospective tax, the income tax department has slapped a fresh demand note of Rs10,247 crore on British explorer Cairn Energy Plc. ITAT in its 9 March order held that Cairn Energy was liable to pay tax on the 2006 transfer of India assets to newly created Cairn India, prior to its listing. It, however, held that interest cannot be charged on it as the demand was raised using retrospective tax legislation. The income tax department had raised a tax demand of Rs10,247 crore and another Rs18,800 crore in interest for 10 years. “Following the ruling of the ITAT, an amended tax demand, received on March 31, 2017, noted that late payment interest would now be charged from February 2016, i.e. from 30 days following the date of the original 2016 final assessment order,” Cairn said in a notice to shareholders. Cairn said the decision of the ITAT is “potentially subject to appeal.” The company had on 24 January, 2014 received a draft assessment order for the alleged capital gains it made in 2006. The order restrained the company from selling the residual 9.8% stake it holds in Cairn India. Cairn Energy had in 2011 sold Cairn India to Vedanta. “Then, on February 4, 2016... a final assessment order in respect of the Indian fiscal year ended March 31 2007, (was) issued by the Indian income tax department (IITD) in the amount of Rs10,247 crore plus interest back dated to 2007 totalling Rs18,800 crore,” Cairn said. The final assessment order did not include any penalties which may also be applied to the final assessment (potentially up to 300% of any tax finally agreed). “The final assessment order was appealed to the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, Delhi which ruled on March 9, 2017 that tax in the amount of Rs10,247 crore remained payable but that the company could not be required to pay interest,” it said. This is because the tax demand was raised on the basis of a retrospective amendment done to the Income Tax Act in 2012 and Cairn could not have anticipated that payment of tax would be required. Stating that it strongly contests the final assessment order, Cairn said enforcement of any tax liability deemed due by the tax department will be limited to India assets, which had a value of about $750 million as of 31 December, 2016. These assets comprised principally Cairn’s residual shareholding in Cairn India. Cairn said it had on 11 March, 2015 filed a notice of dispute under The UK-India investment treaty in order to protect its legal position and shareholder interests. “The international arbitration proceedings formally commenced in January 2016 following the agreement between Cairn and the government of India on the appointment of a panel of three international arbitrators under the terms of the Treaty,” it said. “However, supported by detailed legal advice on the strength of the legal protections available to it under international law, Cairn strongly contests the actions of the IITD in these matters. “In addition to the resolution of the tax dispute, Cairn also seeks full recompense for the loss of value resulting from the restriction on its Cairn India shares,” the notice added.","Within weeks of tax tribunal upholding levy of retrospective tax, the income tax department has slapped a fresh demand note of Rs10,247 crore on Cairn Energy",18:26,"Cairn Energy gets fresh demand note of Rs10,247 crore from tax department" +2017-04-20,"Mumbai: S. Chand and Co. Ltd, a publisher of educational books, on Wednesday announced that it will launch its initial public offering (IPO) on 26 April.The company has fixed a price band of Rs660-670 per share for its initial share sale. The offer will close on 28 April.Everstone Capital-backed S. Chand delivers content, solutions and services across the education lifecycle, serving the K-12, higher education and early learning segments.The firm has appointed investment banks JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd, Axis Capital Ltd and Credit Suisse Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd to manage the share sale.It had filed its draft IPO prospectus with markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on 16 December and received approval in early March.The IPO will see the company raise Rs325 crore in primary capital. Additionally, existing shareholders of the company, including Everstone Capital, will collectively sell around 6 million shares worth Rs403.5 crore, taking the total IPO size to Rs728.5 crore. Everstone holds 32.27% stake in the company.Out of the primary proceeds, the company will spend Rs255 crore to repay debt, said Samir Khurana, group head, strategy and investments at S. Chand.S. Chand is looking to repay loans availed by it and its subsidiary Eurasia Publishing House Pvt. Ltd, which were utilized towards funding the acquisition of Chhaya Prakashani Pvt. Ltd. The company will repay some loans availed by other subsidiaries such as New Saraswati House (India) Pvt. Ltd and Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd.In December 2016, S. Chand acquired 74% stake in Chhaya Prakashani adding four Chhaya brands to its portfolio.As of 31 December, the company offered 55 consumer brands across knowledge products and services including S. Chand, Vikas, Madhubun, Saraswati, Destination Success and Ignitor.Inorganic growth through acquisitions is a strategy that S. Chand has frequently preferred in the past too.In financial year 2012-13, S. Chand acquired Vikas Publishing to bolster its offering in Hindi titles, while in the financial year 2014-15, it acquired New Saraswati House.“We will continue to look to grow through the inorganic growth route in the future too. The company has spent close to Rs460 crore on acquisitions in the past,” said Khurana.Apart from the acquisitions, S. Chand has also invested around Rs33 crore to acquire minority shares in early-stage digital education companies, said Khurana. “We will continue to assess such investments in digital platforms,” he added.According to its red herring prospectus, S. Chand recorded consolidated revenue of Rs540.6 crore in 2015-16, against Rs478.5 crore in the previous year. In 2015-16, it reported a profit of Rs46.6 crore against Rs32.7 crore the previous year.The company’s consolidated revenue has grown at a CAGR of 33% over the past five financial years, from Rs174.6 crore in fiscal 2012 to Rs540.6 crore in fiscal 2016.According to Khurana, the company’s revenues are seasonal and almost 75% of it comes in the fourth quarter due to the large contribution of the K-12 business segment where sales of new books occur in the January-March quarter ahead of the start of the new academic year.So far this year, five firms have raised Rs4,185.91 crore through the IPO route, according to data from primary market tracker Prime Database. In 2016, 26 firms raised Rs26,493.8 crore through IPOs, data shows.","S Chand and Co, a publisher of educational books, has fixed a price band of Rs660-670 per share for its initial public offering (IPO)",07:54,S. Chand and Co to launch IPO on 26 April +2017-04-07,"New Delhi: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has agreed to give a 20-year loan of $175 million to Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd to finance a proposed $450 million transmission project for transferring power from new solar power parks to the grid.The loan agreement was signed on Thursday, an official statement from the power ministry said. State-owned Power Grid will make an equity contribution of $135 million for the project.The new transmission lines will help in evacuating 2,500 megawatt (MW) of power from solar parks in Bhadla in Rajasthan and 700 MW from Banaskantha in Gujarat. The proposed transmission facility will also aid in increasing solar power generation by 4.2 gigawatt (GW) and cut carbon emissions by over 7 million tonnes every year, said the statement.The union cabinet had in February decided to double the solar park capacity in the country to 40,000 MW in three years. The plan is to add 50 new ultra-mega solar parks to the 34 under construction in 21 states.In addition to the ADB loan, Power Grid’s high voltage transmission project will include a $50 million co-financing facility from the Clean Technology Fund (CTF), which is a component of the climate investment funds aimed at helping developing countries to adopt low carbon technologies.The project will improve the capacity and efficiency of interstate transmission networks, particularly in transmitting the electricity generated from the new solar parks to the national grid, said the statement.",Power Grid will use the funds from Asian Development Bank (ADB) to finance a proposed power transmission project connecting new solar power parks to the grid,22:37,ADB to lend $175 million to Power Grid for transmission project +2017-04-10,"
Mumbai: Religare Enterprises Ltd on Sunday announced the sale of its 80% stake in Religare Health Insurance Co. Ltd (RHI) to a group of investors led by True North.In a statement, Religare Enterprises said it has entered into a definitive agreement with the investors for the sale, which values the insurance firm at Rs1,300 crore. The deal will fetch Religare approximately Rs1,040 crore.Apart from True North (earlier known as India Value Fund Advisors), other investors in the consortium are Aditya Parekh and Sameer Shroff-led private equity firm Faering Capital, and Gaurav Dalmia.The transaction is subject to necessary regulatory approvals. American investment bank J.P. Morgan acted as the exclusive financial adviser to Religare Enterprises.ALSO READ | Shivinder, Malvinder Singh want to sell some assets, but the timing isn’t rightReligare Health Insurance was launched in July 2012. The business reported a gross written premium of Rs503 crore in the year ended 31 March 2016. “We have been closely evaluating the health insurance space and have been impressed by the quality of RHI’s management team and business. We believe that RHI would be an excellent platform for building an enduring health insurance franchise in India,” Vikram Nirula, partner at True North said in the statement.True North has so far successfully launched five separate investment funds with a combined corpus of over $2 billion.The stake sale comes at a time when Religare’s promoters Malvinder and Shivinder Singh have been reported to be keen on divesting stakes in other businesses controlled by them.In January, Mint reported that the brothers were in talks with several global private equity funds such as TPG Capital, Bain Capital and KKR to sell a stake in their hospitals business—Fortis Healthcare Ltd. Discussions with Bain and TPG are currently only for a 26% stake in the company. On 5 January, Mint had reported on the talks between KKR and the Singh brothers for a majority stake in Fortis, alongside a structured equity deal in RHC Holding Pvt. Ltd (RHPL). RHPL is the holding firm for the Religare and Fortis brands.Singh brothers are also exploring debt financing options.In November, Mint reported that RHPL was in talks to refinance $300 million debt. RHPL is a closely held investment company owned by Singh brothers. As of 31 March 2016, RHPL had a total net worth of around Rs6,900 crore and a debt of Rs4,064 crore.The various stakes sale plans are, however, overshadowed by an ongoing legal battle with Japanese drug maker Daiichi Sankyo.The case relates to enforcement of an arbitral award in proceedings initiated by Daiichi Sankyo against the Singh brothers in relation to its 2008 purchase of a majority stake in Ranbaxy, then owned by the brothers. The arbitral award came after the Japanese company alleged that the Singh brothers had concealed crucial information while selling Ranbaxy to it for $4.6 billion in 2008.A Singapore tribunal has ordered the brothers to pay Rs2,562 crore, which they are contesting in the Delhi High Court.In March, the court directed Singh brothers to furnish, within a week, details of all of their unencumbered assets, in order to ensure the use of such assets to satisfy the arbitral award, at a later stage, if required, Mint reported on 7 March.","Religare Enterprises Ltd sale of its 80% stake in Religare Health Insurance to True North and other investors values the firm at Rs1,300 crore",21:33,"Religare sells 80% stake in health insurance arm to True North, others" +2017-04-10,"
New Delhi: In deals potentially valued at around Rs12,000 crore, state-owned NLC India Ltd has shortlisted for acquisition GMR Group’s 1,370 megawatt (MW) coal power project in Chhattisgarh and Hyderabad-based Ind-Barath Power Infra Ltd’s 700MW plant in Odisha. NLC, earlier known as Neyveli Lignite Corp. Ltd, will shortly hire two consultants—one each from the public and private sectors to carry out the due diligence, said Sarat Acharya, chairman and managing director, NLC India on the sidelines of Global Natural Resources Conclave organized by Network18 and the Confederation of Indian Industry.The public sector unit plans to acquire 3,000MW of stressed power generation capacity, driven by its strategy of using the revenue generated from running such projects to finance capital expenditure. “Others had come as part of the process that we have been running for stressed power projects acquisition. We are also setting up a power generation capacity of 7,000MW, which will take around six years for commissioning. Acquiring such stressed projects will allow us to generate electricity and start cash flows,” Acharya added.Mint reported on 6 January about NLC being in talks with Ind-Barath to acquire its coal-fired power plant in Odisha.On 23 August, NLC India invited expressions of interest from firms owning coal- and lignite-based power plants of capacity of more than 2,00MW for possible acquisition.Across the country, thermal power projects totalling around 25,000MW are up for sale. Over the last few years, power companies have found it difficult to secure fuel supplies and buyers for the power they generate because debt-laden state electricity boards are unwilling to buy expensive power. Most power generators are weighed down by debt, forcing some of them to sell assets.NLC has already signed an agreement to acquire Damodar Valley Corp.’s (DVC) 1,200MW Raghunathpur project in West Bengal through a joint venture company (JVC) proposed to be formed with DVC, with an equity shareholding of 74:26 by NLC and DVC. However, the acquisition plans have been hanging fire due to opposition from the West Bengal government.While the Raghunathpur projects has got other clearances, we are still awaiting clearance from the West Bengal government, which has been stuck for six months, Acharya said.DVC, formed on the lines of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the US, is owned by the Union government and the state governments of West Bengal and Jharkhand. Experts believe consolidation is inevitable because power projects are stressed.“It is exciting to see power producers evaluating distressed assets and bringing forward their plans for capacity addition if the deal is priced right. It aligns to their competitive advantages like understanding of the region, availability of fuel source and capital, operational excellence and long-term sale of power. It also releases financial stress in the sector,” said Sambitosh Mohapatra, partner (energy) at PwC India.While a GMR spokesperson did not respond to queries emailed on Thursday evening, an Ind-Barath spokesperson confirmed the development and in a text message said, “Yes, NLC has shortlisted our Odisha plant and discussions are currently ongoing between the parties.”NLC India which has an installed power generation capacity of 4,301MW, also plans to set up 4,000MW of solar power projects and is in talks with states in order to draw up viable power purchase agreements for selling electricity to them.“We are developing a 630MW solar power plant in Tamil Nadu...We have a capital expenditure plan of Rs1,24,000 crore (Rs1.24 trillion) to meet our 2025 target. We are also looking at developing lithium ion batteries which is under consideration of our research wing,” Acharya said.A host of state-owned firms such as Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd, NTPC Ltd and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd are chalking out clean energy strategies, encouraged by the opportunities offered by India’s solar power ambitions. India plans to generate 175GW of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 100GW is to come from solar power projects with storage being seen as the next frontier in India’s clean energy push.","The shortlisted projects are GMR Group’s 1,370MW coal power project in Chhattisgarh and Hyderabad-based Ind-Barath Power’s 700MW plant in Odisha",04:34,"NLC shortlists GMR, Ind-Barath power projects for acquisition" +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: Private sector lenders Yes Bank Ltd and IndusInd Bank Ltd on Wednesday reported a sharp rise in their quarterly bad loan provisioning, eroding profits, after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) advised lenders to follow stricter standard asset provisioning and disclosure rules.The additional provisioning pertains to their exposure to the Jaiprakash Associates Ltd cement assets that are being purchased by UltraTech Cement Ltd, said three people aware of the matter. Other banks which have the same exposure are also likely to report a jump in their provisions in the March quarter. However, these provisions are likely to be written back as the UltraTech-Jaiprakash deal will be completed by the end of this quarter, they said. UltraTech has agreed to buy Jaiprakash Associates’ cement assets for Rs16,189 crore.ALSO READ: Yes Bank first casualty in RBI’s rule to pull out bad loan skeletonsYes Bank reported a doubling of gross non-performing assets (NPAs) to Rs2,018 crore in the March quarter, as it had to set aside an additional Rs228 crore to cover potential loan losses. Yes Bank’s gross NPAs were at 1.52% at the end of the March quarter and net NPAs were at 0.81%.“The increase in NPA and consequent provision is in conformity with the divergences observed by the RBI as per its compliance process” mentioned in the RBI circular on Tuesday, a Yes Bank statement said. According to the RBI circular, banks have to make disclosures if their asset classification and provisioning diverge from the central bank norms.“As of 31 March 2017, the impact of divergences overall is at Rs1,040 crore on which we have made 25% provisioning. This includes one borrower exposure of Rs911 crore towards a Delhi-based cement company. However, this is a performing asset which has been servicing interest regularly. We expect to recover the amount in the near term,” said Rana Kapoor, managing director and chief executive officer, Yes Bank.Despite the higher provisions, Yes Bank’s net profit for the quarter ended 31 March rose 30% to Rs914 crore from a year ago. Net interest income, or the income that a bank earns by giving loans, increased 32% to Rs1,639.70 crore. This comes on the heels of a strong loan book growth of 34.7% and deposit growth of 28% during the quarter.
“Yes Bank has negatively surprised by almost doubling on gross non-performing assets during Q4, which is likely to overshadow its strong operational performance and strong capital position. Thus, the sentiments are likely to turn weak in short term,” said Lalitabh Shrivastawa, associate vice-president, research, for banking, financial services and insurance, at Sharekhan.IndusInd Bank reported a 21% rise in net profit to Rs751 crore during the quarter, even as it saw its provisions double to Rs430 crore on account of RBI’s latest disclosure and provisioning norms. Gross NPAs rose 8.57% to Rs1,054.87 crore at the end of the March quarter from Rs971.62 crore in the preceding quarter. “We have provided Rs122 crore against a M&A (mergers and acquisitions) case in the cement sector on advice from the RBI. The repayment is due in June 2017, which we are sure is going to happen,” said Romesh Sobti, managing director and CEO, IndusInd Bank.Yes Bank shares edged down 0.03% and IndusInd Bank shares fell 0.63% on a day the BSE’s benchmark Sensex inched up 0.06% to 29,336.57 points.According to Sobti, the bank has closed its third three-year plan and is going to start on its fourth such plan, where it plans to double its presence as well as its profits by March 2020. The bank aims to have a microfinance portfolio of Rs10,000 crore and its rural finance business will contribute 10% of the overall earnings in this period.“Our plan has not taken into account any inorganic play during this period. We are, however, open to inorganic growth as well. We are looking at various opportunities including microfinance,” Sobti said.“IndusInd Bank results were largely in line, and would have been termed strong if not for the one-off provision impact of Rs122 crore on a standard asset exposure. The ability to outperform industry growth as well as maintain less than 1% gross NPA is commendable, and with its strong management and performance delivery, the bank should be attractive for long-term investors,” said Shrivastawa.",Yes Bank and IndusInd Bank’s Q4 results showed surge in bad loans and provisions following RBI’s new asset quality rules and exposure to Jaiprakash Associates,04:40,"Yes Bank, IndusInd bad loan provisions rise on exposure to Jaiprakash Associates"
+2017-04-20,"Apple Inc. is responsible for the health or mortal sickness of the cottage industry of companies that make parts for iPhones or assemble them. It turns out Apple can also be hurt by the interconnected supply chain. On tap starting this fall will be a shift from two new versions of the iPhone to three. The two expected in Apple’s typical September launch window will be updated versions of the iPhone 7 and its larger-screen sibling, the iPhone 7 Plus.The big deal for this year—the 10th anniversary of the iPhone—is a drastically different new phone with a more vibrant type of screen and extra real estate, thanks to slimmer frames around the edges. Wall Street has already grown excited that this reimagined iPhone will set off a rush of people splurging for a cool new iPhone with a big ticket price.Oh, but wait. Literally.The cool new iPhone may not be on sale in September because of hiccups in obtaining enough key components, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday. The most visible is a different type of screen—known as organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display—which allows for a thinner, sharper-looking screens without hogging too much battery life. It gives Apple the technology it needs to make a phone that is essentially all screen.Apple, at least initially, will be depending solely on the leading maker of OLED displays, Samsung Display Co. You know who already has a new smartphone with the same type of screen? That would be Samsung Electronics Ltd.Yes. Samsung is one of Apple’s most important suppliers and one of its most bitter rivals. Much has been written about the peril of suppliers relying on Apple for their livelihood. Well, there’s also a risk to Apple from depending on its suppliers.Samsung may not be doing this deliberately, but the smartphone-making part of Samsung apparently has a sufficient supply of OLED screens. Those parts are already rolling off factory assembly lines as the screens for Samsung’s new S8 line of smartphones which compete with the iPhone. The enemy-and-friend relationship between Apple and Samsung has been evident for years. Apple worked hard to wean itself off Samsung computer chips for its iPhones and iPads. Apple sued Samsung for copying key elements of the iPhone even as Apple continued to buy parts from Samsung.If the OLED iPhone model goes on sale in October or November, it won’t be a disaster for Apple. The company is no stranger to muddling through shortages of important iPhone components, and Apple CEO Tim Cook is a wizard of supply-chain management.But the experience is a salient reminder that in the smartphone industry, no company is an island. Not even Apple.",It turns out Apple can also be hurt by the interconnected supply chain,01:56,iPhone supply chain bites back at Apple
+2017-04-07,"Singapore: While Syria makes only 0.04% of global petroleum supplies—less than Cuba, New Zealand or Pakistan—it calls one of the world’s biggest producing regions its neighbourhood.The nation borders Iraq, the second-biggest member in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, while other producing giants such as Saudi Arabia and Iran lie just beyond. The Turkish port of Ceyhan, from where shipments including those from Kurdistan are exported, is also close. Apart from its proximity to the Middle East nations, the ongoing conflict in Syria involves Russia and the US, two other major crude producers.Global oil prices jumped more than 2% on Friday on news the US launched a cruise missile attack against the nation, two days after Bashar al-Assad’s regime used poison gas to kill scores of civilians. The task of military planners was made riskier by the presence of Russian forces in Syria who support Assad’s regime in its battle against rebel groups, which include Islamic State and al-Qaeda fighters but also some backed by the US.“Given that two big producers—the US and Russia—are involved, potentially on opposite sides, geopolitical risk has certainly increased and this is getting reflected in prices,” said Tushar Tarun Bansal, director at industry consultant Ivy Global Energy. “If, after the initial strikes, there is no further action by the US, prices will slip back to where they were prior to the strike.”Syria produced about 35,000 barrels a day of oil and some other petroleum liquids in 2016, making it the 66th biggest producer, according to the US Energy Information Administration. While output averaged 400,000 barrels a day between 2008 and 2010, the combined disruptions from military conflict and economic sanctions on the nation have led to declines, the Energy Department’s statistical arm said on its website.Brent, the benchmark grade for more than half the world’s crude, gained as much as 2.2% to $56.08 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange on Friday. West Texas Intermediate futures, the US marker, advanced as much as 2.4% to $52.94 on the New York Mercantile Exchange and were at $52.30 at 2:32pm Singapore time.The gains may be short-lived, with factors such as US inventory and production levels as well as whether Opec’s production cuts with its partners will be extended influencing prices more in coming days, according to Ivy Global’s Bansal.“As long as the military action in Syria is well-contained (not spreading into Iraq), and Syria is no longer a significant oil producer, any big spikes in oil prices could prove temporary,” Gordon Kwan, a Hong-Kong based analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc., said in an emailed note Friday.Oil has struggled to extend a rally beyond $51 a barrel in the past week as concerns over record US inventories and rising American production countered optimism Opec’s production cuts will ease a global glut.“Opec is the wildcard, and the market is currently pricing an extension of the cuts,” said Ivy Global’s Bansal. “So, although it looks unlikely at this stage, in case Opec decides to not extend the cuts, we could see some severe price response.” Bloomberg","Apart from its proximity to the Middle East nations, the ongoing conflict in Syria involves Russia and the US, two other major crude producers",14:15,Missiles hitting producer of 0.04% of global oil rocks crude
+2017-04-20,"Mumbai: Airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru which are operating near full capacity and catering to nearly 55% of India’s air traffic will need to spend heavily on expansion through 2021, Crisil Ratings said. However, despite the expansion, their credit quality will remain healthy because of the strength of their business model backed by robust traffic growth and predictable cash flows under a regulated tariff framework, it said in a report. The agency estimates the four airports to invest a cumulative Rs27,000 crore over the next four years till 2021.Air passenger traffic in India grew 20% in fiscal 2017, sharply higher than the 9% average seen since 2011. Bengaluru and Hyderabad airports have clocked even faster growth rates of over 24%. Rising private consumption and healthy economic growth would continue to provide tailwind to traffic growth at airports, the rating agency said.Owing to surging footfalls and high capacity utilization of over 90%, the four airports would need to invest Rs27,000 crore for expansion, said Gurpreet Chhatwal, president, Crisil Ratings. “Yet, their credit quality will not suffer because of low implementation risk – such expansions are brownfield and modular in nature – and conducive tariff regulation,” he said.Tariffs such as passenger user fee levied by airports is calculated in blocks of five years (called ‘control periods’) based on a fixed return on capex and base traffic growth assumption. This not only compensates for the risks taken, but also provides for adjustment in user fee on account of any large variation in traffic, and/or capex plan in a control period. Regulations also have had a balanced approach. For instance, a ‘hybrid-till’ mechanism encourages airport developers to increase their non-aeronautical revenues through retail, advertising, and parking. At the same time, it also benefits passengers because the passenger user fee is subsidized by a portion of non-aeronautical revenue.As traffic increases rapidly, aeronautical revenue streams from passenger user fees and landing and parking charges would also increase in the ongoing control period. “While aeronautical revenues may moderate in the next control period due to adjustment in passenger user fee, increasing footfalls can offset this through higher non-aeronautical revenue; so it’s unlikely to curb the earnings’ momentum of these airports. The contribution from non-aeronautical revenue is expected to increase to 50% over the next four years from 35% now,” said Manish Gupta, director, Crisil Ratings.","Crisil Ratings estimates the four major airports to invest a cumulative Rs27,000 crore over the next four years till 2021",00:47,Heavy capital expenditure by major airports unlikely to impact credit quality: Crisil
+2017-04-07,"Mumbai: India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp. expects its natural gas production to reach a 5-year high in the current fiscal year following the start in coming weeks of a long-delayed project in the Arabian Sea, two senior company executives said.State-owned ONGC, which accounts for about two-thirds of India’s total natural gas production, is likely to produce close to 25 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas in fiscal 2018, the executives told Reuters.The forecast compares with 23.5 bcm in the fiscal year to end March 2017, one of the executives said, representing expected growth of about 6%. The two asked not to be named as the figures have not been released by the company.Higher output from India’s top producer would help the country meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s target of reducing hydrocarbon imports by 10% by 2022. India currently imports 70-75% of its energy needs. While gas makes up only 8% of the total energy consumed, almost 40% of it is imported.India prices its gas almost 60% below imported natural gas, so more cheap domestic gas could also bring down the cost of running stranded power plants and ailing steel mills that account for the biggest chunk of India’s soured loans.“The Daman project is back on track ... The gas from the phase I of Daman will be out by April end or first week of May,” ONGC’s director - offshore, T.K. Sengupta, told media on Tuesday.The project should contribute almost 2 to 3 million metric standard cubic metres per day (mmscmd) of gas from May onward, he said.“ONGC is facing a natural decline of output from its fields so the net impact of additional production is not very high. Having said that, I think ONGC is on track to consistently report increases in production in the coming years,” said Dhaval Joshi, analyst with brokerage Emkay Global Financial Services.ONGC is banking on the Daman offshore project to increase its natural gas output, which has been largely stagnant over the past decade. The project hit delays last year after its contractor, Singapore-based Swiber Holdings, ran into financial difficulties.“We had handed over the Phase 1 work for the project to the sub-contractors who are now completing it for us. The project is eight months delayed,” Sengupta said earlier this week.Phase 2 will be completed by May 2018 when it will add another 3 mmscmd to the company’s production. It will eventually be ramped up to 8 mmscmd by 2020, he said. Reuters","ONGC, which accounts for about two-thirds of India’s total natural gas production, is likely to produce close to 25 billion cubic metres of gas in 2017-18",12:47,ONGC sees its gas output hitting 5-year high in 2017-18
+2017-04-07,"
New Delhi: India will build a new 9 million tonne refinery in Rajasthan, auction more fields with oil and gas discoveries and has started talks with Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Saudi Aramco) for investments in India as part of efforts to improve energy security, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said.Addressing the global natural resources conclave organised by Network18 and industry chamber Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Pradhan assured industry executives that the government will not interfere in the marketing and pricing freedom of companies under the new licensing regime as the priority is to cut down import dependence in hydrocarbons by 10 percentage points by 2022. At present, 70-75% of the oil requirement is met through imports. The idea is to enhance the area under exploration as well as the capacity for refining crude, both domestic and imported.Saudi Aramco is being consulted for participation in a 60 million tonne mega refinery planned in Maharashtra. The proposed $30 billion project is being executed as a joint venture by India’s largest refiner Indian Oil Corp., Bharat Petroleum Corp. and Hindustan Petroleum Corp.For the new 9 million tonne refinery in Rajasthan, Hindustan Petroleum Corp. will partner with the state government under terms which are beneficial for both. Financial assessment of the project is over, explained Pradhan. India, which currently consumes 185 million tonnes of petroleum products on an annual basis, wants to augment supply of auto fuel, liquified petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking and petrochemicals for various downstream industries. State-owned fuel retailers increased the number of LPG connections in the coutnry from 140 million in 2014 to 200 million now. Vedanta Resources chairman Anil Agarwal, who was present on the occasion, said group company Cairn India Ltd, which is producing oil from Rajasthan, was working towards doubling its output. “We are working on augmenting output to 50% of the country’s total production,” Agarwal said, adding the group will bid for oil and gas fields with discoveries when auction is held.Pradhan said that simultaneously, the country’s fuel mix is being expanded with an emphasis on gas. The oil, power and railway ministries are working on importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) for long haul rail transportation, he said.India wants to add more sources of fuel supply as demand is projected to jump significantly. According to the International Energy Agency’s India Energy Outlook 2015, the country is set to contribute more than any other country to the rise in global energy demand over the next 25 years.The report said that India needs more than Rs9 trillion ($140 billion) in energy investment per year to 2040.","India will build a new 9 million tonne refinery in Rajasthan, auction more fields with oil and gas discoveries, says Dharmendra Pradhan",02:08,"Govt planning more refineries, higher LNG use: Dharmendra Pradhan" +2017-04-07,"New Delhi: Capacity addition from renewable energy sources surpassed conventional sources for the first time in financial year 2017 as India added 12.5 gigawatt (GW) of renewable energy capacity compared to 10.2GW from conventional sources of fuel.“India added 12.5GW of renewable energy capacity during financial year 2017, surpassing capacity addition from conventional sources of fuel estimated at 10.2GW, in sync with global trends,” said a report by Elara Capital, which was released on Wednesday. Of the 10.2GW of capacity addition from conventional energy, 74% came from thermal, while the rest came from hydro and nuclear power projects. In financial year 2016, capacity addition from renewable energy was about 6.9GW, and from conventional sources about 23.3GW. ALSO READ : Railways could draw 25% of electric power through renewables: studyThe report is based on data from the Union power ministry and the ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE).The analysis said it signals a clear shift to renewable energy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious renewable energy target for India.Under the Paris Climate Agreement, the Central government has committed to install 175GW of renewable power by 2022 of which 100GW will be from solar power and 60GW from wind power. India had also promised to have about 40% of its power from renewable sources by 2030. India’s total installed capacity of power stations is about 315.4GW, according to government data. Of that, about 50GW is from renewable energy.The analysis highlighted that within renewable energy sources, solar exceeded wind for the first time.“During financial year 2017, solar capacity addition stood at 6.8GW... This is 26% higher than wind addition of 5.4GW,” it said. ALSO READ : Power Grid eyes electric vehicle playHowever, the analysis clarified that “in terms of targets, wind shines” and “solar disappoints”.“Wind addition of 5.4GW is well above industry estimates, 35% above MNRE target (of 4GW). But, solar addition was 43% below target of 12GW (7GW utility, 5GW rooftop). A significant part of the under-achievement was in solar rooftop additions,” the report added. India added a record 5,400 megawatts (MW) of wind power in 2016-17, exceeding its 4,000MW target.The report also stressed that the month of March signalled a clear shift to renewable energy. India added 7GW of renewable capacity in March compared to 4GW from conventional sources.",India added 12.5 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity compared to 10.2 gigawatt from conventional sources of fuel in financial year 2017 ,02:09,Renewables surpass other energy sources in capacity addition in FY17 +2017-04-06,"The ministry of power last week claimed that India had become an electricity exporter for the first time.“As per Central Electricity Authority (CEA), the designated authority of government of India for cross border trade of electricity, first time India has turned around from a net importer of electricity to net exporter of electricity,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that upcoming cross-border transmission lines with Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar will continue to increase sales.India exported around 5798 million units of electricity to Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar, which is 213 million units more than the import of 5,585 million units from Bhutan during the April-February period in fiscal year 2016-17. Exports to Nepal and Bangladesh increased 2.5 and 2.8 times, respectively, in the last three years.Also Read: India becomes net exporter of power for the first timeDoes India’s status as an electricity exporter mean that it has started producing surplus electricity? The reality is a large number of India’s households are still living without electricity. Available government data shows there is a discrepancy in the percentage of villages electrified as against the share of rural households electrified. The former set of figures is often cited to portray India’s electrification challenge as an already accomplished one.What explains the wide gap between the share of electrified households and villages? According to the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana website, a village is deemed electrified if basic infrastructure such as distribution transformer and distribution lines are provided in the inhabited locality as well as the Dalit Basti hamlet (where it exists), and electricity is provided in public places like schools, panchayat office and health centres. Here’s another interesting thing. For a village to be considered electrified, at least 10% of total households have to be electrified. But the actual supply of electricity is not mentioned in the definition of electrification.Such a definition means that village electrification numbers have little bearing on the supply of electricity in reality. Data from 2011 census shows that almost one-third of the households in the country were dependent on kerosene as a source of lighting, with the situation being worse for rural households. This is even as over 84% of villages had been electrified in 2011-12, as per data with the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).International comparison also underlines the fact that Indians consume much less electricity in comparison to their peers. The ratio of domestic and world electricity consumption (per capita) was broadly similar in India and China in 1990. Latest data shows that China has surpassed the global average in terms of power consumption, whereas India is still stuck at its pre-reform relative electricity consumption levels. In 1990, India reported 273 kilowatt hour (kWh) of electric power consumption, as against 511 kWh in China and 2,120 kWh in the world. In 2013, these figures were 765 kWh, 3762 kWh and 3104 kWh, respectively, as per World Bank data.India’s efforts to sell electricity to its eastern neighbours might bring strategic and diplomatic benefits and also open new frontiers for exploring electricity generation opportunities in the region. Such developments, however, should not make us oblivious to the fact that a large majority of Indians are still living in darkness in villages which have been declared electrified on paper.",India’s per capita electricity consumption is one-fifth of the global average,17:55,The truth behind India’s electricity exporter status +2017-04-07,"
Vedanta Resources Plc is firming up its clean energy plans for India, encouraged by the opportunities offered by the country’s growing green economy. As part of the strategy, the firm is looking at developing battery storage solutions, Ajay Kumar Dixit, chief executive officer, alumina and power business, Vedanta Ltd said on the sidelines of a conference on natural resources organised by Network 18 and the Confederation of Indian Industry. Vedanta Ltd, formerly known as Sesa Goa Ltd, is an Indian mining unit of London-based Vedanta Resources. Such storage solutions would help with grid balancing, besides complementing the government’s push for solar power, which is generated during the day and can be stored in batteries to be made available at night. India plans to generate 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 100GW is to come from solar projects. Dixit said the approach is to look at products from its mining operations to develop effective battery solutions.“Our innovation group is looking at it,” he said.Vedanta Resources’ business interests in India include oil and gas, power, iron ore, zinc, copper and aluminium production.Also, Vedanta Resources, which owns Cairn India Ltd, plans to set up solar power parks at its mining sites given the large tracts of land available for the purpose. Experts say India is not doing enough on developing storage solutions in the country.“China is spurring a huge domestic supply ecosystem for lithium-ion based batteries through demand creation and incentives,” consulting firm Bridge to India wrote in a 14 March note.“Unless India moves quickly and decisively, it runs a very real risk of missing the bus on domestic manufacturing for a very vital technology of future,” the note added.Other firms looking at developing battery storage solutions include Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd.In an 5 March interview, Vedanta Resources chairman Anil Agarwal said the firm will consider a “strategic investment” in the solar sector.“There has been a shift in the solar business. It used to be Rs6 per unit and now it has come down to below Rs2 per unit. That is definitely an advantage. So, we are studying it very seriously and will take the clean energy plans forward,” Agarwal said.India’s solar power sector in February witnessed a record low-winning bid of Rs2.97 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to build a 750 megawatt (MW) plant at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh. The Rewa bid translates to 5 cents per kWh and ranks India at the sixth position globally in terms of the lowest tariff bid awarded. This was due to payment guarantee, availability and price of land, and transmission modalities. With effective levelized tariff—the value financially equivalent to different annual tariffs over the 25 year period of the power purchase agreement—of around Rs3.30 per unit at Rewa, the solar power has become a competitive energy source vis-à-vis coal-fuelled conventional source of electricity due to the lower cost of raising finances, and solar module prices plunging. This assumes importance given that India receives solar radiation of 5 to 7 kWh per sq. m for 300-330 days in a year.Vedanta Resources also plans to spend $10 billion over the next three years across its businesses, of which $8 billion is earmarked for Indian operations.","As part of its renewable energy strategy, Vedanta Resources is looking at developing battery storage solutions in India",02:07,Vedanta firms up clean energy plans for India +2017-03-31,"
Growing up in a coastal village in Goa can indelibly imprint the choices one makes. This is evident immediately; Kshama Fernandes, managing director and chief executive officer of non-banking financial company IFMR Capital, picks the Varqui Crab—layers of crab meat and tandoori shrimp in filo pastry—as an hors d’oeuvre for our lunch. We are at Varq, the Indian restaurant with its eclectic and often surprising preparations of familiar food, at the Taj Mahal Hotel on Delhi’s Mansingh Road. The seafood, she declares, is a “much fancier version” of the fare that was dished out to her during a childhood spent in Cansaulim in South Goa. “I would wake up in the morning, go for a run on the beach, and sometimes chat with the fisherfolk as they pulled in their morning catch—it seemed like a very beautiful world to me back then,” says Fernandes, 48. Her life is now far removed from the pastoral setting of a Goan village. But her work, which involves connecting non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and microfinance institutions (MFIs), also known as originators, to last-mile borrowers, who are excluded from the purview of mainstream finance, takes her back to the realm of those who live on the fringes of formal systems—the disenfranchised. “I’m familiar with the trenches,” she admits, “and the last 10 years or so of my journey at IFMR Capital have been about building a financial institution that is a bridge between mainstream capital markets and the excluded sectors.” IFMR Capital, which works in sectors like micro-finance, housing finance, small business loan finance and commercial vehicle finance, is an articulation of the idealism and business acumen of people like Bindu Ananth and Nachiket Mor, who left ICICI Bank to set up the IFMR Trust in 2007 in Chennai. In 2008, when IFMR Capital was set up as an institution that would link small financial companies that lent to the underserved, to mainstream markets, Fernandes, who was professor and head of finance at the Goa Institute of Management, joined it as the chief risk officer. “Those were the early days. IFMR Capital was built on the belief that at the grass roots there are many borrowers and enterprises worthy of credit. I often say that poor borrowers do not necessarily mean poor credit, but are classified as that, because we don’t know how to evaluate them. And in some sense I feel that if there isn’t much happening in the financial inclusion space, it’s because we haven’t found the ways to do it,” she says. Soup arrives at the table; Fernandes, predictably, has opted for the Lobster Rassa, a hearty shellfish broth. She speaks of Goa yet again, as her fount of perennial optimism in a life of constant movement and flux: “My transition from academia to risk officer and then from risk officer to CEO has been fascinating. Working as an academic and then translating that knowledge into a lot of what we do today came very naturally to me,” she says, adding, “What Goa gave me was the positivity, the innocence and the ability to have a wide-eyed look at life. Cynicism would not have helped.” It is that “wide-eyed” approach to capital markets that Fernandes also brought to her 2016 TEDxLeiden address in the Netherlands, interspersing it with stories of grit and resilience. There is, for instance, Anandi, who lives in a village in Odisha, and was denied a loan by a bank in the city—she had no bank account, no income statement and no credit record because nobody had ever lent to her. She was finally given a loan of Rs50,000 in 2012. She used the money to lease a pond outside her hut and breed fish. She sold the fish and repaid the loan six months later. She availed a second loan, leased two ponds, and transformed from a helpless housewife to an organic aquaculturalist.
Fernandes’ talk also mentioned other borrowers like Paramesan Gowda, a 48-year-old who runs a sandwich stall outside the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). Gowda too had no means to prove his creditworthiness, so before Essel Finance Business Loans, an NBFC, offered him a loan, the credit officer stood next to him for two days in a row and counted the number of sandwiches he delivered each day to all 24 floors of the BSE building. Based on this calculation, a balance sheet and profit and loss statement were created, and a two-year loan worth Rs30 lakh was sanctioned. He repaid the loan in 13 months. “Anandi and Paramesan are examples of what timely finance can do—it can give a person control over his or her life,” says Fernandes, as the main course arrives. We are having the pan-seared sea bass in a mango and coconut curry, with hints of basil and pine nuts. Her conversation veers to the past again. “Back then, there were no tarred roads in Cansaulim. Village roads led to the beach. The big trucks that would arrive to collect the fish and take it to the market couldn’t drive up to the beach. So the fisherfolk would carry baskets of fish to the trucks. As children, we would stand on the path from the beach to the trucks, and the fisherfolk would throw some fish in our direction,” she recalls. The memory makes her smile, but she is quick to swerve to the here and now, to IFMR Capital: “We’ve done Rs40,000 crore of financing since inception. That’s not a small number for the sectors we work with.” The selection of originators, or high-quality local institutions that empathize with the financial needs of people like Anandi and Gowda who find it hard to access traditional capital markets, is key to building a sustainable ecosystem of inclusion. Fernandes elaborates upon the guidelines that IFMR Capital adheres to when picking an originator. “If I were a capital market investor and wanted to invest in these originators, what are the things I would look at,” she asks rhetorically. She explains that good governance, transparency and robust management information systems (MIS) are key to forging an alliance with an originator. “Having high-quality auditors is also important, so one can make sure that the company is following best practices as far as reporting is concerned. A strong second line of command—ensuring that the company has more than one visionary to execute strategies—is also vital. Maintaining very good operating standards and risk management are crucial as well.” She says the financial feasibility of the company isn’t the only evidence of its worthiness. “If the guidelines I have discussed are met, eventually the financials add up,” she says, adding, “When one builds a financial institution, then one is building a lot of credibility—that is if one wants to be a financial institution that’s going to be around for a very long time.”
IFMR Capital’s efforts have enabled it to lend to around 110 originators and serve around 24 million end borrowers, in a market worth Rs14 trillion. It has also invented new structures such as multi-originator securitization (Mosec)—a pioneering product, not just in India but also in international markets, which brings together small originators to form a critical mass to draw an investor. Says Fernandes: “When we launched the multi-originator securitization in around 2009-10, we were dealing with a class of very small to mid-sized originators. But we knew that we could never take them to the capital markets because they were too small. A mutual fund may not be interested in a Rs1 crore deal, and won’t understand what a microfinance originator is, what a small business originator is, what an affordable housing finance originator is. So we did a few things. We put many small originators together to form a large portfolio, say Rs100 crore—something we could take to a capital markets investor.” It comes as no surprise that Fernandes won Accion’s Edward W Claugus Award in October, for her exceptional work in creating a financial ecosystem for the underserved. Accion is a global non-profit that has pioneered financial inclusion.
As the restaurant’s signature dessert—apple kheer—is placed before us (with additional helpings of jalebis wedged in a blob of rabri, and malpua stuffed with shredded carrot), Fernandes remarks that indulging in the sweets will mean “an extra hour at the gym”. She is as committed to fitness as she is to financial inclusion. And she constantly seeks the electrifying adventures of the grand outdoors. Last year, despite a tail-bone fracture that made it impossible for her to sit down, she embarked upon an almost 10-hour jeep ride in the mountains, from Shimla to the base camp at a small village called Janglik, for the trek across Buran Pass. She undertook a vertical descent from an altitude of 15,000ft across an ice wall and rock face, using rope, axe and microspikes. “If I didn’t climb mountains and cross oceans, I wouldn’t be as enthusiastic about my work as I am now,” she says, spooning up her dessert. She proves that prudent risk-taking can spur one towards the unexplored, both indoors as well as outdoors.","The MD and CEO of IFMR Capital on the challenges of financial inclusion, her childhood memories of a Goan village, and her love for adventure",16:31,Kshama Fernandes: Finding credit for the worthy +2017-03-31,"London: British consumer goods maker Reckitt Benckiser Group cut chief executive Rakesh Kapoor’s 2016 pay by 39%, as it seeks to shore up investor confidence following a safety scandal in South Korea that hurt its performance.The maker of Durex condoms and Scholl footcare products said Kapoor, Britain’s third highest-paid CEO in 2015, would not receive an annual bonus for 2016, and that the share awards for his long-term incentive plan would be reduced by half.As a result, Kapoor will be paid £14 million ($17 million) for 2016, down from £23 million in 2015.The company also said it would strip out the impact of earnings growth from the impending takeover of Mead Johnson from calculations for Kapoor’s incentive plan for 2017.Reckitt Benckiser has been grappling with the fallout from a scandal related to a product safety issue that caused dozens of deadly lung injuries in South Korea. The South Korean government said in 2015 that 92 people were believed to have died from causes related to humidifier sterilizer products sold by several companies including Reckitt.In January, the former head of Reckitt’s business there was sentenced to seven years in prison. Reuters",Reckitt Benckiser cuts CEO Rakesh Kapoor’s 2016 pay as it seeks to shore up investor confidence following a safety scandal in South Korea that hurt its performance,15:05,Reckitt cuts CEO Rakesh Kapoor’s pay by 39% after safety scandal +2017-03-30,"Mumbai: Despite government attempts to increase gender diversity in companies, number of women representation in boards is not very encouraging. According to a KPMG survey, proportion of women directors in NSE listed companies jumped 180% between 2013-2016 after the Companies Act, 2013. But there is very little to cheer about this hike, as the jump only translates to a 13.7% representation of women in 2016 from a meagre 4.9% in 2013.The Companies Act, 2013 and guidelines issued by Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) made it mandatory for all listed companies to have at least one woman on their boards—either as an executive or a non-executive director—before April 1, 2015.However, findings of the KPMG survey are not very reassuring. KPMG in India’s Board Leadership Centre and Women Corporate Directors India (WCD) conducted a survey in 2016 to assess the progress and challenges. The survey results showed that many companies are still lacking in gender diversity and there needs to be a change of mindset for it. “In order to achieve greater diversity there needs to be a change of mind sets, voluntary diversity targets, alignment between board composition and strategy, and looking beyond personal networks for director appointments,” it said.Also Read| Half of women on boards like quotas but male colleagues say no: reportThe worrisome factor is that the survey respondents feel the need to comply with the regulation has become a primary driver of gender diversity and it is stronger than the belief that it adds value or creates the brand image of a progressive organisation.Over 50% of the respondents indicate that companies are hiring women directors primarily to comply with the regulatory mandate. As much as 70% of the survey respondents indicate that the mandate has opened up board-level opportunities for women that were previously not considered for this role. On the flip side, 25% of the respondents indicate that it has only opened up opportunities for candidates in the promoter’s network.“Respondents largely agree that women improve board dynamics by creating a positive environment (68%) and are better at providing inputs and feedback in a constructive manner (51%)—traits that help in decision making at the board level. However, men and women respondents differ in their opinions on the other traits/advantages that women bring to the table,” KPMG survey said.As of 31 March 2016, 1,375 BSE-listed companies (of the total of 5,541 companies) and 191 NSE-listed companies (of the total 1,759 companies) were non-compliant with the regulations and fined by the respective stock exchanges.According to the survey, few factors preventing companies from appointing more women are listed as inadequate statutory quotas for fostering gender diversity, lack of adequate number of qualifies women to hold board positions, traditional stereotypes and lack of women friendly policies.However, there are few strong reasons for companies to have higher female representation. Research indicates that companies with gender balanced boards outperform companies with male dominated boards on various financial parameters.Also read| Women directors support quotas for board diversityA significant majority (68 %) of the respondents agree that women create a positive environment within the boardroom improving its culture and dynamics. While nearly half of the male respondents agree that women bring in a comparatively balanced view of risks as there is little agreement between them on other traits that women bring to the table.When it comes to parity in remuneration, the survey said compensation of board members are gender neutral, and both men and women receive the same package. However, a recent study reveals that the average compensation of women executive directors at 163 NSE listed companies is 20% less than their male counterparts. According to the study, this could be because more male executive directors are in revenue-generating roles while female directors are usually in support roles such as communication, corporate social responsibility, etc.“Male directors could also be more tenured than their female counterparts. Gender diversity was not as important for companies, as it is now, a decade ago. When women from this pool become executive directors, there might be some disparities in compensation,” it said.Recently, 65 public sector undertakings (PSUs) were found to be still lagging behind in appointing at least one woman director and it has come to that government has asked Registrars of Companies (RoC) to take up the matter with the ministries concerned and initiate penal action against the private listed firms in default.",KPMG survey results showed that many companies are still lacking in gender diversity and there needs to be a change of mindset for it,16:27,"Proportion of women directors up 180%, but gender diversity lags in India: Survey" +2017-03-30,"
New Delhi: Companies can derive value from big data by effectively managing customer relationships and safeguarding their trust, said John Rose, senior partner and managing director, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), New York, at EmTech India 2017, a conference on emerging technologies organized by Mint and MIT Technology Review in New Delhi on 9-10 March.
Addressing the event, Rose said, “Half or more customers do not trust the companies or entities they bank or shop with, in the context of their personal data.”
Rose, who is the former global leader of technology, media and telecommunications practice at BCG and became a BCG Fellow in 2014, has been working on helping companies foster trust among their consumers in order to gain access to—and unlock value from—the ever-widening stream of complex, fast-moving Big Data that is generated online.
His presentation at EmTech focused on how customer trust matters in Big Data and how the misuse or perceived misuse of customer data can lead to financial and reputational damage for brands.
“Trust is not a generational issue; it is important for consumers of all ages,” said Rose.
According to a study he cited, the lack of alignment between companies and consumers about data privacy has real consequences. When consumers perceive data misuse—when they are unpleasantly surprised by the collection or new use of personal data—they either reduce their spending drastically or boycott a company’s products and services altogether, the study noted.
“There is around 33% drop in spending during the first year when US consumers perceive a data misuse. Out of the 33% customers, 18% totally stop spending whereas the remaining 15% reduce spending,” he cited from his findings.
Explaining the consumers’ perspective on privacy and data usage, Rose said, “Consumers take a wider and much less legalistic approach to these issues.”
“They want to be informed about how companies gather and safeguard data about them, and they want to understand the different ways in which companies use personal data. Additionally, they want that information delivered in clear language,” she added.","Companies can derive value from big data by effectively managing customer relationships and safeguarding their trust, says John Rose of the BCG",03:42,EmTech India: Unlocking value from Big Data +2017-03-30,"
New Delhi: For the Mahindra Group, the key to digital transformation lies in the use of technology in moving away from legacy models to create new ones.“We have come a long way from the traditional legacy model of Mahindra or that of any established firm... Our current focus is directed towards expanding businesses into rural areas,” said Jaspreet Bindra, senior vice-president, digital transformation, Mahindra Group. Speaking at EmTech India 2017, the Mint-MIT Technology Review Conference on technology innovations, Bindra said digital transformation is not just about creating an app or a website but about creating business models and customer experiences. He further stressed on effective use of technology wherever it is appropriate to foster innovation. “We have used blockchain— one of the newest technologies—in our financial services sector and it has impacted our businesses positively,” Bindra added.As a $17-billion conglomerate with businesses in various sectors and geographies, he said it is the group’s belief that as each sector evolves due to innovation, the impact is felt on all businesses associated with it.Citing an example, he said there is a lot of innovation happening in the agriculture sector and a lot of data about weather conditions and crop patterns gets generated and captured by technology systems. “Therefore, how we target farmers is also changing in tune with the shifts in technology,” he added.The Mahindra Group is incubating start-ups in areas such as financial technology to facilitate digital transformation.","Speaking at EmTech India 2017, Jaspreet Bindra of Mahindra Group says group’s current focus is directed towards expanding businesses into rural areas ",03:48,Digital transformation is about creating business models: Jaspreet Bindra +2017-03-30,"London: Jeff Bezos has leapt past Amancio Ortega and Warren Buffett to become the world’s second-richest person.Bezos, 53, added $1.5 billion to his fortune as Amazon.com Inc. rose $18.32 on Wednesday, the day after the e-commerce giant said it plans to buy Dubai-based online retailer Souq.com. Bezos has a net worth of $75.6 billion on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, $700 million more than Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s Buffett and $1.3 billion above Ortega, the founder of Inditex S.A. and Europe’s richest person.Amazon’s founder has added $10.2 billion this year to his wealth and $7 billion since the global equities rally began following the election of Donald Trump as US president on 8 Novemeber. The rise is the third biggest on the Bloomberg index in 2017, after Chinese parcel-delivery billionaire Wang Wei’s $18.4 billion gain and an $11.4 billion rise for Facebook Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg.Buffett, who’s added $1.7 billion in 2017, has shed $4.7 billion since his fortune peaked at $79.6 billion on 1 March. Ortega is up $2.1 billion year-to-date. Bezos remains $10.4 billion behind Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the world’s richest person with $86 billion. Bloomberg","Jeff Bezos has leapt past Amancio Ortega and Warren Buffett to become the world’s second-richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index",17:29,Jeff Bezos becomes world’s second richest person with Amazon share surge +2017-03-29,"Mumbai: Brothers Shivinder Singh and Malvinder Singh are serial entrepreneurs known for pulling off one of the best-timed exits in the annals of Indian business. In 2008, they agreed to sell their family firm and India’s largest drugmaker, Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd, to Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo Co. for $4.6 billion—just months before the US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) banned imports at two of its Indian plants. That same year the US Department of Justice launched a probe, eventually resulting in a guilty plea by Ranbaxy and a $500 million fine for selling adulterated drugs. The Singh brothers were not named in the Ranbaxy probe.Now, the timing for the two brothers seems far less opportune. Rising debt has them looking to sell assets, according to people familiar with the matter. But at the same time, the latest turn in a long running legal brawl with Daiichi Sankyo means they can’t change the status of their holdings without first getting permission from the Delhi high court. Any deal agreements could be complicated by the court case, which resumes in New Delhi this week, the people said.In 2012, Daiichi filed a case with an International Court of Arbitration in Singapore accusing the Singhs of concealing and misrepresenting critical information about the US probes into Ranbaxy. In 2015, after years of regulatory scrutiny, Daiichi Sankyo sold its controlling stake in Ranbaxy to Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd for $4.1 billion. Last year the Singapore tribunal awarded Daiichi about $500 million in damages and interest, Daiichi said in a statement at the time.For their part, the Singhs say they were transparent about Ranbaxy’s regulatory problems at the time of the sale and are appealing the Singapore tribunal’s ruling, according to a spokesman. At the same time, they are also opposing Daiichi’s plea for enforcement of the award in the Delhi High Court.Daiichi Sankyo would not comment on pending or ongoing litigation, William Henning, a spokesman for the firm, said in an email.Net worthGiven the size of the Singapore tribunal’s award, the Singh brothers could face significant financial impact if they lose the legal battle. Their main holding company RHC Holding Pvt. Ltd reported a net worth of about $1 billion in a 2015 audit available on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs website. The tribunal also named their other listed holding firm, Oscar Investments Ltd, which has a market value of $64 million and in which the Singhs had a 71% holding as of March 2016.RHC had a $1.6 billion debt load after short-term borrowing increased 61% in the fiscal year ended March 2016, according to consolidated financial results available on the same regulatory website. The holding company had a loss of about $79 million that year, the results show.India Ratings and Research, a credit ratings firm, assigns RHC its third highest rating, indicating it’s a borrower with a low degree of risk. But that assessment was predicated on management’s plan to “significantly reduce debt” through restructuring and divestments, after a rise in loans to its subsidiary companies lead to an increase in borrowing, according to a report from last September.Fortis lossesA spokesman for RHC said the company, through its subsidiaries, associates and other group companies has sufficient resources and assets to meet any of its obligations if need be.RHC has not had any losses or seen substantial increases in borrowing, the spokesman said. The consolidated balance sheet does not represent the results of all the firms in the Singhs’ group of companies, though it does include results of Fortis Healthcare Ltd, RHC’s largest holding, and so gives a skewed picture of the Singhs’ finances, the spokesman, said in an email. He noted there has been no change to the company’s credit rating, which remains high.The last two years of losses on RHC’s consolidated balance sheet and the increase in short-term borrowing coincides with two years of losses at Fortis Healthcare, India’s second largest private hospital chain. Standalone results—which leave out Fortis Healthcare and a number of other companies included in the consolidated financial statements—show RHC posted a $6.3 million profit in the 2016 fiscal year, and total debt increased 23% to about $649 million.Any restructuring that occurs at the level of the Singh’s two largest operating companies, Fortis Healthcare and Religare Enterprises Ltd, won’t be impacted by the ongoing proceedings in the Delhi High Court because the court order is only directed at the holding companies, the spokesman said.Private equityIn recent months, the Singhs have entered talks with private equity giants KKR & Co., TPG and Bain Capital, along with Kuala Lumpur-based hospital operator IHH Healthcare Bhd, to explore an investment in Fortis Healthcare, people with knowledge of the matter said.The Singh brothers have also been in discussions to sell a stake in pathology-lab chain SRL Ltd, which is being spun off as a separate listed company, the people said. They are seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore, one of the people said. The brothers’ financial services conglomerate, Religare Enterprises, is separately negotiating the sale of a stake in Religare Health Insurance Co., as well as a controlling interest in small-business lender Religare Finvest Ltd, according to the people.Representatives for Religare Enterprises, Bain, KKR and TPG declined to comment. IHH said it’s “always looking at various value accretive opportunities”, in an emailed statement, declining to comment on any specific transactions. The Singhs’ holding company, RHC, is evaluating various options to maximize value and Fortis Healthcare has recently received board approval to fund raise as much as Rs5,000 crore, the spokesman said.RHC is set up as a financial institution designed to lend money to its subsidiary companies. Its strong credit rating is due to controlling stakes in Fortis Healthcare and Religare Enterprises, but the performances and credit profiles of its dozens of other ventures, ranging from charter flights to information technology to biofuels, are weak, according to India Ratings’ September report.The possible losses RHC could face from debt it has taken on to make equity investments in its group companies has risen to 141% of its own equity in the last two financial years, according to the report.“Beyond a certain number it may become difficult for the group to service all this debt,” said Ananda Bhoumik, chief analytical officer at India Ratings and Research. “It’s imperative that they try to reduce their leverage.”Drug salesRHC’s debt means the Singhs don’t have much choice but to drum up cash by selling off pieces of their best firms, according to Sweta Karia, an analyst who covers Fortis Healthcare’s stock at Batlivala & Karani Securities Private Ltd.Last week, the court demanded the brothers turn over an audited account of their assets to satisfy Daiichi there would be enough to cover the arbitration award should they lose. That document was submitted, but was sealed.“There is no way out but for this deal to go through,” Karia said of potential asset sales by the Singhs. Bloomberg","The latest turn in the legal case involving Daiichi Sankyo’s Ranbaxy buy prevents asset sale by the Singh brothers, Shivinder and Malvinder, to cut mounting debt",13:13,"Shivinder, Malvinder Singh want to sell some assets, but the timing isn’t right" +2017-02-14,"London: Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc’s annual earnings fell less than expected as Europe’s biggest aircraft-engine maker deepened cost cuts and a late production surge at Airbus Group SE boosted revenue.Pretax profit fell 49% to £813 million ($1.02 billion) from £1.4 billion a year earlier, London-based Rolls-Royce said in a statement Tuesday. Analysts had forecast a figure of £685 million, the average of 11 estimates compiled by Bloomberg.Chief executive officer Warren East has eliminated hundreds of office jobs and shuffled senior management in a bid to make Rolls-Royce more responsive to changes such as the oil-price slump, which stifled demand for marine turbines. Earnings got a late boost as full-year deliveries of the Airbus A350, for which it is the sole engine supplier, surged to 49 from just 12 in the first half.“We have made operational progress and performed ahead of our expectations for the year as a whole,” East said in the statement. “While we have made good progress in our cost cutting and efficiency programs, more needs to be done to ensure we drive sustainable margin improvements.”Revenue increased 9% to £15 billion, Rolls said, while cash flow reached £100 million after the company had previously suggested that an outflow of minus £100 million to minus £300 million was likely.The CEO warned soon after taking charge at Rolls in 2015 that 2016 earnings would be hit by a 650 million-pound headwind stemming from the slump at its marine division, slowing regional- and corporate-jet demand, a drop in sales of the original Airbus A330 ahead of the introduction of a re-engined model, and reduced maintenance revenue from older wide-body jets.Rolls-Royce last month agreed to pay £671 million in fines to the US, UK and Brazilian fraud agencies to settle bribery charges. The company said at the time that early indications were that 2016 profit and cash had come in higher than forecast. Bloomberg","Pretax profit fell 49% to £813 million from £1.4 billion a year earlier, Rolls-Royce said in a statement ",13:45,"Rolls-Royce profit beats estimates on cost cuts, Airbus boost" +2017-03-29,"
US President Donald Trump poses the biggest risk to emerging market capital flows, said Barry Eichengreen, the George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. In town to deliver Exim Bank’s commencement day lecture, Eichengreen said the impact of the Fed raising rates on emerging markets such as India has reduced considerably. Edited excerpts from an interview:
In the past few months, we have seen global risk aversion coming down and a lot of money flowing to emerging markets. What is the big risk to these flows?There is the (US President Donald) Trump risk. Trump can do something that can be disruptive to global trade flows and financial flows. On the trade policy front, he has a lot of freedom to work unilaterally. He doesn’t have to get Congress’s assent to invoke the Terms of Trade Adjustment Act, which is what Nixon used in 1971 to slap a 15% import surcharge. The US has special forces on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. (There) he can invoke the Trading with the Enemy Act, 1917.
Does the Trump risk overshadow everything else? I think the Trump risk definitely overshadows everything else. There could be an electoral surprise in Europe. I would regard that as a low-probability event because of the two-round presidential election in France, because of the fact that there is considerable support for two centrist candidates in Germany. We have learnt from Brexit and from Trump that low-probability events sometimes do happen. I worry less than I did about the economic and financial problems in China.Then there are geopolitical shocks. China is a proud country and it will respond (if Trump imposes import taxes). Then what happens to cooperation between US and China on North Korea? If they are fighting a trade war, can they peacefully coordinate, work on the North Korea problem? If they can’t, what happens to North Korea? That is a frightening prospect. Those are things that keep me awake.
Do you think the global recovery people are talking about is really strong? Is this the right time for the US Fed and other central banks to raise rates?I think it is the right time for the Federal Reserve to raise rates with the US economy growing at potential, with full employment and inflation at target, there is no reason to maintain rates at zero. The argument is different in Japan and Europe where growth has picked up but inflation has not. Those central banks will be slower to taper their quantitative easing, they will be slower to raise interest rates than the Fed.
What risks do these pose to emerging markets?In terms of risks to emerging markets, it really depends what emerging markets you are talking about. I think the risks have been reduced by the fact that the Fed has really learnt from its mistakes in 2013. When Ben Bernanke announced (the taper), markets were surprised. They kind of reacted with shock and that made life in emerging markets very hard for three months. This time, Fed has been announcing in advance what the path is. Turkey is very much No.1 on my list (in terms of negative impact). The politics there are quite turbulent as well.
How relevant is the issue of advanced economy-emerging markets coordination, especially for central banks in the background of capital flight risk?Sometimes, that coordination is critically important. In 2008, when the Federal Reserve extended a $40 billion swap line to Mexico, Brazil and South Korea, it famously didn’t extend it to India. That was an example of cooperation of the US central bank and a few of its friends but was not systematic or universal. To my mind, you not only need central bank coordination, you also need extended IMF facilities because relying on the Fed could mean relying on a whole set of personalities and I think emerging markets will feel safer and more secure if they can rely on the managing director of IMF.","The impact of the US Fed raising rates on emerging markets such as India has reduced considerably, says Barry Eichengreen",00:23,Trump poses biggest risk to emerging market capital flows: Barry Eichengreen +2017-02-14,"Mumbai: Textiles and financial services conglomerate Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd (ABNL) on Tuesday posted a 30.67% decline in standalone profits after tax year-on-year (y-o-y), as its revenues fell across all business segments, barring financial services.The company’s quarterly revenue fell 15.02% to Rs1,216.76 crore while profit after tax declined to Rs65.59 crore against Rs94.61 crore in the year-ago period. “Pass through of reduction in natural gas prices in the agri business, coupled with lower volumes in the textiles and the insulators businesses,” led to lower revenue y-o-y, the company said in a statement.ABNL’s biggest fall in revenue came from its agri-business (fertilizers, agro-chemicals, seeds) which dipped 18% to Rs565.81 crore year-on-year. “Demonetisation led to temporary liquidity shortage in the trade channel as well as downstream players in the textiles and agri value chain,” the company added in the statement. With the cash crunch leading to lower demands, the Ebitda margins of ABNL’s various subsidies in these businesses fell. Indian Rayon sold lower volumes and its Ebitda fell 18%, while Indo-Gulf Fertilizers and Jay Shree textiles saw a 19% and 74% decline in Ebitda, respectively. There was a small bump in the company’s total revenue worth Rs13.60 crore from the financial services business. This segment was reviewed separately for the first time under the new India AS accounting standards, the company said in a statement. This was the only business whose revenue grew this quarter, by 77% y-o-y. ABNL’s standalone debt fell 44% from the March 2016 quarter from the sale of the company’s 23% stake in Birla Sun Life Insurance, and the realization of a Rs115 crore subsidy in January this year. Its current standalone debt stands at Rs2,190 crore.ABNL also announced it has received approval from the stock exchanges and the Competition Commission of India to merge the company with Grasim Industries, an Aditya Birla group company that has interests in manufacturing of viscose staple fibre, sponge iron, and chemicals. Grasim also owns the subsidiary UltraTech Cement, listed on the BSE.The company is now waiting for permission from the National Company Law Tribunal. “The transaction is expected to be completed by the first half of fiscal 2017-18”, the company said in the statement. This merger was first announced in August last year, along with plans to de-merge and list the financial services business into a separate entity.Shares of ABNL were trading 0.78% higher at Rs1,458.30 at 2:39pm versus the BSE’s benchmark Sensex that was 0.05% lower.","Aditya Birla Nuvo’s biggest fall in revenue came from its agri-business—fertilizers, agro-chemicals, seeds—that dipped 18% to Rs565.81 crore year-on-year",15:29,Aditya Birla Nuvo Q3 standalone profit falls 31% +2017-03-28,"
New Delhi: At Bain and Co., Raj Pherwani helps clients with sustained cost transformation and advises them on taking the company to the next level of effectiveness. San Francisco-based Pherwani, partner and global head of performance improvement practice at Bain, has expertise in leading transformation projects across sectors and is also the firm’s leader in the digital space. In an interview, he comments on sustained cost transformation, disruptive technologies, consolidation in the telecom industry and the future of conglomerates. Pherwani was on a two-week visit to India to meet top company leaders. Edited excerpts:
How do you help clients achieve their full potential?
What we have developed is a lot of experience over 40-plus years of being a company but the steps are roughly the same. The exact way in which it is conducted depends on the specific situation.
If you are really about getting to full potential, the starting point is always about trying to understand what is the mission, why are you trying to get there, why is your company uniquely suited to achieve that mission and then it’s an examination of the current status. Then one develops a strategic fact base to understand where things are, what’s going on today, the point of departure if you will.
Based on what we learn in the point of departure, we then prescribe the path forward. I’d say the best way to do it is what we call client-led, Bain-supported; so what we bring obviously is experience, tools, the ability to conduct rigorous analytics on the specific areas where things needs to be done, the experience in change management, setting up these programmes, etc. You have a sense of where you need to push and we will work collaboratively with the client to recommend an approach depending on what we have learnt. It could take a few months or years, setting up the initiatives, the initiative owners, what are their objectives, how are they tracked—all of that communicated to the organization and being very, very thoughtful about the change- management process.
Is performance improvement all about cutting costs and headcount? Does it always have to be the case?
I don’t think so. I like to think of it as are you utilizing your assets— both people and others in the best way and the reality for most of our programmes is not a cost-cutting exercise but about performance improvement, which is about improving productivity, improving the way you do things so it’s not purely about costs. In fact, I would say if you are just going to cut headcount, a lot of companies do it reasonably well on their own. They can get benchmarks on different functions by industry and find a way to improve it.
I think the big differentiator is the cost that is between functions, cross functional, the cost that you don’t recognize because you haven’t looked at it, so that’s where the process I described to you the strategic fact base can help you understand what are some of the root causes, why you are above cost in a certain metric. What I believe in is, it’s important to figure out the formula for sustained cost transformation.
Technology is disrupting industries and businesses across geographies. How do companies tackle this challenge both for themselves and their customers?
You have to address it—technology is a disruptor and can be a disruptor for the positive. In the short term, it is going to create some issues. Every process, every activity, evolution dictates that you are going to have to do it better over time; otherwise, you will not survive. That’s a fact. Most companies except for those that were born on the Web, are operating paper-based processes that were invented 50 years ago. Paper has been made electronic but the fundamental process has not been changed. Digital is allowing you to change the way you do things.
There is better collaboration, inputs are efficient, analytics are faster so you can do things that you could not do before; so are you going to ignore that and not adopt it? Sure, but it’s at your peril. The great companies will examine themselves and disrupt themselves rather be disrupted. Somebody’s going to do it to you so it’s better if you do it to yourself. I think everyone can agree with that.
What do you think about the Indian telecom scene with Reliance Jio crossing 100 million customers in 160 days?
We’ve looked at telecoms forever and there are some rules of thumb. It’s hard to sustain a market with six-seven competitors so it’s a natural law that over time, the markets will consolidate. Look at the US, for example when I started working at Bain in 1993, we had several players and today, you have AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, and there are talks of the last two merging.
Natural laws of evolution in business, particularly in telecom, suggest because it is a capital-intensive industry, so regardless of the country, capital expenditure is going to be on the high side.
Most countries have achieved full penetration if not more, and India is probably at that level. So it’s not surprising that you have a very aggressive deep-pocketed competitor like Jio disrupting the marketplace. We had that in the US with T-Mobile and lot of people wrote them off very early but they have done exceedingly well.
I think in the long term, the consumer will win. I think there will be three-four players in a country this size and none of them can take their foot off the pedal on operating as efficiently as possible.
What would be your management advice to Indian CEOs and CXOs?
I’ve had two meetings with CEOS and CXOs in Delhi and Mumbai, and I am impressed by the way Indian companies are operating. So, it is a great starting point, there is great talent in this country.
I would recommend that all companies owe it to their stakeholders including employees to be operating at the highest levels of efficiency. By the way, that means actually investing and getting to those levels of efficiency which means digital, thinking through your processes, constantly reinventing what you are doing, thinking about making your company better to work at and better to work with and if you do that, you will always be in a good position to out-invest your competitors and provide the best value proposition to your customers, therefore command the best prices in your business.
To make that happen, the leaders of these businesses need to have clarity of vision and need to communicate this, and maybe that’s something in India that may not have been done in the past, but I think today the leadership is thinking about it. Just because the CEO says it doesn’t mean that the person at the frontline gets it. As someone said, the corporate strategy and street-level strategy—the connection of that is so important. So what is said in the boardroom is getting translated to someone who is the front-line salesman or at the factory shop floor—this is super important. Last thing, a lot of companies are very, very diversified. I won’t be surprised if in the next five years, you can play every game, I would have loved to be on the Indian cricket team and win Wimbledon at the same time (I did neither), but companies will have to make choices.
I won’t be surprised if large groups separate out and figured out where they want to focus and divest. I have studied conglomerates for a long time and very, very few maybe, 10 across the globe, earn a value more than the sum of their parts. That’s my hypothesis, I may be off base.","Bain and Co. partner Raj Pherwani talks about sustained cost transformation, disruptive tech, consolidation in the telecom industry and future of conglomerates",11:45,"Performance improvement, not cost cutting, is the key: Bain’s Raj Pherwani" +2017-02-14,"New Delhi: Hindalco Industries Ltd, India’s biggest aluminum producer, expects higher growth in the next fiscal year because of the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), and higher consumption of aluminum and copper because of a rise in budgetary allocation to the infrastructure sector.For Hindalco, the government’s focus on infrastructure and electricity sectors is a big positive, managing director Satish Pai said in an interview. Electricity, packaging, building and construction, automobile, defence, and transportation are the sectors the aluminium producer has identified as growth areas for consumption demand, he said.Hindalco Q3 results: Copper counters surge in aluminium profitsHindalco on Monday reported a net profit in the December quarter from a loss in the year-ago period, but missed analysts’ estimates. Standalone net profit in the third quarter stood at Rs320.56 crore compared to a loss of Rs32.75 crore a year earlier. Net sales rose 13.7% to Rs9,914.81 crore from Rs8,715.94 crore a year earlier because of a rise in average realization for both aluminium and copper, weaker rupee and higher aluminium volume, Hindalco said in a statement.Nineteen analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected Hindalco to report a standalone net profit of Rs396.4 crore while 18 analysts had expected sales of Rs9,400.7 crore.Aluminium business revenue rose about 8.6% to Rs4,916.92 crore while copper business revenue rose 19.3% to Rs5,000.42 crore.“Cost of production and the operations remain under control for us, which is the strongest point. Our cash part is looking good which is why we have paid now up to Rs1,000 crore of debt and we will finish paying Rs1,400 crore by March. Input costs have been good - while oil prices and coal prices of e-auction go up, on the other hand LME (London Metal Exchange) is also up. Overall, I think fourth quarter should be another good quarter,” Pai said.Hindalco, which has a target of doubling its downstream aluminium capacity in five years, is facing stiff competition from cheaper Chinese imports.The Aluminium Association of India has been lobbying the government for implementing a safeguard duty and minimum import price (MIP) in aluminium. “Process for MIP has been on... it takes time but we are hopeful that we are at end of the game,” Pai said.Hindalco already supplies aluminium for bus bodies and other auto extrusions and sees opportunity for growth in the high-speed trains and railways bodies. “It is a 100 tonnes a month business and we want to take it to 1,000 tonnes a month,” Pai said.Defence is another growth area the company is targeting, where a number of domestic firms are looking to start manufacturing in India.“This will be a big kicker for us,” Pai said.The company’s Hirakud smelter in Odisha, which is in the process of increasing capacity to 135 Kilo-Tonnes Per Annum has potential to be expanded in future, Pai said.“Our strategy in next five years is to get debt to Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) down; that’s the biggest focus. We want to bring cost under control and expand in downstream,” Pai said.Hindalco shares rose 1.65% to Rs185 on BSE on Monday, while the benchmark Sensex rose 0.06% to 28,351.62 points.",Hindalco’s net profit in Q3 was Rs320.56 crore compared to a loss of Rs32.75 crore a year earlier,02:40,"Hindalco sees higher growth on GST, govt’s infrastructure spending push" +2017-02-14,"
New Delhi: GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare Ltd, the maker of Horlicks and Boost health foods, on Monday reported 8.25% drop in third-quarter profit as the liquidity crunch following demonetisation hit wholesale trade.Net profit fell to Rs136.41 crore in the quarter ended 31 December from Rs148.68 crore a year earlier. Net sales from operations fell 12.68% to Rs921.64 in the quarter from Rs1,055.57 crore a year earlier.“The overall business environment during the quarter was challenging and uncertain due to demonetisation. This substantially impacted the cash dominated geographies, mainly the east and north, and channels—mainly wholesale and rural, resulting in lower consumption offtake and reduced trade pipelines,” said MD Manoj Kumar in a statement. The British company’s local unit said it had extended credit terms to help trade fight the liquidity crunch due to note ban announced 8 November.GSK Consumer Healthcare, citing market researcher Neilsen, said the marketshare of Horlicks increased marginally by 0.1% to 46.5% in value terms during the quarter from a year earlier. The company, however, is hopeful about the coming quarters. “Our outlook for the upcoming quarters remains positive. We are confident that with improved liquidity position and focus on high science, strong brands, innovation and sharp customer insights will help us to stay ahead in the category,” said Kumar.The company announced its results after market hours. Shares of GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare dropped 0.14% to Rs5,118 on Monday on BSE, while the benchmark Sensex rose 0.06% to 28,351.62 points.",GSK’s net profit fell to Rs136.41 crore in the quarter ended 31 December from Rs148.68 crore a year earlier,01:38,GSK Q3 profit drops 8.25% due to note ban +2017-02-13,"New Delhi: Auto component maker Motherson Sumi Systems Ltd (MSSL) on Monday reported a 28.24% increase in consolidated net profit at Rs547.32 crore in the third quarter ended December. The company had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs426.77 crore in the same period of last fiscal. Its total income from operations during the period under review stood at Rs10,796.9 crore as against Rs9,598.35 crore in the year-ago period, up 12.48%. MSSL chairman Vivek Chaand Sehgal said, “The company has shown exemplary growth in all areas and has achieved highest ever revenues and margins in a quarter. This is the reflection of hard work put in by all our teams from around the world.” Shares of MSSL were trading 2.63% down at Rs346.55 apiece on BSE.",Motherson Sumi had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs426.77 crore in the same period of last fiscal,22:43,Motherson Sumi Q3 net profit rises 28.24% to Rs547.32 crore +2017-02-13,"New Delhi: Piramal Enterprises Ltd on Monday reported a 31.66% rise in its consolidated net profit to Rs404.08 crore for the quarter ended 31 December 2016, on account of improved top-line performance. The company had posted a net profit after non-controlling interest and share of profit (loss) of associates and joint ventures of Rs306.91 crore for the corresponding period of the previous fiscal, Piramal Enterprises said in a BSE filing. Consolidated total income from operations also rose to Rs2,341.74 crore for the quarter under consideration as against Rs1,786.01 crore for the same period year ago. Piramal Enterprises chairman Ajay Piramal said, “In line with our strategic roadmap, this quarter witnessed new acquisitions, foray into new business segments and robust performance across existing businesses”. The company remains committed to overall business strategy of efficiently allocating capital towards growing both organically and inorganically..., he added. “Strong profitability was mainly on account of improved top-line performance, partly offset by increase in interest expense, depreciation and higher tax rate,” Piramal Enterprises said. The company’s global pharma business acquired a portfolio of intrathecal spasticity and pain management drugs from Mallinckrodt LLC in Jan 2017. It also acquired a portfolio of five injectable anaesthesia & pain management products from Janssen in October 2016, it added. The financial services business announced its plan to enter the retail housing finance, it added. Financial services business launched flexi lease rental discounting for completed commercial assets, the company said.","The company’s consolidated total income from operations rose to Rs2,341.74 crore for the quarter under consideration as against Rs1,786.01 crore for the same period year ago",22:36,Piramal Enterprises Q3 profit up 32% to Rs404.08 crore +2017-02-13,"Mumbai: Muthoot Finance Ltd on Monday reported a 56% increase in its net profit for the December quarter.Net profit for the third quarter rose to Rs291 crore from Rs187 crore in the year ago period. Total income stood at Rs1,346 crore at the end of December quarter, an 18% increase over the year ago period.“Though disbursements got affected post demonetisation process announced by the government, we could limit its impact since our digital platforms were ready to manage online disbursements and repayments. We are expecting normalcy coming back during the fourth quarter as cash availability has significantly increased,” said M.G.George Muthoot, chairman, Muthoot Finance.ALSO READ: Muthoot HomeFin to raise Rs800 crore next fiscalRetail loan assets under management stood at Rs26,962 crore at the end of third quarter, witnessing an 8% increase over the previous year.","Muthoot Finance’s total income stood at Rs1,346 crore at the end of December quarter, an 18% increase over the year ago period",21:32,Muthoot Finance Q3 profit rises 56% to Rs291 crore +2017-02-13,"Bengaluru: Biscuit maker Britannia Industries Ltd posted a 4.6% increase in third-quarter net profit to Rs220.39 crore from a year earlier, beating analyst estimates. Revenue rose 6.11% to Rs2,355.27 crore during the period, but fell short of the company’s own expectations, Britannia said in a filing with the BSE on Monday.The analysts had expected a net profit of Rs198.10 crore on revenue of Rs2,137.50 crore, according to a Bloomberg survey. “This quarter has been really tough considering the way things panned out on the economic front. The positive growth momentum witnessed in Q2, aided by good monsoon and flow through of 7th pay commission benefits was impacted with implementation of demonetisation in November,” Varun Berry, managing director, said in a statement.Like other consumer firms, the post-demonetisation liquidity crunch had hurt its consumers and channel partners, the company said, adding that it had attempted to tide over the situation by providing credit to some business partners and improving sales efficiency.“With these steps and increase in availability of cash in the economy, our revenues in December 2016 improved on a sequential basis but is still lower than what we would have expected it to be,” Berry said.Growth in the international business continued to be under pressure due to deteriorating geopolitical situation and currency fluctuations in geographies like Middle East and Africa, he added. Britannia, which had to deal with a high raw material inflation rate of more than 10% in the December quarter, said its cost efficiency program had helped mitigate the impact of higher raw material costs to a “certain extent.” It also “rationalized” advertising spends as no amount of stimulus would have helped the company boost growth after demonetisation.“We are actively working on opportunities in the biscuit business, adjacent macro snacking space and are also evaluating partnership opportunities to drive profitable growth for our company,” Berry added.In a separate filing, Britannia said it appointed YSP Thorat, retired chairman of National Bank For Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), and Ajay Shah as additional directors of the company effective 13 February.Britannia Industries Limited’s shares closed up at Rs3,273 on the BSE, up 1.15% from previous close while India’s benchmark Sensex Index was up 0.06% to 28,351.62 points.","Britannia’s revenue for the third quarter rose 6.11% to Rs2,355.27 crore during the period, but fell short of its own expectations",18:31,Britannia Q3 profit rises 4.6% to Rs220 crore +2017-02-13,"New Delhi: GMR Infrastructure on Monday reported a standalone net loss of Rs381.93 crore for the quarter ended December 2016. The company posted a net profit of Rs40.01 crore in the corresponding quarter of the 2015-16, it said in a BSE filing. Its total income from operations declined to Rs216.25 crore during the quarter as against Rs294.48 crore in the year-ago period. ALSO READ: Britannia Q3 profit rises 4.6% to Rs220 croreIts total expenses rose to Rs103.52 crore during the quarter under review as against Rs36.29 crore in the corresponding quarter a year-ago. In a separate filing, the firm informed that Jayesh Desai has resigned from the position of director of the company with effect from 13 February. “The board at their meeting held on 13 February, 2017 took on record the resignation of Jayesh Desai and recorded its appreciation for the valuable services rendered by him during his tenure as a director of the company,” the statement said. GMR Group is a leading global infrastructure conglomerate with interests in the airport, energy, transportation and urban infrastructure. The shares of the company closed at Rs14.28 apiece on the BSE, down 2.86% from its previous close.",GMR Infra’s total income from operations declined to Rs216.25 crore during the third quarter as against Rs294.48 crore in the year-ago period,21:37,GMR Infra posts Rs382 crore loss in Q3 +2017-04-20,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The government on Thursday raised over Rs1,200 crore through the sale of 9.2% stake in National Aluminium Company Ltd (Nalco) as both retail and institutional investors lapped up the shares offered to them. The first PSU disinvestment of the current fiscal, Nalco also saw the government exercising the option to retain excess subscription, called greenshoe option. The government had hit the market on Wednesday with 5% shares on offer, and exercised the greenshoe option after seeing investor demand on day one of the offer for sale. With bids, over 1.84 times the shares on offer, the subscription of institutional investors was valued at Rs954 crore. Retail investors on their part bid for 3.17 times the shares reserved for them valued at Rs250 crore. Together, the bids are valued at over Rs1,200 crore. Of its total holding of 74.58% in Nalco, the government has offloaded 9.2% at a floor price of Rs67. Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) secretary Neeraj Gupta said the government was confident of retail investor demand and hence had exercised the greenshoe option keeping in mind the last four disinvestments. “Today’s response validates our market assessment,” Gupta said. The OFS opened for retail investor subscription on Thursday and was lapped up 3.17 times. Retail are defined as individuals who place bids for sales of total value of not more than Rs2 lakh in aggregate and are offered 5% discount over the issue price. The Nalco stock closed at Rs68.10, up 0.52% over its previous close, on BSE. Nalco is the first disinvestment of the current fiscal, which started on 1 April. The government has set a target of Rs46,500 crore through minority stake sale and Rs15,000 crore from strategic disinvestment in 2017-18. In 2016-17, the government had raised over Rs46,247 crore from disinvestment.","Nalco raises over Rs1,200 crore through 9.2% stake sale; the offer for sale opened for retail investor subscription today and was lapped up 3.17 times",18:00,"Govt sells 9.2% stake in Nalco, raises Rs 1,200 crore" +2017-04-20,"Los Angeles: Don’t worry about Fox. It’ll be okay without Bill O’Reilly.The country’s most-watched cable network is doing so well that the departure of the star of The O’Reilly Factor isn’t likely to be a huge financial blow. That’s even though the show was the biggest draw on Fox News, which has been 21st Century Fox’s most profitable channel, bringing in what one estimate puts at $200 million annually in advertising revenue.“The growth in the network is overwhelming any advertiser issues” that will crop up now that O’Reilly is out and Tucker Carlson is stepping into the prime-time slot, said Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research LLC who has a buy rating on the stock. O’Reilly took his leave Wednesday afternoon, and Fox shares fell 0.9% to $30.39 at the close in New York.Fox doesn’t break out how much any one channel or program contributes to the bottom line. S&P Global Inc.’s Kagan research unit estimates that Fox News was responsible for about one-fourth of the company’s 2016 operating income, which was $6.6 billion.O’Reilly’s exit will probably cost just a couple of percentage points in ad sales, before factoring in the network’s expected growth over the next year, Wieser said. “Investors wouldn’t really notice the impact.”That’s not to say there won’t be any painful ripples. The hard-charging host had been on the air since the 1996 birth of Fox News. O’Reilly was “a ratings machine,” said Vijay Jayant, an analyst at Evercore ISI, in a note to clients.Consistent messagingRecent history shows, though, that Fox News can handle it when individual personalities walk. There was little fallout in 2011 after Glenn Beck quit. His talk-show was replaced with the group-format The Five that has done so well it’s moving into a prime-time slot next week. (Beck weighed in on Twitter Wednesday, saying, “With Bill O’Reilly gone, it’s the Beginning of the End of Fox News as We Know It.”)After Megyn Kelly jumped to NBC in January, Carlson replaced her at 9 pm, and his ratings beat hers.“Fox News’s dominance stems from the consistency of its messaging and the loyalty of its broader audience more than from the success of star anchors,” said Jayant, who has an outperform rating on the stock.ALSO READ: Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai pull ‘O’Reilly’ ads on sexual harassment claimsDozens of advertisers pulled their spots from The O’Reilly Factor after the New York Times reported that Fox and the host had resolved sexual harassment allegations by paying his accusers $13 million. The report came just months after Fox News’ founder Roger Ailes resigned amid similar allegations.How valuable?Fox executive chairman Rupert Murdoch and his sons, chairman Lachlan Murdoch and chief executive officer (CEO) James Murdoch, convened on a call Wednesday morning where they decided O’Reilly’s fate, a person familiar with the situation said. The Murdochs were swayed by details that emerged during an internal investigation into the allegations by law firm Paul Weiss, the person said. O’Reilly issued a statement late Wednesday, saying, “It is tremendously disheartening that we part ways due to completely unfounded claims.”Estimates of how valuable The O’Reilly Factor was vary, with Pivotal saying the show’s annual ad sales were about $200 million and Evercore putting them at half that or less. Fox hasn’t disclosed what it paid the host, though the New York Observer has reported his 2016 compensation package was $18 million.By Jayant’s calculations, annual revenue and earnings growth will probably take a hit of less than half a percentage point as a result of O’Reilly’s leaving. He sees a decline of about 35% in ad revenue without O’Reilly, a similar level to the viewership gap between that show and the average Fox News primetime hour.ALSO READ: Fox News host Bill O’Reilly taking vacation amid sex harassment furoreIt’s unclear whether O’Reilly will be able to find a home with a competitor under the terms of his exit from Fox, but rival news organizations such as One America News Network and Newsmax said they’d be interested in talking with him about a new gig.“He was the heart and soul of Fox News. He had unparalleled and unchallenged talent that he demonstrated over many years. I think he will remain a hot commodity for years to come,” said Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy in an interview. “The problem that Bill O’Reilly is going to have is that there aren’t many conservative media outlets out there that carry as much heft.”Ruddy cautioned that if he talked to O’Reilly about a job, he’d need to review the allegations because they are serious.However difficult it might be for Fox to replace all the revenue O’Reilly generated, the uproar was a distraction for 21st Century Fox as it seeks regulatory clearance for its $14.6 billion acquisition of Sky Plc, the UK-based satellite-TV provider. That deal needs approval from the British regulator Ofcom, which will decide whether the takeover breaches British rules on media plurality and broadcasting standards, and whether Sky would continue to be a “fit and proper” holder of a broadcast license.The US civil rights group Color of Change has asked Ofcom to investigate Fox’s corporate practices before approving the Sky purchase, alleging “rampant racial discrimination and sexual harassment” at the company.“If you believe that the Sky transaction is a strategically good thing, then elements that put the transaction at risk are much more important than Bill O’Reilly,” said Pivotal’s Wieser. Fox has mitigated the damage but “this isn’t settled by any stretch. There are still issues to overcome here on that fit-and-proper test.” Bloomberg","Bill O’Reilly’s exit will probably cost just a couple of percentage points in ad sales, before factoring in Fox News’ expected growth over the next year",17:51,Bill O’Reilly’s exit looks like a non-factor for Fox News’ profit machine +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: Reliance Defence and Engineering Ltd has secured nod from a consortium of lenders to exit its corporate debt restructuring (CDR) package. The consortium of lenders, led by IDBI Bank Ltd, has agreed to the exit plan of Reliance Defence, a subsidiary of Reliance Infrastructure, with a longer maturity period for loans worth about Rs6,800 crore, people aware of the matter said.The lenders have also given their go-ahead to implementation of refinancing scheme of Reliance Defence. Both the proposals were presented to the CDR Empowered Group’s (EG) meeting on 29 March and approved by the requisite majority of CDR lenders. Reliance Infrastructure refused to comment. IDBI has confirmed to the Ministry of Defence the approval granted by the EG to the CDR exit plan and refinancing scheme. According to the people quoted above, the confirmation from IDBI makes Reliance Defence eligible for participating in all future contracts of the Navy. Now, Reliance Defence and Larsen and Toubro Ltd are the only two private sector shipyards that will compete with government-owned shipyards for prestigious contracts for making submarines, landing platform dock (LPD) and corvette. As per the refinancing scheme approved by the Empowered Group, about Rs6,800 crore of Reliance Defence debt will be refinanced with maturity of about 20 years and lower interest rate. Exiting CDR is also expected to provide increased financial manoeuvring to the company. Reliance Infrastructure has increased its shareholding in Reliance Defence to nearly 31%. Reliance Defence’s current order stands at over Rs5,300 crore from the Navy, the Coast Guard and commercial vessels. Reliance Infrastructure had acquired Pipavav Defence and Offshore Engineering Co. Ltd in March 2015, which was later renamed as Reliance Defence and Engineering. Immediately after the acquisition, Reliance Group had announced its plans to exit CDR. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had also given its nod to Reliance Defence to exit the CDR package. The stock of Reliance Defence was trading at Rs66.10 on the BSE, up 3.44% from its previous close.Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.","A consortium of lenders, led by IDBI Bank, has agreed to Reliance Defence’s plan to exit CDR package, with a longer maturity period for loans worth Rs6,800 crore",18:52,Reliance Defence gets banks approval to exit CDR package +2017-02-13,"New Delhi: Power Finance Corporation (PFC) on Monday reported an over 23% surge in standalone net profit to Rs1,949.91 crore for the third quarter ended 31 December. The company had posted a net profit of Rs1,582.32 crore for the corresponding quarter of last fiscal, PFC said in a BSE filing on Monday. According to the statement, total income has increased to Rs7,063.08 crore in the quarter under review, from Rs6,994.10 crore in the same period last fiscal. It also informed the BSE about the non-performing asset provision of Rs51.19 crore for the current quarter and Rs475.50 crore for the nine months ended on 31 December 2016. It also stated that the Gross NPA stood at Rs7,302.67 crore as on 31 December 2016, whereas it was Rs7,520.21 crore on 31 March 2016.","PFC posted a net profit of Rs1,582.32 crore for the corresponding quarter of last fiscal, the company said in a BSE filing on Monday",16:12,"Power Finance Corporation’s Q3 net profit jumps 23% to Rs1,949 crore" +2017-04-20,"Zurich/ London: Nestle SA and Unilever reported sales that beat estimates as the European food giants pushed through cost increases to combat slowing purchases by pickier consumers opting for quality over quantity.KitKat maker Nestle said organic revenue rose 2.3% in the first quarter, compared with the 2% median estimate. Unilever’s sales growth of 2.9% exceeded analyst predictions of 1.9% as the Hellmann’s mayonnaise provider issued its first results announcement since rebuffing a takeover approach from Kraft Heinz Co.Improved pricing power at both companies provided an early sign of recovery for the food and beverage market after years of deflationary pressure in Europe, slowing sales in China and economic crises in Brazil and Russia. Higher commodity costs, inflation in Brazil and the fall in the pound since the UK’s vote to leave the European Union are contributing to the upward pressure.“Pricing was better than expected,” Jon Cox, an analyst at Kepler Cheuvreux, said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “Everybody has to increase prices, and generally that’ll be sticky.”Nestle and Unilever are joining apparel makers Burberry Group Plc and Ralph Lauren, which are trying to wean themselves off discounting, especially in the US Alcoholic beverage companies such as Diageo Plc are also trying to ride a trend of “premiumization” as consumers shift to fewer but more expensive purchases.Food companies are under pressure to lift costs in order to boost profit margins as potential predators like Kraft Heinz look for consolidation opportunities. The US company is backed by private equity firm 3G Capital Inc., known for its pursuit of aggressive profit targets.The challenge facing the industry is that some cost increases are provoking consumers to reduce purchases: Nestle said higher pricing weighed on shipments in Europe and also at its baby-food unit.Nestle’s quarterly revenue growth was the slowest this century, according to Andrew Wood, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. A later Easter in 2017 pushed chocolate orders into the second quarter from the first this year.Nestle shares rose as much as 1.1% in Zurich, while Unilever gained as much as 1.6% in Amsterdam.Unilever was more aggressive than Nestle in raising food prices in the quarter, with a 3.4% increase, led by more expensive versions of Magnum and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Nestle, which increased prices 1%, was prompted to raise the cost of Nescafe after robusta coffee futures have gained 38% in the past year. Each company’s increases were above analyst estimates.“We’re starting to see some inflationary pressures in the U.K. from the depreciation of the pound,” Unilever chief financial officer Graeme Pitkethly said in a phone interview, adding that the company’s competitors are also raising prices in the country.UK grocer Tesco Plc last year briefly removed some Unilever items from its online store after a dispute over pricing. Distiller Pernod Ricard SA in March lifted the cost of some spirits and wines in the U.K.Positive aspects of the period for Nestle, the maker of Lean Cuisine meals, included accelerating sales in Europe and Asia, Kepler’s Cox said. In contrast, growth slowed to a near halt in the Americas region, hurt by declines in US confectionery and pet care.Unilever cited gains in its home- and personal-care businesses, while sales were unchanged in the food division.The ice-cream unit was helped by new products such as chocolate-coated Magnum pints in a tub. The refreshment unit, which includes ice cream, increased prices by 5%.The Anglo-Dutch company didn’t provide any immediate update on plans to divest its spreads unit, which includes the Flora brand. After fending off Kraft Heinz in February, Chief Executive Officer Paul Polman said Unilever will deliver on promises to increase shareholder returns via buybacks and lift profitability goals.In a first move toward that, the company raised the quarterly dividend by 12% to 36 euro cents a share. Unilever said it’s on track for 2017 underlying sales growth of 3% to 5% and sees an improvement in underlying operating margin of at least 80 basis points. Bloomberg","Higher commodity costs, inflation in Brazil and the fall in the pound are contributing to the upward pressure for both Unilever and Nestle",17:40,"Unilever, Nestle price rises boost outlook as demand plunges " +2017-04-13,"
Mumbai: As currency in the public hands continues to increase, a lot of new adopters of digital payment systems have returned to cash. Less than half the customers who chose digital payment options during demonetisation continue to use them, said a senior official at the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The total number of new digital payment users in banking went up from around 40 million to 100 million in the first two months after the government invalidated 86% of the country’s currency in circulation on 8 November. Now, three months after the exercise has ended, only 25 million have stuck around, according to Dilip Asbe, chief operating officer at NPCI.“So about 25-30 million new customers came in. Obviously more came in, but 25 million have stayed back. If you would look at regular payment system cycle standpoint, it would have taken a couple of years to reach that stage,” said Asbe, speaking at the launch of a unified payments interface (UPI)-based payments for merchants by digital transactions platform Benow. As on 7 April, currency in circulation stood at Rs13.6 trillion compared to Rs17.97 trillion on 4 November. It had dropped to a low of Rs8.98 trillion as on 6 January following the note ban.Throughout November and December, various digital payments modes such as national electronic funds transfer (NEFT), immediate payment service (IMPS), mobile banking, UPI and mobile wallets all saw a significant jump in the volume and value of transactions made.However, by February, as the cash started returning to the system, this momentum slowed and transactions started dipping. In March, RBI data showed a total of 893.9 million transactions; though this was an improvement from February figures, it was still below the 957.5 million peak reached in December. However, the value of these transactions reached Rs149 trillion—boosted partly by increased real-time gross settlement (RTGS) and NEFT transactions for advance tax payments—well above the previous peak of Rs104 trillion in December. NPCI, on its part, has been pushing new means of digital payment systems. In March, it introduced UPI for merchants as a means to increase the usage of such payments. In a tie up with Reliance Retail and Innoviti, NPCI allowed customers to pay using UPI applications of any bank by scanning a dynamic QR code on point of sale (PoS) terminals. At the time A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, had said that the payments system provider is looking to bring in more merchants on board. Separately, NPCI is in the process of adding more banks for the Bharat QR code, said Asbe. About 20 banks are currently on board with QR code, a new payments technology. Once this number reaches 30-35, more merchants are likely to be on board. “I think there is a separate MDR (merchant discount rate) which is being discussed right now, which I heard is closer to 25 basis points, very similar to debit card (transactions) below Rs2,000,” Asbe said while speaking about Aadhaar-based payments which are likely to be launched shortly. However, Asbe added that the MDR charge was still unclear.","As per Dilip Asbe of National Payments Corporation of India, new digital payment users went up to 100 million during demonetisation but only 25 million have stuck around",04:56,A lot of new adopters of digital payments have returned to cash: NPCI official +2017-04-13,"
Bengaluru: Amazon India has received the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) approval to launch its own digital wallet in India, paving the way for the American online retail giant to gain a slice of India’s fast-growing digital payments business. Amazon India, which had applied for what is called a Prepaid Payment Instrument (PPI) licence nearly a year ago, will now look to take on established rivals such as Paytm and Freecharge as it prepares to launch a prepaid wallet service that will be broader in scope than its Pay Balance service and will not be restricted to Amazon-based transactions. In December, Amazon had launched its Pay Balance service in order to boost cashless transactions. While Pay Balance works in a similar manner to other mobile wallet services, it was restricted to transactions on Amazon. Amazon confirmed the development, but did not comment on the broader scope of what its wallet service could look like and whether it would cover areas such as bill payments. “We are pleased to receive our PPI licence from the RBI. Our focus is providing customers a convenient and trusted cashless payments experience. RBI is in the process of finalizing the guidelines for PPIs. We look forward to seeing a continuation of the low-limit wallet dispensation with simplified KYC (know-your-customer norms) and authentication. This will allow us to help customers adopt digital payments at scale and thereby contribute towards making India a less-cash economy,” said Sriram Jagannathan, vice-president of payments at Amazon India. Amazon’s new wallet service will look to address a vital problem in the world of payments — like other wallet services such as Paytm, it will help customers bypass the two-step authentication process for online payments using credit or debit cards and makes the process smoother for online shoppers, thus plugging a key gap in the payments process that reduces the risk of loss of business from online shoppers. In September, mobile payments start-up PhonePe Internet Pvt. Ltd, which is owned Flipkart (Amazon’s biggest rival in India), launched an app based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform, which was a key bet for Flipkart, given how payments are still largely an unsolved problem in both online and offline commerce. Amazon received the PPI licence in late-March. The development comes weeks after the RBI issued guidelines on issuance and operation of PPI licences, indicating potentially stricter norms for mobile wallet players as the central bank looks to ramp up focus on security and customer protection. RBI raised the minimum capital requirement for digital wallet operators by nearly five times and introduced a directive for full compliance with Know-Your-Customer (KYC) norms, among other new guidelines, causing an outcry among top digital payments firms. Following the guidelines, top leaders from the payments industry met RBI officials to discuss some of the clauses, including the KYC mandate, which they argued would act as a deterrent towards expanding the digital payments business. “We hope the government and RBI would continue to encourage multiple ways to shift consumers from cash behaviour by recognising the value of digital wallets, used especially for making small value payments to large merchants like e-commerce, government, IRCTC, utility or insurance companies,” said Amazon’s Jagannathan.","Amazon India has received RBI approval to launch its own digital wallet, paving the way for the online retailer to gain a slice of India’s fast-growing digital payments business",04:56,Amazon gets RBI nod for e-wallet in India +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The scrip of IT firm Nucleus Software Exports on Thursday surged nearly 5% after the company said its board will meet on 25 April to consider buyback of equity shares. Shares of the company jumped 4.57% to settle at Rs272.15 on BSE. During the day, they soared 7.47% to Rs 279.70. On NSE, the stock surged 4.33% to close at Rs 272.15. “...a meeting of the Board of Directors of the company will be held on April 25, 2017, to consider the proposal of buyback of fully paid up equity shares of the company, up to such amount of the aggregate of company’s paid up equity share capital and free reserves as the Board may decide,” Nucleus Software said in a regulatory filing. Share buyback typically improves earnings per share and is a mechanism to return surplus cash to shareholders, besides supporting the stock price during sluggish market.",Nucleus Software shares jumped 4.57% to settle at Rs272.15 on BSE after the company said its board will meet on 25 April to consider buyback of shares,17:13,Nucleus Software shares jump nearly 5% on share buyback plan +2017-04-13,"
Mumbai: Participatory notes (P-Notes), long vilified for the anonymous nature of their investors and suspected as a route for money laundering, are seeing rising interest among short-term foreign investors as the general anti-tax avoidance rule (GAAR) became applicable from 1 April.Foreign portfolio investors, especially those from countries which don’t have any tax treaties, typically route their investments though so-called special purpose vehicles in Mauritius and Singapore to save on taxes. Mauritius and Singapore have tax avoidance treaties with India. This is a favoured route, especially for hedge funds, while trading in futures and options or investing for the short term. Under GAAR, foreign investors would need to prove that such structures are not aimed at evading taxes. GAAR gives the tax department powers to scrutinize transactions structured in such a way as to deliberately avoid paying tax. Failure to show that a transaction was not structured to evade levies means investors will have to cough up 15% tax on equities and 30% on equity derivatives. Investing via P-Notes has a lower tax liability of 7.5-8%.“Many of the SPV (special purpose vehicle) structures coming from Mauritius and Singapore may not be able to pass the GAAR test. Those investors appear to be interested in accessing the Indian market through the P-Note route,” said Suresh Swamy, a partner at consulting firm PwC in India. Investment bankers, who are also P-notes issuers, are coming out with new products such as one which will allow foreign investors to set off losses against taxes. “Hedge funds are drawing comfort from the fact that the tax rules clearly provide that GAAR provisions do not apply to a person who has invested in ODI (off-shore derivative instruments)/ P-Notes. P-Note issuer should also not ordinarily face a challenge in meeting the GAAR threshold,” said Swamy.Data from the Securities and Exchange Board of India showed that as of February, about 6.6% of all foreign investments in India come through the offshore derivative instrument route. This has fallen from a peak of 55.7% in June 2007 as the capital markets regulator increased its scrutiny on these instruments and P-Notes became less lucrative owing to the renegotiated tax treaties with Mauritius and Singapore. “Structures could be scrutinized if they are designed to primarily avoid taxes. Choice of entity can however be driven by several non-tax considerations too,” said Richie Sancheti, head of investment funds practice at Nishith Desai Associates.“P-Notes respond to the need of investors who seek a streamlined basis for accessing several markets while dealing with very limited number of counterparties. In Indian context, if the participation is not intended to be deep but particular portfolio specific, it would be disproportionate to undergo tax and administrative compliances as a foreign portfolio investor,” he added.",Participatory notes (P-Notes) are seeing rising interest among short-term foreign investors as general anti-tax avoidance rule (GAAR) became applicable from 1 April,04:56,P-Notes make a comeback under GAAR +2017-04-12,"New Delhi: Retirement fund body EPFO has extended the deadline for submitting Aadhaar number to 30 April 2017 for its over four crore members. The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) had set 31 March 2017 as the deadline for submitting Aadhaar number earlier.EPFO has also extended the deadline for submitting digital life certificates for its over 50 lakh pensioners till 30 April to link pension accounts with Aadhaar. “We have extended the deadline for submission of Aadhaar by subscribers to 30 April 2017. Besides, pensioners can also submit their life certificates till 30 April,” EPFO’s Central Provident Fund Commissioner V P Joy told PTI.EPFO had extended the deadline several times in the past. It has also done away with the system of accepting life certificate manually through banks. Pensioners are required to provide life certificates digitally either through their mobile phones or at common service centres or bank branches providing such facility.The latest EPFO order provides that if a pensioner is not able to submit the life certificate in digital format, then the same can be submitted in physical form with valid reasons for not submitting it digitally. It also says that a pensioner would cease to receive payments from May if life certificate is not submitted by 30 April 2017.",Retirement fund body EPFO has extended the deadline for submitting Aadhaar number to 30 April 2017 for its over four crore members,17:50,EPFO extends deadline for submitting Aadhaar to 30 April +2017-04-12,"Mumbai: International Finance Corporation (IFC) Wednesday said it will lend $100 million to Federal Bank Ltd as long-term finance for its International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) branch in Gujarat’s Gift City. The funding is expected to help the bank’s clients in growing their business and supporting the Gift City initiative.Federal Bank’s IFSC unit which opened in November 2015 offers funded and non-funded facilities to overseas operations of Indian corporates, loans to overseas business ventures of non-resident Indians, trade finance solutions to Indian clients etc. It has crossed $200 million mark in total business. Kerala-based Federal Bank has 1,252 branches and 1,665 ATMs.On Wednesday, Federal Bank shares closed at Rs92.55, up 0.76% from its previous close on BSE, touching a high of Rs93.60 and a low of Rs90.75 a share during the day.The private sector lending arm of the World Bank, IFC has an active direct private equity-style investment practice, apart from lending to companies in India. It also has an active limited partner (LP), portfolio in India where it backs PE and venture capital funds focused on India.Other recent investments by IFC in the country include $20 million debt to RGVN Microfinance, $3 million to pi Ventures and up to $30.1 million to Mumbai-based ETC Agro Processing (India) Pvt Ltd, among others.",International Finance Corp will lend $100 million to Federal Bank as long-term finance for its International Financial Services Centre branch in Gujarat’s Gift City,20:36,IFC to lend $100 million to Federal Bank for Gujarat’s Gift City branch +2017-04-12,"New Delhi: No documentary proof is required for getting advance or withdrawal from General Provident Fund (GPF), the minister of state for personnel Jitendra Singh said on Wednesday in New Delhi.The government has simplified and liberalised the conditions for taking advance from the fund for education, illness and purchase of consumer durables with effect from 7 March 2017.“Conditions and procedures for withdrawal from the fund for the purpose of education, illness, housing, purchase of motor vehicles etc. have also been liberalised. “No documentary proof is required to be submitted now for advance and withdrawal applications. A simple declaration by the subscriber is sufficient,” the minister said in a written reply to Lok Sabha.A time limit for sanction and payment of advance or withdrawal has also been fixed, said Singh. He said there is no proposal under consideration of the government to increase/link the rate of interest on GPF at parity with that of Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF).“The interest rates on EPF are decided on the recommendations of the Central Board of Trustees taking into account the yearly income from the investment made by EPFO. The GPF interest rate is presently fixed at par with that of PPF interest rate,” said Singh.","MoS for personnel Jitendra Singh says the government has simplified the conditions for taking advance from GPF for education, illness and purchase of consumer durables",16:43,"No documentary proof required for GPF advance, withdrawal: Government" +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: SpiceJet Ltd will start offering streaming movies, cricket and other content on all its flights beginning later this year, becoming the first Indian low-fare airline to do so.All 49 SpiceJet planes will be fitted BoardConnect Portable from Lufthansa Systems, which will store and wirelessly stream pre-loaded content to passengers’ Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices. Full service airline like Jet Airways and Air India already offer in-flight streaming content on some of their flights. SpiceJet, which charges passengers for food, baggage and preferred seating, did not say if it will charge for the streaming video service. The service will also be used to sell products on the flight.“SpiceJet expects to be the first LCC (low-cost carrier) in India to provide this unique entertainment and shopping experience to its customers,” Ajay Singh, chairman and managing director, SpiceJet said in the statement.BoardConnect Portable includes a server and access points in a single device called the Mobile Streaming Unit (MSU). About the size of a conventional tablet, it can be mounted or removed without affecting other components in the aircraft, for example in the galley. An integrated modem allows rapid wireless updates of content while the aircraft is on the ground.In the past, airlines used to install in-flight entertainment systems connected with long wiring behind the back of each seat, which were expensive to maintain. SpiceJet controls a 13% market share compared with IndiGo’s nearly 40% market share. IndiGo, India’s largest airline flies 133 aircraft.SpiceJet shares were up 9.94% at Rs103.20 at 3pm at the Bombay Stock Exchange on Thursday, while the benchmark Sensex was trading 0.17% up at 29,385.23 points.","All 49 SpiceJet planes will be fitted BoardConnect Portable from Lufthansa Systems, which will store and wirelessly stream pre-loaded content to passengers’ Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices",15:38,SpiceJet to offer streaming in-flight content +2017-04-12,"New Delhi: The government has formed a panel to study the existing framework for virtual currencies such as bitcoin.A finance ministry statement said Dinesh Sharma, special secretary in the economic affairs department will chair the nine-member inter-disciplinary committee. The committee has been tasked to submit its report within three months.Circulation of virtual currencies which are also known as digital/crypto Currencies has been a cause of concern, the statement said. “This has been expressed in various fora from time to time. Reserve Bank of India had also cautioned the users, holders and traders of virtual currencies (VCs), including bitcoins, about the potential financial, operational, legal, customer protection and security related risks that they are exposing themselves to vide its press releases dated 24 December, 2013 and February 1, 2017,” it added.The panel will also have representatives from department of economic affairs, department of financial services, department of revenue, home ministry, IT ministry, Reserve Bank of India, NITI Aayog and State Bank of India.The committee will take stock of the present status of virtual currencies both in India and globally, examine existing global regulatory and legal structures governing them, suggest measures on consumer protection, money laundering , etc; and examine any other relevant matter related to virtual currencies.","Dinesh Sharma, special secretary in the economic affairs department, will chair the nine-member committee to study framework on virtual currencies including bitcoins",16:49,Govt forms panel to study virtual currencies framework +2017-04-20,"Singapore: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has created a loyalty program for online shoppers in Singapore that it may expand to other markets, teaming up with Uber Technologies Inc. and Netflix Inc. to lure customers.It’s the first time Uber and Netflix have jointly created an online rewards program, said Maximilian Bittner, chief executive officer of Lazada Group SA, the Singapore-based e-commerce operator Alibaba acquired for $1 billion in 2016. The trio’s LiveUp programme starts Thursday and links their services, from UberEats and Netflix to online grocer RedMart and Alibaba’s Taobao online marketplace.Consumers pay S$28 ($20) a year to get benefits such as six months of Netflix streaming, discounts on Uber rides and free delivery on Taobao or Lazada purchases. A mobile app will be rolled out in the second half of the year.“Singapore is the market on the cutting edge of validating what we think consumers might want, so we will focus on Singapore first,” said Bittner, who expects to add more partners. He drew a comparison with code-sharing among carriers, which gives consumers a range of benefits like flight redemptions.Alibaba and its US partners are betting on the growth of online retail in Singapore.The city-state’s internet retailing market, which accounted for just 0.9% of total retail there in 2003, went from 2.4% in 2013 to 4.8% in 2016, according to data compiled by Euromonitor.Faced with the prospect of Amazon making a big push into Southeast Asia, Lazada has been seeking ways to defend its slice of the region’s e-commerce market.Bittner and RedMart co-founder Vikram Rupani hatched the loyalty programme over breakfast on Christmas Eve before approaching Netflix and Uber to get involved. “Their decision to do it was very fast because they have the same goal,” Bittner said. Bloomberg","Alibaba customers need to pay only $20 to get benefits such as Netflix streaming, discounts on Uber rides and free delivery on Alibaba’s Taobao or Lazada purchases",13:33,"Alibaba’s Singapore unit enlists Uber, Netflix to lure customers" +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: Mortgage lender Dewan Housing Finance Corp. Ltd (DHFL) plans to sell a majority stake in its Aadhar Housing Finance Ltd unit, two people aware of the development said. Aadhar Housing Finance, which provides housing loans for low- and middle-income customers, had a loan book of Rs1,736 crore as of 31 March 2016. DHFL has hired investment bank Rothschild to find a buyer, one of the two persons said on condition of anonymity.International Finance Corp. (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, holds about a 20% stake in Aadhar Housing.“The process has been just launched and it is too early to talk about potential investors. But, there would be serious interest from private equity investors,” the second person said, also on condition of anonymity. It was too early to talk about valuation, but it could be anywhere between 1.5-3 times the loan book, he added.Established in 2011, Aadhar Housing has operations in 13 states including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar, which account for 72% of India’s population, according to the company website. It lends to those with income levels of between Rs60,000 and Rs6 lakh per annum. Home loans are capped at Rs25 lakh. In FY15, Aadhar Housing’s loan book stood at Rs933 crore.Aadhar disbursed Rs1,032 crore in the first nine months of FY17.An email, text messages and several calls made to a DHFL spokesperson did not elicit any response. An email sent to IFC also did not elicit any response. A Rothschild spokesperson declined to comment.Housing credit growth slowed to 16% from a year earlier, taking overall housing credit to Rs13.7 trillion in the year ended 31 March from Rs12.4 trillion in the previous year, according to a March report by rating agency ICRA Ltd.The affordable housing segment is likely to continue to grow at a faster pace than the industry average, supported by the government’s efforts to address supply, demand and affordability issues. Higher allocations by the government, providing infrastructure status to affordable housing projects and extension of the credit-linked subsidy scheme, which, coupled with the current low-to-moderate penetration levels, are likely to help growth in the affordable housing segment, the ICRA report added.With the prospects of the luxury real estate market remaining bleak, more builders are shifting their focus to the affordable housing sector in India, which may create increased revenue for housing finance firms in India. Besides, the government’s push for affordable housing also created a boom in this space. A new credit-linked subsidy scheme for the middle-income group with a budget of Rs1,000 crore has been launched by the Union government. As part of its vision of ‘Housing for All by 2020’, credit-linked subsidy scheme was launched under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana programme targeted at the middle-income group earning as much as Rs18 lakh a year.Against the backdrop of increased demand in affordable housing , a handful of leading home financiers are raising funds. Discussions are on with private equity (PE) investors to raise money to meet expansion plans.In February, Mumbai-based Home First Finance Co. India Pvt. Ltd said private equity firm True North was in advanced talks to acquire a majority stake in Home First Finance for around $100 million. Shubham Housing Development Finance Co. Pvt. Ltd is looking to raise around $100 million from PE funds, as the company looks to increase its loan portfolio and expand its network nationally, Mint reported last year.Aspire Home Finance Corp. Ltd, the mortgage lending unit of Motilal Oswal Group, is also in the market to raise funds.Expanding its presence in a segment that offers loans for low-cost houses, IFC announced its plan to invest in three housing finance firms—Aspire Home Finance, Micro Housing Finance Corp., and Aptus Value Housing Finance India Ltd—through non-convertible debentures.The US-based PE fund Carlyle had purchased New Silk Route-controlled financial services firm Destimoney in February 2015, which also resulted in an indirect acquisition of a 49% stake in PNB Housing Finance Ltd.",Dewan Housing Finance has hired investment bank Rothschild to find a buyer for its 80% stake in Aadhar Housing Finance,08:47,Dewan Housing Finance may sell majority stake in Aadhar Housing Finance +2017-04-20,"New Delhi/Mumbai: India’s newest petrochemicals maker is seeking to sell half its $4.6 billion facility to Saudi Arabian Oil Co., according to people with knowledge of the matter.Formal talks between ONGC Petro additions Ltd (OPaL). and the world’s biggest oil exporter, known as Saudi Aramco, will start soon, said the people, who asked not to be named as the information isn’t public. OPaL’s earlier talks with a unit of Kuwait Petroleum Corp. about investing in the project stalled last year, the people said.A spokesman for OPaL was unable to comment. Saudi Aramco and Kuwait Petroleum didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.The investment could help Saudi Aramco strengthen its hand in the world’s largest oil consuming region as it prepares for what may be the biggest-ever initial public offering. India’s per capita consumption of polymer products, which is about a third of the global average, is expected to expand as a growing middle class, increasing income levels and higher urbanization drive growth, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said last month while inaugurating OPaL’s plant.“India’s petrochemical business is booming and Aramco will definitely want to be a part of this growth,” said Vaibhav Chowdhry, an analyst at KR Choksey Shares & Securities Pvt. Ltd. The country’s petrochemical market is expected to grow as fast as 12% annually for next several years, he said.Oil & Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC), which owns the biggest stake in OPaL, entered into a preliminary cooperation agreement in January 2014 with Petrochemical Industries Co., a subsidiary of state-owned Kuwait Petroleum. Talks between OPaL and PIC about the Kuwaiti company investing in the Indian project stalled last year, according to the people. OPaL hosted a team from Saudi Aramco at its plant in Gujarat last month, they said.Rising incomeHigher demand for these products prompted billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd and the nation’s biggest refiner Indian Oil Corp. to expand their petrochemicals businesses. Reliance invested about $19 billion to double the capacity of its petrochemicals unit, while Indian Oil will spend $4.6 billion to add new facilities and expand existing units.Saudi Aramco, which is the biggest supplier of crude oil to India, has shown interest in a proposed 60 million tonnes-a-year refinery and petrochemicals project being planned by Indian state refiners on the nation’s west coast, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on 30 March.The Saudi oil major has already invested in integrated refining, chemicals, marketing and distribution companies in the region. Last month, it bought half of a Malaysian oil refinery and petrochemical plant and signed a deal to provide up to 70% of its crude requirements. Separately, the Saudi oil giant signed a $6 billion oil refinery deal with Indonesia’s PT Pertamina.Dahej plantOPaL’s Rs30,000-crore petrochemical project is a dual-feed cracker with a capacity to produce 1.1 million tonnes a year of ethylene and 400,000 tonnes of propylene, according to its website. The plant, located at the Dahej Special Economic Zone, started production last year and aims to capture 13% of India’s polymer sector by next year, according to its website.While investment in OPaL will allow Aramco to access India’s growing market, the Indian company will be able to use the Saudi company’s export channels to push products in the international market, two of the people said. ONGC has said it intends to hold 26%, with state utility GAIL India Ltd owning 15.5%, after half of OPaL is sold. Bloomberg","Formal talks between ONGC Petro additions Ltd (OPaL), and the world’s biggest oil exporter, Saudi Aramco, will start soon",08:56,India said to woo Aramco for 50% OPaL sale as Kuwait talks stall +2017-04-12,"New Delhi: Public sector IDBI Bank said a section of employees who were to go on a one-day nationwide strike on Wednesday have called it off. “It is advised that proposed one-day nationwide strike on 12 April 2017 by united forum of IDBI officers and employees in support of their demands has been called off,” IDBI Bank said in a BSE filing. On Tuesday, the bank had informed about a day’s strike on 12 April 2017 to press their demand related with wage issues. The association had also written a letter to finance minister Arun Jaitley, seeking his intervention in the matter. “Yesterday there was a conciliation meeting in Mumbai held by the deputy chief labour commissioner and the management has been advised to finalise the wage revision settlement before May 8,” All India Bank Employees’ Association general secretary C. H. Venkatachalam said in a statement. In view of this, the strike to be observed on Wednesday has been deferred and the union has decided to attend bilateral talks to explore the possibility of settlement, he said. The bank’s stock was trading 0.99% lower at Rs75.30 apiece on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on Wednesday.",IDBI Bank says union planning a nationwide strike on 12 April has decided to attend bilateral talks to explore the possibility of settlement on wage issue ,14:54,"IDBI Bank union calls off strike, wage issues being discussed " +2017-04-12,"New Delhi: The income tax department on Tuesday asked financial institutions (FIs) to get self-certification from account holders by 30 April to comply with FATCA provision and avoid blocking of accounts.“The account holders may be informed that, in case self-certifications are not provided till 30 April 2017, the accounts would be blocked, which would mean that the financial institution would prohibit the account holder from effecting any transaction with respect to such accounts,” the CBDT said in a statement.The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) also advised all financial institutions that all efforts should be made by them to obtain self-certification. India had entered into an agreement with the United States for implementation of the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) with effect from 31 August 2015. Under the Income Tax Rules, the financial institutions had to obtain self-certification from account holders by 31 August 2016, in respect of all individual and entity accounts opened from 1 July 2014- 31 August 2015. In view of the difficulties faced by stakeholders, the tax department had on 31 August 2016, indefinitely extended the deadline for complying with self-certification norms. In today’s statement, the CBDT said queries were received from the financial institutions regarding the revised time lines for completion of due diligence. It said if the account is blocked due to lack of self-certification, then the transactions by the account holder in such blocked accounts will be permitted once the self-certification is obtained and due diligence is completed. Under the FATCA provisions, financial institutions are required to obtain self-certification and documentation or else they were required to close the accounts and report the same if found to be a “reportable account” as per the prescribed due diligence procedure for a pre-existing account.FATCA allows automatic exchange of financial information between India and the US.",Income tax department asks financial institutions to get self-certification from account holders by 30 April to comply with FATCA provision and avoid blocking of accounts,15:32,CBDT asks financial institutions to get accounts self-certified by 30 April +2017-04-12,"New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) “killed several birds with one stone” in its policy meet on 6 April by not sucking out excess liquidity with its permanent tool like open market operations (OMO) and cash reserve ratio (CRR) hike, an HSBC report says.According to the global financial services major, the RBI’s decision to narrow the policy rate corridor by raising the reverse repo rate and lowering the MSF (marginal standing facility) rate killed several birds with one stone. “The RBI seized the day on April 6 by not sucking out the excess liquidity via a permanent and blunt tool (like OMO sales or CRR hike). Instead, by outlining its inclination for ‘variable reverse repo auctions with a preference for longer term tenors’....,” HSBC said in a research note. “The RBI, in our view, had its ‘carpe diem’ moment... by not sucking out liquidity... Rather, it aims to mould it gently to give desirable behavioural change a fair shot,” the report added. The six-member monetary policy committee, headed by RBI governor Urjit Patel, on 6 April kept the repurchase or repo rate—at which it lends to banks—unchanged at 6.25% but increased reverse repo rate to 6% from 5.75%. The MSF, on the other hand, has been revised downwards by 0.25% to 6.5%. MSF is RBI’s overnight lending rate for banks against government securities. Following demonetisation, excess liquidity of around Rs4 trillion was sloshed around in the banking system and had distorted the short end of the yield curve, the report said.“Several short term money market rates such as the CBLO and the T-Bill rates had moved significantly below the repo rate. Pushing up the reverse repo rate is expected to raise these and bring back some normalcy,” HSBC added. There are, however, some risks associated with this move. The RBI has to be watchful of any inflationary pressures post a pick up in demand, and the central bank will also need to make sure that banks are not parking funds in unproductive or risky avenues, the note said.","RBI’s decision to narrow the policy rate corridor by raising the reverse repo rate and lowering the MSF rate killed several birds with one stone, says HSBC",15:30,RBI had ‘carpe diem’ moment in last policy meet: HSBC +2017-04-11,"Beijing: Alan Du, a venture capitalist and World Series of Poker veteran, was in his fifth day of matching wits against his stone-cold opponent— and his losses were piling up.His rival was literally inhuman. That’s because Du went up against “Lengpudashi” an updated version of the Libratus artificial intelligence program that achieved a major milestone by besting four of the world’s best poker pros in January. Housed within a super-computing centre near Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, its name, intended to resemble its English moniker, fittingly translates into “cold poker master.”Du and five team members played 36,000 hands against the machine over the course of five days. On Monday, at a resort conference centre on China’s Hainan island, the final point-based score was announced: the AI won by a landslide.Poker is a popular game among venture capitalists because “every hand you play is like a venture, trying to assess risk and ROI,” said Du, a seed investor who became the first mainland Chinese to win a WSOP gold bracelet in Las Vegas last year. “We held ourselves very well when playing against this world-class opponent.”Poker’s complex betting strategies and the element of bluffing make it particularly intriguing to AI researchers. A player also decides to bet, bluff or fold without ever seeing the opponent’s full hand—a different kind of challenge than games like chess or Go, in which all the pieces are clearly visible on a playing board.Du had tried to prevail where the pros had fallen short by employing an understanding of AI. Unlike the players in the January match-up who drew upon years of professional experience, Du’s Chinese team included engineers, computer scientists and investors, who attempted to apply their knowledge of machine intelligence and game theory to counter the machine’s moves. It wasn’t enough.The latest AI exhibition, organized by Sinovation Ventures and Hainan’s government, didn’t generate quite the same buzz as last year’s match-up between Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo and Korean master Lee Sedol in Seoul. Perhaps that’s because even casual observers are becoming accustomed to seeing AI software upstage humans. Google announced Monday its DeepMind AI software will take on top-ranked Chinese player Ke Jie in a rematch of man versus machine.Tuomas Sandholm, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon, has been honing the research underlying Libratus since 2004, honing its ability to make decisions in situations with imperfect information. The point of training AI to win at games like chess, Go, and poker isn’t for the sake of games themselves, but because controlled environments help computers hone strategic decision-making. Those reasoning skills can then be applied to real-world problems such as business, finance, and cybersecurity, he said.“People have a misunderstanding of what computers and people are each good at. People think that bluffing is very human—it turns out that’s not true,” said Noam Brown, Sandholm’s PhD student and a co-developer of Libratus. “A computer can learn from experience that if it has a weak hand and it bluffs, it can make more money.”The AI didn’t learn to bluff from mimicking successful human poker players, but from game theory. “Its strategies were computed from just the rules of the game,” not from analyzing historical data, Sandholm said.Venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee, founder of Sinovation and an event organizer, said the rapid acceleration of AI technology over the past five years wasn’t possible before the advent of big data analysis. His fund has invested $120 million in AI-related companies in China—including facial recognition and loan-application start-ups—and he plans to devote a significant chunk of the money he’s currently raising to other AI ventures.Also evident in the Hainan exhibition was the possibility of AI’s gradual democratization. Brown said the computing power on display over the competition could be had for under $20,000.“It’s surprisingly affordable,” he said. “Within 5 years, this could be running on smartphones.” Bloomberg",The latest version of the Libratus artificial intelligence program achieved a major milestone by besting four of the world’s best poker pros in January,14:10,"Poker-playing engineers take on AI machine, get thrashed" +2017-04-11,"
Bengaluru: Global information technology (IT) services spend in 2017 is projected to grow 2.3% to $917 billion, estimates Gartner Inc., lower than its earlier estimate of 4.2% and the 3.6% growth recorded in 2016, on account of protectionist policies, especially in the US.The lower IT services spend does not bode well for the country’s $150-billion software services sector which is already facing challenges posed by newer technologies, such as cloud computing and blockchain, making many companies alter the way they do business.Worldwide IT spend in 2017 is projected to grow 1.4% to $3.46 trillion, down from Gartner’s earlier forecast of 2.7% on account of the strength of the US dollar. Despite the revised guidance, overall IT spend globally will be 0.4% higher than last year. “The modest changes to the IT services forecast this quarter can be characterized as adjustments to particular geographies as a result of potential changes of direction anticipated regarding US policy—both foreign and domestic,” Gartner said in a press release on Monday.“The strong US dollar has cut $67 billion out of our 2017 IT spending forecast,” said John-David Lovelock, research vice-president at Gartner. “We expect these currency headwinds to be a drag on earnings of US-based multinational IT vendors through 2017.”The IT services market accounts for $21 billion of the $67 billion decline in Gartner’s latest estimate. Data centre systems, enterprise software and communication services are the three other segments that have now been estimated to grow at a slower pace than the earlier estimate, said Gartner. Personal computers, tablets and mobile phones, classified as devices, is the only segment which Gartner expects will grow at a faster pace. Since the start of the year, Indian IT firms have been rattled by some of the decisions made by the administration of President Donald Trump. In addition to some of the legislation aimed at changing the way America allows companies to bring in engineers from abroad, the new Trump administration has made two policy changes. In March, the US government did away with a provision that allowed fast-track processing of H-1B work visas. Earlier this month, the US put out a stricture asking companies when they bring in a foreign computer engineer under an H-1B visa to prove that the employee is performing a “speciality occupation”. Equity analysts said the protectionist measures could be worrisome for Indian IT firms. “This event shows that protectionist measures can be put in place even without passing new legislation and impact IT companies as early as in FY18,” Sagar Rastogi and Utsav Mehta, analysts at Ambit Capital, wrote in a 5 April note.In February this year, industry body Nasscom surprised many when it delayed giving a growth projection for 2017-18. Nasscom cited regulatory changes in the US and uncertain macroeconomic outlook as the reasons behind pushing back its annual growth estimates for the sector.","Gartner has lowered its growth estimates in global IT services spending due to US visa policy, automation and newer tech like cloud computing and blockchain",03:48,Gartner sees IT spending growing at a much lower 1.4% in 2017 +2017-04-11,"Singapore: Aliza Knox helped Twitter Inc. and Google Inc. build Asian businesses from scratch. Now she plans to do the same for an Australian mobile advertising start-up whose backers include 21st Century Fox Inc. co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch.Knox quit as Twitter’s most senior Asian executive this month to join Unlockd, a company that offers users a discount on wireless bills, additional data or entertainment content if they agree to view ads when unlocking their device screens. As chief operating officer, the former Google executive will spearhead the start-up’s global expansion.The Melbourne-based firm, which got off the ground in 2014, joins a growing list of companies—from Amazon.com Inc. to startup Jana—targeting a global mobile advertising market that researcher eMarketer expects to reach $101 billion in 2016.“They are totally aggressive about the business and getting things done,” said Knox, who hails from the San Francisco Bay area and worked at Boston Consulting and Visa before joining Google, mostly in Singapore and Australia. “But they also have the humility that this is a competitive environment.”Unlockd now reaches about a million users through partnerships with carriers such as Boost Mobile, a subsidiary of Sprint Corp., Tesco Mobile Ltd in the UK and Digicel Group Ltd in the Caribbean. It works with advertisers including Uber, McDonald’s, British Airways and Doritos, and its content partners include Twitter, Yahoo and the Facebook Audience Network.The company is now in talks with carriers to expand into several new markets, including India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, company co-founder and chief executive officer Matt Berriman said. Unlockd may eventually set up a regional office in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, he added.“We expect at least two or three markets to be launched in the next six to nine months,” Berriman said in a phone interview. The company, which has raised about A$25 million ($19 million), plans to announce the closing of its Series B round in coming weeks, he added. New investors as well as existing backers joined the round, he said. Unlockd’s backers include Peter Gammell, former CEO of Seven Group Holdings.Berriman, 32, met Knox over drinks in December at a restaurant across from the Twitter building in San Francisco. They were introduced by a headhunter who thought Knox’s management experience could come in handy at Unlockd. What appealed to Knox about the Australian start-up were its strong growth potential and culture. “What I love doing and I have proven to be good at doing is taking companies from almost nothing to a really significant presence,” Knox said. “Unlockd has a tremendous growth potential.” Bloomberg",Aliza Knox quit as Twitter’s most senior Asian executive this month to join Australian mobile advertising start-up Unlockd,08:39,Twitter’s former Asian chief joins mobile ad start-up Unlockd +2017-04-11,"San Francisco/ Washington: Qualcomm Inc. accused Apple Inc. of lying to regulators to spur investigations of the chipmaker, and threatening it to cover up the use of inferior parts in some iPhones.The world’s largest maker of phone semiconductors responded to a January lawsuit from Apple with counterclaims for damages late Monday, alleging the iPhone maker breached contractual pledges, mischaracterized their agreements and misrepresented facts.“We were really stunned by some of the things that they included in their suit,” said Qualcomm’s General Counsel, Don Rosenberg. “This is our attempt to respond to some disturbing elements in their complaint.”At the heart of the worsening standoff is a commercial dispute over how much Qualcomm is entitled to charge phone makers to use its patented technology, whether or not they use its chips. The San Diego, California-based company gets the majority of its profit from licensing technology that covers the fundamentals of all modern mobile phone systems. Qualcomm shares are down 12% since Apple sued 20 January, wiping more than $10 billion off the chipmaker’s market value.Apple is alone among major handset makers in not paying Qualcomm directly and has instead paid through contract manufacturers in Asia who build the iPhone. It’s now meddling in the legal agreements Qualcomm has with those suppliers, including Foxconn Technology Co. as it pressures the chipmaker to cut a more favourable deal on licensing fees, Rosenberg said.According to Qualcomm, Apple is behind regulatory investigations of its business practices worldwide. Cupertino, California-based Apple has lobbied with “false and misleading statements to induce regulators to take action against us because it would be in their commercial interests,” Rosenberg said.In December South Korea’s antitrust regulator slapped a record 1.03 trillion won ($902 million) fine on Qualcomm for violating antitrust laws. Then, in January, the US Federal Trade Commission accused it in a lawsuit of forcing Apple to use its chips exclusively in return for lower licensing fees and unfairly cutting out competitors. It’s also facing investigations in Europe and Taiwan.Apple filed its antitrust complaint 20 January in Qualcomm’s hometown of San Diego, accusing the chipmaker of illegally trying to control the market for chips and improperly withholding more than $1 billion in “rebates” to punish the iPhone-maker for talking to Korean regulators.Apple sought to have its case joined with one filed by the US Federal Trade Commission in Northern California.The FTC has also accused Qualcomm of illegally maintaining a monopoly for semiconductors in mobile phones. Apple’s request was denied 5 April. Qualcomm is now trying to have the FTC case dismissed.In addition to the $1 billion in withheld fees, Apple is seeking billions more in compensation for what it calls past overcharges, and lower royalties going forward.Qualcomm says Apple has soured a decade worth of working together and has threatened Qualcomm, to try to prevent it from publicly speaking about the performance of the iPhone 7. Some models of that device rely on Intel Corp. modems for their connections to phone networks and, according to Qualcomm, aren’t as good as the ones that use its modems.“We didn’t ask for this fight. Apple is a customer,” said Rosenberg. “We, of course, would like to continue to and will continue to do business with Apple.”While Apple’s iPhone revolutionised the smartphone industry in 2007 with its sleek design and user-friendly apps, none of them would have worked without the foundational technology developed by Qualcomm and other companies, Rosenberg said.He said Qualcomm gets “a small fraction” of the price of an iPhone, and contrasted that with the more than $1 billion Apple sought from rival Samsung Electronics Co. over the use of patented features like a pinching motion to expand or contract images.Qualcomm said it’s been the biggest contributor to the standardized technology that forms the foundation of all modern telecommunications.All companies that developed the standards pledged to license patents on those standards on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.Regulators and courts worldwide have been struggling with how to interpret that pledge, including how to calculate royalties and what rights the patent owners retain when it comes to recalcitrant would-be licensees. Qualcomm is seeking court rulings that it complied with its obligations and that its agreements with contractors follow licensing commitments. It also wants the court to rule that it’s Apple who’s been in breach of contract and that it’s engaged in unfair competition. Bloomberg",At the heart of the standoff between Apple and Qualcomm is a commercial dispute over how much the latter is entitled to charge phone makers to use its patented technology,10:26,Qualcomm accuses Apple of lying to regulators and making threats +2017-04-10,"San Francisco: Past cyber attacks on scores of organizations around the world were conducted with top-secret hacking tools that were exposed recently by the Web publisher Wikileaks, the security researcher Symantec Corp. said on Monday.That means the attacks were likely conducted by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The files posted by WikiLeaks appear to show internal CIA discussions of various tools for hacking into phones, computers and other electronic gear, along with programming code for some of them, and multiple people familiar with the matter have told Reuters that the documents came from the CIA or its contractors.Symantec said it had connected at least 40 attacks in 16 countries to the tools obtained by WikiLeaks, though it followed company policy by not formally blaming the CIA.The CIA has not confirmed the Wikileaks documents are genuine. But agency spokeswoman Heather Fritz Horniak said that any WikiLeaks disclosures aimed at damaging the intelligence community “not only jeopardize US personnel and operations, but also equip our adversaries with tools and information to do us harm. “It is important to note that CIA is legally prohibited from conducting electronic surveillance targeting individuals here at home, including our fellow Americans, and CIA does not do so,” Horniak said.She declined to comment on the specifics of Symantec’s research.The CIA tools described by Wikileaks do not involve mass surveillance, and all of the targets were government entities or had legitimate national security value for other reasons, Symantec researcher Eric Chien said ahead of Monday’s publication. In part because some of the targets are US allies in Europe, “there are organizations in there that people would be surprised were targets,” Chien said. Symantec said sectors targeted by operations employing the tools included financial, telecommunications, energy, aerospace, information technology, education, and natural resources.Besides Europe, countries were hit in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. One computer was infected in the US in what was likely an accident - the infection was removed within hours. All the programs were used to open back doors, collect and remove copies of files, rather than to destroy anything.The eavesdropping tools were created at least as far back as 2011 and possibly as long ago as 2007, Chien said. He said the WikiLeaks documents are so complete that they likely encompass the CIA’s entire hacking toolkit, including many taking advantage of previously unknown flaws. The CIA is best-known for its human intelligence sources and analysis, not vast electronic operations. For that reason, being forced to build new tools is a setback but not a catastrophe.It could lead to awkward conversations, however, as more allies realize the Americans were spying and confront them.Separately, a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers on Saturday released another batch of pilfered National Security Agency (NSA) hacking tools, along with a blog post criticizing President Donald Trump for attacking Syria and moving away from his conservative political base. It is unclear who is behind the Shadow Brokers or how the group obtained the files. Reuters","Symantec says it connected at least 40 attacks in 16 countries to the tools obtained by WikiLeaks, though it followed company policy by not formally blaming the CIA",20:08,Symantec attributes 40 cyber attacks to CIA-linked hacking tools +2017-04-11,"
I left India for America as a post-graduate student in the late 1980s. In those days, the issuance of an H-1B visa to employees of Indian firms to enter America to work without having first studied at an American university was unheard of.Most Indians went to America as students on what was called an F1 visa. The line outside the US Consulate in Madras would start to form around 2am; no appointments were given, and visa interviews were on a first-come, first-served basis.Many of these Indian students opted to stay back in the US; their US employers filed for H-1Bs on their behalf—employing them after they had finished Master’s or PhD courses from an American university.The flood of H-1B visa holders who came in directly from India without first getting an American degree started in earnest only in the mid 1990s.The American-schooled Indian F1 crowd sneered at these new arrivals, and derisively referred to them as “FOB” or “fresh off the boat” Indians.The H-1B holders came up with their own unkind epithet about their American-schooled Indian brethren, calling them “coconuts”. I trust that this insult will need no further explanation if I simply ask you to look at the different hues on the inside and the outside of a coconut.In those years, the main impediment to “fresh off the boat” Indian programmers was that many Americans would complain about their Eastern, non-linear way of thinking, and bemoan the lack of quality in their work.None doubted their individual competence and sheer brilliance at raw programming, but the quality of the finished product when stitched together was doubtful. This was in contrast to America’s almost Germanic obsession with process, which, luckily for us coconuts, we had imbibed during our periods of study at American universities.The Indian IT services industry quickly caught on to this, and set about transforming themselves with zeal. They entered the cocoon of Carnegie-Mellon University’s ‘SEI’ or Software Engineering Institute’s ‘CMM’ or Capability and Maturity Model as chrysalises and emerged with wings, stamped with a CMM Level 5 certification.Any organization that received this certification could claim to be the best in the world when it came to the quality of their software engineering processes—and if my memory serves me right, when I returned to India in 2002, there were over 60 CMM Level 5 certified organizations in India, compared with a low single-digit number in the West. The “low quality” objection from American companies simply disappeared. Urban legend has it that Jack Welch, when speaking of General Electric’s large scale move into India and its use of Indian outsourcers, remarked, “We came for the cost, but stayed for the quality.”This was all very well in the 1990s and the noughties—an age when processes around computer engineering had emerged from the Neanderthal world of computer assembly language and machine-level coding into a process famously called the “waterfall process” of computer programming—a logical, sequential method for designing and developing software, more suited to the world of Homo Sapiens-Sapiens.The waterfall method begins with gathering the user’s requirements for the programme, after which the process moves into system architecture and design before it is handed over to the programmers.The programmers then write the requisite computer code before handing it over to the testers, who test each unit of code, as well as the entire programme. The finished programme is then tested by users for acceptance before a final “regression” test checks how it will interact with other computer programmes already in use.Only after a programme has passed all stages of the cascades in this waterfall process is it finally released into an “always-on” environment. The quantity of computer code was simply measured in how many thousands of lines of coding instructions a computer programme contained, and the elegance of the waterfall process allowed for CMM to easily be the arbiter of quality in what was a logical sequence of events. There have been variations on the waterfall process in the past two decades. The mid 1990s saw a move to “object-oriented” programming, which was less tightly organized around logic, and more around actual actions, and computer code came to be measured in “function points” rather than in thousands of lines of code.Methods such as “Agile” and “Dev-Ops” have been all the rage recently. I shall not delve into a detailed explanation of each of these so as not to bore you, and because I don’t understand them fully. But, as computer programming moves from the world of Homo Sapiens-Sapiens into the Artificially Intelligent world of sapient machines which can program themselves, new methods of checking for the quality and integrity of computer coding capabilities are the need of the hour. The added dimension of the cyber-security of the code and the associated data only magnify this need.Unsurprisingly, an organization is now trying to take on this mantle. The Consortium for IT Software Quality, or CISQ, is a sponsored special interest group founded jointly by the SEI at Carnegie-Mellon University and the Object Management Group. CISQ is chartered to create international standards for measuring the size and structural quality of software after analysing the actual computer source code written for Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and “bot” programmes, rather than the various processes used to build these programmes, and regardless of whether the code is generated by a human or a computer.The executive director of CISQ, Bill Curtis, led the development of the CMM model while at the SEI, and the organization is now trying to build credence as an arbiter of software quality. Its heritage, and its pivot down to the source code level while ignoring the various programming processes, means that it has a high chance of success.Siddharth Pai is a world-renowned technology consultant who has led over $20 billion in complex, first-of-a-kind outsourcing transactions.","As computer programming moves into the Artificially Intelligent world, new methods of checking for the quality and integrity of computer coding capabilities are needed",00:53,Quality in the age of quantum computing +2017-04-10,"Washington: The advance of technology is the biggest reason workers are earning a shrinking slice of the income pie, according to a new study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).Labour’s share of national income declined in 29 of the world’s 50 biggest economies between 1991 and 2014, the IMF said in a study released Monday.Analysis suggests “technology is the largest contributor to the change in labour shares in the large majority of countries,” it said.The second main component of income is capital. When wages grow more slowly than productivity, labour’s share of income falls as the owners of capital reap gains at a quicker pace. That often worsens income inequality because capital tends to be concentrated in the hands of a few, the IMF said in a blog accompanying the research.The IMF’s finding is significant because economists have been debating what’s to blame for decades of sluggish wage growth. President Donald Trump has blamed trade with countries such as China and Mexico for hurting American workers and hollowing out the nation’s manufacturing sector. The IMF study suggests technology is a bigger driver.About half the decline in national labour shares can be traced to the impact of technology, according to the study, which is part of the World Economic Outlook. The full outlook, including the fund’s forecasts for global growth, will be released 18 April in Washington.Workplace robotsThe study notes the rapid advance of information and communications technology has accelerated the automation of routine tasks, causing firms to substitute capital for workers.Global economic integration has also played a part in labour’s declining share of income, the IMF said. The impact of changes in policies and institutions appears to be limited, though it’s difficult to say how much of the slump has to do with the decline of labour unions, according to the fund.The IMF has warned before of the threat from the growing use of robots. A paper by fund economists in September drew on science fiction as well as economic analysis to show the likely “profound negative implications” for income distribution of increased automation. It even depicted an extreme scenario, or singularity, “in which capital takes over the entire economy to the exclusion of labour.” Bloomberg","Analysis suggests technology is the largest contributor to the change in workers’ income share in the large majority of countries, according to a new study by the IMF",20:18,"Technology hits workers’ income share more than trade, IMF says" +2017-04-11,"New Delhi: India’s annual fuel demand is estimated to grow at 5.8% in the fiscal year 2017-18 higher than the previous year, government data showed on Tuesday, indicating improved industrial activity.Local fuel demand—a proxy for oil demand—in India rose about 5% in 2016-17 as economy slowed in the March quarter after government scraped old notes.Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November declared notes of Rs500 and Rs1,000 illegal tender, taking about 86% of total currency out of circulation, in a move that hit sales of cars and motorcycles.India is likely to consume 205.4 million tonnes of refined fuel in 2017/18, data posted on the website of the petroleum ministry’s Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell showed.“We expect slightly better than 5% growth in 2017/18, only risk is GST (goods and service tax) related. Implementation of GST could slow industrial activity in the small and medium industries and that could dampen diesel demand,” said K. Ravichandran, senior vice-president at ratings agency ICRA Ltd.From 1 July, New Delhi aims to roll out GST, one of the most significant reforms since India opened its economy in the early 1990s. The tax will harmonise a mosaic of state and central levies into a national sales tax.Diesel demand is estimated to grow 3.8% while that of petrol seen rising about 10% in this fiscal year, the data showed, reflecting robust demand for passenger vehicles.A gradual step up in gas demand and improved electricity supply could impact consumption of gasoil in the country. However, gasoil use is still expected to be higher than the last year driven by rising vehicle sales.India is promoting use of liquefied petroleum gas, used for cooking, to replace kerosene and that would raise sale of the cleaner fuel. Reuters",Local fuel demand—a proxy for oil demand—in India rose about 5% in 2016-17 as economy slowed in the March quarter after demonetisation,22:31,India’s 2017-18 fuel demand seen up 5.8%: Govt +2017-04-11,"Bengaluru: The Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) on Tuesday approved an 8% hike in tariff in 2017-18 for all categories of consumers in order to bridge a revenue gap for the previous fiscal, mitigate power purchase costs and an increase thermal power fuel costs. KERC cleared an 8% hike against a demand of 25% by electricity supply companies. Justifying the tariff hike, it said it was needed to cover the revenue gap of Rs2,616 crore. Karnataka has been forced to procure costlier short-term power due to reduced availability of cheaper hydel power owing to poor monsoon, the commission said.The new tariffs will come into effect retrospectively from 1 April.",Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission cleared an 8% hike against a demand of 25% by power supply companies,23:10,Karnataka hikes power tariffs by 8% +2017-04-11,"London: Technology that uses flying drones to generate electricity from wind is getting a boost from the German utility E.ON, which is backing a test project that may show if it can help cut the costs of producing power offshore.The machines stay airborne like kites to tap the energy of high-altitude wind currents. The force of the wind would push forward the drones, which would tug at a cable anchored to drive a power turbine. The technology still is in its early stages, with a handful of pilot projects around the world, including one bought up by Alphabet Inc. in 2013.“E.ON has been looking into airborne wind technologies for five years, and we believe it has true game-changing potential,” said Frank Meyer, a senior vice-president at the utility. “It supports one of our overall targets to drive down the cost of renewable energy, and also allowing production of renewable energy at locations where it is currently not economically and technically feasible.”E.ON believes the industry could take off in the first half of the 2020s, according to spokesman Markus Nitschke. The company is planning to be an early adopter of the technology, he said by e-mail. Airborne energy is projected to be cheaper than the mainstream form of offshore wind power if it is commercialized, partly because it doesn’t use as much material.Costly foundationsFoundations and towers for traditional wind turbines make up about 30% of the capital required to install the equipment offshore, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Moving into deeper waters further off the coast will increase these costs, although the windier conditions may balance this out by driving the turbines more often.ALSO READ: Renewables surpass other energy sources in capacity addition in FY17The drones are also expected to have a higher capacity factor because they fly higher where the winds are stronger, meaning they would produce power more often, according to Udo Zillmann, head of the Airborne Wind Energy Industry Network.“Based on tests by E.ON, the capacity factor is about 70%,” Zillmann said. “Operating offshore wind parks are less than 50%. Based on that and the lower development costs, the end goal could be to halve the cost of offshore wind energy.”Dutch developerE.ON is working with Ampyx Power, a Dutch developer, on the project. E.ON will build and operate a demonstration site for airborne wind energy in northwestern Ireland, which Ampyx will use for its current trial and the next version of its machine, which it hopes will be commercialized. The company expects to start testing by mid-2018. E.ON wants multiple companies to use the site eventually.The German utility previously invested in another airborne wind energy developer known as Kite Power Systems, or KPS. Last December, the utility, Schlumberger Ltd. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s venture fund jointly put £5 million ($6.2 million) into the UK company.“While in principle we are technology-agnostic, we consider this cooperation with Ampyx Power a major step in our efforts to take a leading role in furthering the promising emerging airborne wind energy sector,” Meyer said. Bloomberg",The German utility E.ON is backing a drone project in which the machines stay airborne like kites to tap the energy of high-altitude wind currents,16:55,Flying drones that generate power from wind get backing from German firm E.ON +2017-04-11,"New Delhi: People in Himatnagar area in Gujarat get the most uninterrupted power supply in the country, while residents of Mankachar in Assam grapple with an average 188 instances of power cuts a month.According to Urban Jyoti Abhiyaan or Urja, the power ministry’s application tracking service delivery to consumers in towns across the country, Kerala, Maharashtra and Rajasthan top the list in supplying uninterrupted power, while Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Assam have a lot to catch up.The Urja application meant to bring transparency in the performance of utilities and states captures the stark contrast in how consumers are served in different parts of the country. Data up to the town level on parameters like the number of power cuts in a month, the duration, severity of power theft and pending consumer complaints and connection requests put pressure on states to improve service delivery at the last mile of the electricity value chain.In Maharashtra and Gujarat, power supply is disrupted for only up to three hours on an average in a month, while the average monthly power outage duration in Haryana is a crippling 48 hours. Data at town level is captured to compute the state average. Bhavnagar in Gujarat and Erandol, a town in Jalgaon district in Maharashtra, have the least power outages of 0.16 hours in a month, while it is 253 hours in Karimganj in Assam.Andhra Pradesh has reported the least amount of power theft, while it is the highest in Uttar Pradesh. There were no pending requests for power connection in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Sikkim and Tripura in March 2017, while 84% of requests were pending in Goa in the same month.Utility performance varies across states as power distribution is often influenced by political considerations that prevent tough reform measures relating to pricing and power theft which in turn affect utilities’ ability to invest further in technology to boost efficiency and service quality.Union power minister Piyush Goyal is set to launch a related application ‘Urja Mitra’ on Tuesday allowing utilities to inform consumers about power outages. A rural feeder monitoring scheme, also to be launched on Tuesday, will track the quality of power supply in rural areas.State-power utilities are at present going through a debt restructure and turnaround scheme which involves reducing power theft and eliminating the gap between their average cost of power supply and the average revenue realized. State governments, which took over three-fourths of the accumulated debt of distribution companies, are keeping a close watch on the performance milestones. According to Sambitosh Mohapatra, partner, energy utilities and mining, PwC India, as the demand for power picks up and the gap between cost of service to revenue realised is bridged, many utilities will become profitable in the next two-three years.","Government’s Urja app shows Jharkhand, Uttarakhand and Assam lag in supplying uninterrupted power",13:00,"Kerala, Maharashtra, Rajasthan top list in providing uninterrupted power: Urja app" +2017-04-10,"Seoul: Google Inc. has offered to invest at least 1 trillion won ($880.29 million) to help South Korea’s LG Display Co. Ltd boost output of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens for smartphones, the Electronic Times reported on Monday citing unnamed sources. The paper said Google offered the investment to secure a stable supply of flexible OLED screens for its next Pixel smartphones. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd’s flagship Galaxy smartphones use the bendable displays, while Apple Inc. is expected to start using them in at least some of its next iPhones. LG Display declined to comment, while Google could not be immediately reached for comment. Reuters","Google offered the investment to secure a stable supply of flexible OLED screens for its next Pixel smartphones, says a report by the paper",11:14,Google offers at least $880 million to LG Display for OLED investment: report +2017-04-11,"
Mumbai: An infrastructure fund of Australia’s Macquarie Group Ltd has agreed to buy about 330 megawatts (MW) of operational solar assets from power producer Hindustan Powerprojects Pvt. Ltd for an enterprise value of $600 million, said two people familiar with the discussions. The deal, which will give Macquarie an entry into India’s renewable energy sector, is in an advanced stage of completion and an agreement has been signed, these people said, asking not to be named as the discussions are private. Macquarie Asia Infrastructure Fund (MAIF) will hold a 100% stake in these assets, which are spread across 18 special purpose vehicles, largely in the state of Gujarat, these people said. The projects have been operational since 2010 and have thus signed power purchase agreements at tariffs higher than the prevailing solar energy tariffs. The Macquarie Group declined to comment. A spokesman for Hindustan Powerprojects also declined comment. Of the $600 million deal value, $250 million is the equity value and about $350 million is the debt associated with the projects, one of the two people cited above said. Macquarie wants to create a renewable energy portfolio consisting of solar and wind projects in India and is simultaneously on the lookout for other assets, this person said. The deal comes at a time when merger and acquisition activity in the sector has heightened and several clean power producers are looking for growth capital. Hindustan Powerprojects, formerly Moser Baer Projects Pvt. Ltd, currently operates about 600MW of solar power capacity under subsidiary Hindustan Cleanenergy and led by its chairman Ratul Puri. The firm also operates a 1,200MW coal-fired plant in Madhya Pradesh, in which a Macquarie and State Bank of India fund have previously invested Rs580 crore. Mint had reported last month that Macquarie and Hindustan Powerprojects were in talks for the sale of about 320MW in solar assets. Delhi-based Hindustan Powerprojects, formed in 2008, was among the first firms to set up solar projects in India. It plans to reach 2 gigawatts (GW) in total solar capacity by 2017 end and has a target of hitting 7GW of total capacity by 2020 from coal, solar and hydel power sources. Macquarie is a leading owner and operator of infrastructure assets globally. Since starting its first infrastructure fund in India along with the State Bank of India in 2009, Macquarie has deployed about $2 billion in India’s infrastructure sector. It invested through Macquarie-SBI Infrastructure Fund and infrastructure trust SBI-Macquarie Infrastructure Trust till 2013. It has been investing from MAIF I since 2014. Private equity firm Blackstone Group Lp, which had invested about $300 million in Hindustan Powerprojects in August 2010 and holds more than 30% in the firm, may consider exiting its stake in 2017 through a public listing of the power firm, Mint had reported on 31 December 2015. In fiscal year 2017, India added 5,526MW of new solar capacity (up 83% from the previous year) and 5,400MW of new wind capacity (up 63%), according to consultancy Bridge Io India. “While these numbers are impressive, it is worth noting that the solar capacity addition including rooftop solar is almost 50% below the annual target of 12,000MW. In contrast, wind capacity addition was +35% over the 4,000MW target,” Bridge To India said in a note on Monday. India’s renewable energy market will need $200 billion in investments to reach its target of 100GW of solar energy and 60GW of wind energy by 2022. There is currently over 10GW of solar capacity and 32GW of wind capacity installed across the country.",The acquisition of solar power assets of Hindustan Powerprojects gives Australia’s Macquarie Group an entry into India’s renewable energy sector,03:29,Macquarie to acquire solar power assets of Hindustan Powerprojects in $600 mn deal +2017-04-11,"
New Delhi: The Automotive Research Association of India (Arai) has successfully tested lithium-ion batteries developed by the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre for use in two- and three-wheelers, a development that is expected to provide a fillip to India’s electric vehicles (EV) push.The government is now planning to transfer the technology to companies for commercial production of these batteries, and will also set up a central agency to lead the country’s EV programme. This was decided at a meeting chaired by road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday. India’s initiatives on solar energy and electric vehicles are closely linked. The country plans to generate 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 100GW is to come from solar power projects. With storage being the next frontier for India’s clean energy push, the batteries in EVs offer a potential solution.India’s EV programme would help with grid balancing, besides complementing the government’s push for solar power, which is generated during the day and can be stored in EV batteries. “The technology should be transferred to companies in the private or public sector or joint ventures for commercial production of batteries. Bhel (Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd) is interested, but more companies should be roped in,” a government official said, requesting anonymity.Bhel is exploring the feasibility of manufacturing cells and batteries with technology developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (Isro) for application in electric vehicles, as reported by Mint on 31 March. Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre is part of Isro.Enthused by the market potential for EVs in India, state-owned firms such as Bhel, Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd (PGCIL) and NTPC Ltd are looking at new businesses catering to the space. While Bhel, India’s largest power generation equipment maker, wants to manufacture electric vehicles such as buses, cars, two-wheelers and boats, PGCIL, the power transmission utility responsible for establishing green energy transmission corridors, is considering setting up charging stations for EVs.Also, Vedanta Resources Plc is firming up its clean energy plans for India, encouraged by the opportunities offered by the country’s growing green economy. As part of the strategy, the firm is looking at developing battery storage solutions. “The need for bringing all issues related to non-polluting vehicles under one agency was also pointed out. At present, there are multiple agencies involved,” added the official cited earlier.Experts say solar power and EVs are a great combination.“EV on a clean fuel source is a better option for India. It is very important to have an enabling provision and one agency to spearhead the programme. There should also be continuous innovation to bring the cost of battery down and enabling support for infrastructure such as charging stations. It should be available across the country within a definitive time frame in order for EVs to take off as a mass product,” said Abdul Majeed, partner and national auto practice leader, PricewaterhouseCoopers.Queries emailed to cabinet secretariat, ministries of road transport and highways, Isro and the department of space late on Sunday evening remained unanswered. Arai director Rashmi Urdhwareshe didn’t respond to phone calls or a text message.The Friday meeting was also attended by cabinet secretary P.K. Sinha, road transport and highways secretary Sanjay Mitra, secretary in department of space Alur Seelin Kiran Kumar, director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre K. Sivan and Arai’s Urdhwareshe.Any shift to electric vehicles will help reduce pollution and fuel imports. India’s energy import bill is expected to double from around $150 billion to $300 billion by 2030. The government has been trying to push sales of electric vehicles and has set an ambitious target of selling six million by 2020.",The government is planning to transfer the battery technology to companies for commercial production,03:29,Batteries developed by Isro may be used in India’s electric vehicles +2017-04-08,"Washington: A federal US agency responsible for processing of H 1B application for foreign IT professionals on Saturday said it has reached the congressionally mandated 65,000 visa cap for the 2018 fiscal year.“US Citizenship and Immigration Services has reached the congressionally mandated 65,000 visa H 1B cap for fiscal year 2018,” an official announcement said. Also Read: H1B visa: IT investors may as well say goodbye to recovery in FY18US Citizenship and Immigration Services has also received a sufficient number of H1B visa petitions to meet the 20,000 visa US advanced degree exemption, also known as the master’s cap, the statement said. However, unlike previous years, it did not say how it is going to determine the successful applications, which in the past had been through a computerized draw of lots.PTI","US Citizenship and Immigration Services responsible for processing of H1B application says it has reached the congressionally mandated 65,000 visa cap for the 2018 fiscal year",09:39,H1B visa application caps reached +2017-04-10,"Delhi/Mumbai: Iran will cut some benefits to Indian state-run refiners on crude purchases after New Delhi decided to reduce the amount of oil it buys from the Persian Gulf nation, people with knowledge of the matter said.National Iranian Oil Co. will cut the credit period on crude oil sales to 60 days from 90 days for refiners such as Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd. and Indian Oil Corp., the people said, asking not be identified as the matter isn’t public yet. Iran will also reduce the discounts it offers on the shipping of crude to 60% from 80%, they added.The lower incentives will make Iranian purchases costlier and less competitive in a world awash with crude oil where rivals such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq are seeking to expand their market share. Iran’s crude sales to India more than doubled in 2016 after the lifting of sanctions over its nuclear program. India is Iran’s second biggest customer and the emerging center of global oil demand.India in turn, is using the supply glut to put pressure on Tehran for securing development rights to the Farzad-B gas field in the Persian Gulf, which was discovered by an Indian consortium led by ONGC Videsh Ltd. about a decade ago. Iran and India were aiming to conclude an agreement on developing the field by February. The South Asian nation, which stood by Iran during the sanctions, is seeking to invest as much as $20 billion in Iran’s energy industry and ports.Cutting purchasesIndian state-run refiners told Iran last month that they would cut oil purchases by 3 million tons during the financial year that started 1 April, the people said. MRPL and Indian Oil will reduce imports by 1 million tons each, while Hindustan Petroleum Corp. and Bharat Petroleum Corp. will cut purchases by about half a million tons each, according to the people.India’s overall oil imports from the Persian Gulf nation touched 19.8 million tons during April-December last year, compared with 12.7 million tons in the 2015-16 financial year, according to oil ministry data.Iran’s oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said “there are many other customers” if India decides to cut imports, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported on 5 April. Reuters earlier reported Indian state refiners will cut oil imports from Iran by a fifth.India’s oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said 6 April that it’s up to the state refiners to decide on Iran crude volumes.MRPL spokesman Prashanth Baliga couldn’t comment immediately, while an Indian Oil spokesman declined to comment. National Iranian Oil Co.’s public relations office in Tehran didn’t respond to an email and two calls seeking comment. Bloomberg","Iran may cut the credit period on crude oil sales to IOC, MRPL to 60 days from 90 and reduce the discounts on shipping of crude to 60% from 80%, people familiar with the matter said",04:43,"Iran said to cut benefits on oil sales to India’s IOC, MRPL after reduced import" +2017-04-10,"New Delhi: India’s fuel demand fell 0.6% in March compared with the same month last year.Consumption of fuel, a proxy for oil demand, totalled 17.36 million tonnes, data from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) of the oil ministry showed.Sales of gasoline, or petrol, were 2.95 higher from a year earlier at 2.11 million tonnes.Cooking gas or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) sales increased 1.9% to 1.89 million tonnes, while naphtha sales surged 1.8% to 1.15 million tonnes.Sales of bitumen, used for making roads, were 12.25 lower, while fuel oil use edged lower 23.45 in March.","Consumption of fuel, a proxy for oil demand, totalled 17.36 million tonnes, data from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) of the oil ministry showed",12:32,India’s fuel demand fell 0.6% year-on-year in March +2017-04-10,"
Mumbai: Finnish state-run utility Fortum Oyj’s India unit, which last year drove down solar power tariff to a new low, will set up at least 250 megawatts (MW) of solar capacity in the country every year, managing director Sanjay Aggarwal said.The local unit of Fortum will also enter the waste-to-energy sector and launch charging stations for electric vehicles to gain a larger hold in India’s renewable energy sector, Aggarwal said.Exactly a year ago, Fortum said it would invest €200-400 million (Rs1,500-3,000 crore) in India’s solar energy sector to set up some large-scale greenfield projects. The company will have about 200MW of solar energy capacity operational by August. It has a target of achieving 1GW of solar capacity in the next few years. The company plans to set up its solar projects across utility plants, business-to-business, and rooftop projects, Aggarwal said. “We will keep on bidding for new projects and our appetite would be to add about 250MW every year,” Aggarwal said. “In India, we are looking at four pillars: the first would remain solar, second would be the bio-ethanol plant, we want the third to be in waste to energy, and fourth, we want to launch charging stations for e-vehicles. But the engine of Fortum India will be solar.”The company’s bid for a solar project in a Rajasthan auction last year drove tariffs to a low of Rs4.34 per kilowatt-hour. Solar tariffs have this year fallen to a record-low of Rs3.30 a unit on a levelized basis—i.e., a value financially equivalent to the tariffs over the period of the power purchase agreement.The parent had last year bought a majority stake in a company called Chempolis Ltd, which has a memorandum of understanding with Numaligarh refinery for putting up a bioethanol plant. The plant would collect bamboo from across Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur and convert the cellulose to ethanol, which would then be blended with petroleum products. “There are no success stories in India so far in waste-to-energy, a bedrock of Fortum in the Nordics... We would like to position ourselves in the space and also use the dominant position in the Nordics with respect to charging stations for e-vehicles,” he said. Fortum opened its India office in September 2012 and acquired a 5MW solar power plant in Rajasthan in 2013. In 2015, its 10MW solar photovoltaic plant was commissioned under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission.In January 2016, Fortum won an auction for a 70MW project in Rajasthan and three months later won another for 100MW in Karnataka. By August, the company will have 200MW of operational solar power capacity in India, Aggarwal said.Aggarwal said his unit continues to look at merger and acquisition opportunities in renewables. Average solar tariffs in India have fallen by about 73% since 2010, almost in line with Chinese spot prices for solar power modules, which have also fallen by about 80% in the same period, Mercom Capital Group said in a report last month.Intense competition in reverse auctions for solar projects due to limited supply of projects has pushed companies to bid lower, sacrificing margins, in order to gain market share, the report said.","Apart from solar power, Fortum India will also enter the waste-to-energy sector and launch charging stations for electric vehicles, said MD Sanjay Aggarwal",04:35,Fortum India to add 250MW solar power capacity every year +2017-04-11,"
Mumbai: Hyderabad-based renewable energy producer Mytrah Energy India Pvt. Ltd is in advanced talks to raise Rs1,800 crore in structured debt funding from Piramal Capital’s structured finance group (SFG), two people directly aware of the development said on condition of anonymity. According to them, the deal is at a term-sheet level and will be one of the largest structured debt investments by Piramal group till date.Mytrah plans to use the funds to refinance its debt and provide exits to some of its current investors such as IDFC Alternatives, AION Capital and Merrill Lynch International before its planned initial public offering (IPO). “The transaction will go towards refinancing the company’s debt in various special purpose vehicles (SPVs),” said the first of the two people cited above. “Apart from refinancing, the funds will also go towards funding projects at various stages of development,” the person added.Emails sent to Mytrah Energy and separate emails and text messages sent to Shirish Navlekar, joint managing director and chief financial officer at Mytrah Energy, went unanswered. Piramal declined to comment.Mytrah Energy is one of the largest private firms in the renewable energy sector—it operates about 920 megawatts (MW) of wind energy projects and recently won bids to develop about 500MW of solar energy capacity. At least two of Mytrah’s existing investors, which include AION Capital and IDFC Alternatives, are keen to exit before the IPO, said the second of the two persons cited above.In September, Mint reported that Mytrah Energy has hired investment banks Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd and IDFC Bank Ltd to start working on a public listing that could see the firm raise between $250 million and $300 million.IDFC Alternatives, the asset management arm of IDFC Ltd, invested Rs350 crore in Mytrah in 2011 while AION Capital, a special situations fund, along with Merrill Lynch International, invested Rs400 crore in 2015.According to disclosures made by Mytrah Energy, its finance cost increased by $16 million by end June 2016 to $42.16 million, largely due to a higher interest on newly commissioned operating assets. In a recent report, credit ratings agency India Ratings said Mytrah Energy has refinanced existing debt of 543MW of projects and in the process raised another Rs300 crore which was used to fund the promoter’s contribution requirements for capex. “By exploiting the tail period of these operational projects, the company has leveraged the balance sheet of the SPVs and raised additional debt. This has substantially increased the debt levels of the consolidated entity to about Rs6,200 crore from close to Rs5,200 crore at end-FY16,” the report said.Piramal Capital has been largely active in the mid-market space and the potential transaction marks a shift towards higher value deals. Mint reported in March that Piramal was in talks to invest up to Rs1,500 crore in Krishnapatnam Port Co. Ltd (KPCL) to enable the firm’s promoters to buy private equity fund 3i Group Plc. “With the number of funds active in the mid-market space going up significantly in the past one year, that’s one of the primary reasons why Piramal is now looking at deals of bigger size of more than Rs1,000 crore where the competition is less,” the first person said, adding: “Apart from KKR there aren’t too many funds who can routinely fund such large transactions.”Currently, Piramal Fund Management manages or advises funds over Rs8,000 crore on the equity side and Rs4,000 crore of gross disbursements on the debt side. This includes six domestic funds, one offshore fund and three third party mandates.","Mytrah Energy plans to use the funds to refinance its debt and provide exits to investors IDFC Alternatives, AION Capital and Merrill Lynch before its planned IPO",02:57,"Mytrah Energy in talks to raise Rs1,800 crore from Piramal Capital SFG" +2017-02-10,"
Barring an unlikely extension of his tenure, these are U.K. Sinha’s last few weeks as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).Will he make them count?Mint reported earlier this week that the markets regulator is looking to increase its oversight of the boards of stock exchanges.This is reportedly in response to the findings that the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd’s (NSE) practices with regards to co-location services were unfair. Sebi has already done a fair bit to address this. It took an active interest in the appointment of independent directors on NSE’s board, according to Bloomberg Quint. And one version of the turn of events at NSE is that it was the presence of these new board members that led to the eventual exit of the exchange’s chief executive officer and its group operating officer. While all of this sounds good, the elephant in the room is the lack of penal action against the exchange.Note that two separate investigations have found that the NSE provided unfair access to some trading members. And worse still, all accounts suggest NSE attempted a cover-up, which is a far worse crime.NSE is going ahead with an initial public offering, or IPO, against the backdrop of a crisis of confidence and credibility.Will Sebi penalize the exchange?From the looks of it, this seems unlikely.But Sebi and Sinha must realize that this creates a huge moral hazard.If the regulator doesn’t take penal action against NSE, the message to the exchanges is that you can take such risks and get away without a penalty.In other words, the benefits from such practices will always outweigh the costs.The best way to avoid recurrences in future is to impose high penalties in such cases.Venkatesh Panchapagesan, adjunct professor, finance and control area, Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore, says: “As exchanges transition into listed entities, it is important for the regulator to ensure that regulatory lapses are dealt with punitively. Otherwise, the desire for profits will always trump the costs associated with regulatory oversight. Self-regulation will fail then.”To elaborate: while in theory Indian exchanges are expected to perform various regulatory roles, in practice these can be viewed as irritants—costs that eat into profits made by other divisions.While this is a challenge with all exchanges, the problems are pronounced for listed exchanges, where profits are in focus far more regularly. One way to deal with this is to carve out regulatory roles into a separate entity, as suggested in this column earlier.But as we await Sebi’s readiness to move in this area, the best alternative for now is to severely penalize any lapses that come to light. That way, the exchanges won’t dream about compromising on regulatory oversight of markets, trading members and listed companies.All of this is crucial because even a mere perception of unfairness in an exchange can lead to a loss of investor confidence and result in costs to the economy such as an increase in cost of capital. Some investors could well look at an episode such as this and decide to stay away from the Indian markets.On the other hand, if Sebi is seen as a proactive regulator, which doesn’t take regulatory lapses lightly, it will attract new investors to Indian shores.In short, there’s a whole lot at stake, and it’ll be a pity if the only thing that Sebi comes up in its board meeting on Saturday is to tinker with the boards of stock exchanges.At the least, it should make its findings against NSE public. J.R. Varma of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad says in a blog post that this is material information about the operation of one of India’s most critical financial market infrastructure institutions and must be disclosed.Another aspect that has become amply clear is that having caps on shareholding hasn’t helped in this case. It’s true that a dominant shareholder may run riot and it makes sense to avoid a repeat of the National Spot Exchange Ltd fiasco. But it’s also true that even a company executive with no shareholding can run riot by being overly profit- or market share-focused.In this backdrop, all that the narrow shareholding caps have done is thwart competition for entrenched exchanges. This, in turn, has led to hubris—NSE’s appointment of its group operating officer on a contractual basis being a prime example.Even now, market participants who are unnerved by the findings at NSE have no great options to move their business. Not too long ago, they had moved business from BSE to NSE because of concerns about the former’s governance.Sebi must realize that encouraging competition in the exchange space will entail tremendous benefits to the marketplace. Of course, this will have to go hand in hand with a robust oversight of the markets by the regulator. But this can has been kicked down the road for far too long. It is high time Sebi revisits shareholding caps for investors in stock exchanges.If it even allows companies to own a 26% stake, global exchanges such as CME Inc. and Intercontinental Exchange may find it attractive to enter the Indian markets, and it can lead to far better competition in the stock exchange space.Of course, to Sebi’s credit, the listing of exchanges will result in positive outcomes, including a greater scrutiny of exchange practices. A listed NSE would have witnessed a huge slump in value because of allegations of unfair access, and may have acted as a check on the management. Even so, Sebi has far better tools at its disposal to ensure good governance at exchanges. It must use them.",Outgoing Sebi chairman U.K. Sinha should address the NSE algo trading case and avoid creating a moral hazard,11:44,Will U.K. Sinha exit Sebi with a bang? +2017-02-11,"
A few quarters ago, a press conference on the financial results of State Bank of India (SBI) paused comically after a chunk of plaster fell on the stage from above. Smirks in the audience indicated they had taken this as a metaphor for the deteriorating bad loan situation. Stretching that metaphor, can we say SBI’s book is on the mend like the auditorium—the venue for that conference—that is under renovation now?On the face of it, the numbers for the third quarter resemble a chess board as for every positive metric, there is a negative one. The largest lender’s slippages remained around Rs10,000 crore, unlike many of its peers, which showed a decrease. But upgrades surged, indicating stress has eased. Note that this improvement is despite the demonetisation blow to the asset side. Of course, the bad loan ratios, both gross and net, rose simply because of the measly 4.2% loan growth.But for ugly bad loan ratios, two heartening numbers are the sequential reduction in stressed assets ratio (which is gross bad loans plus restructured standard assets) to 9.54% and a fall in credit costs to 1.92%. Further, more than 70% of slippages are from the watchlist that SBI put out in March, which means the lender has got its diagnosis right on toxic assets. The list itself is down 31% to Rs17,992 crore, which represents just 2.66% of the total corporate loan book.The management’s outlook for its asset book is anything but sanguine and the stock movement this year suggests even investors have not abandoned caution. SBI shares have risen 12% this year; but so have the benchmark indices. Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairman of the bank, hopes loan disbursals will grow 6.5% in 2016-17. The loan growth for FY18 is pegged at 11% and that, too, on the base effect, given this year’s limited growth.Bhattacharya also pointed out that demonetisation has set the bank back by a quarter in mending its bad loans. Its mid-corporate and small and micro enterprise customers were the worst hit by the currency withdrawal, and bad loan ratios rose sharply. Moreover, as Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd points out, SBI used the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) special dispensation to classify loans worth Rs2,000 crore as standard in the wake of demonetisation.Ignore the one-time relief and SBI’s already formidable stock of bad loans at Rs1.08 trillion would have increased further. The bank highlighted that fresh loans disbursed by it are to corporate entities having a rating above ‘A’ and that a slow but sure pick-up in economic activity would eventually translate into higher credit growth. But for FY17, asset quality will look nasty, and the only saviour for the stock is that it currently trades at 1.27 times the estimated book value of FY18 earnings, which is cheap.","But for ugly bad loan ratios, two heartening numbers at SBI are the sequential reduction in stressed assets ratio to 9.54% and a fall in credit costs to 1.92%",02:32,December quarter results indicate SBI limping back to normalcy +2017-02-15,"
There are many reasons for the Tata Motors Ltd stock to have a bumpy ride—they range from the Brexit effect to Cyrus Mistry’s exit and more recently, demonetization. And now, we have a deplorable set of numbers put forth by the company for the December quarter, which practically writes off the stock’s near-term prospects. Not surprisingly, the stock plunged by 4% and its DVR (differential voting rights) tanked even harder by 6% after the results were announced.
ALSO READ | Tata Motors Q3 profit plunges 96% on losses in India ops, lower JLR profitAlthough the consolidated net revenue at Rs66,855.1 crore was in tune with Street estimates, it was the operating performance that was the biggest let-down. It was harder to fathom because the UK subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover Ltd (JLR), which has been leading profits higher quarter after quarter, for the first time hugely failed investors.Consolidated operating margin fell by about 500 basis points to 7.6% from a year ago, mainly because JLR’s upward margin trajectory was punctured. It contracted from 14.4% to 9.3%—the first time to single digits since fiscal year 2010. The Tata Motors management in its media meet explained that runout in one of its premium models, significant marketing expenses, biennial salary negotiations and new model launches led to this margin drop. Add to this an unfavourable currency and product mix too.One wonders though, if its new product lines are yielding lower profit margins. Indeed, JLR sales have been maintained thanks to the expansion in US markets, even when China briefly wobbled and Europe was still inching up. But higher market penetration and share led to margin erosion during the quarter. The consequent weak operating profit trickled down to weaker net profit, almost half of that clocked a year back.The story was similar for the stand-alone company on home ground too. Demonetization impacted commercial vehicle sales, though its passenger cars fared better than the industry during the quarter. But again, it was the 345 basis points drop in operating margin to 1.5% that was a big let-down from the Street’s expectation of 4.2%. Net loss at Rs1,000 crore was more severe than that charted out by brokerage firms.Therefore, the consolidated net profit of Rs111.6 crore was a distant cry from the ambitious average expectation of Rs2,264.5 crore by 20 Bloomberg analysts.For now, it does not appear that the results disappointed on account of any one-off provisions or write-offs. Therefore, a bigger slide in the Tata Motors stock, which closed at Rs486.80 on Tuesday, may not be surprising. Certainly, brokerage firms will trim the earnings forecast for the near term.Yes, it cannot be ignored that JLR, the prized cash-cow of Tata Motors, is continuing to add sales volumes. What needs to be watched is whether growth will come at the cost of margins. If so, it will cap the earnings momentum leading to an erosion in valuation too.",The deplorable set of numbers put forth by Tata Motors for the December quarter practically writes off the stock’s near-term prospects,07:57,"Tata Motors has a bumpy ride ahead, with JLR misfiring" +2017-01-30,"
Shares of UPL Ltd, formerly United Phosphorus Ltd, gained 83% in the past one year as the company maintained the growth tempo despite the turbulence in its consumer markets. The December quarter (Q3) has been no different.Revenue and volume are up 18% from a year ago. As has been the case in recent quarters, Latin America led the growth with a 37% rise in revenue. What came as a surprise though is a strong 20% growth in the India business.A combination of dry spells, delayed crop seasons and demonetization-induced disruption to business has reduced growth expectations of agrochemical companies. Validating that view, Rallis India Ltd recently reported a subdued 8% growth for the December quarter despite a favourable base.UPL’s India business also has the benefit of a favourable base—revenue in Q3 last fiscal was down 17%. Even then, as one analyst with a domestic broking firm points out, the growth is stronger than expectations. “A crop shift in favour of pulses, soyabean, oilseeds and corn resulted in improved demand for herbicides, which helped drive the top line,” Sharekhan said in a note.In Latin America, the company benefited from better crop area and yield improvements in Brazil, a large market for UPL in terms of revenue. Its insecticide brands did well due to the high infestation of sucking insect in soybean. In North America, the business was flat as low incomes made farmers wary of investing in agriculture inputs. Business in Europe grew 8%. Its herbicides products did well, the company said in its results presentation.While revenue in the rest of the countries grew 2%, Latin America and India stood as major growth drivers for UPL. In a conference call with analysts, the management maintained a 12-15% revenue growth forecast and 60-100 basis points expansion in operating margin.Achieving the growth guidance may not look challenging, especially with revenue already rising 14% so far this fiscal.But the growth outlook in the current quarter is less sanguine. The major consumption phase is over in three key geographies-the US, Europe and India. “Management has also cautioned for a tougher operating environment during Q4 FY17 in North America, Europe and India,” Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd adds.This puts the growth burden on Latin America. Thankfully, the prospects in the region, especially Brazil, remain encouraging.Though the valuation at 16 times one-year-forward earnings estimates does not look expensive yet, two factors will play a crucial role in the continuing outperformance of the UPL stock.One is the maintenance of revenue growth momentum. The second is a recovery in the US and European farm sectors. These will ensure broad based growth and increase investors’ confidence in UPL’s 2017-18 prospects.","While revenue at UPL in the rest of the countries grew 2%, Latin America led the growth with a 37% rise in revenue",07:41,UPL’s India business surprises positively in December quarter +2017-02-08,"
Tata Steel Ltd’s shares have doubled in value in the past year, thanks to an improvement in market conditions and prospects of a cut in exposure to the loss-making European business.
ALSO READ | Tata Steel registers first profit in 5 quartersThe company’s December quarter results may cause some more cheer among investors. Reported operating profit was far higher than Street expectations, thanks largely to an unusual jump in the profits of its India business.Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of the India business rose by as much as 70% quarter-on-quarter to Rs3,393 crore, thanks to both better volumes and realizations. But as pointed out in this column last month, the jump in sales last quarter could well be due to one-off factors, and the performance may not sustain going forward.ALSO READ | Why is India’s steel consumption rising?According to analysts, sales in the December quarter were aided by advance purchases ahead of an expected price hike in January, as well as some dealers stocking up using demonetized currency. If underlying steel demand hasn’t improved as much, the increase in inventory levels may well hurt going forward. As such, it makes sense to wait and watch for signs of improvement in underlying demand before jumping to conclusions just based on last quarter’s results.The European operations reported a sharp decline in profit as expected, thanks to higher raw material and energy costs as well as due to a planned yearly maintenance stop. In the near term, the profitability of the business depends on how prices of coking coal move.More importantly, though, investors will be keen to see a lasting solution to the European problem through an M&A (mergers and acquisitions) deal, such as the one being discussed with ThyssenKrupp AG. The latter has said that Tata Steel must fix its pension deficits before merger talks can be taken forward. If the deal doesn’t materialize, investors will be clearly disappointed. After all, one of the reasons the company’s shares have done well in the past year is because of prospects of cutting losses in Europe through M&A deals.The silver lining, of course, is that price realizations have improved, and the Indian business has been doing far better than it has done in years.","Tata Steel shares have done well in the past year is because of prospects of cutting losses in Europe through M&A deals, such as the one with Thyssenkrupp",03:06,There may be more to Tata Steel’s bumper profit than meets the eye +2017-02-06,"
At a recent gathering of limited partners (LPs), one asked, “Can fund managers influence Indian promoters?’’ In a tone that oscillated between an unproven suspicion and an open secret, another quipped, “Some operating teams are a little more than window dressing for LPs.”In an industry where persistence in performance has fallen and available data is selective, this is not an easy question to answer. We got down to the business of comparing the performance of private equity (PE)-backed companies, and what we found may surprise you. PE advocates active governance. Empirical research demonstrates that ‘active ownership’ over strategy, executive appointments, operational improvement and acting early contribute to better returns. The converse holds true too—not acting, or doing so late, produces worse returns. Our survey of LPs and portfolio company CEOs shows investors get credit for selection, exercising controls over capital decisions and improving board efficiency. However, the operating team’s role varies widely. When it’s all about the numbers, PE delivers. Comparing PE-backed and non-PE backed company performance, PE outperforms on revenue and earnings growth. Simply put, they grow faster and deliver higher margins while doing so—this appears to be true from the first year through the fifth year of ownership (t=1 to 5). Although performance and relative outperformance diminish over time, the results are clear. So, what capabilities are being built here?• Willingness to engage in cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As): over 80% of PE-backed companies clinched their first cross-border deal after PE investment. Many portfolio companies see PE as a vehicle to make acquisitions.• Stronger export growth: At an average, PE-backed companies grow exports over 2x their non-PE backed counterparts in every sector, with the exception of pharma—where they grow exports in line with non-PE backed companies.• More jobs, better talent: PE-backed companies created more jobs. Indexed to 100 at the time of investment, over a five- year period, they grew jobs 1.5x versus 1.15x for non-PE backed companies of similar sectors and size. Clearly an outcome of higher revenue growth. Why does outperformance diminish over time? You can cut costs and introduce productivity initiatives to improve margins within 12-18 months. Quick improvements offer rapid top-line improvements. Yet, most short-term fixes, even if structural, offer short-lived advantages.Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) outperformance requires more frequent capital re-allocation. Companies often defer these strategic actions and investments, since they have a longer horizon to impact than most PE investors are willing to underwrite. There is clear evidence that with sufficient granularity in strategy, these investments pay off over time.Company outperformance needs to translate into returns for investors. This is a challenge. Where there is pricing discipline and early intervention, we are optimistic it will, especially as greater experience settles into PE teams in India. Vivek Pandit is a senior partner of McKinsey & Co. in India and is based in Mumbai. ","Comparing private equity-backed and non-private equity backed company performance, PE outperforms on revenue and earnings growth",01:25,Does private equity add value to companies they invest in? +2017-02-08,"Sydney: Ensuring a smooth ride is all very well, but drivers need to be thinking about their destination if they hope to get anywhere. That’s a lesson Toyota Motor Corp. needs to learn before its rivals start to overtake.Shares of the world’s biggest carmaker fell the most in three months on Tuesday after third-quarter results released after the previous day’s close.The biggest worry in those numbers shouldn’t be the yen: While currency effects hacked 205 billion yen ($1.8 billion) off third-quarter operating profit, the sharp reversal in the Japanese currency after the US election means foreign exchange will provide all of the 150 billion-yen improvement in Toyota’s full-year forecast. The deeper problem for shareholders is Toyota’s curiously pessimistic assessment of the future.ALSO READ: Honda cites growing electric car demand for Hitachi ventureA look at the front page of Toyota’s investor presentation illustrates the problem:The cover stars are the latest iterations of the Toyota Camry—a vehicle first introduced in 1982—and the Camry Hybrid, a decade-old line based on the hybrid technology that Toyota first rolled out when the original Prius models went on sale 20 years ago. Even President Akio Toyoda couldn’t help making a joke out of calling the Camry “sexy” in a speech to the Detroit motor show last month.Compare this with Daimler AG, which led its investor presentation the previous week with an image of the Tron-styled grille of its EQ electric concept vehicle:If you think pretty pictures don’t give much useful information to investors, you might want to dig through the numbers, too.Toyota’s forecast research and development spending in the year through March is unchanged from the previous quarter at 1.07 trillion yen. With Daimler upgrading its own plans, that’s now just a sliver ahead of the average 8.1 billion euros ($8.8 billion) the German company has committed to spending this calendar year and next.There’s a very real chance that Daimler—which makes less than one passenger car for every four coming off Toyota’s production lines—could soon be spending more on developing the next generation of automobiles.The fall in the yen under Abenomics has helped turn Toyota’s slowing pace of R&D investment into an outright decline in dollar terms, but it’s not sufficient to explain the weakness. After all, 10 of Toyota’s 15 design and research centers are outside Japan. Among the 10 carmakers that turn out more than 3 million vehicles a year, its R&D as a percentage of sales is well below the average.ALSO READ: Toyota raises full-year profit outlook on weaker yen, cost cuttingThis spending matters because the radical technological advances that are starting to reshape the global car industry, from battery electric vehicles, to self-driving technology and shared ownership, threaten to leave behind any automakers that aren’t prepared for the way the world is changing.Toyota is still a mammoth innovator, just behind Apple Inc. as one of the top 10 R&D investors globally, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It’s got a $1 billion Google-style skunkworks to develop autonomous cars, the world’s best-selling new-energy vehicle in the form of the Prius, plus the Mirai hydrogen fuel-cell car.Still, its deals with oil companies to push hydrogen technology have a distinctly Betamax feel to them at a time when the rest of the industry is making leaps and bounds with battery electric technology.In 2015, Toyota was the only one of the world’s top five global automotive manufacturers not to also be one of the top 10 electric vehicle manufacturers. Just three months ago, it finally appeared to admit it had backed the wrong horse, conceding it may have to start mass production of battery electric vehicles after all. Perhaps the sort of visions of the future promulgated by Volkswagen AG, Daimler and Ford Motor Co. are unrealistic. If Toyota was intoxicated decades ago from the white heat of technology rather than making reliable, affordable and profitable cars, it would probably never have got where it is today. R&D is notorious for burning piles of money on moonshot projects that fail to produce any return on investment. Gadfly has often shared Toyota’s somewhat dubious view of those developments, particularly in car-sharing and autonomous vehicles—but guiding a business is a lot harder than writing opinion columns, and carries a lot more responsibility. Toyota needs to boost innovation, if only as an insurance policy. Too much skepticism about the future risks looking like insouciance. Bloomberg",The radical technological advances that are reshaping the global car industry threaten to leave behind any automakers that are not prepared for the changes,01:26,Toyota might be losing the future to bigger R&D spenders +2017-01-30,"
The wait for ITC Ltd’s consumer business to become profitable has been a long one. While the business has grown in size, now at 18% of revenue, it continues to add new products in existing categories, enters new categories and invests behind them. That insatiable appetite to diversify revenue and grow scale indicates that profits will come later. This urge to diversify may now see it enter the healthcare sector.ITC said it plans to add healthcare to its objects clause, but did not mention other details.Could ITC be planning a full-fledged entry into the healthcare sector, either on its own or by acquiring an existing hospital chain?Cigarettes and healthcare may make strange bedfellows, but hospitality and hotels do make for a good combination.Also in common, unfortunately, is that setting up hospitals requires significant investments, especially if you have to add new ones, gestation periods are relatively long and the sector is becoming more competitive.ITC’s recurring cash flows from the cigarettes business give it the requisite financial muscle, but investors may fret if the investment requirements prove to be substantial.Coming to its results, demonetisation did see its cigarette sales growth slow down to 2.2% in the December quarter, compared with a growth of 7.1% in the September quarter.It said that tight liquidity conditions affected sales growth. As the cash crunch eases, its cigarettes business should come back to more normal growth rates. The changes in tax rates in the budget, final rates and cess under goods and services tax, if any, on cigarettes, are near-term policy triggers to watch for.Along with cigarettes, demonetisation did see its consumer business sales, too slow down to 3.4%. Hotels’ revenue growth was relatively better but paper saw a slight decline. Overall, net sales rose by 4.1% but a higher increase in material costs led to expenses rising by more than sales did. Its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) margin declined from over a year ago, as a result, but improved sequentially. Its profit after tax rose 5.7%. The cigarette segment’s margin declined and the consumer business turned in a loss of Rs19.7 crore.ITC did better than what the Street was expecting. It should do even better as business improves, post-demonetisation. Still, the share fell 2.8% on Friday which may be partly due to it having rallied sharply since end-December (it is up 14% since 26 December). The diversification into healthcare, too, may have dampened investor enthusiasm. News on the taxation front and its plans for healthcare will occupy centre stage for the moment.","The changes in tax rates in the budget, final rates and cess under goods and services tax, if any, on cigarettes, are near-term policy triggers to watch for",07:38,"Q3 results: ITC sticks to diversification strategy, eyes healthcare now" +2017-01-30,"
The December quarter results of Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T), a proxy for the state of India’s investment demand, was disappointing. It was all the more so, as it had turned in a vibrant performance for the September quarter. What is likely to dampen investor sentiment is the management’s decision to lower growth guidance to 8-10% for the full year ending March, from the earlier forecast of 12-15%. And even that appears to be an uphill task for the juggernaut.The firm’s December quarter results surprised the Street negatively. Net revenue grew 1.4% to Rs26,287 crore from a year ago, which fell short of Bloomberg’s average estimate by a significant 11%. One could blame it on demonetisation, to some extent.The impact was felt the most in the infrastructure segment, which comprises over three-fourths of L&T’s revenue. The management said in its media release that clearance delays and the abrupt liquidity crunch at the customers’ end hindered work progress.Meanwhile, toll revenue was down, too. So were real estate sales. Yet, the segment’s revenue grew by 6%, with a robust contribution from its international projects.That’s not all. L&T’s power segment is battling a dwindling order book. Revenue fell by 23% year-on-year (y-o-y). Also, the other smaller engineering segments and information technology (IT) did little to enthuse investors.But L&T’s 9.6% operating margin matched investor expectation and was a neat 140 basis points (bps) higher than the year-ago period. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Stringent working capital management and cost-cutting exercises did the trick. In this respect, the infrastructure segment delivered a respectable 110 bps y-o-y rise, even as the hydrocarbons, heavy engineering and electrical and automation segments pulled up their socks.However, both operating profit and net profit fell short of the average brokerage estimates. Yet, the consolidated net profit was about 39% higher y-o-y at Rs972.5 crore, not a bad deal considering the macroeconomic challenges.The moot question is, will L&T meet its guided revenue and order inflow target?On the revenue front, the firm will have to ramp up execution in the fourth quarter to match even the watered down 10% growth in annual revenue. Thanks to customer delays after the currency ban, the work at many sites was almost at a standstill. These have to gain traction again. Meanwhile, segments such as IT could clock slower revenue growth.On order inflows, the challenge is no less. December-quarter order inflow was 10% lower, with a third coming in from overseas. Again, given its run-rate at the end of nine months, the firm has to clock at least Rs50-60,000 crore to meet the guided annual target. Not impossible, given that the fourth quarter is the “lumpiest” on order inflows, but a Herculean task, too.In fact, L&T’s results convey that all is not well in the economy.“Domestic growth appears to take a longer time as investment momentum is weak and the banking system is burdened with a debt overhang,” says the company's media release, adding that the challenging business conditions are likely to remain for a few more quarters.Infrastructure orders from the government are still delayed and private capex is yet to take off.L&T’s stock trades at Rs1,439 apiece, which discounts its one-year forward estimated earnings by a rich 21 times.In fact, since demonetisation, the stock, which has been a steady outperformer, has been volatile. Brokerages have trimmed both the expected earnings and valuations over the past few weeks. Only a fillip to revenue or order inflows can make this elephant dance.","What is likely to dampen investor sentiment is the management’s decision to lower growth guidance to 8-10% for the year to March, from the earlier forecast of 12-15%",07:38,L&T results mirror the poor state of investment demand +2017-04-07,"
In his 2013 book Zen Garden: Conversations With Pathmakers, Subroto Bagchi, co-founder of IT firm Mindtree, recalls being tipped off about Shombit Sengupta ahead of their first meeting in 1999. “I was told that if you did not have a budget of a crore as consulting fee, you didn’t go to Shombit. But wait a minute. There was another condition—he had to like you!” he writes about the man who, he says, taught him “more about brands...than anyone else in my entire career”.The trouble, though, is that Sengupta no longer wants to talk about brands. At 63, the founder and creative strategist of Shining Consulting, responsible for the consumer interface makeover of companies such as Unilever, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Rémy Martin, Johnson & Johnson, Wipro and Mahindra & Mahindra, would rather concentrate on his art. It’s the reason why, after 40-odd years in France, he now prefers to spend 60% of his time in India. In Bengaluru, to be precise, where, many years ago, he bought a dilapidated transformer factory in Whitefield and redesigned it into an abode like no other. It’s tempting to see the house, split into two wings, as a metaphor for Sengupta’s own life, divided between France and India, brand design and art.
The two parts of the house are connected by a labyrinthine corridor; the walls have Sengupta’s own exuberant artworks while the floor space resembles a fairground, installed with the most dazzling collection of colourful Indian kitsch: shiny lip balms, glittery balls, skeins of crinkled cotton, stacks of glass bangles. It’s all a bit overwhelming.Like the man himself. Kitted out in a sheep-print shirt, his shock of hair still more pepper than salt, Sengupta demands attention as he talks. His story is so fantastic, it’s hard to look away but it does not do to merely follow his words: He needs total engagement. He responds in kind, listening actively and often stepping outside himself to call you out. As he does when his wife Renee Jhala, managing director of Shining Consulting—they met while he was consulting with Wipro, where she was head of public relations—wafts by: “She is making me talk about the brands,” he mock-complains about me, but acknowledges in the next breath that the success that followed his disruptive approach to design and branding allowed him to reboot his life as a sexagenarian to focus on art.“I went into business (as a brand consultant) to earn money,” Sengupta says without preamble. “And I stuck around for 35 years. Art has always informed my work. But I never delivered something that only looked good; my work made businesses look good.”Aesthetics, one might think, was not supposed to be the strong suit of a boy born in a camp for East Pakistan refugees in Kanchrapara, West Bengal. But early on, Sengupta developed an appreciation of his surroundings. If the Bengali Bengal was defined by poverty, the Victorian Bengal was embodied in the British-built residence of his schoolteacher-mother’s friend. In Chandannagar, a row or a swim across the Hooghly, he encountered a third Bengal, a French Bengal. His father, a committed Communist and anti-British activist, had French sympathies—he was a fan of the Vincent van Gogh biopic Lust For Life, which portrayed the Dutch artist’s flowering in Paris—and subtly communicated to the young boy that an art education, to be worthwhile, had to be French.And so it was that at the age of 19, only half-done with his course at the Government College of Art and Craft in what was still Calcutta, Sengupta bought himself a ticket to Paris for Rs2,700, the sale proceeds of his mother’s gold bangles. “I could barely speak English, let alone French,” says Sengupta, his English still thickly accented by Bengali. “But I had a skill in art and I was determined to develop it.”
Though Sengupta went on to join École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, the national school of fine arts, and then studied design at École Supérieure d’Arts Graphiques Penninghen, formal degrees were not his forte. Perpetually short of funds and compelled to send money home, Sengupta took up any work he could find, from sweeping floors to assisting lithographers. “Intelligence or leadership are not qualities you learn in school. Apprenticeship is very important. I was always drawn to writers, advocates, psychologists, performing artistes—that was the way I nurtured myself, how I learnt to converge different elements when it came to branding and design as well.”A considerable part of Sengupta’s success as a brand guru championing a “consumer connect” must be laid at the door of this carefully cultivated understanding of multiple disciplines. “Art was the only way I could earn. Yves Brayer, a famous artist I met at the lithographer’s, encouraged me to consider design communication. So I studied graphic design, applied art, photography, typography. But once in the field, I found I was completely different from everybody. Because of my multiple interests, areas of expertise and a humanist outlook, I made for a grand solutions provider. I can diagnose an ailing business the way a good doctor diagnoses a patient.
“Also, my language was completely different,” Sengupta says. “So, if a chief executive officer came to me and said his product was ‘premium’, I would ask him, what’s premium about a consumer product? Affordability is a different issue but, by labelling yourself ‘premium’, you’re alienating a huge market.” His maverick approach included hanging out at a kirana, or neighbourhood grocery store, to figure out why large cooking-oil containers weren’t selling, and picking up the Britannia tag line Eat Healthy, Think Better from a Kolkata rickshaw-puller. Business magazines lavished pages on him, a colourful, plain-speaking break from the pinstriped politically correct. At its peak, the Shining client list read like the who’s who of the corporate world: Prominent among them were 3M, Dow Chemicals, Carrefour, Intermarché, Corning/Newell, Henkel, Nivea, L’Oréal, Pernod Ricard, Reckitt Benckiser, Galerie Lafayette-Monoprix, Total Petroleum internationally, and Reliance Retail, Madura Garments, Coffee Day, Jindal Steel & Power in India. Of late, Sengupta has consciously cut down consulting engagements to a few select clients, mostly in Europe. But, out of the corner of his eye, he continues to pick up on trends and behaviours in the market. Pet among his peeves are Indian businesses that aim to be conglomerates rather than single-domain enterprises. “I give them 15-20 years, they won’t last beyond that,” he says. “Before the Tatas launched the Nano, I had said it wouldn’t work—and it didn’t. When businesses believe in one thing, they can nurture people, build expertise. I hope the new generation will follow that path. Take Airtel. (Sunil Bharti Mittal) tried a couple of other things but his focus was one. Infosys, too, has focused on one domain. “As for the young people working on start-ups, I always tell them, don’t go for start-ups—shorthand for make money and go away—go for build-ups. All businesses have always been start-ups. All this new language is totally nonsense!”In the second hour of our conversation, we are sitting at a worktable in his sprawling, double-height studio, with its curving walls and natural light. All around us are works old and new: Some acrylic-on-canvas frames from Sengupta’s 2016 Night Spirit series, depicting the owl in various mythologies; a few of the tiled Désordre installation series—first made in 2008—which viewers are invited to scramble like a jigsaw puzzle; multiple large canvases featuring a woman and a horse that gallerist Vickram Sethi places in a metaphysical/sexual lineage dating back to the legend of Lady Godiva. He last showed at the Institute of Contemporary Indian Art, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai, in November; a couple of exhibitions are lined up in Europe later this year. For all the workload, art has always been a mainstay for Sengupta. “Art was the foundation of my work,” he says simply, when I ask him how he juggled the two (he was also a weekly columnist for The Indian Express between 2009-14, and is the author of the Jalebi trilogy, on managing businesses in India). “I don’t sleep for more than 4-5 hours a day. Only between 1978-84 did art take a back seat, because I was setting up Shining. But even then, my sketchbook never left my side.“Around 1994, I realized it was important for an artist to develop his own school of thought. That’s when I came up with the concept of Gesturism, basing it on a professor’s early appreciation of the kinetic energy in my works. My style changed completely after that. But Renee pointed out that my art was too Cartesian (after René Descartes, whose philosophy was the bedrock of continental rationalism), too European. I needed to re-root myself in India to define my identity, unite my French inspiration and sense of structure with the non-dogmatic, indisciplined way India uses colour. A third factor was my examination of the désordre—disorder in the French sense, related to physical objects—in India.”In a life so packed with activity, art and accolades, turning 60 was a milestone. “Renee pushed me to devote more time to art at that juncture,” says Sengupta. “Fine art is pre-civilizational; design is a post-industrialization phenomenon, aiming to satisfy a human need, stated or unstated. Art, on the other hand, is completely individual; it needs no other justification.” As we wind down our conversation, the canvases around us look on. Each of them bears the flamboyant Sen signature: The artist prefers to use a truncated version of the family name for his work. Interestingly, his son from his first marriage, too, shortened his name Saikat to Shoi. As Shoi Sen, marketing man-turned-lead guitarist for British band De Profundis, he opened for Iron Maiden in Bengaluru in 2009. Reinvention, it seems, is a family trait.","The maverick founder of Shining Consulting on connecting with the consumer, why he doesn’t believe in start-ups, and seeking reinvention at 63",18:03,Shombit Sengupta: The art brand +2017-01-25,"Two sets of findings, related to societal trust levels, in a report released last week at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, should be a cause of grave concern to all of us. Part of a study released by communications group Edelman, the survey of more than 33,000 people in 28 countries including India, recorded the largest-ever drop of trust in business, government, the media, and non-government organisations (NGOs).Corporate chief executive officers (CEOs), whose credibility level dropped in each of the countries surveyed, were aggressively targeted with only 37% of people saying they trusted them.The 12-point drop from the previous year is the all-time low since the survey began in 2001. This isn’t the first time the corporate sector has been reminded of declining people’s trust. Last January, Young & Rubicam BrandAsset Valuator revealed that consumers’ trust in well-known brands continues to fall.ALSO READ | What global CEOs are watching for, according to a PwC surveyStrangely, you would think that CEOs reputation for trust would have taken a hit from the work of the media. But that institution didn’t fare too well either with 43% of the respondents expressing trust in the press, down from 48% the year before. So if people’s falling trust in company executives isn’t driven by the reports in traditional media, where is the angst coming from? Perhaps there’s a third force now that might be responsible for generating the ire and that’s the social media, the new watchdog for corporate wrongdoing.Edelman CEO Richard Edelman, speaking at the WE, linked this to the sky-high compensation levels of top CEOs as well as the fact that employees were disappointed their leaders were not helping them deal with automation and the changing business environment. These changes have led to a rash of lay-offs in recent times with companies as diverse as Oracle Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Microsoft Corp. trimming their work forces.ALSO READ | Of founders and CEOsIn India, close on the heels of the controversy last year when several well-funded start-ups rolled back offers made to fresh graduates from engineering schools, comes the news this year of large scale sackings. Just this week, Girnar Software Pvt. Ltd, which runs a series of auto portals including CarDekho and is funded by such heavyweights as CapitalG (formerly Google Capital), Sequoia Capital, Hillhouse Capital and Ratan Tata, announced that it was axing 136 people.Paradoxically, for all the efforts CEOs and top leaders make to build their image, it is the company’s rank and file that is viewed by the public as more trustworthy.Indeed, twice as many respondents would have employees rather than CEOs communicate financial earnings and operational performance.Why is trust important? Business analysts have frequently proved that there is a direct correlation between growth and trust.ALSO READ | Optimism reigns in India as CEOs, consumers look beyond ChinaAmerican behavioural economist and psychiatrist Richard L. Peterson and sports consultant Frank Murtha noted in 2008 after the financial crisis: “Trust is the oil in the engine of capitalism, without it, the engine seizes up. Confidence is like the gasoline, without it the machine won’t move.”Part of the reason for the increasing trust deficit is of course the overall culture of lower deference towards authority figures and institutions. But that isn’t all of it. In 2016, for instance, Volkswagen AG CEO Martin Winterkorn’s resigned following the emissions scandal, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes lost his job following a sexual harassment charge, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch became a public enemy when she trebled prices of life-saving injection EpiPen, and Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf came under fire for refusing to take personal responsibility when his bank was caught creating two million fake accounts. Closer home, Vijay Mallya took employees, shareholders and bankers for a right royal ride before flying to the UK as creditors closed in on him.The resulting trust deficit has had several disastrous consequences. Corporate loyalty is fast going the way of the dinosaur. As employees feel free to change jobs at will, this has led to mounting costs of hiring and training besides a struggle to build team spirit and group dynamics. Externally, there is a lower threshold level of tolerance for any slippage in corporate performance. One quarter of declining numbers and stakeholders start demanding changes either in terms of management or worse still, strategy.Corporate trust deficit is a two-way street. It indicates that employees, customers, and company watchers have problems believing what its top executives say. But equally it also indicates that the company itself is in some kind of trouble.Sundeep Khanna is a consulting editor at Mint and oversees the newsroom’s corporate coverage. The Corporate Outsider will look at current issues and trends in the corporate sector every week.Click here to read more from The Corporate Outsider.",The resulting trust deficit has had several disastrous consequences ,07:48,The consequences of declining trust in CEOs +2017-04-06,"New Delhi: Telecom major Bharti Airtel has terminated the services of its vice-president and head of alliances Pallab Mitra for alleged violation of code of conduct. “All employees are hereby advised that the company has terminated the services of Pallab Mitra, vice-president and head-alliance, with immediate effect for violation of the company’s code of conduct,” Airtel chief human resource officer B. Srikanth said in a communication to employees. Mitra could not be reached for his comments. Airtel spokesperson said: “The company’s code of conduct is of paramount importance and it follows a policy of zero tolerance in the event of any violation of the same.” ALSO READ: Leveraging mobile phones to boost skilling initiativeSrikanth said: “Please desist from dealing with this person, or in sharing any information whatsoever with him, verbally or in writing or through messaging.” Mitra has worked with Airtel for about 12 years with a gap of around five and half years in between. He started working with Airtel in 2001 as head of commerce for about 4 years. Mitra left the company in February 2010 to join Tata Teleservices. His second innings at Airtel started from September 2015 onwards after his one-and-half year stint with wi-fi firm Ozone Networks. Airtel learnt about the purported code of conduct violation by Mitra from a whistleblower after which it conducted a probe into the matter, the communication said. “...investigation, thereafter, substantiated the allegations,” Srikanth said.","Airtel learnt about the purported code of conduct violation by Pallab Mitra from a whistleblower after which it conducted a probe, says letter to employees",21:44,Airtel fires vice-president Pallab Mitra for allegedly violating code of conduct +2017-04-06,"Colorado Springs: Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos said on Wednesday he is selling about $1 billion worth of the internet retailer’s stock annually to fund his Blue Origin rocket company, which aims to launch paying passengers on 11-minute space rides starting next year.Blue Origin had hoped to begin test flights with company pilots and engineers in 2017, but that probably will not happen until next year, Bezos told reporters at the annual US Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.“My business model right now … for Blue Origin is I sell about $1 billion of Amazon stock a year and I use it to invest in Blue Origin,” said Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon.com Inc. and also the owner of The Washington Post newspaper.Ultimately, the plan is for Blue Origin to become a profitable, self-sustaining enterprise, with a long-term goal to cut the cost of space flight so that millions of people can live and work off Earth, Bezos said.Bezos is Amazon’s largest shareholder, with 80.9 million shares, according to Thomson Reuters data. At Wednesday’s closing share price of $909.28, Bezos would have to sell 1,099,771 shares to meet his pledge of selling $1 billion worth of Amazon stock. Bezos’ total Amazon holdings, representing a 16.95% stake in the company, are worth $73.54 billion at Wednesday’s closing price.For now, Kent, Washington-based Blue Origin is working toward far shorter hops—11 minute space rides that are not fast enough to put a spaceship into orbit around Earth.Blue Origin has not started selling tickets or set prices to ride aboard its six-passenger, gumdrop-shaped capsule, known as New Shepard.The reusable rocket and capsule is designed to carry passengers to an altitude of more than 100 miles (162km) above the planet so they can experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of Earth set against the blackness of space. Unmanned test flights have been underway since 2015. At the symposium, Bezos showed off a mockup of the passenger capsule, which sports six reclined seats, each with its own large window. Also on display was a scorched New Shepard booster rocket that was retired in October after five flights.Like fellow tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of SpaceX, Bezos says that reusability is the key to cutting the cost of space flight. Last week, SpaceX relaunched a rocket for an unprecedented second mission to put a spacecraft into orbit. “The engineering approach is a little different, but we’re very like-minded,” Bezos said of Musk.Blue Origin is developing a second launch system to carry satellites, and eventually people, into orbit, similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule.Development costs for that system, known as New Glenn, will be about $2.5 billion.There is no estimate yet for how much Bezos will invest overall on Blue Origin. But Bezos has indicated he will spend what it takes. “It’s a long road to get there and I’m happy to invest in it,” Bezos said. According to Forbes magazine, Bezos has a net worth of $78 billion. Reuters",Jeff Bezos is selling about $1 billion worth of Amazon’s stock annually to fund his Blue Origin rocket company,09:35,Jeff Bezos is selling $1 billion of Amazon stock a year to fund rocket venture +2017-04-06,"
Vedanta Resources Plc.’s founder and group chairman Anil Agarwal plans to leverage his association with Anglo American Plc. to persuade the British miner to set up businesses ranging from fertilizer production to diamond mining in India.Vedanta Resources also plans to spend $10 billion over the next three years across its businesses, of which $8 billion is earmarked for Indian operations, Agarwal said in an interview on the sidelines of the Global Natural Resources Conclave organized by Network18 and the Confederation of Indian Industry.In March, Agarwal announced the planned purchase of about 13% of Anglo American’s stock in an investment by his holding company Volcan Investments Ltd, making him the second-largest shareholder in the $26 billion company that counts diamond producer De Beers among its assets. “We are now looking at this work (the stake acquisition) that we have done as strategically being very important for India. We have focused on the fact that it (De Beers) is the largest global producer of diamonds and we (India) are the largest polisher of diamonds. We want all the diamonds to come to India. Secondly, India has enough diamond reserves. We will persuade them to produce diamonds in India,” said Agarwal.“We are a large shareholder in the company and they are also a friend of ours. So, we will speak with them. They are into fertilizers. They are also the largest coal producers. They also produce copper and magnesium. They are also the largest producers of platinum in the world. So, all of that can be done here,” Agarwal added.His plans come in the backdrop of the National Democratic Alliance government working on a new method of auctioning mining leases to match commodity price cycles and investor appetite.Agarwal’s stake purchase in Anglo American came after the company last year spurned his offer to merge part of his mining business.Agarwal didn’t rule out acquiring a controlling stake in the firm, one of the world’s top five mining groups alongside BHP Billiton Plc., Rio Tinto Plc., Vale SA and Glencore Plc. Its key assets include giant copper mines in Chile, iron ore operations in Brazil and South Africa and De Beers.The company is bullish on its capital expenditure plans.“We will invest $10 billion over the next three years. We will spend close to Rs60,000-70,000 crore, of which oil and gas will account for Rs15,000 crore. This will result in an increase in our capacity overall of 40-50%. Around 80% of these investments will be made in India,” Agarwal said.In 2011, Cairn Energy Plc. sold 58.5% of Cairn India Ltd to Vedanta Resources for $8.67 billion. Vedanta Resources has large debt obligations. According to data from S&P Global Ratings, Vedanta has bank loan maturities of $1 billion due in financial year 2018 and $500 million due in financial year 2019. That’s in addition to bond maturities of about $2 billion in financial year 2019. In January, Vedanta raised $1 billion by selling bonds to refinance its near-term debt obligations.In response to a query about how he plans to fund the capital expenditure, Agarwal said: “We have our internal accruals. We have also registered very good profits this year. We will redeploy this profit...We are very confident that we will invest this money. This will help in job creation and increase employment.”Vedanta’s business interests in India include oil and gas, power, iron ore, zinc, copper and aluminium production.","Vedanta also plans to spend $10 billion over the next three years across its businesses, of which $8 billion is earmarked for Indian operations, says Anil Agarwal",01:42,Anil Agarwal plans to bring Anglo American’s business to India +2017-04-06,"
Anil Agarwal, group chairman, Vedanta Resources Plc has been in the news after announcing plans to buy around $2.4 billion of Anglo American Plc shares on the exchanges after his merger proposal was rebuffed last year.
In an interview on the sidelines of a conference on natural resources organised by Network 18 and Confederation of Indian Industry, Agarwal hinted at a larger play after acquiring around 13% of Anglo American’s stock, which will make him the second-largest shareholder after South Africa’s Public Investment Corp.
Agarwal also spoke about a pending tax dispute with the Indian government after the acquisition of Cairn India Ltd by London-listed Vedanta Resources, which included Rs10,200 crore as principal tax dues and the fallout of Donald Trump’s policies and Brexit on his areas of business. Edited excerpts:
How has your experience been with this government, given that Cairn Energy is still grappling with tax issues, with the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal passing an order for a payment of Rs10,247 crore as tax?The tax issue is not from this (National Democratic Alliance) government. It was imposed by the last (United Progressive Alliance) government. This government had stated during the time of elections that this was wrong and they will remove it. They are also trying their level best. They have been talking to us day and night. Till now, no solution has been found. Whenever we go outside, the most critical question that gets asked overseas is the issue of retrospective tax. Everyone feels that the last government did it and it can be done again. However, this government has repeatedly said, and everyone feels that this government is very stable, and it is very determined that it would not do anything like that. But till the time this issue is not resolved, it is very important to resolve it and the government is working in that direction. If they accelerate it a bit, it will become better.
According to you, where is the issue stuck?These are government policies. They will have to solve it in a simple way. Big things have been done. It has gone to the courts. For how long will it go on, no one knows. It will bring bad repute globally. I don’t have an idea but whenever I go, I get a sympathetic view (from the government).
What does the government tell you?They tell me that this thing which has been done is not a right thing. We are with this issue. We have waived off the interest and will do whatever which is required... No timeline has been committed.
What is your big play in Anglo American Plc? I am a Bihari, can’t speak much (laughs). The only thing ‘right now’ is that I am an investor.
You are saying ‘right now.’ What happens going forward?We are an investor right now. Can’t say anything beyond this.
You are not denying that you will buy more stake in Anglo-American?As of today, I can’t speak about more than what I have already said.
You have said that you will persuade Anglo American to bring their businesses to India. But since you have bought the stake on behalf of the holding company, which is Volcan, you will still do business with them. Or, will they operate independently?That we will see. Whatever works out keeping in mind the governance.
Will there be a separate entity?That, we will tell you later.
What are your green energy plans?We produce wind power... around 500MW. There has been a shift in the solar business. It used to be Rs6 per unit and now it has come down to below Rs2 per unit. That is definitely an advantage. So, we are studying it very seriously and will take the clean energy plans forward.We have two plans. We will produce a lot of gas in Rajasthan...We are already producing wind energy. And we are definitely looking into solar and how do we do a strategic investment in solar.But, we will not be producing solar cells. We will be producing solar power, which will be used for our own purpose because we consume over 10,000MW.
What is the update on Cairn India’s merger with Vedanta?It is almost done. I think it should be done in 2-4 days.
Any impact of Donald Trump’s policies and Brexit on your areas of business?From a business perspective, these are positive for us. England has its own orbit. In my opinion, England may fall behind in the race for a brief time but England will be very stable. I live there and I am very confident that England will prosper.Donald Trump’s economic policies are phenomenal. He himself is a businessman and the way he spoke about (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi’s efforts to reduce the involvement of bureaucracy and red tapism... He himself is doing that.
But, he is stuck in a logjam in the Republican controlled Congress...I agree but intentions are like this. I can’t comment on him. He is such a big man. I am a very optimistic person. I believe that he will correct himself. He has no other intention except to take his country forward.
We are talking about resurgence in resources. How do you see this playing out? What is your outlook?It is going to be long-term. India is just at the tip of the iceberg. If India does not improve its natural resources, it will be a complete dumping ground for the world to unload oil and gas, gold, silver, fertilizer and this has to change. India has every resource and human resource as well. So, this is a golden opportunity for the world to come and set up the plant. And this is the first time that I am seeing awareness in the government where they have started to believe that we have natural resources.","Vedanta’s Anil Agarwal on a pending tax dispute with India after the acquisition of Cairn India Ltd, and the fallout of Donald Trump’s policies and Brexit on his areas of business",01:47,Donald Trump’s economic policies are phenomenal: Anil Agarwal +2017-04-05,"
Normalcy has returned to the currency system post demonetization and the pace of cash withdrawls has come down, said R. Gandhi who retired as deputy governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday and was in charge of the currency management division. Calling the note ban a well-thought-out and well-deliberated decision, he said the only thing he would do differently with the wisdom of hindsight was print more Rs500 notes. Edited excerpts from an interview:
What gave you the confidence to go ahead with demonetization?That decision was not taken on a single day. Initially, it was only a thought. A lot of discussions happened: Is it good or bad? If we have to do it, what (are the) ramifications? So it was not as if somebody decided and went about doing it overnight. Secondly, even if it were to be done, we were very clear that the final call will have to be taken by the government because it is a policy decision and not in RBI’s purview. If such a policy decision is taken, then how do we implement it? (What are the) backward linkages, forward linkages? All such debating, thinking and preparation gave us the confidence to go ahead.
Which decision came first? The decision to introduce Rs2,000 notes or the withdrawal of Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes?These two decisions were in parallel. The normal practice in currency management is to periodically have a plan. In 2014, we had come to a conclusion that we need higher denomination notes. So, on that basis, we had recommended Rs5,000 and Rs10,000 notes given the pace of inflation which we had and which we had projected. Currency is an area where nothing can be done overnight. Everything has a lot of backward linkages and requires lead time. Any decision that you take, to implement it, it will be about 8 months to a year. Then the government had its own public policy ideas about demonetization as a control on black money. So discussions were happening in parallel.
With the benefit of hindsight, would you say that you did not anticipate the complexities? There were 50 notifications in the first 30 days. Would you have done anything differently?I don’t think we didn’t plan well. We planned everything. Every reaction was fully foreseen. There was no nasty surprise for us. Everything had been well identified, and debated. Several instructions were given by us. But you need to analyse it differently. About 20 (notifications) were relaxing rules. These relaxations were also pre-planned. If at all, there were one or two without planning. The rest were planned. The remaining 30 were regulatory instructions to banks. That we could not have given upfront, it would have let the cat out of the bag. In hindsight, if there’s anything I would have done differently… may be the quantum of Rs500 notes production. We may have decided differently. That’s the only correction.
When did the consultations on the note ban begin?The consultations started in January. The introduction of Rs2,000 was a decision irrespective of demonetization.
Did the printing presses have enough capacity to support the withdrawal of 86% of currency in circulation?That was a big discussion. That is why the agreement on the Rs2,000 note (majority of notes printed initially were of this denomination). Because we wanted to have that much value in exchange (for old notes).
Did nobody in the RBI central board express any concern or dissent about this decision?Discussions were already on. In any policy decision there will be questions. Finally it was presented to the board. I wouldn’t say that there were no concerns or questions. But we could address them. The way we had prepared and the way we had planned, it was possible to be implemented. Yes, the inconvenience to the public was admitted. One-is-to-one (like-for-like) cash was definitely not going to be available.
The board was apprised only one day prior to the move?Yes. We could not inform the board much in advance.
Is there any target for remonetization? Currency in circulation can never be targeted. It is in the hands of the public. We manage it by creating enough stock. If public wants more, the draw will be much faster. If they want less, draw will be much lesser. Over a period it is not a constraint to supply whatever money the public demands. In a short period, there will be leads and lags. Now with 70%, we are seeing complete normalcy across the country. There is no trouble anywhere.
So, when will normalcy be restored or when will we go back to pre-demonetization levels?We have already reached that stage. As of now, 73-74% actual cash has come. The pace of remonetization has come down because there is no demand. The pace at which money is demanded by the public is seen by the speed at which they are withdrawing from the banking system. When the pace is slowing down, then we have met their demand. From January onwards, cash withdrawals are coming down and we are also looking at how much currency is coming back. For most of the small banks and private banks, deposits are more than withdrawals. They are in surplus. They don’t need to draw more money from RBI. They are able to recycle.
Why is it taking so long to tell the public about the quantum of currency that has come back? It’s the last and final word. The final count. RBI would like to have it really, fully done. Checking for counterfeit notes will take a lot of time. To verify 24 billion SBNs (specified bank notes) collected will take months.
Demonetization has led to a debate on RBI’s autonomy. Comments?RBI does not have the power to demonetize. The power is with the government only. That’s a government call. I don’t see it as a conflict on autonomy. It is an area where only they are authorized to take a decision. It’s a joint effort. Everyday there were consultations.
You have worked for 37 years. Over the years have you seen RBI’s autonomy eroding? Different types of activities have been assigned to RBI or removed from RBI. That is the evolution of RBI. I will not read too much into that. Regulating banking is different from regulating any other financial activity. Any other financial activity or real sector activity is based on risk capital. Banking is different. People’s money is entrusted with an institution. That’s not risk capital for the bank. The way banks have to be regulated is different, it cannot be equated (with other regulators). They are trying to equate it. That is a dangerous trend in my opinion. FSLRC (Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission) has openly recommended that we should encourage regulated entities to question the decisions of the regulator and they should not hesitate to drag them to court. I understand why they are saying that. A regulator cannot unilaterally decide something and impose it on regulated entities. But the way they are putting it may not be right.
You have worked with different governors, who was it easiest to get along with?Dr C. Rangarajan. In terms of long impact, I’d say S. Venkitramanan. He made us think 10 years forward in every area.
The decision to introduce Rs200 notes... Is it a precedent to slowly demonetize Rs2,000 notes?Introducing a currency denomination is a stand-alone exercise. It has nothing to do with demonetization. In the normal course in any country’s stable of denominations, we have the 1 series, 5 series and 2 series like 10s, 20s and 50s. We have Rs100 and Rs500. Rs200 is the missing one. Is there a need for Rs2,000 notes? Will they be phased out?The need for Rs2,000 will always be there. The highest denomination requirement is based on inflation. In any continuous inflation economy, you will have to introduce higher denominations. Or you will not be able to manage. In a stable inflation economy, there is no need. In the US, for instance, the $100 bill is more than 100 years old. For us, we introduced Rs100, then Rs500 and then Rs1,000. Our economy was facing inflation. Now with the monetary policy committee and inflation control, we can definitely hope to have stable inflation. Then we may not require any more new denominations.What happens to the liquidity worth Rs 3.5 trillion in the banking system?This is temporary. We knew the impact of demonetization was transient. Excess liquidity is coming down. In another few weeks, it will not be there. With remonetization, the liquidity has gone into the hands of the public. It is not going to be there for long. To the extent, people don’t want 1:1 cash, there will be excess. Right now about 75% of currency is remonetized. Remaining 25% is the excess you are seeing in the hands of banks. Is it a permanent addition to liquidity? It’s not. During this year, normal growth in currency has not taken place. We have not filled in whatever we have withdrawn. Excess liquidity will meet that need.So, it’s not going to be inflationary?No. It will not be. Credit growth has also not picked up. Day to day excess liquidity we are absorbing through LAF (liquidity adjustment facility).Has the excess liquidity in the system made it difficult for RBI to intervene to stem the rupee’s appreciation since January?The currency appreciation is a bit of a surprise. Post Trump (US president Donald Trump) we would have expected the dollar to strengthen. The decision to intervene is based on volatility. If the market is able to bear the changes, then we do not want to intervene. We are not against the direction of the rupee, whether it is appreciating or depreciating.",R. Gandhi who retired as a deputy RBI governor this week says the note ban was a well-thought-out and well-deliberated decision,02:01,"Note ban planned carefully by RBI, Rs500 note only hiccup: R. Gandhi" +2017-04-04,"New Delhi: Lydia Bly Jett of SoftBank Group International joined the board of e-commerce company Snapdeal on 30 March, showed the company documents sourced from Tofler.After SoftBank Group’s chief operating officer Jonathan Bullock resigned from the board in February 2017 followed by the appointment of managing partner Kabir Misra on 10 March, Jett’s appointment is the third board movement from SoftBank to Snapdeal. The move comes at a time when the company is facing financial woes of its own. In January, Mint reported that Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd-owned Snapdeal had initiated discussions to raise fresh funds at a lower valuation, which recently concluded in an intra-board tiff: a conflict of interest between Snapdeal’s investors, Kalaari Capital and Nexus Venture Partners on one side, and SoftBank Group Corp. on the other had led the company miss out on at least two funding offers over the past six months, Mint reported on 31 March.While early investors Kalaari and Nexus together own roughly 18% stake in the company, SoftBank , the largest shareholder, owns 33% in the e-commerce firm.SoftBank has also been reported to be the driver of talks with Paytm and Flipkart to sell Snapdeal, in addition to infusing $50 million cash cushion to the company until a merger materializes, Mint reported on 22 March. For such a round to happen, Snapdeal’s other board members may need to be bought out or be convinced to take a large haircut on their investments.SoftBank has already pumped roughly $900 million into Snapdeal. Pushing sales through deep discounts and large marketing spends, e-commerce in India has been popularly criticised for burning a large sum of cash, which has resulted in the cash-deprived state of Snapdeal. As a result, the company has cut hundreds of jobs, slashed spending on discounts and marketing and has seen a sharp drop in monthly sales.Mint reported on 17 February that Jasper Infotech had about Rs1,100-1,200 crore cash left in the bank and Rs300-400 crore at its payments unit Freecharge at the end of 2016; the company registers an average monthly burn of about $25 million (about Rs160 crore), which includes the cash spent on its mobile wallet firm Freecharge over the past nine months of the financial year ending March 2017. Snapdeal has also seen the exit of senior executives in the past two months, including Freecharge chief executive Govind Rajan and head of partnerships and strategic investments Tony Navin.",Lydia Bly Jett’s appointment is the third board movement from SoftBank to Snapdeal since February,14:54,SoftBank Group’s Lydia Bly Jett joins Snapdeal board +2017-04-04,"
With a target to sell six million two-wheelers in 2017-18, Honda Motor Co. will be breathing down the neck of Hero MotoCorp Ltd, India’s largest two-wheeler company and its erstwhile joint venture partner in India. Hero MotoCorp sold 6.6 million units in the year to March, compared with Honda’s five million in India. Six years after the separation, Noriaki Abe, chief executive for Honda’s global motorcycle business, talked about the difficulties in snatching marketshare from Hero in rural markets, Honda’s inability to introduce a model that will rival Hero’s Splendor or Passion, and changing the mindset of a lot of Indian buyers who are still in love with Hero. Edited excerpts:
You will now be the chief executive for Honda’s global motorcycle business. That means your involvement with India will get even more intense.India is our biggest market now. Last year, India operations exceeded volume of Indonesia.
What are your expectations from this market now?We have a very challenging target for next year (2017-18). In this year (2016-17), Honda Motorcycle India could not reach the original target because of demonetisation. Such a loss will pass to the next fiscal, which means the target will be very, very high.Basically, we will have to sell one million more next year. The target is to sell six million units.
Your ex-partner, Hero, has not seen the kind of growth you have seen. How long will Honda take to surpass Hero in sales volume?Luckily or unfortunately, the market has changed. The income of consumers is growing in urban areas. That helped us grow in India, because we have scooter models, which is very apt for urban ride. But in rural areas, Hero is very, very strong. We never give up, but it is very difficult to penetrate in rural areas. Improvement of the economy is reflecting on consumers’ choice in mass motorcycle field, and that will help us because the income of the rural area may improve gradually. Infrastructure of the country will improve and, then, many consumers will reach out to our products. We would like that to happen in motorcycle business in India. But, with some respect, Hero is very strong.ALSO READ: Honda to make a middleweight motorcycle in India to take on Royal Enfield
Your two-wheeler sales are driven by scooters. What stops you from introducing one brand that can change Honda’s fortunes in the motorcycle segment?To beat the Splendor? (laughs) Scooter is still the mainstay of our business plan. We are trying to launch many models in the motorcycle field. But in 110cc segment, we could not find one very strong scooter to compete with Splendor. But, variety of our line-up in motorcycle field surely stimulates our consumers’ mind.
What is ironic is Splendor and Passion brands were actually built on Honda technology and engines.Technology is one thing, but we learnt many things in our partnership with Hero. One of the most important things is cost structure, supplier network. We need to make similar network in the automobile field also to make our company more impactful. Price is one thing and mindset of customers is another. We have launched similar models like Hero’s in the motorcycle segment but it is really difficult to change the mindset of the consumer, which is a main issue.
If your target is six million for next year and Hero’s annual sales is about 6.5 million, it should not take you long since Hero is not growing as fast as you.Mass population is in rural areas, where we have many things to do. There, consumers are committed to Hero. So, we could not reach the real India. That’s our interpretation, but we can never give up to reach such area also. In urban area, there is new India, which has accepted Honda; but older India has not yet, which is our interpretation. So, it is quite interesting.
In the car business, do you see origin of product development moving to India anytime soon?Not soon. It will take time. Motorization in the motorcycle field is occurring now. Market is growing. But real motorization in automobile may happen in the middle of next decade. That is our expectation. So, we have sometime around 10 years. But, during such period, we have to face the new regulation, especially with environment-friendly regulation, which is very important for every manufacturer. Such kind of a change in battlefield may help us again. We are very optimistic. Indian market is very important for two decades because the potential of growth is very huge. If the country is conducted properly by the government here, the growth would be exponential.There has been a lot of consolidation in the global auto industry like Toyota-Suzuki or Toyota-Daihatsu. By nature, Honda has not been a company that would go for such strategic decisions.We don’t have such kind of alliances. But to make new technology and components, we already have a partnership with General Motors. We are open to partners but not in India. Toyota-Daihatsu in many ways are related companies. Two-three years ago, Toyota announced to have first Toyota and second Toyota. Second Toyota is for emerging markets and First Toyota is for developed markets. In that sense, below second Toyota, they needed Daihatsu.For example: Volkswagen already has that kind of culture. They have Audi as the top brand but Skoda is for mass market. Toyota is aiming for such kind of a model; but in Asia region, such European mix has struggled. Similar (is the case) with Ford and General Motors.In case of Honda, in Asia and especially in Asean countries, we are very successful. Our business is based on strong motorcycle sales; brand is well known. In automobile, we are a premium brand. But, if we were affordable to the consumer there, our volumes will grow automatically. That is happening in Malaysia and Indonesia.
It has not happened in India though. In India, competition is very difficult in Maruti. Situation is very difficult and different here. Taste and mindset of consumer is very different. India is a huge country and more than double of entire Asean. We have to recognize that India is different. In short term, we will use our global expertise to strengthen our premiumness in Indian market. But we must continue to learn. In motorcycle operations, we are gaining market share and volumes but still a long way to go to reach Hero.","Noriaki Abe, CEO of Honda’s global motorcycle business, talks about the difficulties in snatching marketshare from Hero MotoCorp in rural markets",01:28,"Still a long way to go to match Hero MotoCorp, says Honda’s Noriaki Abe" +2017-04-03,"
On 1 April, State Bank of India (SBI) merged its five associate banks and Bharatiya Mahila Bank with itself, a union which will catapult it to the ranks of the top 50 lenders in the world.Following the merger, SBI’s growth will not necessarily be in the top line but in increased efficiency, productivity and better ratios, said its chairman, Arundhati Bhattacharya.In an interview, she also talked about how credit growth is likely to rebound to 7-8% by the middle of the current fiscal, and called upon the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to participate more in stressed asset resolution. Edited excerpts:
Do you think your growth will slow post this consolidation with associate banks? It depends on which areas we grow. While we may not be growing in certain areas, we may grow in areas where we are still small, like wealth management. It’s an area where I am small; so I am going to grow fast there. We don’t have any compulsion to simply increase the top line. The idea (behind the merger) is to increase efficiency, increase productivity, better the ratios that we have in various areas. Growth will come not necessarily in the top line.
What will be the integration cost for SBI due to the merger? Integration cost is only in respect of VRS (voluntary retirement scheme) cost. We will know what the number is by 12th of the month. At that point of time, we can put down the cost. Most things are coming together. Other than that, there are some re-branding costs. The additional provident fund provision for employees of associate banks will not be more than Rs25 crore. There is nothing very substantial.
Do you expect to wrap up the merger by October, before you retire? It should be wrapped up well before that. We are going to wait till the 22nd or 24th of April to finish the audit; and then, the data merger of banks will start taking place. That is expected to finish by end-May. Once the data merger is finished, thereafter, there is nothing which is left over. After that, there is only the question of doing rationalization, which will take place over a period of time. It will not happen very quickly. So, we should give 18 months’ time for all of that because there is the question of relocating branches. You have to locate to other places, move people and all of that takes a bit of time.
Credit growth has shrunk to 3.3% in February. Will credit growth be muted next year as well? On growth, I don’t see things happening quickly. The first two quarters will go trying to resolve stressed assets. It is only from the next busy season that we can hope to see things growing well. We also have a caveat: the monsoon should be normal or near normal because the busy season growth is very much dependent on agriculture in our country. So, that is also very much there. Overall, I think a lot of projects are beginning to take shape. Demand is growing no matter what we say. We had a little bit of blip in between. Most of the industry is back on track. Credit growth should be around 7-8%, driven by sectors such as roads, railways, transmission, fertilizers, renewable energy, affordable housing and some amount of work in smart city projects.
Are bankers taking any steps to resolve stressed assets, or are they waiting for regulatory or political support?Some amount of support from government and regulator is required when you are looking at resolving systemic issues. This time, the NPA (non-performing assets) cycle has been systemic. It’s not a question of one or two or three corporates getting hit. It’s a question of a large number of corporates in a few identified sectors which have been hit. With that kind of a problem, it is important to have a systemic answer to these issues. A little more participation from the government and regulator is warranted and required.
Do you think the government is doing enough to protect bankers for their decisions? We are looking to come up with valuations (for resolving NPAs) that will pass scrutiny. The difficulty even when you are putting up an asset for resolution is the variety of bids that come in: somebody says they want to buy it all out. Somebody says they want to come in as a strategic investor. Somebody says they want to come in as a financial investor. With the variety of bids that come in, it’s difficult to compare one with the other in order to determine which one is the best. That is where the controversy comes in.What’s required is for somebody to say in the circumstances this is the best that could have been done. So, that is what bankers are looking for. Something that will give them the confidence to go ahead with the best of their abilities to ascertain what is good for this particular unit, without it being checked by hindsight to say “well, this could have been a better decision” or “that could have been a better decision”. So, I think, that’s what people are looking for. Private sector banks have that freedom. Their commercial decisions are not questioned. I think it’s important for all of us to be on the same playing field.
Is it the only reason stopping banks from going ahead with resolution of stressed assets?There are other issues in respect of smaller banks. When you are looking at things like needing to meet large provisions, they will not have the wherewithal to do it at one time. That is another area that needs to be looked at. So, either they have to be given capital so that they can do it all at one time, or need to be given more time so that they can earn and pay. While we are asking for this, it is apparent that these will be quite transparently disclosed. So there is nothing that the stakeholders will not be able to understand. What it will do is enable these banks to function while they assimilate the provisions that need to be taken. So some amount of flexibility is sought. What could be done is instead of making these provisions in one quarter, we can spread it out over a year, a year-and-a-half, so that provisions come at a later date. But my own feeling is that the quicker we get this behind us, the better it will be. The world is an evolving and challenging place today, whether it be (owing to) technology, competition or risk awareness. We need to have the bandwidth to address these issues instead of getting stuck with one issue.
What is the status of your tie-up with Brookfield Asset Management Inc. (over a stressed asset joint venture fund)?There is nothing as of now. We don’t have a deal on the table.
Would you like to participate in a bad bank?Frankly, I don’t know what the structure will look like.
Is the banking industry prepared to implement goods and services tax on 1 July? There is a lot we have to do internally. We are already ready for people sending the money in through us (or paying tax). That will have to be tested with government servers. For our own internal purposes, there is a lot of work that needs to be done. The rules are not finalized. It’s going to be a humongous task. It is difficult to gauge at this time if we will meet the deadline of 1 July. We need more clarity on how things will happen.
Is SBI looking at giving variable pay to its employees? We would like to do it. But the actual proposal is not yet on the table.","SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya calls on RBI to participate more in resolution of stressed assets, says merger to be wrapped by May-end",13:47,SBI aims to boost efficiency rather than revenue after merger: Arundhati Bhattacharya +2017-02-15,"
New Delhi: Tata Motors Ltd’s fiscal third-quarter profit plummeted 96% as lower sales at its British luxury car unit Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc. (JLR) and a wider loss in its domestic business took its toll on India’s largest automaker by revenue.
Net profit fell to Rs111.57 crore in the three months ended 31 December from Rs2,952.67 crore in the year-ago period, the Mumbai-based company said on Tuesday. A Bloomberg poll of 20 analysts had estimated a profit of Rs2,264.5 crore.
Consolidated sales fell 2.2% to Rs67,864.95 crore from Rs69,398.07 crore in the year-ago period.
Tata Motors said the invalidation of high-value banknotes by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 8 November hurt its domestic commercial vehicles business, a cash cow, with sales of trucks and buses declining 9%. Sales of light commercial vehicles were flat.
ALSO READ | Can’t tell right now Nano’s road ahead: Tata Motors’s Guenter Butschek
The biggest hit came from JLR, where net profit declined to £167 million ($208 million) from £440 million a year ago on a 13.1% increase in revenue to £6.5 billion.
“These are terrible numbers,” said Mahantesh Sabarad, head (retail research), SBI Cap Securities Ltd.
“That is because the JLR margin seem to be settling in to the single-digit space unlike (in) the past where a 14% was a given. More so, the JLR product mix has altered quite substantially” and variable marketing spending has been on the rise, Sabarad said.
Investors punished the stock. Tata Motors shares declined as much as 7% after the earnings announcement but recovered some ground to close down 3.68% at Rs486.80 on a day the BSE’s benchmark Sensex edged down 0.04% to 28,339.31 points on Tuesday.
The fall wiped off Rs5,993.23 crore from the company’s market value.
ALSO READ | Tata Motors reshuffles senior management for a leaner structure
On a standalone basis, the company said net loss widened to Rs1,046 crore in the December quarter from Rs137 crore a year ago. Revenues grew marginally to Rs10,167 crore from Rs10,019 crore.
“Standalone has been struggling, with the passenger vehicle business unit not really picking up pace, but this quarter has been one of the better ones,” Sabarad said.
Passenger vehicle sales rose 25.4% on the back of a continued strong customer response to the Tiago hatchback, said the company. Exports grew by 34.6% year-on-year.
Managing director and chief executive officer Guenter Butschek, a former chief operating officer at European aircraft maker Airbus, has been tasked with turning around the fortunes of Tata Motors, whose domestic passenger car sales and market share have roughly halved in the past two years.
As the domestic business floundered, JLR has sustained Tata Motors. In the December quarter, total retail sales at the unit rose 8.5% to 149,288 units, led by higher demand in China, North America and Europe.
“What is it that we need to be a high-performance organization— being lean, it’s about being agile and it’s about having clearly addressed and delegated accountability,” Butschek told a news conference on Tuesday.
The company expects to fare much better in the fourth quarter, chief financial officer C. Ramakrishnan told the conference.
Tata Motors unveils TAMO sub-brand, to showcase luxury sports car next month
“JLR margins would definitely be better in the fourth quarter, hopefully on the back of the new launches that we have,” Ramakrishnan said.
Other issues facing JLR include Britain’s Brexit vote and US President Donald Trump’s promised protectionist policies, according to a 20 January report by Mumbai-based IDFC Securities Ltd.
The US accounts for about 25% of JLR sales.
“Given this, JLR is in a more precarious position than its peers,” IDFC Securities analyst Deepak Jain wrote in the report.
The JLR unit is vulnerable because it doesn’t have factories in the US and sells much of its UK output abroad.
The unit’s operating profit margin narrowed to 9.3% from 14.4% a year earlier.
To offset the impact of a border tax now being studied by the Trump administration, JLR would need to raise prices by more than $17,000 per vehicle, according to West Bloomfield, an analyst at Michigan-based Baum & Associates Llc.
Reuters and Bloomberg contributed to this story. ","Tata Motors’ consolidated net profit stood at Rs111.57 crore for third quarter, dragged down by losses in domestic operations and lower profit of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) ",04:27,"Tata Motors Q3 profit plunges 96% on losses in India ops, lower JLR profit" +2017-03-31,"Meet the 10 winners of the Mint-MIT Technology Review competition for innovators below the age of 35 from across India in different cutting-edge domains. The winners were selected after a rigorous judging process. The innovators were felicitated on 9 and 10 March at EmTech 2017, the second edition of the emerging technology conference organized in Delhi by Mint and MIT Technology Review.Akash DongreOrganization: Indus OSDesignation: Co-founder and chief product officerInnovation: A multilingual operating system available on over 50 mobile devicesEducation: BTech in mechanical engineering from IIT BombayAkash Dongre—along with co-founders Rakesh Deshmukh and Sudhir Bangarambandi—has always believed that “Indian problems require indigenous solutions”. No wonder their eponymous innovation, touted as the “world’s first regional operating system”, is blazing a trail in the Indian smartphone ecosystem. “In our short journey, beginning in 2015, we have already partnered with five domestic smartphone brands (Micromax, Intex, Karbonn, Celkon and Swipe) and built a user base of more than six million, which is consistently growing at a rate of 500,000 OS activations per month,” says Dongre. Indus OS, which is available in 12 Indian regional languages, boasts innovative features such as Indus Swipe (translation from English to a regional language and vice versa with just a swipe), Indus Keyboard (with built-in word and matra (a unit of metrical quantity in Indian languages) prediction) and Indus Reader (which can convert an English text into audio in eight regional languages). Besides, there’s a marketplace called App Bazaar, where over 50,000 apps are available in local languages.Dongre recalls one of his foreign trips when his lack of understanding of the local language made him feel handicapped: “Everything around me was in a language I did not understand.” Dongre also realized how digitally less connected the Indian heartland is and how alien English is to a lot of Indians. “After spending some more time to understand the Indian digital landscape and brainstorming with my team, we decided to start building an ecosystem for Indian consumers.” The team built Indus OS on three core pillars: simplicity, innovation and localization. “At the heart of our story lies the desire to equip anyone who is using a smartphone with a holistic ecosystem of their choice,” says Dongre.Indus OS, which introduced Indus OS 2.0 in July 2016, will introduce Indus OS 3.0 in 2017. “In 2017, we intend to continue to work with the Government of India and app developers alike to build a smartphone ecosystem of choice for the emerging markets population,” Dongre says.Ankit JhanwarOrganization: Pluss Advanced TechnologiesDesignation: Vice-president, corporate planning and strategyInnovation: A packaging box for vaccine transportation that uses phase change materials and a unique design for precise temperature controlEducation: BTech in polymer science and technology from IIT Roorkee; certificate in entrepreneurship, management and global leadership from London School of Economics and Political ScienceAn optimist by nature, Ankit Jhanwar was not put off by the disinterest displayed by some packaging companies in developing a temperature-controlled shipping solution using phase change materials (PCMs)—a domain in which his company, Pluss Advanced Technologies, had been working since 2005. Such a temperature-controlled solution could prove very useful in cutting down the 30% wastage of vaccines in the existing cold chain system in the country. So what Pluss did was develop a complete shipping solution using its own proprietary PCMs, which could not only provide better temperature control but also address the challenging Indian ambient conditions of 40°C. “A range of products were planned to address the gaps at each leg of the supply chain right from manufacturer to the depot to the distributor to chemist and finally to the patient,” says Jhanwar.The shipping solution that he developed was branded Celsure—which uses the PCM technology to provide precise temperature control. “It is the only shipping solution which provides temperature control for more than 72 hours even at ambient temperature of 40°C,” he says. Thanks to this innovation, all the current pharmaceutical shipments which happen by air can now be done by road using Celsure—something that can lead to huge savings in freight cost, thereby making it possible to lower the prices of medicines.According to Jhanwar, Celsure also addresses the unique challenge of shipping from a hot environment (say, India) to a cold environment (like Europe) or vice versa. What’s more, the solution has brought in simplicity in the packaging, removing human errors. Jhanwar says that it’s available in sizes as small as one vial to as large as 10,000 vials and can provide temperature control for as low as 2 hours to as high as 120 hours. Pluss has a goal of reducing medicine wastage due to ineffective cold chain to as low as 0.1% in the next three-five years. The firm is constantly working on scaling up and commercializing the innovation. Celsure was launched in April 2016 with only one variant; eight more variants have been added within a year. Logistics firms such as Blue Dart and DHL have adopted Celsure as one of their preferred modes of shipping temperature-sensitive pharma products. Successful trials have also been run with various pharmaceutical firms. Besides commercializing it in India, Pluss plans to go global with the launch in Singapore and the Middle East in 2018 and in the US and Europe in 2019. “We are also keen on tie-ups with the government, World Health Organization (WHO), Unicef and other related organizations for last-mile delivery of vaccines. Customized products are being planned to address the last mile challenges,” says Jhanwar. Anusha RammohanOrganization: General Electric Global ResearchDesignation: Lead engineerInnovation: Flow analytics for multi-phase flow metering in oil and gas industryEducation: BE (Hons.) in electronics and instrumentation from BITS-Pilani; MS in electrical engineering from Arizona State University, USAnusha Rammohan believes that the intersection of the digital and physical worlds is the ideal space for disruptive innovations. And that’s exactly what attracted her to the esoteric domain of flow analytics for multi-phase flow metering in the oil and gas industry.As the lead engineer at GE Global Research’s John F Welch Technology Center in Bengaluru, Anusha got the opportunity to combine physical sensors with advanced analytics to develop a solution capable of radically transforming the processes of the entire industry. “As the global energy demand continues to increase, there is an urgent need in the oil and gas industry to be more efficient with resources, people and investments to reduce the cost of producing oil while doing so safely with reduced environmental impact,” says Rammohan. Her innovation addresses this need by combining sensor and device data in the field using intelligent analytics to provide accurate and reliable information in real time about oil production. For instance, she says, timely information about well and field level production of oil, water and gas allows operators to make critical decisions related to optimizing pumps, allocating resources and energy to each well, shutting down or stimulating wells, and preventing leakage and blockage of pipes, etc. By transforming data into actionable insights, her analytics solution enables increased oil recovery, reduced human intervention and improved resource planning.Not merely restricting her innovation to a single industry, the next stop for Anusha is to extend it to applications in industries such as aviation, power and transportation. The applications include performance optimization of assets, health monitoring of safety-critical components and their increased reliability and reduced downtime—all of which can significantly improve productivity and bring down costs. Rammohan has been granted patents related to her work in image mapping, sensor positioning and flow measurement; she has filed for more. She dreams of a world powered by analytics and technologies such as artificial intelligence—one in which “autonomous decision making” would greatly reduce the ambiguity, uncertainty and human subjectivity that are currently proving to be bottlenecks in all industries.
Kshitij Marwah
Organization: Tesseract Imaging
Designation: Founder
Innovation: Virtual reality (VR) camera to create and share high resolution VR/holographic content; holographic augmented reality headset
Education: MTech in computer science from IIT Delhi; MS in media arts and sciences from MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts, US
Kshitij Marwah says virtual reality and augmented reality (VR and AR) are the new mediums for human beings to tell their stories in a much more “experiential and immersive manner”. It marks a natural progression, as he says: “From the spoken word to the written word, from photos to videos—we have always found new ways and tools to tell our stories.”The power of his belief in VR and AR, backed by the rigour of his technical education (never mind that he dropped out of his PhD at MIT Media Lab), led Marwah to his innovations: Quark VR camera and the Holoboard AR viewing headset. Says he, “The Quark VR camera will democratize mixed reality content creation and the Holoboard AR headset will allow for its viewing in a truly immersive and unique manner.”Marwah has a simple way of explaining his innovation. “Imagine the next time when you are watching a cricket match in your house. Rather than sitting in front of your television, with our Quark camera streaming the match live in VR and the Holoboard headset, you can feel as if you are sitting right in the stadium but in the comfort of your couch,” he says.His current company, Tesseract Imaging (in Norse mythology, Tesseract is said to be a cosmic cube of immense power; in geometry, the tesseract is a four-dimensional hypercube), was spun out of MIT Media Lab’s India arm, a unit that Marwah had co-founded to promote and spread inter-disciplinary learning among students in India. He is credited with growing the Lab initiative from a platform of 50 students to 500 students selected from hundreds of thousands of applicants across the country. He headed the India arm of the Lab from 2012 to 2015.Marwah believes that the innovations coming out of Tesseract will revolutionize “the way we capture, consume and see content and media”. On the anvil are plans to begin shipping the Quark VR cameras in mid-2017 and Holoboard AR headsets by the end of the year. “With our technology, we believe we can make sure that our society can capture, share and consume their daily experiences and share stories across generations with an experience that is immersive and powerful.”Nishant KumarOrganization: Embryyo Technologies Pvt. LtdDesignation: Founder and CEOInnovation: Sensor and mobile app-based drug adherence monitoring system for tuberculosisEducation: Dual degree in mechanical engineering from IIT Bombay Nishant Kumar, the founder and chief exec of Embryyo Technologies, a medical technology and research start-up incubated at Pune’s Venture Centre, was troubled by the way tuberculosis (TB) treatment was left midway by a large number of patients in India. There wasn’t an effective way of ensuring patients stayed the course. “This was because the TB medication involves a drug regimen of about 6 months where the patient is required to take a total of about 400 pills,” he says. There are several reasons why treatment is left incomplete, including side effects, forgetfulness, poor counselling and duration of the regimen. The enormity of the problem—as many as 2.5 million people in India were affected by TB in 2015 as per a World Health Organization report—inspired Kumar to do something about it. He visited the local district level hospitals and direct observation treatment (DOT) centres to interact with the clinicians, healthcare workers and patients, which helped him in “collecting more insights” and further strengthened his resolve to address this problem. He says that it demanded an easy-to-use, affordable solution which could fit seamlessly in an already established public health infrastructure in the country. The result was BoxRx, an electronic medical event monitoring system that has currently been piloted for drug adherence monitoring in TB patients. According to Kumar, most people with TB are cured by a strictly followed, six-month drug regimen but any interruption to it can cause drug resistance.That is where the innovation behind BoxRx comes in handy. The solution comprises a specially designed electronic pill box which carries the TB blister pack as prescribed by the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP). A tearable paper with conductive ink tracks printed corresponding to each pill is placed beneath the blister pack before closing the box. Whenever a pill is removed from the blister pack, the conductive track gets broken and this activity is logged and transmitted from an in-built Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) circuit to a central server in the form of an SMS. The server processes the information in the SMS and updates the mobile application of the doctor/health worker assigned to that particular patient.To scale up the innovation, Kumar plans to work very closely with the national and international organizations that are leading the TB control programmes. Also on the cards is large-scale manufacturing and on-field implementation of the innovation so that it reaches the maximum number of patients. Kumar envisions a society that is centred on harmonious and sustainable co-existence. “I believe that good health is the primary signature of prosperity for an individual, a family, a nation and the world at large,” he says.Pankaj AgarwalDesignation: Creative leaderOrganization: Samsung ElectronicsInnovation: A button-type device that connects to toys and a mobile app to enable intuitive interactions for kidsEducation: BTech in electrical engineering from IIT Kanpur; MS from Seoul National University; MBA from Harvard Business SchoolWhenever Pankaj Agarwal saw his son Anant play alone with his toy blocks, a question often nagged him: “Why does he have to play alone? Is there something I can do to make play-at-home social and interactive for him?” He was also inspired to change the status quo when he looked at the many expensive toys gathering dust around his house. Agarwal thought of the millions of middle-class homes that just couldn’t afford all those high-tech toys with pricey tags.So he added a simple and interactive, yet relatively inexpensive, tag of his own: TagPlus. The innovation comprises a button-type smart tag, a smart app (for phones/tablets), and, above all, content created and shared in the cloud by kids as young as 7-year-olds. A key benefit of TagPlus is that it can increase the repeat play value of toys. An important feature of the innovation, says Agarwal, is that there is no set-up required. “No device pairing, no logins, no passwords!” When kids buy toys that have this smart tag, they can start playing on the TagPlus platform immediately after unwrapping it. Kids can “click”, “long press”, “shake” and “bump” their smart tags and the smart app will respond accordingly. A “click” on the smart tag activates the TagPlus app on a nearby digital device to show toy-related content. A “long press” action will bring on a social media interface where kids can easily upload their creations and also see the creations of other kids playing with the same toy. “Think of this as a ‘mini Facebook for kids’,” says Agarwal. A “shake” action on the smart tag will help kids find and connect with children playing with an identical toy who could be anywhere in the world. Also, when kids “bump” two tags from two different toys, the connected app shows multiple ways in which the toys can be combined to create something entirely new. Agarwal and his other TagPlus team members at Samsung believe that this patent-pending technology platform has the potential to make kids’ playing experiences more serendipitous, socially engaging and creative “by seamlessly bridging their virtual and physical play environments”. Agarwal and his colleagues did multiple pilot tests of TagPlus in South Korea and they are also in discussion with many toy makers to adopt the platform. “The response has been very positive,” he says. Agarwal plans to continue his innovative work in the creative domain and believes that “members of our society should be educated and imbibe a culture of creativity”.Prasant MisraDesignation: ScientistOrganization: TCS Research and Innovation, Tata Consultancy Services LtdInnovation: Auditory sensing for micro unmanned aerial vehicles Education: PhD in computer science and engineering from the University of New South Wales, Sydney; postdoctoral fellowship from the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, StockholmPrasant Misra has been focusing his research efforts around building “spatially intelligent systems”. His current work pertains to the auditory sensing technology for micro unmanned aerial vehicles (MUAVs, more popularly known as drones). It’s like “growing the ears” for intelligent things, as he puts it. “It is part of a grand vision to equip this category of flying robots with a sensory gamut that is on par with humans,” he says. This will not only enable such “things” to derive better spatial intelligence, but also drive cognition to a better level of autonomy by combining auditory sensing with vision.There are, however, fundamental challenges in developing such robust auditory capabilities, especially in capturing the spatial dimensions of a sound scene and analysing its acoustic signature. “The signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio is extremely low due to the presence of (near-field) wideband acoustic interference (i.e., self-noise) from the MUAVs’ spinning rotors and motors, which is both strong and non-stationary,” he explains. Theoretically speaking, building an acoustic array with a large number of acoustic elements can overcome such high levels of noise, but the space, payload and energy limitations of an MUAV come in the way of meeting such exhaustive system requirements and computational needs.Misra is now investigating both lightweight acoustic sensing system design, and low-power (but efficient) computation paradigms to overcome this challenge. The initial results, he says, are quite promising.The impact of the work Misra is doing is far-reaching. It will not only force us to rethink the current model of aerial sensing (which is primarily vision dominated), but will also open up newer applications and usage scenarios for the betterment of society. It is now quite common to talk of aerial drones, especially tiny ones with multiple rotors that can hover mid-air, in applications ranging from e-commerce deliveries and inspection of industrial machinery to wildlife monitoring and search-and-rescue operations. Nevertheless, their sensing technology is predominately vision-centric. “While the advantages are clearly obvious in visual inspection and monitoring applications, on the flip side, they become unusable in camera-obstructed or low-light conditions, or in scenarios that offer non-visual clues such as those based on sound. In fact, these conditions are a norm in high-stress environments (dense canopy or fog, structures on fire, underground mines, etc.),” he says.Misra is working towards taking the MUAV technology from its existing level to “cognitive autonomous systems”. He believes that as spatial intelligence and cognitive technology mature, the lines between machines and humans would blur, enabling both to live together in the same society as companions. In the future, cognitive aerial drones will take up roles such as aerial cars and taxis, pick up and escort agents, search and rescue bots, and ears and eyes for the disabled. In short: anything you want them to be.Sandeep Senan Designation: Founder and directorOrganization: Evobi Automations Pvt. Ltd (Bibox Labs)Innovation: A toolkit-based approach to learning so that kids can learn through experiments by making things like a robotic toy or a fire alarmEducation: BE in computer science from Visvesvaraya Technological University, Karnataka; MBA in international business from Edith Cowan University, AustraliaWhen it comes to innovation and creativity, Sandeep Senan is as excited as the young kids he wants to empower with the innovative tools at his disposal. His innovation, Bibox (short for Brain-in-a-box), is like an “electronic brain which can be instructed by a kid using a graphical software, which can run on a tablet or smartphone or PC or even with cards”, he says. Senan is of the view that the realm of innovation must be extended to children rather than remain mostly confined to the adult world. There’s a need for a huge change in the way children are taught and allowed to be creative, he feels.“The task of making adults creative is a humongous task, but if we think about kids, they are naturally curious and thus it’s easy to instill an innovative thinking process in them,” says Senan. So when he discovered that there was a lack of tools and curricula designed for instilling the habit of innovation in kids, he decided to do something about it.“The innovation Bibox was originated out of that need to give kids the tools to change the world and thus the confidence to keep innovating and make it a habit so that when they become adults, they can go out and make large-scale impact because the thinking is ingrained into their minds,” he says.Bibox doesn’t have a definite shape or size but is basically a set of tools—processors, switches, sensors, battery and software, among others—using which children in different age groups can try their hand at innovation. This “brain”, says Senan, can be connected to a variety of accessories, including toys, lights and TV sets, and children can come up with stuff like walking robotic dogs, automatic TV and even connected health products using the Internet of Things.“Because Bibox responds to kids’ logic in the physical world, they can see what the logic means and correct themselves when required—making the learning experience truly experiential,” he says. Besides providing them such toolkits, Senan’s organization also provides them some structured mentoring to enable them to use their creative freedom and confidence to innovate more and more in any field they choose to be in. “We are just getting the process started a little early,” he says. Through Bibox Labs, he has enrolled more than 25,000 students in over 100 schools in India.To take his innovative ways to a much larger base of students, Senan and his team are digitizing the process of mentoring the kids to be innovators. Once this is in place, he says, any student anywhere in the world would be able to go through the same process that Bibox Labs follows in its affiliate schools. They also plan to partner with private firms, non-governmental organizations and various government bodies to scale up the programme.Subham Banerjee Designation: Young scientistOrganization: Centre for Biodesign and Diagnostic, Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, department of biotechnologyInnovation: Transdermal patch against neurotoxin poisoningEducation: Master of pharmacy from West Bengal University of Technology; PhD in pharmacy from Birla Institute of Technology, MesraSoldiers fighting in hostile territories often have to shield themselves against harmful or poisonous gases and chemical substances. One often hears of deadly strikes such as the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system (1995), the nerve gas attack in Syria (2013) or the recent attack in Iraq by Islamic State militants in which they set fire to a sulphur mine, spreading sulphur dioxide plumes.Subham Banerjee’s innovation concerns protecting people against neurotoxic poisoning resulting from such attacks. “The exposure of humans to neurotoxins is a major risk factor in severe mortality in chemical or biological warfare situations, as neurotoxins are one of the most potent toxins,” he says. His innovation, a transdermal patch that can provide protection against neurotoxin poisoning, comprises an inert adhesive matrix system with active pharmaceutical ingredients. The patch can be applied to intact or even burnt or blistered skin. It works by releasing a combination drug (eserine and pralidoxime chloride) through the skin in what is called a “controlled or sustained release” mechanism.According to Banerjee, the new patch has “an excellent safety profile”, can be “self-administered”, and has positive environmental as well as economic impact. “Apart from conventional dosage forms, no novel sustained release prophylactic transdermal patches are currently available in the market,” he says. Which is why this innovation has huge socio-economic benefits and the potential to achieve product dominance in the market.In order to sustain this project and take it to the next level of successful commercialization, however, Banerjee says that some studies have to be carried out. For one, process parameters have to be optimized to scale up the capability of manufacturing these patches in bulk quantities. Also, a preclinical toxicity study in rodents needs to be done, followed by a full-fledged pilot for the bioavailability study in human subjects as per the guidelines of the Drug Controller General of India.Banerjee believes that this innovation has the potential to make an “extra value-addition” to the existing measures for biological warfare protection available with India’s Armed Forces.Vinay Kumar Designation: Co-founder, director and CEOOrganization: PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. LtdInnovation: A single device that can diagnose multiple parameters related to diabetes managementEducation: MTech in microelectronics and VLSI design and MSc in electronic science from Kurukshetra University; PhD from Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science BangaloreAt age 14, when Vinay Kumar was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, his doctor told him he would have to take insulin injections. The look of disappointment on his face prompted the physician to lie that it was only for 10 days that injections were needed. Later on, when Kumar realized that he was stuck with the needle for a lifetime, he became determined to put the hurt and discomfort behind and do something about it. Over the years, diabetes took a bigger and bigger toll on his body, with episodes of hypoglycemia (abnormally low level of sugar in the blood) and even fainting—but all this only strengthened his resolve.In addition to struggling with a debilitating condition like millions in the world do, Kumar constantly thought about how a diabetic can manage his condition better and, at the same time, persisted with his studies. “These two aspects of my life merged when I decided to pursue a PhD at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc Bangalore),” he says. Besides working on novel ways to diagnose diseases and acquiring multiple patents, he also co-founded (along with Navakanta Bhat and Gautam Sharma) PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. Ltd, a start-up incubated at IISc that is focused on medical device research and development.Kumar’s innovation is a hand-held point-of-care device which, as a single unit, can measure eight different parameters related to diabetes management and early detection of its complications. “With a tiny drop of finger-pricked blood samples, patients can test HbA1c (which gives 90 days blood glucose control profile), glycated albumin (which gives 15 days blood glucose control profile) and instant blood glucose as well,” he says. The device can detect very early damage in the kidney by measuring the microalbuminuria, creatinine and ACR (albumin to creatinine ratio) in the urine samples. Apart from these, he adds, it can measure the haemoglobin level for anaemia and chronic kidney disease. “The device can measure serum albumin, an important blood marker for kidney and liver. So the single device can take care of full diabetes glycaemic management and early detection of complications such as diabetic nephropathy,” explains Kumar.The road ahead for PathShodh is well-defined. “The device is ready and regress clinical validation for most of the tests has been completed on real patient samples in collaboration with major pathology labs and hospitals in Bangalore. We also have the manufacturing line setup at IISc to manufacture the disposable test strips for these different tests,” says Kumar. The commercial launch of the device can happen any time now. That would certainly move the needle in a positive direction for PathShodh’s mission of making healthcare diagnostics affordable and available to all.",Meet the 10 winners of the Mint-MIT Technology Review competition for innovators below the age of 35 from across India in different cutting-edge domains,17:26,EmTech 2017: Innovators under 35 +2017-02-14,"Mumbai: Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL) Tuesday announced a net loss of Rs407.44 crore for the December quarter, less than half of the Rs869.73 crore loss it posted a year ago, helped by higher production and sales of steel.Total income from operations rose 24.7% to Rs5,407.87 crore from Rs4,336.05 crore a year earlier.Nine analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected JSPL to report consolidated net loss of Rs611 crore while eight analysts had expected sales of Rs5,297.6 crore.ALSO READ: Jindal Steel and Power in talks to sell Chhattisgarh power plant for over $1.5 billionThe Naveen Jindal-led integrated steel and power producer’s consolidated steel sales in the quarter rose 18% to 1.16 million tonnes while consolidated steel production rose 7% to 1.15 million tonne, JSPL said.Revenue in the iron and steel business rose 40.4% to Rs4,577.71 crore while revenue in the power business rose 6.2% to Rs1,554.27 crore. A large part of the company’s power capacity remained unutilized, the company said.Total expenses in the third quarter rose 7.7% to Rs5,158.57 crore from Rs4,789.58 crore a year earlier.“Going forward, the company will continue to focus on increased volumes of steel, improve product mix with a higher focus on high yield products, improve its product mix and increased production in all mines both in India and abroad which would enhance the revenues as well as the operating margins in the coming quarters,” JSPL said in a statement.","Jindal Steel and Power’s total income from operations rose 24.7% to Rs5,407.87 crore in the December quarter from Rs4,336.05 crore a year earlier",23:24,JSPL reports loss of Rs407.44 crore +2017-02-14,"Mumbai: Godrej Industries Ltd, one of the Godrej group holding companies, Tuesday posted a Rs42.31 crore standalone loss for the December quarter against a Rs49.42 crore profit a year ago, even as sales rose.Total revenue increased 30.34% to Rs410.52 crore from a year ago.The company’s finance costs rose 25.7% from a year ago to touch Rs52.78 crore. Godrej also posted a loss before interest and tax of Rs24.72 crore in the ‘other’ business, up 45% year-on-year. This segment includes integrated poultry, tissue culture, seeds, windmill energy generation, and gourmet and fine foods.On a consolidated basis, the company posted a Rs89.95 crore net profit, down 15.1% from a year ago. However, in a statement, the company said that consolidated results for this quarter were not comparable with previous quarters because of “changes in the shareholdings during the period in some of the subsidiaries, joint ventures, and associates.”ALSO READ: Godrej Properties Q3 net profit up nearly fourfold at Rs77.25 crore“The best way to look at this company is on a sum of the parts basis,” an analyst with an equities brokerage firm said, requesting anonymity. “The bulk of Godrej Industries’s holdings are in Godrej’s consumer business, Godrej Properties, and Godrej Agrovet. These are all fast-growing companies, and GIL’s market cap is equal to the market value of its shares in both the listed entities it holds–GCPL, and Godrej Properties,” he said. Godrej Industries currently holds 23.8% of Godrej Consumer Products and 56.7% of Godrej Properties, as per a company investor update released Tuesday.“The star business in Godrej Industries’ stable is Godrej Agrovet, their agriculture business,” the analyst said. “It has been growing at 25-30% CAGR.” Godrej Industries said this division posted an 18% growth in revenue and 369% growth in profit before tax (without exceptional items) year-on-year. The subsidiary has interests in animal feeds, oil palm, agri inputs, and life sciences, whose revenues grew steadily in the past three quarters. The agri-inputs grew fastest at 26% year-on-year.Brokerage firm Axis Capital in an October report had pointed out that Godrej Industries’s market cap is largely derived from its holdings in the listed properties and consumer businesses, ignoring the value generated by Agrovet, the company’s agri-chem business. Axis Capital estimated that Agrovet will be worth Rs7,000 crore by end of FY2018 and will be worth Rs14,000 crore by 2021, close to GIL’s current market cap of Rs17,409 crore. Shares of Godrej Industries closed 0.09% higher at Rs516.50 on the BSE on Tuesday, while the benchmark Sensex closed lower by 12 points, or 0.04%, at 28,339 points.",Godrej Industries’ total revenue in Q3 increased 30.34% to Rs410.52 crore from a year ago,22:50,Godrej Industries posts Rs42.31 crore loss for December quarter +2017-02-14,"Ahmedabad: Adani Enterprises Ltd (AEL), part of the Adani Group, posted a consolidated net profit of Rs340 crore for the quarter ended 31 December, a 62% increase from a year earlier.The company, which is in the business of mining, agro, renewable energy and city gas distribution, said in a media statement Tuesday evening that revenue rose to Rs8,606 crore from Rs7,895 crore in the same period last year.ALSO READ: Adani gets CCI nod to buy Reliance Infra’s power transmission projects in Gujarat, Maharashtra“Adani Enterprises demonstrated encouraging performance backed by mining, city gas and renewable businesses. Government’s focus of strong spending on infrastructure and energy space coupled with improving utilization and cost optimization enables the company to deliver on its growth plans,” executive director Ameet Desai said in the statement.According to Gautam Adani, chairman of the Adani Group, the government’s initiatives to curb the parallel economy and other reforms augured well for AEL’s businesses. “We at Adani Enterprises continue to focus on business opportunities with sustainable returns and value enhancement,” he added.","Adani Enterprises’ revenue rose to Rs8,606 crore in December quarter from Rs7,895 crore last year",20:59,Adani Enterprises posts 62% jump in Q3 profit at Rs340 crore +2017-02-14,"Bengaluru: Low-fare airline SpiceJet Ltd’s fiscal third-quarter profit declined 24% because of higher fuel prices and a drop in demand after the government invalidated high-value banknotes in a shock announcement in November.Net profit fell to Rs181.1 crore in the three months ended 31 December from Rs239.9 crore in the year earlier, the company said in a statement to BSE on Tuesday.Revenue rose 12.5% to Rs1,642.4 crore from Rs1,459.95 crore the year before. Still, it was the eighth straight quarter SpiceJet reported a profit after nearly shutting down in December 2014.Ajay Singh, chairman and managing director of SpiceJet, attributed the decline in profits on high fuel prices and demonetisation denting demand for travel in what is typically the most profitable quarter for airlines.SpiceJet’s will start inducting fuel-efficient Boeing Max planes starting next year, Singh said, adding that the new planes will help the airline save costs over the long term.Last month, SpiceJet placed a $11 billion order to buy 100 Boeing 737 Max aircraft to expand operations.“Our historic aircraft order signifies the end of the turnaround phase for SpiceJet and marks the beginning of a growth story. This order will help build an even stronger and more profitable airline. We will be relentless in reducing our costs and identifying new avenues for revenue generation,” he said.SpiceJet, with about 13% domestic market share, has 343 daily flights to 45 cities with 32 Boeing 737NG and 17 Bombardier Q-400 planes. SpiceJet’s profits mirror a similar drop in earnings for two other listed airlines in the December quarter. InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, which operates IndiGo, and Jet Airways India Ltd have reported a slump in profits in the three months ended 31 December.IndiGo said third-quarter profit dropped 25% to Rs487.25 crore from Rs657.29 crore a year earlier while revenue rose 16.8% to Rs5,158.42 crore from Rs4,481.20 crore in the year-ago period.Jet Airways’ profit slumped 69% to Rs142.38 crore from Rs.467.11 crore a year ago while revenue dropped to Rs3,344.62 crore from Rs3,608 crore a year ago.Singh had said in mid-January that the December quarter will be a profitable one for SpiceJet.SpiceJet stock rose 0.55% to Rs 64.35 on BSE, while the benchmark Sensex fell 0.04% to end at 28,339.31 points on Monday. The earnings were announced after the end of trading on Tuesday.",Budget airline SpiceJet’s profit declined 24% in the December quarter from the year-ago period on the back of higher fuel prices and competitive flight fares,20:53,SpiceJet’s Q3 profit declines 24% to Rs181 crore +2017-02-14,"Ahmedabad: Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ), the country’s largest port developer, reported a consolidated net profit of Rs848 crore for the quarter ended 31 December, a rise of 26% from a year earlier.APSEZ said in a statement that its consolidated revenue rose 32% to Rs2,235.78 crore in the same period.In Q3 FY17, APSEZ handled cargo of 41 million tonnes, an increase of 8% from 38 million tonnes it handled in Q3 FY16.“Our strategy to diversify our cargo mix and focus on high value cargo continues to yield positive results. Like last quarter, the continued outperformance in cargo volumes is backed by healthy growth in our newer ports namely Hazira, Dhamra and Kattupalli,” said Karan Adani, chief executive officer of APSEZ, in the statement. ALSO READ: Adani Enterprises posts 62% jump in Q3 profit at Rs340 croreOperational efficiencies and the company’s efforts to change the mix of bulk cargo beyond coal have resulted in all-round growth in our financial numbers, he added.APSEZ owns and operates eight ports and terminals in India including Mundra, Dahej, Kandla and Hazira in Gujarat, Dhamra in Orissa, Mormugao in Goa, Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and Katupalli in Chennai. The company is developing a terminal at Ennore in Tamil Nadu and Vizhinjam in Kerala.","Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone’s consolidated revenue rose 32% to Rs2,235.78 crore in December quarter",22:35,Adani Ports Q3 profit rises 26% to Rs848 crore +2017-02-14,"Bengaluru: DLF Ltd, India’s largest property developer, said on Tuesday that fiscal third-quarter profit fell 46% to Rs98.14 crore from the year-ago period. Revenue also fell 30% to Rs2,057.92 crore during the three months ended 31 December. The realty firm’s stake sale in its rental unit, which is expected to raise about Rs12,000-13,000 crore, is at an advanced stage with discussions on with shortlisted investors. The transaction involves promoters selling 40% in DLF’s commercial property arm, DLF CyberCity Developers Ltd (DCCDL), to institutional investors. The proceeds from the sale will be infused into DLF and be used mainly to reduce debt.“In respect of DCCDL CCPS (compulsorily convertible preference shares) transaction, the discussion with shortlisted investors is at an advanced stage and shall be presented to the committee of independent directors for their evaluation and final decision. In lieu of this, conversion period for CCPS issued to the promoters in DCCDL has been extended by one year at their request to facilitate its sale,” DLF said in a release. DLF on Saturday said that its promoters have deferred till March next year the conversion of securities held in the firm’s subsidiary into equity shares. The deadline to convert CCPS into shares was 19 March this year, but the same could not be executed in view of Securities and Exchange Board of India’s order in October 2014 banning DLF and six executives from the capital market for the next three years.ALSO READ: Property developers falling in line with new stringent realty law“The performance in the last quarter was subdued as markets adjusted itself to new paradigm initiated by demonetisation move. While demonetisation is extremely positive for the company and the industry, it has had short-term negative impact on secondary sales, which in turn has impacted primary off-take. The company expects this period of adjustment may continue for next few quarters till the time secondary market stabilizes and customers start to purchase new products,” DLF said in a statement.DLF said it remains focused on execution and creation of finished inventory. With deliveries of 11 million sq. ft in the first nine months of 2016-17, under-construction residential projects have come down to 19 million sq. ft.Meanwhile, office leasing business continues to witness healthy traction, backed by expansion in services sector. Witnessing the demand in office leasing, DLF is building two new office complexes in Gurgaon and Chennai.PTI contributed to this story.","DLF Ltd’s revenue also fell 30% to Rs2,057.92 crore during the quarter ",22:08,DLF’s Q3 profit falls 46% to Rs98.14 crore +2017-02-14,"New Delhi: Fortis Healthcare on Tuesday reported a net profit of Rs453.29 crore for the third quarter ended on 31 December 2016-17. The company had reported net loss of Rs29.16 crore in the same quarter of last fiscal. Its consolidated total income from operations stood at Rs 1,133.38 crore for the third quarter of current fiscal, compared with Rs1,026.52 crore in the year-ago period, Fortis said in a BSE filing. Fortis Healthcare said results are not comparable, as the consolidated result includes financial results of FHTL which it had invested in last year. It has completed acquisition of 51% economic interest in Fortis Hospotel Ltd (FHTL) from RHT.Fortis Healthcare CEO Bhavdeep Singh said: “Like all other healthcare players, we have been impacted by demonetisation, however we have still continued to grow on most parameters in comparison to last year and the trailing quarter”. During the quarter, revenue of its hospital Business stood at Rs917.2 crore while revenue from its diagnostics business was at Rs188 crore. Fortis Healthcare stock closed 5.25% up at Rs195.60 on BSE.","Fortis Healthcare consolidated total income from operations stood at Rs 1,133.38 crore for the third quarter, compared with Rs1,026.52 crore in the year-ago period",18:26,Fortis Healthcare Q3 profit at Rs 453.29 crore +2017-02-14,"Mumbai: Despite higher sales, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd’s consolidated net profit fell 4.7% year-on-year in the quarter ended December due to a sharp increase in tax expense.India’s largest pharmaceutical company reported a net profit of Rs1,471.82 crore for the quarter against Rs1,544.85 crore a year ago, missing analysts’ estimates. Sales were up 8.4% at Rs7,683.24 crore, as against Rs7,087.07 crore in the year-ago period.A Bloomberg poll of 24 brokerages had estimated the company’s net profit at Rs1,782 crore.Tax expense for the December quarter jumped four-fold to Rs372.92 crore from Rs88.82 crore in the same period last year.Sun Pharma’s sales in the US, which accounted for 45% of the total sales, rose 4% on year to $507 million, benefitting from authorized generic sales of olmesartan and its combinations, the company said in its earnings statement.The drug maker’s sales in India were up 5% at Rs1,969 crore, while sales in emerging markets grew 14% to $172 million in the quarter under review.The company’s spending on research and development stood at Rs613 crore, which was 8% of sales. During the quarter, 8 abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs) were filed with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A total of 149 of its applications await US FDA’s approval.Shares of Sun Pharma ended down 0.7% at Rs650.15 on Tuesday on the BSE, while benchmark Sensex index closed almost flat at 28339.31 points.","Sun Pharma reports a profit of Rs1,471.82 crore for the third quarter, as against Rs1,544.85 crore a year ago. Sales rises 8.4% at Rs7,683.24 crore",18:13,"Sun Pharma Q3 profit falls 5% to Rs1,471.82 crore on higher tax outgo" +2017-04-13,"Seoul: Pre-orders for Samsung Electronics Co Ltd’s flagship Galaxy S8 smartphone have exceeded those of its predecessor S7, the firm’s mobile chief said on Thursday, suggesting many consumers are unfazed by last year’s Galaxy Note 7 fires.Strong initial demand for the S8 will be encouraging for a firm recovering from one of the worst product safety failures in tech history, which ended in the Note 7’s swift withdrawal.The new smartphone has received favourable reviews ahead of the start of sales in South Korea, the United States and Canada on 21 April. Some investors and analysts have even predicted a first-year sales record for the South Korean company.“It’s still a bit early, but initial response to the pre-orders that have begun at various places across the world have been better than expected,” mobile chief Koh Dong-jin said at an S8 media briefing.He said the S8 will be the safest Galaxy smartphone to date due to measures implemented to avoid the battery failures that caused some Note 7s to spontaneously combust.Analysts said strong S8 sales are likely to help Samsung to its best-ever quarterly profit in April-June, along with a booming memory chip market that is widely expected to deliver record revenue this year for the industry as a whole.Brand recoverySamsung has been working to restore investor trust as well as its reputation since the Note 7’s withdrawal in October within two months of being on the market, losing out on $5.4 billion in profit.Senior executives told foreign media on the sidelines of the briefing that it will take time for Samsung’s brand image to recover. They also said Samsung has seen a rebound in consumer sentiment towards the firm since announcing the results of a probe into the fires and preventative measures on 23 January.“It took Toyota about four years for its brand to get back to where it was, and I think ours can do it faster,” said Lee Young-hee, an executive vice president at Samsung’s mobile business, referring to a series of Toyota Motor Corp vehicle recalls from 2009 to 2011.S8 advertising focuses on features such as almost bezel-less screens rather than highlighting safety. Executives said this was deliberate in the belief that Samsung has done enough to convince consumers the Note 7’s problems will not be repeated.“We felt really comfortable that we had attained a level of confidence with consumers so that we could actually shift to the product campaign,” said Pio Schunker, global head of integrated marketing for Samsung’s mobile business.“Ultimately I think it is this product that proves this case.” Reuters","Pre-orders of flagship Galaxy S8 smartphone have exceeded those of its predecessor S7 suggesting consumers are unfazed by last year’s Note 7 fires, says Koh Dong-jin of Samsung",18:20,Samsung putting Note 7 behind it as S8 pre-orders surpass S7’s +2017-04-13,"Washington: H1B work visas—the most sought after by Indian IT professionals—had a “positive effect” on innovation and increased the overall welfare of Americans, a new study has found, amidst uncertainty over the regulations of such visas by the Trump administration. The H1B visa allows US companies to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialised occupations. The number of these visas granted annually is capped by the federal government. Recently, the Trump administration issued a stern warning to companies not to discriminate against American workers by “misusing” the H1B work visas programme. Researchers, including John Bound and Nicolas Morales from the University of Michigan in the US, studied the impact that the recruitment of foreign computer scientists had on the US economy. They selected the time period of 1994-2001, which marked the rise of e-commerce and a growing need for technology workers. Foreign computer scientists granted H1B visas to work in the US during the IT boom of the 1990s had a significant impact on workers, consumers and tech companies, researchers said. Also Read: Tightening visa norms a blessing in disguise for IT firms, says Mohandas PaiBound, Morales and Gaurav Khanna of the University of California-San Diego found that “the high-skilled immigrants had a positive effect on innovation, increased the overall welfare of Americans and boosted profits substantially for firms in the IT sector.” Immigration also lowered prices and raised the output of IT goods by between 1.9% and 2.5%, thus benefiting consumers. Such immigration also had a big impact on the tech industry’s bottom line. “Firms in the IT sector also earned substantially higher profits thanks to immigration,” said Morales, a U-M economics doctoral student. On the flipside, the influx of immigrants dampened job prospects and wages for US computer scientists. US workers switched to other professions lowering the employment of domestic computer scientists by 6.1% to 10.8%. Based on their model, wages would have been 2.6% to 5.1% higher in 2001, researchers said. “As long as the demand curve for high-skill workers is downward sloping, the influx of foreign, high-skilled workers will both crowd out and lower the wages of US high-skill workers,” said Bound, U-M professor of economics.","Foreign computer scientists granted H1B visas to work in the US during the IT boom of the 1990s had a significant impact on workers, consumers and companies, researchers said",15:11,H1B visas boosted overall welfare of Americans: study +2017-02-14,"New Delhi: Driven by higher income, metals and mining major Vedanta Ltd saw its consolidated net profit jump over four times to Rs1,866.28 crore during the December quarter of the current fiscal.Led by NRI billionaire Anil Agarwal, it had reported net profit of Rs408.58 crore in the October-December quarter of the previous fiscal, Vedanta said in a BSE filing.Its total consolidated income from operations of the metals-to-oil group rose significantly to Rs20,393.03 crore during the third quarter of 2016-17, as against Rs15,731.48 crore in the year-ago period. The total expenses of the firm also rose to 16,033.75 crore during the quarter as against Rs14,216.38 crore in the third quarter of 2015-16. Vedanta CEO Tom Albanese said: “Volume ramp-up and cost efficiencies across our operations, aided by higher commodity prices, have significantly driven up EBITDA y-o-y. Our financial position remains robust and we continue to strengthen our balance sheet by maximising free cash flow and reducing debt.”He further said that with the company’s focus on simplifying the group structure, the Vedanta Limited and Cairn India merger is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2017.“The proposed merger of Vedanta Limited and Cairn India is an important strategic step in simplifying the group structure. This was approved by all sets of shareholders in September 2016, and Vedanta expects the transaction to complete in the first quarter of CY2017 (by March, 2017),” the company said.It said this has been the “best ever quarter for Vedanta Limited in last 2 years. Profit after tax jumped 4.5 times (or 353%) to Rs1,866 crore in October-December 2016 quarter.”The company said results are driven by higher volumes at Iron Ore, Aluminium & Power, Copper India and Zinc India businesses as well as significant cost and marketing savings and higher commodities prices.It said it recorded “EBITDA at Rs6,002 crore, up 83% y-o-y” and EBITDA margins of 39% reflects benefits from higher commodity prices and volume ramp-up. Vedanta said that as on 31 December 2016, gross debt has been reduced by Rs1,828 crore to Rs64,966 crore and net debt stands reduced by Rs447 crore to Rs11,514 crore on account of positive free cash flow.Also, strong operating performance has led to generation of free cash flow of Rs1,801 crore, it said, adding that its financial position remains strong with total cash and liquid investments of Rs53,452 crore.The company said it is focused on strengthening its balance sheet by maximising free cash flow, refinancing and terming out maturing debt, and simplifying the group structure.It added, “Vedanta achieved cumulative cost and marketing savings of $545 million over the last 7 quarters. This is ahead of the plan to save $1.3 billion in four years.”","Vedanta’s total consolidated income from operations of the metals-to-oil group rose to Rs20,393.03 crore during third quarter of 2016-17, as against Rs15,731.48 crore in the year-ago period",17:34,"Vedanta Q3 profit rises 4-times at Rs1,866 crore" +2017-04-13,"San Francisco: Facebook on Wednesday said it has started weeding out bogus accounts by watching for suspicious behaviour such as repetitive posts or torrents of messages. The security improvement was described as being part of a broader effort to rid the leading social network of hoaxes, misinformation and fake news by making sure people are who they claim to be.“We’ve found that when people represent themselves on Facebook the same way they do in real life, they act responsibly,” Shabnam Shaik of the Facebook protect and care team said in a blog post.“Fake accounts don’t follow this pattern, and are closely related to the creation and spread of spam.” Accounts suspected of being bogus are suspended and holders asked to verify identifies, which scammers typically don’t do, according to the California-based social network.In France, the new tactic has already resulted in Facebook taking action against 30,000 accounts believed to be fakes, Shaik said. “We’ve made improvements to recognize these inauthentic accounts more easily by identifying patterns of activity—without assessing the content itself,” Shaik said.“With these changes, we expect we will also reduce the spread of material generated through inauthentic activity, including spam, misinformation, or other deceptive content that is often shared by creators of fake accounts.”Under pressure to stymie the spread of fake news, Facebook has taken a series of steps including making it easier to report such posts and harder to make money from them. Facebook also modified its displays of trending topics to find stories faster, capture a broader range of news, and help ensure that trends reflect real world events being covered by multiple news outlets.Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has sought to deflect criticism that the huge social network may have been used to fuel the spread of misinformation that affected the 2016 US presidential race.Facebook last week unleashed a new weapon in the war against “revenge porn” at the social network as well as the messaging services Messenger and Instagram.When intimate images shared on Facebook without permission are reported, confirmed and removed, the company will use photo-matching technology to prevent copies from being shared again on its platform.","The security improvement is part of Facebook’s broader effort to rid the social network of hoaxes, misinformation and fake news ",10:54,Facebook looking at behaviour to weed out fake accounts +2017-04-13,"Charlottesville,US: To transform India’s economy, there is a need to reduce “friction” in businesses and create an “environment” wherein the government has more trust in its entrepreneurs, Infosys founder N. R. Narayana Murthy has said. For the transformation of the Indian economy, he said it is essential for the younger generation to be daring and that India is integrated with the global economy. “We still have a little bit of work in reducing friction to businesses. We need to create an environment where the government has more trust in its entrepreneurs than it is today,” Murthy, 70, told students of the prestigious Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia here. Murthy, the recipient of the 2017 Thomas Jefferson Foundation medal in Global Innovation, was responding to Darden School of Business Dean Scott Beardsley who asked, “what do you think needs to happen next to transform India’s economy. What is next”. Also read: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“We want our youngsters to be a little bit more daring in taking the entrepreneurial route more and more than the extent to which they do today. We have to become much more integrated to the world economy so that we can consider the entire world as our market and can become globally competitive. “And most importantly we can become much more open minded to learn from the wonderful things that are happening in this country and elsewhere. I would say these are required (for transforming India’s economy to the next level),” Murthy said. He, however, refrained from elaborating what the Indian government needs to do to create the environment of trust in its entrepreneurs and said, “I will tell you why, as an Indian citizen, it may not be proper if I were to be critical about India when I am outside India”. Interacting with students, he said, challenges for entrepreneurs are now different than the time when he started Infosys. Those days access to capital was almost non-existent and government was a big irritant. “Today, challenges are different. But in some sense even more complex, because today’s entrepreneurs have to be much more smarter than what we were because there is so much of competition on a global scale. Before you can say this can be done, somebody else may have already done it.” “Therefore, today’s entrepreneurs would have to be much more nimble, global, competitive because market is truly determinant for success today unlike our time when managing government was a big determinant in India,” he said. Murthy said good governance is all about maximising shareholders’ value while ensuring fairness, transparency and accountability to all stake holders. Of all the stakeholders, society is the most important player. “Respect from the society is the most important ingredient for longevity of a corporation,” he said. “To be honoured by the most innovative country in the world and to be awarded a medal in the name of Thomas Jefferson, author of Declaration of Independence is to me a big honour. I will certainly work hard, and hopefully smart in the remaining years of my life, to deserve this kindness, this generosity and this affection on their part,” he told PTI. The fact that the university has seen it fit to pick up somebody from India, and bestow this honour shows how open this country is and how generous they are, Murthy said. “Therefore this is a clear example of how Indian students wherever they are whether in India or here or anywhere else can be sure that as long as they are good citizens of this world, contribute to make the society a better place through peaceful and harmonious methods, they will be recognised, appreciated,” he said. Murthy said that Indian students are making a positive impact in the countries they are studying. “I have not come across a single person of Indian-origin who has conducted himself or herself in a manner that has brought sorrow to the society they are living in, anywhere, wherever in the world. So I think that is the right way. “I am very very proud of our Indian students. They are smart, have very good values and are very peaceful. They contribute to the society in a very significant way wherever they are. I just want them to continue to do this,” the Infosys founder said. The one important principle that Indian students should remember in everything they do is will this make India a more respected place, a more respected nation? Will this action of mine make me a better part of this community? Will this action deserve appreciation and affection from other members in this community? If they remember these then they will do everything possible, Murthy said. PTI",Infosys founder Narayana Murthy says the younger generation needs to be daring in taking the entrepreneurial route for transformation of the Indian economy,14:26,Narayana Murthy says need to reduce ‘friction’ in businesses in India +2017-04-13,"Bengaluru: For Vishal Sikka, 2016-17 stands as a rebuke.After three consecutive downward growth revisions, Infosys’s dollar revenue growth in the year ended 31 March 2017 will be at best 7.6%, 150 basis points (bps) lower than the 9.1% growth in 2015-16, and 620 bps short of its first projected 13.8% growth outlined in April last year. One bps is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Departure of four executive vice-presidents (EVP) in financial year 2017 (in addition to four EVP exits between August 2014 and March 2016) implies that Sikka continues to struggle to build a stable top leadership team. Further, Infosys continues to look away from acquisitions (it’s been 18 months since the company made its last acquisition), which makes one wonder what Houdini trick the management has to achieve its target of becoming a $20 billion firm by March 2021.Also read: Will corporate earnings disappoint once again?Finally, Infosys founder N.R.Narayana Murthy’s outburst, twice in public, against some of the decisions by the board is another painful blow to Sikka. Agreed, Murthy has not questioned Sikka directly. But few of these decisions, including agreeing to a generous severance money to its former CFO (chief financial officer), and giving a hike to the current COO (chief operating officer), were approved by the management, and so it is naive to conclude that all is okay between Sikka and Murthy.Understandably, these developments have unnerved shareholders: in full fiscal year 2017, Infosys shares declined 16.2%, more than the 9% fall by BSE IT index, even as the benchmark Sensex index returned 17% gains. For these reasons, business historians would take note of the fall in Sikka’s popularity: from being hailed as a hero in the first 18 months, Sikka now battles allegations of skulduggery and corporate greed.So what can Sikka—and Infosys—do to possibly break this impasse?First, get back growth and improve its execution. A related second measure is to get some growth from three divisions: Infosys BPO, EdgeVerve, the products and platforms unit (together bring about 13% of revenue), and Infosys Consulting. Infosys needs to improve its ability to sell more solutions from these three services to its clients. Lastly, Sikka needs to arrest senior management departures and build a stable leadership team. All this needs to be done swiftly, and once completed, hopefully, any corporate governance concerns of shareholders (including the founders) should be assuaged. It is important to note here that the displeasure expressed by some of the founders against the board only coincided with the period when Infosys’s growth started slipping (during the first quarter of last year).Significantly, Sikka’s $8 million performance-related pay as part of his $11 million compensation is a thorny issue, and how the board justifies this variable salary to its CEO on Thursday will dictate if there is a third instance of public spat between Murthy and the board. Is all this doable? Unlikely.Simply, because for IT services firms, chasing reclusive growth is more challenging than ever. Moreover, in case of Infosys, nothing short of a miracle can bring back peace between some of the founders and the board and management. With this as a backdrop, Mint puts the spotlight on five things to watch in Infosys’s fourth quarter earnings on Thursday:Revenue forecast: Brokerage firm BNP Paribas sees Infosys recording 1.3% sequential increase in revenue at $2.58 billion for the January-March period. The Infosys management will be mindful that this growth will be 30 basis points less than what the company did in January-March last year. Analysts term the growth in the fourth quarter as “exit rate” and a strong growth helps to start on a good note in the new financial year. Again, management commentary for the April-June period will be crucial.Will Infosys give full-year guidance? For Infosys, providing a growth outlook is one decision which appears to be going down the wire. Analysts believe the management will give a growth outlook. Based on conversations with executives familiar with the development, this paper thinks otherwise and Infosys may discontinue from this practice. The board will eventually take a call when it meets on 12 and 13 April but this decision will decide the road ahead for the Infosys stock. Performance of top customers: During the second and third quarters, Infosys’s largest client and top five and top 10 clients gave less business to the company. Until the June quarter of last year, Sikka did well to get more business from its largest clients. Since Infosys gets a fifth of total revenue from its top 10 clients, the management needs to reverse this decline if Infosys expects to record sustainable growth. A rain-check on Infosys’s new initiatives in the wake of President Trump’s strict visa laws: Over the last 33 months, Sikka has steered Infosys to embrace newer ways to do business, such as by bringing elements of user-centric method of Design Thinking. At the same time, Infosys has increased its focus on building platforms, in an effort to move away from people-led model of doing business. All these measures will be tested as US President Donald Trump works to have a strict policy in place which makes it arduous for outsourcing companies to bring engineers in the US. Hence, commentary on how Infosys is monetising its platforms business and impact of changes in visa will be eyed.Weak areas: Sikka has been unable to get respectable growth from EdgeVerve and Infosys BPO in his near three-year stint at Infosys. Another disappointment has been that the consulting division too ran into trouble in April last year. Infosys has put in a new leadership team at all three units over the last year, and management commentary on how soon it expects growth from these three units should decide the overall growth for the company.","Infosys founders spat, Donald Trump’s US visa policy and three consecutive downward growth revisions are likely to weigh in on the Q4 results to be declared today",05:04,Infosys results today: Five things to watch out for +2017-04-12,"Tokyo: Toyota is introducing a wearable robotic leg brace designed to help partially paralysed people walk.The Welwalk WW-1000 system is made up of a motorized mechanical frame that fits on a person’s leg from the knee down. The patients can practice walking by wearing the robotic device on a special treadmill that supports their weight.Toyota Motor Corp. demonstrated the equipment for reporters at its Tokyo headquarters on Wednesday.One hundred such systems will be rented to medical facilities in Japan later this year, Toyota said. The service entails a one-time initial charge of 1 million yen ($9,000) and a 350,000 yen ($3,200) monthly fee.The gadget is designed to be worn on one leg at a time for patients severely paralysed on one side of the body due to a stroke or other ailments, Eiichi Saito, a medical doctor and executive vice-president at Fujita Health University, explained.The university collaborated with Toyota in developing the device.ALSO READ: The rise of the bad botsA demonstrator strapped the brace to her thigh, knee, ankle and foot and then showed how it is used to practice walking on the treadmill. Her body was supported from above by a harness and the motor helped to bend and straighten her knee. Sensors in the device can monitor the walking and adjust quickly to help out. Medical staff control the system through a touch panel screen.Japanese automakers have been developing robotics both for manufacturing and other uses. Honda Motor Co.’s Asimo humanoid can run and dance, pour a drink and carry on simple conversations, while WelWalk is more of a system that uses robotics rather than a stand-alone robot.Given how common paralysis due to strokes is in fast-aging Japan, Toyota’s device could be very helpful, Saito said. He said patients using it can recover more quickly as the sensitive robotic sensor in WelWalk fine-tunes the level of support better than a human therapist can.“This helps just barely enough,” said Saito, explaining that helping too much can slow progress in rehabilitation.The field of robotic aids for walking and rehabilitation is growing quickly. A battery-powered wearable exoskeleton, made by Israeli manufacturer ReWalk Robotics, enables people relying on a wheelchair to stand upright and walk.ALSO READ: Toyota makes $1.33 billion investment in Kentucky plantSuch systems also can aid therapists in monitoring a patient’s progress, Luke Hares, chief technology officer at Cambridge Medical Robotics in Britain, said in a phone interview.“They can be so much more precise,” he said.Previously, Toyota has shown robots that play the violin and trumpet. It plans to start sales in Japan of a tiny boy-like robot for conversational companionship. It is also investing in artificial intelligence and developing self-driving vehicles.Toshiyuki Isobe, Toyota’s chief officer for research, said WelWalk reflects the company’s desire to apply robotics in medicine and other social welfare areas, not just entertainment. The company also has an R2-D2-like machine, called the Human Support Robot, whose mechanical arm can help bed-ridden people pick things up.“Our vision is about trying to deliver mobility for everybody,” said Isobe. “We have been developing industrial robotics for auto manufacturing, and we are trying to figure out how we can use that technology to fill social needs and help people more.” AP",Patients suffering from paralysis can practice walking by wearing Toyota’s robotic device on a special treadmill that supports their weight,15:52,Toyota unveils robotic leg brace that helps paralysed people walk +2017-04-12,"San Francisco: Personal computer shipments notched their first quarterly growth in five years, researcher IDC said, though the gain of less than 1% from a year earlier underscored persistent weakness in demand, especially from consumers.Shipments totalled 60.3 million units in the first three months of the year, compared with 59.9 million in the same period a year earlier, IDC said Tuesday in a statement. It marked the first increase since the first quarter of 2012, IDC said.Gartner Inc., another major tracker of PCs, reported a decline of 2.4% for first-quarter global shipments. Both research companies said the business market for PCs had improved though not enough to offset a decline in consumer customers.Sales of desktop and laptop computers have been in decline as consumer demand shifted to smartphones and tablets for easily checking email or the internet on the go. Now the industry is counting on more interest in its machines from businesses and consumers wanting to replace aging hardware with sleeker and more powerful products that feature upgraded software. IDC and Gartner use their own methods for counting shipments in these reports, which are preliminary. Gartner, for example, includes desktops, notebooks and related devices such as Microsoft Corporation’s Surface, but not Google’s Chromebook. IDC includes Chromebooks, but not the Surface in this report, according to Jay Chou, research manager at IDC.The major brands in the industry all posted market share gains. HP retook the top spot with 22% in the first quarter, up from 19% a year earlier, IDC said. China-based Lenovo Group Ltd. posted a smaller uptick to 20.4% and Dell Technologies had 16%. Apple rose to 7% from 6.7%.Gartner puts Lenovo at number 1 with HP at number 2. Dell grabbed the number 3 spot, while Apple was number 5.Prices are climbing as key memory components get more expensive amid a shortage in the industry, according to Mikako Kitagawa, an analyst at Gartner. This doesn’t bode well for PC makers.“The price hike will suppress PC demand even further in the consumer market, discouraging buyers away from PC purchases unless it is absolutely necessary,” Kitagawa said in the statement. “The price hike started affecting the market in 1Q17.”In the US, Gartner said shipments fell 2.4%, with consumer demand dragging down sales. HP was number 1 in the US market, while Dell was number 2. Apple was number 4. Bloomberg","Personal computer shipments totalled 60.3 million units in the first three months of the year, compared with 59.9 million in the same period a year earlier, says IDC report",16:37,PC shipments rise slightly in struggling market: IDC report +2017-04-21,"
Shares of Future Retail Ltd hit an all-time high on Thursday after India’s biggest departmental store chain said its board has decided to consolidate its offline and online home retail businesses under a single entity called Praxis Home Retail Pvt. Ltd.In a stock exchange filing, Future Retail said the home retail business operated through its HomeTown stores, and the e-commerce home retail business operated by Blue eServices (which owns Fabfurnish.com) will be demerged into Praxis Home Retail.Future Retail had acquired Rocket Internet-backed online furniture and home furnishings store FabFurnish.com in an all-cash deal in April last year, its first acquisition of an Internet store.With this, Future Retail will spin off its specialty retail business and focus on large format and small format pure retail businesses. The company said this will bring “greater visibility on the performance of home retail business and e-commerce home retail business”.Under a so-called scheme of arrangement, Praxis Home Retail will issue one share to Future Retail shareholders for every 20 shares of the latter and its shares will be listed on the stock exchanges. Following the demerger, there would not be any change in the shareholding pattern of Future Retail, it said.Future Retail shares rose more than 7% to hit an all-time high of Rs312.85 during the day, before shedding some gains to close 4.46% higher at Rs305.90 on BSE. The benchmark Sensex closed 0.29% up at 29,422.39 points.The scheme is subject to approval from the National Company Law Tribunal, stock exchanges, the Securities and Exchange Board of India and various statutory approvals, including those from shareholders and lenders/creditors of the firms involved.The existing network of Future Retail, the flagship of the Future Group, includes small-format EasyDay stores and large-format Big Bazaar stores, along with other chains such as apparel chain fbb, Foodhall, electronics store eZone and furniture and home decor chain HomeTown.The hypermarket and supermarket business is led by Big Bazaar, fbb, Food Bazaar and Foodhall, while home solutions segment include HomeTown and Ezone, along with newly added Fabfunish.In November, Kishore Biyani-led Future Retail agreed to acquire the retail and allied businesses of Hyderabad-based Heritage Foods Ltd in an all-stock deal.For the fiscal year ended on March 2016, the revenue of the demerged division was recorded at Rs187.36 crore, out of the company’s overall Rs6,716 crore. It was considered on the basis of the five-month turnover of the demerged business vested with the company during the previous year with effect from 31 October 2015 and total revenue for the HomeTown division for fiscal 2015-16 (Rs477 crore).",Future Retail to consolidate its offline and online home retail businesses under a single entity called Praxis Home Retail,05:02,Future Retail to demerge home retail business +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India Pvt. Ltd (HMSI), India’s second largest two-wheeler maker, will launch four completely new models—including the Africa Twin—in the current financial year, but is putting on hold plans to develop a middleweight motorcycle to take on Royal Enfield, a top company executive said.The new models HMSI plans to launch include the 1000cc Africa Twin that sports the advanced dual clutch technology and three more undisclosed brand new models—a bike and two scooters, said Minoru Kato, president and chief executive officer, HMSI.HMSI has already started assembling the completely knocked down kits of the Africa Twin. The model will go on sale next month. In March, Noriaki Abe, then president and chief executive officer (CEO) at Asian Honda Motor Co. Ltd, who took over as CEO of Honda’s global motorcycle business on 1 April, outlined in an interview with Mint Honda’s plans to develop a middleweight motorcycle to compete with Royal Enfield.Kato indicated on Thursday that the plans had been put on hold for now.“So far, from my point of view, the cost competitiveness as of today is not enough to compete in that segment,” Kato said. HMSI is very cost-competitive in big-volume models like the Activa scooter, which comes in 110cc and 125cc versions, but it doesn’t have the experience of developing motorcycles in the above-250cc (up to 450cc) segment, he said.HMSI is targeting the sale of 6 million scooters and motorcycles this financial year in a market that has just recovered from the impact of high-value currency invalidation. It is pinning its hopes on a normal monsoon that would boost rural demand.The two-wheeler maker sold 4.7 million units in the domestic market year ended March, up 10% from the previous year. Overall sales of bikes and scooters expanded 6.89% in the financial year; motorcycles grew at a slower pace of 4% in the same period, according to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam).Even as scooters, a market that HMSI leads, selling every second model in the country, will be the key volume driver for the company, the share of motorcycles as a percentage of sales is expected to go up, said Kato.HMSI, which emerged as the biggest contributor to Honda’s global sales in 2016, is also planning to make India an export hub once the BS-VI emission norms take effect in 2020, company officials told reporters in Mumbai. It has also formed a cross-functional team to lead the migration to BS-VI. HMSI plans to invest Rs1,600 crore this year to launch new products and enhance capacity. Its fourth Indian factory, being built in Karnataka, will commence production in July, taking its annual capacity to 6.4 million units.With sales of scooters growing at a faster pace than motorcycles, HMSI will have an edge over bigger rival and former partner Hero MotoCorp Ltd, said Nitesh Sharma, an analyst at Phillip Capital India Ltd. “Even as Honda is unlikely to dent Hero’s share in the motorcycle segment, where the latter has a dominant position, robust growth in the scooter market will help Honda increase share in the overall two wheeler market,” he said. Despite predictions of a normal monsoon and the lower base of last year, Sharma expects the two-wheeler market to expand by a mere 7-8% in the current financial year.","Honda has started assembling CKD units of Honda Africa Twin in India and slotted launch of three other models in FY18, but put on hold its Royal Enfield challenger",05:02,"Honda to launch Honda Africa Twin next month, three other models this year" +2017-04-21,"
Aircraft engine maker Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc on Thursday opened a new defence service delivery centre (SDC) in Bengaluru, the first outside the US and UK, to provide localized engineering support and solutions and reduce turnaround time for the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy and state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL). Rolls-Royce is looking to improve capability and provide faster front-line support for over 750 engines in a range of aircraft used by the defence as well as commercial aircraft such as the C-130J, Hawk advanced jet, Embraer and Jaguar, among others. Shaun Agle, vice-president (customer services), India defence, said the new service delivery centre will be able to deliver real-time solutions through MRO (maintenance repair and overhaul), provide first and second line of support, have field service representatives, manage the health of the fleet, manage supply chains and collaborate with the armed forces. India is the last remaining user of the Jaguar type of aircraft and is one of the largest users of the Hawk, the company said, while trying to highlight the need for a local presence. The SDC will have at least 10 specialized engineers and service personnel to find localised solutions specific to India. The SDC is based on the model operated by the company at Marham in the UK and Kingsville in the US. The company did not quantify the reduction in time or cost that would result from setting up the local SDC, which will do the work that would otherwise have been referred to Bristol, UK. Last year, Indian customers raised 138 issues, according to the company, which were referred to Bristol. Rolls Royce has over 1,600 engineers based in India who help provide solutions for the UK-based company’s global customers, Kishore Jayaraman, president, India and South Asia, said.",Rolls-Royce is looking to improve capability and provide faster front-line support for over 750 engines in a range of aircraft in India,02:00,Rolls-Royce opens defence service delivery centre in India +2017-04-12,"Hyderabad: The tightening of H1B work visa rules in the US would be advantageous to Indian IT firms as they would shift more work offshore and also be in a position to improve their billing rate, says industry veteran T.V. Mohandas Pai. The present business model of Indian IT companies—offshore-onsite work ratio of 70:30 would now go up to 90:10, the former chief financial officer of Infosys said. “So, what will happen is they (Indian IT firms) will offshore more work and increase their competitiveness. They will do only 10% work onsite, and 90% offshore,” Pai told PTI. “It can be done very easily for 70-80% of the business. It will improve their competitiveness and make them better,” he said. “The new H1B regulations are very good for Indian IT, and bad for companies which try to use it for cheap labour. First of all, Indian IT is not cheap because what they bill to clients is $125,000 to $150,000 per year (for an onsite employee),” he said. “The average pay is around $80,000-85,000 per year. They are unnecessarily getting a bad name, because some fly-by-night operators are trying to do body-shopping and spoil the name of the entire (Indian IT) industry,” he said. The new regulations would play to the strength Indian IT companies because they have been reducing the number of H1B visas they collected since 2014, he said. “So, they are already getting prepared. It will increase the billing because it will create artificial scarcity in America, and allow Indian companies to bill more for work because there are not enough Americans to fill the positions that are needed,” said Pai, who is chairman of Manipal Global Education Services and Aarin Capital. “It’s a blessing in disguise, I don’t think they need to be scared or anything,” he said. As for possible downsides on the visa front, Pai said there would be some uncertainties for the next six months “because nobody knows what they (US Labour department) are going to do and how they are going to behave and all that.” “Uncertainty is because the US Labour Department is threatening more inspections. They will find out the number of applications (by Indian IT firms for H1B visas) have come down and they should be happy,” Pai said. On what Indian IT companies should now do following the tightening of H1B visa regulations, he said, “Increase offshoring, increase automation and drive up billing rates. It will be to their advantage.”","The tightening of H1B work visa rules in the US will shift more work offshore, says industry veteran Mohandas Pai",15:27,"Tightening visa norms a blessing in disguise for IT firms, says Mohandas Pai" +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Sunil Munjal, who separated from his brothers in 2016 to carve an independent identity, has formed a new group company called Hero Enterprise that has started selling life and health insurance policies and plans to venture into aerospace parts. Hero Enterprise will, however, continue to focus on its existing real estate and steel businesses even as the group holding company consolidates its businesses and exit smaller ones such as Hero BPO.Sunil Munjal already sold motor insurance for Hero MotoCorp Ltd while he was still a part of the Pawan Munjal-led Hero Group. In an interview on Thursday, Sunil Munjal said that his insurance distribution firm, Ensure Plus, is also into non-motor insurance such as assets, buildings and aircraft. It has also started selling life insurance and health insurance policies. For life insurance, the company has a partnership with ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Ltd, while for general insurance, it has tied up with National Insurance and Tata AIG. “We are the largest distributor of insurance in India... probably in the world. We wrote 10 million policies last year. Nobody does even half of it,” Munjal said.“Distribution is where the margin is. For us, to step back and put up an insurance company is nothing... It takes around Rs100 crore to get a licence. We have looked at that a few times but distribution is where the main margin is and relationships are. That’s where market connect is and we are very good at it,” he said. Hero FinCorp Ltd, a two-wheeler financing company run by Sunil Munjal’s nephew Abhimanyu, also plans to get into insurance distribution and that means a larger chunk of Sunil Munjal’s motor insurance business that used to come from Hero MotoCorp will get affected.“They will compete like any other entity. Within our group, we always had this system. We could buy and sell from our companies as well as outside. So, that ensures that everybody maintains quality and you are buying because of merit and not because it is your company,” he added.Sunil Munjal, 56, stepped down as joint managing director of Hero MotoCorp Ltd, India’s largest motorcycle maker, in July 2016. By exiting Hero MotoCorp, he raised around Rs3,500 crore.Sunil Munjal’s businesses were a small part of the $6 billion Hero group founded by Brijmohan Lall Munjal, the family patriarch who died in 2015 at the age of 92. He had five strategic businesses: insurance distribution, Hero Realty Ltd, Hero Management Service Pvt. Ltd, Ludhiana-based Hero Steels Ltd and Hero Mindmine Institute Pvt. Ltd.Munjal has hired P.N. Gupta, a former executive from Tata Group’s TAL Manufacturing Solutions, to enter the aerospace parts manufacturing. A person aware of Munjal’s plans in the defence sector said that he is scouting for manufacturing sites for composites.“Talks are still at an exploratory stage,” the person said on condition of anonymity.Munjal said that new business initiatives are not an area of “public conversation” and declined to comment specifically on his diversification.“I have never said yes or no. I would say it is a difficult area but high potential area because India is the largest known importer, in terms of reported numbers, of defence equipment in the world,” he said. “In today’s time, there is no reason for India to be (an import-dependent country). You have every capability and potential to build that capability (to manufacture) here in India,” he added.With 60% of India’s defence requirements met through imports, local defence production has emerged at the heart of the Narendra Modi government’s ‘Make In India’ programme. Under Hero Realty, Munjal has completed one project in Haridwar and a couple of others are under construction in Ludhiana and Mohali. “We have just closed a transaction in Gurgaon,” Munjal said.“We are targeting middle India—middle income, middle class, lower middle class, small town, mid-sized cities, tier III, tier IV cities, and we are trying to see if we can help improve people’s standard of living itself. So, the model is based in the price range between Rs20-Rs80 lakh and the bulk of it will be between Rs30-65 lakh,” he said.We are hoping to provide attributes, functionality of the apartments that one buys for Rs10-20 crore, he added.Munjal added that he is looking to exit smaller businesses such as Hero BPO.“We won’t keep any small business. We don’t want to be in any of the small businesses,” he added.In a separate development, Hero Enterprises’ chairman Sunil Kant Munjal has invested about Rs 100 crore in impact investment firm Aavishkaar Venture Management Services’ new fund ‘Aavishkaar Bharat Fund’, according to a statement on Thursday.Aavishkaar Venture Management is aiming to raise Rs 2,000 crore for a fund that will invest in businesses that are working with the underserved population in sectors such as agriculture, financial services, healthcare, waste and sanitation, renewable energy and logistics and supply chain.",Sunil Munjal’s Hero Enterprise has tied up with ICICI Prudential Life for life insurance and National Insurance and Tata AIG for general insurance,02:49,"Sunil Munjal’s Hero Enterprise to focus on insurance, aerospace manufacturing" +2017-04-21,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +2017-04-21,"
Mumbai: Unilever Plc said on Thursday that its Indian business has recovered from the hit it experienced following the government’s invalidation of high-value currency notes in November. This guidance, ahead of the fourth-quarter earnings of its unit Hindustan Unilever Ltd, comes as a shot in the arm for the whole consumer packaged goods sector, which has been reeling from demonetisation. Analysts expected the lingering effects of demonetisation to hurt business for these companies in the March quarter as well.“Growth in India recovered from the uncertainty experienced due to the removal of the Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes in November 2016, while Brazil continued to be adversely impacted by the economic crisis,” Unilever said in the statement uploaded on the website and filed with stock exchanges. Brazil and India are two of the multinational’s largest markets.Overall, Unilever’s sales grew 6.9% and volumes grew 2.2% in the Asia and AMET/RUB region this quarter, the statement said. It didn’t give India-specific estimates. AMET and RUB stand for Africa, Middle East, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, whose results are reported together with Asia. ALSO READ: What impact does Unilever’s business review have on HUL?In a similar statement filed in January, the Anglo-Dutch packaged consumer goods giant said its growth in India “was below historic levels, particularly in the last quarter (October-December), when demand was adversely impacted” by demonetisation. In the December quarter, HUL’s volumes fell 4% year-on-year after the cash crunch hit consumer spending. This came after a 1% decline in the three months to September. The Unilever statement comes at a time when brokerages have pencilled in volume declines or marginal increases in their March quarter estimates. Motilal Oswal Financial Services, for instance, has forecast a 0.5% decline in HUL’s volumes and 4% for ITC Ltd. Nomura Research estimates a 1% volume growth.“Demand that had started to show signs of recovery in October got dampened due to the cash crunch. Now that money is back in the system demand has come back”, said Ajay Thakur, lead analyst, Anand Rathi Institutional Equities. “Additionally, (sales) growth in the March quarter will also be on account of price increases taken by most companies on account of inflation.”Most analysts say that companies with a tilt towards urban markets will benefit more.ALSO READ: Amul hits back at HUL in ice cream war in Bombay high court“Following demonetisation, we expect consumer companies with a focus on urban consumption, and larger contribution from direct reach to overall channels to see better results,” analysts at Nomura said in a 11 April note.In a report previewing the company’s March quarter results, ICICI Securities said it expects HUL to show a 3.59% increase in domestic revenue, partially helped by an early summer onset.“A slightly early summer resulted in growth of summer care products and is likely to benefit companies such as Emami and HUL,” the brokerage said. HUL owns several personal care brands that target summer sales including Liril, Rexona, and Dove. Since the beginning of the calendar year, the BSE FMCG Index has risen by 14.54%, outperforming the benchmark index, Sensex which has risen 10.50%.Sapna Agarwal contributed this story.","Unilever’s guidance on India, ahead of Hindustan Unilever’s Q4 results, comes as a shot in the arm for the whole FMCG sector reeling from demonetisation",02:48,Unilever says India business growth has recovered after demonetisation +2017-04-14,"Beijing: The New Development Bank (NDB) set up by the Brics countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — plans to issue bonds this year in Indian rupee and Chinese yuan, its president K. V. Kamath said on Friday. The bank sold its first ¥3 billion yuan-denominated bonds in China last year in July to fund clean energy projects in member-states. Kamath, a former executive with India’s largest private lender ICICI Bank, told the state-run Xinhua news agency that after last year’s issuance of bonds, the preparation for the second batch of yuan-denominated bonds, possibly in the second half of this year, is expected to be more smooth. The size will be around ¥3 billion, similar to the last one. He said the issuance will come after the bank is rated by international rating agencies. Between $300-500 million of rupee-denominated ‘masala’ bonds will be issued after July, added Kamath, who is based in Shanghai. ‘Masala’ bonds are rupee-denominated bonds issued outside India. Kamath said the NDB plans to lend $2.5-3 billion to fund 15 projects to member-states this year, up from $1.5 billion for seven projects in 2016. Most projects last year were connected to clean energy and transportation. Kamath said the loans will go to more sectors this year. For example, in India the bank will prioritise rural drinking water networks and infrastructure projects. The Brics bank was set up with an initial authorised capital of $100 billion after leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa signed a treaty for its establishment during the sixth Brics Summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, in 2014. It officially opened in Shanghai in 2015. PTI","KV Kamath said the New Development Bank plans to lend $2.5-3 billion to fund 15 projects to member-states this year, up from $1.5 billion for seven projects in 2016",15:14,"Brics bank plans to issue rupee, yuan bonds this year: KV Kamath" +2017-04-12,"Bengaluru: It’s hard to overstate the importance of the technology industry to India. Over the past three decades, the IT sector has helped drive the country’s economic growth, employed millions and made billionaires out of at least seven founders.Now the industry is at risk from US President Donald Trump’s policies. The administration is promising a clampdown on the work visas India’s tech services companies use to service American customers. In the days since the US government took first steps toward H1B visa reform, all of India’s high-profile technology tycoons have seen their net worth eroded.Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd and India’s fifth-richest man, and Shiv Nadar, the sixth-richest person in the country and chairman of HCL Technologies, have seen their shares slide. Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani and three other founders of Infosys Ltd, all among the top 100 of India’s richest billionaires, have taken a hit too. IT stocks have dropped about 3% over that stretch, while the benchmark index has climbed 0.6%.Also read: In Donald Trump’s H-1B visa crackdown, Indian students weigh Canada, Ireland“Whether these changes are a precursor for more radical measures is what is worrying companies,” said DD Mishra, a Pune-based research director at Gartner.Infosys, which reports earnings 13 April, may have the most at stake. The Bengaluru-based company is most vulnerable to US visa reforms because it has the lowest percentage of local hires in the US, Goldman Sachs analysts Sumeet Jain and Saurabh Thadani said in a research note last week. HCL and Wipro also have risks from visa reforms but they hire relatively more Americans, the analysts wrote.Infosys kicks off earnings season for the industry this week, giving investors a chance to get more insight into the challenges and corporate strategies for addressing them. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, the market leader, is scheduled to report results next week.The debate has been over the H1B visa program, which allows companies to bring 85,000 workers into the US from overseas each year. On 31 March, just as companies prepared to file applications for next year’s allotment, the Trump administration rolled out a series of policy measures making it harder for firms to use the program for computer programmers and announced measures to fight what it called “fraud and abuse.” In parallel, the Justice Department warned employers applying for visas not to discriminate against US workers. All of this was in line with promises made during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to overhaul the program he described as bringing cheap overseas labour at the cost of American jobs and salaries.From India, those promises look like threats to the economy. Information technology is the largest employer in the private sector, providing a livelihood to nearly 4 million, and contributes about 9% of gross domestic product. India’s software and services exports total about $110 billion, with nearly two thirds of that revenue coming from the US.Visa uncertainty could wreak havoc with planning and jeopardize profits in the industry. It may also raise risks for customers that depend on such services, from Wall Street banks to retailers and airlines. “Difficulties in getting visas or rising salaries of H-1B employees will have a material impact on companies,” said Rostow Ravanan, chief executive officer of Mindtree Ltd, a Bangalore-based outsourcer that uses hundreds of H-1B visas every year.Several countries around the world are adopting or considering similar policies. That poses a threat to the business model perfected by Indian companies, Ravanan said. “These trends are dangerous because the IT industry and its talent serve the entire world,” he said.Leading outsourcers including Infosys, Tata Consultancy, Wipro and HCL Technologies declined to comment on the visa issue.Companies have been working on contingency plans. If foreign workers cannot go to the US, it will become more expensive to hire local staff. Companies may also try to do more work for American clients from abroad, including India.Nitin Rakesh, chief executive officer of tech services provider Mphasis Ltd is optimistic. He said the industry has gone through four or five reincarnations since the outsourcing business began. A Trump crackdown may lead to more innovation in the model.“Through leveraging all the possible technology, including mobility and cloud, the growth opportunities are immense,” said Rakesh, warning however that some companies will adapt and others may not. “Growth will not be homogeneous.” Bloomberg","US President Donald Trump’s H1B visa reform policies have eroded the net worth of India’s high-profile technology tycoons, including Azim Premji ",14:28,"H1B visa reform hits tech billionaires, from Azim Premji to Shiv Nadar" +2017-04-11,"New York: Chinese technology conglomerate LeEco Inc. is sharply scaling back its US ambitions.The company - which oversees a range of businesses in China, from streaming video to smartphones to electric cars - missed its projections for 2016 sales in the US by a wide margin and is planning to cut more than a third of its US workforce, a person familiar with the matter said.Billionaire Jia Yueting is narrowing his vision for LeEco’s global expansion amid lacklustre sales and the prospect of a cash crunch. The company entered the North American market in October with a splashy event in San Francisco, where it showed off an array of products, including ultra high-definition televisions, phones, virtual reality goggles and electric bikes. Yet LeEco generated US revenue of less than $15 million last year after that October debut, compared to an original goal of $100 million, according to the person cited above.The company so far is only selling TVs, smartphones and some accessories in the US. The US unit is also making plans to eliminate about 175 jobs, which would shrink its staff in the country to about 300 people, said the person, who asked not to be named because the financial details have not been made public.LeEco declined to comment on the planned job cuts and revenue miss.ALSO READ: Oppo founder reveals how he toppled Apple in ChinaOn Monday, the company said it was abandoning its plan to acquire US TV maker Vizio Inc. for $2 billion, citing regulatory hurdles. The collapse of the deal, which was meant to give LeEco a beachhead to build its brand with American customers, sets LeEco even further back in the US. The two companies said they will instead collaborate on ways to bring Vizio’s products to the Chinese market and integrate LeEco’s content into Vizio’s platform.Unfamiliar marketJia pushed into the unfamiliar US market even as his umbrella company struggled to alleviate a cash shortage. Executive departures and job cuts are further fuelling concern about the future of LeEco US, where the company delayed payroll earlier this month. Frustration has also stemmed from employees with bosses in China who appear to have little understanding of the American market, according to current and former employees.At the time of LeEco’s US roll-out, Jia said the US operations employed more than 500 people “with more being added each week”. The company had also purchased 49 acres of land in Santa Clara, California, from Yahoo! Inc. to build a campus that could house as many as 12,000 employees. Those plans have now been scrapped, according to the person with knowledge of the company’s operations.After rapid expansion of his tech empire, Jia admitted late last year in a letter to employees that the company was struggling to raise cash. Some suppliers said that LeEco was behind on payments and the company was stripped of some sports broadcasting rights.ALSO READ: Xiaomi’s Lei Jun doubles bet on IndiaThe company now employs about 475 across its US offices, which are based in San Jose, California. LeEco has been planning to make another round of job cuts for several months, but the timing for the reduction depends on when the company can build up enough funds to pay for employee severance packages, the person said.At the time of its US debut, analysts questioned whether LeEco could export its business model outside of China, where its brand is less well-known. The company’s aggressive approach to international expansion sharply contrasts with that of China’s three biggest internet companies: Baidu Inc., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. They have made slow forays in the US, opening modest offices in Silicon Valley and mostly focusing on investing in US start-ups. Bloomberg",LeEco has abandoned its plan to acquire US TV maker Vizio and plans to eliminate 175 jobs in the country ,17:12,LeEco plans to cut over a third of US workforce after missing sale target +2017-04-14,"New Delhi: Insurance regulator Irdai has launched a web portal for insurers that will allow them to register and sell policies online. The portal—isnp.irda.gov.in—is also open to intermediaries in insurance business, Irdai said in a circular. Last month Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) issued guidelines on e-commerce for insurance sector. Announcing the launch of registration portal for Insurance Self Networking Platform (ISNP), Irdai said insurance companies, brokers and corporate agents can sell and service insurance policies through this platform. Also Read: Irdai wants insurance policies issued in demat formatInsurers and intermediaries can create a login credential for registration and submit ISNP application form on the portal. In its guidelines issued in March, Irdai had said that companies may offer discounts to customers if their policies are sold through e-commerce websites. This will help companies increase insurance penetration in the country, it said. The ISNP portal will offer host of services including change of policy details like name and address, collection of renewal premiums, surrender or withdrawals, fund switching, policy revival or cancellation or transfer, duplicate policy, death/maturity claim and other policy specific services, it added.","Insurance regulator Irdai said insurance companies, brokers and corporate agents can sell and service insurance policies via online platform",21:01,Irdai unveils portal for insurers to sell policies online +2017-04-14,"
Mumbai: Edelweiss Global Asset and Wealth Management has raised $350 million for the final close of its second credit-focused fund, Edelweiss Special Opportunities Fund (ESOF) II, said a senior executive of the firm.“After successfully returning capital to investors in the first credit-focused fund, Edelweiss Special Opportunities Fund, Edelweiss has subsequently raised its second version, ESOF II. As of 31 March 2017, the firm has closed the fund at $350 million,” Nitin Jain, chief executive-global asset and wealth management, Edelweiss, said in an interview.The fund achieved a first close of $205 million in June 2015.ESOF II, which invests in privately negotiated collateralized credit transactions, has raised funds from several institutional investors including public pensions and insurance companies. ESOF I had raised $230 million.Edelweiss’s second credit fund comes at a time when a host of other firms in the alternative investment space are in the market to raise credit-focused funds. These include the likes of Reliance AIF Asset Management Co. Ltd, Avendus Capital and private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Lp and Baring Private Equity Asia.Credit products in the alternative investment space are seeing a sharp increase as investors hunt for higher yields in a lower interest rate environment, said Jain.“Increasingly, you are seeing that fixed income yields are becoming low. So, then, there is a hunt for yield. People want a higher yield, but a fixed income nature product. So a lot of interesting, absolute return products are getting traction in the market, which are alternate in nature—they can be credit funds or they can be hedge funds,” said Jain.People want double-digit returns and low volatility, so a lot of products are being created to deliver yields between 10-14% using credit, he added.The hunt for higher yields has also made other products such as public sector bank perpetual bonds or AT1 bonds (additional tier 1 bonds) attractive to investors, said Jain.“Perpetuals have become attractive and the need for higher yield is again driving that trend. Public sector banks are giving you a yield of anywhere between 9% and 10.5%. When you go to fixed deposits, you’re getting only 7-7.5%. While they have a slightly different risk profile, people are getting very comfortable with them,” said Jain.Led by Jain, the Edelweiss asset and wealth management business today manages assets worth Rs1.2 trillion, with over Rs60,000 crore worth of assets on the domestic wealth management side and the rest coming from the institutional asset management business.Edelweiss’s wealth management business caters to individuals across three categories—mass affluent, high net-worth individuals (HNI), and ultra HNI and family offices. The asset management business includes funds which invest in credit strategies across asset classes such as real estate, performing credit and distressed credit (including the Edelweiss asset reconstruction business) as well as public market funds. The firm’s wealth management business, which was set up in 2010, has witnessed a growth of almost 70-80% in the last two years, said Jain.Edelweiss is targeting a corpus of Rs1 trillion for its wealth management business, which it hopes to achieve in the next two years, he said. “For growing the wealth management business, we are tapping new generation entrepreneurs, family offices and employees in progressive organizations in sectors such as IT services and financial services,” said Jain.In order to achieve its planned growth, Edelweiss is also investing heavily in technology.“Technology is playing a very important role now. Clients want to access information, flow of information, practically on a real-time basis. Earlier it was acceptable if you told people the health of their portfolio once a quarter. Now, there are clients who want to track it on a minute by minute basis,” he said.The firm has embarked on a five-year digital transformation drive and has partnered with IT consulting and services firm IBM to help drive the transformation, said Jain.Edelweiss’s digital transformation drive is focused on increasing the productivity of its advisory team, while helping control costs to improve both the revenue and profit of the business. Edelweiss’s wealth management business employs around 1,300 people.",Edelweiss Special Opportunities Fund II comes at a time when a host of other firms in the alternative investment space are in the market to raise credit-focused funds,04:47,Edelweiss raises $350 million for credit-focused fund +2017-04-14,"
Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has tightened the rules that trigger regulatory action on lenders when they fall short of capital or exceed bad loan limits. Under the revised rules, as many as 16 banks could face RBI intervention if their December quarter numbers are considered. According to RBI’s so-called prompt corrective action (PCA) framework, banks are assessed on three parameters: capital ratios, asset quality and profitability. Failure to meet any of these norms could invite RBI action on these lenders, which could include strictures on lending and branch expansion, change in management and reduction in assets.
These norms come at a time when the bank s are struggling with Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and many banks are starved for capital.
Under the revisions announced on Thursday, the first risk threshold under PCA would be triggered if the capital-to-risk assets ratio falls below the minimum mandated 10.25%. The original rules introduced in 2002 had set this limit at 9%. Breaching this threshold would mean restrictions on dividend distribution or remittance or profits; promoters would also be asked for capital infusion, said RBI.
RBI has also defined two more risk thresholds—when the capital adequacy ratio falls below 7.75% and below 6.25%. Each higher threshold brings more strictures such as stopping branch expansion, higher provisions and even restrictions on management compensation and directors’ fees.
Apart from these mandatory actions, RBI has armed itself with discretionary powers such as winding up the bank or merging it, which it would use when the highest risk threshold is breached.
As of December, Dhanlaxmi Bank and Central Bank of India were the only ones to have a capital adequacy ratio of less than 10%. These rules are applicable based on 31 March 2017 numbers.
“The PCA framework is nothing new. In the backdrop of Basel (capital adequacy) norms incrementally going to be tighter, RBI is using this tool to finally intervene in the banks. This tool will assist in guiding banks to faster NPA (non-performing asset) resolution which, if left to their own, is only going to get delayed,” said Saswata Guha, director, Fitch Ratings.
On asset quality, RBI has mandated a maximum net NPA ratio of 6%. A net bad loan ratio of more than 12% is the highest limit and breaching it could result in RBI asking lenders to sell assets, cut unsecured exposures and so on. Under the old rules, net NPA had to breach 10% for RBI action to kick in.
There were 16 commercial banks which had a net NPA ratio of more than 6% at the end of December. Indian Overseas Bank—where RBI had previously initiated action under PCA in October 2015—had the maximum net NPA ratio of 14.32%. For Bank of Maharashtra and United Bank of India, it is in excess of 10%.
RBI will also monitor leverage as an additional parameter under the framework.",Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has tightened the rules that trigger regulatory action on banks when they fall short of capital or exceed bad loan limits,04:42,RBI tightens rules for regulatory action on banks +2017-04-14,"
The government is working on a plan to list four state-run general insurers—United India Insurance Co. Ltd, New India Assurance Co. Ltd, Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd and National Insurance Co. Ltd—and national reinsurer General Insurance Corp. of India (GIC Re) in this financial year. Mint takes a look at some of the key financial indicators of these general insurance firms other than GIC Re and how they perform vis-à-vis some of their private sector peers. Combined ratio is an indicator of the profitability of operations of an insurance firm. It is the ratio of the sum of incurred losses plus operating expenses to earned premium. Insurance firms strive to bring their combined ratios below 100%. Combined ratios have broadly deteriorated for insurers since 2013-14.When one compares the combined ratios of the public and the private sector, private sector is seen as more efficient even in the deteriorating overall market. An an indicator of the capital strength of an insurance firm, solvency ratio refers to the company’s ability to meet its short-term and long-term liabilities. Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India mandates a solvency ratio of 1.5 for continuity in operations and stock market listing.The trend in solvency ratios shows three of the public sector firms have moved down in their capital strengths. National Insurance and Oriental Insurance have solvency ratios below 1.5. “These companies will need to improve their capital strength through improvement in their combined ratio and through better investment income. The drop in investment income of Oriental Insurance and United India is a matter of concern,” said K. Ramachandran, an insurance industry expert.Investment income is the sum of profit on the sale and redemption of investments and the interest payments, dividends, and rents. Investment income is declining significantly for three of the four state-run general insurers. But it is not the case for most of the big private insurance firms. Net worth is the amount by which assets exceed liabilities. It is an indicator of the financial strength of the firm. Three of the four state-run insurers, except New India Assurance, have seen an erosion in net worth in the last one year. “The challenge to the insurance companies lies in keeping the policyholders’ funds in excess. This would ensure a better service to shareholders’ funds,” added Ramachandran.",Mint takes a look at some of the key financial indicators of these general insurance firms and how they perform vis-à-vis some of their private sector peers,04:46,A financial health check of state-run insurers to be listed +2017-04-13,"New Delhi: Lendingkart Group, an online lender to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), has raised Rs30 crore in debt from Anicut Capital, the company said on Thursday.The funding has been raised against issuance of non-convertible debentures (NCDs), a type of debt security, to Anicut Capital, a Chennai-based alternative asset management firm. Lendingkart will use these funds to expand its loan book and expand to more regions in India. In June 2016, the company raised $32 million in series B round of debt plus equity funding led by Betelsmann India Investment. The company is also backed by Darrin Capital Management Mayfield India, Saama Capital and India. Founded in 2014 by Harshvardhan Lunia and Mukul Sachan, Lendingkart Group includes Lendingkart Technologies Pvt. Ltd. that has built the technology software for credit risk analysis, and a non-banking financial company (NBFC) Lendingkart Finance that underwrites the loans. “The latest round of NCD will further bolster our loan book and enable us to serve the credit needs of many more SMEs...We look forward to leverage Anicut’s rich experience in banking and small business financing in times to come.” said Lunia in a statement. It underwrites working capital loans online to SMEs, which have an annual turnover of Rs12 lakh to Rs1-1.5 crore. On an average, these SMEs are lent Rs5.5-6 lakh at an annualized interest rate ranging between 16% to 24%, for a duration of six to 12 months. Lendingkart claims to have a loan application approval rate of 22-23%, Mint reported in December 2016.Till December 2016, Lendingkart claimed to have disbursed 7,000 loans to SMEs in over 450 cities since its inception. It aims to cross 10,000 loans covering over 800 cities by June 2017. In addition, Lunia had also said that the company is launching its credit risk analytics software as a service for other financial institutions in 2017. Founded by Ashvin Chadha and IAS Balamurugan, Anicut Capital is in the process of final closing its Rs300 crore fund by September 2017. Since its first close in August 2016, Anicut has committed capital of over Rs110 crore across six investments. Chadha and Balamurugan have lent over Rs500 crore to over 70 companies in last five years, according to the statement.",Lendingkart will use the funds to expand its loan book and expand to more regions in India,22:10,Lendingkart raises Rs30 crore in debt from Anicut Capital +2017-04-20,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +2017-04-13,"Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday tweaked rules that trigger regulatory action against lenders who overshoot the limit on bad loans or fail to comply with capital ratios.The changes are under the so-called Prompt Corrective Action framework unveiled in 2002, which sets thresholds that when breached trigger supervisory action from the RBI, including restriction on dividend distribution.In extreme cases, the framework provides the RBI with powers to force mergers or even wind up the non-compliant lender.Regulatory action will be taken if a bank’s capital-to-risk-assets ratio falls below 7.75%, RBI said in a statement on Thursday.If the ratio falls below 3.625%, the bank could be a candidate for a merger or may even be wound up, the regulator added.It was not immediately possible to draw a direct comparison between the new limits and the existing ones.Meanwhile, on bad loan ratios, the central bank said the first threshold will be triggered if a bank’s net non-performing assets ratio crosses 6%.A net bad loan ratio of more than 12% will invite the extreme action of winding up or merger, it added. Reuters","In extreme cases, the framework provides the RBI with powers to force mergers or even wind up the non-compliant bank",19:05,RBI changes rules for regulatory action on banks overshooting limit on bad loans +2017-04-20,"New York: Apple Inc wants to “one day” end the need to mine materials from the earth to make its gadgets such as the iPhone, the company said in its annual environmental responsibility report out on Thursday.“Traditional supply chains are linear. Materials are mined, manufactured as products, and often end up in landfills after use. Then the process starts over and more materials are extracted from the earth for new products.We believe our goal should be a closed-loop supply chain, where products are built using only renewable resources or recycled material.”ALSO READ: iPhone supply chain bites back at AppleThe company’s research concluded that recycled aluminium should come from Apple products rather than from recycling facilities because of the high grade needed for the metal. Apple has been encouraging customers to return used products for recycling and has melted down iPhone aluminium enclosures to make mini computers used in its factories.“For tin, we took a different approach,” the tech giant said. “Unlike aluminium, there is an existing market supply of recycled tin that meets our quality standards.” As a result, Apple has been using recycled tin for its iPhone 6s. The ultimate aim is “to one day end our reliance on mining altogether,” said Apple, without settling a date.Apple did not disclose the amount of recycled products currently used in its products. The tech giant said 96% of the electricity at its global facilities comes from renewable energy and that its new corporate campus is powered entirely by renewable energy.",Apple wants to ‘one day’ end the need to mine materials from the earth to make its gadgets ,21:49,Apple wants to use recycled metal to make iPhones +2017-04-20,"Mumbai: Embassy Industrial Parks, a joint venture between real estate developer Embassy Group and private equity firm Warburg Pincus India Ltd, on Thursday said it had purchased 24 acres of land in Gurugram, Haryana, to build an industrial and warehousing hub at a total cost of Rs140 crore.Another Rs38 crore was spent on buying the land, the company said in a statement. Property consultant CBRE is the transaction advisor. Last year, Embassy Industrial Parks signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Haryana government to build three industrial parks in the state, investing Rs1,910 crore.Located on NH-8 near Bilaspur Chowk, the warehousing facility will have 600,000 sq ft. of leasable space containing a logistics park concept with a host of amenities, the company said in a statement. The manufacturing facilities of auto companies Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, Honda Cars India Ltd and Hero MotoCorp Ltd and warehouses of Decathlon Group, Amazon India, Flipkart Ltd and Blue Dart Express Ltd are in close proximity to the acquired plotThe company said the warehouse is being constructed to meet the growing logistics requirements of e-commerce, retail, consumer durables, apparel, automotive and pharmaceutical companies.Anshul Singhal, chief executive officer (CEO), Embassy Industrial Parks said India’s warehousing sector had grown 55% from 2013 till 2016. In the national capital region centred on Delhi, the sector had grown 45% in the same period.“We have entered a significant phase in the evolution of the Embassy Industrial Parks brand in the NCR Region. It has a strong reputation and is a key focus area for the company to grow our operations,” he said.Embassy Industrial Parks has also invested Rs350 crore to build a 1.1-million sq ft industrial park at Chakan, Pune. The group is planning to invest about Rs1,600 crore as equity to build seven-eight industrial parks over the next six years.“The Delhi-National Capital Region (Delhi-NCR) is one of the most preferred warehousing hubs in the country. It is also one of the largest manufacturing and consumption hubs in the country, garnering a share of almost 25% in the overall activity in the warehousing sector in the country,” said Anshuman Magazine, chairman, India and South East Asia, at CBRE.",Embassy Industrial had purchased 24 acres of land in Gurugram to build an industrial and warehousing hub,20:04,Embassy Industrial to build warehousing hub in Gurugram for Rs140 crore +2017-04-13,"
Mumbai: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has begun commercial production of coal bed methane (CBM) gas from two blocks in Madhya Pradesh, two people familiar with the development said. RIL’s move comes after the government approved pricing and marketing freedom for producers of natural gas from CBM on 15 March. The company has deferred production for a while due to lack of clarity over pricing CBM gas. The two blocks are located in Sohagpur East and West.“RIL has commenced commercial production from 24 March 2017 and expects sales to third party customers from May. RIL has appointed Crisil to help in price discovery process based on CCEA (cabinet committee on economic affairs) approval dated 15 March 2017. We are currently in ramp-up phase and expect to reach around 0.4 mmscmd of production by June 2017. The ramp-up phase will continue further for 15-18 months till we reach plateau production in CBM,” a RIL spokesperson said in response to a Mint query.RIL had begun test production from the block last April. “But wells had been shut as RIL wanted clarity on gas pricing. In CBM production, you need to de-water many small wells. And the de-watering sometimes takes nearly three years. Thus, RIL may take two-three years to reach peak production,” said the second of the two people mentioned above. RIL was awarded the CBM blocks in 2001, in the first round of CBM auctions. With this, RIL has become the third company in India to begin CBM gas production. Great Eastern Energy Corp. Ltd (GEECL) and Essar Oil Ltd are the two existing players selling CBM gas in the market. RIL holds another CBM block in Sonhat, Chhattisgarh.CBM is natural gas stored or absorbed in coal seams. India, with the world’s fourth largest proven coal reserves, holds significant potential for CBM exploration and production. CBM gas is similar to natural gas, containing 90-95% methane. Reliance Gas Pipeline Ltd (RGPL), an RIL subsidiary, has laid around 312km of pipeline to carry natural gas from Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh close to its CBM blocks to Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh. An RIL executive, one of the two mentioned earlier, added that initial gas output from RIL block could be around 0.4 million metric standard cubic metres per day(mmscmd). Peak output, however, is envisaged at 2.5-3 mmscmd. “RIL is best placed to sell its CBM gas as its blocks are centrally located and there will be good demand by industries nearby. Also, the cost of production for RIL may be around $3 per million British thermal unit (mBtu) and even if RIL sells the gas at around $7-8 per mBtu, it would be in a good spot,” said an oil and gas analyst with a domestic broking firm, asking not to be identified.","Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has commenced commercial production of coal bed methane, or CBM gas from 24 March and expects to start sales from May",04:57,Reliance starts CBM gas production from two blocks in Madhya Pradesh +2017-04-13,"
New Delhi: IDFC Alternatives, the asset management arm of the infrastructure-focused lender, is in talks to buy First Solar’s 200 megawatts (MW) of renewable power assets in India in a deal potentially valued at around $200 million, two people aware of the development said.Mint reported First Solar’s Indian asset sale plans on 20 March.First Solar, a US-based photovoltaic (PV) panel maker and one of the first overseas companies to enter India’s solar energy market, counts the country as its second-largest market after the US in terms of total shipments.“IDFC Alternatives is interested in acquiring First Solar’s power generation assets,” said one of the two people cited above, requesting anonymity.The second person who also didn’t wish to be identified confirmed the development.The development comes in the backdrop of falling solar power tariffs because of plunging prices of solar modules. Module prices are expected to drop further in 2017 as global supply exceeds demand. Most solar power developers in India have been sourcing solar modules and equipment from countries such as China where they are cheaper. According to information available on its website, the infrastructure team of IDFC Alternatives has $1.8 billion under management.The Indian solar power generation space is getting intensely competitive.France’s Solairedirect SA won the rights to set up 250MW of solar plants at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh and sell power to NTPC Ltd at a new record-low tariff of Rs3.15 per kilowatt hour (kWh) in an auction on Wednesday.The previous low was Rs2.97 per kWh for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh. The winning bid offered a so-called levelized tariff—the value financially equivalent to different annual tariffs over the period of the power purchase agreement (PPA)—of around Rs3.30 per unit.Spokespersons for First Solar and IDFC Alternatives declined to comment.India plans to generate 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 100GW is to come from solar power projects.There has been a spate of activity in the solar power space in India. Australia’s Macquarie Group Ltd plans to buy about 330MW of operational solar assets from Hindustan Powerprojects Pvt. Ltd for an enterprise value of $600 million.Marque deals in the Indian clean energy space include Tata Power Co. Ltd buying the entire 1.1 gigawatt renewable energy portfolio of Welspun Energy Ltd for $1.4 billion and Hyderabad-based Greenko Energies Pvt. Ltd, backed by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Holdings Pte. and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, acquiring SunEdison’s Indian assets for $392 million last year.According to analysts, the country’s push for clean energy has gathered pace. India’s total renewable capacity including solar, wind, bio-mass and small hydro grew by around 11.2GW in FY 2016-17, similar to thermal capacity addition, which declined 50% in the year, according to consulting firm Bridge to India. “The country added 5,526MW of new solar capacity (up 83% over FY2015-16) and 5,400 MW of new wind capacity (up 63%) in the year,” Bridge to India wrote in a 20 March report.",IDFC Alternatives is in talks to buy First Solar’s renewable power assets in India in a deal potentially valued at about $200 million,04:57,IDFC Alternatives eyes First Solar’s India assets +2017-04-20,"Bengaluru:Rajiv Bansal, former CFO of Infosys, has dragged his former employer to arbitration to claim the remaining Rs12 crore of his severance pay. Infosys had agreed to pay Bansal a severance amount of Rs17.38 crore or 24 months of salary, but the company suspended payments after he got Rs5 crore as co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy and others objected to the severance package as excessive. According to sources, Bansal has invoked his rights to an arbitral tribunal and a meeting is scheduled next month. This has opened another battle front for Infosys, which is already fighting visa clampdown by US President Donald Trump and global headwinds. When contacted, Bansal declined to comment. “The company has already clarified on the severance package for the former CFO Rajiv Bansal through a detailed statement. We do not have anything additional to add at this point,” Infosys said in an e-mailed response. Bansal’s severance payout has been one of the issues that Infosys founders had raised to allege governance lapses at the Bengaluru-based firm. When Bansal left Infosys in 2015, Infosys had agreed to pay him Rs17.38 crore in severance pay, equalling 24 months of pay. In February, Infosys chairman R. Seshasayee had clarified that of the agreed amount, only Rs5 crore have been paid so far and that the remaining was withheld pending clarifications on the terms of the severance contract. He had also admitted that the “judgement” could have differed if circumstances were different or if certain processes had been in place. Murthy had raised concerns about the hefty amount and questioned if the same was “hush money”.","Former Infosys CFO Rajiv Bansal asks for arbitration for settlement of his Rs17.38 crore severance pay, which hadn’t gone down well with Infosys founders",21:36,Infosys ex-CFO Rajiv Bansal seeks arbitration for severance pay: report +2017-04-13,"
Mumbai: Following the Supreme Court’s judgement on Tuesday that disallowed Tata Power Co. Ltd and Adani Power Ltd from raising power tariffs to compensate for expensive imported Indonesian coal, the two companies are left with few options. Both companies will have to take measures to mitigate their losses to overcome the weakening of their finances, analysts said.The two companies could likely look at cheaper fuel sources, maintain optimum generation to recover capacity charge without losing too much on fuel cost under-recovery, utilize the losses to set off against alternate income, and refinance debt, Kotak Securities analyst Murtuza Arsiwalla wrote in a report Wednesday.The judgement is credit-negative for Tata Power but does not impact its Ba3 rating, Moody’s Investors Service said.ALSO READ: What next for Adani Power, Tata Power after Supreme Court order on tariffs?In Adani Power’s case, the order has allowed for “force majeure” benefits if it is related to Indian laws. The SC has asked the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) to hear the matter and determine the amount of relief to power generators who have been hurt by changes in local laws.Thus, Adani Power could seek relief for compensatory tariffs due to poor availability of domestic coal for sale of power from its Mundra plant to the state of Haryana; and for its Tiroda and Kawai plants that have used imported coal. Adani Power and Tata Power did not respond to Mint’s queries sent on Wednesday. On Tuesday, Tata Power had said it would continue to work towards alternatives, including sourcing of competitive and alternative coals “to best contain the onslaught of under-recovery”. Adani Power had said it was yet to decide the further course of action.While Adani Power has recognized compensatory tariff of Rs8,800 crore since FY13, Tata Power hasn’t. Thus, the judgement is negative for Adani Power and neutral for Tata Power, according to Rupesh Sankhe, analyst at Reliance Securities. Sankhe had told Mint on Tuesday that an option for Tata Power was to forego its equity of Rs4,000 crore in the plant and ask its lenders to come forward and take over the project.“We, prima facie, envisage about Rs13-18 hit on Tata Power’s SOTP (sum of the parts) (Rs85) due to its inability to book any CT (compensatory tariff) which we have assumed at about 0.30 paise/unit from FY18, thus impacting the NPV (net present value) to the tune of about Rs35-50 billion. We await further clarity on the APTEL order for Adani Power (SOTP – Rs28),” Edelweiss Securities Ltd analysts Swarnim Maheshwari and Manish Saxena wrote in their report on Wednesday The two power producers have long argued that a change in Indonesian regulations has pushed up their cost of coal imported from that country to fuel their electricity plants at Mundra, forcing the companies to seek a higher price.Tata Power’s Coastal Gujarat Power Ltd (CGPL) unit and Adani Power both operate over 4,000 megawatt (MW) coal-fired project in Mundra, Gujarat, and have power purchase agreements with state discoms in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana and Punjab.In a major setback to Tata Power and Adani Power on Tuesday, the Supreme Court denied award of compensation on account of expensive Indonesian coal, setting aside an earlier tribunal ruling that had allowed the power producers to charge higher tariff.The SC order is in contrast to a judgement by CERC in December that Tata Power and Adani Power were entitled to charge their customers more to recover the higher costs stemming from an increase in the price of imported coal by invoking ‘force majeure’.Adani Power had recognized compensatory tariff of Rs14.6 billion for the first nine months of FY17 and Rs30 billion for FY16 against Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) of Rs54 billion and Rs85 billion, respectively, according to the Kotak report. “Tata Power, on the other hand, did not recognize any compensatory tariffs but had an average under-recovery of Rs9 billion or Rs0.5/ kwh for 9MFY17 against Ebitda of Rs5 billion,” it said.Adani Power’s shares fell further on Wednesday, closing 9.01% lower at Rs33.85 on BSE. Tata Power’s shares closed up 0.06% to Rs85.45.The firms’ shares could languish further as some of the projects would turn unviable, brokerage Sharekhan Ltd said in a note on Wednesday. The SC order could also impact sentiments towards public sector banks due to potential asset quality issues, the note said.","Adani Power and Tata Power will have to take measures to mitigate their losses to overcome weakening of their finances, following Supreme Court’s order on power tariff",03:53,"Supreme Court tariff order reduces options for Adani, Tata Power" +2017-04-12,"Big plans are afoot for India’s sprawling hydrocarbons industry. Finance minister Arun Jaitley says the government aims to create an “integrated public sector oil major” to match the might of the international oil and gas giants. The big question is how that plan will unfold. Details are beginning to emerge.What’s the logic?The government owns majority stakes in eight major listed oil and gas firms. Combining some or all would create a bigger corporation with clout to negotiate better deals, for instance, on crude oil purchases. India imports some 80% of its crude needs. A merged business would also be less vulnerable to the vagaries of oil prices, say, by combining producers (which benefit from higher prices) with refiners (which get a boost from lower prices).Just how big are those eight state-owned companies?Their combined market value is almost $109 billion. If folded into one company, that would rank seventh globally among oil and gas majors. (Exxon Mobil is No. 1 at $345 billion). Such an entity would outstrip India’s private oil giant, Reliance Industries, whose market value is $71 billion. Six smaller unlisted joint-venture oil and gas companies may also come into play.What do we know about the government’s plan?Not much, in terms of detail. In August, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said his ministry was open to discussing a merger to create a larger, stronger national oil company and that the government was figuring out the appropriate model for the combination. Jaitley then spoke in mostly general terms during his 2 February budget speech, about strengthening public-sector enterprises through consolidation, mergers and acquisitions.Where are we now?According to the Economic Times, the oil ministry, which administers the industry and works independently of the finance ministry, held a meeting in March with the state-run oil companies and asked them to produce a road map for integration. So far, that road map appears to entail Oil & Natural Gas Corp. purchasing the government’s stake in either Hindustan Petroleum Corp., worth $4 billion, or Bharat Petroleum Corp., worth $7.7 billion.How would that work?Surprisingly simply. ONGC could just buy shares from the government and keep the refiner as a separate subsidiary, obviating the need for an official merger. ONGC already has a refining subsidiary -- adding HPCL or BPCL would create the nation’s third-largest refiner. India would receive vital funds for reducing the country’s fiscal deficit, but the move would imperil Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s goal of cutting crude imports, since ONGC might need to divert spending from its exploration investments aimed at boosting oil and gas output.Is there a precedent?The government attempted something similar at least once in the oil sector, during the mid-2000s. Those efforts unraveled through opposition from some of the companies and employees. The newly proposed mergers deals would also need to surmount the enormous challenge of absorbing refiners with networks across 29 states, thousands of employees and unique work cultures.What about beyond the energy world?Air India has remained unprofitable since its 2007 merger with Indian Airlines, though it managed to reduce losses this year. The government has struggled to integrate the carriers, failed to achieve the expected synergies and faced labour issues. What does the market think?Shares of all but one of the five largest state oil companies fell in the two months after the February budget, even as India’s benchmark stock index surged.A 2015 study by the Journal of Business Management and Economics concluded that while mergers in India’s energy sector may not create immediate shareholder value, they produce companies that are better placed to compete and adapt. Credit ratings company Fitch reached a similar conclusion.",The government owns majority stakes in eight listed oil and gas firms. Combining some or all would create a bigger corporation with clout to negotiate better deals on crude oil purchases,14:40,Why India is creating an oil and gas behemoth +2017-04-13,"Mumbai/New Delhi: Petrol and diesel prices in some cities will now see daily change in sync with international rates, according to two officials from oil marketing companies.This will be effective 1 May in five cities including Puducherry and Visakhapatnam, Udaipur, Jamshedpur and Chandigarh as part of a pilot project. This will be extended to other parts of the country after an assessment of consumer response.Diesel and petrol prices move in tandem with the price of crude oil in most countries. In January, Mint reported that the fuel retailers plan to introduce dynamic pricing in India this year.“We have been piloting dynamic pricing at a few of our retail outlets for some months now, and the response has been encouraging. This has allowed us to go ahead and introduce it formally,” an executive director from an oil marketing company said on condition of anonymity as he is not allowed to talk to reporters.Currently, state-run fuel retailers—Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL)—revise petrol and diesel prices on the 1st and 15th of every month based on average international price of the fuel in the preceding fortnight and the currency exchange rate.“Due to the fortnightly revision of fuel prices, petroleum dealers were applying breaks (not lifting fuel daily) on uplifting of fuel. If the prices go up on the 1st or 15th of every month, there would be a rush to uplift products, else, the upliftment would be impacted. This would result in losses for OMCs and we wanted that this price predictability should go away. So dynamic pricing will be a good bet,” said a senior official from an oil marketing company on the condition of anonymity.Shares of Indian Oil fell 0.07% to Rs408.90 on BSE, Bharat Petroleum rose 1% to Rs717.60, Hindustan Petroleum rose 1% to Rs542.45 while India’s benchmark Sensex fell 0.49% to 29,643.48 points.Although state-run fuel retailers have the capability to revise petrol and diesel prices on a daily basis, what needs to be monitored is how consumers react to price volatility, industry experts say.“If there is heightened volatility in global markets due to geopolitical developments, it could get reflected in domestic retail prices too. Therefore, companies are doing the right thing in testing the model in pilot projects to see how its impact and consumer response. In the medium- to long-term, daily price revision may be a good idea as is practised elsewhere,” said R.S. Butola, a former chairman of Indian Oil.Indian Oil chairman B. Ashok and Hindustan Petroleum chairman and managing director M.K Surana didn’t immediately respond to phone calls seeking comment.Besides, global fuel prices and currency exchange rate, central and state taxes account for a major part of the fuel prices. It accounts for half of retail petrol price and 46% of retail diesel price. The central government collected Rs64,509 crore from petrol as excise duty in 2016-17 up to end-February, 20% more than what was collected in the whole of FY16. Excise receipts from diesel jumped 36% in the same period to Rs1.37 trillion.","Fuel retailers including Indian Oil will change petrol and diesel prices daily in Puducherry, Visakhapatnam, Udaipur, Jamshedpur and Chandigarh",02:55,"Petrol, diesel prices to change daily from 1 May" +2017-04-12,"Anil Agarwal has sealed the merger of his mining and energy businesses in India, creating a BHP Billiton Ltd-like resources conglomerate, even as a recent investment in Anglo American Plc. raises questions about how far the billionaire’s ambitions stretch.Vedanta Ltd combined with unit Cairn India Ltd on Tuesday and fixed 27 April as the record date for determining the list of the latter’s shareholders who will be allotted stock in the parent company, according to a joint statement. Vedanta will offer minority shareholders of oil producer Cairn India one equity share and four redeemable-preference shares with a face value of Rs10 each as part of the deal agreement.The merger gives shareholders a company with a diverse portfolio encompassing iron ore, bauxite, aluminium, power, oil and gas that has the ability to ride out commodity cycles. Agarwal, a self-made billionaire, recently surprised the mining industry by becoming the second-biggest shareholder in Anglo American through an unusual deal that led analysts to speculate he might be planning to force a break up of or a merger with the century-old miner.“This merger will increase the appeal of Vedanta Ltd to global investors as it simplifies the structure and increases the size and free float of the company,” Tom Albanese, chief executive officer of Vedanta, said in the statement. The firm will continue to focus on remaining a low-cost and low-debt operator, he said.Agarwal’s fortune has been built on a series of ambitious acquisitions: In 2001, he bought control of then government-owned Bharat Aluminium Co. in one of the first tests of India’s efforts to offload state holdings. He followed with another government entity, Hindustan Zinc Ltd, in a deal that drew the attention of the nation’s top investigating agency. He successfully bid for what was India’s largest iron ore producer Sesa Goa Ltd. in 2007 and for Cairn India in 2010, despite having no oil and gas experience. Last year, Anglo American was said to have rebuffed informal approaches from the billionaire to discuss ideas including a combination with Hindustan Zinc Ltd.The Vedanta-Cairn combine was proposed by Agarwal in 2015, but delayed after Cairn shareholders held out for a better deal, which was offered last year.It will allow India’s most-indebted metals company after Tata Steel Ltd. to access Cairn’s cash pile, which stood at Rs26,000 crore ($4 billion) at the end of December. Vedanta’s debt at the time was Rs65,000 crore, while Cairn is debt-free.“They are under pressure because of the heavy debt and the merger is planned only because of this,” said Kishor Ostwal, managing director of CNI Research Ltd, an equity research provider in Mumbai. The strong commodity cycle has benefited the group and improving raw material prices will give them a further advantage, he added.Vedanta shares have nearly tripled in the past year, leading gains among India’s 100 largest companies. It advanced in March after unit Hindustan Zinc announced a special dividend of about $2.2 billion, of which the parent will get about $1.4 billion. The dividend payout will cover 68% of Vedanta’s debt maturities in the fiscal year ending March 2018 and alleviate near-term refinancing risk, according to Moody’s Investors Service.“The stock looks very interesting and our bias is positive,” Ashish Chaturmohta, head of derivatives and technicals at Sanctum Wealth Management Ltd, said by phone. “The dividend mostly is going to go for debt reduction and so will the cash with Cairn,” he added, saying the stock can move up further.Shares of Vedanta climbed 2.6% to Rs259.25 in Mumbai on Wednesday. The merged company will have a market-capitalization of about $15.6 billion and a higher free float of shares of 49.9%, according to Tuesday’s statement.Vedanta’s 6% 2019 dollar notes rallied 42% in the past year as the company reduced its leverage and strengthened prospects for repayments with dividends. Bloomberg","Anil Agarwal has sealed the merger of Vedanta and Cairn India, creating a BHP Billiton-like resources conglomerate ",14:15,Anil Agarwal creates BHP-style Indian resources major +2017-04-12,"New Delhi: The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved setting up of an Indian Institute of Petroleum and Energy (IIPE) at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh at a cost of over Rs655 crore, fulfilling the commitment made to the state when Telangana was separated from it. The Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved setting IIPE as ‘an Institute of National Importance’ through an Act of Parliament. “The Institute will have the governance structure as well as legal mandate to grant degrees in a manner similar to that enjoyed by IITs,” an official statement said. A separate Act will also impart the required status to the institute to become a ‘Centre of Excellence’ in petroleum and energy studies. The Cabinet also approved Rs655.46 crore as capital expenditure to set up IIPE and contribution of Rs200 crore towards its Endowment Fund. This will be in addition to a contribution of Rs200 crore from oil companies towards the Endowment Fund. The Centre had promised a petroleum university as part of the package to Andhra Pradesh after Telangana was split from it. Andhra Pradesh has allocated 200 acres of land, free of cost, for setting up of IIPE at Sabbavaram Mandal in Visakhapatnam district. A temporary campus of IIPE has been set up from academic session 2016-17 at the Andhra University campus with two undergraduate programmes in petroleum engineering and chemical engineering (with capacity of 50 students each). IIT-Kharagpur has taken up the responsibility of mentoring the institute. “The objective is to meet the quantitative and qualitative gap in the supply of skilled manpower for the petroleum sector and to promote research activities needed for the growth of the sector. “The academic and research activities of IIPE will derive strength from the institute’s proximity to sector-related activities such as KG-Basin, Visakhapatnam refinery and the planned petrochemical complex at Kakinada,” the statement added.","Indian Institute of Petroleum , which will be build at a cost of over Rs655 crore, will have the legal mandate to grant degrees in a manner similar to that enjoyed by IITs",20:31,Cabinet approves setting up Indian Institute of Petroleum at Visakhapatnam +2017-04-13,"New Delhi: About 4 crore subscribers of EPFO will get 8.65% interest on provident fund deposits for 2016-17, as decided by the organisation’s trustees in December, labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya said on Thursday.The comments follow reports suggesting that the finance ministry is nudging the labour ministry to lower the EPF interest rate by up to 50 basis points.“It is not like that. The CBT (EPFO trustees) had decided to give 8.65%. Our ministry keeps on discussing with finance ministry. We would have surplus of Rs158 crore on providing 8.65%,” Dattatreya said on being asked whether the finance ministry is making a case for lowering the interest rate.“If need be, I will talk to them (finance ministry). I have requested them to approve 8.65%. In any case this amount (interest income) will be given to workers. But how and when it will be provided, this is the question,” he added.Also Read: EPFO subscribers to get loyalty benefit of up to Rs50,000The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation’s (EPFP) apex decision making body the Central Board of Trustees (CBT) had decided to provide 8.65% rate of interest on EPF deposits last December. As per the practice, the board’s decision is concurred by the finance ministry after evaluating whether the EPFO would be able to provide the rate approved by trustees through its own income or not. Once the finance ministry ratifies the rate of interest approved by the CBT, it is credited into the account of EPFO members for that particular financial year.The finance ministry had last year also decided to lower the EPF interest rate of 8.8% for 2015-16 decided by the CBT, to 8.7%. The decision had drawn flak from all corners forcing the government to uphold 8.8%.The finance ministry has been asking the labour ministry to rationalise the EPF interest rates in view of lowering of returns on various administered saving scheme like PPF run by it.The government generally ratifies the rate of return approved by the CBT because the EPFO is an autonomous body and provides interest on EPF deposits from its own income.Asked whether rate of interest on EPF for current fiscal would be lowered amid pressure from finance ministry, he said: “Our situation (income earning on investments) is encouraging. We can expect better returns in 2017-18. But the rate of interest for this fiscal will be decided only after working out the income estimates.”","EPFO subscribers will get 8.65% interest on provident fund deposits for 2016-17, as decided by the trustees in December, says labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya ",18:40,PF body to provide 8.65% interest on EPF for FY 17: Bandaru Dattatreya +2017-04-13,"Mumbai: The head of State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender, said she expects a boost to annual profit of as much as Rs3,000 crore ($465 million) in three years on cost and efficiency gains from the absorption of associate banks.Chair Arundhati Bhattacharya also said in an interview that signs of more factory activity pointed to a turnaround in India’s weak credit cycle this financial year — welcome news for a government keen to revive private investment.State-run SBI this month merged five subsidiary lenders and absorbed them into the parent company. It had fully owned two and had majority stakes in the others, but all had previously operated separately.Workforce integration will start in June, said Bhattacharya who joined SBI 40 years ago and rose through the ranks to become its first female chief in 2013. SBI has said it will shut or move some branches and close overlapping units.“Total bottom line impact (of) around two to three thousand crores (Rs2,000-3,000 ) is what we are thinking of,” she said. “I’ll have a better hang of these numbers by the middle of May.”ALSO READ: Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout falls short of what investors needThat would compare with a net profit of Rs115.9 billion for the year ended March 2016 if results of the five subsidiary banks were included.Profits at state-run lenders have been under pressure, weighed down by a record $150 billion in stressed assets. The pile of bad debt, combined with slower economic growth and deferral of large projects, has prevented lenders from boosting credit growth.As of March 17, banking sector loans had grown just 4.4%, compared with 10.9% in the previous year, the weakest pace since the fiscal year ended March 1954. But Bhattacharya, 61, said she was hoping for good growth from the July-September quarter.“I’ve already had a number of meetings with people saying their capacity utilisation has gone up. Commodity prices have gone up, so to that extent people are coming with working capital requests,” she said.SBI has forecast loans to grow 11% this financial year after an expected 6.5% growth in the year ended March.Bhattacharya also said the central bank would need to offer rates matching or higher than the reverse repo rate of 6.00%, the rate lenders get for deposits at the RBI, should it implement a special facility to drain cash from the banking system.India’s central bank wants to withdraw some of the big cash pile accumulated in the banking system since the government banned circulation of big currency-notes, but lenders are keen to get proper returns in exchange for transferring cash. Reuters",SBI’s Arundhati Bhattacharya expects a boost to annual profit on cost and efficiency gains from the merger with five associate banks,17:55,SBI merger to boost profit in 3 years: Arundhati Bhattacharya +2017-04-13,"London: HSBC Holdings Plc said some of its largest clients have already asked for their business to be routed through the bank’s offices in mainland Europe and aren’t waiting to see what Brexit deal the UK hammers out with the continent’s trading bloc.“A small number of our larger clients are asking us to book more of their trade and foreign-exchange activity in their French operation through our Paris office than their UK divisions,” Noel Quinn, head of global commercial banking, said in an interview. Executives at multinational companies are “making plans to ensure they can continue to trade irrespective of the outcome. They can’t afford to wait for a decision that may not emerge until two years’ time.”ALSO READ: How markets overcame past geopolitical crisesGlobal banks have started arranging for some British-based operations to move to new or expanded offices inside the EU after British Prime Minister Theresa May triggered discussions to leave the trading bloc. Privately, many executives at the world’s biggest firms say they’re now assuming the result will be a “hard Brexit”—the loss of their right to sell services freely around the region from the UK. That means they have to put contingency plans in place before the end of the two-year negotiation period.Flipping HQQuinn, who’s sat on the executive committee of HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, since December 2015, said some companies are also evaluating whether to “flip” their regional head offices to European cities from Britain. This would require them to reclassify the UK branch as a country office that would become a subsidiary of the continental headquarters, he said. This may result in some small-scale job moves and lost taxation for the UK government, as firms start reporting the purchase and distribution of services elsewhere.“Larger companies that already have a pan-European presence are going to find it easier to invoke a plan B than the smaller ones,” Quinn said. “They’re not losing faith in the UK, but the reality is businesses or even individuals themselves will start making their decisions before the answer emerges from the Brexit process.”Hoarding cashHSBC chief executive officer Stuart Gulliver has said as many as 1,000 of HSBC’s traders and salespeople, who generate about 20% of the investment bank’s revenue, will relocate from London to Paris after Prime Minister May confirmed the UK would leave the single market. Some French staff have already asked to return home, according to people familiar with the matter. The bank decided to keep its headquarters in London rather than move to Asia or France in February 2016 after a year-long review.Quinn also noted companies are maintaining higher levels of cash since the June 23 vote to leave the EU.“The quantity of cash they have in their bank accounts has progressively increased,” Quinn said in the interview. “The cause of that could be UK businesses trading really well post-Brexit because of the devaluation of sterling, or it could be the preservation of cash given the uncertain economic horizon, or it could be deferment or delay in investment activity.”The commercial bank reported a 12% increase in adjusted pretax profit to $6.1 billion last year, which was the most among HSBC’s four divisions and accounted for about a third of group’s total earnings, according to company filings. The UK contributed $1.8 billion of its pretax profit compared with $2.9 billion in the Asia region.Bloomberg",HSBC says some of its clients aren’t waiting to see what Brexit deal the UK hammers out with the European Union and want to book their trade though the bank’s Paris office ,16:19,HSBC says companies already re-routing business due to Brexit +2017-04-12,"
Ahmedabad: The Adani group’s plan to build one of the world’s largest coal mines in Queensland moved closer to realization after Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull met founder-chairman Gautam Adani during his three-day visit to India. Turnbull assured the Indian billionaire that his government would resolve an issue with native title laws, helping take the $16.5 billion project closer to fruition, Australian media reported on Tuesday. The native title issue surrounding the Carmichael Mine project refers to an Australian Federal Court ruling that invalidated deals with traditional land owners in that country. Legislation to fix this issue is before the Senate and Turnbull is understood to have assured the company it will be resolved, Sky News reported on Tuesday.Australia ready to supply uranium to India as soon as possible: Malcolm TurnbullTurnbull is said to have told Adani that he expected the changes overruling the court’s decision to be passed by the country’s Parliament when it reconvenes in May. He also told Adani that the ruling had caused problems with many land deals across Australia, the report added. A quick resolution is crucial for Adani, which has invested $3.3 billion in the coal mine, railway and port project and said previously that it will start construction in the second half of 2017. An Adani spokesperson said that the meeting was “very positive” for the group’s Australian project, but refused to comment on details. “Happy to meet with Australian PM today. Working together for economic and stronger Australia- India ties,” Gautam Adani posted on microblogging site Twitter on Monday evening.Turnbull’s reaffirmation of his government’s commitment to Adani’s coal mine project comes after Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk met Adani last month at Mundra in Gujarat where the conglomerate runs a port. In October, the Palaszczuk government exempted the project from new water laws that could have mired it in further legal challenges. The project, announced in 2010, has run into resistance from environmentalists, resulting in delays of at least three years. Last year, the Queensland state’s department of environment and heritage protection (EHP) issued a final environmental authority (EA) for the project in the Galilee Basin. On 19 August, Adani won a major legal battle when the Australian apex court dismissed appeals lodged by indigenous community member Adrian Burragubba as well as a Brisbane-based environmental group against the project.ALSO READ: What next for Adani Power, Tata Power after Supreme Court order on tariffs?But that has not stopped protests. Last month, just ahead of the Queensland premier’s visit, a group of protestors including former Test cricket captains Ian Chappell and Greg Chappell wrote an open letter to Adani saying that the mines project will threaten the Great Barrier Reef, and asking the group to instead invest in solar energy. Adani, during the meeting which lasted for about 30 minutes, also discussed the prospect of a $900 million government loan to Adani group to fund a rail line for the Carmichael mine project, said a person familiar with the matter who did not wish to be named. “As far as the rail link is concerned, if you’re asking about Adani’s interest in securing funding from the Northern Australian Infrastructure Fund, that’s an independent process—it has to go through that process, through that independent assessment by the board,” said Turnbull, ahead of the meeting, while answering a question related to the rail funding at a press conference in Delhi. Adani expects to complete the first phase of the project by 2020-21, producing 25 million tonnes of coal annually.","Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull, who is on a three-day India visit, met Gautam Adani on Tuesday—a boost to Adani Group’s coal mine project in Queensland",04:59,Malcolm Turnbull’s India visit boosts Adani’s Australia coal mine project +2017-04-12,"Kolkata: Power utility NTPC Ltd has put its 1,320 mw Katwa project on hold even after resolving issues with land acquisition, alleges the West Bengal government, which has demanded an explanation from the central public sector enterprise for transferring key officials to other units.The project first ran into rough weather when Mamata Banerjee after taking office as chief minister in 2011 refused to acquire land for it. The state had by then already given the power utility around 556 acres to build a new thermal power generating station.NTPC needed at least 294 acres more to set up two units of 660 mw each at Katwa, but the company was asked to purchase land on its own. In 2015, the state provided around 100 acres more to the project, while NTPC on its own acquired the rest.Still, the project may not materialise in the foreseeable future, say key officials at NTPC and the state government.West Bengal’s power minister Sovandeb Chatterjee said NTPC had recently transferred several key officials from the Katwa project including its general manager. “We have written to NTPC seeking an explanation—how many officers have been transferred and why,” said the minister.On Wednesday, he will brief the chief minister on this matter, Chatterjee added.Though the key problem of land has been resolved, NTPC appears to have no immediate plans of starting construction of the power plant at Katwa, said a key power department official in Kolkata, who asked not to be named. The state will not take kindly to further delays in executing the project, he added.“These are routine transfers,” said a spokesperson for NTPC, adding that the Katwa project will “move at its own pace”. While admitting that the company had still not started the process to place orders for machines, he said the project was delayed for want of coal linkages.The state government has also been slow in sorting this out, said a former NTPC official who was closely involved with the Katwa project.The state government had earlier committed to supply coal from its own power generation units run by the West Bengal Power Development Corp. Ltd, but that arrangement requires clearance from the Centre, according to this person, who asked not to be identified.“In all these years, the state didn’t ever pressure the Centre to clear this proposal,” said this person. “It is natural that NTPC is now diverting its resources and management bandwidth to rescue distressed projects in other parts of the country such as in Rajasthan.”It was envisaged that in the long run coal for the Katwa project will come from the Deocha-Pachami coal block which has been allocated to multiple states led by West Bengal. A company has been formed and clearance given by the Centre to start exploring the 9.7 sq. km block in West Bengal’s Birbhum district.Though the block with an estimated reserve of two billion tonnes could theoretically be turned into the biggest coal mine in the country, extracting coal from it is not going to be easy because of the local geology and settlements, said a former Coal India Ltd official, who too asked not to be named.West Bengal has enough power for now and NTPC is of the view that it doesn’t need to invest in the state immediately, said the former NTPC official cited above. What is more, the political relations between West Bengal and Delhi have soured so much that central public sector enterprises such as NTPC will not be encouraged to invest in the state until things improved, he added.","West Bengal government alleges NTPC has put its 1,320 mw Katwa project on hold even after resolving issues with land acquisition",01:54,NTPC puts Katwa power project on hold +2017-03-08,"
The Bharat Financial Inclusion Ltd stock has staged perhaps the most impressive recovery in the financial sector space with a 67% rise since demonetisation, a reflection not entirely of its balance sheet. It took a warning from, ironically, the management of the company, to make investors take a reality check on their valuations.On Monday, the Bharat Financial management warned that close to 4.5% of its loan book may turn non-performing and the recovery of dues will take three-four months as against the earlier indication of March-end. But, the lender’s shares ended nearly 2% up after falling nearly 6% during the day. What makes investors so hopeful despite many analysts worried about the effects of demonetisation on the microlender as well as the whole sector?Bharat Financial Inclusion says 4.5% of loan portfolio at risk of turning bad in Q4Analysts at Kotak Securities Ltd warn that write-offs could escalate in the fourth quarter but the higher loan growth momentum could act as a cushion. But those at UBS Securities India Pvt. Ltd said that loan growth recovery is faster. “We believe that higher credit costs are one-off (driven by demonetisation) and expect core profitability to improve sharply from H2FY18,” the firm said in a note.But is this enough to warrant current valuations?Bharat Financial’s gross loan portfolio grew 38% year-on-year in the third quarter despite demonetisation taking a chunk off disbursals and bringing collections to a grinding halt. It also had an enviable bad loan ratio of 0.06% of its loan book. And a profit growth of 80% makes a convincing argument for the 67% recovery in the stock price since demonetisation.Also, Bharat Financial’s shares gained 41% between 26 December (when they hit their low in the wake of demonetisation) and 24 January when the company announced its quarterly results. The sharp gains were vindicated as the quarterly numbers seem to allay the fears of the lender being hard hit by the currency purge.Bharat Financial shares fall as much as 6% on bad loan fearsBut a large part of its valuations also reflect the hope of Bharat Financial getting acquired by another lender, which sprang from news reports of IndusInd Bank Ltd reviving talks of buying a majority stake in the company. Mainstream private banks are increasingly finding it difficult to grow their loan book in the traditional corporate and retail segments and therefore, microfinance is an attractive opportunity. The obvious choice to gain market share is to acquire an existing microfinance firm as setting up shop would be a costly affair for banks.So, the hope of a suitor has been keeping shares of not just BFIL but also other listed microfinance firms in play even though enough anecdotal evidence shows demonetisation is hurting their business.After the Bharat Financial management’s warning on Monday, several analysts cut their ratings. Analysts at Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd and Kotak Securities have a “neutral” rating on the company, while Religare Securities Ltd has a “sell” rating.Microfinance firms seek RBI nod to extend loan tenureThe microlender’s stock now trades at a multiple of 3.4 times its estimated book value for 2017-18. That seems to be pricing in most of the positives.",The hope of a suitor has been keeping shares of not just Bharat Financial Inclusion but also other listed microfinance firms in play,08:04,Matchmaking hopes buoy Bharat Financial shares +2017-04-12,"
New Delhi: Tata Power Co. Ltd and Adani Power Ltd were dealt a major setback on Tuesday when the Supreme Court set aside an earlier tribunal ruling that allowed the power producers to charge compensatory tariff from consumers.The ruling will likely weaken the finances of both companies, particularly Adani Power, which may have to write off some of the additional revenues it had booked in anticipation of a favourable verdict.Adani Power shares plunged 16% to Rs37.20, while those of Tata Power fell 1.95% to Rs85.40 on the BSE on Tuesday.ALSO READ: What next for Adani Power, Tata Power after Supreme Court order on tariffs?A bench comprising justices Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Rohinton F. Nariman ruled on a batch of appeals challenging a 2016 order of the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (Aptel) which held that an unforeseen increase in the cost of coal would be a “force majeure event” under the power purchase agreements (PPAs) between power-generating companies and distributors.The companies cited a change in Indonesian rules in 2010 as a force majeure event that raised the cost of coal imported from that country to fuel their electricity plants in Mundra.“The impugned order is set aside. The only benefit we are allowing is if the force majeure event is related to Indian laws,” the court said.Aptel had referred the decade-long issue to the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) to grant relief to Tata and Adani in accordance with the PPAs. In December, CERC came out with a compensation formula that allowed the companies to recover the higher costs stemming from the rise in the price of imported coal. This order will also stand nullified with the Supreme Court ruling.Tata Power’s Coastal Gujarat Power Ltd (CGPL) unit and Adani Power’s 4,000 megawatt (MW) coal-fired project in Mundra, Gujarat, have PPAs with state discoms in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana and Punjab. The annual impact for Tata Power could be a negative of Rs800-Rs1,000 crore if they want to run this plant at minimum PLF (plant load factor), according to Rupesh Sankhe, an analyst at Reliance Securities. “Since the (Mundra) plant will not be viable for Tata Power, it could look at an option of foregoing its equity of Rs4,000 crore in the plant and asking lenders to come forward and take (over) this project. Lenders, in turn, can then restructure the plant or sign new PPA or find a new developer for the project,” Sankhe said. CGPL has been consistently reporting cost under-recoveries. In the December quarter, it reported an under-recovery of 70 paise per unit, which led to a loss of Rs244 crore for the unit.“CGPL/Tata Power considers it very unfortunate that neither Regulatory Powers of CERC nor Forced Majeure as adjudicated by Aptel, have been accepted by Hon’ble Supreme Court,” Tata Power said in an emailed statement. “The final order got uploaded in the evening and the company is studying the same. However, CGPL would continue to work towards alternatives, including sourcing of competitive and alternative coals to best contain the onslaught of under recovery.”For Adani, this ruling will have more severe consequences, not just because of the additional revenues it had booked, but also due to its high leverage levels.In the past four years, the company has included likely compensatory tariffs of Rs8,800 crore—an amount higher than its net worth of Rs7,948 crore, according to analyst estimates. “Adani Power had been infusing close to Rs2,000 crore in this business every year and there is very limited visibility with respect to the profitability going forward,” said an analyst who didn’t want to be named as he is not authorized to speak to reporters. Adani Power’s consolidated debt at the end of September was Rs49,547 crore. After accounting for the cash in its books, that translates into a net debt-to-equity ratio of 6.1. Even after accounting for compensatory tariffs, Adani’s Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) accounts for about 1.25 times its interest costs for the nine months ended 31 December.However, Adani Power said in a statement to BSE that “its preliminary analysis showed that it will get benefit in respect of its power purchase agreement (PPA) for 1,424 megawatt (MW) to Haryana state distribution companies (discoms), PPA for 3,300 MW with Maharashtra Discoms and in PPA for 1,200MW with Rajasthan Discoms”.“The company would decide further course of action once the final order of Supreme Court is available,” Adani said in a filing.The company seems to be referring to the court’s order that it will allow “force majeure” benefits if it is related to Indian laws.In 2016, Aptel ruled in favour of the state electricity regulatory commissions of Maharashtra and Rajasthan, which had disallowed compensatory tariffs for Adani’s Tiroda and Kawai plants respectively, saying that the provisions of force majeure do not apply.Analysts declined to comment on this aspect without seeing the court’s order.Gireesh Chandra Prasad in New Delhi and Shailaja Sharma in Mumbai contributed to the story. ",Supreme Court sets aside an earlier tribunal ruling that allowed Tata Power and Adani Power to charge compensatory tariff from consumers,00:40,"Blow to Tata Power, Adani as Supreme Court sets aside ruling on tariff" +2017-02-21,"
Kalpataru Power Transmission Ltd’s shares have lost ground in the last four trading sessions despite it reporting better-than-expected performance for the December quarter. That suggests the positives are already priced in.The stock closed at a new 52-week high early this month as the company announced a large order win and indicated good growth momentum. The December quarter results closely tracked the upbeat commentary. Stand-alone revenues are up 29%. Profits rose 57% as finance costs fell.Kalpataru did not receive any major orders in the December quarter. But it made up with new order wins in the first half of this quarter. It is seeing strong business opportunities from state electricity boards, Indian Railways and the international market.The company is favourably placed for Rs3,000 crore worth of contracts and expects to start the next fiscal year with an order backlog of Rs10,000 crore, 1.4 times the 2015-16 consolidated revenues. On stand-alone revenues, the order backlog would be 2.3 times the previous fiscal year’s revenues. According to IDBI Capital Market Services Ltd, it takes six months to convert the order backlog into revenue stream. This should ensure good revenue momentum and analysts are confident the management will comfortably meet the lower end of the 15-20% growth in the current and next fiscal years.The optimism is captured in the stock—up around 60% in the last one year. For it to continue to do well, Kalpataru will have to impress the Street with more than revenue growth.Profitability is one aspect it can improve upon. Despite strong revenue growth, the company’s profitability did not see any major improvement (see chart). Also, earnings expectations are being weighed down by continuing troubles at its subsidiaries.Growth at one of them, JMC Projects (India) Ltd, is undermined by slow moving orders from the real estate sector. It is not expected to post any revenue growth in the current fiscal year. Another unit Shree Shubham Logistics Ltd, which offers agri-logistics services, is hit by under-utilization of assets and is estimated to post losses for the current fiscal year. According to HDFC Securities Ltd, the logistics firm may require financial support (cash infusion) from Kalpaturu next fiscal year.These issues are not unknown and strong growth in the core power transmission and infrastructure EPC business is making up for the weakness in subsidiaries. EPC is short for engineering procurement and construction. According to HDFC Securities, the strong order backlog should give Kalpataru leeway in picking projects with better margins. For the stock to outperform, it is crucial the company impresses on profitability and earnings front.","Kalpataru Power did not receive any major orders in the December quarter, but it made up with new order wins in the first half of this quarter",07:56,Kalpataru Power: strong revenue visibility masks subsidiary troubles +2017-02-27,"
Automobile firms, apart from Tata Motors Ltd, sprung a pleasant surprise in their December quarter financial results. Operating margins topped forecasts and also inched up from the year-ago levels in some cases, in spite of subdued sales. However, the tide seems to be reversing now.Key input prices have steadily risen from their lows. Compared with a year ago, steel and rubber prices have almost doubled, while copper and aluminium are up 18-25%. This is certain to weigh on the operating margins in the March quarter. In fact, a margin correction was expected in the December quarter. But it didn’t happen because most auto companies had a high inventory of finished goods that skewed raw material costs as a percentage to sales.
Finished goods stocks were high because demonetisation played spoilsport on vehicle sales, especially in the rural markets. Auto firms also have to comply with new emission norms that will add to costs, too.For instance, brokerages have forecast a Rs600-1,000 per unit cost increase for two-wheelers on this count. It would be much higher for commercial vehicles. Therefore, the prospects for the next few quarters would hinge on the ability of auto companies to pass on the cost pressures to customers.Through the December quarter, there were no price hikes as sales were punctured. But many auto companies such as Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, Hero MotoCorp Ltd, Bajaj Auto Ltd and TVS Motor Co. Ltd reportedly raised prices in January. However, a report by Religare Capital Markets Ltd highlights that the price hikes may only partially offset cost pressures that would impact margins in the near term.Meanwhile, sales may move up as the pent-up demand of the December quarter kicks in. Another trigger could come from pre-buying by customers (especially in commercial vehicles) because vehicles may be costlier after April, when the new emission norms apply.Higher sales may then translate into operating leverage benefits such as margin improvement. This may take some time though.For now, the stocks in the auto universe trade at optimum valuations—ranging between 18-23 times estimated earnings for the fiscal year ahead. The key things to watch out for in the next few months are sales growth and price hikes in vehicles.","Steel and rubber prices have almost doubled, while copper and aluminium are up 18-25% against a year ago—certain to weigh on operating margins in March quarter",07:52,"Auto firms fend off demonetisation blues, but face the heat of rising costs"
+2017-03-07,"
Until about a year ago, the agrochemical industry was beset by low demand and adverse weather conditions.
Then things seemed to ease.
But those risks are now emerging again. Shares of Rallis India Ltd and Bayer CropScience Ltd have fallen between 2% and 8% in the past month. Even shares of UPL Ltd and PI Industries Ltd, which are partly hedged because of a large overseas business, have lost 6-10% in value. The broad market has risen 1.5% during the period.Barring Bayer, all other stocks had outperformed the BSE 500 index in the past one year. But the correction in the past one month indicates that investors are getting cautious.International weather forecasts point to a reoccurrence of the El Niño warm weather pattern in 2017. The forecasts are inconclusive and clarity will emerge only in May. But if El Niño returns as feared, then it can crimp the crucial monsoon rains, which in turn, will impact agriculture activity. Though rural spending is now less dependent on agriculture, the monsoons and the corresponding agricultural output still affect rural demand, Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd said in a note.According to Aditya Jhawar, an analyst at Investec Capital, monsoon rains influence the quality and quantum of farm investments. “Agrochemical companies are exposed to the vagaries of monsoon as the consumption of agrochemicals and the up-trading/down-trading of molecules largely depends on performance of monsoon,” he says. Bayer and Rallis, with a 70-80% exposure to the domestic market, are expected to be the worst-hit companies.The concerns arise amid talk of a dull January-March quarter (fiscal Q4). Demand for agrochemical products is being hit to an extent by weak crop prices, low pest infestation and drought conditions in southern parts of the country. According to Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd, lower winter crop acreages in south India and higher inventory can weigh on pesticide consumption in the current quarter and result in muted revenue growth for the industry.Of course, the March quarter is a lean season for agrochemical companies. A large chunk of sales happen in the September and December quarters. And revenue growth till December 2016 has been good (see chart). Even so, growth is lower than initial expectations and is coming on a low base of two consecutive years of sub-par monsoon rains (2014-15, 2015-16).If current risks do not subside—deficit monsoon rains, weak crop prices and continuation of drought in several parts of the country—then revenue growth in the coming fiscal year can be hit, taking the industry back to anaemic growth levels.","If El Niño returns as feared, then it can crimp the crucial monsoon rains, which in turn, will impact agriculture activity",07:49,Déjà vu for agrochemical stocks +2017-02-21,"
Shares of Petronet LNG Ltd have increased an impressive three-fifths so far this fiscal year.Shortage of domestically produced gas leading to better demand prospects for liquefied natural gas (LNG) is what has fundamentally propelled the company’s stock upwards.The LNG importer’s profit growth has been robust each quarter so far in fiscal year 2017 and the December quarter results are no exception. Net profit increased spectacularly, more than doubling compared to the same quarter last year to Rs397 crore. Operating profit increased 114% year-on-year to Rs607 crore.The Petronet LNG management told analysts in a conference call that the Dahej (Gujarat) capacity expansion to 15 million tonnes (from 10mt) was fully operational during the December quarter. The company said that the volume of 187 trillion British thermal units regasified at the Dahej terminal in December quarter is a marginal increase over the September quarter and a 36% increase over the December 2015 quarter.However, Petronet LNG’s Kochi (Kerala) terminal continues to operate at miserably low utilization levels—6% during the December quarter. Pipeline infrastructure problems have adversely affected utilization levels at the Kochi terminal and that has been a worry. “On the Kochi pipeline issue, Petronet LNG management shared that work on the first phase (Kochi-Mangalore pipeline) has started,” point out analysts from IIFL Institutional Equities in a report on 15 February. According to the brokerage firm, once this line is complete, utilization of the Kochi terminal would increase to 40%. However, further ramp-up in utilization would depend on completion of Kochi-Bangalore, the second pipeline, which is likely to be completed only by 2019. Needless to say, developments on this front will be an important trigger for the stock.It helps that spot LNG prices are expected to remain subdued in the coming years on account of higher supply in global markets thanks to capacity additions. The Petronet LNG stock’s remarkable appreciation reflects that it captures this good news including the recent commissioning of expanded capacity. But further outperformance could be difficult.Incremental expansion at the Dahej terminal to 17.5mt is expected to be completed by fiscal year 2019. “Given we already assume further capacity expansion benefit of 2.5mmt with full utilization by FY19/FY20 and earnings growth post-FY20 would be minimal, we expect stock would be de-rated going forward,” wrote analysts from Elara Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd in a report on 14 February.Currently, one Petronet LNG share trades at about 17 times estimated earnings for the next fiscal year based on Bloomberg data.","Shortage of domestically produced gas leading to better demand prospects for liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is what has fundamentally propelled Petronet LNG’s stock",07:56,Petronet LNG’s impressive showing +2017-02-27,"
Telenor ASA has handed its India business over on a silver platter to Bharti Airtel Ltd. Leave alone receiving any value for its equity, Telenor will also service the outstanding debt of its Indian subsidiary before the handover.Evidently, the company wants to cut losses and run. But in the process, Bharti Airtel gets spectrum worth Rs5,000 crore based on last year’s auction prices, by only making a payment of around Rs1,600 crore to the government.As consolidation has picked up pace, one thing is becoming increasingly clear—sellers are settling for lower and lower valuations. Telenor even settled for nothing, despite having 44 million customers and nearly Rs5,000 crore in annual revenues; leave alone the value of its spectrum.Remaining small- and mid-sized companies such as Reliance Communications Ltd (RCom), Aircel Ltd and Tata Teleservices Ltd should take note of the writing on the wall. Last year, when Videocon Telecommunications Ltd sold its spectrum assets, it got a considerably lower valuation than it had earlier envisaged. When Idea Cellular Ltd backed out of a generously priced deal, Airtel stepped in at lower valuations. But even then, Videocon managed to get around 1.4 times the value of the spectrum, based on recommended prices for an upcoming auction.Of course, since then, large companies filled many of their spectrum portfolio gaps in the auction. And spectrum ceases to be the scarce asset it once used to be.In addition, the massive reduction in tariffs after Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd’s launch last year has made things increasingly difficult for mid-sized companies such as RCom and Tata Teleservices. Each of them has huge debt and lacks the resources to compete in an environment where heavy capex is the order of the day. With Jio setting the pace with new tariff structures, these smaller companies no longer pose the competitive threat they once used to.News reports suggest they are in talks to combine operations to stand their ground against Airtel, Jio and the proposed Vodafone-Idea combine. Coming together may help display scale for a possible suitor, but the monumental debt on their books may more than offset any buying interest that emerges. Besides, even if they manage to overcome debt and other hurdles and combine operations, they will together have a revenue market share of around 18%. Consider that both Idea and Vodafone India Ltd individually have a higher market share (of 19% and 23.5%, respectively), but are still discussing a merger to effectively take on the might of Jio and Airtel. If Telenor’s painful exit from the Indian markets is any indication, the remaining small and mid-sized telecom companies would do well to take what they get and exit while they can.","If Telenor’s exit from the Indian markets is any indication, the remaining small and mid-sized telecom companies would do well to take what they get and exit while they can",07:52,Telenor’s painful exit and the writing on the wall +2017-02-20,"London: Unilever was all smiles when Kraft Heinz Co. abandoned its attempt to buy the UK consumer company for $143 billion. In an unusual joint statement, the two companies referred to their “high regard” for each other.This isn’t how bitterly contested takeover situations normally end. The Anglo-Dutch consumer giant must have wanted to end things amicably—or at least be seen to.Why would Unilever help Kraft Heinz save face, given it manifestly doesn’t want to be acquired, let alone by the US ketchup maker?ALSO READ | Unilever shares slide after Kraft Heinz withdraws $143 billion takeover bidSure, Unilever is a good-hearted corporate citizen. But it looks like it may need something from Kraft Heinz one day, and is showing the world the pair could do business.One possibility: CEO Paul Polman has a sale of its food assets in mind, and needs to keep potential buyers sweet.Kraft Heinz is all food. Almost 60% of Unilever’s revenue comes from personal products and homecare, things like soap and washing powder. A sale of the food business would let Polman preserve the company’s independence and culture, while meeting Kraft Heinz’s need for a deal that offers plenty of margin expansion potential.So why not do such a deal now? Perhaps Kraft Heinz wasn’t keen, or it really wanted Unilever’s faster-growing household products and personal care assets.ALSO READ | Unilever can’t breathe easily after fending off Kraft HeinzOr, it’s possible Polman wasn’t ready. Conceivably, Unilever wants to bulk up its household and personal care operation before selling the food business.How could it achieve that? A purchase of New York-based Colgate-Palmolive Co. would fit the bill. With a market value of $64 billion, it’s about half Unilever’s size, and would be a strategic match, as analysts at Exane point out.Buying a storied US name might seem tricky in the current climate, but a generous offer may assuage Colgate’s managers, making the politics easier.Alternatively, there is a messier way of getting to the same result—a deal with Swiss peer Nestle SA. The world’s largest food group, with a market value of 228 billion Swiss francs ($227 billion), suffers Unilever’s same problems of weak margins and low growth.At the very least, it might make sense for the two companies to merge most of their food operations into a joint venture and spin that off, or sell it. There are surprisingly few overlaps: the Swiss have mostly exited ice cream outside North America, while Unilever still makes choc-ices, for instance.ALSO READ | Kraft Heinz and Unilever’s food fightAn all-food combination would have combined sales of €32 billion ($34 billion). It could be worth €63 billion, based on the average sales multiple for the industry.Ulf Mark Schneider, Nestle’s newish CEO, has indicated he’s not in the market for big deals, so no one should hold their breath. But a full merger of the pair, with a spin-off of the food unit, would create a global group focused on the faster growing businesses of personal care, pet care and food supplements.Either way, the consumer industry needs deals to address weak profitability and growth.Polman needs to ensure Unilever has the strongest negotiating hand as opportunities arise. For now, that means cutting costs and reducing the company’s conglomerate discount. That is where he can still earn his legacy. If he fails, others will do it for him. Bloomberg","Why would Unilever help Kraft Heinz save face? One possibility: CEO Paul Polman has a sale of its food assets in mind, and needs to keep potential buyers sweet",20:57,Unilever’s boldest defence? A Colgate or Nestle deal +2017-02-21,"
A seasonally weak quarter for air conditioners (ACs) coupled with the adverse impact of the note ban on sales was expected to be a drag on Voltas Ltd’s December quarter performance. However, although sales were affected, the projects division more than made up for it, leading to higher-than-anticipated operating profit jump.The quarter’s net revenue at Rs1,180.5 crore was 6.7% lower than the year-ago period. The unitary cooling products (UCP) division, comprising of AC sales and which accounts for a third of the total revenue, clocked a 5% drop in revenue. There was an 11% drop in the number of ACs sold as the currency crunch hit sales for most part of the quarter. Meanwhile, revenue at the electro-mechanical projects (EMP) division, too, contracted by a similar degree.Fortunately, the EMP division’s profit margin at 3.9% was better than what the Street had pencilled in. This made up for the 110 basis point decline in the UCP division’s profitability. A basis point is 0.01%.Besides, the operating expenditure as a percentage to sales fell from a year back as raw material cost was lower. Therefore, the operating profit at Rs89 crore zipped past the average estimate of 20 brokers by 40%. It was also around 52% higher year-on-year. Higher profit clocked in spite of lower revenue traction led to a significant 210 basis point jump in operating margin.Further, a steep rise in other income fuelled net profit by 55% to Rs81.6 crore.The Voltas stock, which last changed hands at around Rs350 on BSE, is on a strong wicket in spite of its relatively high price-to-earning multiple of 18 times one-year forward estimated earnings.For one, the next two quarters are better for the UCP division given that the demonetisation effect will wear off as the peak season for AC sales picks up. Note that Voltas is the market leader with a 27% share of the AC market. Also, the order inflows for its EMP projects division are likely to gain momentum as the economies of the Middle East, where Voltas has a significant presence, are improving on the back of rising crude oil prices. Above all, legacy loss-making projects are now behind the company, paving the way for improved overall profitability.","The next two quarters are better for the unitary cooling products division, given that the demonetisation effect will wear off as the peak season for AC sales picks up",07:56,Voltas profit tops forecast as project business surprises positively +2017-02-20,"
Shree Cement’s December quarter earnings were marred by the performance of its power segment, which incurred a loss at the operating level, thus impacting overall profitability. In the cement segment, volumes improved 4.5% year-on-year (y-o-y) to 4.91 million tonnes (mt) due to capacity additions in east India, but realizations declined sequentially as prices corrected sharply in both eastern and northern markets post demonetization. On a y-o-y basis, net profit increased by a mere 0.72% to Rs235.45 crore and net sales rose 3.24% to Rs2,091.17 crore, aided by higher other income. Last but not the least, freight costs surged, pushing cement operating cost/tonne higher.Going by these factors, there’s nothing much to cheer about, but the stock’s valuations show a different picture. Shares of Shree Cement, trading at a one-year forward price-to-earnings multiple of 33.92 times, compare well with ACC Ltd and Ambuja Cements Ltd. Shree Cement is expected to have an edge over peers in the long run given positives like a less stressed balance sheet, better operating efficiency and geographical diversification. But the question to ask is, whether such rich valuations are justified? The answer probably is that current valuations already reflect the aforementioned factors.More importantly, there are concerns which cannot be ignored. Cement volumes would remain sluggish in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab due to elections thus impacting cement realizations. Brokerages Reliance Securities Ltd and Karvy Stock Broking have trimmed their Ebitda estimates for FY17, FY18 and FY19 to factor subdued realizations in key markets. Ebitda stands for earnings before interest, tax depreciation and amortization. Secondly, freight and energy costs would weigh on margins as they are expected to harden. Also, how soon volumes in the power segment revive is key. Shree Cement is on a capacity addition spree and aims to become a 40mt capacity company by FY19. It will incur a cost of Rs1,800 crore to add clinker capacity of 2.80 mtpa and cement capacity of 3 mtpa in Karnataka. This integrated project will be funded through internal accruals and is expected to be completed by December 2018. Though the company has been adding capacity without leverage, some analysts don’t favour this move simply because south India already has excess capacity. Meanwhile, it has announced a one-time special dividend of Rs100 for every equity share held.Since the company has been expanding its footprint in various regions, a slew of brokerage houses are gung-ho on the stock citing it to be a beneficiary of cement demand recovery. When this anticipated revival will finally happen is anybody’s guess, but for now valuations need to correct.","Since Shree Cement has been expanding its footprint, a slew of brokerage houses are gung-ho on the stock, citing it to be a beneficiary of cement demand recovery",07:51,Is Shree Cement’s rich valuation warranted? +2017-02-21,"
Investors weren’t impressed with the Rs1,600 crore deal between Havells India Ltd and Lloyd Electric and Engineering Ltd. Shares of both companies fell on Monday—Lloyd’s shares dropped as much as 17.1% and Havells’s shares fell 3.2%. Cumulatively, their market capitalization fell by more than Rs1,000 crore. What gives?For starters, Havells hasn’t really got itself a bad deal as its shares suggest. The enterprise value (EV) of Rs1,600 crore for Lloyd’s consumer durables business translates into a valuation of 14.5 times estimated Ebitda for fiscal year 2016-17. This compares favourably with peers such as Voltas Ltd and Blue Star Ltd, which trade at an EV/Ebitda ratio of 22.9 and 23.7 times, according to an Ambit Capital Pvt. Ltd report on 20 February. Of course, Lloyd’s consumer durables business enjoys lower margins compared to these firms, although that seems to be factored in the valuations. Ebitda is short for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.But one man’s gain is another man’s loss and the Lloyd stock seems to be mirroring that sentiment. The Street clearly expected Lloyd to fetch better valuations from the sale. In fact, the stock had risen by around 25% year-till-date until last week in anticipation of the sale.As a part of the deal, Lloyd will get Rs1,550 crore, with the balance going to group company Fedders Lloyd Corp. Ltd. At the end of September, debt stood at about Rs720 crore, according to analysts. Assuming the company uses the proceeds to retire its entire debt, that leaves it with net proceeds of Rs830 crore.For perspective, its market capitalization on Monday was less than Rs1,100 crore. What this means is that the deal values Lloyd’s retained non-consumer durables business at about 2.4 times FY17 annualized earnings before interest and tax (Ebit) or, in other words, next to nothing.Of course, one can argue that the retained business largely consists of the unexciting supply to original equipment manufacturers, where margins tends to be low and working capital needs tend to be high. Even so, valuing the business at less than three times earnings net of cash suggests extremely low expectations from the company. Lloyd would do well to communicate to investors what it intends to do with the large inflow. Meanwhile, even as Havells has paid relatively cheap valuations, Lloyd’s low margin profile is understandably a cause of worry. The consumer durables business’ Ebit margin for the nine months ended December is only 7%. Compare that to Havells’s electrical consumer durables business, which enjoyed 25% margin for the same period. According to an analyst with a domestic institutional brokerage firm, the competitive intensity for Havells will increase with this deal, as it will now face competition from MNCs and Chinese firms.To be sure, Lloyd’s vast distribution network of more than 10,000 direct and indirect dealers is a positive. Havells will get access to ready infrastructure and a platform to enter the fast growing air conditioner market. But investors will watch out for improvement in margins and a pickup in growth. Else, Havells would have been better off with its money in the bank.Lloyd’s consumer durables business is expected to generate an Ebitda of Rs110 crore for FY17. Ambit Capital says that this would roughly amount to the interest income Havells could have earned on the Rs1,600 crore consideration paid to Lloyd.In that backdrop, the stock’s reaction is not totally surprising.","Even as Havells has paid relatively cheap valuations, Lloyd’s low margin profile is understandably a cause of worry",07:56,Havells-Lloyd deal: Why are investors unimpressed? +2017-04-18,"Mumbai: Tractor loans could see a rise in delinquency rates as a result of political pressure for farmers to be granted waivers on agricultural loans, Fitch Ratings said in a report on Tuesday. However, the negative impact of any potential rise in tractor loan delinquencies on Fitch-rated asset-backed security (ABS) transactions is likely to be minimal, given low exposure.According to the rating agency, post Uttar Pradesh government announcing farm loan waivers where tractor loans were not included, farmers might expect a change in this position in future announcements. Also, there is a lack of clarity whether tractor loans will be included in potential loan waiver programmes in Maharashtra, Punjab and Haryana where 30% of the population resides.“We would expect the delinquency rate on agricultural loans to take several months to return to normal following the announcement of policy details. The crop season is currently in its harvesting period in most parts of India, a time when most farmers earn the bulk of their income. If the farmers postpone loan repayments and use the money earned elsewhere, it could take at least until the next harvest in six months’ time to cure delinquencies,” the report noted. Many senior Reserve Bank of India (RBI) officials in the past have stated their opposition to loan waivers as it hurts the credit culture and imposes immense pressure on the banking system.State Bank of India (SBI) in March had announced one-time settlements for tractor and farm equipment loans that make up about Rs6,000 crore of doubtful and loss cases on its books. However, the bank specifically said that its scheme has nothing to do with any government announcement.On 15 March, SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said support to farmers is necessary but not at the cost of credit discipline as people who benefit from loan waivers often expect further waivers in future, which leads to many more loans remaining unpaid. The rating agency believes that government support might help cure delinquencies faster given that state governments compensate lenders quickly. However, this is unlikely since state bureaucracy works slowly. Effective collection practices and customer-education programmes can help in containing the potential rise in delinquencies. “Indian ABS transactions are unlikely to be significantly affected, even if tractor loan delinquencies do rise. We do not expect any significant stress or rating impact and we have a stable rating outlook on these transactions,” the report added.","Tractor loans could see rise in delinquency rates due to political pressure for farmers to be granted waivers on agricultural loans, says Fitch report ",12:07,Tractor loans could see rise in delinquency rates: Fitch report +2017-04-18,"
Quarterly results of banks this time around would offer both the optical illusion of high profit growth and the harsh reality of a worse bad loan situation. From the looks of how the sector indices and stocks have moved over the last three months, the veneer of profit growth has been factored in. Given that the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2015-16 was horrifying due to the Reserve Bank of India’s asset quality review (AQR), by the sheer low base, profits for the same quarter in 2016-17 would be pleasing to the eyes. But the ground realities over bad loans are still the same. Investors therefore should focus on the five following numbers to judge how deep banks are in the bad-loan cesspool:Provisions: Those who had hoped for a better life after AQR are doomed to be disappointed. The gist of AQR was to identify and provide for all bad loans but lenders had hoped for quick deal-making and faster resolution thereafter. This hasn’t happened and due to ageing of non-performing assets (NPAs), provisions are unlikely to abate. With past mistakes continuing to haunt banks, corporate focused lenders such as ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and most public sector banks will continue to see erosion in profits through higher provisioning. To add insult to injury, the run-up in bond yields would trigger mark-to-market provisioning as well.Slippages: The trend in fresh slippages is perhaps the most awaited from banks because it is a gauge of how non-AQR loans have performed. Here several banks have primed investors with watchlists but past quarters have shown that trouble is brewing outside these watchlists as well. Fresh slippages for most banks had declined in the September quarter, while the impact of demonetization made them rebound in the December quarter. That of the March quarter will be the litmus test.Gross and net NPA ratios: These ratios could be tricky as they could show a decline from the year-ago period and that wouldn’t necessarily mean banks have finally got a grip on their bad loans. There is also a chance that gross and net NPA ratios may worsen because of the collapse in credit growth. Analysts at Icra Ltd expect the gross NPA ratio would hit 10% for FY17 from 7.6% in the previous year. Again, retail-focused banks win hands down here too.Core income: This is one metric that will set apart the bruised from the battered among banks. Lenders such as Kotak Mahindra Bank, Yes Bank, Federal Bank and IndusInd Bank would shine on net interest income or the income generated from core operations. Public sector banks and some private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank and Axis Bank would suffer as there are no takers for loans from the corporate sector. Analysts expect public sector lenders to show core income growth of just 5%, while private sector lenders may show around 10%.Margins: Net interest margins could take a beating simply because banks faced a deluge of deposits in the wake of demonetization and a lion’s share of these deposits have been deployed in low-yielding government bonds due to low credit demand.","Given that the Q4 of 2015-16 was horrifying due to RBI’s asset quality review, by the sheer low base, profits for the same quarter in 2016-17 would be pleasing to the eyes",08:20,Q4 results: Five numbers that distinguish bruised from battered banks +2017-04-18,"New Delhi: Having seen a “modest setback” due to demonetisation last fiscal, the Indian economy will claw back to 7.2% growth this financial year and rise further to 7.5% in 2018-19, says a World Bank report. In its report on South Asian Economy, the World Bank said that “significant risks” to economic growth could emanate from fallout of demonetisation on small and informal economy, stress in the financial sector and uncertainty in global environment. Also, a rapid increase in oil and other commodity prices could have a negative implication for the economy, it added. The country’s economic growth is expected to see an uptick at 7.2% this fiscal and further accelerate to 7.5% in 2018-19, the report said. The growth slowed down to 6.8% in 2016-17 due to a combination of weak investments and the impact of demonetisation, the World Bank said, adding that timely and smooth implementation of the GST could prove to be a significant “upside risk” to economic activity in 2017-18. As per the report, the economic growth is projected to increase gradually to 7.7% by 2019-20, underpinned by a recovery in private investments, which are expected to be crowded in by the recent increase in public capex and an improvement in the investment climate.“India’s economic momentum suffered a modest setback due to demonetisation, while the poor and vulnerable likely witnessed a larger negative shock. The economy is expected to recover and growth will gradually accelerate to 7.7 per cent by 2019-20,” it said. The demonetisation, the World Bank said, caused an immediate cash crunch, and activity in cash reliant sectors was affected. The GDP growth slowed to 7% during the third quarter of 2016-17, from 7.3% during the first half of the fiscal. India’s fiscal, inflation and external conditions are expected to remain stable, the US-based multilateral lending agency said, adding that the centre will continue to consolidate modestly, while retaining the push towards infrastructure spending. “Inflation will stabilise, supported by favourable weather and structural reforms. Normal monsoons have so far offset increases in petroleum prices,” it said. Referring to the external factor, it said exchange rate has appreciated, partly reflecting expectations of a narrowing inflation gap between India and the US and limited external vulnerabilities as the current account deficit is expected to remain below 2% of the GDP and fully financed by FDI inflows. It said challenges to India’s favourable growth outlook could stem from continued uncertainties in the global environment, including rising global protectionism and a sharp slowdown in the Chinese economy, which could further delay a meaningful recovery of external demand. It said there is a great uncertainty about the extent to which demonetisation caused small, informal firms to exit and shed jobs. Also, private investment continues to face several impediments in the form of corporate debt overhang, stress in the financial sector, excess capacity and regulatory and policy challenges.",The World Bank report says timely and smooth implementation of the GST could prove to be a significant ‘upside risk’ to Indian economy in FY18,08:47,World Bank says Indian economy to grow at 7.2% in FY18 +2017-04-17,"
New Delhi: A key government department has advocated scrapping the rule mandating banks to invest a fixed portion of their deposits in government bonds, a view that has found support in the N.K. Singh committee reviewing rules on fiscal discipline.In its discussions with the committee, the department of financial services in the finance ministry suggested an end to statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) requirements that force banks to buy bonds, reducing their lending capability. The committee led by Singh, a former revenue secretary, is reviewing India's rules governing fiscal responsibility and budget management (FRBM).Last April, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) started reducing SLR by 0.25 percentage point every quarter, and allowed over half of these holdings to meet the Basel-mandated liquidity coverage ratio. Currently, the SLR stands at 20.5% of total bank deposits.“Economists generally advocate quick SLR phase out as one of the policy instruments to end the lazy/cautious banking syndrome and also make the governments more receptive to discipline of open markets rather than relying on financial repression. Presently—when most banks are holding government securities in excess of minimum SLR—it is the opportune time to wind up SLR,” the committee report said, quoting the department’s view.Apart from Singh, other members of the committee including chief economic adviser in the finance ministry Arvind Subramanian, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy director Rathin Roy, Reserve Bank of India governor Urjit Patel and former finance secretary Sumit Bose met officials of key central government departments to seek their views on various fiscal policy issues.The members also sought the opinion of economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das on whether SLR should be dispensed with.“Urjit Patel pointed out that SLR was partly used to hold government bonds. Secretary (economic affairs) mentioned that as on date, most banks have more than the 21% stipulated SLR. However, before taking any call on the issue, the role of SLR as assets in the context of huge NPAs (non-performing assets) of banks will need to be kept in view,” the report said, citing the interaction between Das and members of the committee.","In its discussions with the N.K. Singh panel, a finance ministry department suggested an end to statutory liquidity ratio requirements that force banks to buy bonds",03:10,N.K. Singh panel backs proposal to scrap SLR requirements for banks +2017-04-17,"Hyderabad: The Hyderabad high court has directed the State Bank of India (SBI) not to finalise the options regarding retirement benefits offered to the officers of its associate banks until 15 June. The SBI had set the deadline of April 13 for the officers of five associate banks (which merged with it on 1 April ) for choosing options regarding provident fund, pension and gratuity benefits, among other issues. The Associate Bank Officers’ Association and some others had moved the court against this directive, saying the time given was very short as the process of integration of the SBI and associate banks was underway and their members won’t be able to take decision before 13 April. Justice Naveen Rao said in his interim order on 13 April that as “doubts arising out of various clauses of option notification are yet to be cleared”, the SBI shall not finalise them till 15 June. The court also asked the SBI and other respondents to file their reply in the meantime. Also Read: SBI merger to boost profit in 3 years: Arundhati BhattacharyaThe State Bank of Hyderabad, the State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, the State Bank of Mysore, the State Bank of Patiala and the State Bank of Travancore merged with the SBI, the country’s largest lender, on 1 April. Harshavardhan Madabhushi, general secretary of Associate Bank Officers’ Association, said the court’s interim order may also have impact on the voluntary retirement scheme announced by the SBI for the employees of merged entities.",Hyderabad high court directs SBI not to finalise the options regarding retirement benefits offered to the staff of its associate banks until 15 June,21:24,SBI should not finalise benefit options for staff of merged banks: Hyderabad HC +2017-04-16,"New Delhi: Arresting the trend of withdrawals that began in December, the net balance in Jan Dhan accounts swelled by Rs1,000 crore to Rs63,971.38 crore during the week ended 5 April.The net balance in the accounts opened under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) was Rs62,972.42 crore on 29 March, as per the finance ministry’s data. Total deposits in these accounts had increased to a record high of Rs74,610 crore on 7 December and thereafter, started declining gradually.As per the PMJDY data for 5 April, it is for the first time the net balance in the accounts has shown an increase on a weekly basis. PMJDY was launched in August 2014 to increase banking penetration and promote financial inclusion in the country. Meanwhile, the number of Jan Dhan accounts have increased to 28.23 crore of which 18.50 crore have been seeded with Aadhaar.The deposits in the accounts had surged following demonetisation of old Rs500/1,000 notes in November last year. After setting a cash deposit limit of Rs50,000 in Jan Dhan accounts, the government had on 18 November cautioned account holders that they will be prosecuted under the Income Tax Act for allowing misuse of their bank accounts through deposit of black money in Rs500/1,000 notes during the 50-day window till 30 December. The directive came against the backdrop of reports that some persons were misusing other people’ bank accounts to deposit demonetised notes.","The net balance in Jan Dhan accounts swelled by Rs1,000 crore to Rs63,971.38 crore during the week ended 5 April",22:36,"Withdrawal trend reverses in Jan Dhan accounts, deposits up by Rs1,000 crore" +2017-04-16,"New Delhi: Cash and ATM management companies will soon be allowed to attract 100% foreign direct investment (FDI) as they are not required to comply with the Private Security Agencies (Regulation) Act (PSARA). A clarification to this effect is likely to be issued by the home ministry shortly. The clarification will be against the backdrop of the confusion among firms in cash and ATM management relating to compliance with the Act, under which they can receive FDI only up to 49%.The issue was discussed at a meeting convened by the prime minister’s office (PMO) last month. “In that meeting, it was decided that the home ministry would be asked to issue a clarification that these companies will not have to comply with PSARA and would be eligible to attract 100% FDI,” an official said. There are about a dozen cash management players in the country, including Writer Safeguard, SIS Securitas, CMS, Secure Value, Logicash, Brinks Arya, Securitrans and Scientific Security Management Services. According to experts, companies managing cash for banks have so far been caught in a policy tangle, with the home ministry insisting that 100% FDI could not be allowed for them if they provide private security guards or armoured vehicles. Companies that make devices such as currency authenticators and sorting and currency counting machines will also benefit from this clarification, they added. Several players, including TVS Electronics and ITI, are in such businesses. Cash Management companies handle over Rs40,000 crore of cash per day. The government in 2015 permitted 100% FDI under the automatic route for white label ATM operations with an aim to promote financial inclusion. FDI into the country grew 22% to $35.85 billion during April-December of 2016-17. Foreign investment is considered crucial for India, which needs around $1 trillion for overhauling its infrastructure such as ports, airports and highways to boost growth. A strong inflow of foreign investments also helps improve balance of payments and strengthen the rupee against other global currencies, especially the dollar.",Cash and ATM management companies will soon be allowed to attract 100% FDI as they are not required to comply with the Private Security Agencies Act,22:36,"Govt may soon allow 100% FDI in cash, ATM management companies" +2017-04-04,"
New Delhi: State-run broadcaster Doordarshan on Monday said its net revenue rose to Rs827.51 crore in the year ended 31 March, surpassing its annual target of Rs800 crore. The broadcaster got Rs318.06 crore from government advertisements and Rs157.59 crore from corporate ads during the year.Doordarshan, owned by Prasar Bharati, had reported a net revenue of Rs755 crore in 2015-16. “We surpassed our target this time and the revenue is much higher as compared to last year. Our DTH (direct-to-home) revenue has seen a significant rise. We have also tried to cut down our expenditure,” said Supriya Sahu, director general at Doordarshan, adding that the broadcaster is in the process of re-evaluating its manpower requirements in a bid to pare costs. The broadcaster, which operates 23 channels across the country, recorded the highest ever revenue from its free-to-air DTH platform DD Free Dish in 2016-17. DD Free Dish recorded a revenue of Rs264.17 crore in 2016-17, a 47% increase from a year ago. It had generated Rs180 crore from Free Dish in 2015-16.DD Free Dish currently carries 80 channels, including Star India Pvt. Ltd’s Star Utsav and Sony Pictures Network’s Sony Pal. It also broadcasts news channels such as Aaj Tak, ABP News and News 24.“The rise in our DTH revenue is a result of our expanded reach across the country. We had revised reserve prices in 2016 and have had very successful DTH slot auctions during the year,” Sahu added. DD Free Dish has 22 million subscribers across India, show recent estimates from television viewership measurement agency Barc India. Going forward, the broadcaster plans to add 24 new channels to DD Free Dish, taking the total channel count to 104. The platform is also planning to encrypt its free-to-air signals to secure the signals from being stolen by unauthorized operators.The broadcaster is in the middle of a revamp to revive its viewership and finances. In 2017-18, Doordarshan expects to generate Rs100 crore from the prime-time programming slot auction that concluded in December 2016. “We are revamping all the content on channels like DD National, DD Kashir and DD Sports. We are also curating content for our north-east channel, DD Arun Prabha. We expect the revenues to further go up this year,” Sahu said. The broadcaster is also planning to introduce new channels in kids, youth and music genres. “The overall approach is good. It is a good strategy to have a mix of Doordarshan’s own content as well as content from private producers. What Doordarshan is doing with Free Dish is outstanding. Free Dish is the largest DTH company and is only getting bigger,” said Ashish Pherwani, media and entertainment advisory leader at EY India.",Doordarshan got Rs318.06 crore from government advertisements and Rs157.59 crore from corporate ads during the year,01:35,Doordarshan’s revenue rises to Rs827.51 crore in FY17 +2017-04-15,"New York: Apple Inc has secured a permit to test autonomous vehicles in California, fuelling speculation that it is working on self-driving car technology in a crowded arena of companies hoping to offer those cars to the masses.The permit allows it to conduct test drives in three vehicles with six drivers, the state Department of Motor Vehicles said on Friday. The vehicles are all 2015 Lexus RX450h, according to the DMV.Although it has never openly acknowledged it is looking into building an electric car, Apple has recruited dozens of auto experts in recent years, and the permit pulls the curtain back a bit on any possible plan. “This does confirm what’s long been rumored: that Apple is at least toying with the idea of getting into the autonomous game in some capacity,” said Chris Theodore, president of consultancy Theodore & Associates, and a former vice president at Ford Motor Co and Chrysler. The permit does not mean Apple is definitely building a car. “This is not necessarily automobiles as initially rumored, but software or possibly hardware associated with autonomous technology,” Theodore said. An Apple spokesman declined to comment directly on the filing, pointing back to a statement the company made in November when it wrote to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on the subject of regulating self-driving vehicles.“The company is investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation,” Apple’s director of product integrity, Steve Kenner, wrote in that five-page letter.Apple executives have been coy about their interest in cars. Chief executive Tim Cook has suggested that Apple wants to move beyond integration of Apple smartphones into vehicle infotainment systems.Apple joins a growing list of traditional carmakers, technology companies, and small start ups to test drive cars in California — all vying to be the first to have commercially viable vehicles on the roads. Companies that have been issued permits also include Alphabet Inc’s Google unit, Ford Motor Co, Volkswagen AG, Daimler AG, Tesla Motors Inc and General Motors Co.Many companies have said the first cars will launch in 2020 but some experts believe it may take much longer due to regulatory challenges. Reuters","Apple has secured a permit to test autonomous vehicles in California, fuelling speculation that it is working on self-driving car technology",17:10,Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars: report +2017-04-14,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday launched the BHIM-Aadhaar platform—a merchant interface linking the unique identification number to the Bharat Interface for Money mobile application—at Nagpur on the 126th birth anniversary of Dr B.R. Ambedkar.“Like Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar worked to give rights to the common man through the Indian Constitution, one can expect the BHIM app to do similarly great work through the financial system,” said Modi.The new interface will enable customers to make payments using a merchant’s biometric-enabled device. The merchant merely has to download the BHIM app on his smartphone and link the device to an Aadhaar biometric reader.“Any citizen without access to smartphones, Internet, debit or credit cards will be able to transact digitally through the BHIM-Aadhaar platform,” a government statement said.Also Read: Narendra Modi to visit Nagpur on Ambedkar Jayanti tomorrow
To avail of this service, a customer has to first link his bank account to his Aadhaar number. To make a payment, all he has to do is select the bank’s name and enter the Aadhaar number. His fingerprint will serve as the password to authenticate the transaction.To start with, no transaction fee will be levied on either the merchants or customers to encourage adoption of the new digital payment service, especially in small towns and rural India. The government statement said 27 major banks had already tied up with 300,000 merchants for accepting payments using BHIM-Aadhaar. It went on to add that all public sector banks have been instructed to go live with Aadhaar Pay. In his speech, Modi said that the time is not far when premise-less and paperless banking will become part of people’s lives. He announced two new incentive schemes for the BHIM app—cashback (for merchants) and referral bonus (for customers). The schemes will start from 14 April and end on 14 October, he added.Also Read: Is Narendra Modi abandoning his promise of good governance?Under the referral bonus scheme, an individual will earn Rs10 for every new referral made—i.e., educating another person or merchant about the BHIM app and ensuring that they carry out three transactions using the same. “Even in one day, if you refer around 20 people, you can end up earning Rs200 per day. This can continue for a period of three months,” said Modi.Under the cashback scheme, merchants can earn up to Rs300 per month for transactions made using BHIM. An updated version of BHIM (version 1.3) is available on Android and ioS. Several new features have been added to its interface such as new languages, the option to block unwanted collection requests and pay by scanning QR (quick response) codes.“The new upgrade is aligned to facilitate government’s initiative of launching customer referral bonus and merchant incentive schemes. We have added more regional languages, enhanced user experience and security features for wider acceptance and usage of the BHIM app,” said A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive of National Payments Corporation of India.Three new languages—Punjabi, Marathi and Assamese—have gone live on the app. This development was reported earlier by Mint on 24 January (bit.ly/2kbqHky).According to Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union minister for electronics and information technology, 20 million people have downloaded BHIM so far, and payments worth Rs823 crore have been made. The app was launched on 30 December. It was one of several measures aimed at promoting digital transactions in the aftermath of the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes, which triggered a nationwide cash crunch.","Any citizen without access to smartphones, Internet, debit or credit cards will be able to transact digitally through the BHIM-Aadhaar platform launched by Narendr a Modi",22:53,"BHIM-Aadhaar platform launched, advancing PM Modi’s digital push " +2017-03-16,"
London: Fast fashion is getting tougher.Zara owner Inditex SA said on Wednesday that profitability shrank to an eight-year low. Main rival Hennes & Mauritz AB reported the first monthly sales drop in almost four years. Shares of both retailers sank.The reports illustrate the difficulties facing the fashion industry as consumers divert spending to leisure activities and buy more of their apparel from a rising number of online suppliers. The increased competition is putting pressure on prices, while higher production costs are also squeezing profitability.“In February, industry data was very challenging,” Richard Chamberlain, an analyst at RBC Capital, said in a note. Sales declines of 9% in Germany and 6% in Sweden reflect “some spend rotation into other consumer categories.”H&M shares fell as much as 5.1% in Stockholm, the most in three months. A 1% drop in February sales was caused by the month having one day fewer than in the leap year of 2016. Adjusting for that, revenue rose 3% in local currencies, missing estimates. Chamberlain estimates that H&M’s same-store sales fell 3% in the month, weighed down by the tough industry conditions and as initiatives to expand online options for customers and improve methods of supply take time to feed through to sales.In Zara’s shadowH&M has been in the shadow of faster-growing competitor Inditex in recent years, though Wednesday’s results from the Zara owner suggest it too is finding life more difficult.Inditex’s gross margin narrowed to 57% from 57.8% in the 12 months through January, missing the Spanish retailer’s goal to keep the measure within 0.5 percentage points of the previous year. The shares fell as much as 2.7%, the most since December, though pared their losses after chief executive officer Pablo Isla said that at current exchange rates, the gross margin won’t fall this year.Inditex said the decline in last year’s gross margin was due to currency swings. Foreign exchange stripped 3 percentage points off sales growth. Weaker currencies in Russia, China and Mexico reduce the value of sales in those markets when translated into euros. BloombergRodrigo Orihuela contributed to this story.",Zara’s profitability shrinks to eight-year low; H&M reports first monthly sales drop in four years,08:56,"Fast Fashion fading? H&M, Zara come under pressure" +2017-03-11,"New Delhi: Online real-estate company, Housing.com (Locon Solutions Pvt Ltd), now owned by PropTiger, posted losses that soared 45% to over Rs400 crore in the year ended 31 March 2016, financial documents sourced from Tofler showed. The company registered an 111% increase in revenue to Rs26.76 crore, while total expenditure rose to Rs430 crore, a jump of 48% during financial year 2015-16. Softbank-backed Housing.com was acquired by News Corp-backed PropTiger in January 2017 in an all-stock deal and was reported to receive $50 million in fresh funds from News Corp.’s REA Group Ltd and $5 million from SoftBank Group.Most of Housing.com’s original 12 founders left during fiscal 2015-16 when its chief executive and co-founder Rahul Yadav was fired by company directors in July 2015. As a result, the company saw many CXO level entries and appointments, reflecting in its total employee benefit expense which increased by 120% to Rs188.5 crore. In November 2015, the company appointed Jason Kothari as chief executive. After Housing.com’s acquisition, Kothari joined e-commerce company Snapdeal in January as its chief strategy and investment officer. Founded in 2012, Housing.com has undergone changes in terms of both its business model as well its top-level management in the past year. The company moved away from being a property listing portal to a property buying and selling portal in November 2015.During Kothari’s leadership, Housing had shut its rental business. In January 2016, Housing.com moved to a new model—earning advertising revenue from property listers that pay for greater visibility of their properties.In December 2016, Housing announced that it had relaunched rentals. “Last year (in 2015) Housing.com had taken a strategic decision to close rentals in order to focus the company on the home buying and selling segment... Housing.com has now started preparing for the re-entry and plans to launch home rentals early next year,” Housing had said in a statement in December 2016. In May, Mint reported that Housing.com is looking to touch $10 million in revenue in the current financial year. Housing.com had not replied to Mint’s queries.","Housing.com registered an 111% increase in revenue to Rs26.76 crore, while total expenditure rose to Rs430 crore, a jump of 48% during financial year 2015-16",01:34,Housing.com posts FY16 loss of over Rs400 crore +2017-03-09,"Munich: BMW AG reported its weakest profitability since 2010, capping a negative year for chief executive officer (CEO) Harald Krueger after losing the luxury-car crown to arch-rival Mercedes-Benz.Amid higher spending on electric-car and autonomous-driving technologies, BMW’s automotive profit margin narrowed to 8.9% in 2016 from 9.2% a year earlier, according to a statement on Thursday. The shares fell as much as 4.2%, the most in four months.“We are fully focused on implementing our strategy,” which involves pivoting to self-driving, electric vehicles, Krueger said in the statement. “From 2019 onwards, we will be firmly embedding all-electric, battery-powered mobility in our core brands.”ALSO READ | Geneva Motor Show: Car makers focus on technology, not consolidationBMW, lacking the financial heft of rivals backed by a larger parent, is focusing its resources on innovating for the future instead of chasing short-term sales volume. The Munich-based carmaker plans to launch the self-driving, electric iNext model in 2021 in a bid to regain its edge as an automotive leader. To manage rising development costs, BMW is pushing high-margin traditional models, such as the new X7 sport utility vehicle that’s due in 2018.Bolstered by the revamped BMW 5-Series and Mini Countryman, sales in 2017 will likely be slightly higher, the company said, adding that the overall outlook is clouded by global political and economic volatility.The world car market is cooling, with demand in the US and Europe set to peak after years of growth, and Chinese purchases forecast to slow after the government raised the sales tax on small-engine vehicles.BMW shares fell as low as €83.01, before paring the loss to 3.4% at €83.74 at 1:07pm in Frankfurt.Electric futureCarmakers are investing in battery-powered vehicles to comply with tightening emissions regulations, even though customers aren’t rewarding the effort because they’re concerned about cost and driving range. BMW said it plans to sell 100,000 electrified vehicles this year, for the first time.However, demand isn’t enough to offset the investment costs, which is burdening profitability even as BMW posted record sales last year. Groupwide earnings before interest and taxes dropped 2.2% to €9.39 billion ($9.91 billion), missing the average analyst estimate of €9.82 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.ALSO READ | These automakers could be Donald Trump’s next targets“Operational performance falls a bit short of expectations, but net result and dividend exceed expectations,” DZ Bank analyst Michael Punzet wrote in a note to clients, adding that BMW’s “competitive advantage” on electrification is a positive.The automaker was one of the first to develop an electric car from the ground up with the $42,400 i3 in 2013, and despite reining in rollouts in recent years, it’s planning to add battery packs to existing models in a move that sets it up to act quickly should demand take off.Luxury raceBMW faces the additional burden of having to spend money on redesigning a lineup at its main brand that’s been largely static for years, amid a styling lull that gave Mercedes the opening to oust its long-time rival from the top of the sales ranking.Global deliveries at BMW rose 5.2% in 2016 to 2 million cars, growing to a record but at less than half the 11% rate which lifted deliveries at Mercedes to 2.08 million. Mercedes had lagged behind its rival since 2005 and temporarily dropped below Audi to third place before a revamped SUV lineup drove a strong comeback in recent years.ALSO READ | Mercedes-Benz to overtake BMW as largest premium carmakerBMW, which also owns the Rolls-Royce brand, said growth was driven by gains in China and Europe, which offset a weaker US market.Rising sales pushed BMW’s group revenues 2.2% higher to €94.2 billion. While BMW’s automotive margin stayed within its target range of 8% to 10%, it’s lower than Mercedes’s 10%.Despite the challenges, BMW said it plans to pay a dividend of €3.50 per share for 2016, its highest ever, after €3.20 a year earlier. The carmaker is scheduled to release full 2016 earnings details on 21 March. Bloomberg","Amid higher spending on electric-car and autonomous-driving technologies, BMW’s automotive profit margin narrowed to 8.9% in 2016 from 9.2% a year earlier",19:27,BMW’s profitability hits lowest since 2010 amid tech rivalry +2017-02-24,"London: Standard Chartered Plc posted annual profit that missed analyst estimates as the bank took losses on a private-equity business it’s shutting down and said efforts to clean up conduct issues affected performance. The shares fell as much as 5.4%.Pretax profit for 2016 was $409 million, compared with a loss of $1.52 billion a year earlier, the London-based company said in a statement Friday. Operating profit excluding one-time items was $1.09 billion, missing the $1.42 billion average estimate of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.Chief executive officer Bill Winters, more than a year and a half into the job, has yet to convince investors he can sustainably reverse the bank’s losses and restore a dividend, after a sharp drop in revenue and surging loan impairments in 2015 drove the Asia-focused lender to its first annual loss since 1989. Winters has also vowed to clean up the culture of the firm, where senior staff flouted ethics rules and considered themselves “above the law.”“We have sharpened our focus on all aspects of conduct,” Winters said in the statement. “The pace and scale of those changes—many of which were done in parallel and required intense periods of adjustment for employees—undoubtedly impacted some elements of the group’s financial performance in the period. But they were the right things to do.”ALSO READ: Baidu needs to speed up the future after that Uber boostStandard Chartered dropped 3.8% to 722.7 pence at 11:50 am in London. The bank’s shares jumped 85% over the past 12 months before today, the best performance among major European lenders. The stock still trades at a steep discount to book value.‘Traumatic’ changeRevenue declined 11% to $13.8 billion, surpassing the average $13.7 billion estimate in the Bloomberg survey. Loan impairments fell to $2.38 billion from $4.01 billion in 2015. In August, the bank said it would probably miss a profitability target set only last year, blaming an uncertain regulatory and economic environment.While bad-debt costs almost halved, the size of the “grade 12” category that houses the loans most at risk of default increased 26% to $1.5 billion last year. A “small number of exposures in the diamond and jewellery sector” drove loan impairments up to $511 million in Europe and the Americas. The bank said in June it was closing its $2 billion diamond-financing business because it doesn’t comply with stricter lending standards.“There are still plenty of challenges, obviously, but they’re going in the right direction,” said Hugh Young, Asia managing director at Aberdeen Asset Management Plc, one of Standard Chartered’s largest shareholders.The bank recognizes it must increase revenue to hit its targets, Winters said on a call with reporters Friday. Last year, the CEO said the annual loss “rips at our souls,” but he said Friday his outlook has improved in 2016, while acknowledging the “hill is still steep.”“My soul is intact, I feel very good about the bank, but it has been a wrenching year and a half,” the CEO said. There’s been “a traumatic amount of change” as he instituted “a very different approach to business. No one harbours any illusions that we are done, we have quite a long way to go.”ALSO READ: Should the fall in Taurus mutual fund worry investors?Standard Chartered said it plans to exit its principal finance business, which includes a private-equity unit known as SCPE, after that division incurred losses of $650 million in 2016. The firm valued its assets in the principal finance business at $1.2 billion at the end of 2016, compared with $2.1 billion a year earlier, according to a company report.Standard Chartered also said it’s “addressing credit issues” and “bolstering its management team and risk discipline” at PT Bank Permata, a lender it part-owns in Indonesia. That nation’s government has changed rules on foreign-owned banks, meaning Standard Chartered must decide whether to merge the two lenders it owns in the country, or sell one of them. A decision probably won’t come until next year, Winters said today.Standard Chartered said its common equity Tier 1 capital ratio, a measure of financial strength, rose to 13.6% from 13% at the end of September. That was higher than the 13.5% average estimate from five analysts.No dividendFinance director Andy Halford said the bank decided not to reinstate a dividend, after scrapping it in November 2015, because its turnaround was still in early stages. The lack of a payout “will be taken as disappointing,” Sanford C. Bernstein analysts said in a note to clients.Despite planning 15,000 job cuts in a strategic review in 2015, full-time employees actually rose on a “scaled-up” basis to 86,693 at 31 December from 84,076 a year earlier, the bank’s annual report shows.Headcount costs are down 7% as the bank moved employees to lower cost locations, a spokesman said. The company has also hired in some strategic areas, including more than 1,000 full-time retail banking employees in India, Singapore and Bangladesh.The bank identified “new uncertainties ahead, including threats to open trade and globalization” in its statement, and Winters said he’d seen Asian companies’ behaviour start to change already.“Clients in our markets are focusing on diversifying trading partners as much as possible to avoid a cliff-edge effect,” if President Donald Trump’s administration implements protectionist policies, Winters said. “If the US for whatever reason makes itself a less desirable trading partner, some other countries will be willing to fill that gap.” Bloomberg","Pretax profit for 2016 was $409 million, compared with a loss of $1.52 billion a year earlier, says Standard Chartered in a statement ",21:17,Standard Chartered misses annual profit estimates +2017-04-12,"Bengaluru: It’s hard to overstate the importance of the technology industry to India. Over the past three decades, the IT sector has helped drive the country’s economic growth, employed millions and made billionaires out of at least seven founders.Now the industry is at risk from US President Donald Trump’s policies. The administration is promising a clampdown on the work visas India’s tech services companies use to service American customers. In the days since the US government took first steps toward H1B visa reform, all of India’s high-profile technology tycoons have seen their net worth eroded.Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd and India’s fifth-richest man, and Shiv Nadar, the sixth-richest person in the country and chairman of HCL Technologies, have seen their shares slide. Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani and three other founders of Infosys Ltd, all among the top 100 of India’s richest billionaires, have taken a hit too. IT stocks have dropped about 3% over that stretch, while the benchmark index has climbed 0.6%.Also read: In Donald Trump’s H-1B visa crackdown, Indian students weigh Canada, Ireland“Whether these changes are a precursor for more radical measures is what is worrying companies,” said DD Mishra, a Pune-based research director at Gartner.Infosys, which reports earnings 13 April, may have the most at stake. The Bengaluru-based company is most vulnerable to US visa reforms because it has the lowest percentage of local hires in the US, Goldman Sachs analysts Sumeet Jain and Saurabh Thadani said in a research note last week. HCL and Wipro also have risks from visa reforms but they hire relatively more Americans, the analysts wrote.Infosys kicks off earnings season for the industry this week, giving investors a chance to get more insight into the challenges and corporate strategies for addressing them. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, the market leader, is scheduled to report results next week.The debate has been over the H1B visa program, which allows companies to bring 85,000 workers into the US from overseas each year. On 31 March, just as companies prepared to file applications for next year’s allotment, the Trump administration rolled out a series of policy measures making it harder for firms to use the program for computer programmers and announced measures to fight what it called “fraud and abuse.” In parallel, the Justice Department warned employers applying for visas not to discriminate against US workers. All of this was in line with promises made during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to overhaul the program he described as bringing cheap overseas labour at the cost of American jobs and salaries.From India, those promises look like threats to the economy. Information technology is the largest employer in the private sector, providing a livelihood to nearly 4 million, and contributes about 9% of gross domestic product. India’s software and services exports total about $110 billion, with nearly two thirds of that revenue coming from the US.Visa uncertainty could wreak havoc with planning and jeopardize profits in the industry. It may also raise risks for customers that depend on such services, from Wall Street banks to retailers and airlines. “Difficulties in getting visas or rising salaries of H-1B employees will have a material impact on companies,” said Rostow Ravanan, chief executive officer of Mindtree Ltd, a Bangalore-based outsourcer that uses hundreds of H-1B visas every year.Several countries around the world are adopting or considering similar policies. That poses a threat to the business model perfected by Indian companies, Ravanan said. “These trends are dangerous because the IT industry and its talent serve the entire world,” he said.Leading outsourcers including Infosys, Tata Consultancy, Wipro and HCL Technologies declined to comment on the visa issue.Companies have been working on contingency plans. If foreign workers cannot go to the US, it will become more expensive to hire local staff. Companies may also try to do more work for American clients from abroad, including India.Nitin Rakesh, chief executive officer of tech services provider Mphasis Ltd is optimistic. He said the industry has gone through four or five reincarnations since the outsourcing business began. A Trump crackdown may lead to more innovation in the model.“Through leveraging all the possible technology, including mobility and cloud, the growth opportunities are immense,” said Rakesh, warning however that some companies will adapt and others may not. “Growth will not be homogeneous.” Bloomberg","US President Donald Trump’s H1B visa reform policies have eroded the net worth of India’s high-profile technology tycoons, including Azim Premji ",14:28,"H1B visa reform hits tech billionaires, from Azim Premji to Shiv Nadar" +2017-02-25,"New York/Seattle: Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said fourth-quarter profit rose 15% as investment gains climbed.Net income climbed to $6.29 billion, or $3,823 a share, from $5.48 billion, or $3,333, a year earlier, the Omaha, Nebraska-based company said Saturday in a statement. Operating earnings, which exclude some investment results, were $2,665 a share, compared with the average $2,717 estimate of three analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.While Buffett is widely known as a gifted stock picker, Berkshire derives most of its income from the businesses he’s bought during his five decades running the firm. Its dozens of subsidiaries include auto insurer Geico, railroad BNSF, a network of auto dealerships, retailers and electric utilities.Also read: Warren Buffett says US market system to continue far into the futureThe 86-year-old billionaire keeps adding to the mix. Last year, he completed deals for battery maker Duracell and Precision Castparts, a supplier to the aerospace industry, helping to boost profit in his company’s manufacturing segment.Buffett tells investors to focus on the earnings from his stable of operating businesses, rather than one-time gains or losses on Berkshire’s securities portfolio. That’s because results can fluctuate widely on investments and derivatives contracts that he entered years ago.In the fourth quarter, Dow Chemical Co. converted Berkshire’s $3 billion preferred stake to more than $4 billion of common stock. The investment dates to the chemical maker’s 2009 takeover of Rohm & Haas, a transaction that Buffett helped finance.Berkshire has been a major beneficiary of the rally in stocks since Donald Trump was elected US president. Class A shares have climbed 15% since 8 November, bringing the company’s market capitalization above $400 billion for the first time. That compares with the 11% increase in the S&P 500 Index. Bloomberg","Berkshire Hathaway’s operating earnings, which exclude some investment results, were $2,665 a share",19:35,Berkshire Hathaway profit advances 15% to $6.29 billion on investments +2017-04-12,"New Delhi: A Delhi court on Wednesday issued an open-ended non-bailable warrant against beleaguered businessman Vijay Mallya for allegedly evading summons in a Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) violation case. Chief metropolitan magistrate Sumit Dass passed the order after the Enforcement Directorate submitted that non-bailable warrant issued on 4 November last year by the court has not been executed and it needs more time to do so. An “open-ended NBW” does not carry a time limit for execution unlike NBW. The court, which put up the matter for next hearing on 8 November, however, asked the agency to file a progress report in this regard within two months.",Delhi court issues an open-ended non-bailable warrant against Vijay Mallya for allegedly evading summons in a FERA violation case,12:56,Delhi court issues non-bailable warrant against Vijay Mallya in FERA violation case +2017-04-12,"New Delhi: Roy Price, vice-president of Amazon Studios, a unit of e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. that recently won three Academy Awards, was in Mumbai on Tuesday to announce Amazon Prime Video’s latest original content partnership with director Kabir Khan. Based on Subhash Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army, the new series, tentatively titled The Forgotten Army is the 18th Amazon India original show to go on the floors.During this third visit to India in a year, Price, who oversees all development and production of original film and television properties for Amazon, met several filmmakers and producers.“We have had positive and productive conversations with film studios and producers in India. We have been moving forward with a variety of deals many of which have been announced,” said Price on the phone from Mumbai. He talked about the significance of original content to the India strategy,streaming wars and viewership growth in India. Edited excerpts:What makes original content so integral to Amazon Prime Video’s India strategy?Our goal is to get and create compelling content for our customers whether its licensed or originals. So originals is important, it’s a differentiator, it also helps build our brand. And obviously the team globally has led the charge in that way. We have won over a 100 awards for our originals in the US. We recently won three Academy awards (for Manchester by the Sea and The Salesman) and that’s testimony to our vision that great original content is not just popular with customers but also works as a differentiator. You can have a global service but all customers are local. From a content point of view, we really have what we call a multi-local strategy. To make Prime Video India really speak to Indians we want to develop Indian shows with Indian artistes telling Indian stories that may have a universal sensibility. So our real job is to find those really great ambitious artistes and empower them and today was a great example of that.I think India is a huge and important country and there is a strong appetite here for Indian content. So, according to the multi-local strategy, we are focusing a lot of attention on Indian originals.How do you respond to Amazon Prime Video’s viewership growth in India so far?We think it’s a very strong start. I think customers are happy with what they are seeing on the service. There are a lot of titles that are doing well including Top Gear and Sultan and a mix of different kinds of things. We are always learning from what customers are enjoying and so we will continuously be looking at that to think about whether we have the exact right mix or should we invest more in a particular area and less towards some other. Its all determined by customer reactions.What’s your favourite title from Amazon’s India content library?Sultan and Bajirao Mastaani. I showed it to many people in LA and they enjoyed that.What’s your take on streaming wars in India?Wherever we operate in the world there are a lot of platforms that exist and I think the best thing to do is to really focus on customers and their wants and then focus on the talented filmmakers and creators and their wants and if you can satisfy both those groups then you’ll be just fine.How has the India journey been so far?Well, it is early; we have only been here a few months but we also discuss it a lot (globally). It is an important area of focus. I think the only two countries that I have been to three times over the past year is India and the UK. That’s not the only metric but it is very important and we are growing the team and it’s an important effort from Amazon.",Amazon Studios VP Roy Price sees original shows as central to Amazon Prime Video’s India strategy,05:07,Amazon Prime Video focusing a lot on Indian original shows: Roy Price +2017-04-12,"Bengaluru: Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, co-founders of India’s most valuable internet firm Flipkart, lost their billionaire status after the e-commerce firm’s valuation fell in its latest funding round.Their fortunes are now worth $650-750 million each after Flipkart’s valuation reduced to $11.6 billion in its funding round of $1.4 billion announced on Monday, according to Mint research.The Bansals became the first internet billionaires in 2015 when Flipkart raised $700 million at a valuation of $15 billion. Their fortunes were then estimated to be worth roughly $1.3 billion each, according to Forbes magazine.While that is a fall, they are still among the top three richest internet entrepreneurs, behind Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who is the only Internet billionaire currently.Also read: Why Flipkart’s valuation wasn’t hurt by multiple markdownsSachin and Binny, who are in their mid-30s, started Flipkart in a two-bedroom apartment in Bengaluru as an online bookseller inspired by their previous employer Amazon, the giant American online retailer that is Flipkart’s arch rival now.The two are now out of operational roles at Flipkart. Sachin became executive chairman in January 2016, when Binny replaced him as chief executive officer. Exactly a year later, Binny himself was replaced as CEO by Kalyan Krishnamurthy, a representative of Tiger Global Management, Flipkart’s largest investor. Binny is now Group CEO.",Sachin and Binny Bansal’s net worth has fallen to $650-750 million each after Flipkart raised $1.4 billion and acquired eBay India at a valuation of $11.6 billion,05:01,"Flipkart’s Sachin, Binny Bansal no more billionaires after raising $1.4 billion" +2017-04-11,"Singapore: Aliza Knox helped Twitter Inc. and Google Inc. build Asian businesses from scratch. Now she plans to do the same for an Australian mobile advertising start-up whose backers include 21st Century Fox Inc. co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch.Knox quit as Twitter’s most senior Asian executive this month to join Unlockd, a company that offers users a discount on wireless bills, additional data or entertainment content if they agree to view ads when unlocking their device screens. As chief operating officer, the former Google executive will spearhead the start-up’s global expansion.The Melbourne-based firm, which got off the ground in 2014, joins a growing list of companies—from Amazon.com Inc. to startup Jana—targeting a global mobile advertising market that researcher eMarketer expects to reach $101 billion in 2016.“They are totally aggressive about the business and getting things done,” said Knox, who hails from the San Francisco Bay area and worked at Boston Consulting and Visa before joining Google, mostly in Singapore and Australia. “But they also have the humility that this is a competitive environment.”Unlockd now reaches about a million users through partnerships with carriers such as Boost Mobile, a subsidiary of Sprint Corp., Tesco Mobile Ltd in the UK and Digicel Group Ltd in the Caribbean. It works with advertisers including Uber, McDonald’s, British Airways and Doritos, and its content partners include Twitter, Yahoo and the Facebook Audience Network.The company is now in talks with carriers to expand into several new markets, including India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, company co-founder and chief executive officer Matt Berriman said. Unlockd may eventually set up a regional office in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, he added.“We expect at least two or three markets to be launched in the next six to nine months,” Berriman said in a phone interview. The company, which has raised about A$25 million ($19 million), plans to announce the closing of its Series B round in coming weeks, he added. New investors as well as existing backers joined the round, he said. Unlockd’s backers include Peter Gammell, former CEO of Seven Group Holdings.Berriman, 32, met Knox over drinks in December at a restaurant across from the Twitter building in San Francisco. They were introduced by a headhunter who thought Knox’s management experience could come in handy at Unlockd. What appealed to Knox about the Australian start-up were its strong growth potential and culture. “What I love doing and I have proven to be good at doing is taking companies from almost nothing to a really significant presence,” Knox said. “Unlockd has a tremendous growth potential.” Bloomberg",Aliza Knox quit as Twitter’s most senior Asian executive this month to join Australian mobile advertising start-up Unlockd,08:39,Twitter’s former Asian chief joins mobile ad start-up Unlockd +2017-02-21,"London/Hong Kong: HSBC Holdings Plc’s fourth-quarter profit missed estimates amid lower revenue, as the lender extended a stock buyback that has driven its London shares to a three-year high.Adjusted pretax profit, which excludes one-time items, jumped 39% to $2.62 billion, Europe’s largest bank said in a statement on Tuesday. That missed the $3.78 billion average estimate of six analysts compiled by Bloomberg News. On an unadjusted basis, HSBC reported a $3.4 billion pretax loss for the fourth quarter. The bank’s shares fell in Hong Kong by the most since November.Chief executive officer Stuart Gulliver said the lender will spend $1 billion buying back its stock, adding to $2.5 billion of repurchases it made last year. Gulliver is battling five years of declining revenue as he pares back HSBC’s sprawling global footprint and cuts $5 billion in costs. HSBC also has to assess its operations after the UK voted to leave the European Union and navigate the potential global disruption from US President Donald Trump’s protectionist stance.“We anticipate new challenges in 2017 from geopolitical developments, heightened trade barriers and regulatory uncertainty,” Gulliver said in the statement.Adjusted revenue in the fourth quarter fell 3% to $11 billion, less than the $12.4 billion analysts expected. Operating costs rose 3% to $8.4 billion, compared with the $8.3 billion average estimate of the six analysts surveyed.The bank’s Hong Kong stock lost 3.4% to HK$66.65 as of 1:21pm local time, the biggest intraday drop since 9 November.In London, HSBC shares surged 57% since the Brexit vote on 23 June, the most of any major European bank, rising to 712.30 pence, the highest since August 2013. Even so, the lender trades at less than its book value.Since Gulliver started restructuring in 2011, he’s slashed more than 40,000 jobs and has pledged another 25,000 cuts, exited at least 80 businesses and reduced its global footprint to 71 countries and territories from 88. Nevertheless, alongside most European lenders, HSBC has been struggling to boost profitability. Investors need to lower their expectations as a 10% return on equity is probably the best a large universal lender can do, the CEO said in January.Gulliver, 57, along with chairman Douglas Flint, 61, are the longest-serving duo heading a major European bank. HSBC said last March that it will nominate a replacement for Flint sometime in 2017 and Flint said in the statement that the process to find his successor remains “on track.”The bank reported a common equity Tier 1 ratio, the key measure of financial resilience, of 13.6%, compared with 13.9% at the end of September. While the latest figure was slightly lower than estimated, the capital position helped HSBC announce the additional buyback, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts wrote in a report.The stock purchases are expected to be completed in the first half this year, HSBC said. Bloomberg","HSBC’s adjusted pretax profit, which excludes one-time items, jumped 39% to $2.62 billion",11:55,HSBC’s profit misses estimates as lender extends stock buyback +2017-02-15,"New Delhi: FMCG major Nestle India on Wednesday reported a decline of 8.66% in its standalone net profit to Rs167.31 crore for the fourth quarter ended on 31 December 2016.The company, which follows January-December financial year, had posted a net profit of Rs183.19 crore during the October-December quarter last fiscal. However, net sales of the company during the quarter under review were up 16.17% to Rs2,261.28 crore as against Rs 1,946.44 crore in the corresponding quarter of the last fiscal, Nestle said in a BSE filing.Total expenses during the quarter under review moved up 15.99% to Rs1,927.16 crore as against Rs1,661.45 crore in the year-ago period.Shares of Nestle India today settled at Rs6,173.60 on BSE, down 0.58% from previous close.","Nestle India’s net sales during the fourth quarter were up 16.17% to Rs2,261.28 crore as against Rs 1,946.44 crore in the corresponding quarter of the last fiscal",19:36,Nestle India Q4 net profit down 8.6% to Rs 167.31 crore +2017-02-22,"Paris: European aerospace group Airbus took a new €1 billion ($1.1 billion) charge for its troubled A400M military aircraft programme as it posted higher than expected core earnings and revenues for 2016.The company, reporting for the first time as Airbus and with a new financial format after ditching the Airbus Group brand in a revamp that recognizes the dominance of its civil business, said “adjusted” operating income fell 4% to €3.955 billion on revenues which rose 3% to 66.581 billion.Its results had been buoyed by a last-minute surge in civil jetliner deliveries.Analysts were on average expecting a 7.3% drop in full-year operating earnings before one-offs to €3.83 billion on sales up 0.7% to 64.919 billion. Reuters",Airbus said ‘adjusted’ operating income fell 4% to €3.955 billion on revenues which rose 3% to 66.581 billion,12:58,Airbus takes new hit for A400M as core profit beats forecasts +2017-04-15,"Paris: Up-to-date Microsoft customers are safe from the purported National Security Agency (NSA) spying tools dumped online, the software company said Saturday, tamping down fears that the digital arsenal was poised to wreak havoc across the internet .In a blog post , Microsoft Corp. security manager Phillip Misner said that the software giant had already built defences against nine of the 12 tools disclosed by TheShadowBrokers, a mysterious group that has repeatedly published NSA code . The three others affected old, unsupported products.“Most of the exploits are already patched,” Misner said.The post tamped down fears expressed by some researchers that the digital espionage toolkit made public by TheShadowBrokers took advantage of undisclosed vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s code. That would have been a potentially damaging development because such tools could swiftly be repurposed to strike across the company’s massive customer base.Those fears appear to have been prompted by experts using even slightly out-of-date versions of Windows in their labs. One of Microsoft’s fixes, also called a patch, was only released last month .“I missed the patch,” said British security architect Kevin Beaumont, jokingly adding, “I’m thinking about going to live in the woods now.”Beaumont wasn’t alone. Matthew Hickey, of cybersecurity firm Hacker House, also ran the code against earlier versions of Windows on Friday. But he noted that many organizations put patches off, meaning “many servers will still be affected by these flaws.”Everyone involved recommended keeping up with software updates.“We encourage customers to ensure their computers are up-to-date,” Misner said.",Microsoft security manager Phillip Misner said that the software giant had already built defences against nine of the 12 tools disclosed by TheShadowBrokers,18:26,Microsoft says users are protected from alleged NSA malware +2017-04-14,"New Delhi: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, whose pay package was a point of contention for the company’s founders, has drawn $ 6.68 million (about Rs 43 crore) or 61% of the promised compensation for the 2016-17 fiscal. Sikka was eligible for a $11 million pay including basic salary, variable pay, restricted stock units (RSUs) and performance stock options for the year. Incidentally, this is also lower than what Sikka drew in the previous financial year when he took home Rs 48.73 crore. According to Infosys’ financial statements that outline compensation to key executives, Sikka received only $3.68 million of the $8 million variable component that he was promised. One of the highest paid executives in the Indian IT industry, Sikka took home $0.82 million in variable pay, $1.9 million in RSUs and ESOPs worth $0.96 million, totalling $3.68 million. Sikka’s salary was revised from $7.08 million to a handsome $11 million package with effect from April 2016, a move that did not go down well with the founders, including NR Narayana Murthy. The $11 million package was to include a base salary of $1 million and $2 million worth of stock annually as well $3 million in variable pay. Sikka is also eligible for another $5 million worth of performance-based equity and stock options upon achievement of certain performance targets.Also Read: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka guaranteed 90% of $11 million salary“The Board, based on the recommendations of the Nominations Committee, approved on April 13, 2017, $0.82 million as variable pay to CEO for the year ended March 31, 2017,” Infosys said. It further mentions “...RSUs amounting to $1.9 million and ESOPs amounting to $0.96 million representing the performance-based equity and stock options for the financial year 2017”. While the founders had raised concerns over the significant salary hike given to Sikka, the Board, on its part, maintained that the variable component was tied to steep performance goals. However, Infosys has not made those goals public. Infosys had defended Sikka’s pay hike saying all decisions were made “in the overall interest of the company”. Infosys’ performance of 2016-17 has disappointed the street, especially after it lowered its annual revenue guidance thrice last fiscal. The “aspirational goal” of $20 billion revenue by 2020 set by Infosys looks like a tall order given the current performance, said industry watchers. The Bengaluru-based firm, which posted a revenue of $ 10.2 billion in 2016-17, has been focussing on new areas like automation and artificial intelligence to bolster its revenues to meet the said target. For the financial year 2017-18, Infosys expects its revenues to grow by 6.1-8.1% in dollar terms.","Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka has drawn about Rs43 crore or 61% of the promised compensation, $11 million, for the 2016-17 fiscal",19:10,Infosys’s Vishal Sikka takes home only 61% of eligible pay +2017-02-15,"New Delhi: Leading stock exchange BSE has reported a 17% decline in consolidate net profit to Rs63.73 crore in the October-December quarter of the current fiscal.The exchange had posted a net profit of Rs76.73 crore in the third quarter ended 31 December 2015-16, latest update available with BSE (formerly known as Bombay Stock Exchange) website showed. However, total income increased to Rs174.72 crore in the third quarter, from Rs160.56 crore in the same period a year ago. Overall expenses rose to Rs112.36 crore in the quarter under review, from Rs97.78 crore in the same period last fiscal, mainly due to employees, computer technology and administration related spending. Employee costs surged by 21% to Rs32.46 crore. The exchange’s group firms include CDSL, Indian Clearing Corporation, BSE Institute and BSE Investments. On a standalone basis, BSE’s net profit rose to Rs70.07 crore during the quarter under review, from Rs32.37 crore in the year-ago period. The exchange’s total income grew to Rs122.56 crore from Rs108.53 crore. Earlier this month, BSE got listed on the rival NSE platform, becoming the first stock exchange to go public. Shares of BSE were trading at Rs998.85 apiece on the NSE on Wednesday, down 0.51% from the previous close.","BSE’s total income however increased to Rs174.72 crore in the third quarter, from Rs160.56 crore in the same period a year ago",14:23,Bombay Stock Exchange Q3 net profit drops 17% to Rs64 crore +2017-04-14,"Seoul: South Korean authorities found no explosives at the headquarters of Samsung Life Insurance Co Ltd in Seoul, police said on Friday. A police official told Reuters that officers dispatched to the Samsung Life building in Seocho, a southern district of Seoul, concluded there were no explosives at 1:38pm (0438 GMT). The building had been evacuated earlier in the day following a report that explosives were inside. Reuters",Samsung Life HQ building had been evacuated earlier in the day following a report that explosives were inside,15:12,South Korea police says no explosives found at Samsung Life HQ +2017-04-14,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday launched the BHIM-Aadhaar platform—a merchant interface linking the unique identification number to the Bharat Interface for Money mobile application—at Nagpur on the 126th birth anniversary of Dr B.R. Ambedkar.“Like Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar worked to give rights to the common man through the Indian Constitution, one can expect the BHIM app to do similarly great work through the financial system,” said Modi.The new interface will enable customers to make payments using a merchant’s biometric-enabled device. The merchant merely has to download the BHIM app on his smartphone and link the device to an Aadhaar biometric reader.“Any citizen without access to smartphones, Internet, debit or credit cards will be able to transact digitally through the BHIM-Aadhaar platform,” a government statement said.Also Read: Narendra Modi to visit Nagpur on Ambedkar Jayanti tomorrow
To avail of this service, a customer has to first link his bank account to his Aadhaar number. To make a payment, all he has to do is select the bank’s name and enter the Aadhaar number. His fingerprint will serve as the password to authenticate the transaction.To start with, no transaction fee will be levied on either the merchants or customers to encourage adoption of the new digital payment service, especially in small towns and rural India. The government statement said 27 major banks had already tied up with 300,000 merchants for accepting payments using BHIM-Aadhaar. It went on to add that all public sector banks have been instructed to go live with Aadhaar Pay. In his speech, Modi said that the time is not far when premise-less and paperless banking will become part of people’s lives. He announced two new incentive schemes for the BHIM app—cashback (for merchants) and referral bonus (for customers). The schemes will start from 14 April and end on 14 October, he added.Also Read: Is Narendra Modi abandoning his promise of good governance?Under the referral bonus scheme, an individual will earn Rs10 for every new referral made—i.e., educating another person or merchant about the BHIM app and ensuring that they carry out three transactions using the same. “Even in one day, if you refer around 20 people, you can end up earning Rs200 per day. This can continue for a period of three months,” said Modi.Under the cashback scheme, merchants can earn up to Rs300 per month for transactions made using BHIM. An updated version of BHIM (version 1.3) is available on Android and ioS. Several new features have been added to its interface such as new languages, the option to block unwanted collection requests and pay by scanning QR (quick response) codes.“The new upgrade is aligned to facilitate government’s initiative of launching customer referral bonus and merchant incentive schemes. We have added more regional languages, enhanced user experience and security features for wider acceptance and usage of the BHIM app,” said A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive of National Payments Corporation of India.Three new languages—Punjabi, Marathi and Assamese—have gone live on the app. This development was reported earlier by Mint on 24 January (bit.ly/2kbqHky).According to Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union minister for electronics and information technology, 20 million people have downloaded BHIM so far, and payments worth Rs823 crore have been made. The app was launched on 30 December. It was one of several measures aimed at promoting digital transactions in the aftermath of the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes, which triggered a nationwide cash crunch.","Any citizen without access to smartphones, Internet, debit or credit cards will be able to transact digitally through the BHIM-Aadhaar platform launched by Narendr a Modi",22:53,"BHIM-Aadhaar platform launched, advancing PM Modi’s digital push " +2017-04-14,"Pittsburg: A prestigious US university and Tata Consultancy Services have collaborated to set up a state-of-the-art facility which its promoters say would lay the groundwork for the fourth industrial revolution by conducting cutting edge research.The collaboration comes more than a century after Jamshedji Tata came to this city known as the steel-making capital to understand technologies which he would later use to launch India’s own industrial revolution. Top Indian industrialist Ratan Tata, joined by Carnegie Mellon University president Subra Suresh along with Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran broke the ground of the new TCS Hall at the university campus. Supported by an unprecedented $35 million grant from TCS, which is the largest ever industry donation the CMU, the building when complete by next year, would become the hub of CMU and TCS collaborations on promoting next generation technologies that will drive the 4th Industrial revolution, Suresh said. “Today, we are not looking at heavy metal and millions of tons of steel. We are looking at a collaboration of intellectual skills and the development of two countries together that might bring about global understanding between people,” Tata said.Ratan Tata, Chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, described the CMU-TCS partnership a visionary collaboration of skills that will bring understanding between young people of India, the United States and other places in the world. “The wide-ranging multi-national partnership that is creating new research opportunities, new student aid, and a brand-new facility for educational research that we are celebrating today has deep roots. In fact, the historical parallels and connections between the Tata Group of companies and Carnegie Tech and Carnegie Mellon make this new chapter in our partnership even more meaningful,” Suresh said.“In the late 19th century - years before this university was founded - the Tata family patriarch, Jamshedji Tata, came to Pittsburgh—the steel capital of the world—to learn from expert steelmakers how to launch his own steel-making business in India,” he said. Jamshedji Tata famously had four goals in life: setting up an iron and steel company in India, opening a world-class learning institution, building a unique cartel, and constructing a hydroelectric plant, he added. “Years later, a company affiliated with one of Andrew Carnegie’s executives landed a contract to build the Tata plant in India, bringing to life the Jamshedji Tata goal that mirrored Andrew Carnegie’s life’s work: the great steel empire built here in Pittsburgh, and a great university, Carnegie Tech, now known as Carnegie Mellon as we celebrate it today,” he said. Suresh said the latest addition to the rapidly-expanding CMU landscape, this nearly 50 000 gross square-foot TCS Hall will house research and academic spaces where both institutions will collaborate on mutual interests in fields such as cognitive systems and autonomous vehicles and robotics. “TCS Hall will house a variety of activities in education and research, as well as the CMU Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Departments. And it’ll fit seamlessly into Carnegie Mellon’s pioneering work in leading the fourth industrial revolution,” said the CMU president. PTI","The TCS-Carnegie Mellon collaboration comes more than a century after Jamshedji Tata came to Pittsburg, known as the steel-making capital to understand technologies",12:29,"TCS, Carnegie Mellon University to set up facility for cutting edge research " +2017-03-24,"
Vedanta group has clearly given up hope that the sale of the government’s stake in Hindustan Zinc Ltd (HZL) will happen in the foreseeable future. Why else would it decide on a hefty dividend that entails a huge tax outgo and enriches the government more than anyone else? Vedanta has a 64.9% stake in HZL, but its share in the magnanimous Rs13,985 crore payout by the latter will only be 53.9%. The government, on the other hand, has a 29.5% stake in HZL, but gets 41.5% share of the spoils. This is thanks to the dividend distribution tax of over 20% that firms have to bear while paying dividends. A number of companies such as Wipro Ltd and Bharti Airtel Ltd have used tender buybacks as a means to return cash to shareholders, given the large amount of tax savings. Vedanta, unfortunately, doesn’t have that luxury. Because of a Supreme Court order that has stayed the sale of the government’s residual stake in HZL, it may not be able to participate in a tender buyback offer. And if the company were to go ahead with a buyback without the government participating, that would result in a drop in the government’s shareholding, which may again flout the apex court’s directives. As such, dividends seem to be the only option left to take cash out of HZL. From Vedanta’s point of view, the ideal outcome would be to buy the government’s stake and then use its control over the company to directly pursue inorganic opportunities such as its interest in Anglo American Plc. Now, apart from gifting the government a disproportionate share of HZL’s cash, it also has to share the company’s cash with its minority shareholders, as well as those of Vedanta Ltd and Vedanta Plc (see chart).Analysts at Credit Suisse Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd say Vedanta could use the funds to service some of its debt and to fund its stake purchase in Anglo American. “Depending on the extent of upstreaming at Vedanta Ltd and Vedanta Plc, the ultimate promoter entity (Volcan Investments Ltd) could receive $220-$500mn of dividend which could come in handy in pursuing its Anglo American ambitions,” wrote the analysts in a note to clients. Upstreaming refers to dividend payments by Vedanta Ltd and Vedanta Plc from their respective dividend income. In other words, Volcan may eventually get only 20-23% of the total payout by HZL. From HZL’s point of view, while the outflow looks huge, it hardly poses much of a problem for it. As of 31 December, the company’s net cash and cash equivalents were Rs25,319 crore. Post the dividend payouts, its cash balance is expected to drop to Rs15,000 crore, point out analysts from Edelweiss Securities Ltd. But that shouldn’t worry investors. Edelweiss pegs free cash flow generation at Rs10,000 crore each for fiscal years 2018 and 2019 on the back of robust zinc price outlook and capacity ramp-up.
HZL shares have risen about 88% in the past year, thanks to the rally in zinc prices. But as Credit Suisse’s analysts point out, valuations are rich. “Even with our bullish Ebitda estimates, the stock is trading at a high 8x EV-Ebitda multiple: valuations have rarely been this rich,” they said in another note on 6 February. EV is short for enterprise value, and Ebitda is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. HZL’s shares have been more or less flat since, while zinc prices have averaged at around $2,800/tonne, about $100/tonne lower than the levels the broker has used for its earnings estimates.",Vedanta has given up hope of a govt stake sale in Hindustan Zinc. Why else would it decide on a hefty dividend that enriches the govt more than anyone else?,08:56,Getting hold of Hindustan Zinc’s cash turning an expensive affair for Vedanta +2017-03-24,"The packaged consumer goods sector had a difficult time in the December 2016 quarter. Even before demonetisation, demand was simply not getting off the ground. While urban demand had shown some early signs of reviving, companies said rural demand continued to show signs of strain. The BSE FMCG Index declined 4.8% in the December quarter. FMCG stands for fast-moving consumer goods. The current quarter has seen it increase by 13.5%, partly as the effects of demonetisation are fading but also because ITC Ltd’s stock has run up sharply.Demonetisation made things worse. In cities, consumption was briefly affected but revived as modern trade outlets stepped in and consumers switched to digital currency. However, rural markets were affected. Also, companies use wholesalers to service relatively smaller outlets and markets, and this channel was adversely affected.In the December quarter, the sector’s sales declined by 2.5%, while its operating profit fell 0.4%. Volume growth was affected, not only by demonetisation, but also by price hikes by companies to compensate for an increase in the price of inputs.Hindustan Unilever Ltd, for instance, reported a 4% decline in volumes, partly due to the currency ban and partly due to price hikes.ITC’s shares have gained in the current quarter as the hike in excise duties in the budget was lower than expected and even after an additional cess on cigarettes, the company is expected to benefit from the introduction of the goods and services tax, or GST, from 1 July.The outlook for packaged consumer goods makers’ stocks remains mixed. Consumer confidence improved in the December quarter, indicating urban markets can be expected to recover. Good monsoon rains in 2016-17 are expected to contribute to better farm output. While that is good, it is being tempered by a moderate increase in prices. By how much farm incomes improve and to what extent non-farm incomes revive will determine rural consumption trends in the medium term. Meanwhile, companies may use price hikes to drive growth till demand recovers. GST remains a key event to watch out for in FY18.",Volume growth was affected in the December quarter not only by demonetisation but also by price hikes taken by firms to compensate for an increase in the price of inputs,09:32,FMCG: GST and urban consumers offer hope +2017-04-14,"Bengaluru: In a conversation with Mint, Ravi Venkatesan, 54, who in addition to being Infosys co-chairman is also chairman of Bank of Baroda, said that one of his immediate priorities would be to align all stakeholders around the transformational journey that Infosys is in the midst of.
Why did you agree to take on this role as co-chairman?Because the board asked me to. But also because I love Infosys. Just like the Idea of India (Sunil Khilnani’s book), the idea of Infosys is a powerful one; Infosys remains a vital institution of our country. It’s important that it continues to flourish.
Was this decision solely the board’s or was it made after some of the founders suggested it?This was a decision of the board. Why did the board decide to go for a co-chairman? Simple because when an aircraft is going through turbulent weather, it only helps to get a co-pilot.
Questions have been raised by some of the founders against the board and even against the management. So how would you get both the founders and board aligned and make sure this is not a distraction for the management? For the record, I was close to the founders of Infosys before I joined the board. What they accomplished was incredible. I hope to remain close to them long after I cease to be on the board. Equally, I believe in the strategy that (CEO) Vishal Sikka has set out for transforming Infosys. I intend to do my very best to see that he succeeds in this mission. Everything else is a sideshow. I don’t see any contradiction here.
How do you rate Vishal’s leadership in the three years that he has been CEO now?I think Infosys has done somethings incredibly well under Vishal’s leadership. We have a bold and differentiated strategy which customers are excited about; customer satisfaction is at an all-time high. Most employees are energized by the vision and strategy. Vishal and his team have built on the momentum they inherited and closed the gap with competition. Many seeds for the future have been sown and we see the green shoots in many areas—in AI, in automation, with initiatives like design thinking. That said, the transformation is a work in progress. Some things aren’t working as intended and course corrections are being applied. There are pockets of underperformance which represent opportunities. We need to rapidly scale up things that are working. There are capability gaps that need to be fixed. But overall, I am optimistic about our prospects.
How will the co-chair arrangement work? How will you delineate roles to make sure there’s no overlap?Sesh (R. Seshasayee) and I have known each other for 20 years and worked on the Infy board for six years, so we are quite comfortable with each other. We have decided that there are some areas that he will continue to lead such as overall leadership of the board or investor outreach while in other areas like strategy or talent I will work more closely with Vishal and his team. We have decided that we will work as partners rather than compartments.
What are your immediate priorities?My first priority is to help align all stakeholders around the transformation journey that we are on. The second is to work closely with Vishal in helping build a world class leadership team that can execute the transformation strategy.Your elevation has been seen positively and the general view is that relations between the board and the founders will improve now. What’s your take on that and how do you intend to repair relations with the founders?I have the greatest respect for the founders of Infosys and especially for Mr (N.R. Narayana) Murthy who has been a mentor and friend for a long time. I believe that everyone wants the same thing—which is to see Infosys flourish and prosper from the incredible opportunities that are being thrown up by technology shifts. The board and leadership team wants this. Investors want this. Employees want this. The founders want this. However, this is a journey through uncharted waters and so the key is to earn the trust of all stakeholders so we stay together through the ups and downs of this voyage. Trust really is the key. This requires intense, honest and ongoing dialogue. It also requires courage, willingness to experiment, assimilate feedback, learn and change.After a stellar year in 2015-16, the last 12 months have been slow by Infy’s lofty standards. What in your opinion needs to be fixed immediately in order to get back the company to industry-leading growth?This has been a tough year for everyone with growth slowing and severe commoditization. Infy’s performance must be seen not just in absolute terms but in the context of the industry. Vishal has already commented on our performance and what he and the team will do. I personally believe we have to more aggressively move investments and our brightest people from more commoditized areas towards our best growth prospects which are in areas such as digital, cyber security, AI, IOT and so on. Our job as a board is to support management in moving much more quickly on the many opportunities we have.Will you reduce your other board commitments now that you’re taking up this role? Will you remain chairman at BoB?The transformation of BoB is also a work in progress. (P.S.) Jayakumar and his team have worked really hard and we are seeing the green shoots of their labour. I would love to see it through if that’s what the government also wishes.","Ravi Venkatesan, who was appointed as Infosys co-chairman Thursday, says the idea of Infosys is a powerful one and it’s important that it continues to flourish",04:46,"Ravi Venkatesan: In turbulent weather, it only helps to get a co-pilot" +2017-03-24,"Indian oil firms delivered a subdued performance in the December quarter. Take for instance Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL’s) results. Despite the fact that it crossed the Rs8,000-crore mark in stand-alone net profit for the first time, the performance would have been sweeter if income from sources other than its main business had not played a key role in boosting profit. Notably, while RIL’s gross refining margin (GRM) improved to $10.8 a barrel from $10.1 a barrel in the September quarter, the measure was lower than expected, considering that the benchmark Singapore refining margin had done much better sequentially.GRM is the realization from turning every barrel of crude oil into finished products and is an important measure of profitability for refining firms.RIL’s petrochemicals segment performed well but that couldn’t compensate for the disappointment from the refining business. However, investors have little to complain given that the stock has appreciated as much as 21% till 17 March since RIL announced it will start charging its customers in the telecom business. Further stock appreciation will be dependent on how the telecom venture fares in the days to come.State-run refining and marketing firms—Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) and India Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL)—delivered a decent performance. Reported GRMs improved sequentially. Inventory gains helped. According to analysts from Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd, core earnings, adjusted for inventory gains, came in at Rs12.7/12.1/7.6/ share for BPCL/HPCL/IOCL versus reported earnings per share of Rs15.7/15.7/8.4, respectively. “After adjusting for one-offs, core earnings of IOCL and BPCL came in-line with our estimates but HPCL missed the mark on this metric as marketing margins disappointed,” an Emkay report said last month. However, broadly, reported earnings of all three firms were in-line, according to Emkay. These stocks have done well in the past two years, helped by diesel price deregulation and improvements in earnings. A further upside can come if refining margins improve further.Meanwhile, stocks of upstream oil firms—Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd—have performed well in the past couple of months, thanks to firmer crude prices. However, if oil prices continue to remain range-bound, further appreciation in shares of ONGC and Oil India will be tough. Both firms saw their net price realization improve year-on-year as well as sequentially.",Oil firms delivered a subdued performance for the December quarter,08:14,Subdued performance from oil firms in the December quarter +2017-03-24,"Growth of information technology (IT) services firms continues to decelerate on a year-on-year basis. Growth in constant currency terms stood at 8.7% for tier-I IT companies in the December quarter, excluding Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., according to data collated by Nomura Research. Two quarters ago, growth stood at over 10%, and a year before that, growth was in the teens.Of course, that growth rates have been declining in the IT sector is well known and, as a result, IT stocks have underperformed the Nifty 50 index by around 18% in the past year.The moot question is if the December quarter results give signs of a possible turnaround. Investors will be disappointed there. Nomura’s analysts point out that growth in the key US region was the slowest in 12 quarters. Growth in some of the industry verticals that were doing well in previous quarters, such as retail, healthcare and telecom, slowed in the December quarter. And the performance of the largest industry vertical—banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI)—gave no hints of a turnaround. Besides, as US firms await the broad policy direction of the new government, there may be some delays in taking decisions.Of course, there are some silver linings. Companies, for instance, are sounding more optimistic, especially with regards to demand from BFSI. Besides, analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities say the intensity with which some large corporations shifted work to captive units earlier has abated to an extent.But, from the looks of it, things are likely to go further south before any turnaround comes about. The recent appreciation in the rupee is likely to worsen matters for Indian IT companies. Profit margins have already been under pressure, owing to the increased investments in building digital capabilities and thanks to pricing pressure in the traditional application maintenance work. Besides, all of the noise against H1B visas in the US may result in new laws that increase costs of providing on-site services. Kotak’s analysts wrote in a note to clients, “In case the rupee were to sustain at current levels, we do highlight that many traditional levers of the industry are exhausted... Our EPS (earnings per share) estimates for FY2018/19 are based on INR/USD rate of 68 and have 5-9% downside risk at spot prices.”",The recent appreciation in rupee may worsen matters for Indian IT firms as profit margins are already under pressure owing to increased investments in building digital capabilities ,07:56,"IT sector: Donald Trump, rupee worsen matters in December quarter" +2017-03-24,"The absence of negative surprises proved to be good news for power utilities. Against an 8% rise in the Sensex, the BSE Power index gained 10% in the first two months of 2017 even as the companies reported a lacklustre performance for the December quarter.Overall generation was up 5.3%, slightly better than the 4.4% rise a year ago. Power production at NTPC Ltd was up just 1%. As power off-take remained subdued, the firm’s thermal power plants’ utilization dropped 1%. “3QFY17 has seen a continuation of the overall trend of weak power demand growth, subdued merchant prices, back-downs by discoms and marginal generation capacity addition,” Antique Stock Broking Ltd said in a review.Due to a normalization of taxes, NTPC’s unadjusted profits fell 7.5%. JSW Energy Ltd reported an even steeper drop in profit on high costs and low realizations. Still, as the rise in the BSE Utilities index shows, investors attached little importance to the results. Why? Because of positive commentary from managements and the hope that 2017 will end the woes of Tata Power Co. Ltd and Adani Power Ltd.NTPC maintained its 4,000 megawatts (MW) capacity addition guidance for the current fiscal despite adding just 1,400MW till December. Similarly, Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd, whose project start-ups grew just 2% from the September quarter, indicated strong capitalization in January-March. “As against ~4,650 ckm (circuit km) transmission line commissioned in 9mFY17, management is targeting to commission a ~4,750 ckm transmission line in 4QFY17E,” HDFC Securities Ltd wrote in a note.Tata Power’s coal business venture did well. But high coal prices affected profitability of its Mundra plant. Adani Power reported a higher-than-expected loss on low volume off-take and shortage of domestic coal. Even then both stocks went up in January-February on speculation the coming Supreme Court order will end the under-recovery woes at their plants in Mundra, Gujarat. “For us, the key trigger remains the Supreme Court’s ratification of CERC (central electricity regulatory commission) compensatory tariff recommendations,” Edelweiss Securities Ltd wrote in a note on Tata Power.The story is similar at CESC Ltd. The stock, too, has gained sharply, as the management said its Spencer’s retail business, which has been losing money, stopped making losses at the operating level in the last quarter. Further, it also indicated it is open to listing the retail business, fuelling valuation gains. With the retail business showing signs of profitability, analysts are optimistic CESC’s return ratios will improve.The optimism is also providing heft to NTPC, Power Grid, Tata Power, and Adani Power. The question is: will 2017 live up to the expectations?","Overall electricity generation in the December quarter was up 5.3%, only slightly better than the 4.4% rise in the year ago quarter",06:22,Power utilities: eye on key milestones helped investors overcome subdued Q3 +2017-04-11,"
Mumbai: Drugmaker Wockhardt Ltd’s extensive antibiotics research is expected to start yielding benefits soon, with one of its new drugs likely to be launched in the US in 2020-21. Notwithstanding regulatory issues, the company’s new drugs pipeline of five antibiotics looks promising, says Habil Khorakiwala, founder chairman of Wockhardt. In an interview, he talks about how the new drugs portfolio will pan out and ongoing efforts to resolve compliance issues with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Edited excerpts:
Wockhardt recently got USFDA approval for the abridged phase-III clinical trial for one new antibiotic. When will the company start the trial and when can we expect the product to be launched?We will start trials for WCK 5222 in two to three months. It will take about two years to complete the trial. Today, there is a major crisis in antibiotics. It has happened mainly because large companies have reduced or given up antibiotic research over the last 30 years and the number of approvals has come down. We started our antibiotics research programme 20 years back. In all, 11 antibiotics in clinical trials have received qualified infectious disease product (QIDP) status, of which five are Wockhardt’s drugs. One of the things that the USFDA has done is that where there is a huge unmet need, they are fast-tracking approvals. For our antibiotic, WCK 5222, USFDA has asked us to do a single trial on a limited 600-650 patients. Normally, they ask for two full clinical trials with 1,000-1,200 patients. Hopefully, we will launch the drug in the US in 2020-21. We might have to do some trials post the marketing approval.
In what stage of development are the other four new antibiotics?For two drugs—WCK 771 and WCK 2349—we plan to soon begin phase-III clinical trials in India and hope to launch them in the domestic market in two years. Another one will enter phase-III trials in India after about eight to nine months. The next new drug that we plan to take to the US market is WCK 4282, which is indicated for treating urinary tract infections, hospital-acquired bacterial pneumonia and bloodstream infections.
Will you out-license the new drugs?We are not looking to out-license all of them. Some of the products for hospital-acquired infections (the company has three such products) we can commercialize on our own. For those drugs, we don’t need a large sales force. We may look at partnerships for other drugs for the US market. We plan to out-license our entire new drug portfolio for the Japan market, where we do not have any presence. For Europe and other markets, we haven’t decided yet.
How are you funding the research activities?We have about Rs2,000 crore of cash; so we are utilizing that. Plus, with our growth in India, the UK and emerging markets, we expect profitability to improve. This will be able to absorb our research and development expenses. We will maintain R&D spend around the same level as last year or slightly higher for the next two years and a significant portion of it will be spent on clinical trials of new drugs. In 2015-16, R&D spend was Rs669 crore, accounting for 15% of total sales.
Wockhardt’s five manufacturing plants are facing compliance issues with the USFDA. What remedial measures has the company taken?We have been having regular dialogues with FDA regarding remedial measures at our plants. We meet them two to three times a year. Some of the things we have done are that we have a whole new team in manufacturing and quality control and we are giving a lot of training to employees at various levels. We have automated quality systems to ensure data integrity. We are also trying to simplify operating procedures. All these activities are being done along with third-party consultants. We are focusing on one plant at a time.Were any of the company’s plants inspected recently by the USFDA or is any inspection likely in the near future?I will not be able to comment on this. Given that US business has taken a hit due to regulatory issues, what is the growth outlook for the next two-three years?We can expect double-digit revenue growth. Our India, UK and emerging markets business is doing well and it will continue. For the US market, we have already initiated a process of site transfer for critical products to third-party manufacturing plants. This is for both APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients) and formulations. So, we are trying to mitigate the risks. We might get some product approvals in the current year and also in the next two years. We also hope to get clearance from USFDA for our plants. Any positives in terms of US market will provide incremental growth.What about profitability?I would not like to comment on this. Are you planning to launch insulin products in regulated markets?We have already launched insulin products in India and in emerging markets. In the near term, we are not looking to launch them in regulated markets as our focus is on the new antibiotic drugs pipeline. However, diabetes is one area where we are trying to build a portfolio for the US market.","Wockhardt chairman Habil Khorakiwala on the pharma firm’s plans, how its new drugs portfolio will pan out and ongoing efforts to resolve compliance issues with US FDA",03:30,Wockhardt aiming to launch new antibiotic in US in 2020-21: Habil Khorakiwala +2017-04-10,"Bangalore: SoftBank Group Corp.’s Masayoshi Son and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos are heading for a clash in India.SoftBank is closing in on an agreement to combine its e-commerce company Snapdeal with market leader Flipkart Online Services Pvt. Ltd, creating a stronger domestic player to compete with the American behemoth, according to people familiar with the matter. To get the merger done, Son is willing to cut Snapdeal’s valuation 85% to $1 billion, said the people, asking not to be named because the talk is private.Snapdeal’s founders and early investors had resisted such a steep cut, but SoftBank has argued the deal is necessary as venture funding dries up and competition intensifies, the people said. Talks are now in the final stages and a deal could be signed within weeks, they said, though it’s also possible they could fall apart.Snapdeal co-founder and chief executive officer Kunal Bahl raised the possibility of an acquisition in an email to employees over the weekend, explaining he and co-founder Rohit Bansal are seeking to protect employees.Also read: Snapdeal’s co-founders hint firm’s fate not in their hands“While our investors are driving the discussions around the way forward, I am reaching out to let you know that the well-being of the entire team is mine and Rohit’s top and only priority,” Bahl wrote, according to a copy obtained by Bloomberg.Flipkart, Snapdeal and SoftBank all declined to comment.The combination of India’s two leading e-commerce players is being called an arranged marriage, said the people, with Son playing the role of matchmaker. The Japanese billionaire, who owns about a third of Snapdeal parent Jasper Infotech Pvt., plans to contribute that equity to the merged entity and to infuse another $500 million to $1 billion in Flipkart through a transaction with Flipkart backer Tiger Global Management, the people said.That would give Flipkart more firepower to battle Amazon in one of the world’s fastest growing online retail markets. The Seattle-based company has vowed to spend $5 billion in the country and India chief Amit Agarwal has used the money to gain customers.Son financed a similar battle in China—and won billions. He was one of the earliest backers of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the e-commerce player that first defeated eBay in China and then successfully fended off Amazon. That investment remains one of his most successful to date, giving him stock worth more than $80 billion.Flipkart is already raising cash for the battle. The Bangalore-based company is said to have recently struck a deal for $1 billion in funding from investors including Tencent Holdings, Microsoft Corp and EBay Inc. An alliance among Flipkart, Snapdeal and EBay would give the business customers, scale and technology, though it’s not clear how easily those could be integrated.“We will do all that we can, and more, in working with our investors to ensure that there is no disruption in employment and there are positive professional as well as financial outcomes for the team as the way forward becomes clear,” Bahl said in the email. Bloomberg","Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank is closing in on a deal to merge Snapdeal with Flipkart, creating a stronger domestic player to compete with Jeff Bezos’s Amazon ",17:56,"In battle of billionaires, Son set to clash with Bezos in India" +2017-03-24,"The construction sector put up an unimpressive show, although on expected lines, in the December quarter. Undoubtedly, demonetisation hurt the sector in several ways.One, engineering and construction work came to a standstill in November and December as the economy was hit by a cash crunch. Deferred payments to workers delayed execution and billing across infrastructure firms. The average net revenue of 156 firms in the mid- and large-sized category excluding Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T) fell by 8.9% year-on-year (y-o-y). L&T, too, posted marginal revenue growth.Road construction firms with operational projects were worse off than the rest of the pack because toll collections were suspended for about three weeks. How this impacts earnings for the full year depends on when and how the expected government compensation for revenue loss will shape up.Weak revenue trickled down to a similar performance on operating metrics. Firms such as IRB Infrastructure Ltd and NCC Ltd, that have been improving profitability, found the going tough, but were able to sustain profitability.Adding to the quarter’s woes was the weak ordering activity across infrastructure segments. Save for a few orders in the capital goods space, there were hardly any big-ticket orders in power, roads and railways.The only solace is that the large firms have put their house in order by deleveraging balance sheets, reducing indebtedness and optimizing cost structures.Meanwhile, firms in power transmission such as KEC International Ltd and ABB Ltd put up a decent show during the quarter. In contrast, firms whose performance is linked to power generation paled in comparison.The S&P BSE Infrastructure index has rallied sharply on hopes that the government will live up to its commitment of boosting investment in infrastructure.So far, reality is far from it and, given the current pace of new projects tendered until February, it is likely that road sector will not meet the targets both in terms of fresh ordering and execution during FY17.","Firms in power transmission such as KEC International Ltd and ABB Ltd put up a decent show, while those whose performance is linked to power generation paled",06:22,A subdued December quarter for infrastructure firms +2017-04-10,"Los Angeles: Neil Hunt, one of the chief architects of Netflix Inc.’s streaming service, is leaving after 18 years.Greg Peters, a Netflix veteran who works with telecom providers and consumer electronics makers around the world, will replace Hunt in July, the company said Friday in a statement. Peters oversaw the 2015 expansion into Japan and worked under Hunt as the head of streaming and partnerships.The company didn’t give a reason for Hunt’s departure and didn’t respond to requests for comment.Hunt oversaw everything from the design of the Netflix service to the algorithm that spits out recommendations and managed the technical challenges of introducing the world’s most popular paid video service to 190 countries. Investors tend to overlook the difficulties in delivering high-definition video online to millions of homes worldwide, fixating instead of the company’s multi-billion-dollar annual budget for movies and TV shows.“Greg and Neil have collaborated through the years to make the Netflix experience all over the world absolutely incredible,” chief executive officer Reed Hastings said in the statement.Hunt worked at Pure Software, which was founded by Hastings before Netflix.Netflix is scheduled to report first-quarter results on 17 April. The shares are up 16% this year, compared with 5.2% for the S&P Index.Tawni Cranz, Netflix’s chief talent officer, is also leaving. She joined Netflix’s human resources department in 2007 and took her current post in 2012. Bloomberg","Greg Peters, a Netflix veteran who works with telecom providers and consumer electronics makers around the world, will replace Neil Hunt in July",04:42,"Neil Hunt, architect of Netflix’s streaming service, leaves after 18 years" +2017-04-07,"New Delhi: Skills and talent development firm NIIT on Friday said its chief executive officer (CEO) Rahul Patwardhan has put in his papers due to personal reasons. The company has appointed Sapnesh Lalla as CEO designate with immediate effect. He will take over as CEO from 1 August. “The CEO of NIIT Ltd, Rahul Keshav Patwardhan, has tendered his resignation due to compelling family reasons and has requested to be relieved from the close of business hours of 31 July 2017,” NIIT said in a BSE filing. It added that the board has accepted Patwardhan’s resignation at its meeting on Friday. Lalla currently heads the Global Corporate Business (GCB) which constitutes nearly 70% of the global business of NIIT. He has been with NIIT for 25 years and has served both in India and the US.",NIIT CEO Rahul Patwardhan tendered his resignation due to compelling family reasons and has requested to be relieved from the close of business hours of 31 July,19:35,NIIT CEO Rahul Patwardhan quits +2017-04-13,"Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd named Ravi Venkatesan as co-chairman and decided to payout Rs13,000 crore to shareholders through dividends and/or share buyback, in an attempt to buy peace with its promoters and other shareholders. Starting this year, the company will use 70% of its free cash flows (as against 63% earlier) to award dividends or buy back shares.The company made both announcements while declaring its results for the fourth quarter of 2016-17 and the full year. In the January-March quarter, Infosys reported a 0.7% sequential rise in dollar revenue to $2.57 billion (about Rs17,000 crore), allowing it to end fiscal 2016-17 with a 7.4% growth and $10.21 billion in revenue. Net profit declined 0.8% to $543 million in the March quarter, from $547 million in the October-December period. For the full year, the net profit was $2.14 billion.ALSO READ: Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout falls short of what investors needBut the big news in the company, which has, over the past few months witnessed an unseemly scrap between its promoters and board and management over issues related to corporate governance, an irregular and very generous severance package given to its former chief financial officer, and salaries of the chief executive and chief operating officer, was the elevation of Venkatesan, now an independent director, and the shareholder payout.The appointment of a co-chairman was one of founder N.R. Narayana Murthy’s demands when hostilities between the promoters and the board, led by chairman R. Seshasayee and management were at their peak in early February. At the time, an Infosys spokesperson termed Mint’s query on this “speculative”. It isn’t clear whether Venkatesan, former chairman of Microsoft India and the chairman of Bank of Baroda who has been on the board of Infosys since 2011, is the person Murthy wanted as co-chairman. Murthy didn’t respond to a query. Venkatesan responded with a text message saying: “Big challenges; bigger opportunities.”Analysts have also argued that the promoters could be seeking a share buyback. Two of Infosys’s former CFOs, T.V. Mohandas Pai and V. Balakrishnan have articulated this demand.Analysts see three possible reasons for the announcements made on Thursday.One, the board wants to buy peace so that the management can be insulated from what CEO Vishal Sikka calls as “distractions”, which were partially responsible for a poor 0.7% sequential growth during the January-March period.ALSO READ: Infosys will have to ‘live with’ H1B visa policy: Vishal SikkaTwo, Venkatesan’s elevation suggests that the board is working towards a succession plan, which could possibly even see Seshasayee stepping down in coming months, well before his term ends in June 2018. This too, was a demand raised by the promoters at one time.Three, the sudden elevation of Venkatesan could suggest that the founders have won their 10-month long battle to regain control of the board.Infosys’s board has Sikka and COO U.B. Pravin Rao as executive members and eight independent directors. Other than Seshasayee, Venkatesan and D.N. Prahlad, a former employee and a relative of Murthy who was appointed last year, the other independent directors are Punita Kumar-Sinha, John W. Etchemendy, Jeffrey Sean Lehman, Roopa Kudva and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw.Some analysts and executives in the IT industry who know both Murthy and Venkatesan say the two share a good rapport.“Knowing Ravi, I believe he will certainly be able to bring both parties (together) and (get them to) agree on things (so) that public spats don’t happen and consensus between the founders and the board and management is reached”.One proxy advisory firm said the appointment sends out the wrong message.“The appointment of Ravi Venkatesan as co-chairman may be construed as signs of Infosys’s board listening to feedback. But, in doing so, it has courted another controversy. IiAS believes that Infosys is now fighting the wrong battle: instead of focussing on its performance, it is now spending more time focussing internally and quelling perceptions,” IiAS, a proxy advisory firm, wrote in a note on Thursday.","Ravi Venkatesan’s appointment as Infosys co-chairman and Rs13,000 crore payout to shareholders seen as moves to placate founders led by N.R. Narayana Murthy",22:41,"Infosys seeks to buy peace with new co-chairman, Rs13,000 crore payout promise" +2017-04-13,"Seattle: Amazon.com Inc. is embracing artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver goods more quickly, enhance its voice-activated Alexa assistant and create new tools sold to others through its cloud-computing division, chief executive officer Jeff Bezos said in his annual shareholder letter.Changes ushered in by artificial intelligence and machine learning will help the companies that embrace them and put up barriers for those who don’t, the world’s second-richest man wrote in a 1,700-word letter released Wednesday.Bezos repeated familiar themes, such as the need to operate a business like it’s always “Day 1” to keep a start-up mentality and the ability to act quickly on limited information to stay ahead, what he calls “high-velocity decision making.” His emphasis on artificial intelligence and machine learning was the most concrete indication of areas in which the e-commerce giant will continue to invest.ALSO READ: Jeff Bezos is selling $1 billion of Amazon stock a year to fund rocket ventureMachine learning is the science of getting computers to act without being programmed, and is used in autonomous cars, speech-recognition and Internet search engines. The technology has influenced high-profile projects at Amazon such as drone delivery, its popular Echo voice-activated speaker and the new cashier-less Amazon Go convenience store unveiled late last year in Seattle, Bezos wrote.“But much of what we do with machine learning happens beneath the surface,” he wrote. “Machine learning drives our algorithms for demand forecasting, product search ranking, product and deals recommendations, merchandising placements, fraud detection, translations, and much more. Though less visible, much of the impact of machine learning will be of this type—quietly but meaningfully improving core operations.”ALSO READ : Amazon Web Services head Andrew Jassy reaps $35.4 million for 2016Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud-computing division, will offer affordable tools so clients can incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning into their own operations. Such tools have already been used by to detect diseases and increase crop yields, Bezos wrote. Bloomberg","Changes ushered in by artificial intelligence will help the companies that embrace them and put up barriers for those who don’t, says Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos",19:26,Jeff Bezos says artificial intelligence to fuel Amazon’s success +2017-04-09,"Mumbai: After three failed auctions, banks have finally managed to sell the Kingfisher Villa in Goa belonging to the troubled businessman Vijay Mallya to a city-based actor for Rs73 crore through a private treaty. The harried lenders to Kingfisher Airlines have ended the jinx to recover the dues of over Rs9,000 crore by monetising assets of the airline under their custody by selling the villa to actor-producer Sachiin Joshi. The sale of KFA Villa finally took off earlier this week after three failed auctions, the last being on 6 March. With this, the lenders’ only other asset is the Kingfisher House in the city, which had commanded a valuation of over Rs150 crore initially, but could not be auctioned even at the fourth round. Though both the parties—the 17-bank consortium led by State Bank of India (SBI) and the buyer actor-producer Sachiin Joshi, who owns Viiking Media, refused to confirm the deal, sources said the villa in north Goa has finally been sold to Joshi for Rs73.01 crore, far less than the reserve price the bankers set at upwards of Rs90 crore for auctions, which failed thrice.“Secured creditors have the right to go for a private treaty if the auction route fails. With this, it seems the jinx over the sale of KFA properties is over. The villa was sold through a bilateral agreement earlier this week for Rs 73.01 crore to actor-producer Sachiin Joshi,” a source who is aware of the development told PTI. The villa, spread over 12,350 sq. ft or three acres at Candolim (on the way to Fort Aguada), was legally owned by United Breweries Holdings, the parent of the airline. The lenders had taken physical possession of the villa in May 2016. The lenders’ bid to auction trademarks, including the brand value of the Kingfisher logo, in August 2016, too, was unsuccessful. The reserve price for the brands was set at Rs330 crore, which is not even a tenth of the Rs4,000 crore valuation it commanded when offered as collateral. Asked if a similar route will be followed to dispose of Kingfisher House in the city, which was once the headquarters of the airline, the source said with the sale of the villa, at least a process has been initiated. The source also said movable assets lying in the villa will be sold through a recovery officer as per the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) orders. For the third auction on 6 March, the reserve price for the villa was set at Rs73 crore, which was around 10% lower than the second auction held last December when the price of the sea-facing property was set at Rs81 crore. It was put under the hammer for the first time last October with a reserve price of Rs85.29 crore. The villa was used by Mallya to host lavish parties. SBI Caps Trustee was entrusted with auctioning the properties on behalf of the lenders. Mallya was declared a wilful defaulter and is wanted by authorities for default in payment for loans related to Kingfisher Airlines that was grounded in 2012. He owes over Rs9,000 crore to lenders like SBI, Punjab National Bank, IDBI Bank, Bank of Baroda, Allahabad Bank, Federal Bank and Axis Bank, among others. He left the country on 3 March last year and is currently said to be in Britain and his extradition talks are on. The SBI-led consortium had also reduced the reserve price of the Kingfisher House by 10% to Rs103.50 crore from Rs115 crore during the third failed auction last December. In the first auction in March 2016, the reserve price was set at Rs150 crore, but was lowered to Rs135 crore in the second held last August.",Lenders to Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines have sell Kingfisher Villa to actor Sachiin Joshi for a reported Rs73.01 crore,23:45,Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Villa sold to actor Sachiin Joshi for Rs73 crore +2017-04-14,"Apple Inc. has hired a team of biomedical engineers as part of a secret initiative, initially envisioned by late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, to develop sensors to treat diabetes, CNBC reported, citing three people familiar with the matter.An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.The engineers are expected to work at a non-descript office in Palo Alto, California, close to the corporate headquarters, CNBC said.The news comes at the time when the line between pharmaceuticals and technology is blurring, as companies are joining forces to tackle chronic diseases using high-tech devices that combine biology, software and hardware, thereby jump-starting a novel field of medicine called bioelectronics.Last year, GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Google’s parent firm Alphabet Inc. unveiled a joint company aimed at marketing bioelectronic devices to fight illness by attaching to individual nerves.US biotech firms Setpoint Medical and EnteroMedics Inc. have already shown early benefits of bioelectronics in treating rheumatoid arthritis and suppressing appetite in the obese.Other companies playing around the idea of bioelectronics include Medtronic Plc, Proteus Digital Technology, Sanofi SA and Biogen Inc. Reuters",The development takes place as pharma and tech companies join forces to tackle chronic diseases using high-tech devices,01:24,Apple hires secret team to develop sensors for treating diabetes: report +2017-03-24,"After a year of underperformance, the BSE Capital Goods index started the New Year on a positive note. Compared with an 8.7% increase in the Sensex, the capital goods index gained 12.2% in January-February as the companies delivered revenue growth despite a general sluggishness in investment activity.A Kotak Institutional Equities’ review of six notable companies’ results shows that revenues increased by about 5% in the December quarter.In the previous two quarters, they grew in the range of 3-5%.A Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd’s review of 12 companies in the sector shows that aggregate revenues grew 6% from a year ago. Profits grew at an even faster pace as companies benefited from cost rationalization measures.“Domestic revenue of industrial companies showed moderate growth in 3QFY17, which is heartening. We attribute the pick-up in domestic revenues to (1) the low base of the past several quarters and (2) modest pick-up in investments in certain sectors such as railways, roads, power generation and transmission,” Kotak Institutional Equities added.Overall order inflows, which reflect the business environment and future prospects, remained muted.At an aggregate level, firms reviewed by both Kotak and Motilal Oswal saw a decline in order inflows. Both Larsen and Toubro Ltd and Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd reported a drop in order inflows. If one excludes these two firms, aggregate orders inflows will rise year-on-year, Motilal Oswal said.Compared with project-based firms, product companies did better.ABB India Ltd, Siemens Ltd, Thermax Ltd and GE T&D Ltd reported a year-on-year improvement in order inflows. According to Motilal Oswal, there is a rise in inquiries for small-ticket orders in conventional segments. Another broking firm, Sharekhan Ltd, says it is expecting better order inflows on improved prospects in international markets.While the commentary should provide comfort to investors, everybody is not convinced about the future growth trajectory yet. Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd’s study of ordering activity in West Asia, a large engineering procurement and construction market for Indian firms, shows that contract awards fell in the first 10 months of the current fiscal year.Of course, government-led investments in India have raised domestic market prospects. But as Kotak points out, conviction about immediate earnings growth trajectory is low right now. “The high valuations of industrial and infrastructure stocks reflect the market’s confidence in a recovery of revenues and profits in the medium term. We do not dispute the medium-term potential of investment in India but suspect that revenues will continue to be weak for the next few quarters,” Kotak adds.","Government-led investments have raised domestic market prospects, but conviction about immediate earnings growth trajectory is low right now, say analysts",06:22,Capital goods: No broad based recovery in order inflows yet +2017-04-13,"Hyderabad: Infosys Ltd’s decision to return Rs13,000 crore to shareholders is “too little”, said former chief financial officer V. Balakrishnan on Thursday, and added that appointing a co-chairman would make the structure much more complex at board level.“I think it’s a good step forward, but the quantum could have been bigger because they have Rs40,000 crore on their balancesheet. Returning Rs13,000 crore is too little,” Balakrishnan told PTI over the phone. “On go-forward basis, returning 70% of free cash flow is almost similar to what they (Infosys) have today—that is 50% of net profit,” Balakrishnan said.Infosys on Thursday said will payout up to Rs13,000 crore in FY18 either in dividends or via a buyback or a mix of both, after it reported an almost flat net profit in the March quarter and sales outlook that fell short of estimates.The Bengaluru-headquartered, NASDAQ-listed company said it would begin to pay 70% of annual free cash flow as dividend compared to a previous policy of sharing up to half its post-tax profit.“... I think the benchmark for IT services companies should be Accenture,” Balakrishnan added. “Accenture returned substantial part of existing cash, and also, if I am right, they returned around 90% of free cash flow to shareholders every year. So, progressively Infosys should move towards this. That is a good benchmark.”On the appointment of Ravi Venkatesan as co-chairman of Infosys, Balakrishnan said there is no substance in that because the company today has a chairman, chief executive, chief operating officer, co-COO, chief financial offer, and a deputy CFO.“And I think it’s too top heavy. And they have not articulated why this change is required now and what value it is going to add. So, I don’t want to read too much into it. I think it’s making the structure much more complex at the board level, and that has got its own repercussions,” he saidBalakrishnan also labelled Infosys results for the March quarter as disappointing. “Whole year (2016-17), they have not met numbers in any of the quarters. And guidance also looks muted. I think the performance is very challenging.”","Former CFO V. Balakrishnan calls Infosys results for the March quarter disappointing, wants the IT firm to emulate Accenture on dividend payout to shareholders",19:12,"Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout to shareholders too little: ex-CFO V. Balakrishnan" +2017-03-24,"Metal shares paused for breath in the December quarter, rising by 1.1%, coming on the back of a 14% increase in the September quarter. That pause did not hurt the sector apparently, as it gained over 15% in this quarter so far. A large part of that pause can be attributed to demonetisation, which had pulled down the broader market as well.Demonetisation was expected to have an adverse effect on the demand for metals, especially steel, due to fears that automobiles and real estate will get affected. While real estate has indeed been affected, automobiles recovered rather quickly, except for two-wheelers. Sales did not get badly affected, either.In some cases, there were reports that dealers had stocked up on inventory using old currency during the initial days, while in steel, an expectation that prices will be increased led to higher purchases. When companies announced results, the effects of demonetisation were hardly seen. Output was higher for most firms, especially as they were producing more metal from expanded or new capacity. Although domestic demand was subdued, exports have proved to be a viable option. Rising metal prices have helped. Overall, the metals sector saw sales increase by 12.9%, while operating profit increased by 19.6%.Price realizations have played a supportive role. Steel prices have been trending up, supported by rising iron ore prices and coking coal prices, too. The current quarter has seen that continue but iron-ore prices have come off their highs. Non-ferrous metals continue to do well. There is some concern that the treatment and refining charges earned by copper firms may see some pressure in 2017.Overall, the outlook for metal firms continues to look good. One weak link is that private sector capital investment is not picking up smartly. Along with a weakness in the real estate sector, that does not augur well for domestic metal demand. However, global trends are looking up, which augurs well for exports and prices. External risks include a setback to China’s plans to regulate output and if the US Federal Reserve hikes rates by more than expected.","The outlook for metal companies continues to look good, but the one weak link is that private sector capital investment is not picking up smartly",06:14,Metals: Waiting for domestic consumption to pick up speed +2017-03-24,"Cement demand in the December quarter was impacted by demonetisation in most parts of the country, with southern India being an exception.Pan-India firms ACC Ltd and Ambuja Cements Ltd saw a 9% year-on-year (y-o-y) decline in volumes; and for UltraTech Cement Ltd, it was a 2% y-o-y fall. South-based firms Dalmia Bharat Ltd (36% y-o-y), India Cements Ltd (22% y-o-y) and Orient Cement Ltd (19% y-o-y) saw strong volume growth, benefiting from improved institutional demand in Andhra Pradesh/Telangana and a low-base effect on account of floods in Chennai during the same period a year ago. As a result, on an overall basis, cement companies reported a flat volume growth at 37 million tonnes (mt) in the third quarter.Not only demand, profitability also took a hit as production costs increased. Fuel prices, especially those of petroleum coke (petcoke), surged Rs400-500/tonne in the past quarter. According to a Kotak Institutional Equities (KIE) report, on a sequential basis, profitability of cement companies declined 11% to Rs753/tonne, though y-o-y it is up 10%.Meanwhile, low demand kept realizations subdued.In the past two months, the impact of demonetisation has subsided and the demand scenario has improved, but it remains below normal levels, especially retail demand. A pick-up in government spending on infrastructure and affordable housing projects may lead to a sequential demand uptick, but y-o-y demand would decline mainly due to a high base since demand growth in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2016 was strong. Cement prices in the country, except the south, have begun to rise, but if this improvement in cement prices doesn’t sustain, then realizations would decline sequentially in the March quarter.That apart, another worry is surging input costs. In the December quarter, a slew of cement manufacturers opted for alternative fuels to minimize the adverse impact on margins, while some others made use of the low-cost petcoke stock they were left with. As per analysts, the full impact of the rise in petcoke prices will be felt in the March quarter as most cement companies are likely to have exhausted that inventory. Diesel price, too, is trending upwards which will result in higher road freight costs, raising the production cost per tonne.Though the shares of large-cap cement companies have recovered from where they were when demonetisation was announced and are currently trading at rich valuations, given these concerns, March quarter earnings would be lacklustre, indicating that valuations need to correct.","Cement prices have begun to rise; but if this improvement doesn’t sustain, realizations would decline sequentially in the March quarter",06:22,"Cement: After demonetisation, rising costs, unfavourable volume base to hurt " +2017-03-24,"If fiscal 2015-16 was annus horribilis for Indian banks, the year to March seems to be no different.Banks and their investors seem to be coming to terms with this as analysts have slashed their 2016-17 earnings per share (EPS) estimates for the Bankex by about 10% since demonetisation.The third-quarter financial results of banks, particularly large corporate lenders, were as painful if not more than those of the previous quarters as bad loans continued to pile up.The stock of gross non-performing assets (NPA) of listed banks is now a massive Rs7.1 trillion ($108 billion), a rise of 60% from a year ago.Notwithstanding NPA war rooms such as that of Punjab National Bank or watch lists made public in the case of ICICI Bank Ltd and Axis Bank Ltd, the rate of bad loan accretion remained elevated. To be fair, though, the slippage rate (good loans turning bad) slowed in the December quarter from the previous quarters.Of course, setting aside money against the NPA stockpile was mandatory and while many banks cut corners (shown by the fall in their provision coverage ratio), some lenders continued to make higher provisioning. Nevertheless, the cumulative provisioning of all listed banks fell 8% in the December quarter to Rs45,147 crore. But recoveries and upgrades being unimpressive, this bad-loan pile will age and necessitate higher provisioning in the future, which explains the bearish outlook on the full-year earnings.Analysts have understandably pencilled in a jump in credit costs for the current financial year.If bad loans were the constant bugbear for banks, a new irritant that chipped away some of the fee income was the waiver of various charges on ATM, or automated teller machine, transactions and use of cards after the demonetisation of high-value bank notes.Given the twin blows, one out of three public sector banks made losses while the cumulative profit of all listed private banks fell 14% from a year ago.Even India’s most valuable bank, HDFC Bank Ltd, couldn’t go unscathed, and its profit growth fell to 15% for the third quarter from 20% in the second quarter.That the earnings per share estimate of 2017-18 for the Bankex is also down 12% indicates that many feel the pain will persist longer.But, ironically, the shares of banks, especially those of public sector lenders, have gained sharply even after many reported worsening asset quality metrics and reduction in their core business of lending.These gains are largely on the back of hopes that the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would work out a decisive plan to tackle the bad loan problem.While balance sheets do not seem to warrant current valuations, analysts believe that if a concrete plan for bad loan resolution emerges, corporate lenders such as ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and even State Bank of India, or SBI, could be re-rated.“In our view, a joint private-government initiative may work, with the private sector providing the capital and expertise to manage the bad loans and the government’s legal backing to the PSUs (public sector undertakings) to enable them to make suitable ‘haircuts’ to bad loans,” Kotak Securities wrote in a note.","While balance sheets do not seem to warrant current valuations, analysts say if a concrete plan for bad loan resolution emerges, corporate lenders could be re-rated",06:14,A bleaker FY17 for banks +2017-04-14,"New York: The spectacular failure of what was once the world’s biggest renewable-energy company has turned into a smorgasbord of wind and solar farms being gobbled up by infrastructure investors, clean-power developers and even a vegan soccer team.Since filing the largest US bankruptcy of 2016, SunEdison Inc. has hosted the biggest-ever sale of renewables assets. It’s shed at least $1 billion of assets from Southern California to Chile to India—some through record-breaking deals—including projects that would have died without new owners. With wind and solar supplying more than 11% of global electricity, the company’s debt-induced collapse enabled competitors to strengthen their existing hands or enter new markets.“Developers have been picking at the carcass,” Nathan Serota, a New York-based analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said in an interview. “As it turns out, the carcass was not so bad.”Based in Maryland Heights, Missouri, SunEdison amassed its portfolio by taking advantage of clean-energy’s push into the mainstream. Its financial engineering helped enable wind and solar to make up more than half of all new power-plant capacity in the US in the past decade. In the process, the company piled up $16.1 billion in liabilities by the time it sought court protection from creditors on 21 April, a year ago next week.Its ascent was marked by landmark acquisitions announced in the first seven months of 2015, making SunEdison a key driver for the clean-energy ambitions of some developing countries, including India.Now, it’s looking at how to make a comeback. After toggling between a wind-down or a reorganization since filing for bankruptcy, it announced last month a rough outline for restructuring. But it’s also sold off so many prized assets and lost key staff that questions remain about what of value will be left.“They’re not coming back as anything material, just the rump or shadow of their former self,” Swami Venkataraman, a New York-based analyst at Moody’s Investors Service, said last month.SunEdison didn’t offer any official comment.Bulk dealsWhether or not SunEdison prospers, its assets have found loving owners.Its piecemeal sales process started tentatively, but it soon became clear that bulk transactions were preferred. That meant fewer deals, a plus considering SunEdison had at one point marketed several gigawatts of assets. That favoured large companies able to cope with large-scale finance and project development, including the US’ largest independent power producer, NRG Energy Inc.“They could look at us with a high degree of transaction-certainty,” Craig Cornelius, NRG’s San Francisco-based senior vice president of renewables. “Otherwise, they would have needed four different buyers for the same portfolio.”NRG in November bought about 1.5 gigawatts of wind and solar projects—its biggest-ever clean-power acquisition—for as much as $183 million, depending on certain milestones. That saved three solar farms in Hawaii that a local utility had effectively halted, citing SunEdison’s uncertain status. Hawaii is a new solar state for NRG.In March, SunEdison one-upped itself with twin deals that would together represent the biggest-ever transfer of operating clean-power plants—4 gigawatts of wind and solar farms. Those transactions would shift its TerraForm yieldcos to Brookfield Asset Management Inc., Canada’s largest alternative-asset manager, valuing the two entities at $2.49 billion.The deals would make Brookfield—the owner of about 10,700 megawatts of clean-energy plants globally—a major solar force. Brookfield today owns a half-megawatt of solar, enough to power just 82 US homes.SunEdison’s aggressive bids in 2015 helped drive down solar tariffs in India, and its bankruptcy shocked the country that saw a big western company’s presence as a vote of confidence in its renewables goals.Greenko Energies Pvt., an Indian developer backed by sovereign wealth funds of Abu Dhabi and Singapore, emerged to fill the void. In January, it bought about 1.7 gigawatts of solar assets from SunEdison, valued at about $500 million.About 440 megawatts were in operation and another 1.2 gigawatts in development. The acquisition will help Greenko expand its generation capacity to about 5 gigawatts in the next two years, said Mahesh Kolli, its founder.With insolvency looming, SunEdison sold 198 megawatts of solar assets in Japan to BCPG. The deal accelerated BCPG’s clean-energy efforts, which date to its 2015 acquisition of solar projects in Thailand. It had already been evaluating Japan, and the SunEdison portfolio helped it establish itself there.Actis LLP, a London-based private equity firm, also used SunEdison assets to expand with a deal this year for a 1.5-gigawatt portfolio of Latin American solar projects. It wants to invest $525 million in renewable energy across Latin America, with a focus on Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay and Chile.In the UK, meanwhile, the Forest Green Rovers Football Club Ltd, purchased SunEdison’s residential rooftop business shortly before the bankruptcy filing.Forest Green Rovers, a vegan soccer team based in Gloucestershire, is owned by the clean-energy supplier Ecotricity Group Ltd. Chairman Dale Vince, who wants his club to be the greenest in the world, is building a new stadium made almost entirely of wood, and already uses a solar-powered robot lawnmower.ScaleIn late December through the first quarter, SunEdison closed more than $250 million in deals, according to a bankruptcy filing.“What made it exceptional was the scale of the overall portfolio—that it included every stage of development, that it covered every imaginable geography,” NRG’s Cornelius said. “That was the result of the expansion SunEdison had taken.” Bloomberg","Bankrupt Sun Edison has shed at least $1 billion of assets from Southern California to Chile to India, including projects that would have died without new owners",16:43,Developers from India to Chile find solar gems in SunEdison asset sale +2017-04-14,"Mumbai: Indian renewable energy companies have raised over $1.62 billion during the first quarter of 2017 in transactions ranging from venture capital (VC) funding, debt financing, project funding and merger and acquisitions (M&A), according to data from Mercom Capital Group Llc., a global clean energy consulting firm. Transactions in Indian solar and renewable energy companies made up for nearly half of the total global funding raised by solar companies around the world in the first three months of 2017. The global solar sector raised total corporate funding of $3.2 billion in the first quarter of 2017—nearly double of $1.6 billion raised in the fourth quarter of 2016, Mercom said in a report on Thursday. This included venture capital funding, public market and debt financing. The growth in the first quarter is higher by 15% when compared with the total corporate funding of $2.8 billion raised in the first quarter of 2016, the report said. In its study, Mercom tracked 233 new large-scale project announcements worldwide in the first quarter of 2017, totaling 12.7 gigawatt (GW). Large Indian transactions included ReNew Power Ventures Pvt. Ltd securing $200 million from a joint venture between Tokyo Electric Power and Chubu Electric Power, Greenko Energy Holdings raising $155 million from an affiliate of GIC, and Hero Future Energies securing $125 million from International Finance Corporation (IFC). ReNew Power also raised $475 million through its subsidiary Neerg Energy by selling green bonds to overseas investors and also secured $390 million in project funding from Asian Development Bank. Welspun Renewables Energy Pvt. Ltd (WREPL), now owned by Tata Power Co. Ltd, raised $176.27 million through issuance of non-convertible debentures on a private placement basis. Solairedirect, a French solar project developer, through its India unit, secured a $100.4 million loan from IDFC for the construction of its two solar projects, while India Power Green Utility, a subsidiary of India Power, acquired a 49% stake in two solar project companies from Punj Lloyd Infrastructure. “Q1 funding levels were up in the solar sector from the 2016 lows, largely due to increased debt financing activity. Corporate funding never reached $3 billion in any of the quarters in 2016. M&A activity was also strong with several large deals. Solar public companies also had a good first quarter,” said Raj Prabhu, chief executive, Mercom Capital Group. Global VC funding (venture capital, private equity, and corporate venture capital) for the solar sector saw a 78% rise in the first quarter of 2017 with $585 million in 22 deals compared to $329 million raised in the same number of deals in the fourth quarter of 2016, the report said. The amount raised was also higher when compared to $406 million raised in 23 deals in the first quarter of 2016. There were 29 solar M&A transactions in the first quarter of 2017 compared to 20 transactions in the fourth quarter of 2016 and 14 transactions in the first quarter of 2016. About 7.4 GW of solar projects were acquired in the quarter compared to 5 GW in the previous quarter, Mercom said. However, residential and commercial solar funds dropped to $630 million sequentially from $1.5 billion, the report said.","Indian renewable energy companies have raised over $1.62 billion of the total $3.2 billion raised by global solar sector in the first quarter of 2017, says Mercom",04:51,India solar transactions top global fund raise of $3.2 billion so far in 2017: report +2017-04-13,"Paris: Supply and demand in the oil market are close to matching up, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday, as landmark Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)-led production cuts are mitigated by rising US supply and slipping worldwide demand growth. The compliance rate with the agreement among OPEC members and some non-members, including Russia, “has been impressive”, the IEA said in its monthly oil market report, giving a lift to oil prices. But oil at above $50 a barrel has, in turn, attracted higher-cost producers in the United States back to the market, and frantic American drilling will push non-OPEC supply to surprisingly high levels throughout the year, the IEA predicted. “Although the oil market will likely tighten throughout the year, overall non-OPEC production, not just in the US, will soon be on the rise again,” it said in the report. At the end of November, OPEC agreed to cut output by 1.2 million barrels per day (mb/d) from 1 January, initially for a period of six months. Then in December, non-OPEC producers led by Russia agreed to cut their own output to 558,000 barrels per day. The aim was to reduce a glut in global oil supply that had depressed prices.Reports this week said that OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia is pushing the cartel’s producers to extend the agreement by another six months at their meeting in May. The IEA made no prediction about such a likelihood, but said that a consequence of OPEC “hypothetically” renewing the deal would be to support prices more, and give further encouragement to US shale oil producers. This means that non-OPEC oil production will soon be on the rise again.Also Read: Indian Oil shares rise over 3%“Even after taking into account production cut pledges from the eleven non-OPEC countries, unplanned outages in Canada as well as in the North Sea, we expect (non-OPEC) production will grow again on a year-on-year basis by May,” the report said. Meanwhile on the demand side, the IEA revised down its estimates for the worldwide thirst for oil, meaning there will be more oil available than previously thought. “New data shows weaker-than-expected growth in a number of countries including Russia, India, several Middle Eastern countries, Korea and the US, where demand has stalled in recent months,” it said. Demand growth for 2017 is now expected to be 1.3 million barrels per day, down from the IEA’s previous forecast of 1.4 million.","The IEA in its monthly oil market report said the compliance rate with the agreement among OPEC members and some non-members, including Russia, ‘has been impressive’",21:16,World oil market ‘close to balance’ despite OPEC cuts: IEA +2017-04-13,"Mumbai: Reliance Power Ltd posted more than a three-fold increase in March quarter consolidated profit, helped by a 40% fall in tax expenses during the period.The company, which is part of billionaire Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group, reported a consolidated profit of Rs216 crore for the quarter ended 31 March 2017, the company said. Fourth-quarter consolidated revenue from operations stood little changed at Rs2,466 crore. The company had posted a rise in its quarterly profit in three of the four quarters preceding March quarter, according to Thomson Reuters data. ReutersReliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.",Reliance Power reported a consolidated profit of Rs216 crore for the quarter ended 31 March 2017,18:20,Reliance Power Q4 profit jumps on lower tax expense +2017-04-13,"New Delhi: Shares of fuel retailer Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) rose by over 3% on Thursday, helping its market valuation surge past Rs 2trillion, following a decision that state-owned firms will have price revision on daily basis in select cities from next month. Also Read: Petrol, diesel prices to change daily from 1 MayThe scrip went up by 3.30% to end at Rs 422.40 on BSE. During the day, it soared 4.84% to Rs 428.70 —52-week high. On NSE, the shares moved up by 3.21% to close at Rs 422.40. IOC apart, shares of HPCL gained 3.07% and BPCL rose by 1.85% on BSE. Led by surge in the stock price, IOC’s market valuation rose to Rs 2,05,113.43 crore. With this the company became the ninth most-valued firm in terms of market capitalisation (m-cap). TCS remains the country’s most-valued firm followed by RIL, HDFC Bank, ITC, ONGC, SBI, HDFC and Infosys. In terms of volume, 6.19 lakh shares of the company were traded on BSE and over 77 lakh shares changed hands at NSE during the day. Besides, IOC eight companies have a market valuation of more than Rs 2 lakh crore.State-owned fuel retailers IOC, Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL), which own over 95% of nearly 58,000 petrol pumps in the country, will launch a pilot for daily price revision in five select cities from May 1 and gradually extend it to all over the country.",The Indian Oil shares rose after a decision that state-owned firms will have price revision on daily basis in select cities from next month,18:32,Indian Oil shares rise over 3% +2017-04-13,"Hong Kong: High in the Andes, in northwest Argentina, stories are told of fortunes being made in lithium, the wonder metal inside iPhones to Teslas that has captivated global investors from Warren Buffett down.This is not one of those stories.It begins in the lithium-rich salt pans of Argentina’s Salta Province and stretches all the way to South Korea and Hong Kong, leaving a trail of lawsuits and unhappy investors. The drama reinforces a timeless lesson about sinking money into natural resources: Chasing the latest rush, whether in lithium, uranium or oil, is a high-risk game.Just five years ago, investors were told that lithium mining company Lithea Inc. soon might be worth $1.4 billion. But last month, after various legal wrangles, a Hong Kong court ordered the assets of a businessman behind Lithea to be frozen as investigators chased him over unpaid debts.The man in question, Choi Sung-min, got in early on the lithium rush. In 2009, his British Virgin-registered Cordia Global Ltd. gained control of Lithea for $15 million, company and court documents show.Three years later, with the lithium rush in full swing, an investor presentation produced by Lithea valued Choi’s stake at $250 million. It went on to predict that its value would quickly quintuple once the mining company went public.Enter Kwon Ohjoon, chairman of Posco, the South Korean steel giant. Under Kwon, Posco had developed a new extraction method designed to speed up the processing of lithium-rich brine, which currently takes many months.Posco hired a geological firm run by Hong Kong-based Herman Tso, to assess two deposits in Argentina as potential partners for its technology, including Lithea.It turned out to be a controversial choice. Only a few months earlier, Tso had appraised a Russian coal mine part-owned by Choi, and his report was used to help raise millions in debt. Investors later claimed the mine was worthless—and the mine’s owner, Siberian Mining Group, saw its market value virtually wiped out in Hong Kong. Last year, a court in the city judged that Tso wasn’t even qualified to assess mines.Tso declined to comment on the report, while Choi says he has acted properly throughout. Posco said Tso’s bid was chosen because it was the fastest and cheapest.All of that came to light only after Posco’s foray into Argentina. In July 2013, Tso travelled to Salta Province near the Chilean border and pronounced Lithea’s project to be “technically viable” and worth $280 million, according to a copy of his report seen by Bloomberg.While Posco was talking with Lithea, troubles began to pile up for Choi. He was investigated by the Korea Deposit Insurance Corp., the government agency that insures bank deposits. Choi had guaranteed several loans from a Korean bank that had collapsed amid scandal, according to court documents.KDIC was trying to get the money back and said that Choi had routed a $2 million loan from the failed bank through various companies to his Russian coal mine.In an interview in Hong Kong, Choi denied KDIC’s version of events, saying he mostly used money made from an Indonesian mine venture to fund his investments. In 2014 he sold his stake in Lithea for $1.3 million -- less than 1 percent of the value that Tso had placed on the company a year earlier.The intrigue didn’t end there. The buyer was BMC Global Ltd., a BVI-registered firm owned by an associate of Choi’s who had worked with him on the Siberian Mining venture, corporate documents show. Choi said he sold his stake to BMC because of debts he owned to a Hong Kong lender and not to hide assets from KDIC.After learning about Choi’s troubles, Posco said it broke off talks with Lithea, only to reopen them in late 2014, on the understanding that Choi would no longer be involved. But a photo on Posco’s website shows Kwon and Choi together at the Argentina mine in early 2016. Choi said he was acting as a consultant. Posco said Kwon, 66, wasn’t available for interview.At the same time, KDIC continued to exert pressure on Choi. In February 2016, a BVI court agreed to freeze assets worth up to 102 billion won ($85 million) owned by Choi and six firms connected to him, court documents and Hong Kong exchange filings show.KDIC said it also obtained an order to freeze Choi’s $3.4 million Manhattan apartment.The Posco-Lithea venture, meantime, began to unravel. Last September, Posco finally pulled out, citing breach of contract, a Hong Kong court document shows. BMC was sued by a creditor, Tor Asia Credit Master Fund LP, according to Hong Kong court documents. The fund’s adviser, a firm set up by former Goldman Sachs banker Chris Mikosh and former Citadel LLC executive Patrick Edsparr, declined to comment.BMC last month agreed to sell Lithea to a Canadian company, LSC Lithium Corp., for $44 million. A spokeswoman for LSC declined to comment on the sale because the deal has not yet closed.The sale brings the story of the Argentine lithium deposit full circle, with a value of roughly twice what Choi paid in 2009—far less than the $280 million in Tso’s official valuation or the $1.4 billion Lithea’s presentation once boldly predicted. The mine has yet to produce any commercial lithium.","The drama reinforces a timeless lesson about sinking money into natural resources: Chasing the latest rush, whether in lithium, uranium or oil, is a high-risk game",11:49,Curious case of the billion-dollar lithium mine sold for a song +2017-04-21,"London: UK-based Indian-origin entrepreneur Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty House Group on Friday announced an in-principal agreement to acquire ArcelorMittal’s Georgetown Steelworks in South Carolina. The proposed deal between Liberty House and NRI steel magnate Lakshmi N. Mittal’s US steelworks includes a 5,40,000-tonne a year electric arc furnace and 6,80,000-tonne a year rod mill. The agreement is subject to final terms between the two parties and completion of due diligence by Liberty over the coming weeks, a joint statement said. If completed as planned, the acquisition will give Liberty House the opportunity to reopen and revitalise business, which was an important part of the state’s industrial infrastructure for 47 years before its closure in August 2015. It would also mark the first significant step in Liberty’s plan to make major investments in the US steel industry, the UK-based company said. “This is a landmark day for Georgetown and its residents, particularly families with a previous stake in the steel industry who will now get a chance to rediscover what was lost. Our agreement in principle with ArcelorMittal opens the door to the eventual restoration of several hundred jobs, both directly and in the supply chain, and it gives this region’s economy a new industrial focus,” Gupta said. ALSO READ: Tata Steel to issue debt securities of up to Rs9,000 croreThe businessman behind the GreenSteel strategy of Liberty House has been instrumental in a string of recent acquisitions of struggling steel units in the UK, including those formerly owned by NRI industrialist Swraj Paul’s Caparo Group and Tata Steel. He explained: “This is a key first step for us in the US. We’re keen to apply the same low-carbon GreenSteel vision here as we are doing in the UK. Acquiring the plant at Georgetown, with its ability to recycle scrap steel in an arc furnace, gives us a strong platform from which to launch our strategy in the US. “We’re confident that, with the right support from the community and authorities, we can make Georgetown and other US steel plants competitive, profitable and sustainable.” Confirming the provisional agreement, John Brett, president and CEO of ArcelorMittal US, said: “We have achieved our goal of identifying a purchaser with extensive steel experience and a commitment to returning this site to its steelmaking capability. We hope the community will welcome this opportunity that will preserve the facility and equipment and create good jobs with good wages.” Liberty House has also been in discussion with United Steelworkers and said it is confident that the workers’ union will support and assist in the process of recruiting a workforce to re-open the plant and rebuild the business. The 6,00,000 sq ft Georgetown plant sits on a 60-acre site next to a deep-water port along the Sampit River. When operating at full capacity the steelworks employed more than 320 workers directly and supported hundreds more jobs in the local economy. The plant has traditionally served the construction, automotive and industrial markets. Liberty’s GreenSteel strategy is aimed at achieving a competitive, low-carbon and sustainable steel industry worldwide.","The proposed deal between Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty House and Lakshmi N. Mittal’s ArcelorMittal includes a 5,40,000-tonne a year electric arc furnace and 6,80,000-tonne a year rod mill",19:22,Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty House to acquire ArcelorMittal’s US unit +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: Steelmaker Tata Steel Ltd said its board has approved issue of debt securities of up to Rs9,000 crore in order to refinance existing debt and to meet working capital requirements.The issue will be in the form of non-convertible debentures (NCDs) on private placement or foreign currency or rupee-denominated bonds, or in a combination, in one or more tranches, Tata Steel said in a BSE filing late on Thursday. Earlier on Thursday, the company’s board had met to consider the proposal for fund raising.“The funds will primarily be deployed towards re-financing the existing debt, capex/working capital requirements and general corporate purposes. The board of directors also authorized the Finance Committee of the board to determine and approve the timing and terms of such issue of securities,” the filing said.As on September 2016, Tata Steel had a consolidated debt of Rs82,777.51 crore. The company has in recent months divested certain overseas assets to cut losses. In February, the company posted its first profit in five quarters due to strong performance by its Indian business, a rebound in demand and higher pricing.On Wednesday, Economic Times reported that Tata Steel plans to pay $663 million to its UK pensioners as one-time settlement under a new scheme Regulated Appointment Arrangement. Tata Steel declined to comment on the story.The one-time payout could “remove the overhang of potential deficit contributions and the stock should likely re-rate”, Shivraj Gupta, analyst at Citigroup Global Markets Inc., said in a note to clients.In December, subsidiary Tata Steel UK reached an agreement with trade unions to replace its defined benefit pension scheme British Steel Pension Scheme with a defined contribution plan.At Rs454.30 a share, Tata Steel’s shares were little changed on Friday morning on the BSE.","Tata Steel board has approved issue of debt securities of up to Rs9,000 crore in order to refinance existing debt and to meet working capital requirements",10:46,"Tata Steel to issue debt securities of up to Rs9,000 crore" +2017-04-21,"Chennai: Ashok Leyland on Friday said that 10,664 units of its commercial vehicles were impacted by the Supreme Court ban on BS-III vehicles but the financial hit will be minimal as the affected engines would be upgraded for aftermarket sales. The Hinduja flagship firm said the BS-III engines would be upgraded to BS-IV standard using its new intelligent exhaust gas re-circulation (iEGR) technology. “Out of a total of 10,664 units of BS-III vehicles, 95% were with us, not with dealers. So we will be upgrading the engines of those vehicles using our indigenously developed iEGR,” Ashok Leyland managing director Vinod Dasari said. The cost of fitting iEGR technology will be just around Rs20,000 per engine and these engines will be used for sales in the aftermarket at a premium, he added. “We can sell these engines at around Rs2 lakh though usually the BS-III engines are priced around Rs1.5 lakh. So the net financial impact on us because of the BS-III ban will be minimal,” Dasari said. He did not give details of the iEGR technology, citing it being a trade secret, but claimed it “is a simple innovative solution of achieving the desired results in order to meet BS-IV norms”. Dasari said BS-IV compliant engines with iEGR have 10% higher fuel economy and can be used for engines of up to 400 horsepower. Ashok Leyland has already started converting 250 old BS- III engines to BS-IV standard using iEGR. “It will take about two to three months to get all the BS-III engines (converted) to BS-IV. It is not about the financial impact but it’s about effort needed to do so, “ he added. The new BS-IV compliant engines would be fitted on the chassis of the affected vehicles for sale in the market. Ashok Leyland has been selling BS-IV compliant commercial vehicles since 2010, Dasari said. Last month, the Supreme Court had banned sale and registration of vehicles with the older BS-III emission norms from 1 April, in a blow to auto firms saddled with a stock of over 8 lakh such vehicles valued up to Rs20,000 crore.",Ashok Leyland said the BS-III engines would be upgraded to BS-IV standard using its new intelligent exhaust gas re-circulation (iEGR) technology,16:57,"Ashok Leyland says over 10,000 vehicles impacted by BS-III ban " +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Vodafone has agreed to sell 9.5% additional stake to Aditya Birla Group for Rs 130 per share after they merge their telecom operations to create the country’s largest operator worth more than $23 billion. Aditya Birla Group has filed with the BSE the composite scheme of amalgamation between Vodafone and Idea Cellular, which stated that the merged entity shall be under the joint control of the two firms and will be governed by the shareholders’ agreement.In the merged entity, Vodafone will hold 50% stake, while Aditya Birla Group hold 21%. Upon completion of merger, Vodafone will transfer 4.9% shares of merged entity to Aditya Birla Group for Rs 3,874 crore. Post such transfer, Aditya Birla Group shareholding will increase to 26% and Vodafone shareholding will reduce to 45.1%, according to the scheme. The remaining 28.9% will be held by other shareholders. Also, Aditya Birla Group will have the right to acquire more shares from Vodafone at a price of Rs 130 per share, in order to equalise the shareholdings over 4 years. If equal shareholding is not achieved within four years, Vodafone will sell down its shareholding to equalise its shareholding with Aditya Birla Group over the following 5 years, the scheme said. Until equalisation the voting rights on additional shares of Vodafone shall be exercised jointly by Vodafone and Aditya Birla Group. The two firms had last month announced merger of their telecom operations in India to create the country’s largest mobile phone operator with a 35% market share.The combined entity of Vodafone and Idea Cellular, which are India’s number 2 and 3 mobile players, respectively, will overtake Bharti Airtel and would be in a better position to take on a raging price war unleashed by newcomer Reliance Jio in the world’s second-largest market.The new company, which will come into being over the next two years, will be headed by Kumar Mangalam Birla, while Vodafone will have the right to appoint chief financial officer. The CEO and the chief operating officer will be appointed with the approval of both companies. The two firms will have three nominees each on the board of the new entity, the scheme said. The merger excludes Vodafone’s 42% stake in Indus Towers and will be effected through issuing new shares in Idea to Vodafone, which will result in Vodafone deconsolidating Vodafone India. This mechanism will facilitate reducing Vodafone Group net debt by Rs 55,200 crore and lowering Vodafone Group leverage by around 0.3x net debt/EBITDA, the scheme added. Vodafone-Idea is the second merger in the sector to be announced this year.In February, Bharti Airtel unveiled plans to buy the Indian business of the Norway-based Telenor. The merged venture will create India’s largest mobile operator with almost 400 million users and a 35% market share by customers. The deal gives Vodafone India an implied enterprise value of Rs 82,800 crore and Idea an enterprise value of Rs 72,200 crore.",Vodafone has agreed to sell 9.5% additional stake to Aditya Birla Group for Rs 130 per share after the Vodafone’s merger with Idea Cellular,18:29,Vodafone to sell over 9% additional stake to Aditya Birla Group post merger +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Niche bike maker Royal Enfield on Friday announced its entry into Brazil, the fourth largest two-wheeler market in the world. The company has entered the Latin American country with three models—Bullet 500, Classic 500 and the Continental GT cafe racer. It has set up its second direct distribution subsidiary outside India in Brazil, with having established the first such entity in the US in 2015.The newly-formed subsidiary—Royal Enfield Brazil—at Sao Paulo will sell bikes to dealers, as well as conduct all front-end development and support activities such as marketing and after-sales in the country. A flagship store has also been opened in the city. “We are delighted to be formally entering Brazil, and are able to offer our motorcycles to a whole new group of customers, that will enable us to realise our competitive potential in the fourth biggest motorcycle market in the world,” Royal Enfield president Rudratej (Rudy) Singh said in a statement. The company sees a huge opportunity in Brazil that has a hugely underserved mid-sized motorcycle market with a massive commuter base, he added. “With motorcycle enthusiasts in Brazil waiting to upgrade to simple yet timeless and evocative motorcycles, Royal Enfield with its authentic British pedigree will be able to provide an excellent alternative with an accessible cost of ownership,” Singh said.In the coming years, Brazil can become one of the company’s biggest markets outside of India and help it become a leader in the middle weight motorcycle segment globally, he added. Royal Enfield already has strong presence in Colombia, another important two-wheeler market in Latin America. With a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 50 per cent in the last six years, Royal Enfield has become one of the most profitable automobile brands in the world. The company sold more than 6.6 lakh units globally in 2016-17 fiscal. It intends to ramp-up its production capacity to up to 9 lakh motorcycles by 2018-end, to meet its increasingly rising global demands.","Royal Enfield has entered Brazil with three models—Bullet 500, Classic 500 and the Continental GT cafe racer",16:27,Royal Enfield rides into Brazilian market +2017-04-13,"New Delhi: The government aims to auction coal blocks for commercial mining by end-December, coal secretary Susheel Kumar told television channel ET NOW on Thursday.India is the world’s third-biggest producer and importer of the fuel, and with coal accounting for about 70% of India’s power generation, the government wants to boost domestic output to cut imports. Reuters",Coal secretary Susheel Kumar says government aims to auction coal blocks for commercial mining by end-December,10:49,Govt hopes to auction coal blocks for commercial mining by end-December +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: Danish stereo and speaker system maker Bang and Olufsen is planning to set up 8-10 standalone “satellite” stores this fiscal year to expand the luxury lifestyle brand’s reach in India.“We are looking at setting up at least 8-10 stores by the end of fiscal year 2018 in cities like Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Kolkata, and Ahemdabad,” said Gaganmeet Singh, CEO of Beoworld India Pvt. Ltd that licenses the Bang and Olufsen brand in India. He was speaking at the launch of the company’s final double-storey flagship store at the Taj Santa Cruz Hotel in Mumbai. Bang and Olufsen set up its first flagship store that sells all its home and recreational range of products at the luxury Emporio mall in Delhi.Each of the new “satellite stores”—of around 15-50 square metres—will cost the company Rs7-10 crore to set up, Singh said. He declined to share a total investment target.“We are already getting interest from malls and hotels in these cities such as hotel Taj Krishna in Hyderabad, Elante Mall in Chandigarh, Select City Walk in Delhi and others,” Singh said. “We are looking at the options.”Bang and Olufsen’s satellite stores will carry a limited range of their high-end products, focusing more on their affordable “B&O Play” range of speakers that start at Rs10,000-12,000 apiece.The flagship stores use more space as they carry Bang and Olufsen’s large screen televisions and customizable home theatre and sound systems that are priced at up to Rs3-5 crore each.To reach out to more customers, Singh said the company has been expanding its network of third-party sellers that has grown 30% annually.“Companies like Bose have the first mover advantage, they came to India much earlier,” Singh said. “The challenge is that not enough people know about Bang and Olufsen.”",Danish stereo and speaker system maker Bang and Olufsen set up its first flagship store —selling its home and recreational range of products—at Delhi’s Emporio mall ,10:37,Bang and Olufsen plans 8-10 stores in India this fiscal +2017-04-13,"New Delhi: Rather than inviting competitive bids for 1,000 megawatt (MW) wind power projects, the Central government should call for 5,000-6,000 MW tenders to give a clear direction to the wind power sector, the Indian Wind Turbine Manufacturing Association (IWTMA) said.“The government wants everything to be procured through competitive bidding. We are for it. In their first initiative, they started with competitive bidding for 1,000 MW. But we feel that 1,000 MW is not enough... you come with 5,000-6,000 MW,” said Sarvesh Kumar, chairman of IWTMA in an interview with Mint on Wednesday.“If you have given us a target to do 60,000 MW of wind power by 2022 which means there has to be a capacity addition of 6,000-7,000 MW every year. So keeping that in mind, they should come into competitive bidding with (tenders for) 5,000-6,000 MW. Industry is ready to meet those challenges and whatever the tariff comes we are ready to work with that,” Kumar added. IWTMA has already appealed to the ministry of new and renewable energy to announce a bid for 4-5 gigawatt in 2017-18 to give a definite momentum to the process.Kumar also stressed that “while competitive bidding is a good vehicle, it must also encompass freedom in open access to sell the power to both captive and group captive transaction.”Under the Paris Climate Agreement, the Indian government has committed to install 175 GW of renewable power by 2022, of which 100GW will be from solar power and 60GW from wind power. Wind is already the mainstay of India’s renewable power. Of about 50,018 MW of installed renewable power, about 57.3% (28,700 MW) comes from wind alone. The past few months have been very positive for the wind sector. In February 2017, wind power witnessed a significant drop in tariffs when it reached Rs3.46 kilowatt hour (kWh) for a 1,000 MW tender by state-run Solar Energy Corp. of India (SECI).Also Read: India wind power tariff follows solar route, falls to record lowThe government also recently announced that India added a record 5,400 megawatts (MW) of wind power in 2016-17, exceeding its 4,000MW target.Also Read: India adds record 5,400MW wind power in 2016-17IWTMA also acknowledged the support of MNRE in framing and enforcement of various policies and initiatives for the wind power sector. The association in collaboration with the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) is organizing a mega three-day conference ‘Windergy India 2017’ during 25-27 April in Delhi. Stakeholders and experts from across the globe are expected to take part in the conference. IWTMA expressed confidence that the industry will surpass the government’s target of 60 GW by wind by 2022. Chintan Shah, vice-chairman of IWTMA, said, “Tremendous opportunity lies in exports from India as our goods are accepted with international quality.” “We need to sort out problems of freight, logistics, and favourable lines of credit and this can witness an export of 2 to 2.5 GW per annum in a span of 18 to 24 months,” Shah added.","1,000 MW wind power projects not enough, government should call for 5,000-6,000 MW tenders, says chairman of IWTMA",10:01,"Govt should call for 5,000-6,000 MW tenders for wind power sector: IWTMA" +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Ahead of Kia Motors’ India entry, its sister company and the country’s second-largest car maker Hyundai Motor India Ltd said both companies will have separate strategies and aggressively compete with each other.“Kia and Hyundai will be different. Management, operations and network... Everything will be different. Vendors can be shared for cost reduction, but strategy will be different,” Y.K. Koo, managing director of Hyundai India, said in a press briefing.“We will be aggressive against Kia. They are competition,” he added.Koo said it will not be easy for Kia to make inroads in India since the market has changed dramatically.“Since 1997-98, the auto industry has changed a lot; the competition is very different. Now, the competition is very tough. Almost 19 players... To set up a factory is okay since people have money, but to survive and continue the success is a different issue,” he explained.Reuters on 7 February first reported that Kia is likely to choose a site for its plant in Andhra Pradesh’s Anantapur district. The Economic Times newspaper on 17 April said Kia’s investments in Andhra Pradesh could be as much as Rs10,000 crore. Mint could not verify these independently.Hyundai isn’t worried.“Already 19 players are here. If that becomes 20 or 21, it does not make a lot of difference,” said Koo, who was part of the original team that set up Hyundai’s operations in India.“Kia is not the same as Hyundai. Their DNA is different. They have different sales and marketing strategies. Product line-up could also be different,” he added.Hyundai has had a phenomenal ride in the Indian market. The Indian business is the third largest contributor to the South Korean firm’s revenue after its home market and China; in 2013, it accounted for 14.5% of global sales. Since inception, Hyundai has invested $3 billion in India. It has two car assembly facilities, an engine manufacturing unit (all in Chennai) and a research and development centre (in Hyderabad). Hyundai India is planning to invest Rs5,000 crore as it looks to double its sales in India to 1 million units by 2021. The company also plans to introduce eight models by 2020, including three models in the compact, small sport utility vehicle (SUV) and hybrid segments.The company plans to sell 682,000 units in 2017-18 and aims to maintain its market share, which stood at 17% during the fiscal year ended 31 March.On Thursday, Hyundai introduced a new version of its compact sedan Xcent, priced between Rs5.38 lakh and Rs8.41 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi). The six petrol variants are priced between Rs5.38 lakh and Rs7.51 lakh, while the five diesel trims are tagged between Rs6.28 lakh and Rs8.41 lakh. The company will keep selling the older versions of Xcent and old Grand i10 under the Prime brand to the fleet segment, Koo said.",Hyundai India managing director Y.K. Koo says will not be easy for Kia Motors to make inroads in India since the car market has changed dramatically,09:18,"Hyundai, Kia Motors will aggressively compete in India: MD Y.K. Koo" +2017-04-13,"New Delhi: Solar power tariff discovered through auctions hit a new low on Wednesday with NTPC Ltd’s 250 mega watt (MW) project at Kadapa in south-central Andhra Pradesh getting awarded for a flat Rs3.15 per unit. The project was awarded to the Indian arm of French clean energy firm Solairedirect SA, said an NTPC official, who asked not to be named. Solairedirect Energy India Pvt. Ltd already has 182 MW of projects in India including 97 MW in operation and 85MW under construction. Power, coal, mines and new and renewable energy minister Piyush Goyal tweeted on Wednesday that solar tariff achieved another record low at a flat Rs3.15 a unit during the Kadapa auction by NTPC. The previous low was Rs3.3 a unit levelised tariff recorded when the 750 MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh was auctioned by Rewa Ultra Mega Power Ltd in February. Levelised tariff indicates the average fixed and variable tariff over the entire term of the power purchase agreement.Solar power tariff has been declining on account of sharply declining prices of solar panels, better structuring of the project that reduces risk for project developers and better currency hedging deals that make financing available at competitive cost. Also, many pension and sovereign wealth funds looking for not very high, but stable and long-term returns are willing to finance clean energy projects in India. At current rates, solar power generation cost is at par with that of thermal power generation. That is prompting many businesses in the services and manufacturing sectors to go for captive solar power generation as they could save on the cross-subsidy component that makes power from the grid costlier. When the first 150 MW of solar power project was tendered under the National Solar Mission (NSM) in 2010, the average tariff quoted was Rs12.16 a unit. Tariff has fallen since then almost in line with Chinese spot module prices, which have fallen by approximately 80% since 2010, according to Mercom Communications India, a clean energy intelligence provider.",Solar power tariff discovered through auctions hit a new low of Rs3.15 per unit with NTPC’s 250MW project at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh ,09:42,Solar power tariff falls to record low of Rs3.15 a unit +2017-04-13,"
Solar power tariff hit a new low of Rs3.15 per unit in an auction on Wednesday. The previous low was Rs3.30 per unit discovered in February, while in an auction a year ago, the discovered tariff was about 40% higher at Rs4.34 per unit.Plunging solar tariffs may well have a disruptive impact on the power sector in the short term. The steep fall in tariffs is triggering a rethink among states, leading to a slowing down of fresh tenders and auctioning activity. According to Mercom Capital Group, a clean energy communications firm, states want new power purchase agreements (PPAs) to match the newly discovered solar tariffs and this is slowing tendering activity.Jharkhand which auctioned about 1,000 megawatts of solar capacity more than a year back is yet to sign PPAs, points out Mercom. “In this case the discom (power distribution company) was unwilling to sign the PPAs for tariffs above Rs5 per kWh claiming it is not viable for the discom,” adds Mercom. A derived unit of energy, kWh stands for kilowatt hour.Subdued demand is a major reason for the reluctance from states to sign PPAs. But the weak financial condition of discoms is also forcing them to lean towards cheaper tariffs. This can spell trouble for PPAs signed at higher tariffs some time back, as discoms will now find them unpalatable. “Due to aggressive renewable energy targets in some states such as Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, solar grew even at high tariff levels, only to leave these states struggling with finances a few years later and finding it difficult to take on new solar generation,” adds Mercom.According to an industry expert, every PPA has legal sanctity. But the weak financial condition of discoms and availability of cheaper energy options (electricity is cheaper in the spot energy market) means projects locked in at higher prices can face indirect risks such as payment delays or power offtake curtailments, the expert points out.The risks are not confined to the green energy sector. JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd in a report last month warned that weak demand and the poor financial condition of state electricity boards can hit conventional energy contracts as well. “With depressed power demand, even projects with PPAs can suffer from delayed payments/PPA cancellations, wherein the rates are high (>Rs4.5/kWh). This is because cheaper power is available in long-term bids at around Rs4/kWh, while solar/wind bids have plunged to Rs3.4-3.5/kWh levels. Power is available on exchanges at Rs2.5/kWh,” pointed out JM Financial.Of course, renewable energy and the spot electricity market are still relatively small in scale (compared to the whole power market). So they may not have a large impact yet. But the growing prevalence of renewable energy, plunging tariffs and easing congestion in the transmission sector, which makes it easier for states to buy electricity in the spot market, mean these segments are emerging as reliable options and they can have a disruptive impact on the power sector.",Plunging solar power tariffs may well have a disruptive impact on the power sector in the short term,07:59,Solar power tariffs: A race to the bottom? +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: Indian billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla is exploring entry into the production of carbon fibre, a high-strength and light-weight composite material expected to be a $4.7 billion global business by 2022, according to a person familiar with his thinking.The Aditya Birla Group, the $40 billion mining-to-mobile phone carrier conglomerate, may buy the technology to manufacture carbon fibre at one of its existing overseas manufacturing facilities, said the person, asking not to be identified because the plan is private. Another option is to buy a carbon fibre plant from another company if the technology is too complex to be adapted at Birla plants, the person said.Carbon fibre is finding increasing traction among defence manufacturers and automobiles makers that seek strong, high-tensile, heat-resistant and light materials. The market for carbon fibre — dubbed the ‘wonder material’ by The Guardian newspaper last month — is estimated to more than double to about $4.7 billion by 2022 from $2.2 billion in 2015, according to an Allied Market Research report.“The main positive is that it’s a much lighter material versus competitors such as steel or aluminium — but is just as strong,” said Johnson Imode, a London-based analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. “This makes for energy and efficiency savings for customers.”The group’s consideration is still at an exploratory stage and there’s no timeline for entering this business, the person said. The demand from the automobile sector is particularly high as designers aim to make cars both lighter, stronger and less polluting, according to this person. A company spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment.Thinner than hairCarbon fibre is a thin long strand, far thinner than even a human hair, in which carbon atoms are bonded together in a crystal alignment that makes the fibre incredibly strong for its size. Thousands of these strands are entwined together to form a yarn, which can be then woven into a fabric or used as it is.The applications for the material range from aircraft and spacecrafts to racing cars, sailboat masts, wind turbines and even golf clubs. The market could grow as much as 10 percent annually, Imode estimates.Nearly half of the airframe of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is comprised of carbon fibre reinforced plastic and other composites, according to the airline manufacturer.Japan, US and Europe are home to the bulk of the world’s carbon fibre manufacturers, making it one of the likely corporate hunting grounds for Birla to scout for a target. The biggest players include Toray Industries Inc., Hexcel Corporation, Mitsubishi Rayon Co., Teijin Ltd., SGL Group, Cytec Industries Inc., Nippon Graphite fibre Corp. and Zoltek Companies, Inc.The conglomerate, if it takes the plunge, would be the first large Indian player in the carbon fibre market.Birla, 49, known for his penchant for dealmaking, has sealed two dozen mergers and acquisitions in the past two decades.He’s in the process of combining his mobile-phone unit Idea Cellular Ltd. with Vodafone Group Plc’s Indian business to form the nation’s largest wireless carrier. UltraTech Cement Ltd. had bought cement units from debt-laden Jaiprakash Associates Ltd. last year. This month he received a nod from shareholders to merge two listed group firms, Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd. and Grasim Industries Ltd., to create a behemoth with $9 billion in combined revenues. Bloomberg","Kumar Mangalam Birla is exploring entry into the production of carbon fibre, a high-strength and light-weight composite material expected to be a $4.7 billion global business by 2022",09:01,Kumar Mangalam Birla said to eye booming global carbon fibre market +2017-03-24,"The mood was sombre in the December quarter among real estate firms. The November ban on old, high-value banknotes affected the real estate sector hugely, given that it is infamous for cash transactions.As liquidity was sucked out of the system through the note ban, and with the fear of unearthing “black money” transactions looming over the sector, residential unit sales on a pan-India basis fell 30-40%. In fact, realty firms were among the worst performers in terms of revenue and operating performance.For instance, the net consolidated revenue at DLF Ltd—the largest developer—plunged 29% in value terms. Even the more conservative Sobha Developers Ltd, which has a strong southern presence, posted a 22% drop in revenue year-on-year.Likewise, the entire sector saw tepid sales, almost nil new launches and even cancellation of booked units by customers, on fears that demonetisation could slow down the process of recovery in realty. Obviously, this had an impact on profits, too, in spite of firms being proactive in controlling marketing costs. Hence, profit margins shrank, too.Discernibly, though, those with a significant exposure to commercial assets sailed through plummeting residential sales. The quarter saw sector analysts turn positive on demand and rental rates for office space and malls. A report by Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd says, “amid the demonetisation storm and the high debt levels, we prefer firms that have a strong portfolio of operational rental assets and mid-income housing.”The December quarter results show that rental income from commercial property is alleviating, at least partially the financial implications of rising interest costs from the unsold inventory burden in residential projects. Even the real estate investment trusts (REITs) and private equity firms that are bold enough to enter the realty space, prefer commercial assets. So, firms such as Phoenix Mills Ltd, Prestige Estates and Developers Ltd and Brigade Enterprises Ltd are on a stronger foundation for now.Meanwhile, although the BSE Realty index has recovered from the demonetisation blues, retail investor interest is likely to be restricted to firms with asset-light balance sheets or with exposure to retail and commercial segments as a recovery in residential unit sales is still a long way off.","December quarter results show rental income from commercial assets is alleviating, at least partially. Residential properties still not up to the mark",05:24,Real estate firms with commercial portfolio scored in December quarter +2017-04-21,"
Indian mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deal value surged in the first quarter of the calendar year, driven by the telecom sector, according to global deal tracking firm Mergermarket.Deal value rose to $17.9 billion in January-March, from $9.2 billion in the year-ago period, Mergermarket said in its report on quarterly M&A trends. The number of deals fell to 76 from 110 in the same period last year.The telecom sector alone witnessed three transactions worth $13.6 billion in the quarter, compared to just $60 million from two deals a year ago.The top telecom deal in the quarter was Vodafone Group Plc.’s merger of Vodafone India Ltd with Idea Cellular Ltd in a $12.7 billion transaction that accounted for 70.6% of the total deal value in this quarter.Another major deal in the telecommunication sector was global private equity fund KKR & Co Lp’s $948 million investment in Bharti Infratel Ltd for a 10.3% equity stake.The second best performing sector in M&A was energy, mining and utilities (EMU), in terms of deal value, recording 11 deals worth $1.5 billion in the quarter. Across the 11 deals, six were in the renewable energy space and were valued at $419 million, the report noted.Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd’s acquisition of an 80% equity stake in the KG-OSN-2001/03 field from Gujarat State Petroleum Corp. Ltd for about $995 million topped EMU sector deals, and was the second-biggest after the Vodafone India-Idea Cellular merger.Inbound M&A activity declined by 28.2% to $2.7 billion in the quarter compared with$3.8 billion in the year-ago period, despite strong foreign interest in the renewables sector. The number of inbound M&A transactions also fell to 39 from 51.Domestic M&A activity increased 181.2% from a year ago with deals worth $15.3 billion.Also, it was the third-highest first quarter by value for private equity buyouts since 2001 by Mergermarket records, with 19 deals worth $2 billion.India’s share of the Asia-Pacific deal value in the first quarter came to 13.2%— the highest across all quarters since 2013.","The telecom sector alone witnessed three M&A transactions worth $13.6 billion in the quarter, compared to just $60 million from two deals a year ago",05:05,Indian M&A deal value doubles in Mar quarter: Mergermarket +2017-03-22,"
It was a foregone conclusion that shares of Avenue Supermarts Ltd, which runs the D-Mart supermarket chain, would list at a huge premium on Tuesday. But a 115% appreciation is taking things too far, notwithstanding the pedigree of the company.At Tuesday’s closing price of Rs641.60, the D-Mart stock trades at 77 times estimated earnings for fiscal year 2016-17 and 55 times one-year forward earnings. “Valuations are certainly expensive; the euphoria around the listing is driving prices,” says Arun Kejriwal, director of Kejriwal Research and Information Services Pvt. Ltd.On an EV (enterprise value) to Ebitda basis too, valuations are sky-high at around 31.6 times, based on IIFL Institutional Equities’ FY18 estimates. Ebitda stands for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. “I find it very difficult to buy D-Mart at this valuation. It reminds me of the heydays of retail stocks,” says a fund manager.Nevertheless, the absurd valuations may well sustain, given a dearth of quality stocks and investors’ admiration for the company’s promoter, who is an ardent investor himself.ALSO READ | D-Mart IPO: Value does not come cheap“It may take some time for the euphoria to cool down”, says Kejriwal.“We expect premium valuations to sustain given strong growth and limited options to play the organised retail story in India,” analysts at Prabhudas Lilladher Pvt. Ltd said in a note to clients.To be sure, the quality of the company and its superior margin profile are appealing as well. Its net margin in the nine months to December stood at 4.4%, higher than Future Retail’s mere 2% margin. And since the IPO (initial public offering) proceeds will be used to repay debt, net margin is expected to rise to about 5%, increasing its lead over other retailers. Further, D-Mart’s return on capital employed for 9MFY17 was 22.9%, higher than Future Retail’s estimated return of 12.8% for FY17.Still, should that justify valuations of as high as 31.6 times Ebitda. Analysts at IIFL Institutional Equities, for instance, have a price target of Rs480 for the stock, at EV/Ebitda valuations of roughly 24 times, based on its FY18 estimates. In hindsight, it’s clear that the issue was underpriced. S.P. Tulsian, an independent analyst says, “It was a goodwill gesture on the part of the company to price the issue lower and the market has rewarded it generously.” But as a consequence, the company ended up raising far less funds than it could potentially have raised. The value of its free float capital has risen by around Rs2,000 crore; if it had decided to share half of the spoils by pricing the issue higher, D-Mart would have received an additional inflow of around Rs1,000 crore. That is fairly significant for a company with a balance-sheet size of around Rs4,000 crore.While the good taste of the spectacular listing may linger for some time, investors would be keen to know whether growth rates will persist. More recently, revenue growth has slowed. For FY16 and FY15, revenue growth was 33% and 37%, respectively, year-on-year. That is lower than the annual revenue growth seen in the preceding two years.It’s also worth remembering that D-Mart’s quarterly financial results history and the impact of seasonality, if any, is not known to the Street yet. Those factors are worth watching for the stock along with other factors such as same-store sales growth. And finally, with valuations so high, there is hardly any room for error on any of these counts.","The 115% appreciation in D-Mart share prices on listing day is taking things too far, notwithstanding the pedigree of the parent company Avenue Supermarts",03:47,Irrational exuberance in D-Mart shares +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Higher fares slowed air passenger traffic growth to an 18-month low in March, typically a lean month for air travel.Passenger traffic grew 14.9% to 9 million passengers during the month, as against 7.8 million a year ago, according to data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Thursday. Air traffic growth has remained around 20% in the past two and half years. The last time it fell below 15% was in September 2015, when it grew 14.56%. Despite a significant increase in capacity, airlines have been flying with high occupancy. This presented an opportunity to charge higher.“Why lose the opportunity to get higher fares?” an airline executive said, declining to be named. Fares have been raised gradually over the past few weeks, the executive added.Cheaper fares increase discretionary travel, which gets curtailed when fares rise.In March, SpiceJet flew its planes 91.4% full, AirAsia 87.8%, GoAir 84.8%,Vistara 82.2%, IndiGo 81.6%, Jet Airways 79.8% and Air India 74.6%.Flights between metros were fairly on time. IndiGo regained its top spot in terms of on-time performance after many months. Its flights in four metros were 88% on time, displacing previous No. 1 SpiceJet, which came in at 85.7%. Vistara (85.1%), GoAir (81.8%), Jet Airways (80.7%) and Air India (79.7%) followed. Regional airline Air Carnival flew 64.8% full, Zoom Air 74.6% and TruJet 75%. Air Costa did not operate, as its planes were impounded by aircraft lessors GE Capital Aviation Services over non-payment of dues. Airlines’ market share remained mostly consistent. IndiGo’s domestic market share was 39.9%, followed by Jet (17.9%), SpiceJet (13.2%), Air India (13%), GoAir (8.9%), Vistara (3.2%) and AirAsia India (3.1%). To be sure, Air India and Jet Airways have significant international operations, while the other airlines mostly fly domestic. The number of complaints against airlines fell from the month of February. There were a total of 680 complaints that DGCA received in March, compared with February’s 810. Of these, 242 were against Air India, 213 against Jet Airways, 90 against IndiGo. SpiceJet had 58 complaints, GoAir 55, AirAsia 16, TruJet and Vistara had three each. April-June is considered the peak season for air travel in India as schools shut for summer vacations. “Airfares will rise; you will see strong yields in this quarter from 15 April to June-end,” the airline official cited above said, “Once a customer become accustomed to pay less, he will never pay more.”","Air passenger traffic grew 14.9% to 9 million passengers during the month, as against 7.8 million a year ago, according to data released by the DGCA",08:51,Air traffic growth slows to 18-month low as fares rise +2017-03-21,"
Private sector infrastructure firm Ashoka Buildcon Ltd scaled a 52-week high of Rs199 last week as it became the lowest bidder for a Rs1,187 crore road project. The project, once secured, will increase its already swelling order book of Rs6,220 crore, which is three times the company’s trailing consolidated revenue.What sets Ashoka Buildcon apart from its peers is that its order book comprises a healthy 44% of engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) projects, 29% of build-operate-transfer (BOT) projects and the rest in power transmission and distribution (T&D). So far, the EPC projects in its kitty have been on schedule.Its December quarter’s 18% growth in stand-alone revenue was the result of the company kick-starting projects bagged in fiscal year 2016. The operating leverage gave a leg-up to its profit margin that rose 50 basis points year-on-year. In fact, operating profitability at both EPC and BOT levels has steadily improved over the last two years. Of course, like others in the infrastructure pack, Ashoka Buildcon’s December quarter performance was hit by demonetization, when toll collection was suspended for 23 days. Collections were about 25% lower than the year-ago period.Still, this did not hamper profit growth. Net profit for the quarter was a little over double that in the year-ago period.Analysts are positive on the stock’s prospects also because the company operates roads in key mineral-rich states. Chances of revenue accretion are higher on these routes with economic and industrial recovery, both by way of increased traffic and higher incidence of commercial vehicles plying on these routes.That said, being nimble-footed in bagging orders could lead to a rise in debt, which is currently twice the equity at the consolidated level. A report by Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd says, “ABL’s (Ashoka Buildcon’s) strong order book and low stand-alone debt levels will drive the EPC revenue by a compounded annual growth rate of 17% between FY2017 and 2019.”Since January, the Ashoka Buildcon stock has gained momentum on the back of strong execution and order wins. There is significant wind beneath its wings, provided its robust order book is converted into revenue through timely execution.","There is significant wind beneath Ashoka Buildcon’s wings, provided its robust order book is converted into revenue through timely execution",08:12,Ashoka Buildcon’s diversified order mix supports profit margins +2017-03-22,"
You might have met this boss. His hand brushes your back. One-on-one discussions are laced with innuendo. At meetings he will ask about your love life. He’s just being “friendly”; don’t be such a prude, yaar, the others will say. You shrug. You ignore it. You need the job. Or you could choose to complain. Should you choose this option, here is what will likely happen. You might discover that your organization is the one in three Indian companies that doesn’t have an Internal Complaints Committee (ICC), as required by the law, because “these kind of things don’t happen here”. Or, if it has one, it will initiate a hearing to which you will be summoned and asked about specific incidents and perhaps also about whether you have a boyfriend, your drinking habits and so on. Colleagues could urge you to “settle”. As you approach the water-cooler, conversation will cease because, naturally, everyone is gossiping about you—she’s not that attractive. Wasn’t she overlooked for promotion…?Despite a law since 2013 and the Vishakha guidelines before that, sexual harassment at the workplace remains a maze that nobody seems to be able to negotiate. To start with, there seems to be a complete and perhaps deliberate lack of awareness as to what constitutes sexual harassment. Is it against the law to call a female colleague “sexy”? Is it OK to do so outside the office? The answers are simple: Yes and no. So, even if you’re a heterosexual single male, you may not call a female colleague “sexy” because, guess what, to do so would be not just morally wrong and demeaning to her, it is also against the law. Easy and straightforward? Not quite. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from a spate of high profile cases from Greenpeace India to The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri), it is that the wheels of justice seem stuck in the mire. ALSO READ | Understanding the male principleAt Teri where forensics have established that R.K. Pachauri’s claim that his phone and email were hacked was a lie, the original woman complainant has quit the organization and is now working for another research institute. “Sexual harassment and assault can scar you for life,” she says. But, “if someone is willing to talk, they must be given a patient hearing because they can be true survivors of a willful misogynist crime penetrated deep in mindsets that we assume to be liberal and modern.” Why is the law failing women like her? “It’s the attitude of the organization,” she says. Companies tend to support the more powerful accused male rather than the subordinate female complainant. Moreover, there’s a tendency to brush the matter under the carpet for fear that it will damage the company’s reputation. “We don’t think the violation of a woman’s dignity or bodily integrity is a crime,” says advocate Vrinda Grover. The problem is not that organizations are unaware of the law. The problem is that they don’t care. A text-book case on how not to deal with sexual harassment would be the manner in which entertainment content start-up, The Viral Fever, dealt with an anonymous social media complaint. Refusing to even acknowledge such a possibility (and I concede that an anonymous social media complaint comes with its own set of problems), an initial company statement threatened to “find the author of the article and bring them to severe justice”. The company has since, after howls of protest on social media, admitted to being “confused” and says it is now “committed to getting to the bottom of these allegations.” At a time when India’s female labour force participation is declining and economists are talking about the potential boost to gross domestic product (GDP) from equal participation, it might be useful to look at conditions that make it hostile for women to seek jobs. National Crime Records Bureau data finds a 51% increase in cases of sexual harassment cases from 2014 to 2015. Nearly 70% of respondents in a survey by the Indian Bar Association earlier this year said they would not report sexual harassment for fear of reprisals. And smaller companies might be prone to serious under-reporting, found this Mint report.The fact that this malaise should exist across the board from multinational companies (MNCs) to public sector organizations, from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to young start-ups says something about attitudes to women at work. This is not about a few bad apples but a culture of entitlement and an attitude that states, what’s the big deal about sexual harassment? More than committees and norms, companies need policies against sexism. A female employee is not eye candy, placed for men to admire and comment on. She is a professional worthy of the dignity afforded to any man in the office. Ultimately sexual harassment at work is about unequal power balances. When that balance is so out of whack in society, how can we expect it to be any different at workplaces?Namita Bhandare writes on social and gender issues.Her Twitter handle is @namitabhandare.",A text-book case on how not to deal with sexual harassment at the workplace would be the manner in which The Viral Fever dealt with an anonymous social media complaint,03:47,An unequal balance +2017-03-20,"Vodafone chief executive Vittorio Colao has negotiated a partial retreat from a tough situation in India on reasonable terms. Given a bloody price war brought on by new rival Reliance Jio Infocomm, a merger deal with Idea Cellular Ltd is smart even though Colao has ceded control without getting a premium.Combined subscribers: 395 millionVodafone Group Plc and Idea Cellular said on Monday that they would combine their Indian mobile operations to create the country’s largest telecom firm with 395 million subscribers, vaulting the new company ahead of Bharti Airtel Ltd. At first, Vodafone and Idea will share ownership, although power will tilt towards the Indian side.To get to that supposed ownership equilibrium, Colao and negotiating partner Kumar Mangalam Birla—billionaire owner of Aditya Birla Group, Idea’s biggest shareholder—had to perform some serious contortions. Vodafone India was bigger and worth more than Idea, so the pair each contributed assets, cash and debt to get to an equal contribution.Both put in their mobile operations at roughly similar multiples of 6.4 times Ebitda for Vodafone and 6.3 times for Idea. That looks like a compromise on Vodafone’s part since Idea’s Ebitda has been falling faster than its own. Meanwhile, Vodafone has excluded its 42% stake in the Indian towers company Indus, while Idea has thrown in its 11.2% stake in that same entity, worth about $1 billion. Finally, Birla pays $579 million to buy 4.9% of the new company from Vodafone.ALSO READ | The rationale behind Idea-Vodafone merger in five chartsColao can live with the fiddly structure, given that the big prize is $10 billion of cost savings within four years from combining the number two and three operators in the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market. Vodafone and Idea will both benefit from those synergies, but how the bounty will be divided will depend on how quickly Idea ups its stake in the new entity.As for governance, Vodafone ends up being the junior partner. Both sides get to nominate the same number of board seats and choose the CEO jointly, but Birla nominates the chairman. While that may seem unfair, the reality of doing business in India means having locals in charge should be a good thing. Vodafone’s inability to end a long, acrimonious tax dispute with the government shows the problems foreign companies can face there.Reliance Jio not main reason for merger of Idea Cellular, Vodafone: Vittorio ColaoThe slightly lopsided power-sharing will make more sense if Birla later raises its stake, as it has the option to do under a shareholder agreement. Birla can buy up to an additional 9.5% from Vodafone in the first three years at an already negotiated price of Rs130 per share. If it doesn’t, then Vodafone can later begin to sell down to get to equal ownership.Much of Colao’s nine-year tenure at Vodafone has been spent undoing a global expansion undertaken by his predecessor. Its experience in India hasn’t been happy as it racked up some 900 million euros of cumulative losses, prompting a massive write-down in November.As he’s shown in well-timed exits from the US and France, Colao is an unemotional seller. With the Idea deal, he’s shown again that pragmatism beats pride. Bloomberg","Given a bloody tariff war brought on by Reliance Jio, Vodafone’s merger deal with Idea Cellular is smart even though CEO Vittorio Colao has ceded control without getting a premium",22:36,Vodafone’s Indian escape act is heavy on the contortions +2017-03-20,"
A 7% jump in ITC Ltd’s share on Friday was puzzling at first and though it closed with a lower gain of 4.9%, it was still substantial. The provocation was the GST council’s caps fixed on the cess on demerit goods. The reaction would have been justified if ITC’s share had fallen in anticipation of the cess. Till Thursday, ITC’s share was just a bit lower than its level in early February but a good 24.4% higher than end-December.How does the GST council’s decision benefit cigarettes? News reports state that cigarettes will, in addition to a 28% basic tax under GST, also pay a cess of either 290% or Rs4,170 per thousand sticks or a combination of both. This cess is to compensate states for potential losses in revenue due to GST. News reports say the GST Council wants the tax incidence and price of cigarettes to stay at current levels, terming it as revenue-neutral.ALSO READ | GST council clears last two bills, caps cess on demerit goodsMore details will become clear when the actual legislation and rules become available. Cigarettes are at present charged a specific excise rate, based on length, which starts from Rs1,681/thousand sticks for filter cigarettes up to 65 mm and to Rs4,421/thousand sticks for cigarettes greater than 75mm. States charge sales tax in addition.A first reading suggests cigarettes at the higher end will attract a lower levy than the current specific excise rate. But there is the basic tax of 28% also that is being levied. Also, input tax credit cannot be used to lower the cess, and will be restricted to inputs on which a similar cess has been paid, according to the draft compensation bill.If the government’s effort is to keep revenue and prices at the same level, then firms don’t really gain or lose. The real transformation appears to be a transition to a well defined tax structure. Every fiscal, before budget, ITC’s shares would swing with investor concerns on a potential hike in taxes. The reason could be to raise revenue or to use punitive taxation to curb cigarette consumption. In many years, they were proved right. The past two budgets are an exception. That changes now. Cigarettes are already in the highest tax bracket, the cess rate is capped, and states and municipal authorities cannot levy (or increase) additional taxes. Of course, if tax collections are poorer than expected, the GST council could potentially review these caps. States are to be compensated for five years. That may mean the cess may go after five years unless the governments decide to retain it under some other form.Even then, as long as there’s no devil in the details, cigarette taxation has entered an era of certainty. Companies can now focus on the market and not worry about taxation. That alone is a good reason to relook valuations and might explain why ITC’s share jumped. With tax uncertainty behind it, the only concern should be public health-related legislation to curb cigarette consumption.","GST Council wants the tax incidence and price of cigarettes to stay at current levels, hence the jump in ITC shares despite the news of cess on demerit goods",08:11,Why the cap on cess puffed up ITC shares +2017-03-20,"
The big broad theme in the Indian aviation industry this financial year has been pricing pressures.Sure, competitive fares improved load factors but profitability was impacted adversely. InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, the company that runs IndiGo, wasn’t immune to those problems. However, a glimmer of hope is emerging. Yields are showing signs of improvement. The airline had said its January yields declined 10% year-on-year at the time of announcing its December quarter earnings.February and March have been better months on the yield front as the industry tries to deal with rising fuel costs, point out analysts.Kotak Institutional Equities notes that fares for 30 days plus advance bookings have improved only marginally in the past two months, but fares for travel dates earlier than 30 days have increased meaningfully.“This should provide some support to IndiGo’s yield in 4QFY17E, as short-notice trips usually account for a sizeable chunk of the 4QFY17E passengers, as per the management,” Mohan Lal, an analyst with Kotak, wrote in a 16 March note.Fuel surcharge to pass on the increase in crude price has been absorbed well by the market, according to IIFL Institutional Equities. The brokerage has raised its financial year 2017 earnings per share estimate by 8% to factor in this improvement.For the nine months to December, IndiGo’s Ebitdar or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and aircraft and engine rentals declined 4.4% from a year earlier. Ebitdar margin narrowed 550 basis points to 28.67%. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. To be sure, even as there are indications of improvement in yields, IndiGo’s profits for the March quarter are expected to decline year-on-year given that crude oil prices were comparatively much lower in the same period last year. Year-on-year yields, too, are expected to fall.In general, analysts hope that financial year 2018 will bring some stabilization in industry yields as the scope for a further decline in yields appears limited. Moreover, a lower base will help. The stock currently trades at Rs921.85, a bit lower than the Rs926.25 share price on 8 November when demonetization was announced. During this time, the benchmark Sensex has increased 7.5%. Based on Kotak’s estimates, one IndiGo share trades at 20 times expected financial year 2017 earnings. It goes without saying that yields and traffic growth are key measures to watch out for. Further, an upside in the stock shall depend on how these factors play out in the coming months and, of course, on the movement in crude oil prices.","For IndiGo and other aviation stocks, February and March have been better months on the yield front as the industry tries to deal with rising fuel costs",08:11,A glimmer of hope for the IndiGo stock +2017-04-19,"Kenosha, Wisconsin: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered federal agencies to look at tightening the H1B visa programme used to bring high-skilled foreign workers to the US, as he tries to carry out his campaign pledges to put “America First”.The move is a deterrent to Indian IT companies which send hundreds of software engineers to the US on H1B visas. Trump signed an executive order on enforcing and reviewing the H1B visa, popular in the IT industry, on a visit to the headquarters of Snap-On Inc. a tool manufacturer in Kenosha, Wisconsin.In the document, known to the White House as the “Buy American and Hire American” order, Trump also seeks changes in government procurement that would boost purchases of American products in federal contracts, with one aim being to help US steelmakers.The moves show Trump once again using his power to issue executive orders to try to fulfil promises he made last year in his election campaign, in this case to reform US immigration policies and encourage purchases of American products. Senior officials gave few details on implementation of the order but Trump aides have expressed concern that most H1B visas are awarded for lower-paid jobs at outsourcing firms, many based in India, which they say takes work away from Americans. They seek a more merit-based way to give the visas to highly skilled workers. “Right now, widespread abuse in our immigration system is allowing American workers of all backgrounds to be replaced by workers brought in from other countries,” Trump said.As he nears the 100-day benchmark of his presidency, Trump still has no major legislative achievements. With his attempts to overhaul healthcare and tax law not bearing fruit so far in a Congress controlled by his fellow Republicans, Trump has leaned heavily on executive orders to seek changes to the US economy.The venue for Trump’s visit on Tuesday is a nod to his voter base in the manufacturing centres of the American heartland. Wisconsin unexpectedly voted for the Republican last year, partly due to his promises to bring back industrial jobs. H1B visas are intended for foreign nationals in occupations that generally require higher education, including science, engineering or computer programming. The government uses a lottery to award 65,000 visas every year and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.Critics say the lottery benefits outsourcing firms that flood the system with mass applications for visas for lower-paid information technology workers. “Right now H1B visas are awarded in a totally random lottery and that’s wrong. Instead, they should be given to the most skilled and highest paid applicants and they should never, ever be used to replace Americans,” Trump said. Reuters",Donald Trump orders a look at tightening regulations on H1 B visa used by Indian IT companies to bring high-skilled foreign workers to the US,13:19,Donald Trump signs H1B visa order to tighten rules on foreign workers +2017-03-18,"
By most accounts, Yogendra Vasupal, co-founder and chief executive officer of Chennai-based budget stays aggregator Stayzilla, is a decent human being and the least likely of people in India’s bustling start-up market to cheat anybody.
Yet, on Tuesday, Vasupal was arrested by local authorities in Chennai on charges of defrauding one of the company’s vendors, an advertising agency called Jigsaw Advertising. The arrest comes in the wake of Stayzilla, backed by front-line venture capital firms Matrix Partners India and Nexus Venture Partners, recently shuttering its operations in a bid to pivot to a more viable business model.
The details around Vasupal’s arrest remain murky but, in a rare show of solidarity, entrepreneurs and investors from across the start-up ecosystem rallied behind Vasupal, seeking his release from what they consider wrongful confinement by the authorities.
That isn’t the only ugly incident that made headlines this week. On 12 March, Sandeep Aggarwal, a founder of Delhi-based e-commerce marketplace ShopClues, took to social network Facebook to rage against his co-founders Radhika Aggarwal and Sanjay Sethi for allegedly pushing him out of the company. The Facebook post has since been removed. Sandeep Aggarwal, a former Wall Street analyst, founded ShopClues in 2011 with Radhika Aggarwal, also his wife, and Sethi, and was its CEO till he was arrested in July 2013 by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation on insider trading charges. Aggarwal immediately stepped down as CEO and subsequently pleaded guilty to the charges.
It isn’t difficult to understand why Aggarwal is keen to get back in the game with ShopClues. In his absence, Radhika Aggarwal and Sethi have grown the company’s valuation to more than $1 billion and attracted a host of well- known investors including New York-based hedge fund Tiger Global Management and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte. Ltd. It is also the only e-commerce unicorn (start-ups valued by investors privately at $1 billion or more) from India that hasn’t yet shown any outward signs of being in trouble. A squabble between its founders at this juncture would only be harmful to the company.
The two disparate incidents are manifestations of the immense stress that India’s start-up market has been under for well over a year. The market, as is now well-documented, slipped into a downturn in the final quarter of 2015. There is next to no later-stage capital available because of the withdrawal of non-traditional start-up investors such as hedge funds and strategic corporate investors. Valuations have plummeted from their dizzying heights back in 2014 and early 2015. The absence of later-stage capital has compelled traditional start-up investors, venture capital firms, to turn cautious on deploying fresh capital. There have been more than a few fire sales of start-ups that ran out of cash in the past year, and job cuts are now fairly commonplace in the ecosystem.
What’s worrying though is that the market is still some way off from a recovery. The general consensus, at least within the venture capital community, is that it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. That could just be an inordinately pessimistic view or not. Apart from the Stayzilla shutdown, other events over the first three months of this year underline that what started as a correction in the later part of 2015 is now starting to veer dangerously close to a crisis.
In February, Snapdeal, the e-commerce marketplace owned by Delhi-based Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd, became the first of India’s technology unicorns to implode. In an email to employees, which leaked out to the press, Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal admitted that their e-commerce company had fallen off the wagon. Job cuts were announced and in a somewhat empty gesture, Bahl and Bansal also said they would be taking a 100% cut in salaries in the greater interest of the company. Empty because last year the two had earned about Rs40 crore (a little over $6 million) each via salaries and stock sales. The company has burnt through most of the nearly $2 billion it raised from investors over the years.
As things stand now, according to multiple media reports, Snapdeal is trying to find a buyer for its payments platform Freecharge, which it bought for a reported $400 million in 2015. It is also in talks with SoftBank Group Corp. for a fresh round of funding—Mint had reported in January that discussions were on for a fresh round but at a valuation of $3-4 billion compared to the $6.5 billion it touched the last time it raised capital. There’s also talk of Snapdeal exploring a merger with Alibaba-backed online payments platform Paytm’s e-commerce business.
While the Snapdeal implosion sends out the message that even a unicorn backed by the most powerful of investors isn’t immune to a downturn, its state of affairs are seen as having fewer consequences for the market compared to its Bengaluru-based rival Flipkart. Early in January, Flipkart, the flag-bearer of the current start-up wave, officially became an investor-run company. Tiger Global Management, its largest investor and shareholder, shipped in one of its managing directors, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, to replace the company’s co-founder Binny Bansal as CEO. Binny Bansal, incidentally, had replaced co-founder Sachin Bansal as CEO in January last year. As of today, Flipkart retains its status as India’s most valuable start-up, despite multiple valuation markdowns by several minority shareholders. But it continues to struggle to raise fresh capital at the reported $15 billion valuation it commanded when it last got funded. That was nearly 20 months ago.
Mint reported last month that the company was in talks with several investors including Tencent Holdings Ltd, eBay Inc. and Microsoft Corp. to raise $1.5 billion. It needs the fresh capital desperately to retain its place in the market against the might of Seattle-based e-tailer Amazon. And, it has to raise the money at a decent valuation. At stake is nearly $3.5 billion in investor money that the company has burnt through. Tiger Global alone accounts for about $1 billion. Some may argue that Flipkart is too big to fail. But if it does implode, the after-effects could well be devastating.
Stayzilla, Snapdeal and Flipkart are all examples of start-ups where investors have clearly decided that it’s time to take the hardest of decisions to stem the further erosion of the value of their investments. And, these are the good ones. It’s an inevitable part of the cycle in the high-stakes venture capital business in the interest of creating a healthier start-up market when the cycle turns. It would be nice, of course, to get there without any more entrepreneurs landing themselves in jail.
Snigdha Sengupta is a consulting writer with Mint. She contributes stories on venture capital and private equity.","Apart from the Stayzilla shutdown, events in the first three months of 2017 underline that what started as a correction in late 2015 is starting to veer dangerously close to a crisis",00:09,It may get worse before it gets better for Indian start-ups +2017-03-14,"
Barring south India, cement prices in other parts of the country have begun to improve after remaining subdued until January, mainly impacted by demonetisation . According to dealer channel checks by various brokers, cement prices in the southern region, which were robust in the past, are now down by nearly 2% month-on-month. Since south-based cement makers saw strong volume growth in the December quarter unfazed by the currency ban, what has pushed cement prices lower now?Increased competitive intensity, sand procurement issues, and water shortage in some of the markets of Tamil Nadu (TN) and Andhra Pradesh (AP) have hurt demand, thus hurting prices. “Companies did try to undertake hikes in the AP/Telangana (TG) markets, but the hikes didn’t sustain. Versus pre-demonetisation levels, prices are lower at Rs260/bag in AP/TG (versus Rs300/bag in October), at Rs320/bag in Karnataka (versus Rs330/bag), at Rs330-335/bag in TN (versus Rs345/bag),” said a recent Antique Stock Broking Ltd report. Also, the political situation in TN is still unstable, which may have impacted the state’s spending on infrastructure and allied activities.Interestingly, apart from the above mentioned factors, the so-called March phenomenon too has a role to play in this price correction. “Generally, in the March quarter, focus of cement companies shifts to pushing volumes, it is very likely that to meet that purpose companies may have taken a price cut,” said Vijay Goel, an analyst at Karvy Stock Broking Ltd. Some analysts point out the price correction that happened last year in March in some southern cities was steeper than this. Also, given the high volume base of last year, concerns are that volume growth of south-based cement makers may take a hit in the current quarter, so this price correction could also be with a view to minimize the adverse impact on cement volumes by boosting sales. Just like last year, the downward trend in prices is unlikely to last for more than a month and prices may begin to recover from May onwards, added the analysts.Meanwhile, on a year-to-date basis, shares of some south-based cement firms like India Cements Ltd and Dalmia Bharat Ltd have rallied 35% and 40%, respectively, much higher than pan-India companies UltraTech Cement Ltd (18%), ACC Ltd (5%) and Ambuja Cements Ltd (11%). That’s because, on the valuations front, excluding Dalmia Bharat, the one-year forward price-to-earnings multiple of many south-focused cement makers is lower than the larger pan-India companies.","Cement prices in South India are now down by nearly 2% month-on-month, show dealer channel checks by various brokers",10:02,Why are cement prices in south India correcting? +2017-03-08,"
Tech Mahindra Ltd has made another acquisition with the aim to cross-sell its services to a new set of clients. It said on Monday it has acquired CJS Solutions Group Llc, a US-based healthcare information technology consulting firm that does business as the HCI Group.The enterprise value of $110 million seems reasonable, given HCI’s trailing 12-month revenue of $114 million. Besides, the US-based firm has grown by as much as 28% annually in the past two years. Of course, operating margin is low at high single-digit levels, but this is typical of US-based tech firms. And it seems unlikely that Tech Mahindra can bring about a meaningful improvement in margins, considering that HCI’s work is mostly done on site.
Analysts at Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd said in a note to clients, “We believe that the nature of work that HCI does in the US provides limited opportunity for offshorability. While some margin benefits might still be realized on the back of cost cutting and other efficiencies, the major benefit due to offshoring will not materialize.”The big idea behind the acquisition then appears to be the ability to cross-sell Tech Mahindra’s services to a new set of clients. The company has almost no exposure to the healthcare provider space, and the acquisition will give access to 30 new clients. Overall, the healthcare and life sciences vertical contributes less than 5% to its revenues. Jefferies’ analysts point out that the acquisition is on the same lines as two previous acquisitions in 2016—Target and Bio Agency—where a specific expertise was acquired with the cross-sell of existing services being the major incremental positive.Alongside the company’s penchant for mergers and acquisitions, the performance of its organic business has also picked up in the past two quarters. In turn, this has got investors excited. Since it announced Q2 results in end-October, Tech Mahindra’s shares have risen by around 20%, far higher than the 7% gain in the Nifty IT index.In the process, its valuations have risen to 15.6 times estimated fiscal year 2017 earnings, only slightly lower than Infosys Ltd’s 16.2 times valuation. While the better-than-expected growth in the past quarters suggests Tech Mahindra is firmly on the recovery path, not everyone is convinced. Analysts at Nomura Research said in a note to clients, “We see the telecom (~47% of revenues) segment to be stable but not in a material rebound scenario, with likely near-term headwinds from LCC (Lightbridge Communications Corp.) restructuring and non-recurrence of milestone payments (which aided growth in Q3)... Overall, we look for 8% EPS CAGR over FY17-19F (after a 3% decline in FY17).” EPS is short for earnings per share and CAGR stands for compound annual growth rate. If earnings growth ends up being in single digits, as Nomura expects, the mid-teens price-earnings multiple looks overdone.","The acquisition of CJS Solutions Group, with the aim to cross-sell its services to a new set of clients, reflects well on Tech Mahindra shares",08:05,Investors see Tech Mahindra shares gaining momentum +2017-04-19,"
New Delhi: More Indians living in the US want a job back home after Donald Trump became the president of the world’s largest economy. The number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has gone up more than 10-fold between December and March, according to an analysis by consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Pvt. Ltd, shared exclusively with Mint .There were approximately 600 US-based Indians seeking jobs in India in December 2016. By the end of March 2017, the number had gone up to approximately 7,000, Deloitte analysis said.ALSO READ: Donald Trump orders review of H-1B visa norms, in deterrent to Indian IT companiesThis data comes amid a crackdown by the Trump administration on job visas for skilled workers, including software engineers from India. US Citizenship and Immigration Services said employers seeking H-1B work visas—a non-immigrant visa allowing American firms to employ foreign workers—for 2018 declined for the first time in five years.The surge in the number of applicants has been triggered by Trump’s vows to protect jobs for locals. A Bloomberg report on Tuesday said Trump will take aim at information technology outsourcing companies when he orders a review of H-1B visa programmes to favour more skilled and highly paid applicants. The report also cited companies such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. and Mphasis Corp. as examples of outsourcing firms that would likely have fewer visas approved once the changes are adopted. The H-1B work visa programme channels thousands of foreign workers to the US technology industry.“While US companies will find some tech talent in the US, the numbers might be less than what are required to meet their needs. Add to that, the wages they need to pay to US employees will be much higher than what they pay to H-1B visa holders,” said C.K. Guruprasad, a consultant with executive search firm Spencer Stuart.On Tuesday, Australia abolished the 457 visa programme used by over 95,000 temporary foreign workers, the majority of them Indians, to tackle unemployment.Experts see global in-house centres (GICs) as a viable option for companies to not only retain Indian talent but also address the anticipated shortage in the required volume of workers in the US.According to Parag Saigaonkar, Principal at consulting firm Deloitte in India, while the initial thrust of GICs was on moving job roles from a high-cost to low-cost centre to get a competitive edge, companies are now looking at non-linear values that GICs can add to the business—new things that Indian GICs can produce—and supporting the parent organization.“With the seemingly shifting dynamics towards options between outsourcing and local hiring, companies with GICs in India could move Indian talent from the US to India and also hire locals into the GICs and thus sidestep the restrictions of outsourcing to third party companies,” Guruprasad said.According to K.S.Viswanathan, vice-president for industry initiatives at lobby group Nasscom, while the purpose of GICs so far has revolved around cost and skills arbitration advantages and talent consideration, it is now expected to change.“We are seeing a lot of companies looking at building newer competencies around newer technologies like machine learning, AI, automation, UI/UX, product management, DevOps etc,” said Anand Subramaniam, engagement manager and delivery head (GIC Accelerator Platform), Zinnov, a consulting firm.On an average, GICs add 50,000 to 70,000 people in India every year and due to the volume requirements, this number is expected to go up, according to Nasscom. According to the lobby group, there are over 1,000 GICs in India. Of these, around 67% of them are of US origin. Around 65% of the total workforce of 750,000 employed by these GICs are for US origin companies.",The number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has surged 10-fold since December as Donald Trump moved to tighten US visa policy,11:07,"As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come back" +2017-04-19,"Washington: The executive order signed by President Donald Trump calling for a review of H1B visas is too little and too late, US lawmakers said, even as more than half a dozen legislations on reforming the programme remain pending in the House of Representatives and the Senate. “We already know H1B visa abuse hurts American workers. Simply reviewing the program is too little, too late,” Senator Dick Durbin said after Trump signed the order directing his administration to review the functioning of the system. US lawmakers have already tabled more than half a dozen legislations in the Congress with specific proposals to reform and improve the H1B visas systems. Many of those proposals, as per industry body Nasscom, are discriminatory and are targeted towards Indian IT companies. Trump’s long-awaited executive order drew sharp reactions from the opposition Democrat lawmakers and the sponsors of these legislations, but drew applause from the treasury benches. “I applaud President Trump for his efforts to spur job creation, economic growth, and American competitiveness by improving our country’s high-skilled immigration programs,” said House Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte. Also Read: Donald Trump calls for tighter H-1B visa programme used by Indians“The President’s Buy American, Hire American Executive Order directs the secretaries of the appropriate agencies to examine the H1B visa program and identify reforms that will root out fraud and abuse to ultimately make the program more workable for American businesses while protecting American workers,” he said. The H1B visa program allows US employers to hire foreign specialty workers in technical and highly-skilled fields, like engineering, medicine, mathematics, and science. These workers receive a non-immigrant visa that can last as long as six years. Congressman Bill Pascrell, Ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade, alleged that the executive order is yet another “broken promise” from Trump, who told the American people that he would end the H1B visa program. “For far too long the H1B visa has been abused by some as a cheap way to replace American workers. With no mandated time frames and no changes to the law, today’s executive order cannot solve the underlying problem,” Pascrell said. “I have introduced bipartisan, comprehensive reform legislation to improve the H1B visa program to ensure foreign workers are not underpaid and Americans are sought to be hired first. Real reform must happen legislatively. The Administration should come to the Congress and work with us on changing the law,” Pascrell said. Senator Chuck Grassley, an author of legislation to reform the H1B and L1 skilled work visa programs, said it is time to take action against the abuse of H1B visa system. “The H1B program was designed to fill gaps in America’s workforce with highly-skilled foreign workers, but as we’ve seen in recent years, the program has been abused and exploited at the expense of American workers and most qualified foreign workers,” he said. “We’ve seen companies use the program to fire American workers and replace them with lower-paid foreign counterparts. The visa lottery system makes this problem worse by rewarding visas randomly, instead of prioritising foreign workers with greater experience, skill, and qualifications,” he added. “I’ve introduced bipartisan legislation with Senator Durbin to address these problems, and I’ve expressed to President Trump the need to take action to restore the integrity in the H-1B Program,” Grassley said. Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown meanwhile applauded Trump for the executive order. PTI",US lawmakers have already tabled more than half a dozen legislations in the Congress with specific proposals to reform and improve the H1B visas systems,08:54,"Reviewing H1B visa program too little, too late: US lawmakers" +2017-04-19,"Bengaluru: Baidu Inc. said on Tuesday it would launch its self-driving car technology for restricted environment in July before gradually introducing fully autonomous driving capabilities on highways and open city roads by 2020.The project is named Apollo after the lunar landing program, the Chinese search giant said, adding it would work with partners who provide vehicles, sensors and other components for the new technology.As part of its push into artificial intelligence (AI), the company in January named former Microsoft Corp. executive Qi Lu as chief operating officer. Two months after the appointment, Baidu’s chief scientist Andrew Ng, who led AI (artificial intelligence) and augmented reality (AR) projects, said he would step down.The company also launched a $200 million fund in October to focus on AI, AR and deep learning, followed by a $3 billion fund announced in September to target mid- and late- stage start-ups.“AI has great potential to drive social development, and one of AI’s biggest opportunities is intelligent vehicles,” Qi said in a statement. In November, Baidu and German automaker BMW AG said they would end their joint research on self-driving cars due to differences in opinion on how to proceed.Technology and automotive leaders contend that cars of the future will be capable of completely driving themselves, revolutionizing the transportation industry, with virtually all carmakers as well as companies such as Alphabet’s Google and parts supplier Delphi investing heavily in developing the technology.",Baidu will gradually introduce fully autonomous driving capabilities on highways and open city roads by 2020,09:23,Baidu to launch self-driving car technology in July +2017-04-18,"New Delhi: Australia scrapping the 457 visa programme comes as a new challenge to India’s IT industry that was already facing pressure from the Donald Trump administration’s attempts to overhaul H1B visas in the US. Indian IT professionals account for nearly 18,000 visas issued under the 457 visa category, according to a research report by the Australian Population Research Institute.In 2015-16, information communication and technology (ICT) professionals accounted for 17,185 or 16% of 106,130 visas issued under visa category 457 and for those which took permanent residence, according to a 6 December 2016 report, titled Immigration Overflow: Why It Matters by The Australian Population Research Institute. Indians constituted 76% of the total 457 visas issues. The 457 visa programme allows businesses to employ foreign workers for a period up to four years in skilled jobs where there is shortage of Australian workers. “We are an immigration nation, but the fact remains: Australian workers must have priority for Australian jobs, so we are abolishing the 457 visa, the visa that brings temporary foreign workers into our country,” said prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.The report’s authors also concluded that the relative success of Indian IT companies in Australia “winning IT consulting work in the design and implementation of new IT software systems for Australian businesses and governments” was also due to “import of their own staff on temporary visas to do much of the work”. “This is a policy change and the new change comes into effect from March 2018. We still need to read the fine print but as we understand that the Australian government will do away with visa category 457 and so ICT professionals will need to apply as part of the new short-term and long-term visa categories. We do not see this change curtailing the number of visas approved for now,” said Shivendra Singh, global trade development head at the National Association of Software and services Companies (Nasscom).",Indian IT professionals accounted for 16% of the over 1 lakh visas issued under the 457 visa programme by Australia in 2015-16,20:42,Australian 457 visa: Indians IT workers make up nearly 16% of applicants +2017-04-18,"San Francisco/Tokyo: Ten years after Steve Jobs held up the original iPhone to a gushing San Francisco crowd, Apple Inc. is planning its most extensive iPhone lineup to date.Apple is preparing three iPhones for launch as soon as this fall, including upgraded versions of the current two iPhone models and a new top-of-the-line handset with an overhauled look, according to people familiar with the matter. For the redesigned phone, Apple is testing a new type of screen, curved glass and stainless steel materials, and more advanced cameras, the people said. Those anxiously awaiting the redesigned iPhone, however, may have to wait because supply constraints could mean the device isn’t readily available until one or two months after the typical fall introduction. The iPhone is Apple’s most important product, representing about two-thirds of sales. It also leads customers to buy other Apple devices like the iPad and Apple Watch, and serves as a home for lucrative services like the App Store. This year’s new iPhone lineup comes at a critical time. Last year, Apple broke its typical upgrade cycle by retaining the same iPhone shape for a third year in a row and endured a rare sales slide. Samsung Electronics Co.’s new S8 lineup has also been thus far well received after last year’s Note 7 battery debacle. For the premium model, Apple is testing a screen that covers almost the entire front of the device, according to people familiar with the matter. That results in a display slightly larger than that of the iPhone 7 Plus but an overall size closer to the iPhone 7, the people said. Apple is also aiming to reduce the overall size of the handset by integrating the home button into the screen itself via software in a similar manner to Samsung’s S8, the people said.The overhauled iPhone will use an organic light-emitting diode display that more accurately shows colours, while the other two phones will continue to use liquid crystal display technology and come in the same 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch screen sizes as last year’s iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple’s iPhone feature and design plans are still in flux and can change, they added. The people asked not to be identified discussing Apple’s private testing and design plans. For its redesigned phone, Apple has tested multiple prototypes with manufacturing partners in Asia, including some versions that use curved glass and stainless steel, according to one of the people. One of the latest prototype designs includes symmetrical, slightly curved glass on the front and the back. The curves are similar in shape to those on the front of the iPhone 7. The new OLED screen itself is flat, while the cover glass curves into a steel frame. The design is similar conceptually to the iPhone 4 from 2010. An earlier prototype design had a thinner steel band, leaving more noticeable curved glass on the sides. Apple also tested a more ambitious prototype with the same slightly curved front and steel frame, but a glass back with more dramatic curves on the top and bottom like the original iPhone design from 2007, one of the people said. Apple suppliers have so far struggled to reliably produce heavily curved glass in mass quantities, so the company is more likely to ship the version with more subdued curves, the person added. The company is also testing a simpler design that has an aluminum back, rather than a glass one, and slightly larger dimensions, one of the people said.Because of its early lead in the mobile OLED display space, Samsung will enjoy a rare upper hand in this year’s high-end smartphone contest. At launch, Apple will exclusively use Samsung Display Co. OLED panels for the redesigned iPhone, as other suppliers won’t be ready to supply mass quantities until later, Bloomberg News reported last year. Apple has ordered around 100 million panels from Samsung, the people said. “This fall, it would be three years since we had a remarkable shift in iPhone hardware. This raises expectations for this year’s phone having a material change in functionality and look,” said Gene Munster, co-founder of Loup Ventures and a veteran Apple analyst. “The Samsung Galaxy S8 raises the bar for Apple to hit a home run.” Spokespeople for Apple and Samsung declined to comment. Apple has also experimented with integrating the iPhone’s fingerprint scanner into the screen of the OLED version, which would be technically challenging, the people said. It’s currently unclear if that feature will make it into the final product. Samsung also tried this approach for the S8, but ended up installing a more standard fingerprint reader on the back of its phone due to the challenges, another person said. Significant camera changes are also in testing for Apple’s overhauled iPhone. For the back of the phone, Apple is testing versions of the phone with the dual-camera system positioned vertically, instead of horizontally like on the iPhone 7 Plus, which could result in improved photos, according to people familiar with the matter. Some prototypes in testing continue to include the slight camera bump found on current iPhones, rather than having them flush with the back surface, the people said. For the front-camera, Apple is testing dual-lenses, one of the people said. The current iPhone 7 and 7 Plus have single front cameras. As it has done in the past, Apple is using camera components from Sony Corp., the person added. Apple has explored adding augmented reality-based features and depth-of-field enhancements to its iPhone camera system, Bloomberg News reported earlier this year. Company engineers in the past have also experimented with integrating cameras into screens, another person said.All the new iPhones will run iOS 11, a mobile operating system that will include a refreshed user-interface and will be announced in June at the company’s annual conference for developers, according to a person familiar with the matter.Apple has been testing using faster processors based on a smaller 10-nanometer production process for all three new models, a person familiar with Apple’s chip plans said. That’s down from 16 nanometers for existing iPhones. The smaller processors are more efficient, allowing Apple to retain its battery life standards while adding more advanced features. Bloomberg","Apple is preparing 3 iPhones for launch, including upgraded versions of the current 2 iPhone models and a new top-of-the-line handset with an overhauled look for the 10th anniversary",18:03,Apple readies iPhone overhaul for smartphone’s 10th anniversary +2017-04-19,"
Often, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and its investors don’t see eye to eye. The company’s March quarter results announcement was no different. Revenue grew 1% sequentially in constant currency terms, lower than analysts’ estimates of around 1.6% growth. Worryingly, revenues in the mainstay North American region fell by 1.8%, and those of the key banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) vertical fell 0.4%.
ALSO READ: TCS misses both revenue and profit estimates in March quarterStill, chief executive officer (CEO) Rajesh Gopinathan said, “We are quite happy with the way we have ended the year.” He added on a call with analysts that the outlook for the BFSI segment remains positive, and that thanks to large deal wins, it may be only a matter of time before the expected growth comes in. TCS has been saying for the past few months that things are looking up in the US and particularly in the BFSI segment. Over 40% of its revenues come from the BFSI segment, while the North American region accounted for 54% of revenues last year.But after the March quarter performance, investors are likely to question the company’s optimism. As the chart alongside shows, year-on-year growth rates have fallen significantly at TCS in the past year. Besides, operating profit margin, too, has fallen below its targeted range of 26-28%. The result of this double whammy was that earnings per share grew by just 8.3% last year.With the rupee having appreciated sharply compared to the average rate in fiscal year 2017 (FY17), margins are expected to be under further pressure in the new fiscal year. What’s more, thanks to the many changes in H-1B visa rules and policies, costs of providing on-site services to clients are also expected to rise. As such, earnings can be under pressure in FY18. Against this backdrop, TCS shares trade at around 16 times one-year forward earnings. And while CEO Gopinathan said that he expects FY18 to be incrementally positive, things could turn out to be particularly dire, depending on new visa rules. “We see near-term impact on decision-making due to immigration-related issues, even as companies are denying this. We expect 1QFY18 to start slowly and do not build growth acceleration in FY18,” analysts at Nomura Research wrote in a note to clients. Some of the possible impact of new visa norms is detailed here: bit.ly/2ngI48H.And unlike TCS’s upbeat post-results commentary, most other technology companies including Accenture Plc. have guided for slower growth in the new fiscal year. Besides, while Infosys Ltd tried to soothe investors’ nerves by outlining a detailed capital allocation policy, TCS said it will stay with its existing payout policy.In sum, there’s nothing much to like in TCS’s March quarter results announcement, except perhaps for the management’s hopeful commentary. But given the fair bit of divergence between the company’s outlook three months ago and its actual performance, investors would do well to tread cautiously.","After the March quarter performance, investors are likely to question the optimism being shown by new TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan",07:25,"TCS results: Upbeat commentary, downbeat performance in March quarter" +2017-04-19,"New Delhi: Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) missed analysts’ estimates for both revenue and profit in the fourth fiscal quarter, even as India’s largest software services firm’s full-year sales rose 6.2% to $17.58 billion.The company reported revenue of $4.45 billion in the three months ended 31 March, a 1.5% increase from the preceding quarter and 5.8% from the year-ago period. Net profit totalled $992 million, a 0.8% decline on a sequential basis and an increase of 5.8% from the year-ago period.A Bloomberg survey of 30 analysts had estimated TCS to report quarterly revenue of $4.62 billion and net profit of $1.03 billion in the quarter.Also read: TCS unperturbed by possible changes to H1B visa regime“FY17 was a year of broad-based growth amid economic and political turbulence in our key markets,” said Rajesh Gopinathan, who took over as chief executive of TCS in February. “We believe we are better placed for the year-ahead,” said Gopinathan, who spent much time on the numbers, suggesting that the new CEO will take time to probably replicate the success managed by his predecessor N. Chandrasekaran, the current chairman of Tata Sons Ltd. At the heart of TCS’s underperformance is the company’s inability to generate more business from its largest customers, banks, in its largest market, the US. TCS’s banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) segment, which accounts for over 40% of its revenue, grew 4.8% from a year earlier in constant currency terms. North America, which brings 54% of its business, reported a 4.3% rise.TCS does not give quarterly or annual forecasts but a few equity analysts are sceptical about the company’s prospects. The January-March quarter marks the 10th straight quarter (the company has recorded slow growth since July 2014) in which TCS has either underperformed, or at best managed to keep up with estimates. “Looking at this protracted slowdown, I believe TCS has reached a point where unless the company really brings about a change in the way it has done business, it will be tough for the company to ever beat street expectations,” said a Mumbai-based analyst at a domestic brokerage, on the condition of anonymity. “At best it can match street expectations.”TCS’s performance mirrors the poor show put up by Infosys Ltd last week, and this is worrying for three reasons.First, both growth and profitability for Indian IT firms is under pressure. Mumbai-based TCS reported a full-year increase of 8.3% in constant currency terms, similar to the full-year growth reported by Bengaluru-based Infosys (with $10.21 billion in revenue) although Infosys reported a higher 7.4% expansion in dollar revenue.Like Infosys, TCS’s growth in 2016-17 was slower than in 2015-16: TCS’s revenue growth in constant currency terms was 3.6 percentage points slower than the 11.9% increase in 2015-16. TCS added $1.03 billion in incremental revenue in the year ended 31 March 2017, less than $1.09 billion added in new business in 2015-16 when it reported a 7.1% increase and half of the $2.01 billion in new business added in 2014-15. TCS’s operating margin in the January-March quarter and for the full year stood at 25.7%. Operating margin narrowed 80 basis points from 26.5% in 2015-16, again similar to Infosys, which too saw its profitability eroded as commoditized outsourcing contracts see intense pricing pressure.Despite falling short of its operating margin forecast of 26-28% in the last financial year, the company’s management retained this guidance for the current fiscal year, which at least two analysts say will be “impossible to achieve”.“In this kind of environment, where most companies want more skilled people at client-facing sides, when most countries are adopting a protectionist stance, it looks impossible to keep operating in that band,” a Mumbai-based analyst at a foreign brokerage said, requesting anonymity.Second, despite higher growth in digital, which remains a fuzzy word, and the success of new and renew strategy rolled out by CEO Vishal Sikka to revive Infosys, both companies continue to be plagued by anaemic growth. This has made many analysts question if existing traditional contracts are merely getting rebadged as digital. A case in point: TCS claims its digital business grew 29% in the last year and now brings $3 billion in business.Finally, both TCS and Infosys continue to shy away from acquiring technology-focused firms. Infosys has not made a single acquisition in the last 18 months; TCS has looked away from acquiring a company since it partnered with Japan’s Mitsubishi Group in 2014. This is important because most large technology firms, including Accenture Plc, are looking at acquisitions to bring in new technology and skill sets. Nevertheless, the quarter does have some positives. For starters, the TCS management claimed that its insurance business under Diligenta and Japan has turned the corner, with Gopinathan expressing confidence of growth from these two lagging business units.On Tuesday, TCS shares fell 0.53% to Rs2,308.65 on BSE, while the benchmark Sensex declined 0.32% to 29,319.1 points. The results were announced after the end of trading in Mumbai.","Q4 revenue of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) rose 5.8% from the year-ago period to $4.45 billion, while Q4 profit increases 5.8% to $992 million",05:15,TCS misses both revenue and profit estimates in March quarter +2017-04-13,"Bengaluru: For Vishal Sikka, 2016-17 stands as a rebuke.After three consecutive downward growth revisions, Infosys’s dollar revenue growth in the year ended 31 March 2017 will be at best 7.6%, 150 basis points (bps) lower than the 9.1% growth in 2015-16, and 620 bps short of its first projected 13.8% growth outlined in April last year. One bps is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Departure of four executive vice-presidents (EVP) in financial year 2017 (in addition to four EVP exits between August 2014 and March 2016) implies that Sikka continues to struggle to build a stable top leadership team. Further, Infosys continues to look away from acquisitions (it’s been 18 months since the company made its last acquisition), which makes one wonder what Houdini trick the management has to achieve its target of becoming a $20 billion firm by March 2021.Also read: Will corporate earnings disappoint once again?Finally, Infosys founder N.R.Narayana Murthy’s outburst, twice in public, against some of the decisions by the board is another painful blow to Sikka. Agreed, Murthy has not questioned Sikka directly. But few of these decisions, including agreeing to a generous severance money to its former CFO (chief financial officer), and giving a hike to the current COO (chief operating officer), were approved by the management, and so it is naive to conclude that all is okay between Sikka and Murthy.Understandably, these developments have unnerved shareholders: in full fiscal year 2017, Infosys shares declined 16.2%, more than the 9% fall by BSE IT index, even as the benchmark Sensex index returned 17% gains. For these reasons, business historians would take note of the fall in Sikka’s popularity: from being hailed as a hero in the first 18 months, Sikka now battles allegations of skulduggery and corporate greed.So what can Sikka—and Infosys—do to possibly break this impasse?First, get back growth and improve its execution. A related second measure is to get some growth from three divisions: Infosys BPO, EdgeVerve, the products and platforms unit (together bring about 13% of revenue), and Infosys Consulting. Infosys needs to improve its ability to sell more solutions from these three services to its clients. Lastly, Sikka needs to arrest senior management departures and build a stable leadership team. All this needs to be done swiftly, and once completed, hopefully, any corporate governance concerns of shareholders (including the founders) should be assuaged. It is important to note here that the displeasure expressed by some of the founders against the board only coincided with the period when Infosys’s growth started slipping (during the first quarter of last year).Significantly, Sikka’s $8 million performance-related pay as part of his $11 million compensation is a thorny issue, and how the board justifies this variable salary to its CEO on Thursday will dictate if there is a third instance of public spat between Murthy and the board. Is all this doable? Unlikely.Simply, because for IT services firms, chasing reclusive growth is more challenging than ever. Moreover, in case of Infosys, nothing short of a miracle can bring back peace between some of the founders and the board and management. With this as a backdrop, Mint puts the spotlight on five things to watch in Infosys’s fourth quarter earnings on Thursday:Revenue forecast: Brokerage firm BNP Paribas sees Infosys recording 1.3% sequential increase in revenue at $2.58 billion for the January-March period. The Infosys management will be mindful that this growth will be 30 basis points less than what the company did in January-March last year. Analysts term the growth in the fourth quarter as “exit rate” and a strong growth helps to start on a good note in the new financial year. Again, management commentary for the April-June period will be crucial.Will Infosys give full-year guidance? For Infosys, providing a growth outlook is one decision which appears to be going down the wire. Analysts believe the management will give a growth outlook. Based on conversations with executives familiar with the development, this paper thinks otherwise and Infosys may discontinue from this practice. The board will eventually take a call when it meets on 12 and 13 April but this decision will decide the road ahead for the Infosys stock. Performance of top customers: During the second and third quarters, Infosys’s largest client and top five and top 10 clients gave less business to the company. Until the June quarter of last year, Sikka did well to get more business from its largest clients. Since Infosys gets a fifth of total revenue from its top 10 clients, the management needs to reverse this decline if Infosys expects to record sustainable growth. A rain-check on Infosys’s new initiatives in the wake of President Trump’s strict visa laws: Over the last 33 months, Sikka has steered Infosys to embrace newer ways to do business, such as by bringing elements of user-centric method of Design Thinking. At the same time, Infosys has increased its focus on building platforms, in an effort to move away from people-led model of doing business. All these measures will be tested as US President Donald Trump works to have a strict policy in place which makes it arduous for outsourcing companies to bring engineers in the US. Hence, commentary on how Infosys is monetising its platforms business and impact of changes in visa will be eyed.Weak areas: Sikka has been unable to get respectable growth from EdgeVerve and Infosys BPO in his near three-year stint at Infosys. Another disappointment has been that the consulting division too ran into trouble in April last year. Infosys has put in a new leadership team at all three units over the last year, and management commentary on how soon it expects growth from these three units should decide the overall growth for the company.","Infosys founders spat, Donald Trump’s US visa policy and three consecutive downward growth revisions are likely to weigh in on the Q4 results to be declared today",05:04,Infosys results today: Five things to watch out for +2017-04-13,"Mumbai: Reliance Power Ltd posted more than a three-fold increase in March quarter consolidated profit, helped by a 40% fall in tax expenses during the period.The company, which is part of billionaire Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group, reported a consolidated profit of Rs216 crore for the quarter ended 31 March 2017, the company said. Fourth-quarter consolidated revenue from operations stood little changed at Rs2,466 crore. The company had posted a rise in its quarterly profit in three of the four quarters preceding March quarter, according to Thomson Reuters data. ReutersReliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.",Reliance Power reported a consolidated profit of Rs216 crore for the quarter ended 31 March 2017,18:20,Reliance Power Q4 profit jumps on lower tax expense +2017-04-18,"San Francisco: Google on Tuesday launched a re-imagined version of its free Earth mapping service, weaving in storytelling and artificial intelligence and freeing it from apps. “This is our gift to the world,” said Google Earth director Rebecca Moore about the new version of the program that lets people range the planet from the comfort of their computers, smartphones or tablets. “It’s a product that speaks to our deepest values around education and making information available to people.” A new “Voyager” feature enables people digitally exploring the planet to be guided on interactive stories told by experts and boasting partners including BBC Earth, Nasa, Sesame Street, and the Jane Goodall Institute. Google artificial intelligence will be put to work for Earth users in the form of “knowledge cards” that let them dive deeper into online information about mountains, countries, landmarks or other places being virtually visited. It will also make suggestions on other locations that armchair explorers might be interested in exploring, based on what they have searched in the past. “This is the first time we have done this deep integration with the Google knowledge graph,” Earth engineering manager Sean Askay said. “Everything Google knows about the world, you can know about the world.” There is also a newly installed “Feeling Lucky?” feature for people who want to let the software suggest hidden gems such as Pemba Island off the Swahili coast or the Oodaira Hot Spring in Yamagata, Japan. People can choose to fly around the world in Earth, using a 3-D button to see the Grand Canyon, Chateau Loire Valley and other stunning spots from any angles they wish. “With the new Earth, we want to open up different lenses for you to see the world and learn a bit about how it all fits together; to open your mind with new stories while giving you a new perspective on the locations and experiences you cherish,” Earth product manager Gopal Shah said in a blog post. Online explorers cruising the mobile version of Earth can also capture pictures on their travels, sending friends digital postcards. New Earth was launched on Google’s Chrome and Android software, with versions tailored for Apple devices and other internet browsing software promised soon. It is the first time that Earth can be reached on a web browser instead of through applications installed on devices. The move allows Google to tap into more powerful computing power at data centres in the Internet “cloud” instead of relying on the capabilities of smartphones and other devices.","Google launches reimagined version of its free Earth mapping service, weaving in storytelling and artificial intelligence and freeing it from apps",17:43,"Google Earth gets facelift, integrated with Knowledge Graph " +2017-04-14,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd reported subdued earnings for the March quarter and gave a weak forecast for 2017-18, suggesting that India’s second largest software services company has to do more to become a next-generation services-led company and meet its target of $20 billion in revenue by 2020.In the January-March period, Infosys reported a 0.7% sequential rise in dollar revenue to $2.57 billion, allowing it to end fiscal year 2016-17 with a 7.4% year-on-year growth and $10.21 billion in revenue. Embarrassingly for the management, despite three downward revisions in annual growth, Infosys could manage only a 8.3% full-year growth in constant currency terms, missing the guidance of 8.4-8.8% made in January.Net profit declined 0.8% to $543 million in the March quarter, from $547 million in October-December. In rupee terms, revenue declined sequentially by 0.9% to Rs17,120 crore, while net profit declined 2.8% to Rs3,603 crore.ALSO READ: Infosys seeks to buy peace with new co-chairman, Rs13,000 crore payout promiseA Bloomberg survey of 34 analysts had forecast Infosys to report revenue of $2.68 billion, or Rs17,283.7 crore, in the quarter. The analysts estimated the company to report a net profit of $554.4 million, or Rs3,564.1 crore, in the period.Infosys expects its dollar revenue to expand between 6.1% and 8.1% in 2017-18, lower than the growth projected by Nasdaq-listed Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., which follows a January-December fiscal year and expects to grow between 8% and 10%. In constant currency terms, Infosys now expects 6.5-8.5% growth for the full year.Infosys’s lower growth guidance of 6.1-8.1% in 2017-18 means the firm expects less incremental revenue this year. In 2015-16, it reported a 9.1% growth and did $790 million in incremental business. In 2016-17, it managed $707 million in new business. The guidance of 6.1-8.1% means it expects to add between $600 and $800 million in new business.Q4 results: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?Another area of concern is Infosys’s lower profitability estimate of 23-25% for the current fiscal year—it has operated in a 24-26% band over the last few years—which implies that even as the firm sees pricing pressure for commoditized deals, it has been unable to sell more value-added services.Even though chief executive Vishal Sikka has tried to make engineers embrace newer ways of design thinking and tried to steer the firm to focus on building platforms, for now, it is struggling to change the way it has traditionally done business. This is the biggest worry ahead for the management, with the firm appearing to be unable to scale up business from newer offerings even as the core services business appears to be “structurally breaking down”, according to two equity analysts and one industry executive. This fact is disappointing because until the start of last fiscal year, Infosys appeared to be in the early stages of a turnaround.ALSO READ: Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout falls short of what investors need“We believe the top-line weakness and the lower-than-expected FY18 guidance is driven by the application services (Infosys had the highest exposure of 64% of its revenues to application services among peers in fiscal 2016) weakness (amid threat from cloud and SaaS, or Software as a Service) and low penetration in digital services,” Goldman Sachs analysts Sumeet Jain and Saurabh Thadani wrote in a note after Infosys declared earnings.Still, the management put up a brave face. “Yes, we have had challenges but I think we are progressing well despite all the macroeconomic challenges, pricing pressure and the distractions we have had over the last quarter,” Sikka said. The distractions he is referring to are the two public spats between Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy and the board, where the former raised issues of corporate governance and disproportionately high salaries to the CEO and COO.Although Infosys will likely grow faster than both Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and Wipro Ltd in 2016-17, its growth is lower than the 8.7% reported by Cognizant in 2016. TCS declares its earnings on 18 April and Wipro declares its fourth-quarter results on 25 April. Industry body Nasscom also avoided giving a growth outlook for India’s $150 billion outsourcing sector in February, on account of the uncertain macroeconomic outlook.“In order to get the stuttering sales engine firing again, Infosys needs to articulate its strategy in a more nuanced way and drive it through the organization,” said Thomas Reuner, managing director of IT outsourcing research at HfS Research. “Infosys urgently needs to focus on sales execution.”Investors punished the stock, which fell 3.71% to Rs932.90 on BSE at the close on Thursday, dragging the benchmark Sensex down 0.61% to 29,461.45 points.Infosys’s poor performance also hurt Sikka, who earned $6.7 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.7 million of the promised $8 million performance related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract allowing him to end his contract if his total compensation of $11 million fell more than 10%.","Infosys March quarter results show a 0.7% sequential rise in dollar revenue to $2.57 billion, allowing it to end FY17 with a 7.4% y-o-y growth and $10.21 billion in revenue",03:25,Infosys Q4 results disappoint as growth sputters +2017-04-17,"San Francisco: In the race to the autonomous revolution, developers have realized there aren’t enough hours in a day to clock the real-world miles needed to teach cars how to drive themselves. Which is why Grand Theft Auto V is in the mix.The blockbuster video game is one of the simulation platforms researchers and engineers increasingly rely on to test and train the machines being primed to take control of the family sedan. Companies from Ford Motor Co. to Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo may boast about putting no-hands models on the market in three years, but there’s a lot still to learn about drilling algorithms in how to respond when, say, a mattress falls off a truck on the freeway.If automakers and tech enterprises want to make their deadline, they have to hurry up. The test cars tricked out with lasers, sensors and cameras being put through the paces on tracks and public roads can’t do it on their own. Simulators never run out of gas—and the ones at Waymo can model driving more than 3 million miles in a single day.“Just relying on data from the roads is not practical,” said Davide Bacchet, who leads the simulation effort in San Jose, California, for Nio, a start-up aiming to introduce an autonomous electric car in the US in 2020. “With simulation, you can run the same scenario over and over again for infinite times, then test it again.”As improbable as it may seem to the lay person, hyper-realistic video games are able to generate data that’s very close to what artificial-intelligence agents can glean on the road. AI software has been playing around with games from Super Mario Bros. to Angry Birds for a while now, tackling problems in controlled environments and learning through trial and error.Last year, scientists from Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany and Intel Labs developed a way to pull visual information from Grand Theft Auto V. Now some researchers are deriving algorithms from GTAV software that’s been tweaked for use in the burgeoning self-driving sector.The latest in the franchise from publisher Rockstar Games Inc. is just about as good as reality, with 262 types of vehicles, more than 1,000 different unpredictable pedestrians and animals, 14 weather conditions and countless bridges, traffic signals, tunnels and intersections. (The hoodlums, heists and accumulated corpses aren’t crucial components.)The idea isn’t that the highways and byways of the fictional city of Los Santos would ever be a substitute for bona fide asphalt. But the game “is the richest virtual environment that we could extract data from,” said Alain Kornhauser, a Princeton University professor of operations research and financial engineering who advises the Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering team.Waymo uses its simulators to create a confounding motoring situation for every variation engineers can think of: having three cars changing lanes at the same time at an assortment of speeds and directions, for instance. What’s learned virtually is applied physically, and problems encountered on the road are studied in simulation.Whenever a human has to grab the wheel of a test car because self-driving software hasn’t responded properly, “we’re able to play back the exact situation and predict via simulation what could have happened if the car had been left to drive itself,” Waymo said in a self-driving project report. “If the simulator shows better driving is called for, our engineers can make refinements to the software, and run those changes in simulation in order to test the fixes.”At Toyota Motor Corp.’s Toyota Research Institute in California, engineers try to “break the system” through what’s known as the Quick Brown Fox test: running mile after mile in the most challenging weather and traffic conditions.For all the stupid mistakes motorists regularly make, the human brain is far superior to a computer in perceiving and reacting to the unexpected, from a pothole to a construction zone to a toddler chasing a ball into the street. That’s the great challenge for all the companies competing to be first in the autonomous space: how to make on-board systems better than people at driving, and make driving safer.A looming question is what state and federal safety regulators will demand as proof an autonomous car should be given license to roam. Hundreds of billions of miles may have to be racked up, one way or another. The authorities will probably accept a combination of real and replicated, but rules spelling out requirements have yet to be written.Gill Pratt, chief executive officer of the Toyota institute, told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee in February that simulation should “be an acceptable equivalent to real-word testing,” with follow-up validation. That’s the road developers are increasingly travelling. Bloomberg",Grand Theft Auto is one of the simulation platforms researchers increasingly rely on to test and train the machines being primed to take control of driverless cars,19:43,Driverless cars are learning from Grand Theft Auto +2017-04-10,"
Mumbai: The quarterly earnings season that begins this week will determine whether Indian stocks that have rallied to record highs last week will be able to sustain the gains. Inflows from foreign and domestic investors have been driving up stocks but they may easily retreat if earnings disappoint. With rising commodity prices and the lingering effects of demonetization, earnings prospects for most companies are anything but rosy, analysts say. Companies, excluding banks and commodities suppliers, are likely to be weighed down by margin pressure as raw material costs have surged from a year earlier, they said.Margins of members of the Nifty index are estimated to narrow by as much as 116 basis points in the three months ended 31 March because of rising input costs, Edelweiss Securities Ltd said in a note released on 7 April. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Infosys Ltd, Bajaj Capital Ltd and Reliance Power Ltd are scheduled to report their fourth quarter earnings on 13 April. Analysts expect quarterly earnings growth to be driven by banks and metals companies. Banks’ profit growth in the March quarter is likely to be boosted mostly as a result of a favourable base effect. They had reported weak earnings in the year-ago period because of higher provisions following the Reserve Bank of India’s asset quality review. For metals companies, higher commodity prices are expected to support earnings growth.“Excluding banks and commodities, profits are likely to contract by 9%, similar to last quarter’s contraction and significantly lower than the 10% plus profit growth seen in FY15, FY16 and H1FY17. The slowdown in profit will be more pronounced in consumption sectors and cement,” Edelweiss said in the 7 April note. The brokerage expects FY17 Nifty earnings per share (EPS) to grow 10%, a marked improvement over the past two years, with Nifty EPS expected at Rs455, Rs555 and Rs660 at the end of FY17, FY18 and FY19, respectively. The brokerage expects Nifty firms to report revenue, operating profit and net profit growth of 15%, 8% and 14%, respectively, in the March quarter. Analysts are worried that the lingering effects of demonetization are still likely to impact companies that are dependent on domestic consumption. Recovery of volume growth is likely to be one of the key concerns in the March quarter earnings, Sanjay Mookim, India equity strategist, Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA-ML), said on Thursday. BofA-ML expects earnings growth to improve from sub-5% in FY17 to 12% in FY18 and 15% in FY19. Indian markets have touched record highs in March and April after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party won the crucial Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. The Sensex and Nifty rose 11% and 12%, respectively in the March quarter and if earnings fail to deliver, the rally may lose steam.The net income of Sensex companies is likely to grow 9% on an annual basis and 15.3% quarter-on-quarter, Kotak Institutional Equities said in a report dated 7 April.Excluding banks, the brokerage expects an 8.8% year-on-year growth in net income. Weak demand environment, rising raw material costs and increase in discounts may result in an annual decline in net income for automobile firms, while downstream energy firms may be hurt because of lower refining margins, muted growth in volume and the recent decline in global crude oil prices. Kotak estimates Sensex FY18 EPS at Rs1,682 and FY19 EPS at Rs1,972. Its Nifty EPS estimates for FY18 and FY19 are Rs520 and Rs608, respectively. Gautam Duggad, head of research at Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd, said the March quarter may see margin contraction of 50 basis points for firms under the brokerage’s coverage, excluding financials. “We are expecting 23% earnings growth for our universe and 22% CAGR over FY17-19. Expectations for our Motilal Oswal universe net profit growth is 28% and largely led by three sectors—PSU banks, metals, oil and gas. Rest of the universe may decline by 5%,” he said. Rakesh Tarway, head of research at Reliance Securities, expects 10% profit growth in the March quarter, reflecting similar trends in the first nine months of the fiscal year. He, however, said commodity prices will have a marginal impact on profitability as firms in many industries like tyres, autos and packaged consumer goods have raised prices. “Also, commodity prices have now started stabilizing, which will further insulate margin erosion,” he added. According to Deutsche Bank, Sensex firms are expected to post a 9.1% profit growth in the fourth quarter. “Excluding banks, Sensex net profit growth is likely to be at 5.4%. Autos are likely to be the biggest drag on Sensex growth, as our analyst has factored in a one-time impact of the BS-III vehicle ban,” it said in a note dated 7 April. In the current fiscal year, CRISIL Ratings expects corporate revenue to grow at around 8% on a year-on-year basis. “Revival in sectors such as construction equipment, EPC (on improving order book); metals (especially non-ferrous) and sugar—on better prices, are expected to aid the improvement,” the rating agency said on 3 April.","With rising commodity prices and lingering effects of demonetisation, earnings prospects for most companies for the March quarter are anything but rosy",20:41,Will corporate earnings disappoint once again? +2017-04-07,"New Delhi: Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) on Friday reported its best-ever annual retail sales of 6,04,009 units in the financial year ended 31 March, 2017, up 16% from the year-ago period. The company exceeded sales of 600,000 units for the first time in its history, Tata Motors said in a BSE filing. Retail sales for the fourth quarter ended March 2017 were up 13% to 1,79,509 vehicles as compared to same quarter a year ago. In March, sales were at 90,838 units, up 21% as against March 2016, it added. Commenting on the sales performance, Jaguar Land Rover Group sales operations director Andy Goss said: “These numbers set the seal on Jaguar Land Rover’s seventh successive year of sales growth, by breaking through the 6,00,000 barrier.” He further said: “The last 12 months have seen the launch of three completely new product lines, and successful growth across many of our existing products.” Retail sales for Jaguar went up by 83% to 1,72,848 units in the financial year, primarily driven by the successful introduction of the F-PACE and solid sales of the XE and XF. Land Rover sales were marginally up by 1% to 4,31,161 units in FY17, as continuing strong sales of the Discovery Sport, Evoque and Range Rover Sport were offset by the run-out of Defender and Discovery.","The Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) recorded its best-ever annual retail sales and crossed the 600,000-mark in sales for the first time",21:54,"Tata Motors’ JLR clocks 16% growth in sales at 604,009 units in FY17" +2017-04-12,"Kolkata: In a bid to stave off potential privatization, the management of India’s oldest pharmaceuticals company, Bengal Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals Ltd, on Wednesday said the state-owned enterprise can be turned around in five years.Acting managing director and director (finance) P.M. Chandraiah on Wednesday said the 125-year-old company had turned in an operating profit of Rs4 crore in fiscal 2016-17 as against a loss of Rs9.13 crore in the previous year, thanks to better control over costs and improved employee efficiency.Announcing the first profit in decades, Chandraiah said he was confident that in the current year, Bengal Chemicals’ operating profit can be ramped up to Rs10 crore, and in five years, the company will turn in profits of Rs30-40 crore a year if the government agreed to restructure its loans.Operating results improved in fiscal 2016-17 despite a marginal decline in revenue from Rs112.76 crore to Rs111 crore. But in the current year, the management expects to expand its product range, which, in turn, will lead to the company’s revenue jumping sharply.ALSO READ: Bengal Chemicals divestment may turn into a real estate playFor decades, Bengal Chemicals has been producing low-margin generic drugs, but from May, it proposes to start manufacturing injectable drugs, which alone can generate Rs50 crore in annual revenue, according to Chandraiah. Going forward, the company plans to start producing oral drugs as it seeks to reclaim its lost glory, he added.There is, however, no clarity immediately on the government’s plan to privatize the firm though it has been identified as one in which the government does not wish to remain invested in the long run.The company has valuable real estate across cities, including in Mumbai, where its office is conservatively valued at Rs1,000 crore, according to Chandraiah. Yet, the company has through decades scaled back production for want of working capital.Bengal Chemicals currently owes the government Rs215 crore in outstanding loans and unpaid interest. The management now wants the government to lower the interest rate on its outstanding loans from 21% to levels offered by commercial banks.Alongside, the company is also looking to shore up sales of its over-the-counter products and home disinfectants. For want of a strong distribution channel, the company was forced to sell home disinfectants largely to institutional buyers at low realizations. Now with cash flows improving, it is looking to open up channels to sell these products, which currently account for 30% of its revenue, in the retail market, Chandraiah said.","Announcing the first profit in decades, MD P.M. Chandraiah said in the current year, Bengal Chemicals’ operating profit can be ramped up to Rs10 crore",22:09,Bengal Chemicals reports profit of Rs4 crore for FY2017 +2017-04-11,"New Delhi: Reliance Defence and Engineering Ltd has reduced its consolidated loss to Rs577.22 crore for the year ended March, 2017. The company had posted a loss of Rs592.42 crore for the year ended 31 March, 2016, Reliance Defence and Engineering said in a filing to BSE. The consolidated total revenue of the ocmpany for the year ended 31 March, 2017 increased to Rs603.12 crore, over Rs346.16 crore for the year ended 31 March, 2016. The company said that its board, at a meeting held on Tuesday, has approved revalidation and approval of rights issue up to Rs1,200 crore which was approved “by the board held in 22 April, 2016.” The board has also approved the appointment of Kartik Subramaniam, chief executive officer, as a whole-time director of the comapny with effect from Tuesday in place of H.S. Malhi who superannuated from the services of the comapny and “ceased to be the whole-time director with effect from 11 April, 2017.” The appointment of Subramaniam, CEO, as “whole time director of the company is approved for three years with effect from 11 April, 2017.Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.","Reliance Defence’s consolidated total revenue for the year ended 31 March, 2017 increased to Rs603.12 crore, over Rs346.16 crore a year ago",22:33,Reliance Defence FY2017 loss narrows to Rs577.22 crore +2017-04-19,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +2017-04-19,"Mumbai/New Delhi: India risks straining public finances and undermining already ailing state banks, economists said, after a $5.6 billion loan write-off for farmers in Uttar Pradesh and moves to do something similar in at least four other states.One of the first acts of the new government in India’s most populous state following last month’s election triumph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was to keep a promise to provide debt relief to 21.5 million farmers.Taking their cue from Uttar Pradesh, more state governments could waive loans to farmers, senior officials there said, to fulfil election pledges or woo rural voters before further polls in the run-up to a general election in 2019 when Modi is expected to run for a second term.“This will spread like a contagious disease to most parts of the country and you will very soon see at least 3-4 states announcing similar farm loan waivers,” said Ashok Gulati, a farm economist who advised India’s last government.Economists caution that the move could encourage indebted farmers not to repay loans, deepening malaise at public sector banks already saddled with most of India’s $150 billion in stressed loans.Also Read: Loan waiver is not the solution to farm crisisUttar Pradesh will cover the cost of the waivers by issuing bonds. This would in turn constrain India’s sovereign credit because such bonds are backstopped by the federal government, the economists said.India’s total public sector debt, as a share of gross domestic product, stands at around 66 percent - high compared to other emerging economies.Economists at Merrill Lynch estimate that states will end up writing off debts equivalent to 2% of GDP — the bulk of all outstanding loans to farmers.Leverage levelsRatings agencies would like to see India’s debt-to-GDP ratio fall below 60% over the next three years to justify an upgrade in its sovereign rating. Yet debt waivers would, even if staggered, force up borrowing, analysts said.“The loan waivers would likely worsen the fiscal deficits and leverage levels of the state governments, unless other resources are mobilised or expenditure is controlled,” said Aditi Nayar of ICRA, an affiliate of Moody’s Investors Service.“There is a significant risk that productive capital spending may end up being reduced to fund a portion of the loan waivers.”A government-appointed panel has suggested capping the states’ debt at 20% of India’s GDP, while Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel has said the Uttar Pradesh loan waiver “undermines honest credit culture”.Who’s next?Maharashtra and Punjab are expected to announce similar loan waivers soon, senior officials in both states told Reuters.In Maharashtra, ruled by the BJP, farmers are clamouring for a bailout after two years of drought and falling commodity prices. In Punjab, known as India’s grain bowl, the opposition Congress party won last month’s election partly on the promise of a farm loan waiver.In Tamil Nadu, reeling from dry weather, a court asked the state government to write off loans to all farmers.Farmers from Tamil Nadu recently protested in New Delhi, showing the skulls of neighbours who had committed suicide to press their demand for drought relief and loan write-offs.Won’t paySome of India’s 263 million farmers have decided not to repay their debts, expecting loan waivers to mean they don’t have to.“I am not going to repay the loan because defaulters benefited from the previous waiver and I didn’t get any government help even as I repaid the loan on time,” said Gorakh Patil, a farmer from Jalgaon in western India.Patil was referring to an $11 billion national farm loan waiver in 2008 that helped the Congress party-led coalition of the day win re-election the following year. But non-performing assets jumped.Gross non-performing loans in agriculture and its allied sectors surged to Rs58,800 crore ($9.12 billion) at the end of the December quarter, from Rs9,740 crore in the 2007/08 fiscal year, RBI data show.“There’s no benefit from such waivers,” said a director at one state bank who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. “If you give any benefit across the board, it definitely has an adverse effect on credit discipline.” Reuters","Farm loan write-off could encourage indebted farmers not to repay loans, deepening malaise at PSU banks already saddled with $150 bn in stressed loans, say economists",09:32,"Farm loan write-offs win votes in India, but may hurt economy" +2017-04-19,"
New Delhi/Bengaluru: Fintech start-up Paytm, run by One97 Communications Ltd, is in talks with Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. to raise $1.2-1.5 billion in cash in a deal that could raise Paytm’s valuation to $7-9 billion, according to three people familiar with the matter.The deal, which has been in the works for nearly three months now, will see SoftBank buying some shares from existing Paytm investor SAIF Partners and founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma as well as investing money in the company, the people mentioned above said on condition of anonymity.Paytm, India’s second-most valuable Internet firm, may also buy Snapdeal-owned payments firm Freecharge (SoftBank is Snapdeal’s largest shareholder) in a fire sale, though the fundraising is not contingent upon the proposed buyout, the people said.The fund infusion, one of the largest investments by a single investor in an Indian start-up, would make SoftBank one of the largest shareholders in Paytm, the country’s top mobile wallet which is set to launch a payments bank.Getting SoftBank on board as a large shareholder will help Paytm reduce the control of China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, currently its largest shareholder, and pre-empt possible government concerns about a Chinese company having a strong hold on Paytm. Financial services is considered a strategically important sector.SoftBank and Alibaba are themselves intimately connected. The Japanese company was an early backer of Alibaba and its initial investment of $20 million turned into a stake worth more than $60 billion when Alibaba listed its shares in 2014.“Getting SoftBank will help Paytm change the perception of being a Chinese company with the regulators as well as the public,” said one of the three people cited above.SoftBank and Paytm declined comment.For SoftBank, the world’s biggest investor in start-ups, an investment in Paytm means an entry into India’s big financial services market. “It is the Alipay success story it is looking to repeat in India,” said the second person, referring to the success of Alibaba’s payment services firm. The proposed deal with Paytm is another instance of SoftBank trying to get it right the second time.Separately, SoftBank is trying to sell Snapdeal, run by Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd, to Flipkart. Another of its portfolio companies, Grofers, is in initial talks with Big Basket for a merger. SoftBank initially considered investing in Paytm in late 2014 but passed on the opportunity. It instead bet on online marketplace Snapdeal. At that time, Paytm was rapidly expanding its nascent commerce business, which SoftBank was opposed to because of its Snapdeal investment.After SoftBank passed up on Paytm, the latter ended up raising $1 billion in 2015 from Alibaba and its financial arm Alipay (now called Ant Financial).Paytm’s owner One97 was valued at about $5 billion in August when the company raised $60 million from Mediatek. It saw a valuation of close to $6 billion in March when three existing investors—Reliance Capital, SVB (Saama Capital) and SAP Ventures—sold their combined stake of about 4.3% to Alibaba and Ant Financial.Investor interest in Paytm, the top online payment services provider in India, has increased after the government’s move in late 2016 to invalidate old high-value currency notes. That, and the consequent emphasis on digital payments, have worked well for Paytm.One97 founder Sharma was one of 11 recipients of a payments bank licence from the Reserve Bank of India in August 2015. Paytm Payments Bank, which now houses the electronic wallet business, plans to roll out several financial services products.",SoftBank’s $1.5 billion investment will increase Paytm’s valuation to $7-9 billion and will make the Japanese firm one of the largest shareholders alongside Alibaba,14:55,SoftBank may invest around $1.5 billion in Paytm +2017-04-19,"
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday advised banks to consider setting aside higher provisions even for good loans in stressed sectors. The advisory means the central bank is worried that banks have not fully recognized their bad loans, said experts. Indian banks are sitting on a toxic loan pile of at least Rs7 trillion, or 9% of all bank credit.The central bank specifically red-flagged the telecom industry, and asked bank boards to review their exposure to the sector by 30 June and consider making provisions at higher rates “so that necessary resilience is built in the balance sheets should the stress reflect on the quality of exposure to the sector at a future date.” This means banks should consider making higher provisions immediately for the telecom sector.Under current rules, most standard assets attract a provision of 0.4%. The few exceptions include credit to commercial real estate—which has a 1% provision, and residential real estate (0.75%). However, the regulator hasn’t specified the extent of higher provisioning for good loans to telecom or other stressed sectors. “We are not surprised that banks will see higher provisioning going forward. We have already accounted for a potential jump in fresh slippages of 2.6% of total bank loans in the next 12 months,” said Udit Kariwala, analyst-financial institutions at India Ratings and Research. In a 15 February report, the ratings agency had said that impaired assets would peak at 12.5%-13% by 2018-19.The central bank has also asked banks to put in place a board-approved policy for making higher provisions depending on the stress in various sectors. This policy should be reviewed every quarter depending on the performance of the sectors to which the bank has an exposure, the central bank said. Currently, bank lending to the telecom sector stands at around Rs82,200 crore. The industry has been going through a tumultuous period with the launch of services by Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. A 17 February India Ratings and Research Report had predicted that the industry has lost about 20% of revenues post the launch of free services by Jio. The industry’s debt levels have risen sharply from Rs2.7 trillion in 2014 to Rs4.85 trillion at the end of 31 December 2016. “Telecom industry is now on a downward trajectory as far as margins are concerned. Profitability is getting thinner. There is no scope for a volume game going forward. Because of these concerns, RBI must have asked banks to keep higher provision,” said Dharmesh Kant, vice-president and head of retail research at Motilal Oswal Securities. “The new regulation will increase credit cost for banks. However, the extent may be limited because the exposure to the telecom sector is only 1% of the total credit in the system,” said Karthik Srinivasan, senior vice-president, Icra Ltd. In a separate notification, the regulator also increased disclosure norms for banks after it noted instances of divergences in banks’ asset classification and the provisioning required as per RBI norms. “This has led to the published financial statements not depicting a true and fair view of the financial position of the bank,” the regulator said.The regulator told banks to make a disclosure in the “notes to accounts” if the additional provisioning requirement assessed by RBI exceeds 15% of their net profit. Further, banks also have to make additional disclosures if the additional gross NPAs (non-performing assets) identified by RBI under its asset quality review are greater than 15% of the incremental gross NPAs reported. The first such disclosure will have to be made for financial year 2015-16 in the annual accounts statements for the just ended fiscal 2017.","RBI tells banks to make higher provisioning for good loans in stressed sectors such as telecom, asks bank boards to review exposure by 30 June",04:15,RBI asks banks to closely monitor telecom loans as debt mounts +2017-04-19,"Mumbai: Weak state-run banks like Indian Overseas Bank, IDBI Bank, Bank of India and Union Bank of India are in for regulatory action if the tightened prompt corrective action (PCA) is implemented properly, warns S&P in a report.“If the norms were applied to reported numbers for December 2016, among the banks rated by us, Indian Overseas Bank is in risk threshold 3; IDBI Bank is in risk threshold 2; and Bank of India and Union Bank of India are likely be in risk threshold 1;” S&P credit analyst Geeta Chugh said on Tuesday.She also said the revised PCA, released last week by the Reserve Bank invests a lot of powers on the regulator to supersede the troubled banks, may trigger faster consolidation among the bad loan saddled state-run banks or higher capital infusion by the government.“Our ratings on the banks factor in weak stand-alone credit profiles of ‘B-’ on IOB and IDBI Bank, and ‘BB’ on Bank of India and Union Bank. The ‘BB’ issuer credit ratings on IOB and IDBI Bank and ‘BB+’ issuer credit ratings on BoI and UBI continue to benefit from the very high likelihood of government support,” Chugh said.Welcoming the new guidelines, she said “we believe the Reserve Bank is taking a step in the right direction and the new regulations will force public sector banks to raise their generally low provisioning coverage, and likely accelerate the need for capital.” The revised norms may not necessarily be effective as early warning signals amid the current industry downcycle, she said and noted that a number of public sector banks are already knee-deep in NPAs and firmly entrenched within the new risk thresholds.She further noted that the PCA measures such as restrictions on dividend distributions or branch expansion will have limited benefit because most banks didn’t pay any dividends in fiscal 2016 as they are conserving capital.Also, most of them have shown little growth, and in many cases have contracted their balance sheets.","A report from Standard & Poor’s says weak state-run banks like IOBank, IDBI Bank, BoI and UBI are in for RBI action if the tightened PCA is implemented properly",05:21,"IOB, IDBI, BoI, UBI may be 1st in line of RBI fire under new PCA" +2017-04-18,"Mumbai: The RBI on Tuesday permitted banks to invest up to 10% of the unit capital of an Real Estate Investment Trust (REITs) or Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs).The banks’ exposure to REITs/InvITs will be within the overall ceiling of 20% of the net worth permitted for direct investments in shares, convertible bonds/ debentures, units of equity-oriented mutual funds and Venture Capital Funds (VCFs).“Banks should put in place a Board approved policy on exposures to REITs/ InvITs which lays down an internal limit on such investments within the overall exposure limits in respect of the real estate sector and infrastructure sector,” the Reserve Bank said while issuing prudential guidelines in this regard. It further said banks will not invest more than 10% of the unit capital of an REIT/ InvIT. In addition, banks will have to ensure adherence to the prudential guidelines on equity investments, classification and valuation of investment portfolio, Basel III Capital requirements for commercial real estate exposures and large exposure framework. In its first bimonthly monetary policy of 2017-18, the RBI had permitted banks to invest in REITs and InvITs. The move was aimed to help revive the cash-starved infrastructure sector.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has put in place regulations for REITs and InvITs and requested the RBI to allow banks to participate in these schemes.","RBI says banks’ exposure to REITs/InvITs will be within the overall ceiling of 20% of the net worth permitted for direct investments in shares, convertible bonds/ debentures, VCFs",19:27,"RBI caps bank exposure to REITs, InvITs at 10%" +2017-04-18,"
Mumbai: It was just another Friday for the hundreds of office goers who were jostling with each other to get to their own work places in and around the corporate office of the Union Bank of India at Nariman Point in Mumbai. Even those queuing up in the early hours at the cash counters across the 4,233 branches and 7,946 ATMs of the bank spread across India, were calmly going about their tasks— depositing money or withdrawing cash.However, those early hours of 21 July 2016, were going to be anything but ordinary for the chairman and managing director of Union Bank, Arun Tiwari, who also sits in the corporate office—the Union Bank Bhavan. Happily going about his routine tasks of reading newspapers, sipping a cup of tea and updating himself of the goings-on in the bank, Tiwari was just settling in when his phone rang.He still remembers the time. “It was around 10.30am when I was informed that an unidentified hacker was attempting to swindle us of $171 million (about Rs1,100 crore at today’s rates) from our Nostro account.” A Nostro account is an account that a bank holds in a foreign currency in another bank. All hell should have broken loose. But Tiwari, who insists that he is a “non-technical” person kept his cool. “The thing uppermost in my mind was that I had to quickly get onto the money trail and recover the money.”That was easier said than done. By the time the Union Bank official in the treasury department, who was reconciling the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) payments for the day realized that an amount of $171 million had already been debited from the dollar account of the bank without his authorization, the money had travelled far and wide.The money had found its way to accounts in two banks in Cambodia—the Canadia Bank Plc and RHB IndoChina Bank Ltd, besides the Siam Commercial Bank in Thailand, Bank Sinopac in Taiwan, and a bank in Australia. These funds were routed by Citibank New York and JP Morgan Chase New York, which hold UBI’s foreign exchange accounts.Even as Tiwari informed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the ministry of external affairs and Gulshan Rai, director general of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), to apprise them of the matter and take advice, he simultaneously sent a terse message instructing all the staff at Union Bank Bhavan that “a whole floor on that building was to be cordoned off, and that all staff members working to solve this problem would only leave after the matter was resolved”.“Inspection investigation was done by CERT-In, RBI, our own team,” Tiwari recalls, adding that he also appointed consulting firm EY “the same night”. EY said “as far operations are concerned, you are ahead of time. Whatever was required to be done, as a non-technical person, has already been done.”How did it exactly happen?First, the bank had to know what exactly had gone wrong and how the hackers got access to Union Bank’s servers. Did an insider assist in the task or was it a breach by an external device?It appears, it was neither. Rather, it was an email from a very authentic source— (RBI)—with an attachment. “This email was sent to a few email IDs, and some of them were from customer care, e-banking and some were addressed to individuals too. It might have happened even before 20 July,” Tiwari recalls.Kartik Shinde, partner, advisory services, EY, recalls receiving a call at 10pm that night. “Which PSU (public sector undertaking) bank in India has that ability to take that call? I know of two-three others, who started evaluating vendors, took prices from them. UBI said start the work and we will give whatever the fees. You need to have someone authoritative in the bank like the chairman who will take the call saying that I will take the necessary approvals from CVC (Central Vigilance Commission) and all others but get this analysis done sooner because the more time you spent analysing it, you are giving more lead time for attackers to cover up their tracks, to get out of the system,” he said.It wasn’t that Union Bank was the specific target. Shinde insists that “I wouldn’t say it was a random pick. If I have to break into this network, I will send the payload or malware to all employees. It doesn’t matter who clicks on the link. The hacker simply wants to access the system from where he will do the transaction.”This is also what happened in Union Bank’s case. The “phishing”—an attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and other financial details by pretending to be a trustworthy entity—mails were sent to 15 email IDs. “Three people reported that the email was suspicious to the IT security. The other Union Bank employees were “technically-savvy” persons. They noticed that although the email address said @rbi.org.in, it had an attachment that a zip file. Within the zip file, there was a dot (xer) file and not a dot pdf file, which is why they reported it as suspicious,” Shinde said. Unfortunately, one of the “not-so-tech-savvy” Union Bank officials fell prey to the phishing email and clicked on the link which released the malware that went viral on the bank’s servers. The hackers would have got their way and swindled the cash but for a silly mistake they made, according to Shinde.When a bank does a SWIFT transaction during the day, they typically get a reconciliation report the next day and all the corresponding banks send them the “end-of-the-day balance” report the following morning. When Union Bank got it from the originating bank, they saw a difference of $170 million and that alerted them because of one mistake—the hackers deleted the six entries they had made. “That’s why we say it’s quite similar to the Bangladesh online heist (theft of $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh in February 2016). If they had not deleted the entries, it would have taken some more time for the bank to realise that there are fraudulent transactions,” Shinde explained.Every bank runs a reconciliation process at the end of the day. The malware that infected the central bank of Bangladesh, too, had a component which manipulated the SWIFT’s prt file. The prt file is a print file which usually prints the report of transactions for that day.For instance, if the report shows 106 transactions when they have actually done only 100 transactions, the discrepancy will come to light. This is one reason why the hackers deleted the six transactions in the Union Bank episode. However, this is also the reason that the hack was discovered.So what did Union Bank do?Shinde recalls some RBI officials being there when the forensics began. “The CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) had not come yet. The cybercrime cell officials were there. Traditional police mentality was it must be some insider,” Shinde said. Even a First Information Report (FIR) was filed almost a month after the incident, according to Tiwari.“It took us sometime to zero down on the fact that the attack was similar to what happened in the Bangladesh case,” Shinde explained.EY officials went about doing an analysis of the server and “some network forensics”. They, thus, narrowed down on the systems involved. “Imaging takes 48 hours, indexing takes 24 hours. For instance, when you put a system to do imaging of the disk, it takes two days for a 2 terrabyte (TB) hard disk. There is a lot of time lag that happens. We had a tough time facing the regulators and security officers. It was a high-pressure environment. RBI used to call us every day, asking us what happened. We had to tell them that analysis takes time,” Shinde said.The problem, according to Shinde, is that EY had access only to a “limited set of logs”. Organizations, according to Shinde, typically keep logs in the system for a period of 2-4 months and not for 1-2 years. The reason is also that the data is humongous. “If someone had the ability to analyse a two-year log, you’d have different answers coming out. It’s very difficult. So attribution of zeroing down on a particular geography is very difficult.”In UBI’s case, the UBI employee was sitting in the Mumbai office. But he could have been anywhere. Given that networks of most organizations are flat, SWIFT networks are not segregated—one computer can reach the other computer very easily, according to Shinde. The objective of the attacker is to infect anyone and then start searching for critical systems within the network. In technical terms, it’s called lateral movement, Shinde explained.After analyzing the problem with the “limited resources” on hand, Union Bank delinked its “380-odd SWIFT pan-India connections” in a bid to centralize operations. “Then we created space in this building (Union Bank Bhavan), and had around 40 hotline operators manning the phones. I had told them that nobody will leave till such time that this is put in place and tested,” Tiwari explained. The ploy worked. As regulation necessitates, Union Bank informed the exchanges on 22 July that “…there was an attempted cyber incidence in USD Nostro Account of the bank. The money trail was promptly traced and movement of funds was blocked. Resultantly, there is no loss caused to the bank”.“What pains me —in cricket, we call this a late run. The headlines (referring to reports that appeared a year after the heist) are screaming as if this happened yesterday,” Tiwari rued. He added, “We had, and have, concurrent manual checks too. In all these kinds of heists, money is lost or partly retrieved. Credence must be given that we did not lose a single cent. We recovered about 70% of the money within 24 hours. The last tranche of $30 million took me 50-60 hours because of a legal process.”But isn’t prevention better than cure?Union Bank, according to the 22 July press statement to the exchanges, added that a cybersecurity forensic audit was being done to “identify, plug any gaps and strengthen the system. “There is no impact on the Bank’s operations,” the note concluded.The question that begs an answer—one which even Tiwari could not answer satisfactorily—is who was to blame for the lapse: Union Bank or SWIFT?Kiran Shetty, CEO of SWIFT India, insisted that “SWIFT’s system has not been compromised. We have not got a cyber report from Union Bank or any forensic report from them. The investigation is closely held by them. In most cases, when cyber attacks happen, people are not forthcoming with information. We have not been exposed to full details.”“Globally, there are controls and principles we are defining. We are revisiting the vendors that we have in terms of our connection. We have never been compromised. We are only doing pieces to further strengthen the evolution of our system. We are doing roadshows across five cities in India along with the Indian Banks Association talking about cyber security controls, cyber hygiene, etc,” Shetty said.Shetty, though, acknowledged that “cyber threat is real and is growing”. According to him, the pace of digitization that we have seen in the last decade and at a more accelerated pace, requires the same level of investment on the cyber side as well. The regulator (RBI), he added, has introduced regulations around a CISO (chief information and security officer) directly reporting to the board. There is also a customer security programme where “we are now mandating 27 controls, of which 16 are mandates and 11 are advisory. If you don’t have 16, we will start reporting to the regulator.” Implementation of all these regulations will have to be done by the end of the year.Even Tiwari expressed his inability to share a copy of the forensics report. “I cannot share further details because even I don’t have a copy,” he said.Tiwari, however, pointed out that the measures his bank has undertaken after the incident last July included the “most stringent filtering, awareness of employees, whitelisting (proactive security technique that only allows a limited set of approved programs to run while blocking the others), BIOS passwords (to prevent external devices from accessing computers and servers) and engagement with regional office levels constantly”. He added, though, that even as the bank was fortifying its IT platform “trying to see how to make your processes efficient”, he would not rule out future cyber attacks.“We have put the best IT guys on the jobs and even a CISO but the fact is that however many locks you put on the door, a burglary can still take place. The point is to remain alert and put measures in place, which we have done already,” Tiwari insisted.Shinde concurred that cyber crimes are well thought and well researched most of the times. Even when EY does cyber attack simulations, the first part is the reconnaissance phase.“It’s like in any war on an attack, you first do a thorough reconnaissance on the target to see how weak they are, what controls are there, who to target first, what are the avenues for entry, how many avenues are there,” Shinde explained. Shinde added that one can easily pick up and sniff out email addresses from employees putting news on groups, public forums. “It’s possible that Union Bank, too, could have been targeted via a reconnaissance exercise. This is just one bank which has come out in the open. We don’t know how many banks are there who have gone through the same incident and not reported it to the regulator,” Shinde said, concluding, “Even if you fix everything, you cannot rule out the chance that it will not happen again. In UBI’s case, they responded faster. Today, the response time is critical.”Incidents of hacking in recent times
—Federal prosecutors are investigating North Korea’s possible role in a SWIFT hack that resulted in the theft of $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh in February 2016, according to a 15 April report in the New York Times. Security researchers found that traces of code used in the Bangladesh theft had been used in a cyber attack against Sony in 2014, which the Obama administration and security experts blamed North Korean hackers for carrying out, the report added. Soon after RBI asked Indian banks to immediately put in place a cyber security policy.
—Card data of 3.2 million customers was stolen between 25 May and 10 July in 2016 from a network of Yes Bank Ltd ATMs managed by Hitachi Payment Services Pvt. Ltd.
—Axis Bank reported cyber security breach in October 2016; malware found in its server; no monetary loss reported.
—Bank of Maharashtra lost Rs25 crore when a bug in the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system allowed people to send money without having the necessary funds in their accounts earlier this year.
—On 8 April SBI ATM in Odisha spews out cash without any card being swiped. Physical malware attack suspected in these ATMs.",Union Bank of India recently fell prey to hacking—robbing the lender of $171 million—but the hackers made a silly mistake,22:11,How Union Bank was hacked and got its money back +2017-04-05,"Bengaluru: Titan Co. Ltd said business in the second half of fiscal 2016-17 exceeded its expectations despite demonetization, after the maker of watches and accessories struggled in the first half due to a jewellery industry strike against excise duty and a new rule requiring customers to disclose their permanent account numbers for purchases above Rs2 lakh.Consumer sentiment and demand recovered significantly by the start of the fourth quarter of 2016-17 and sales were good across divisions in varying degrees, Titan said in a quarterly update filed with BSE Ltd on Tuesday.The jewellery unit, led by the firm’s primary brand Tanishq, had a good quarter due to the “resounding success of the studded jewellery activation”, the Titan said.The firm launched Rivaah, a range of wedding jewellery during the quarter and is going all out to promote the sub-brand under Tanishq.Gross margins from the jewellery business are expected to be good in the quarter and enrolments and redemptions in the Golden Harvest Scheme are on track, Titan said.Jewellery accounts for a major portion of Titan’s overall revenue. The firm opened 16 Tanishq stores in 2016-17.The watches unit, which had been struggling after demonetization hurt sales in both trade and multi-brand retail channels, also had a good quarter, according to the BSE filing. The trade channel has recovered from the after-effects of the cash ban, it added.However, the exports and original equipment manufacturing businesses within Titan’s watches unit continue to face headwinds, slowing down overall growth marginally. During the quarter, the company launched its slimmest ceramic watch, Edge Date, and also entered the fitness band market with an activity tracker launched under the Fastrack brand. Titan added 24 World of Titan stores and eight Helios stores during 2016-17.Titan said a revival in the demand for sunglasses turned around overall sales at its eyewear division. But the closure of 12 Spexx stores dampened top line growth to some extent. It opened 59 Titan Eye Plus stores during the year.During the fourth quarter, the company also opened its first handloom apparel store in Bengaluru’s upscale Indiranagar, marking its entry into the women’s wear segment, which is in the pilot mode for now.Titan is optimistic about revenue growth in the coming year, though a high goods and services tax rate for jewellery might have some impact on its growth rate.",Titan said the second half of 2016-17 was a reversal from the first half when the firm struggled due to policy changes in the jewellery industry,01:47,Titan says H2 FY17 exceeded expectations despite demonetisation +2017-04-18,"New Delhi: Markets regulator Sebi is looking to allow investors to buy mutual funds worth up to Rs50,000 through digital wallets to make it easier for investors to purchase these instruments, especially the youth. The move would help in speedy and easy transactions while reducing failures due to payment gateway issues. Besides, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is expected to put in place regulations for instant withdrawal facility in liquid mutual fund. Also, asset management companies (AMCs) can tie-up with payment banks to provide digital transaction to investors. The board of Sebi will discuss proposals in this regard next week, sources said. These new facilities will help in increasing the penetration of mutual funds and help in channelising household savings into capital markets. They would also provide a convenient option to investors to diversify from the traditional saving avenue. Under the proposal, the total subscription through an e-wallet for an investor should be restricted up to Rs50,000 per mutual fund in a financial year. The regulator may ask AMCs to enter into an agreement with pre-paid payment instruments for facilitating payment from e-wallets of the investors to mutual fund schemes. AMCs will have to ensure that e-wallet issuers must not offer incentives such as cash back directly or indirectly for investing in MFs through them. Further, an e-wallet’s balance, loaded through cash, debit card and net banking, can only be used for subscriptions to mutual funds. However, balance loaded with a credit card, cash back and promotional scheme should not be allowed for purchase of such products. Sebi may come out with a framework for an instant access facility in liquid schemes, wherein investors can withdraw their funds invested in the scheme within a very short time through an online mechanism. For the instant access facility, the regulator may set a limit of Rs50,000 or 90% of investment, whichever is lower, per day per investor per scheme. The regulator may mandate fund houses to get prior approval from the AMC board and trustee board before offering this facility to investors and also make appropriate disclosures in offer documents. Currently, 41 AMCs together manage assets worth Rs18.3 lakh crore and mutual fund investor accounts are over Rs5 crore. MFs are investment vehicles made up of a pool of funds collected from a number of investors. The funds are invested in stocks, bonds and money market instruments, among others.","Sebi is looking to allow investors to buy mutual funds worth up to Rs50,000 through digital wallets in a move aimed at enabling speedy and easy transactions ",17:55,Sebi may allow investors to buy mutual funds via digital wallet +2017-04-18,"New Delhi: SBI Card, with over 4 million customers, has started charging Rs100 for payment through cheque if the amount is up to Rs2,000 and anything above will attract no fee. The fee kicks in from 1 April. The move, SBI Card said, is aimed at encouraging digital payments in line with the government’s policy. “A fee of Rs100 will be charged for payments made by cheque for an amount less than or equal to Rs2,000 w.e.f 1 April 2017,” it said.The credit card company, however, said there will be no additional fee for cheque payments greater than Rs2,000. CEO of SBI Card Vijay Jasuja said that over 90% of its customers make payments through non-cheque mode. “We have observed a trend of payment related disputes arising in small cheque payments, causing inconvenience to customers as well. We offer several seamless digital modes of payment which we are seeking to encourage, in line with the government’s focus towards digital payments and this step will facilitate the same,” the CEO said.Jasuja added that there will be no charge on cheque payments on holders of SBI Card Unnati which is targeted at first-time credit card users and aimed at inclusion of people into the organised financial stream.With a customer base of over 4 million, SBI Card operates through a footprint of more than 90 locations in India. SBI Card is a joint venture between State Bank of India and GE Capital. The joint venture operates through two companies. GE Capital Business Processes Management Services (GECBPMSL) takes care of the technology and processing needs of SBI Card while SBI Cards and Payments Services (SBICPSL) focuses on customer acquisition, marketing and risk management of SBI Card.Last month, SBI had said it would increase its stake in SBI Card to 74% by June-end.","SBI Card has started charging Rs100 for payment through cheque if the amount is up to Rs2,000 and anything above will attract no fee",18:40,SBI Card starts charging Rs100 on small payments via cheque +2017-04-05,"
Bengaluru: Advertising technology firm InMobi eked out a net profit in the last quarter of 2016 and the company expects to be profitable this year, chief executive Naveen Tewari said in an interview.Tewari declined to disclose the company’s profit figures. News website Factordaily last year reported that InMobi reported a loss of $40 million on a revenue of $262 million for the year to March 2015, citing the company’s Singapore filings. InMobi said it follows a calendar year but because it is incorporated in Singapore, the firm reports its numbers there according to the financial year.If InMobi can achieve its target of generating a net profit this year, it will mark a remarkable turnaround for a company that has been written off by many investors and analysts.“Till about the first half of last year, InMobi was struggling to make some of its recent big bets work on a sustainable basis. What they’ve done since then is they’ve gone back to the basics and doubled down on some of their core products and markets like the US and China,” said Satish Meena, a senior forecast analyst at Forrester Research. “They’ve also channelled resources into key areas such as mobile video, and that has helped them show early signs of recovery. Their other offerings around mobile are also starting to witness some traction.”He added: “However, we may have to wait a little longer to assess whether the recent recovery is sustainable. For now, mobile video holds the key for them, since most large companies that are investing in this space are betting big on mobile advertising—that’s where most of the advertising dollars are being spent right now.” Tewari said the company’s profit push, which began in mid-2015, was based on signing high-margin deals with clients, an increase in its video ad business and a shift towards more profitable markets.“We became ultra-focused on doing the right deals. You start choosing the right deals and giving up the bad deals. Then, last year, we focused only on two markets—US and China. This year, we’re focusing on three other markets—India, Indonesia and Australia. This is a big shift from previous years when we were spending freely on expanding in all markets,” Tewari said.The firm, which didn’t increase its headcount last year, was also helped by an increase in its re-seller business, in which its partners in various markets earn commissions based on the business they bring, Tewari said.The focus on profits came at a cost: sales growth at the firm dropped to roughly 20% in 2016. In previous years, InMobi has seen sales growth of at least 30%. However, Tewari said growth will pick up this year as it increases its presence in India, Indonesia and Australia, and strikes deals with large enterprises across the world that are eager to generate advertising revenues online.To be sure, InMobi has missed targets in the past. It competes with the giants of the online advertising business—Google and Facebook—both of which have been mentioned as potential buyers of InMobi in the past. It went on a hiring spree in 2012 and 2013 with disastrous consequences. And some of its products have flopped. One such, launched in 2015, was Miip, which took the form of an animated monkey that tracked users’ browsing habits across mobile apps and showed ads in the forms of bubbles and animations instead of traditional display ads. InMobi’s last fund-raising was in 2011, when it raised $200 million from SoftBank Group Corp. Since then, discussions with several investors over funding haven’t materialized.“Our need for raising money was never for operational uses even when we were losing $3-5 million a quarter. At that rate, we would have had cash to last till 2019. Now, of course, we’re adding cash. So, to clarify, we wanted to raise money to be able to do strategic things like acquisitions and not for running the business. For a variety of reasons like differences over valuation, these acquisitions didn’t go through,” Tewari said.InMobi has raised a working capital debt of $60 million, which has to be repaid by 2020. Tewari said the firm is adding to its cash reserves every month after its business turned profitable at the EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) level last March.InMobi is also in the process of hiring a new chief financial officer after its previous finance chief, Manish Dugar, left to join online healthcare platform Practo last May. “Now that we are profitable, we think we can be a public company. Either going public or figuring out if this could be a bigger play (combining) with somebody else—those are both opportunities,” Tewari said.","If InMobi can achieve its target of generating a net profit for this year, it will mark a remarkable turnaround for a company that has been written off by many analysts",01:41,InMobi posts profit in December quarter +2017-04-07,"Seoul: Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd forecast on Friday its best quarterly profit in more than three years in the January-March period, beating expectations and putting it on track for record annual earnings on the back of a memory chip super-cycle.The Apple Inc. rival has rapidly recovered from last year’s costly failure of its fire-prone Galaxy Note 7 device, despite a political scandal involving vice chairman Jay Y. Lee who appeared in a Seoul court on Friday facing charges including bribing ousted president Park Geun-hye.The global memory chip leader said first-quarter operating profit was likely 9.9 trillion won ($8.8 billion), compared with an average forecast of 9.4 trillion won from a Thomson Reuters survey of 18 analysts. Revenue rose 0.4% to 50 trillion won, just ahead of analysts’ forecasts. “The semiconductor business was likely the main driver for earnings,” said Heungkuk Securities analyst Lee Min-hee, adding that sales of mid-to-low tier smartphones also helped the mobile business remain profitable. Samsung shares touched a record high of 2.134 million won in late March on expectations of record annual profit in 2017, as the South Korean tech giant bounced back from the embarrassing withdrawal of its Note 7 devices due to combustible batteries.Investors and analysts expect Samsung to report its best-ever quarterly profit in April-June, with the Galaxy S8 smartphone hitting the market on 21 April in Samsung’s first premium device launch since the Note 7’s withdrawal in October. Some researchers forecast the S8, which sports the largest screens for Samsung high-end smartphones to date, to set a new first-year sales record.“Samsung will look to recover market share they lost last year and pump up volumes even if they have to spend more to do so,” IBK’s Kim said. All this is happening amid management upheaval at South Korea’s biggest family-run conglomerate, with third-generation leader Lee embroiled in a scandal that has already led to Park’s removal from office for allegedly receiving bribes.Lee was arrested in February over his alleged role in a corruption scandal. He denies any wrongdoing. Chips sizzle While Samsung will not provide detailed earnings results until the end of April, analysts tipped its chip division to earn a record 5.8 trillion won in January-March and propel the firm to its best overall operating profit since the third quarter of 2013. Favourable memory market conditions will likely persist throughout 2017 due to diminishing production gains on investments and careful capacity management among chipmakers.Growing demand for more firepower from devices such as smartphones and servers have also helped push up margins for Samsung and its rivals in recent quarters.Samsung shares were down 1.2% in early Friday trade, underperforming a 0.2% fall for the broader market on profit-taking pressures. Reuters","Samsung forecast its best quarterly profit in more than three years in the January-March period, putting it on track for record annual earnings on the back of a memory chip super-cycle",10:21,Samsung tips best quarterly profit in over three years as chips soar +2017-04-18,"Mumbai: State Bank of India (SBI) on Tuesday surpassed ONGC to become the country’s most valuable public sector unit (PSU), in terms of market valuation. At the end of trade, the market cap of SBI stood at Rs2,35,307.51 crore. This is about Rs2,961.79 crore more than that of PSU energy major ONGC’s Rs2,32,345.72 crore. ONGC once used to be the country’s most-valued company in terms of market valuation. Among the top-10 most valued companies list, SBI is at fifth position, while ONGC is seventh. Shares of SBI ended the day with a mild gain of 0.17% at Rs290.15, while ONGC fell by 1.12% to Rs181.05 on BSE. In intra-day, shares of SBI rose by 2.33% to Rs 296.40 and ONGC lost 1.36% to Rs180.60. So far this year, shares of SBI surged almost 16% while that of ONGC fell by over 4%. IT major TCS is the most valued Indian company with a market cap of Rs4,54,902.85 crore followed by RIL (Rs4,45,578.92 crore), HDFC Bank (Rs3,70,480.05 crore), ITC (Rs3,38,851.25 crore), SBI, HDFC (Rs2,35,122.56 crore), ONGC, Infosys (Rs2,11,870.18 crore), HUL (Rs1,97,464.44 crore) and Maruti Suzuki (Rs1,85,235.49 crore).","SBI becoems India’s most valuable PSU firm after market cap rises to Rs2,35,307.51 crore , about Rs2,961.79 crore more than that of ONGC ",17:47,"SBI market cap crosses ONGC’s, becomes India’s most valuable PSU firm " +2017-04-18,"Delhi Metro Rail Corp. Ltd (DMRC) will make huge savings by purchasing power from Rewa Ultra Mega Solar Ltd which is implementing the world’s largest solar power project at a single site in Madhya Pradesh, a power ministry statement said.“There would be huge savings to the Delhi Metro because of per unit cost of power reducing from over Rs4.50 to Rs3.30,” the statement said quoting power and renewable energy minister Piyush Goyal, who presided over the signing of DMRC’s power purchase agreement in Bhopal on Monday.The 750 megawatt (MW) project sharply brought down solar power tariff to Rs3.3 a unit in February this year, the lowest discovered in an auction till then, when three 250MW projects were awarded to Mahindra Renewables Pvt. Ltd, Acme Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd and Sweden’s Solenergi Power Pvt. Ltd. Subsequently, NTPC’s 250MW project at Kadapa in south-central Andhra Pradesh was awarded for a flat Rs3.15 per unit in an auction last week.International Finance Corp. (IFC), the private lending and advisory arm of the World Bank Group, which was the transaction advisor for the Rewa project said in a statement on Monday that the project will mobilize $550 million in private investment.“The Rewa solar park transaction will have an enormous ripple effect, helping create new markets for large solar projects across India and the region,” the IFC statement said quoting executive vice president and CEO, Philippe Le Houérou. “This is the first time that solar power has achieved grid parity, which means that the ambitious renewable energy targets set by the government are within reach,” said the IFC statement quoting Rewa Ultra Mega Solar Ltd chairman and principal secretary, government of Madhya Pradesh, Manu Srivastava. The winning bidders of the project signed two sets of power purchase agreements with the Madhya Pradesh Power Management Corporation Ltd (MPPMCL) and the DMRC. With about 24% of energy from the park being sold to the Delhi Metro, it will meet about 80% of daytime energy requirement of Delhi Metro, the IFC statement said further.","Delhi Metro’s per unit cost of power would reduce from over Rs4.50 to Rs3.30, says power minister Piyush Goyal",01:03,Rewa solar power deal to help Delhi Metro save energy cost: Piyush Goyal +2017-04-18,"New Delhi: A joint venture of state-run NTPC has decided to snap power supply to three states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana from its Vallure thermal station over non-payment of dues of Rs 1,388 crore. The NTPC Tamil Nadu Energy Company Ltd (NTECL) has issued a notice for regulation of power supply to Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Karnataka to the extent of 1,229 MW from its Vallur Thermal Power Station (1500 MW), for non-payment of long outstanding dues of Rs1,388 crore, person familiar with the development said. “The regulation or suspension of power supply shall be implemented from 00:00 hrs of 26 April 2017, and is expected to seriously affect power supply position in these states,” the person aware of the development added. The NTECL, a joint venture company between NTPC and Tamil Nadu Electricity Board, is engaged in generation, transmission and distribution of electricity. The joint venture was formed for setting up a 1,500 mw coal-based power station at Vallur, Ennore in Tamil Nadu utilising the existing infrastructure facility at Ennore and supply power mainly to Tamil Nadu and also to Kerala, Karnataka and Pondicherry.","The NTPC Tamil Nadu Energy Company has issued a notice for regulation of power supply to Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Karnataka to the extent of 1,229 MW ",21:26,NTPC Vallure station to cut power supply to 3 states over pending dues +2017-04-18,"New Delhi: In a boost to India’s lagging solar rooftop sector, the Union ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE) has decided to give custom and excise duty benefits to it for ensuring high growth.The move will not only bring down the costs of setting up projects but also that of generation.Solar power developers setting up grid-connected solar PV (photovoltaic) projects have been seeking “grant of duty benefits” (custom and excise duty) from the MNRE for installation of rooftop systems.“The matter of extending the duty benefits to the rooftop grid connected solar PV power plants has been under consideration in this ministry for past some time. After examination of various issues involved, it has been decided to give customs and excise duty exemption certificates, with immediate effect, to all rooftop solar PV power projects upto a minimum capacity of 100 KW (Kilowatt) as a single project or bundled project,” said an MNRE order dated 11 April.India has set up an ambitious 100 GW solar power target by 2022. Of the 100 GW, 60 GW is planned through large- and medium-scale grid-connected solar power projects while 40 GW is planned from the solar PV (photovoltaic) rooftop system. But the sector has not seen great growth and the target of 40 GW by 2022 remains a mammoth task. As per reports, India’s rooftop solar capacity till 2016-end was about 1GW only.Experts welcomed the custom and excise duty benefits for the solar sector. “It’s a good decision. We have ambitious targets and we need to take various steps to encourage the solar rooftop sector. We need to bring the cost down and make it more lucrative,” said Rakesh Kamal, a consultant with The Climate Reality Project, an independent organisation working on climate change-related issues.Kamal, however, cautioned that MNRE should also focus on maintaining the quality of solar panels being used.India has given a huge thrust to the solar rooftop sector as it does not require pooling of land or separate transmission facilities and has minimal technical losses, unlike ground-mounted solar projects.The solar rooftop sector also benefits power distribution companies in various ways. For instance, rooftop projects enable these companies to meet their renewable purchase obligations, help them in managing daytime peak loads which are projected to become more widespread as India’s economy grows and in localised generation of power that ultimately helps them in avoiding costly power.States leading in providing solar rooftop power are Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Punjab.",The ministry of new and renewable energy has decided to give custom and excise duty benefits to the solar rooftop sector to boost growth,17:39,"Govt to give customs, excise duty benefits to boost solar rooftop sector" +2017-04-17,"New Delhi: India’s fossil fuel consumption trend is suggesting a shift away from inefficient and highly polluting use of hydrocarbons, as a result of efforts to move towards a less-carbon-intensive economy.Consumption of kerosene, used primarily for lighting and cooking purposes in rural areas, has dropped by a sharp 21% in 2016-17 from a year ago to 5.3 million tonnes, aided by greater use of cleaner liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking and coverage of more villages under the rural electrification programme, as per data from Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, an arm of the oil ministry.In the same period, consumption of LPG jumped 9.8% to 21.5 million tonnes, supported by a nationwide drive to boost consumption of clean cooking fuel. In 2016-17, state-owned fuel retailers Indian Oil Corp. (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp. and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. issued a total 3.25 crore new connections, the highest number of connections given in any year ever. The number included the 2 crore connections given under the “LPG-for poor women” scheme, the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana.The Central government has been encouraging states to cut down their kerosene use in line with progress in village electrification and LPG penetration as it is widely believed that a large part of kerosene meant to be distributed through state public distribution system is diverted for adulteration of diesel.The data showed that consumption of diesel, which, apart from as a transportation fuel, is used in power generation sets by businesses and commercial enterprises, grew at a modest pace of 1.8% in 2016-17 to 76 million tonnes compared to a 7.5% growth in the previous 12 months, as the country added more renewable power capacity.India added 5,526 MW of new solar capacity in 2016-17, up 83% from a year ago. Addition in wind power capacity in the same period was 5,400 MW, 63% more than what was achieved a year ago.A draft five-year electricity plan brought out by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), a federal statutory body, last December said that the share of non-fossil fuels in India’s sources of electricity will reach 46.8% by 2021-22. This projection suggests the country could improve upon its climate change goal of generating 40% of electricity from non-fossil fuels by 2030—the intended nationally determined contribution, a commitment made at the UN framework convention on climate change in Paris last December.Indian Oil Corp. chairman B. Ashok said that the growth rate in diesel should be seen in the context of its high base—three times that of petrol. Ashok said that every class of fuel has scope for growth in line with the country’s economic growth rate and rising energy requirement.Petrol consumption grew 8.7% during the year under review to 23.7 million tonnes and jet fuel by 12% to 7 million tonnes. Gas consumption during the period grew to 8.7% to 50.7 billion cubic metres.","Consumption of kerosene dropped by 21% in 2016-17 from a year ago to 5.3 million tonnes, while that of LPG jumped 9.8% to 21.5 million tonnes in the same period",12:47,"Use of kerosene, diesel falls, LPG consumption rises on clean energy drive" +2017-04-17,"
Kolkata: The national coal quality watchdog has downgraded 177 of Coal India Ltd’s 413 mines, potentially impairing the monopoly miner’s profitability, starting from the current year. The downgrades took effect 1 April. A total of 2,636 samples from the miner’s seven subsidiaries were examined and that led to the downgrading of 177 mines, said a key official at Coal Controller’s Organization (CCO)—the watchdog. A few mines were upgraded too, added this person, asking not to be identified.Admitting the downgrade, key Coal India officials said the miner’s focus in the current year will be on quality of coal, and that in most cases downgrading was by 1-2 grades only. The company’s profitability will surely be impacted by the move, but it is too early to assess to what extent, the Coal India officials said, asking not to be named.There will be a negative impact in the short run, said Goutam Chakraborty, an analyst (metals and mining) with Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd. “However, at the same time, the impact may not be too significant going forward,” he added. Because of the downgrade, Coal India’s realization from the 177 coal mines will decline whereas the cost of mining will remain unchanged or inch up due to inflation. Coal grades are determined by the gross calorific value of the fuel. Earlier, Coal India used to determine the grade on its own.After years of bickering between power producers and Coal India over grades and quality slippages, the union government agreed to start a process of independent inspection of coal for quality.Since the Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research started monitoring quality, the slippages have declined, said Ashok Khurana, the secretary general of lobby group Association of Power Producers.Cases of recurrent slippages were referred to the Coal Controller’s Organization and that led to the downgrading of 177 mines, according to Khurana.“The results of the past year have been encouraging and several power producers have benefited,” he added.","Coal Controller’s Organization has downgraded 177 of Coal India’s 413 mines, potentially impairing the monopoly miner’s profitability",04:41,177 mines of Coal India downgraded on quality concerns +2017-04-17,"New York: A well operated by BP Exploration Alaska Inc. on Alaska’s frigid North Slope is no longer spraying crude oil after leaks were discovered Friday morning.The well, located in the Greater Prudhoe Bay area, was venting gas, which caused a spray of crude oil to impact the well pad. By Sunday afternoon in Alaska, that had been stopped. A second leak had been reduced but was still emitting gas, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said in a statement. Well pressure was monitored throughout the night and excess pressure was bled off to keep it within a safe range.The volume of the leak hasn’t been determined, and the cause of the release is unknown, the Department said. There have been no injuries and no reports of harm to wildlife.Based on aerial pictures, the release appears to be contained to the gravel pad surrounding the well head and hasn’t reached the surrounding tundra, BP said in a statement. The well has been shut in since Friday and the response is ongoing, BP spokeswoman Dawn Patience said by email Sunday.The leak comes as the remote North Slope, once home to America’s biggest oilfields, enjoys a resurgence as producers work to boost output from aging wells and extend their reach to new supplies. North Slope production rose to 565,000 barrels a day in March, its highest level since December 2013. It’s another sign, along with multibillion-barrel discoveries in recent months, that the area may be reversing decades of declining volumes and investment.Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.’s Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which runs from Prudhoe Bay south to Valdez, isn’t affected by this incident and is operating normally, Michelle Egan, a company spokeswoman, said by telephone Sunday. Alyeska is a joint partnership led by the North Slope’s top producers, BP Plc, Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips. Bloomberg",BP’s well on Alaska’s frigid North Slope is no longer spraying crude oil after leaks were discovered Friday morning,12:47,BP races to contain Alaska’s North Slope well after finding leaks +2017-04-15,"
New Delhi: After making forays into Bangladesh and Nepal, Indian refiners are about to venture into Myanmar to supply auto fuel. At the same time, they are also consolidating their presence in their earlier South Asian markets. Later this year, Numaligarh Refinery Ltd in Assam will be the first off the block in selling petroleum products to Myanmar. “Supply of fuel will initially be by road and if the quantity required turns out to be huge, then it will make sense to invest in pipelines,” a person with direct knowledge of the matter said on condition of anonymity. State-owned Indian Oil Corp. is also keen to start retailing operations in Myanmar for which it has submitted a proposal to the government of that country, the person said. Indian Oil is also preparing to expand its Nepal operations by opening 100 retail outlets in partnership with Nepal Oil Corp., a state-owned trading company. Besides, talks are on to extend the scope of an earlier planned pipeline between Raxaul in Bihar to Amlekhganj in eastern Nepal, the person said. Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Nepal’s minister for supplies Deepak Bohara discussed the possibility of expanding the proposed pipeline to connect Motihari in Bihar and Chitwan in Nepal when they met in the last week of March, said the person cited above. The governments are also studying the possibility of two additional pipelines to transport liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and natural gas. During Bohara’s visit, Nepal renewed its fuel purchase deal with India for another five years. The Himalayan nation will buy 1.3 million tonnes of fuel from India every year during the period.Indian Oil chairman B. Ashok told Mint in an interview published on 6 March that the company is working on expanding almost all of its existing refineries including the ones in the north-east. The move is part of the Make in India drive, and aimed at adding jobs in the refining and petrochemical sectors. Earlier this week, India and Bangladesh agreed to increase energy cooperation which included business-to-business deals in the hydrocarbon sector. A $1 billion contract between Petronet LNG Ltd. and Bangladesh Oil, Gas and Mineral Corp., (Petrobangla) for use of Petronet’s LNG terminal and a $300 million deal between Reliance Power Ltd. and Petrobangla for setting up a 500 million standard cubic feet per day LNG terminal at Kutubdia island near Chittagong are among them. A report by the Boston Consulting Group in 2016 titled Hydrocarbons to Fuel the Future noted that India’s refinery capacity addition witnessed a halt between the period 2012-2015, driven largely by project delays and that it was important the country regained its lost momentum in adding capacity to reinvigorate export potential. India has a 230 million tonne a year refining capacity. “India has demonstrated technical capability and cost competitiveness in building and operating large refineries. It makes sense to invest in mega coastal refineries of high complexity to serve growing domestic demand and also to serve markets such as East Africa and Asia,” said Debasish Mishra, partner at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP.",Indian Oil Corp. is keen to start retailing operations in Myanmar for which it has submitted a proposal to the government of that country,00:10,Indian refiners eye entry into Myanmar to supply auto fuel +2017-04-16,"New Delhi: The price of petrol was hiked by Rs1.39 per litre and diesel by Rs1.04 a litre in sync with firming international rates. The hike comes on the back of a Rs4.85 per litre reduction in rates of petrol and Rs3.41 a litre in diesel effected from 1 April. Indian Oil Corp (IOC), the nation’s largest fuel retailer, said price of petrol is being increased by Rs1.39 per litre, excluding state levies, and that of diesel by Rs1.04 (excluding state levies) with effect from Saturday midnight. Actual increase in price will be more after taking into account local value added tax (VAT). Petrol in Delhi currently costs Rs66.29 a litre while a litre of diesel is priced at Rs55.61. Also Read: Limerick: On petrol and diesel prices“The current level of international product prices of petrol and diesel and INR-USD exchange rate warrant increase in selling price of petrol and diesel, the impact of which is being passed on to the consumers with this price revision,” IOC said in a statement. The movement of prices in the international oil market and INR-USD exchange rate shall continue to be monitored closely and developing trends of the market will be reflected in future price changes, it said. IOC also said it intends to shortly start daily changes in price of petrol and diesel on pilot basis, in Udaipur, Jamshedpur, Pondicherry, Chandigarh and Vizag.",Petrol in Delhi currently costs Rs66.29 a litre while a litre of diesel is priced at Rs55.61,08:42,"Petrol price hiked by Rs1.39 per litre, diesel up by Rs1.04" +2017-04-16,"Hyderabad: Cairn India Limited, along with its partners is set to invest Rs3,240 crore in the Ravva Fields in the Krishna-Godavari Basin, to undertake 20 Developmental Wells and for setting up related infrastructure, as the oil and gas production is dwindling from the existing wells. Cairn India Limited approached the ministry of environment forest and climate change seeking necessary clearances for the proposed project. According to the minutes of the meeting by Expert Appraisal Committee under the ministry, the proposal was given green signal as far as Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) is concerned. “In order to enhance the hydrocarbon production within the already approved capacities, Cairn India Limited on behalf of Ravva JV proposes the following oil and gas developments to produce contingent hydrocarbon resources available in Ravva Field-Drilling of 20 developmental wells: 6 from new RI Platform and 14 from existing platforms... Drilling of 6 nos. of exploratory/appraisal wells to assess presence of hydrocarbons in identified pockets.. “The cost of the above proposed oil and gas development is estimated to be approximately Rs3,240 crore,” the EAC said in the minutes of the meeting held last month. According to the company’s annual report of FY 16, the Ravva Fields produced 18,602 Barrels of Oil Equivalent per Day (BOEPD) average daily gross operated production in 2016-17 against 23, 845 BOEPD in FY 16. Cairn India officials did not respond to mail seeking additional information. The Ravva field (PKGM-1 Block) located in the shallow offshore area of Krishna Godavari Basin, has completed 21 years of successful operations with ,Cairn India as the operator with 22.5% participating Interest. Exploration, development and production in the block are governed by a PSC that runs until 2019, which is in partnership with ONGC, Videocon and Ravva Oil Singapore. Currently, there are eight unmanned offshore platforms and a 225 acre onshore processing facility at Surasaniyanam in East Godavari of Andhra Pradesh which processes the natural gas and crude oil produced from the field, the annual report said. Over the years due to ageing of the field, production of oil and gas has declined. The onshore processing facility though has approved capacity to produce 50,000 Barrels of Oil Per Day (BOPD) crude oil and 2.32 Million Metric Standard Cubic Meters per Day MMSMD ( MMSMD) of gas and is presently producing approximately 22,000 BOPD of crude oil and 1.44 MMSCMD of natural gas, the minutes added.","Cairn India Limited along with its partners to invest Rs3,240 crore in the Ravva Fields in the Krishna-Godavari Basin",15:10,"Cairn India, partners to invest Rs3,240 crore in Ravva Field" +2017-04-16,"New Delhi: The government has identified old power projects totalling 7,738 MW capacity owned by the Centre and states for replacement with energy-efficient supercritical plants, which will generate a gross 18,560 MW.“The government has identified 7,738 MW inefficient thermal plants, which would be replaced with supercritical units, to conserve scarce natural resources like land, water and coal,” a senior official said. According to the official, the replacement will result in creation of 18,560 MW of capacity as per the assessment of power generation utilities. The move is expected to not just save natural resources, but help in boosting generation capacity of the plants. Taking an example, the official added that 440 MW of the Haryana Power Generation Corporation in Panipat will be replaced with an 800 MW energy efficient plant, which will almost double the generation capacity. Breaking down the numbers, state power generation utilities have marked out 6,608 MW for the purpose, which will lead to creation of 16,580 MW. The central utilities have marked 1,130 MW for replacement that will create 1,980 MW, going forward. According to power ministry estimates, as on 31 March, 2016, the capacity of coal-based thermal plants that are more than 25 years old was about 37,453 MW, including 35,509 MW in the government sector and 1,947 MW in private space. The official said the move towards energy efficiency and less-polluting technology makes more sense than renovation and modernisation and will yield long-term benefits. The plan is being chalked out after stringent norms for thermal power plants were laid down by the environment ministry. The new guidelines for coal-based power stations were introduced in December 2015 to cut down emission of PM10, SO2 and NOx and improve ambient air quality around plants. The ministry for the first time had fixed SOx and NOx norms for such stations and mandated that plants must adhere to these guidelines by 2017. According to industry estimate, the cost for technical changes at these plants could entail up to Rs1.5 crore per megawatt. Besides, the domestic capacity to manufacture power equipment for the upgrade is not more than 15 GW a year compared to demand of around 40 GW per annum for meeting SOx norms alone.","The inefficient 7,738 MW thermal power plants would be replaced with supercritical units to generate a gross 18,560 MW",10:43,Govt to replace 7.7 GW old power units with energy efficient plants +2017-04-13,"New York: Leading the fastest-growing and most profitable division of Amazon.com Inc. is paying off for Andrew Jassy.The head of Amazon Web Services, which includes the company’s cloud business, received $35.4 million in stock and about $179,000 in salary and a 401(k) match, according to a regulatory filing from the Seattle-based company Wednesday. The shares rose in value to about $54 million as of Tuesday’s close. Jassy, promoted to a new CEO role for the division a year ago, was the company’s top-paid employee among the six executives whose compensation has to be publicly disclosed, including chief executive officer Jeff Bezos.Jassy is leading a push into artificial intelligence to boost Amazon’s cloud computing, which commands about 45% of the market for infrastructure as a service, where companies buy basic computing and storage power from the cloud. The unit, which Jassy has run since its inception 11 years ago, brought in a record $12.2 billion in revenue last year as the company introduced an image-recognition program, a speech-to-text service dubbed Polly and tools for building conversational apps. AWS has data centres around the world that provide computing power for many large companies, such as Netflix Inc. and Capital One Corp.“Inside AWS, we’re excited to lower the costs and barriers to machine learning and AI so organizations of all sizes can take advantage of these advanced techniques,” Bezos wrote in his annual letter to shareholders, which was also released Wednesday.Biennial grantsLike fellow tech giant Alphabet Inc., Amazon mainly pays top employees with biennial grants of restricted shares that vest over several years independently of company performance. That sets them apart from large companies in other industries, which tend to link payouts to specific goals such as revenue or stock return. Emphasizing certain criteria “could cause employees to focus solely on short-term returns at the expense of long-term growth and innovation,” Amazon’s board said in the filing.Amazon last year also promoted Jeffrey Wilke to CEO of the worldwide consumer business, awarding him a $33 million compensation package, the bulk coming from restricted shares vesting over several years.Senior vice presidents Jeffrey Blackburn and Diego Piacentini got $22.2 million and $23.7 million, respectively, mostly coming from biennial stock grants.CEO Bezos, who’s the world’s second-richest person with net worth of $77.7 billion, got his usual $81,840 annual salary and $1.6 million in security services last year. The billionaire, whose wealth comes from his ownership stake in the company, has never received equity compensation from Amazon. Bloomberg","Andrew Jassy, the head of Amazon Web Services received $35.4 million in stock and about $179,000 in salary and a 401(k) match",11:04,Amazon Web Services head Andrew Jassy reaps $35.4 million for 2016 +2017-04-13,"
Singapore: One of the world’s best known investment gurus, Jim Rogers of Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interests, admitted in an interview that he may have been too hasty in exiting India in 2015, but says he won’t enter it now when the markets are at record highs. He says he was surprised that the government managed to get the legislation for the goods and services tax (GST) through. “It is a historic move as this has been a very contentious issue among Indian politicians for several years,” he added.Rogers said that in addition to GST, he has also been tracking the Indian market, the best performer among the world’s 10 largest stock markets thus far in 2017. “Yes, I am impressed, and I see that the markets are at an all-time high, currency is going up—they are making new highs without me, and that does not make me happy.”Also read: Jim Rogers: Surprised Modi government got GST throughKeen as he is to enter India, Rogers says he will wait because it doesn’t make sense to enter a market when it is on a high. “I don’t want to jump on to a moving train. When you jump on to a moving train, you’ll get hurt.”Rogers, a hedge fund manager whose investments serve as leads for many other investors, has long been an India bear. In 2014, though, soon after the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance came to power, he changed his tune. He explains that his investments in India were driven by his understanding of Modi’s achievements in Gujarat as chief minister and policy-leanings. “See, first I was interested in India because of his (Modi’s) record and what he said he planned to do,” he said. Then, in 2015, disappointed with the pace of progress in terms of reforms, he exited India. “He (Modi) did nothing much for two years, and I sold,” Rogers added. “Unfortunately, I sold too soon.”If the government continues in the same lines, India can’t be ignored, Rogers said. “If Modi continues doing stuff like GST, then not just me— everybody has to pay a lot more attention to India.”",Investment guru Jim Rogers says he may have been too hasty in exiting India in 2015,11:31,"Jim Rogers changes his mind on India again, says he missed the bus" +2017-04-13,"
Singapore: Commodities trading guru and hedge fund manager Jim Rogers, who had sold his holdings in Indian companies and exited the country in late 2015 on the grounds that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had failed to live up to investors’ expectations, said he was reconsidering entering India.With Indian markets sustaining a record-breaking rally, Rogers admitted that he may have missed the bus on India, “On GST, I am amazed, shocked and stunned,” he said in an interaction, referring to the goods and services tax that will create a unified market in India.ALSO READ: Jim Rogers changes his mind on India again, says he missed the bus“If Modi continues doing stuff like GST, then not just me—everybody has to pay a lot more attention to India. This does not mean that I won’t have another chance to enter—India is currently on my list of something to do,” he added.Edited excerpts from an interview:
In September 2015, when we last spoke, you said you had sold all your holdings in Indian companies and exited India because the NDA government had failed to live up to investors’ expectations. But since then, the Indian markets have rallied and are at record highs, and reforms are on track, including the passage of GST. Foreign direct investment (FDI) into India touched an eight-year high of $46.4 billion in 2016.Wait—India passed the GST and that astonished me. I am surprised that Mr Modi’s government got that through. It is a historic move as this has been a very contentious issue among Indian politicians for several years.You say FDI flows into India are at record highs, and it is certainly not me. I am surprised with the FDI inflows—while Modi has undertaken small reforms, and cleaned up some stuff, I am not aware of any big steps to boost FDI. Yes, I am impressed, and I see that the markets are at an all-time high; currency is going up—they are making new highs without me, and that does not make me happy.This has made me realize that something is happening in India. When GST was passed, I reconsidered investing in India, and I thought, “wait a minute—this is going to work”. I am positively impressed, but I’am not back to investing in India yet—the markets are at an all-time high, but I don’t want to jump on to a moving train. When you jump on to a moving train, you’ll get hurt.I missed the bus in India. If Modi continues doing stuff like GST, then not just me—everybody has to pay a lot more attention to India. This does not mean that I won’t have another chance to enter—India is currently on my list of something to do.
When you look at emerging markets as an investor, where do you see India?India still has a lot of debt, unlike Russia that has a convertible currency and does not have much debt. I am invested in Russia. One reason why Russia does not have a high level of debt is that no one was willing to lend them money—and that is not necessarily a good thing. Indian politicians have been saying for a while now that the country will address this situation of debt, but nothing has been done. Some studies say India’s debt-to-GDP ratio is at 90% now. It is difficult to grow at a rapid pace when you have such high levels of debt, because you are dragging along interest rate payments. But India is still on my list, especially if Mr Modi can continue doing some of the stuff that he said he would do, and especially if the government makes the currency convertible and opens up the markets. I am more impressed by Mr Modi as a politician than as someone who is executing reforms—yes, GST was extraordinary. But your prime minister is a great politician; he is travelling around the world and making friends everywhere. As a politician, Mr Modi is one of the most successful and exceptional of this generation—no question about that. No surprise that he has picked up all states in the recent elections. Seventy years since independence, he is cleaning up the gigantic mess with moves like GST, which no on else has been able to do so far.
Finance minister Arun Jaitley recently said India’s economy is expected to grow at 7.2% in 2017 and 7.7% in 2018. What is your view?Most people don’t trust these numbers, including me. I used to say that what India does is to wait for China to announce its numbers, and then top them. I am skeptical of Chinese numbers and I am skeptical of Indian data. I am skeptical of American numbers, too. I’ve learnt over the years that if you are sitting and watching government numbers, and do your investments based on that, you are not going to make much money. Not too long ago, they caught the Germans faking numbers—the Germans of all people!
When you look at India, what are the risks? Could it be populist steps leading to 2019, the reforms process not continuing, or rising oil prices?I am more worried about the world because that will impact India. Yes, India has elections coming, and normally when that happens, any politician will do anything to win elections. Mr Modi is in a position to do a lot of stuff. I am not too worried about what is happening internally in India as the Modi-led government has momentum and everything going for it. The world situation is more worrying. Mr Trump has now bombed Syria. Many American presidents love war, and Mr Trump had said he was a non-interventionist. Now look at him! He is involved with Syria, and also saying he is going to get involved with North Korea. These can potentially not be good for the world. If the Middle East blows up in the next year or two, it won’t help the markets. It will help Russia and oil. It won’t help India or China. Mr Trump has promised to have trade wars with Mexico and China. He has not done it so far and so, maybe, is just another lying politician. But he said the same of Syria and then he intervened. He has said North Korea better watch out. He met with the Chinese and did not get anything. Power corrupts. Interest rates are going higher no matter what happens. The French and German elections are coming up—they could be disruptive. These worry me more than what Mr Modi is doing inside India.See, first I was interested in India because of his (Modi’s) record and what he said he planned to do. Then I invested. But he did nothing much for two years, and I sold. Unfortunately, I sold too soon. Modi will not do anything foolish before next elections—but the global situation can have an impact on India, irrespective of what Modi does. On the (farm) loan waivers, while I would say it is terrible economics, it is also brilliant politics.
Not just India, the global markets have rallied since Trump took over. So where can one invest in times like these?America is at an all-time high, and be it Japan or Germany—their markets are all doing well. There is a lot of money floating around. I had expected it all to slow down by now, but it has not. The Americans say they are going to be cutting back—but nobody has really done that in that past year or two. The only place I am looking to invest right now is Russian government bonds because the yields are very high—the rouble is down a lot. For whatever reason, Russia, which has been the most hated market in the world, is becoming less hated—more countries and politicians are reconsidering Russia. I’ve learnt in my life that if you buy things that are hated, they will make a lot of money even if takes a couple of years.India is at an all-time high.I own a lot of US dollars, and the reason I own it is because of the turmoil that I see coming, and people look for a safe haven in times like that and the dollar, rightly or wrongly, is considered a safe haven. But it is not—America is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world. What will happen is the US dollar will get overpriced and may even turn into a bubble, depending on where the turmoil is, and I hope that at that time, I am smart enough to sell the US dollar and put my monies elsewhere. Conceivably, it will be gold. Often, when the US dollar is very strong, gold goes down. I own gold, but I’ve not been buying gold in recent years. But if gold goes down sufficiently, I will sell my US dollars and buy gold. I expect the dollar to go substantially higher, and I hope I can sell then.Crude is in the process of making a bottom—it is a complicated bottom—we are going to look back in a few years from now and say that in 2015, 2016 and 2017, crude made its bottoming pattern. I will not sell crude now, especially if Trump is going to throw some more bombs around.
The Fed has said they will raise rates again this year. What’s your view on that?The Fed will continue to raise interest rates—we cannot continue like this—negative interest rates in most parts of the world are destroying a lot of people. Many pension plans, insurance companies and trusts are suffering badly now—you are going to have some pension plans in America go bankrupt, or not earn any money. They have the obligations to meet their promises as people continue to get older. When interest rates go higher, they are going to make bonds go lower—it is going to help the US dollar. Historically, in the US, if the Fed raised interest rates four times, it meant the stock market would go down and go down substantially for a while—it is clear that the Fed will raise interest rates four times, and it does not mean that it has to happen that way. One could counter and say, rates going up from zero to four times is not such a big deal and, therefore, it is different this time. Four of the most dangerous words in the financial markets are: “it’s different this time”. It is very dangerous when you hear people say that.
We are already four months into this calendar year. What do we need to look out for when it comes to the rest of 2017?We are also eight years into an economic recovery in the US, which is also very unusual. Most times in the US, every four years to 7-8 years, we’ve had economic setbacks since the beginning of the republic. Again, it does not always have to happen that way, but it nearly always has. Yes, we are four months into 2017, but I am more worried about the next couple of years. Mr Trump has promised some wonderful things. He has promised lower taxes, which is great for any economy and America is the largest in the world. He has promised to rebuild infrastructure, and that is wonderful, and we need it. He has promised to bring US dollars home—we have $3 trillion sitting outside the US by American companies and he has promised tax incentives to bring that home. He has promised to cut regulations and controls in the US economy—all of that is fantastic. If he does all this, and does not go to war, and also does not engage in a trade war, we can continue to have a good time for the foreseeable future. But I am skeptical because interest rates will be going higher, and because it has been eight years since we’ve had no problems in the US. For the US to continue this run, it can happen, but it has to be on a lot more debt. If all of that leads to a bubble…The other side will be very bad. Don’t worry—you will have a job and Mint will be in business because someone will have to be reporting all of this coming turmoil.","Investment guru Jim Rogers says if PM Narendra Modi continues doing stuff like GST, then not just him, everybody has to pay a lot more attention to India",18:21,Jim Rogers: I am surprised Modi government got GST through +2017-04-13,"Charlottesville,US: To transform India’s economy, there is a need to reduce “friction” in businesses and create an “environment” wherein the government has more trust in its entrepreneurs, Infosys founder N. R. Narayana Murthy has said. For the transformation of the Indian economy, he said it is essential for the younger generation to be daring and that India is integrated with the global economy. “We still have a little bit of work in reducing friction to businesses. We need to create an environment where the government has more trust in its entrepreneurs than it is today,” Murthy, 70, told students of the prestigious Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia here. Murthy, the recipient of the 2017 Thomas Jefferson Foundation medal in Global Innovation, was responding to Darden School of Business Dean Scott Beardsley who asked, “what do you think needs to happen next to transform India’s economy. What is next”. Also read: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“We want our youngsters to be a little bit more daring in taking the entrepreneurial route more and more than the extent to which they do today. We have to become much more integrated to the world economy so that we can consider the entire world as our market and can become globally competitive. “And most importantly we can become much more open minded to learn from the wonderful things that are happening in this country and elsewhere. I would say these are required (for transforming India’s economy to the next level),” Murthy said. He, however, refrained from elaborating what the Indian government needs to do to create the environment of trust in its entrepreneurs and said, “I will tell you why, as an Indian citizen, it may not be proper if I were to be critical about India when I am outside India”. Interacting with students, he said, challenges for entrepreneurs are now different than the time when he started Infosys. Those days access to capital was almost non-existent and government was a big irritant. “Today, challenges are different. But in some sense even more complex, because today’s entrepreneurs have to be much more smarter than what we were because there is so much of competition on a global scale. Before you can say this can be done, somebody else may have already done it.” “Therefore, today’s entrepreneurs would have to be much more nimble, global, competitive because market is truly determinant for success today unlike our time when managing government was a big determinant in India,” he said. Murthy said good governance is all about maximising shareholders’ value while ensuring fairness, transparency and accountability to all stake holders. Of all the stakeholders, society is the most important player. “Respect from the society is the most important ingredient for longevity of a corporation,” he said. “To be honoured by the most innovative country in the world and to be awarded a medal in the name of Thomas Jefferson, author of Declaration of Independence is to me a big honour. I will certainly work hard, and hopefully smart in the remaining years of my life, to deserve this kindness, this generosity and this affection on their part,” he told PTI. The fact that the university has seen it fit to pick up somebody from India, and bestow this honour shows how open this country is and how generous they are, Murthy said. “Therefore this is a clear example of how Indian students wherever they are whether in India or here or anywhere else can be sure that as long as they are good citizens of this world, contribute to make the society a better place through peaceful and harmonious methods, they will be recognised, appreciated,” he said. Murthy said that Indian students are making a positive impact in the countries they are studying. “I have not come across a single person of Indian-origin who has conducted himself or herself in a manner that has brought sorrow to the society they are living in, anywhere, wherever in the world. So I think that is the right way. “I am very very proud of our Indian students. They are smart, have very good values and are very peaceful. They contribute to the society in a very significant way wherever they are. I just want them to continue to do this,” the Infosys founder said. The one important principle that Indian students should remember in everything they do is will this make India a more respected place, a more respected nation? Will this action of mine make me a better part of this community? Will this action deserve appreciation and affection from other members in this community? If they remember these then they will do everything possible, Murthy said. PTI",Infosys founder Narayana Murthy says the younger generation needs to be daring in taking the entrepreneurial route for transformation of the Indian economy,14:26,Narayana Murthy says need to reduce ‘friction’ in businesses in India +2017-04-13,"New York: Angry United Airlines customers can now vent their fury at a juicy target: the chief executive’s pocketbook.United ties about $500,000 of CEO Oscar Munoz’s annual bonus to customer satisfaction questionnaires. The manhandling of a doctor dragged off an overbooked flight in Chicago—and Munoz’s response, widely viewed as ham-handed—doesn’t figure to help his cause.Each day, United collects about 8,000 customer surveys on items such as legroom and the quality of in-flight coffee. Fliers were already pretty disgruntled. In 2016, researcher J.D. Power rated United dead last of traditional North American carriers. Early returns are now even less promising.“United Airlines just sent me a customer survey about my flight yesterday,” Meredith Tucker deadpanned on Twitter after the overbooking episode. “Looking forward to sharing my thoughts.”Of course, Munoz won’t be begging on street corners if he’s docked the half a million. The CEO has 2016 target compensation of about $14.3 million, according to his employment agreement. The actual amount for last year is expected to be disclosed by month’s end.In a filing, the company’s board said executive pay is “designed to further our objective of aligning the interests of our employees with those of our stockholders and customers.” United declined to comment.Hashtag: awkwardSouthwest Airlines Co. also ties part of CEO Gary Kelly’s bonus to a measure of customer loyalty. Delta Air Lines Inc. links a part of CEO Ed Bastian’s annual long-term stock award to customer service.At the airline officially known as United Continental Holdings Inc., the board mentions “customer satisfaction” in the pay filing no less than 20 times. The company didn’t specify exactly how that’s calculated, though the bonus is tied to improvement of the survey results.Presumably, dragging customers out of their seats won’t help. A Twitter wag named Joe Householder wrote, under the hashtag, #awkward: “Based on experience, the guy on the #united flight is getting his, ‘tell us about your trip,” email survey about now.”Another Twitter commentator said he actually received one, which asked, “According to you, why do we consider ourselves the best airline to fly with?” His answer: “beats me.” Bloomberg",The manhandling of a doctor dragged off an overbooked United Airlines flight in Chicago—and CEO Oscar Munoz’s response—doesn’t figure to help his cause,10:19,"United Airlines tied $500,000 CEO bonus to customer satisfaction results" +2017-03-24,"The absence of negative surprises proved to be good news for power utilities. Against an 8% rise in the Sensex, the BSE Power index gained 10% in the first two months of 2017 even as the companies reported a lacklustre performance for the December quarter.Overall generation was up 5.3%, slightly better than the 4.4% rise a year ago. Power production at NTPC Ltd was up just 1%. As power off-take remained subdued, the firm’s thermal power plants’ utilization dropped 1%. “3QFY17 has seen a continuation of the overall trend of weak power demand growth, subdued merchant prices, back-downs by discoms and marginal generation capacity addition,” Antique Stock Broking Ltd said in a review.Due to a normalization of taxes, NTPC’s unadjusted profits fell 7.5%. JSW Energy Ltd reported an even steeper drop in profit on high costs and low realizations. Still, as the rise in the BSE Utilities index shows, investors attached little importance to the results. Why? Because of positive commentary from managements and the hope that 2017 will end the woes of Tata Power Co. Ltd and Adani Power Ltd.NTPC maintained its 4,000 megawatts (MW) capacity addition guidance for the current fiscal despite adding just 1,400MW till December. Similarly, Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd, whose project start-ups grew just 2% from the September quarter, indicated strong capitalization in January-March. “As against ~4,650 ckm (circuit km) transmission line commissioned in 9mFY17, management is targeting to commission a ~4,750 ckm transmission line in 4QFY17E,” HDFC Securities Ltd wrote in a note.Tata Power’s coal business venture did well. But high coal prices affected profitability of its Mundra plant. Adani Power reported a higher-than-expected loss on low volume off-take and shortage of domestic coal. Even then both stocks went up in January-February on speculation the coming Supreme Court order will end the under-recovery woes at their plants in Mundra, Gujarat. “For us, the key trigger remains the Supreme Court’s ratification of CERC (central electricity regulatory commission) compensatory tariff recommendations,” Edelweiss Securities Ltd wrote in a note on Tata Power.The story is similar at CESC Ltd. The stock, too, has gained sharply, as the management said its Spencer’s retail business, which has been losing money, stopped making losses at the operating level in the last quarter. Further, it also indicated it is open to listing the retail business, fuelling valuation gains. With the retail business showing signs of profitability, analysts are optimistic CESC’s return ratios will improve.The optimism is also providing heft to NTPC, Power Grid, Tata Power, and Adani Power. The question is: will 2017 live up to the expectations?","Overall electricity generation in the December quarter was up 5.3%, only slightly better than the 4.4% rise in the year ago quarter",06:22,Power utilities: eye on key milestones helped investors overcome subdued Q3 +2017-03-24,"Indian oil firms delivered a subdued performance in the December quarter. Take for instance Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL’s) results. Despite the fact that it crossed the Rs8,000-crore mark in stand-alone net profit for the first time, the performance would have been sweeter if income from sources other than its main business had not played a key role in boosting profit. Notably, while RIL’s gross refining margin (GRM) improved to $10.8 a barrel from $10.1 a barrel in the September quarter, the measure was lower than expected, considering that the benchmark Singapore refining margin had done much better sequentially.GRM is the realization from turning every barrel of crude oil into finished products and is an important measure of profitability for refining firms.RIL’s petrochemicals segment performed well but that couldn’t compensate for the disappointment from the refining business. However, investors have little to complain given that the stock has appreciated as much as 21% till 17 March since RIL announced it will start charging its customers in the telecom business. Further stock appreciation will be dependent on how the telecom venture fares in the days to come.State-run refining and marketing firms—Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) and India Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL)—delivered a decent performance. Reported GRMs improved sequentially. Inventory gains helped. According to analysts from Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd, core earnings, adjusted for inventory gains, came in at Rs12.7/12.1/7.6/ share for BPCL/HPCL/IOCL versus reported earnings per share of Rs15.7/15.7/8.4, respectively. “After adjusting for one-offs, core earnings of IOCL and BPCL came in-line with our estimates but HPCL missed the mark on this metric as marketing margins disappointed,” an Emkay report said last month. However, broadly, reported earnings of all three firms were in-line, according to Emkay. These stocks have done well in the past two years, helped by diesel price deregulation and improvements in earnings. A further upside can come if refining margins improve further.Meanwhile, stocks of upstream oil firms—Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd—have performed well in the past couple of months, thanks to firmer crude prices. However, if oil prices continue to remain range-bound, further appreciation in shares of ONGC and Oil India will be tough. Both firms saw their net price realization improve year-on-year as well as sequentially.",Oil firms delivered a subdued performance for the December quarter,08:14,Subdued performance from oil firms in the December quarter +2017-04-13,"New Delhi: Henry Kravis, the boss of private equity pioneer KKR & Co. walks into the slightly cramped meeting room of the Vigyan Bhawan with a stride that belies his 73 years and his diminutive build. Sporting a conservative grey suit with a stylish pocket square, the man who is effectively the CEO to 129 CEOs of KKR’s portfolio companies, kicks off the proceedings by delivering a concise insight into what’s happening in the US and closes on the hour by talking about India’s narrow credit market and the lack of depth in its equity markets, both of which have restricted the financing options for small and medium enterprises.Vigyan Bhawan on Motilal Nehru Road in New Delhi’s central district is an odd choice for the meeting. In the past it was the venue for dull global events like meetings of Non Aligned countries or commonwealth heads of states. That was when the government could not be seen patronizing private hotels. Now most ministers call editors to meals at the best hotels. So this is a real surprise—one of the world’s most successful capitalists with a net worth close to $5 billion who is at the very top of the private enterprise food cycle, now meeting selected journalists at this throwback to India’s socialist era.Kravis is a contrarian and instead of dwelling on US President Donald Trump’s many gaffes, talks of how he is a business-friendly president who has a big task ahead to deliver on his many promises, including tax reforms and infrastructure development. He is optimistic, if cautious, on the prospects for his country, pointing to the high levels of enthusiasm among US business people but tempers that by accepting growth could be lower than 2% in the coming year. The humour though, trenchant and pointed, is never far away. Despairing on the lack of dialogue between the Democrats and the Republicans he adds that now he’s not sure “if the Republicans are talking to each other” either.On Europe, he points to the elections in France and Germany as the wild cards that could upset all projections. China, on the other hand, will have to make some tough decisions. It is a country he knows well and it is his next stop after this trip.On India, as much as on any other subject, he is precise and razor sharp. No surprise that. He is after all an Ashkenazi Jew. Legend and scholarly academic papers have it that Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group in the world. Says a paper by researchers at University of Utah, “During the 20th century, they made up about 3% of the US population but won 27% of the US Nobel science prizes and 25% of the ACM Turing awards. They account for more than half of world chess champions.”Coming from that genetic pool you would expect him to be successful and the co-chairman and co-chief executive officer of KKR is among the most successful money managers in the world. The “co” bit is a consequence of sharing the job, the role and the founding of the company with his first cousin George R. Roberts.Kravis pioneered the private equity business when with two other partners he founded a leveraged buyout company called Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. L.P. (KKR) in 1976. Since then the company has grown—22 offices and over $130 billion of assets under management worldwide. Equally the PE business has transformed from being purely the money bags in spectacular deals to being an active participant in corporate change from within. In fact, KKR’s 100-day plan for the companies it invests in is both dreaded by managers and also emulated widely. Nor is the firm restricted merely to private equity. It offers all manner of financing solutions to companies.In India since 2009, it has investments of over $8 billion in companies like Bharti Infratel, Aricent, Café Day Enterprises, Dalmia Cement and Gland Pharma. But for a self-confessed Indophile who likes both Indian food as well the country’s temples (Hampi and the Golden Temple in Amritsar are particular favourites), that doesn’t seem like enough. Maybe that’s what he’s here to fix. With some help from India CEO Sanjay Nayar. After Kravis advised Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his first visit to the US on the need for a bankruptcy code, Nayar played a key role in helping the government frame and structure the same.It marks the evolution of the company from brash upstart in the 1980s memorably dubbed “barbarians at the gate” for its role in the audacious leveraged buy-out of RJR Nabisco, to the high seat of global finance.",Henry Kravis pioneered the private equity business when with two other partners he founded KKR in 1976,01:55,"Henry Kravis, the high priest of private equity" +2017-03-24,"Growth of information technology (IT) services firms continues to decelerate on a year-on-year basis. Growth in constant currency terms stood at 8.7% for tier-I IT companies in the December quarter, excluding Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., according to data collated by Nomura Research. Two quarters ago, growth stood at over 10%, and a year before that, growth was in the teens.Of course, that growth rates have been declining in the IT sector is well known and, as a result, IT stocks have underperformed the Nifty 50 index by around 18% in the past year.The moot question is if the December quarter results give signs of a possible turnaround. Investors will be disappointed there. Nomura’s analysts point out that growth in the key US region was the slowest in 12 quarters. Growth in some of the industry verticals that were doing well in previous quarters, such as retail, healthcare and telecom, slowed in the December quarter. And the performance of the largest industry vertical—banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI)—gave no hints of a turnaround. Besides, as US firms await the broad policy direction of the new government, there may be some delays in taking decisions.Of course, there are some silver linings. Companies, for instance, are sounding more optimistic, especially with regards to demand from BFSI. Besides, analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities say the intensity with which some large corporations shifted work to captive units earlier has abated to an extent.But, from the looks of it, things are likely to go further south before any turnaround comes about. The recent appreciation in the rupee is likely to worsen matters for Indian IT companies. Profit margins have already been under pressure, owing to the increased investments in building digital capabilities and thanks to pricing pressure in the traditional application maintenance work. Besides, all of the noise against H1B visas in the US may result in new laws that increase costs of providing on-site services. Kotak’s analysts wrote in a note to clients, “In case the rupee were to sustain at current levels, we do highlight that many traditional levers of the industry are exhausted... Our EPS (earnings per share) estimates for FY2018/19 are based on INR/USD rate of 68 and have 5-9% downside risk at spot prices.”",The recent appreciation in rupee may worsen matters for Indian IT firms as profit margins are already under pressure owing to increased investments in building digital capabilities ,07:56,"IT sector: Donald Trump, rupee worsen matters in December quarter" +2017-03-24,"The construction sector put up an unimpressive show, although on expected lines, in the December quarter. Undoubtedly, demonetisation hurt the sector in several ways.One, engineering and construction work came to a standstill in November and December as the economy was hit by a cash crunch. Deferred payments to workers delayed execution and billing across infrastructure firms. The average net revenue of 156 firms in the mid- and large-sized category excluding Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T) fell by 8.9% year-on-year (y-o-y). L&T, too, posted marginal revenue growth.Road construction firms with operational projects were worse off than the rest of the pack because toll collections were suspended for about three weeks. How this impacts earnings for the full year depends on when and how the expected government compensation for revenue loss will shape up.Weak revenue trickled down to a similar performance on operating metrics. Firms such as IRB Infrastructure Ltd and NCC Ltd, that have been improving profitability, found the going tough, but were able to sustain profitability.Adding to the quarter’s woes was the weak ordering activity across infrastructure segments. Save for a few orders in the capital goods space, there were hardly any big-ticket orders in power, roads and railways.The only solace is that the large firms have put their house in order by deleveraging balance sheets, reducing indebtedness and optimizing cost structures.Meanwhile, firms in power transmission such as KEC International Ltd and ABB Ltd put up a decent show during the quarter. In contrast, firms whose performance is linked to power generation paled in comparison.The S&P BSE Infrastructure index has rallied sharply on hopes that the government will live up to its commitment of boosting investment in infrastructure.So far, reality is far from it and, given the current pace of new projects tendered until February, it is likely that road sector will not meet the targets both in terms of fresh ordering and execution during FY17.","Firms in power transmission such as KEC International Ltd and ABB Ltd put up a decent show, while those whose performance is linked to power generation paled",06:22,A subdued December quarter for infrastructure firms +2017-03-24,"If fiscal 2015-16 was annus horribilis for Indian banks, the year to March seems to be no different.Banks and their investors seem to be coming to terms with this as analysts have slashed their 2016-17 earnings per share (EPS) estimates for the Bankex by about 10% since demonetisation.The third-quarter financial results of banks, particularly large corporate lenders, were as painful if not more than those of the previous quarters as bad loans continued to pile up.The stock of gross non-performing assets (NPA) of listed banks is now a massive Rs7.1 trillion ($108 billion), a rise of 60% from a year ago.Notwithstanding NPA war rooms such as that of Punjab National Bank or watch lists made public in the case of ICICI Bank Ltd and Axis Bank Ltd, the rate of bad loan accretion remained elevated. To be fair, though, the slippage rate (good loans turning bad) slowed in the December quarter from the previous quarters.Of course, setting aside money against the NPA stockpile was mandatory and while many banks cut corners (shown by the fall in their provision coverage ratio), some lenders continued to make higher provisioning. Nevertheless, the cumulative provisioning of all listed banks fell 8% in the December quarter to Rs45,147 crore. But recoveries and upgrades being unimpressive, this bad-loan pile will age and necessitate higher provisioning in the future, which explains the bearish outlook on the full-year earnings.Analysts have understandably pencilled in a jump in credit costs for the current financial year.If bad loans were the constant bugbear for banks, a new irritant that chipped away some of the fee income was the waiver of various charges on ATM, or automated teller machine, transactions and use of cards after the demonetisation of high-value bank notes.Given the twin blows, one out of three public sector banks made losses while the cumulative profit of all listed private banks fell 14% from a year ago.Even India’s most valuable bank, HDFC Bank Ltd, couldn’t go unscathed, and its profit growth fell to 15% for the third quarter from 20% in the second quarter.That the earnings per share estimate of 2017-18 for the Bankex is also down 12% indicates that many feel the pain will persist longer.But, ironically, the shares of banks, especially those of public sector lenders, have gained sharply even after many reported worsening asset quality metrics and reduction in their core business of lending.These gains are largely on the back of hopes that the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would work out a decisive plan to tackle the bad loan problem.While balance sheets do not seem to warrant current valuations, analysts believe that if a concrete plan for bad loan resolution emerges, corporate lenders such as ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and even State Bank of India, or SBI, could be re-rated.“In our view, a joint private-government initiative may work, with the private sector providing the capital and expertise to manage the bad loans and the government’s legal backing to the PSUs (public sector undertakings) to enable them to make suitable ‘haircuts’ to bad loans,” Kotak Securities wrote in a note.","While balance sheets do not seem to warrant current valuations, analysts say if a concrete plan for bad loan resolution emerges, corporate lenders could be re-rated",06:14,A bleaker FY17 for banks +2017-03-24,"Cement demand in the December quarter was impacted by demonetisation in most parts of the country, with southern India being an exception.Pan-India firms ACC Ltd and Ambuja Cements Ltd saw a 9% year-on-year (y-o-y) decline in volumes; and for UltraTech Cement Ltd, it was a 2% y-o-y fall. South-based firms Dalmia Bharat Ltd (36% y-o-y), India Cements Ltd (22% y-o-y) and Orient Cement Ltd (19% y-o-y) saw strong volume growth, benefiting from improved institutional demand in Andhra Pradesh/Telangana and a low-base effect on account of floods in Chennai during the same period a year ago. As a result, on an overall basis, cement companies reported a flat volume growth at 37 million tonnes (mt) in the third quarter.Not only demand, profitability also took a hit as production costs increased. Fuel prices, especially those of petroleum coke (petcoke), surged Rs400-500/tonne in the past quarter. According to a Kotak Institutional Equities (KIE) report, on a sequential basis, profitability of cement companies declined 11% to Rs753/tonne, though y-o-y it is up 10%.Meanwhile, low demand kept realizations subdued.In the past two months, the impact of demonetisation has subsided and the demand scenario has improved, but it remains below normal levels, especially retail demand. A pick-up in government spending on infrastructure and affordable housing projects may lead to a sequential demand uptick, but y-o-y demand would decline mainly due to a high base since demand growth in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2016 was strong. Cement prices in the country, except the south, have begun to rise, but if this improvement in cement prices doesn’t sustain, then realizations would decline sequentially in the March quarter.That apart, another worry is surging input costs. In the December quarter, a slew of cement manufacturers opted for alternative fuels to minimize the adverse impact on margins, while some others made use of the low-cost petcoke stock they were left with. As per analysts, the full impact of the rise in petcoke prices will be felt in the March quarter as most cement companies are likely to have exhausted that inventory. Diesel price, too, is trending upwards which will result in higher road freight costs, raising the production cost per tonne.Though the shares of large-cap cement companies have recovered from where they were when demonetisation was announced and are currently trading at rich valuations, given these concerns, March quarter earnings would be lacklustre, indicating that valuations need to correct.","Cement prices have begun to rise; but if this improvement doesn’t sustain, realizations would decline sequentially in the March quarter",06:22,"Cement: After demonetisation, rising costs, unfavourable volume base to hurt " +2017-04-12,"Los Angeles: Fox News’s most-popular host, Bill O’Reilly, is taking what he called a long-scheduled vacation after revelations of financial settlements over alleged sexual harassment.While New York magazine reported Tuesday that 21st Century Fox Inc. chief executive officer (CEO) James Murdoch wants him to step down permanently, people familiar with Fox’s plans said O’Reilly intends to return to the The O’Reilly Factor. The people asked not to be identified because the matter is private.O’Reilly’s holiday until 24 April follows a wave of companies pulling advertisements from his prime-time show, the cable news channel’s biggest. The media group controlled by Rupert Murdoch has been dealing with the fallout of alleged sexual harassment at Fox News since last summer, leading to the ouster of its former CEO Roger Ailes. The claims against O’Reilly, reported in the New York Times, add to pressure on a company that is seeking regulatory approval for its bid for Sky PLC.“Last fall I booked a trip that should be terrific,” O’Reilly told viewers. “All of us deserve a break.”Fox News anchors Dana Perino will fill in Wednesday night and Monday through Thursday next week, while Bret Baier will host Thursday’s show and Greg Gutfeld will fill O’Reilly’s seat Friday this week and next, a person familiar with the situation said.“Other than the vacation guest hosts, The Factor broadcast will remain unchanged,” Mark Fabiani, an attorney representing the host, said by e-mail. Fabiani said arrangements for the vacation were made in October and the timing coincides with O’Reilly’s children’s spring break.Fox said in a recent statement that it “investigates all complaints and we have asked the law firm Paul Weiss to continue assisting the company in these serious matters.”The New York Times reported last week that five women received payments from either 21st Century Fox or from O’Reilly in exchange for agreeing not to sue or talk about their allegations that O’Reilly verbally abused them, subjected them to unwanted advances or made lewd comments. Fox said no employees had raised concerns about O’Reilly and it had been looking into the matter in recent months.No one has filed a complaint about O’Reilly with the company’s human resources department over the more than 20 years he has been at Fox News Channel, the host said in an 1 April statement.Fox News, which accounts for an estimated quarter of Fox’s profit, has stayed on top in cable ratings despite the internal turmoil. The network remains the most-watched on cable year-to-date, with 2.8 million average daily viewers, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence analysis. Ratings have seen a bump by several appearances of President Donald Trump.Bloomberg",Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s holiday until 24 April follows a wave of companies pulling ads from his prime-time show over sexual harassment allegations,19:59,Fox News host Bill O’Reilly taking vacation amid sex harassment furore +2017-04-13,"
New Delhi: Ramesh Chandra Agarwal inherited a publishing business set up by his father Dwarka Prasad Agarwal in 1956.In 1983, he decided to expand and diversify the business. “The rest is history,” says Arun Pareek, a former employee who worked closely with Agarwal. Agarwal, who died following a heart attack upon his arrival at Ahmedabad airport on Wednesday, leaves behind a company, DB Corp Ltd, that publishes seven newspapers including its three flagship newspapers Dainik Bhaskar, Divya Bhaskar and Saurashtra Samachar. The three have a combined average daily readership of 19.8 million across the country, according to the company’s BSE filings. The company that was listed in 2010 reported a revenue of Rs630.9 crore in the quarter ended December 2016, up 6% from a year ago. The company also has interests in radio as well as outdoor advertising. It operates 30 radio stations under the 94.3 My FM brand. Agarwal and DB Corp’s journey started in 1983 with the launch of the Indore edition of Dainik Bhaskar. In the mid 1990s, Bhaskar stepped out of Madhya Pradesh and launched in Rajasthan. Currently, Dainik Bhaskar is among the top three most-read newspapers in the country, according to the Indian Readership Survey published by the Readership Studies Council of India (RSCI), an industry body formed jointly by the Media Research Users Council (MRUC) and the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC).Along with his three sons— Sudhir, Girish and Pawan— Ramesh Agarwal further expanded the newspaper business when he launched the Gujarati daily Divya Bhaskar in 2003. The newspaper’s success story became a case study at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. Later, in 2005, he also launched DNA (Daily News & Analysis) an English language newspaper in Mumbai in a joint venture with Subhash Chandra’s Essel group. However, in 2012 it sold its 50% stake in the business to Essel group. As per the report Press in India 2015-16, prepared by the Registrar of Newspapers of India (RNI), Dainik Bhaskar was the most circulated multi-edition daily in 2015-16 with 45 editions and a total claimed circulation of 4.6 million copies per publishing day. Speaking about Ramesh Agarwal, former group editor of Dainik Bhaskar Shravan Garg said: “He was a visionary. He was a man of determination and courage. No one can imagine the kind of leadership he provided to the group. He was responsible for taking the group to such heights. He launched the paper in Indore at a time when the market was completely dominated by other players.”Mint’s publisher HT Media and its subsidiary HMVL compete with DB in some markets.",Dainik Bhaskar group chairman Ramesh Agrawal died following a heart attack upon his arrival at Ahmedabad airport on Wednesday,01:51,"Ramesh Agrawal, Dainik Bhaskar group chairman, dies at 73" +2017-03-24,"The Indian aviation sector continues to be plagued by pricing pressures. What stood out in the December quarter was that SpiceJet Ltd, which hadn’t succumbed to pricing woes in the September quarter, gave in. Its average fare fell 7% year-on-year (y-o-y) for the December quarter, compared with a 5% increase seen during the September quarter.Sure, healthy load factors helped, resulting in a 12.5% rise in SpiceJet’s operating revenue. But profit growth wasn’t commensurate, thanks to higher fuel costs as a percentage of revenue.Ebitdar declined by one-fifth, whereas earnings before tax and exceptional items dropped two-fifths. Ebitdar is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and aircraft lease rentals, and is an important measure of profitability for airlines.To be fair, it’s not as if SpiceJet’s peers—InterGlobe Aviation Ltd (which runs IndiGo) and Jet Airways (India) Ltd, had a great quarter either. Airlines also had to bear the brunt of the adverse impact of demonetisation in the past quarter.IndiGo said its yields declined 20% and 17%, respectively, in November and December, thanks to demonetisation. That decline was sharper than what analysts had expected. Overall, IndiGo’s Ebitdar fell about 14%, despite the fact that operating revenue increased 16% (helped by better volumes).Post-results, Kotak Institutional Equities cut its fiscal 2017 earnings per share (EPS) estimate by 15% to account for a likely poor performance in the second half of the year to March. “This has resulted in a 10-12% cut in our FY2018-19E EPS (earnings per share) estimates as well,” added Kotak in a report on 31 January.Apart from pricing issues, Jet’s financials were also affected on account of demand problems from the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC, countries. Consolidated December-quarter operating revenue increased by a mere 1.4% and average fare per passenger fell 1.6%. Jet’s Ebitdar was lower than analysts’ estimates. Operating costs—including fuel, employee costs, selling and distribution expenses, and other operating expenses—increased at a much faster pace. Jet’s stock has declined in the past year, whereas IndiGo and SpiceJet have seen their stocks rise. High debt continues to remain a worry for investors in Jet stock.Meanwhile, traffic growth is strong. Passengers carried by domestic airlines in January rose 25% y-o-y, according to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. While that augurs well, firmer crude prices are a threat as they account for a huge portion of operating costs for airlines. Also, in such an environment, fares need to improve to support profit margins, which may have an impact on volume growth. But analysts say pricing pressures will continue for some time. That could well mean that aviation stocks may find it difficult to take off in the interim.","With pricing pressures likely to continue for some more time, aviation stocks may find it difficult to take off in the interim",06:14,Aviation stocks: Turbulent journey in the December quarter +2017-04-12,"Atlanta/Dallas: For most of his 19-month tenure, United Continental Holdings Inc. chief executive officer (CEO) Oscar Munoz has cleaned up messes left behind by others. Now he’s mopping up a PR disaster at United Airlines that’s unfolded under his watch.After United Airlines ordered a passenger forcibly removed from a plane in Chicago shortly before departure to make room for a United employee, Munoz’s initial response made the company a punch line on social media. He said United Airlines had to “re-accommodate’’ the man, who was bloodied in the encounter with security officials. In a subsequent letter to employees, the CEO called the customer “disruptive’’ and “belligerent’’ when he would not voluntarily relinquish his seat.“It’s sort of a self-immolation and makes you wonder about his choice as CEO,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management, said of Munoz’s handling of the crisis. He “worked at Coke and Pepsi and AT&T, and someone would have thought he had a better customer sensitivity.”ALSO READ : United Airlines seat fiasco among worst corporate PR gaffesAlmost 24 hours later, after global condemnation of United Airline’s behaviour had time to sink in, Munoz struck a far more contrite tone.“The truly horrific event that occurred on this flight has elicited many responses from all of us: outrage, anger, disappointment. I share all of those sentiments,” Munoz said in a statement Tuesday. “I deeply apologize to the customer forcibly removed and to all the customers aboard. No one should ever be mistreated this way.”On Wednesday he said the carrier no longer will rely on law enforcement to remove seated, paying customers.“This can never, will never, happen again on a United Airlines flight,” he said on ABC’s Good Morning America. He said he hasn’t considered resigning after the incident.‘Thorough review’He committed the third-largest US airline to “a thorough review” of its policies for handling oversold flights and vowed to report back to the public by 30 April. “I promise you we will do better,” he said in the Tuesday statement.Yet the damage had already been done. With a few ill-chosen words, Munoz stoked the flames of an already raging social-media firestorm and squandered goodwill he had worked hard to generate by forging a turnaround plan since joining the company in September 2015. He has overseen a 23% stock rally since then, compared with 13% for the Bloomberg US Airlines Index.Previously known for his deft touch in rescuing United from a corruption scandal, weathering a proxy fight and winning unprecedented labour peace, now he’s the head of an airline that, for some passengers, has instantly become Public Enemy No. 1.ALSO READ : United Airlines CEO: ‘I’m sorry’, in response to dragged passengerThe fallout continued Tuesday with some people saying on United’s Facebook page that they would boycott the Chicago-based carrier. Others said on Twitter that they’d cancelled their United-affiliated credit cards—a key revenue source for airlines.In China, a crucial part of United’s lucrative trans-Pacific network, the incident was a focus of social media and editorials in the state-controlled Global Times newspaper. The hashtag #UnitedForcesPassengerOffPlane was the top trending item on Sina Weibo, the equivalent of Twitter, with more than 270 million views. The man who was removed, David Dao, appeared to be of Asian descent.Dao is receiving treatment in a Chicago hospital for his injuries, according to a statement from lawyers who said they represent him. Video posted to Facebook and Twitter showed him as he was dragged out of his seat and down the aisle of the plane after refusing to give up his seat.United overhaulFor Munoz, the timing of the worldwide outcry is, at the very least, extremely awkward and at worst a serious setback for his overhaul of United, which suffered for years as the industry laggard in both profitability and on-time performance. In an ironic touch, Munoz just last month was named “Communicator of the Year for 2017” by PRWeek. The public-relations industry publication said Munoz “has shown himself to be a smart, dedicated, and excellent leader who understands the value of communications.”In 2015, Munoz took over as CEO from Jeff Smisek, who was ousted amid a federal investigation into ties between the carrier and the former chairman of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. The next month, Munoz suffered a serious heart attack and underwent a transplant in early 2016. He bounced back only to face a proxy challenge from two hedge funds. United named a new chairman and agreed to add new board members approved by PAR Capital Management and Altimeter Capital Management.Within months after the board tussle, Munoz had unveiled a $3.1 billion plan to cut costs and boost revenue, and he set the stage for labour peace for the first time since the 2010 merger with Continental Airlines that created the company. He also brought in new senior leadership including President Scott Kirby, who previously served in the same position at American Airlines Group Inc. This year, United’s market value surpassed that of American, which generates more in annual sales.‘Some credit’The Monday incident comes two weeks after United drew social-media scorn for enforcing its employee dress code for those who fly as non-revenue passengers, such as relatives of employees. Two young girls flying from Denver were told to change their leggings before boarding. In response, the airline then took efforts to tell “our regular customers” that “leggings are welcome.”In his letter to United workers Monday night, the CEO said he stood behind employees and criticized the passenger for refusing to deplane. Sara Nelson, international president of the flight attendants union representing United, said the incident was the most severe customer backlash she’d seen in 20 years on the job and was “completely unacceptable.” Still, employees were grateful to have a chief executive who “has their backs.”“When something like this happens and people have to go to work and have order in their workplace to keep everyone safe, it can be incredibly demoralizing,” Nelson said. “Some credit needs to be given to him.” Bloomberg","In his 19-month tenure, United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz cleaned up mess left behind by others. Now he’s mopping up a PR disaster that’s unfolded under his watch",19:37,United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz goes from saviour to man on hot seat real fast +2017-03-24,"The pharmaceutical sector had a difficult time in the December quarter, with the BSE Healthcare index falling 10.6%. It has done relatively better in the quarter so far, with the index gaining 5%.The heavyweights in the sector found the going tough in the US as a combination of pricing pressure, stiff competition and a relatively slow pace of approvals affected growth. Although demonetisation did cause some disruption, the effect was not as adverse as feared. Data from market research firm AIOCD-Awacs showed sales rose 10.5% in the December quarter over a year ago. This was lower than the 13.5% growth in the September quarter. While November saw sales growth improve since chemists could accept old notes, December saw it slow down after the concession ended.Overall, the pharmaceutical sector’s sales rose 8.8% over a year ago but other operating income rose 22% (this component includes licensing/drug development revenue). As material costs rose only 8%, that constrained expenditure growth, leading to an 18.4% increase in operating profit. Profit after tax rose 15.4%. For a sector that is trading at a price-to-earnings multiple of 29 times its trailing 12-month earnings, that’s not enough.Among firms that reported relatively better sales growth were Biocon Ltd, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Lupin Ltd and Cipla Ltd, partly due to revenue from the launch of important products in the US. Emerging markets and currencies have turned relatively stable, which augurs well as most companies have built sizeable businesses here.On the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) front, the news has been mixed. Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd and Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd got observations from the regulator on a re-inspection of their facilities. This dashed investor hopes that these plants would be cleared. But the news is not uniformly bad, with companies such as Lupin and Cadila Healthcare Ltd getting approvals for their units after re-inspection. More recently, Sun Pharma also announced that the warning letter on its Mohali plant has been lifted by the US FDA.Companies have been going after acquisitions to boost their revenue and keep the growth engine humming. They continue to be on the hunt and the risk here is that companies overpay or the acquired assets don’t generate value.The sector’s valuations suggest that investors still hold hope that the US market problems will get resolved and earnings growth of the sector will recover. FY18 is likely to provide a reality check on that front.",Valuations of pharma firms suggest investors still hold hope that the US market problems will get resolved and earnings growth of the sector will recover,05:28,Q3 results show pharma sector recovering in fits and starts +2017-03-24,"Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd’s free services wreaked havoc on the December quarter financial statements of India’s leading telecom companies. Idea Cellular Ltd reported losses, and Bharti Airtel Ltd reported a 16% sequential drop in operating profit for its wireless business. Airtel generated barely enough cash flow from operations to cover increased capital expenditure (capex). Idea’s cash profits weren’t enough to meet enhanced capex needs and, as a result, its debt has gone out of whack.Analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities wrote in a note to clients after Airtel’s results announcement, “We could be down to as low as Rs20,000-25,000 crore in annualized Ebitda (ex-Jio) for an industry sitting on an aggregate net debt in the vicinity of Rs3 trillion (ex-Jio). This is as distressed as it gets, in our view.” Ebitda is short for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization—an indicator of operating profitability.Customers who availed themselves of Jio’s free services simply stopped using paid data services of incumbents, leading to a drop in revenue and profits. Things are likely to be far worse in the March quarter as Jio’s free services have continued over this period and were used by a far higher number of customers. The silver lining is that Jio will start charging customers from 1 April, although that doesn’t reduce the pressure on incumbents much. Already, they have been forced to bring down tariffs substantially to try and match Jio’s offers to their subscribers. Yet, while it’s clear that revenues and profits will be under pressure for some time to come, it’s anybody’s guess how long the pain will continue and to what extent profits will fall.","While it’s clear revenue and profits will continue to be under pressure, it’s anybody’s guess how long the pain will continue and to what extent profits will fall",06:13,Reliance Jio wreaks havoc on Q3 results of telecom firms +2017-04-12,"Hyderabad: Veteran industrialist Adi B. Godrej has disapproved the move of Infosys co-founder N. R. Narayana Murthy to publicly express concern over the pay hike of the company’s chief operating officer (COO), as he justified a big gap between salaries at the entry and top levels. “Of course, there will be a big gap because there are very few people capable of taking top-level things but I think that it (executive pay packets) should be left to each company,” the Godrej Group chairman told PTI. “And I don’t think people should publicly comment on such issues. There is no need to publicly comment on such issues,” he said. Godrej was responding to questions on Murthy criticising the pay hike of COO of Infosys, U.B. Pravin Rao. “Each company should decide, its Board should decide. If the Board has decided after proper considerations why should others complain?” the former president of the Confederation of Indian Industry asked.","Adi Godrej says people should not publicly comment on issues such as pay hikes, responding questions on Infosys co-founder N. R. Narayana Murthy’s comments ",18:12,Adi Godrej disapproves of N.R Narayana Murthy’s pay hike comments +2017-03-24,"Auto firms’ performance in the December quarter was under stress on account of the ban on high-value banknotes that crippled sales for almost half the quarter. Net revenue of leading auto firms, therefore, declined slightly from the year-ago quarter, with the biggest impact being on two-wheelers.Save for premium motorcycle manufacturer Royal Enfield, which bucked the trend, both Hero MotoCorp Ltd and Bajaj Auto Ltd sold fewer vehicles. This, in turn, led to a sales year-on-year decline. However, TVS Motor Co. Ltd’s mopeds fared well, lifting overall sales slightly.Commercial vehicle (CV) firms presented a divergent trend. No. 2 player Ashok Leyland Ltd’s sales bumped up significantly. Realization and profits rose. The CV market leader Tata Motors Ltd, on the other hand, posted weak growth. Its passenger car segment was the saving grace on the domestic front.The country’s largest car manufacturer Maruti Suzuki India Ltd saw dull growth. This is because the firm has a significant exposure to rural markets with entry-level cars. This segment did badly. Fortunately, the higher-end segment, comprising utility vehicles along with new launches, compensated for the drop in sales of entry-level cars.The biggest takeaway is that most firms maintained operating margins at cushy year-ago levels despite the odds. A higher inventory of unsold vehicles masked cost increases. Further, other expenses and staff costs were trimmed too. But then, higher inventory of finished goods offset the material cost increase and lifted profitability. This trend is unlikely to continue in the quarters ahead. Higher material costs could cap margins.What stuck out as a sore thumb was Tata Motors. Its results were dismal, thanks to dismal global sales and operating performance by its UK subsidiary and cash cow, Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc.That said, in spite of the sudden blip, analysts feel demonetisation blues are already behind the sector. All eyes are now on a sales revival, especially in two-wheelers and CVs, driven by the race to buy vehicles before the new and more expensive vehicles, compliant with the new emission norms (BS-IV), hit the market in April.Here again, in the two months of the March quarter already gone by, the “pre-buying” story has not been impressive. Sales continue to be weak across most vehicle categories.Further, the higher raw material cost effect is bound to weigh on profit margins in the current and forthcoming quarters, unless price hikes and sales offset the same. Of course, valuations are fair at the current stock prices. A robust pick-up in sales, along with the ability of firms to pass on any cost pressures to customers, will be key in the coming quarters.","A higher raw material cost effect is bound to weigh on profit margins in the current and forthcoming quarters, unless price hikes and sales offset the same",06:14,Auto firms Q3 results: A blip in growth as demonetisation cripples sales +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: The government plans to cancel the registration of more than two lakh companies that have not been carrying out business for a considerable period of time, amid stepped up efforts to tackle the black money menace.More than 200,000 companies, spread across various states, have been served with show cause notices as they have not been carrying out any operation or business activity for a prolonged time.The corporate affairs ministry’s move also comes against the backdrop of overall efforts by the authorities to crack the whip on shell companies, suspected to be used for money laundering activities.The Registrars of Companies (RoCs) in various states and union territories have issued notices to more than 200,000 firms under the Companies Act, 2013, according to information available with the ministry.These notices have been issued under Section 248 of the Act, which is implemented by the Ministry. This section pertains to striking off names of companies on certain grounds.With the issuance of notices, the companies concerned have to explain their position and if the responses are not satisfactory, then their names would be struck off by the Ministry.Data showed that RoC Mumbai has issued notices to more than 71,000 companies while RoC Delhi has served notices to over 53,000 firms, among others.As per the regulations, an RoC can seek explanation from a company if the latter has not commenced business within one year of getting incorporated under the Act.Notice is also issued if a particular company has not been carrying out business for at least two continuous financial years and has not applied for dormant status. Such entities are given a time of 30 days to submit objections if any.The Ministry has power to remove or strike off the names of such entities from the “register of companies” if the response is not satisfactory. Earlier this month, the Ministry had amended the Companies (Removal of Names of Companies from the Register of Companies) Rules. There are more than 15 lakh registered companies in the country.","The firms, spread across various states, have been served with show cause notices as they have not been carrying out any operation or business activity for a prolonged time",01:14,Govt prepares to strike off registration of over two lakh firms +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Indian engineering firm Larsen & Toubro signed a deal with South Korea’s Hanwha Techwin to supply artillery guns to the Indian army in a deal estimated to be 4.5 billion rupees ($696.38 million), the two firms said on Friday.Jayant Patil, head of the defence and aerospace wing of L&T, said the two companies will jointly manufacture the self-propelled howitzer—a boost for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make-in-India drive to push domestic industry.The Indian army had chosen L&T to supply 100 guns, Patil said, adding the contract will be among the first under the indigenisation campaign aimed at reducing the military’s dependence on foreign imports.The military’s bigger projects such as acquisition of fighter planes, helicopters and submarines are making slower progress because of the government’s insistence on involvement of local players.South Korea’s Minister for Defence Acquisition Program Administration, Chang Myoung Jin, said Seoul was looking to significantly expand defence ties with India. Reuters",L&T and Hanwha Techwin to jointly manufacture self-propelled howitzer in a boost for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make-in-India drive to push domestic industry,01:06,L&T signs deal with S.Korea’s Hanwha Techwin for artillery guns +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Global private equity giant KKR on Friday sold a 5.6% stake in Dalmia Bharat for an estimated Rs575 crore through an open market transaction. The shares were purchased by a host of entities, including Kuwait Investment Authority, Birla Mutual Fund and Franklin Templeton Investment Funds.According to block deal data available with stock exchanges, KKR Mauritius Cement Investments Ltd offloaded a total of 49,65,270 shares, amounting to 5.58 per cent stake, of Dalmia Bharat. The shares were sold on an average price of Rs 2,047.5, valuing the transaction at Rs574.86 crore, it added.In January 2016, Dalmia Bharat had announced that it signed a pact with KKR to acquire the global private equity giant’s 15 per cent stake in its subsidiary Dalmia Cement Bharat Ltd for over Rs 1,218 crore in a cash-and-stock deal. The deal had earned the private equity player a return of 2.4 times on its investment of Rs 500 crore it made in September 2010. The stock of Dalmia Bharat today closed at Rs 2,048.95 on BSE, down 1.74 per cent from the previous close.","The shares were purchased by a host of entities, including Kuwait Investment Authority, Birla Mutual Fund and Franklin Templeton Investment Funds",01:00,KKR sells 5.6% stake in Dalmia Bharat for Rs575 crore +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) is likely to report a higher fourth-quarter profit on Monday, as it likely benefited from higher margins in its petrochemical and refining businesses. The company is expected to post a standalone net profit of Rs8,015.70 crore on revenue of Rs67,467.10 crore for the three months ended 31 March, according to a Bloomberg poll of 16 analysts.RIL, which runs the world’s largest refining and petrochemicals complex at Jamnagar in Gujarat, posted a standalone net profit of Rs7,320 crore on revenue of Rs49,957 crore in the year-ago period.“We expect strong earnings driven by refining and petchem (higher volumes, improved margins). Despite increased losses in domestic exploration and production, we expect RIL to report a ninth straight quarter of quarter-on-quarter stand-alone profit after tax growth,” Nomura Research said in a report dated 7 April. RIL’s standalone profit for the quarter ended 31 January was Rs8,022 crore.Analysts expect RIL to post a gross refining margin, or GRM, of between $10.5 and $11 per barrel against $10.8 per barrel a year ago. GRM is the difference between the per-barrel price of crude and the value of products distilled from it.In the March quarter, Brent crude oil prices averaged $54 per barrel, up 8% on a quarterly basis. The average rupee-dollar rate improved on a quarterly basis to 67 and closed at 64.9 at the end of March against 67.9 in the third quarter. This may lead to forex gains for refiners on their crude payables and foreign debt.Singapore’s benchmark GRM was slightly down on a quarterly basis at $6.5 per barrel. “We expect GRM at $11 per barrel (up 2% quarter-on-quarter), a $4.6 per barrel premium over Singapore benchmark,” Edelweiss Securities Ltd in a report dated 7 April.Over the last few quarters RIL’s refineries have enjoyed a premium of $4-5 per barrel to Singapore GRMs. RIL’s petrochemicals business is estimated to report better earnings on account of an improvement in margins and higher volumes. “We expect petchem EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) to rise 11% quarter on quarter (q-o-q) on stronger margins and slight uptick in volumes. Polymer margins are near-record levels, aromatics margins have rebounded q-o-q and integrated polyester margins are also at multi-quarter highs in the fourth quarter,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a report dated 10 April. Ebit is an indication of a company’s operating profitability.Losses in the exploration and production front may widen for RIL, with production from its KG D6 block expected to have declined 23% year-on-year to 7.3 million metric standard cubic metres per day. On Friday, RIL’s scrip ended at Rs1,399.75, up 2.22% on the BSE, while the benchmark Sensex closed at 29,365.30 points, down 0.19%.","Analysts expect better petrochemical, refining margins to have aided profit growth ",00:51,RIL may post higher March-quarter profit +2017-04-22,"
Bengaluru: Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp.’s growth of 8.6% in calendar year 2016, the slowest in the history of the Nasdaq-listed company, hurt its senior management ranks, including chief executive officer Francisco D’Souza, whose compensation last year fell by a sharp 31%. D’Souza took home $8.26 million, against $11.95 million in 2015.Cognizant’s subdued performance last year—along with the company moving the grant of restricted stock units (RSU) to its senior management from the fourth quarter of last year to the first quarter of this calendar year—further hit the earnings of other senior management members, including president Rajeev Mehta and chief financial officer Karen McLoughlin. Mehta and McLoughlin saw their compensation drop by 30.5% and 30% respectively last year, as compared to 2015, according to filings made to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.ALSO READ: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backCognizant’s 8.6% growth in 2016 paled in comparison with the 21% growth it posted in 2015, underlining a broader slowdown witnessed by technology outsourcing companies, which are battling to keep themselves relevant. Newer technologies like cloud computing and data analytics are making the largest Fortune 1000 companies, across industries, cut reliance on traditional solutions offered under application development and maintenance by technology outsourcers.For this reason, chief executives are seeing a fall in their compensation. Vishal Sikka, CEO of Infosys Ltd, saw his compensation for 2016-17 decline 8.1% to $6.8 million from $7.4 million earned in 2015-16, after the firm’s growth slipped to 7.4%, compared to 9.1% in 2015-16.D’Souza, son of an Indian diplomat, has been at the helm of Cognizant for over a decade. Since he took over as CEO in January 2007, Cognizant has grown from a $1.4 billion company to end last year with $13.5 billion in revenue, overtaking both Infosys and Wipro Ltd.Starting in 2010, Cognizant added over $1 billion in new revenue or incremental revenue every year for seven straight years, a feat only matched by Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.","Due to the poor show by Cognizant, CEO Francisco D’Souza took home $8.26 million, against $11.95 million in 2015.",00:51,Cognizant CEO Francisco D’Souza’s pay falls 31% in 2016 as growth slows +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Friday stayed an order imposing a penalty of Rs290 crore on AT&T Global Network Services India Pvt. Ltd for unpaid licence fees between 2002-2005 by its affiliate AT & T Communication Services India Pvt. Ltd.Both AT&T Global Network Services and AT&T Communication Services India are subsidiaries of AT&T Global Network Holdings LLC.Based on a show cause notice issued to AT & T Communication Services India Pvt. Ltd in August 2005, the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) passed an order on 5 April imposing the penalty for unpaid license fee on AT & T Global Network Services India. Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva questioned the validity of imposing penalty on a company which had not been issued a notice or given a chance to be heard in the first place.Rajiv Nayyar, counsel for AT & T, told the court that AT & T Global Network Services was incorporated in 2005 and could not be penalized for breaches committed earlier. He added that AT&T Communication Services India had been involved in the proceedings from the very beginning, and yet the demand was levied on AT&T Global Network Services, which had not been a party to the dispute. Nayyar told the court that the 5 April order was “cryptic, bad in law, arbitrary and against the principles of natural justice” and was passed by a committee comprising members who were different from those who had heard the entire issue.AT & T Global Network Services sought for the order to be set aside and contended that the although it belonged to the AT & T group, it was economically and operationally independent from AT&T Communication Services India.The matter will be heard next on 19 May.",The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) passed an order on 5 April imposing the penalty for unpaid license fee on AT & T Global Network Services India,23:39,Delhi HC stays DOT order levying Rs290 crore penalty on AT&T Global over unpaid fees +2017-03-31,"
Investors were underwhelmed by Accenture Plc’s results for the quarter ended February 2017. While revenue was more or less in line with expectations, new order bookings fell below expectations, and so did the company’s outlook for the consulting business. Accenture’s shares have fallen by around 4% since the results were announced last week. Some analysts have cheered the relatively higher growth in the company’s outsourcing business, suggesting this augurs well for India’s IT services industry. Outsourcing services grew 8% in constant currency terms last quarter, compared to 5% growth in consulting services. This is the first time in two years that Accenture’s outsourcing segment has outgrown its consulting practice. But as analysts at Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd point out, “(The outsourcing segment) is largely market share gain-driven and cannot be read positively from an Indian IT perspective, in our view.” In other words, the pickup in Accenture’s outsourcing business may well be coming at the expense of Indian IT, with which it competes directly. Worse still, the analysts add that the heightening of immigration fears could put the multinational firm in an advantageous position in this segment versus Indian IT, which is far more dependent on H-1B visas. Not very long ago, Indian investors were celebrating the fact that Tata Consultancy Services Ltd’s (TCS’s) market capitalization exceeded the combined value of Accenture and Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. Now, Accenture’s value exceeds that of TCS by around $5.5 billion. Note that Accenture’s new order bookings fell by 4% year-on-year and were below expectations. Growth in the key North American region fell to 4%, compared to double-digit growth a year ago. Company-wide growth has more-or-less halved in the past one year. These aren’t comforting signs for Indian IT, by any stretch of imagination. Some analysts see the relatively higher growth in Accenture’s outsourcing business as a positive for Indian IT, since it points to a shift in the nature of digital spends by customers, which may provide more opportunities for Indian companies. The argument goes that digital has moved beyond the consulting phase and is now scaling up, where Indian IT’s capabilities will be required. It would be prudent for investors to look for more datapoints that attest this. For now, what’s working in the favour of IT stocks is that since valuations are low when compared to the broad market, they have takers when stocks fall below a certain threshold. Although revenue growth has come down substantially, these companies still generate high amounts of cash, and have lately increased payout ratios.","The pickup in Accenture’s outsourcing business may well be coming at the expense of Indian IT firms, such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro",07:42,Is Accenture making things worse for Indian IT? +2017-03-31,"
Is coconut oil a hair oil or edible oil? Marico Ltd would be keen to know the answer, as the GST (goods and services tax) Council will soon get down to deciding rates. While GST rates on all consumer products are of interest, if one takes the government’s word at face value — that consumer prices will not increase—then the impact on companies should be minimal. In any case, many FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) firms, including Marico, have units in states such as Assam to avail of excise benefits. These will continue under the GST regime.Of more immediate interest to Marico’s investors should be an increase in its Parachute pure coconut oil sold in bottles. Some pack sizes have seen prices increase by 7-10% in March. This comes on the back of a sustained increase in copra prices, which are up by 38% since October while coconut oil is up by 42%, as per prices maintained by Marico.The increase in Parachute prices may seem relatively less and even delayed, compared to the raw material price trend. This may be deliberate. For one, Marico may have locked in earlier to lower input prices. Also, the company did not reduce prices sharply when input costs fell. It prefers to maintain its margins in a range. When input prices increase, this strategy allows it to increase market share, as buyers of loose oil shift to Parachute as the price differential between the two narrows. About a third of the coconut oil market by volume is still sold in loose form.Parachute’s market share in coconut oil is likely to have risen in the March quarter, and with the increase in price, margins should improve in fiscal year 2018. Post-December quarter results, when domestic coconut oil volume had declined by 1% due to demonetization, the company said it expects to recover and grow by 5-6% in the near term. In Bangladesh, which contributes to 45% of Marico’s international sales, the firm had said sales growth of coconut oil will return to constant currency growth in the fourth quarter.The raw material prices in other inputs in edible oils for its Saffola range or for paraffin oil for its value-added hair oils are stable or increasing. Broadly speaking, a firming of its cost base should allow for price hikes, with the extent depending on demand and competition. Urban demand is expected to be in better form in FY18, which should help the premium part of Marico’s portfolio.Rural markets were affected more by demonetization than urban markets in the December quarter. FY17 was expected to be better due to a better monsoon. If rural demand recovers, that should help its low-price packs and hair oil sales.The Marico stock has risen by 23% since end-December and is trading around the same level it was in early September. It trades at a price-to-earnings multiple of 40 times the estimated FY18 mean earnings per share, based on estimates polled by Reuters. That makes it a relatively expensive stock. If product prices keep increasing, if demand improves and if GST benefits become evident, the stock’s valuation could still be justified. A near-term risk is supply disruption when GST is implemented.",Sustained increase in copra prices have starting reflecting in Parachute coconut oil prices—a matter of much interest to investors and beneficial to Marico share prices,07:42,Marico numbers to get a massage with pricier coconut oil +2017-03-29,"
Bharti Airtel Ltd has been looking to sell a stake in its tower infrastructure subsidiary, Bharti Infratel Ltd, for some now. It was initially even willing to give up majority control, although it has dropped those plans for now. According to an analyst at a domestic institutional brokerage firm, a majority stake sale may not have been feasible given the hit on tower companies owing to the consolidation in the telecom sector. With Airtel deciding to retain a stake of over 50%, a stake of up to 21.6% was up for grabs in Infratel. The company announced on Tuesday it has sold a 10.3% stake for Rs6,194 crore. The shares were sold at Rs325 apiece, or a 4% premium over Monday’s close and a 6% premium compared to the average price in the past one month. Given the selling pressure and the 12% correction in Infratel shares since end-January, Airtel has got itself a fairly decent deal. Based on the transaction price, the tower company has been valued at a healthy EV/Ebitda multiple of 9.5 times, based on FY17 earnings and 8.7 times based on FY18 earnings, according to JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd’s estimates. EV is short for enterprise value. Ebitda stands for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.Airtel’s Bharti Infratel stake sale: KKR, CPPIB part of bigger agreement?Valuations were even higher earlier this year before Vodafone India Ltd and Idea Cellular Ltd said they were in talks for a potential merger. Evidently, the combined entity will no longer need as many towers as they did when they ran separate operations. But as it turns out, the two companies said last week while announcing their merger that the overlap on tower tenancies amounts to only around 20% of the total. Analysts at Credit Suisse, for instance, had estimated the overlap to be as high as 33%, and hence a greater hit on Infratel as redundancies are removed from the system post-merger. “Idea management believes that with subscribers of over 400 million (combined entity) and rapidly growing data volumes, it would be risky to shut down other tenancies. In other words, they see 220,000 sites as the size of the network in the long term. Seen from point of view of Bharti/Jio (165,000/100,000 tenancies), this could become a benchmark for nationwide network and accelerate new tenancy demands from these two operators,” Credit Suisse’s analysts wrote in a note to clients.As such, the outlook for Infratel has improved marginally after Idea and Vodafone’s merger announcement last week. Of course, this is not to say that everything is hunky-dory. Revenue growth will be hit as Idea and Vodafone rationalize tower assets, and this will have an impact on economies of scale, and hence, margins. It is also not clear whether Infratel will be compensated by the combined entity through the payment of exit penalties. Meanwhile, with Idea looking to sell its tower assets, as well as its stake in Indus Towers Ltd, and Vodafone possibly looking for an exit, too, Infratel could well consolidate its position in the sector, and gain a sizeable lead over competitors. Perhaps, this prospect helped get Airtel a premium for its Infratel shares.","Airtel has sold 10.3% stake in Bharti Infratel for Rs6,194 crore with shares valued at Rs325 apiece, or a 4% premium over Monday’s close",07:57,Airtel finally gets decent deal for its Bharti Infratel shares +2017-03-30,"
All nation-states have armed forces which consist of individuals who are willing to sacrifice their lives for the country. How many corporations in the world, with all their management systems and resources, have managed to create employees with such dedication? This was a question I had raised in my last article. The question that follows is: How does a nation-state build loyalty among its citizens? What can human resources professionals in various organizations learn from this?All strong nations have enemies they have fought multiple wars with. This column had earlier referred to the creation of out-groups to effectively consolidate the members of an in-group. Starting a war does a far more effective job of binding the nation together than the creation of an out-group. The famous historian Ian Morris, in his book War! What Is It good For? : Conflict And The Progress Of Civilization From Primates To Robots, has pointed out that, throughout history, by fighting wars, people have created larger, more organized societies that have gone on to be richer. Creation of conflict is integral to all great human movements too. Communism is not about peaceful coexistence of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie but a conflict between them. Organized religions know that the concepts of God and heaven are strong only when there is an equally strong concept of devil and hell as part of their belief systems. Most organizations have a vision of what they aspire to be. But very few have defined what they don’t want to be, the enemy they are at war with. Steve Jobs, in the “1984” launch commercial, made it clear that his organization was not interested in peaceful coexistence with other existing technology giants. At the outset he declared a war on technology that was not human friendly (read IBM and Microsoft). That belief is reflected even today in the design of Apple products. This also explains why Jobs and the brand he created continue to have a mass following of dedicated, aggressive fans.From the many wars that nation-states fight, heroes emerge. All strong nations have their national heroes—those who fought for its people, laid down their lives for the flag. Even after their death, nations ensure that these heroes are remembered. The history of nations is filled with stories of their valour. These stories help preserve the memories of the past for many generations of its citizens to come. How many organizations have a well thought out strategy to identify and project their heroes? Is there a process to collect their stories? Is there a mechanism to disseminate the inspiring stories, not just through formal training programmes, but also through water-cooler conversations? Why have nations not redesigned their flags or remixed their national anthems?Management experts who profess that “change is the only constant” forget the scientific fact—the human brain loves status quo. As Stephen Fleming of University College London says, whether it’s moving house or changing a TV channel, there is a considerable tendency for the human brain to stick with the current situation and choose not to act anew. When any action is repeated, the corresponding neural connections become stronger and over a point of time the brain gets to perform that action without even consciously thinking. The comfort of not thinking too much is disturbed by new stimuli. Political parties, organized religion and even god-men who manage to build strong loyalty with their followers have understood this brain fact. No political party or organized religion changes their symbols. Some of these symbols are thousands of years old. All godmen make sure that not just their attire, even their hairstyles remain constant over decades. And, organized religions have not allowed anyone to change even a comma in their holy books. But many organizations change their logos and other physical expressions at the drop of a hat. Such rebranding exercises are short cuts used by organizational leaders to show that they are making “visible” changes. Design agencies whose business thrives with every logo change will continue to give plausible arguments to prove that the new font and colours are far superior to the previous ones!Very few professional organizations have exploited the powers of consistency. To do that, organizational leaders should begin with a strong vision that has depth and width. They should know what expressions of that vision are permanent and what facets of that vision could change with the times. From its economic policies to global status to the demographic profile of its citizens, India has changed a lot. But the design of the national flag and the tune of its national anthem has always remained constant. Great nations understand the power of consistency. Nation-states do not try to build strong bonds with their citizens through financial incentives. The bond between all nations and their citizens is emotional. Political leaders know the power of emotional rewards over monetary rewards. And these emotional rewards are amplified through rituals. All nations have several rituals: standing up when the national anthem is sung, hoisting a flag, republic day parades—all add to strengthening the emotional bond between the nation and its citizen.An intuitive understanding of the core concepts of human behaviour has been used by nation leaders to build strong loyalty among its citizens. What prevents organizations from learning from these national leaders?Biju Dominic is the chief executive officer of Final Mile Consulting, a behaviour architecture firm.Comments are welcome at views@livemint.com",How does a nation-state build loyalty among its citizens? What can human resources professionals in various organizations learn from this?,08:46,Why national flags don’t change +2017-03-29,"
There’s a noticeable dichotomy within power sector companies. While there is surplus capacity and low utilization of existing capacity among power generation firms, the stage is all set for revenue and order book growth for power transmission and distribution (T&D) firms.This is not without reason. Analysts from the sector are hopeful that the draft National Electricity Plan (December 2016), which signals a sizeable Rs2.6 trillion investment into building T&D networks between 2017 and 2022, should open avenues for firms in this business.In any case, after some sluggishness until fiscal year 2015, domestic T&D orders started to pick up. Firms like KEC International Ltd, Kalpataru Power Transmission Ltd, Techno Electric and Engineering Co. Ltd, and ABB India Ltd have shown robust order inflows in the last three-four quarters. The road ahead is clear too. An Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd report says, “The addressable opportunity for larger engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) players in transmission lines would be around Rs900 billion (Rs90,000 crore) and in the substation segment around Rs750 billion, over the next five years.”It was after the FY08-09 downturn that some of these firms battled losses and were also caught in a debt trap. However, stringent cost management has now brought large-sized companies back on to the profit track. Those that could not cope are not in the race to bid for new orders. Further, the government is also clear that firms that are yet to complete orders will not be given fresh contracts. Hence, there is lower competition for large-sized companies that have weathered the tough times.Meanwhile, some firms have struck a meaningful geographic balance to diversify risks. For example, two-thirds of Kalpataru Power’s current order book accrues from the Middle-East, Africa and South-East Asia. KEC and Thermax Ltd have successfully diversified in terms of geographic regions and business verticals. Else, the T&D orders, which are mainly government tenders, run the risk of delays in awards and cost overruns.Some others are restructuring businesses to improve profitability. Techno Electric, for instance, has taken the decision to exit the wind power generation business and plough back the funds raised towards more viable substation projects, besides repaying debt.Such efforts have powered up the operating margins by 100-150 basis points in the last few quarters and they are poised to grow further as order inflows bring in benefits of operating leverage too. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.No doubt, T&D stocks in the entire power sector are to investors what roads are in the infrastructure universe. In a year, shares of KEC and Kalpataru Power have returned twice that of the BSE Capital Goods index. Although the price-to-earnings multiple did expand, the expected order inflows and revenue momentum should expand earnings to support valuations.",Analysts are hopeful that the draft National Electricity Plan should open avenues for power transmission companies and power discoms,07:58,Prospects light up for power transmission and distribution firms +2017-03-29,"
I am not a big fan of shopping at D-Mart. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not that I dislike it. I like to buy my fresh fruits and vegetables at the farmers’ market on Sunday at a park close to where I live in Juhu. They also sell staples, organic honey, preserves and cookies. I enjoy the interaction with the farmers, the experience and discovery. To me retail is not just about value for money, functionality and utility, it’s also about theatre, experience and discovery.Unlike me, millions of consumers in western India love shopping at D-Mart. The fact that the no-frills discount retail chain’s parent Avenue Supermarts Ltd listed on 21 March with a 115% premium to its sale price is testimony to that.To be sure, it’s not without reason that investors drove up the stock so steeply. The regional chain is India’s most profitable retailer. Over 90% of D-Mart’s customers are regular shoppers who buy from the retailer 2-3 times a month on average. This is despite having no loyalty programme.What seems to be working for D-Mart is offering limited merchandise at prices lower than its rivals. If Future Retail’s large format stores like Big Bazaar stock 30,0000-50,000 units on average, a D-Mart store stocks just 40-50% of that merchandise. Most of this seems to defy logic. After all, over the years, we have been getting used to increased choices. Today, there are around 141 models of passenger vehicles from 15 car manufacturers on Indian roads. This is without taking into consideration luxury car models such as BMW, Audi and Mercedes. In the early 1990s, there were just four passenger car manufacturers with about a dozen car models, which included Hindustan’s Ambassador and Contessa, Premier Padmini, Standard Herald and 2000, the Maruti 800, Omni and Gypsy, and a range of Mahindra utility vehicles.A search for soap on online retailer Amazon.com Inc.’s India website shows up 324,992 results whereas a search for shampoo produces 17,028 results. A huge change from 30-40 years ago when bath soaps were dominated by the red Lifebuoy, pink Lux, Liril and Cinthol soaps and hair wash options were largely Shikakai soap, Halo and Sunsilk shampoo. However, too much is not always a good thing. Especially given our stressful and busy urban lives, offering more options to consumers may just lead to confusion, making shopping an ordeal instead of a pleasure. Psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper said that consumers who are offered fewer choices are more likely to purchase, based on an experiment that they conducted with jam at an upscale food market in a landmark study in 2000. The psychologists put up a display of 24 varieties of gourmet jam on one table one evening and on another day, shoppers saw a similar table, except that only six varieties of the jam were on display. The large display attracted more interest than the small one. But when the time came to purchase, people who saw the large display were one-tenth as likely to buy as people who saw the small display.In his provocative book, The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz warns that giving consumers more product choices actually lowers their purchase satisfaction. Schwartz reasons that having too many options makes us fear missing out, which causes anxiety, analysis paralysis and regret.Globally, some of the biggest success stories in food retailing in recent years are not that of US retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. or UK retailer Tesco Plc. They are of the international expansion of German no-frills retail chains Aldi and Lidl, founded in 1946 and 1973, respectively.Aldi and Lidl only offer between 2,000 and 3,000 lines. In comparison an average Walmart store has 100,000 products and an average retailer 45,000 items. It’s not only in retail. Look at some of the most successful brands—Tesla Inc., Apple Inc. and Google’s home page. What stands out is the simplicity of design, a clean interface, and no clutter.Among large retailers and manufacturers, the shift towards simplicity and offering less choice has already started happening. In 2015, Tesco announced cutting its range on its retail shelves by a third. Walmart reduced its average number of store displays by 15%. Even Procter and Gamble reduced its range of Head and Shoulders shampoos by nearly half—and ended up seeing a 10% bump in sales.Interestingly, for India, the journey from having no choices to having a plethora of choices, and now to preferring our choices curated for us has happened in a very short time frame of 25-26 years. It was only in 1991 that India opened its doors to multinationals and we saw our markets being flooded by foreign manufacturers like The Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. The lessons, though, are crystal clear. D-Mart, even though much smaller in size, on listing, had a market capitalization of Rs39,916.44 crore, more than the aggregate of all of its key listed national rivals including Future Retail Ltd, Shoppers Stop Ltd and Trent Ltd.Shop Talk will take a weekly look at consumer trends, behaviour and insights.","Given our stressful and busy urban lives, offering more options to consumers may just lead to confusion, making shopping an ordeal instead of a pleasure",11:36,Why less is more +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: National carrier Air India has lowered the age limit for availing travel concession under its scheme for senior citizens to 60. As per the scheme, an Indian citizen who has attained the age of 60 on the date of commencement of journey is entitled to a 50% discount on the basic fare of an economy class seat, an Air India spokesperson confirmed. Earlier, the age limit for this offer was 63 years. This offer, however, is only valid for domestic travel. Those seeking to avail this scheme will have to produce a valid identity proof like voter identity card, passport, driving licence, or a senior citizen card issued by Air India.","Earlier, the age limit for Air India’s elderly travel concession was 63 years",20:52,Air India lowers age limit for elderly travel concession to 60 +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Bengaluru-based hospital chain Narayana Hrudayalaya Ltd has acquired Gurgaon-based multi-speciality hospital NewRise Healthcare Pvt. Ltd from drug maker Panacea Biotech Ltd for Rs180 crore. The 230-bed hospital is in the final stages of completion and is likely to be commissioned within the next nine months, Narayana Hrudayalaya said in a stock exchange filing on Friday, adding that the acquisition is expected to strengthen its position in the north. Narayana Hrudayalaya currently has a network of 23 hospitals and seven heart centres across India. As per the agreement, Panacea Biotech and its associate firm PanEra Biotech Pvt. Ltd will sell 100% equity shares and 100% preference shares, respectively, in NewRise Healthcare to Narayana Hrudayalaya.In a separate stock exchange filing, Panacea Biotech said that NewRise Healthcare’s net worth was Rs55.31 crore as of 31 March 2017. Panacea Biotech had entered into a corporate debt restructuring exercise in 2014-15 and the company had total liabilities of Rs1,807.43 crore as of 31 March 2016. On Friday, shares of Narayana Hrudayalaya ended down 0.2% at Rs317.65 apiece on BSE, while Panacea Biotech’s shares closed 3.6% higher at Rs164.85 each. The benchmark Sensex index fell 0.2% to 29,365.30 points.","The company has entered an agreement to acquire 100% stake in NewRise Healthcare from Panacea Biotec, Narayana Hrudayalaya said in a BSE filing",23:09,Narayana Hrudayalaya to buy Panacea Biotec’s NewRise Healthcare for Rs180 crore +2017-04-21,"
Mindtree Ltd’s shares have fallen 44.3% since it issued a profit warning for the March quarter. Growth at the company has taken a tumble since then, owing to delays in project starts and troubles at its UK subsidiary Bluefin Solutions. In this backdrop, it may come as a relief for investors that for the first time in over a year, Mindtree has beaten the Street’s expectations by a meaningful margin. Revenue grew 2% sequentially in constant currency terms last quarter, compared to estimated growth of less than 1%. What’s more, margins rose by 60 basis points, again ahead of estimates, indicating that the burn at Bluefin has reduced meaningfully. The company said that Bluefin’s revenue increased more than 11% sequentially; although, of course, it makes sense to wait and see if the recovery will sustain. The churn in Mindtree’s top 10 customers continues, and the company said it is in the process of rebuilding its top 10 portfolio. Last quarter, growth in the revenues of top 10 customers rose 0.7%, far lower than the company’s average growth rate. And in a clear sign that Mindtree isn’t exactly out of the woods, year-on-year growth in revenue stood at merely 0.3%. In this backdrop, the company’s assertion that growth in fiscal year 2018 will be in low double-digits seems ambitious at first. Having said that, Mindtree’s strong deal wins in the past few quarters also provide hope that growth will pick up in the new fiscal year. Work has commenced on some of the large deal wins in the December quarter, with on-site effort increasing by 6.1% sequentially last quarter. And while deal wins in the March quarter was considerably lower vis-à-vis December, at $209 million, on a cumulative basis the total contract value won by the company in the past few quarters should help sustain growth. “Even as the overall growth has slipped, Mindtree’s customer relationships and engagement with deal advisory (firms) continues to be strong and could result in an improvement in growth rates starting the June quarter,” analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities said in a recent note to clients. Of course, given the rough ride investors have had with Mindtree shares in the past year, they may do well to be cautious. Besides the fact that it makes sense to wait for the company to deliver consistent performance, it’s also important to remember that valuations aren’t cheap at 17.8 times trailing earnings.","While Mindtree shares have fallen 44.3% since it issued a profit warning for March quarter, its better-than-expected Q4 results should come as a relief to investors",07:41,Mindtree shows signs of a recovery +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: The US Food and Drug Administration noted incomplete laboratory records among potential manufacturing violations it observed during an inspection of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.’s Dadra unit this month, according to an inspection report obtained by Bloomberg News.Other observations included failure to create accurate duplicates of key records, and to properly investigate drug batches that didn’t meet specifications, according to the FDA’s report, called a Form 483, obtained through a Freedom of Information request. Sun Pharma’s stock fell as much as 3% to Rs636.60, the lowest intra-day level in more than two months, before trading at Rs637.70 at 1:47pm in Mumbai.Frederick Castro, a spokesman for Sun Pharma, declined to comment on the FDA’s observations.Sun Pharma, India’s largest drugmaker, has been contending with increased scrutiny from US regulators that has constrained access to the market where it gets about half its sales, slowing revenue growth. Another Sun Pharma plant in Halol, Gujarat, remains under an FDA warning letter that prevents new product launches from that facility to the US. A reinspection of the Halol plant last year produced 14 pages of new observations, including poorly designed tests and tardiness reporting results. Sun has said it is responding to those observations.“They need to improve on the documentation aspect across their plants,” said Surya Patra, an analyst at PhillipCapital India Pvt. “But improving their documentation systems will not hamper their manufacturing activities, so their business is not likely to be hampered.” The observations at the Dadra and the Halol plants were of a similar nature, and don’t appear to be serious as they are procedural, he said.In March, Sun announced the FDA had lifted its import ban against a facility in Punjab which had been acquired with the 2015 purchase of Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd.FDA observationsDadra is a union territory in western India. The FDA made 11 total observations on the plant. The remainder range from an instance where expired intermediate-stage drugs were stored with unexpired batches, to a quality control unit that lacked authority to review manufacturing records, to criticisms of the lighting, employee clothing and equipment maintenance schedules, according to the document.In explaining the observation of incomplete lab records the report says inspectors noticed a torn and discarded printout showing data which was not included in records of test data for a batch of medicine. Inspectors also found an Excel spreadsheet on a shared computer network which was not included in official data elsewhere, and in another instance raw data was missing from some drug production activities, according to the report.The FDA’s website says that a Form 483 is issued to a company when inspectors note any conditions that may constitute violations of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The agency also says that the report does not constitute a final decision of whether any regulations were violated. The FDA considers company responses and other documents before deciding what further action, if any, is appropriate after a Form 483.",US FDA reports incomplete laboratory records among potential manufacturing violations during an inspection of Sun Pharmaceutical’s Dadra unit this month,20:22,US FDA inspection of Sun Pharma’s Dadra unit finds incomplete lab records +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: A Jet Airways flight from Amsterdam to Toronto on Friday suffered a tail strike, forcing the pilot to return to the Dutch capital. The airline was operating a Boeing 777-300ER plane, which has capacity to seat more than 300 passengers. Sources said the flight suffered a tail strike while taking off from Amsterdam to Toronto and later faced pressurisation problems. Following the issues, the pilot decided to return to Amsterdam, they added. The exact number of passengers on board the aircraft was not immediately known. In January this year, a Jet Airways plane’s tail had touched the runway during landing at the Dhaka airport. The flight was from Mumbai.","The Jet airways flight, from Amsterdam to Toronto, suffered a tail strike while taking off, forcing the pilot to return to the Dutch capital",19:31,Jet Airways flight suffers tail strike +2017-04-12,"
On 10 April, Flipkart announced a new funding round and the acquisition of eBay India. Let us look at this development through the filter of something previously discussed in this column: the winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce.Since there is little differentiation between e-commerce firms, price becomes the sole differentiator. The company with most money to burn wins, while others sell out, usually to the winner. This may be simplistic, but it captures the essence of how e-commerce has played out globally.India is witnessing that scenario right now. Flipkart just announced acquisition of eBay India, and is likely to strike a similar deal with Snapdeal. Does this change the endgame? Can Flipkart outlast Amazon India? Or somehow settle into a stable duopoly beating the global trend? Or is it just delaying the inevitable? And what of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd?The winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce has not changed at all. And it will not until firms find a way to differentiate. Do customers see any real difference between Amazon and Flipkart? Both have great customer service, and similar merchandise. Even the frills are the same: if one has Amazon Prime, the other has Flipkart First. Does this acquisition change the endgame for Flipkart? Let us go through the arguments.Unique positioning of the acquired company: if the acquired company has unique strengths, it probably wouldn’t be up for acquisition. One argument could be that the target is strong in a certain segment such as a product category or geography. That may be true but it does not take that much effort or time to build from scratch. One has to only see how Amazon India has grown.Synergies with the acquired firm: the less said about this, the better, but we would be happy to be proven wrong. Flipkart’s deal-making has always been more about value buying, or common investors triggering a consolidation, than tapping synergies. Making the most of the opportunity of Rocket Internet pulling out of India, Flipkart snapped up Jabong for a song at $70 million. Its acquisition of Letsbuy and Myntra was triggered by common early stage investors. Its next buy Snapdeal, if the deal closes, will happen for similar reasons. With no home-grown mid-stage to late-stage venture funding available in India, Snapdeal is left with no choice but to sell.One oft-heard argument is that by buying everyone else, Flipkart will acquire such scale that it will either be able to survive stand-alone or force either Alibaba or Amazon to buy it. Given that all e-commerce firms are losing money, being bigger may just mean losing more money. Also, scale and customer base are meaningful only when entry barriers exist and there is some sort of customer loyalty. Otherwise, both are just vanity metrics.However, it is true that by acquiring all other rivals, Flipkart’s ability to present itself as the sole alternative to Amazon to investors and customers increases.There are other reasons for investors to back such acquisitions. The incentives of fund managers may not be aligned with those of the company. Many such deals are driven by investors such as Tiger Global and SoftBank, explained a limited partner (an investor in venture capital and private equity firms) from Hong Kong. In Flipkart’s case, Tiger has been an investor in the company for more than seven years and has to start thinking of providing liquidity to its investors. A deal to acquire Snapdeal, with an added deal for money from SoftBank (the single largest shareholder in Snapdeal), may provide this, this person added.ALSO READ: Why Flipkart’s valuation wasn’t hurt by multiple markdownsNew investors may be driven by a different logic, the limited partner explained. This could be strong liquidation preference terms that reduce downside risk. Or it could just be the opportunity to back a winning horse—or, at least, one that has a better chance of at least being there when the last race is run. Shrija Agrawal is Mint’s deals editor. Due Diligence will cover issues in India’s venture capital, private equity and deals space.","Flipkart’s $1.4 billion fundraising, acquisition of eBay India and a likely Snapdeal buyout shows the winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce hasn’t changed at all",01:57,Is Flipkart’s latest fundraising a game changer? +2017-04-10,"
Shares of paint maker Akzo Nobel India touched an all-time high of Rs1,965 on BSE last week, on 3 April.The stock has been on market participants’ radar after its Dutch parent, Akzo Nobel NV, rejected US rival PPG Industries unsolicited takeover bid, twice, in March, stating that the proposal doesn’t reflect the current and future value of the firm. Akzo Nobel NV will hold an investor update on 19 April, where it will provide updated financial guidance and a detailed plan for separation of its specialty chemicals business, in an attempt to avoid the bid.Despite the deal not going through, they remain bullish on the stock because of a slew of domestic factors.First and foremost, they cite the firm’s rising market share in premium decorative paints segment. The industry has grown at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 12% over FY11-16 and most other firms have reflected the same trend. However, Akzo has grown at 20% CAGR in the same period, said an Angel Broking report.Secondly, its premium decorative paint brand, Dulux, is well positioned in that segment, the second largest after Asian Paints; and the firm’s recent unconventional strategy of introducing wholesalers into paint distribution would boost its presence in under-penetrated tier-II and tier-III cities, and provide the brand a competitive pricing advantage over peers, added analysts.Not only that, the company has also been aggressively adding capacities, expanding its base and making acquisitions. In December, Akzo Nobel India commissioned a specialty coatings production facility in Noida that can manufacture 600 kilolitres of coatings annually, with an investment of Rs3 crore. In the same month, it also bought BASF India’s industrial coating business. It is setting up a facility in Mumbai to serve its customers in the Northern and Western parts of India. Akzo Nobel India has six manufacturing facilities in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mohali, Gwalior, Raigad and Navi Mumbai.A steady balance sheet and lucrative dividend payout ratio are some other positives.However, what concerns analysts is Akzo Nobel’s operating margin, which had taken a beating for two years following the amalgamation of three subsidiaries with itself in FY12. Though the operating margin has improved from then, it still lags peers.“Despite continuing to deliver robust gross margins, which are at par with the market leader, Akzo’s operating margins have remained significantly lower (with a minimal differential of ~350 basis points with the closest peer) than peers in the paints sector on account of higher operating costs,” said a Spark Capital Research report. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. In FY16, operating margin came in at 11%, and Angel Broking foresees a further improvement of 200-250 bps. The firm has taken many cost-control steps, especially keeping staff costs in check, to improve operating margins.Meanwhile, talking about valuations, Akzo Nobel India is the fourth largest firm by market-cap in the organized paint sector, but trades at a significant discount to larger peers (see chart). After soaring to a new high, the stock witnessed some profit-booking and is currently trading at Rs1,867. Though the stock’s recent surge had to do with the aforementioned global factor, bridging of the valuation gap would largely depend on improvement in its operating margin.","Akzo Nobel India’s operating margin, which had taken a beating for two years following the amalgamation of three subsidiaries with itself in FY12, has improved from then, but still lags peers",08:00,"Akzo Nobel India stock hits all-time high, but valuations yet to catch-up" +2017-04-12,"
Flipkart announced a massive funding round this week, after a gap of nearly two years. Although, at $1.4 billion, it’s the company largest, the backdrop for the funding is markedly different from previous funding rounds. About two years ago, in July 2015, the e-commerce firm had raised $2.4 billion in three funding rounds over a 12- month period. Funds flowed in easily back then, not only for Flipkart, but also for its competitors and all forms of start-ups. Companies used these funds to provide huge discounts and gain customers, which in turn brought in a new set of investors.ALSO READ: Why Flipkart valuation wasn’t hurt by multiple markdownsIn the past 18 months or so, investors have become a lot more discerning. They’ve realized India’s e-commerce opportunity is no longer as big as it once seemed to be. Their focus has shifted to unit economics and other efficiency parameters. Flipkart said in a meet organized by an investment bank late last year that its cash burn has reduced by around 25% from peak levels. The flip side is that growth has faltered in the past year.Among other things, the large funding by Tencent Holdings Ltd, eBay Inc. and Microsoft Corp. can be seen as a sign of approval for this more sensible strategy. As such, unlike previous years, Flipkart will be expected to use its freshly raised funds far more cautiously. According to an analyst at a multinational bank, the new investors may well have included terms where funds are released based on certain milestones being met. With Amazon.com Inc. breathing down its neck with high levels of discounting in the Indian market, Flipkart could be walking a very tight rope, trying to protect market share as well as improve unit economics and reduce cash burn.ALSO READ: Flipkart’s Sachin, Binny Bansal no more billionaires after raising $1.4 billionHaving said that, Flipkart’s latest funding round provides the reassurance that there are still some takers for the Indian e-commerce story. In particular, that there is room for another large company alongside Amazon. While the growth opportunity may not be as big as estimated earlier, it is still clearly big enough to attract some investors. When funding had nearly dried up in the past 18 months, financial investor Morgan Stanley Institutional Fund Trust marked down Flipkart’s valuation to around $5.4 billion, or about 65% lower compared to its valuation in July 2015. The latest funding values the firm at $11.6 billion on a post-money basis. Of the total equity issuance of $1.4 billion, about $200-250 million is estimated to be in exchange for eBay’s India business. The net inflow of $1.2 billion or so should easily suffice in terms of funding cash burn for another two years. If Flipkart manages these funds well, and uses it to gain scale and improve unit economics, it may continue to find new investors; especially since most of its competitors are gradually shutting shop.","If Flipkart manages the new funds well, and uses it to gain scale and improve unit economics, it may continue to find new investors",03:15,Flipkart’s largest funding may also be the trickiest to navigate +2017-04-11,"
NMDC Ltd was slow to increase iron ore prices when global prices soared to high levels in fiscal year 2017. Now that global prices are slipping, the company’s investors will hope it will be slow to cut them as well. Between October 2016 and early-March 2017, the prices of seaborne iron ore rose by 63.3% during which NMDC’s domestic prices rose by 15.5% (for iron ore lumps) and 24.1% (fines). Domestic market conditions would be one reason for the slower increase in prices, while the government’s desire to keep the cost of steel-making down may be another.The global iron ore market has turned bearish, says a Bloomberg report, as bankers turn nervous about its future in a scenario where China cuts back its steel output. Whether the bear case is here to stay will be known in a few months from now. On earlier occasions too, iron prices have rebounded after falling sharply for some time, due to adverse news. Iron ore in Qingdao, China, closed at $75.5/tonne on 7 April, according to Bloomberg, which is still 35% higher than its level in October.Unless prices fall sharply, NMDC may still be able to justify in holding on to prices at current levels. Last week, it disclosed that sales for the March quarter had risen by 14.3% over a year ago but declined by 2.9% sequentially. Average prices during the quarter are up by 10.7% in the case of lumps and 16% in the case of fines, which indicates that sales and profit should post good growth rates both over a year ago and sequentially.Rising domestic steel capacity is a good sign for NMDC, although one worrying sign is slower growth in steel consumption. A pickup in domestic consumption will help steel makers earn better margins, improve steel output and in turn benefit the company. The main risk it is facing at present is if iron ore prices crash, as that will directly affect profitability and cash flows.NMDC had said in December that it may exit its three-million-tonne steel project under construction through a strategic disinvestment. Clarity on whether it will focus on iron ore going forward and leave steel-making to others will be useful to investors. That will mean its cash surplus will be available for distribution, either by way of dividends or by buying back of shares. While the government is the moving force behind the return of cash, minority shareholders also gain in the process. The company’s share is up by 31% over a year ago but is below its February levels as falling global iron prices worry investors.","Unless prices fall sharply, NMDC may still be able to justify in holding on to prices at current levels",08:02,Slipping global iron ore prices worry NMDC investors +2017-04-10,"
Improving volume is raising earnings expectations of Container Corp. of India Ltd (Concor). Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd revised the company’s fiscal 2016-17 to 2018-19 earnings estimates upwards by 2-3% after the container rail and logistics solutions provider reported a 7.8% growth in volume in tonnage terms for 2016-17. They had fallen in 2015-16. Exim (export-import) volume, its core business, is up 9.2%.Of course, the earnings upgrade is moderate, and it is not yet clear if higher volume will translate into revenue.Due to the fall in lead distance, the company’s revenue in the December quarter dropped about 5% from the year-ago quarter. But that should not bother investors much. The company’s steps to lower empty (container) running costs are bearing fruit. This factor, coupled with volume recovery, can help it extract better economies of scale, which should aid earnings.“Volume-linked leverage clearly helps Concor, given the fixed-cost nature of the business. Also in 3Q, just between higher double stacking to 216 trains from 188 trains q-o-q (quarter-on-quarter) and lower rebates, ConCor’s EXIM EBIT margins improved to 17.1% from 15.7% q-o-q ,” Jefferies adds. “Double stacking (of containers) benefits should also play out in 4QFY17E (fourth quarter FY17 estimates).”Adding to the optimism is the improving volume outlook. Maersk Line, a container shipping line, says Exim container trade volume growth, which doubled in 2016 from 2015, can be maintained if the government keeps up policy action.Sandeep Mathew, an analyst at SBICAP Securities Ltd, says the prospects of core Exim trade (excluding crude and oil products) are improving. This should improve Concor’s volume outlook, given its dominant position in the domestic Exim container market.Further, the Indian Railways’ initiatives to strengthen its freight traffic business, focus on dedicated freight corridor construction, and government initiatives such as multi-modal logistics parks are expected to help improve rail container operators’ competitive positioning. JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd expects the creation of a rail development authority and other initiatives to help rail container operators to regain freight market share from the road transport sector.The optimism has driven up the stock 26% so far this calendar year. The BSE 500 index during the period is up less than 16%. While valuations at 26 times 2017-18 earnings estimate are not cheap, a sustained recovery in volumes will be crucial for continuation of the stock’s outperformance.","While Concor’s valuations at 26 times 2017-18 earnings estimate are not cheap, a sustained recovery in volumes will be crucial for continuation of the outperformance",07:59,Concor’s earnings expectations get a boost from higher volumes +2017-03-29,"
The monetary policy committee (MPC) will meet in the first week of April to discuss what the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) should do next. A lot of attention in the next few days will quite naturally be focused on what it will decide or what it should decide as far as interest rates go. This will be the fourth meeting of the MPC. The minutes of the three MPC meetings over the past six months offer some important clues on an issue that needs more clarity—how the committee has been interpreting the inflation-targeting mandate given to it by the government.
What is the inflation target?
The official inflation target notified by the government is 4%, with a band of 2% on either side. A lot depends on how the MPC interprets this target. There were concerns after the surprise 25 basis points rate cut in October 2016 that the committee was in effect considering the upper end of the band as the inflation target, thus raising fears about a compromise in the long fight against high inflation.
But RBI governor Urjit Patel has subsequently made clear in the December 2016 and February 2017 MPC meetings that the primary objective of the Indian central bank should be to secure the central point of the notified inflation target, i.e. 4%.
Does the real economy matter?
The minutes of the first three MPC meetings show that developments in the real economy are a central concern for monetary policy decisions. This is evident from the number of times the output gap has been mentioned in the MPC meetings. Few seem to appreciate that RBI has embraced flexible inflation targeting. It is quite different from pure inflation targeting where the central bank is solely concerned about inflation while the government is solely concerned about growth.
The importance of the output gap is implicitly recognized in the theoretical model that provides the theoretical framework of the Urjit Patel committee report. The real economy enters the model in terms of the Taylor Rule as well as the New Keynesian Phillips Curve.
However, one current problem is that RBI has not clearly indicated what it believes to be the potential rate of economic growth in India right now, so it is difficult for outsiders to assess how large the output gap is. The Indian central bank needs to share more information about its assessment of potential output.
One additional point: The discussions on the impact of demonetisation, especially in the December meeting, show that the MPC will look past temporary shocks to output or inflation rather than respond in a knee-jerk fashion—and that is how it should be.
Is there an intermediate target for Indian monetary policy?
The RBI has traditionally used money supply growth, the nominal exchange rate and the interest rate as intermediate targets to control inflation. It has now moved to directly targeting inflation, but that does not mean that the central bank has completely abandoned intermediate targets. As Michael Patra made clear in the October MPC meeting, the inflation forecast now serves as the intermediate target of monetary policy. Many central banks that have embraced flexible inflation targeting use the inflation forecast as the intermediate target. So RBI is on good ground here: it seems committed to the notified inflation target in the long run and the inflation forecast in the medium term.
However, the main problem here is that the Indian central bank does not provide enough information about its inflation forecast over the medium term in the fan charts that are released with every monetary policy statement.
What about the exchange rate?
Indian monetary policy has till now kept a close eye on the exchange rate as well. There are good reasons for central banks in emerging markets to do so—because of the impact of exchange rate shocks on inflation on the one hand and on private sector balance sheets on the other. Some versions of the Taylor Rule define the central bank response function not only in terms of the inflation gap and output gap, but also exchange rate dynamics (which in the Indian case could be the real exchange rate).
The MPC has not given too much importance to the exchange rate in its first three meetings. It is not clear whether this is because the rupee has been stable in the past six months or because the MPC members do not give weightage to the exchange rate while setting interest rates.
The MPC has also been silent on financial stability issues. One reason could be that the current monetary policy orthodoxy is that macro prudential regulations rather than monetary policy tools are a better way to achieve financial stability.
These are early days yet. The new MPC arrangement is barely six months old. There have been only three meetings till now. But the discussions during these meetings—as revealed in the minutes that have been made public—do offer some important clues on how inflation targeting is getting operationalized in India.
Finally, the unanimity in the MPC is still puzzling given the fact that a committee is supposed to be less prone to groupthink. This will undoubtedly change as the committee settles down.Niranjan Rajadhyaksha is executive editor of Mint.Comments are welcome at cafeeconomics@livemint.com. Read Niranjan Rajadhyaksha’s previous Mint columns at www.livemint.com/cafeeconomics",The minutes of the past three MPC meetings offer important clues on how it has been interpreting the inflation-targeting mandate given to it by the govt,02:19,How RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee has been thinking +2017-03-27,"
On Friday, most state-owned bank stocks rose. For a few of them, the rise was spectacular. For instance, the Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC) stock jumped 6.6% and Bank of India (BoI) 5.2% on the National Stock Exchange. The Nifty PSU Bank Index, a measure of public sector banks’ shares, gained 3.31% on Friday compared with less than a quarter percentage point rise in the exchange’s benchmark 50-stock Nifty.Incidentally, in the quarter ended 31 December, both OBC and BoI had at least 13% gross bad loans on their books. After setting aside money, OBC’s net bad loans were 9.68% of its overall loan book; for BoI, 7.09%. Still their stocks jumped, along with most other public sector banks’, after finance minister Arun Jaitley announced that the government has been working on a radical proposal to resolve the bad loans crisis in Indian banking.Banks bat for relaxed RBI norms on bad loan resolution as deadline loomsI presume the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the government have been discussing this radical proposal for weeks. It appears to have been galvanized by, and likely evolved around, what the RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya outlined in his maiden speech—on “Some Ways to Decisively Resolve Bank Stressed Assets”—delivered at an Indian Banks’ Association conference in February. Some of the banking sector analysts have found the proposal too academic and not feasible in the Indian context and the “status quoist” bankers are not too excited since it talks about resolving the bad loan problem in a time-bound, decisive manner.I will be happy if indeed the proposal turns out to be the blueprint for resolving the bad loan problem in Indian banking. Collectively, all listed banks recorded around Rs7.2 trillion gross bad loans in the December quarter; it will rise further in March. The state-run banks are far more affected by this malaise than their counterparts in the private sector. More importantly, this does not represent the bad loan scenario accurately.Every bank is carrying dollops of restructured loans on its books and a portion of that is likely to turn bad; at least Rs3 trillion worth of bad loans have been written off by the banks in the past few years and there is no clarity on how much bad loans are on the books of non-banking financial companies (including microfinance entities), regional rural banks, housing companies and cooperative banks. If we add all of them, the bad loan figures might look staggering.Not a blanket bad bankWhat is interesting is that the plan has not proposed a blanket bad bank, separating the bad loans of troubled banks from performing loans and creating a pool without any clear resolution path.It is also not in favour of leaving things to the banks, as most bank managements are not in a hurry to resolve the problem. Given a choice, they would like to postpone the inevitable as they are not comfortable getting rid of bad assets at a steep discount for fear of being hounded by investigative agencies. This is one of the many reasons why they would like to delay the resolution process and instead focus solely on persuading the government for capital every year.ALSO READ | Banks’ bad loan growth slowing but the last word can’t be said as yetThe proposal is, instead, to create special structures to deal with stressed loans keeping in mind the turnaround potential of the companies that have borrowed money from banks.One such structure is a private asset management company to handle the creation, selection and implementation of a feasible resolution plan for a quick turnaround of the 50 largest troubled companies in telecoms, metals (iron and steel, in particular), engineering-procurement-construction and textiles within a fixed time frame. One or more credit rating agencies will rate the resolution plans and the promoters of the companies will have no say in the restructuring plan.The banks will choose from among those resolution plans that ensure adequately high credit rating of the restructured entity, and likely take a deep haircut approved by the government (or likely, by an approved oversight committee) and accepted by the vigilance authorities.The insolvency code will come into play only if the process to arrive at an acceptable resolution plan fails.For those sectors such as power, which suffer from excess capacity and need a longer-term solution, the plan is to create a quasi-government body – a national asset management company with a minority government stake. This will raise debt, possibly government-guaranteed, and manage the asset reconstruction companies and private equity firms which will be responsible for turning around the stressed companies.Radical departure from the pastThe proposal is a radical departure from measures that RBI has so far adopted to resolve the bad loan problems.The platforms such as corporate debt restructuring (CDR), strategic debt restructuring (SDR) and the scheme for sustainable structuring of stressed assets (S4A) which have been used to clean up the bank balance sheets have left the job to the banks. Here, for the first time, we are seeing an aggressive regulatory intervention with a clear incentive structure. Those banks which will not be able to implement them or do not coordinate well with others run the risk of being punished.SDR, introduced in June 2015, gave banks the power to convert a part of their debt in stressed companies into majority equity but it didn’t work because promoters delayed the restructuring, dangling the promise of bringing in new investors. Before that, in February 2014, RBI had allowed a change in management of stressed companies. The principle of the restructuring exercise was that the shareholders must bear the first loss and not the lenders; and the promoters must have more skin in the game.This was done after the regulator realized that the CDR mechanism, put in place in August 2001, could not do much to alleviate the pain of the lenders. Any loan exposure of Rs10 crore and more (including non-fund limits) and involving at least two lenders could have been tackled on this platform. Of the 530 cases with loans worth over Rs4.3 trillion that were approved for restructuring at the CDR cell as on 31 December, 2016, 264 cases with loans worth Rs1.25 trillion failed their restructuring agreements.The S4A scheme allowed the banks to convert up to half the loans of stressed companies into equity or equity-like securities. Meant for restructuring companies with an overall exposure of at least Rs500 crore, this scheme can come into play only when the bankers are convinced that the cash flows of the stressed companies are enough to service at least half of the funded liabilities or “sustainable debt”. Not much has, however, got resolved under this scheme either.The most important point in the new proposal is that it has subtly shifted the focus from banks to the larger economic scenario, as a banking crisis can morph into a larger crisis that hits the industrial growth in Asia’s third-largest economy. Without dissecting the economic viability of underlying assets and finding ways of restructuring them, if we want to save the banks first and take care of the industries later, it could be too late to lift the economic growth and create jobs. We can have healthy banks but who will they lend to? In other words, the suggestion is not to look at the health of the banking sector in isolation but to treat the sick banks and sick industries at the same time.Bang for the buckFor that, a big hit on the bank balance sheets and additional bank recapitalization is a given. The best way to get the maximum bang for the buck is to make the banks understand that they would need to opt for a deep haircut or get rid of the bad assets at a steep discount before the assets are nurtured back to health by one of the two agencies.The proposal has also called for a significant restructuring of the public sector banks, including raising private capital, sale of assets or securitizing them, merging banks and getting rid of non-performing work force by offering voluntary retirement schemes and replacing them with a younger, digitally-savvy talent pool. Those banks which show no signs of improvement would be put under the so-called prompt corrective action plan of RBI that curbs their growth. It’s refreshing to hear the Indian banking regulator talk about “tough love” and allow the market forces to decide which banks should be around and which shouldn’t.If both the banking regulator and the government are ready to bite the bullet, the banks will be left with no choice but to toe the line.And Friday’s market reaction suggests many banks might, in fact, be better off if their stressed assets are resolved swiftly. Their valuation will go up and if the government wants to divest its stake in some of the banks, it will be able to make some money and bring down the fiscal deficit.Is this the silver bullet to address the problem which is getting deeper by the day? I don’t know. But there is little doubt that we need to get the job done and time is of the essence. Neither the regulator nor the government can remain in denial anymore. The days of forbearance are over. One of the reasons why global rating agencies seem unwilling to raise the sovereign rating of the world’s fastest-growing large economy is its not-so-healthy banking system. In short, it’s now or never.Tamal Bandyopadhyay, consulting editor at Mint, is adviser to Bandhan Bank. He is also the author of A Bank for the Buck, Sahara: The Untold Story and Bandhan: The Making of a Bank.His Twitter handle is @tamalbandyo",We can have healthy banks but who will they lend to? Let’s treat the sick banks and sick industries simultaneously,12:17,Bad loan resolution: It’s now or never +2017-03-24,"The demonetisation-led cash crunch meant expectations for the December quarter results of retail firms—Titan Co. Ltd, Shoppers Stop Ltd and Bata India Ltd—were running low. In that backdrop, these companies did better than expected.Titan’s jewellery business, which contributes the lion’s share of its overall revenue, performed well, reporting a 15.4% year-on-year revenue growth. This looks even better considering that the December 2015 quarter had a high base, thanks to the presence in the initial days of studded jewellery activation. Gold jewellery volume growth for the December 2016 quarter was 4%. Titan’s watch business performed well, too.Shoppers Stop’s like-to-like sales growth for its department stores came in at 6.4%. Now, by itself that number isn’t impressive considering this is the stronger festive quarter we are talking about. Note that the measure had increased 17.4% a year ago. But the December 2016 quarter like-to-like performance was better than analysts’ estimates. The firm maintains like-to-like growth saw double-digit year-on-year decline in November, compared with double-digit increase in October and December.Like-to-like sales growth is the comparable sales growth of stores that have been operational for over a year.Bata India’s revenue rose 2.4%, while its operating profit declined as staff costs, rent and other expenses rose at a faster pace. For the nine-month period to December, revenue increased just 0.8%. This is estimated to improve. ICICI Securities Ltd expects Bata India’s revenue growth to revive from fiscal 2018 onwards on account of an improved product mix and the company following a dual strategy of driving same-store sales growth and opening new stores in untapped locations. “We expect revenue to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 8.1% year-on-year during FY16-19E,” wrote ICICI Securities in a report last month.From 8 November (when demonetisation was announced) till 17 March, share prices of Titan and Bata India have appreciated, while those of Shoppers Stop have declined. Analysts at Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd say Shoppers Stop has nudged ahead its Ebitda margin target of 6.5% by one year to FY18E on the back of demand disruption owing to demonetisation. Ebitda is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The performance of subsidiary HyperCity will be a key thing to follow for the Shoppers Stop stock. In general, improvement in consumer demand translating into better like-to-like growth and eventually higher revenue growth are key factors to watch out for.","Retail firms Titan, Shoppers Stop and Bata India performed well in the December quarter though demonetisation ensured expectations were running low",09:32,Retail stocks: Q3 results exceed expectations +2017-04-19,"New Delhi: Confidence in India’s company corner rooms has climbed and now far outpace that at their global counterparts despite concerns over economic growth, regulation and protectionism, a global survey showed. According to the results of PricewaterhouseCoopers’s 20th global survey of chief executive officers released on Tuesday, 71% of India’s CEOs are very confident of their company’s prospects for revenue growth over the next 12 months as opposed to 64% a year ago. Worldwide, only 38% of CEOs exude similar confidence.Across geographies, the concerns on top of CEOs’ minds seem to be similar. This year, 82% of CEOs are concerned about uncertain economic growth, while 81% are concerned about over-regulation. These concerns, along with looming protectionism, are seen by CEOs as threats to growth. In India, 64% of the CEOs surveyed were concerned about protectionism, against 59% globally. Inadequate infrastructure and the lack of availability of key skills in the country—key enablers for growth— continue to be major concerns.Eighty-one per cent of CEOs in India rated inadequate basic infrastructure as the top threat to growth as opposed to 54% of CEOs globally. Further, 87% of India’s CEOs rated availability of key skills as a key threat to growth, compared to 77% globally. Strong growth fundamentals and upcoming policy reforms, including the Goods and Services Tax (GST) expected to be rolled out on 1 July, are giving CEOs reasons to be optimistic about the overall business environment in India. Foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country has grown by 53% in the past two years to reach $55 billion in 2015-16.","According to the results of PwC survey, 71% of India’s CEOs are very confident of their company’s prospects for revenue growth over the next 12 months as opposed to 64% a year ago",00:27,Indian CEOs more optimistic than global counterparts: PwC +2017-03-27,"
There is a widespread belief that the implementation of the goods and services tax (GST) will herald a new era for logistics firms. The new regulation will strengthen organized companies’ competitive position vis-à-vis the unorganized sector, as customers will be allowed to offset service tax under GST. Currently, a large part of the surface logistics business is handled by the unorganized sector as tax avoidance helps them keep prices lower.The second benefit is the transformation of India into one market. Post GST, stakeholders expect customers to consolidate their warehousing requirement to the hub and spoke model and drive business to efficient transportation solutions providers. “As inefficiencies and costs come down, inland transport would be more cost effective. This increases business, creating the space for expansion,” says Prakash Tulsiani, executive director and chief operating officer, Allcargo Logistics Ltd.But the Street is not yet fully convinced. As GST implementation is now round the corner, shares of TCI Express Ltd and Gati Ltd have gained 19-38% in the past two months. VRL Logistics Ltd, which is also focused on local logistics, is up less than 2%, while Allcargo Logistics Ltd lost 5%. VRL and Allcargo are also lagging behind on one-year returns, compared with the BSE 500 index.Some stocks recovered a bit in recent weeks. But the euphoria is missing. Why? Among the several reasons, one is the subdued business environment. The second is the lack of clarity on GST benefits. Antique Stock Broking Ltd notes that the business model which will lead growth post the roll-out of GST is still unclear even as “managements share different insights on growth opportunities”.Analysts warn competitive intensity can rise as the sector consolidates post GST. Besides, they expect the unorganized logistics sector to move into the tax net rather than risk losing business. In other words, there may not be a large amount of business for grabs, as many of these firms may remain in business.Tulsiani of Allcargo Logistics says demand may see a gradual rise as customers will take time to adapt to the new system. “We sense that companies will take some time to adopt and understand the implications of GST and then take a cautious call.The demand increase should be able to take care of available supply,” Tulsiani adds.Sandeep Mathew, an analyst at SBICAP Securities Ltd, reasons that the requirement for scale and cost-efficient solutions may benefit large organized firms more than smaller firms. “Smaller players will have to start focusing on niches (eg. underserved markets) to effectively compete with larger players,” Mathew adds.Of course, the overarching belief among the experts cited above is that GST will have a positive impact on the sector. Tulsiani of Allcargo Logistics validates his view by pointing to outsourcing of warehousing activity by private companies.Mathew of SBICAP Securities expects companies to start reflecting the positive impact of GST in earnings from 2018-19 onwards in a more meaningful manner.While these expectations should keep hopes alive for logistics firms, the way things are currently also suggests that business will not come on a platter for them. Depending on the region and client profile, they will have to realign their service offerings in a cost-efficient manner. The next six months will provide much required cues about the kind of growth opportunities that GST throws up, and how companies are pursuing them.","The next 6 months will provide much required cues about kind of growth opportunities that GST throws up, and how companies are pursuing them",07:47,Logistics companies will have to sweat it out for GST benefits +2017-04-19,"New Delhi: Businessman Vijay Mallya was arrested by the Scotland Yard in London on Monday on India’s request for his extradition on fraud charges. He was released on bail a few hours later after he appeared at a central London police station.“Officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Extradition Unit this morning arrested a man on an extradition warrant. Vijay Mallya was arrested on behalf of the Indian authorities in relation to accusations of fraud,” said the Scotland Yard.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise: lawyersThe London Metropolitan Police said Mallya was arrested after appearing at a central London police station. He appeared at Westminster magistrates’ court in London and was seen walking out with his legal team a few hours later after being granted bail.An unfazed Mallya later tweeted on Tuesday, “Usual Indian media hype. Extradition hearing in Court started today as expected.”The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Indian High Commission in London will now present India’s case in the UK court for Vijay Mallya’s extradition as the country “wants to the myth that by crossing boundaries you are out of bounds“, said a person aware of the developments. India is seeking extradition of Mallya for defaulting on Kingfisher Airlines loans due to IDBI Bank.CBI has been investigating a case against Mallya and the companies he controlled over allegations of money laundering since early last year and had secured a non-bailable warrant against the absconding businessman in a case related to money laundering and wilful default of loans, Mint reported on 22 November. CBI clarified that the arrest was in connection with his extradition.“Vijay Mallya has been arrested in connection with the IDBI bank case. We cannot comment further on the matter till it is heard at the London Court,” a senior CBI official told Mint, on condition of anonymity.A senior government official on condition of anonymity stated that, “protocol would now require Mallya’s case to be heard in London. The extradition case will be heard and evidence related to the same will be produced on the basis of which the London courts will take an informed decision. It is too soon to comment on when he will be extradited to India.”On 23 January, CBI’s central and Bengaluru division raided the premises of the Vijay Mallya-run UB Group in Bengaluru in connection with a Rs900-crore loan default and money laundering case. On the same day, CBI arrested nine officials of Kingfisher Airlines and IDBI Bank Ltd, including the bank’s former chief.In September 2016, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had issued the order, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), to attach the various properties including flats, a farmhouse, shares and fixed deposits in Mallya’s name and his associate firms. The agency had earlier said that the market value of these assets was Rs6,630 crore.The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had stated that India’s request for Mallya’s extradition had recently been certified by the UK, after the UK’s home department on 21 February conveyed India’s request for Mallya’s extradition to the Westminster magistrate’s court, after being certified by the UK secretary of state. However, with Mallya’s extradition proceedings just beginning in the UK, India may well have to wait till he is handed over by the British authorities.In New Delhi, MoS (finance) Santosh Kumar Gangwar said, “We are now assessing the facts how we can bring him back into the country and start judicial proceedings against him.” The government, he said, will leave no stone unturned to bring to justice anyone indulging in financial irregularities.On 23 March, MoS (external affairs) V.K. Singh informed the Rajya Sabha that while India and the UK had an Extradition Treaty which has been in force since 1993, “In the last five years, only one fugitive criminal namely Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel has been extradited from the UK. As per Article 2 of the India-UK Extradition Treaty, an extradition offence for the purposes of this Treaty is constituted by conduct which under the laws of each Contracting State is punishable by a term of imprisonment for a period of at least one year. An offence may be an extradition offence notwithstanding that it relates to taxation or revenue or is one of a purely fiscal character.” Singh also added that the extradition requests in respect of criminal fugitives namely Raymond Varley, Ravi Shankaran, Velu Boopalan, Ajay Prasad Khaitan, Virendra Kumar Rastogi and Anand Kumar Jain had been rejected by the UK government.Meanwhile, S.S.Naganad, who is the senior counsel appearing for the consortium of banks led by State Bank of India stated that, “There was more than one issue against him (Mallya). There was money laundering case, Karnataka high court has issued an arrest warrant, a magistrate court has also issued an arrest warrant. All this put together is what the Indian government had sought an extradition for.”Sharan Poovanna in Bengaluru contributed to this story.",Vijay Mallya was arrested in London by Scotland Yard on India’s request for his extradition on fraud charges relating to Kingfisher Airlines loans but was soon released on bail,04:17,"Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hours" +2017-04-19,"Mumbai: Private sector lender IndusInd Bank Ltd on Wednesday said its net profit for the March quarter rose 21.16% from a year ago due to higher net interest income and other income.Net profit for the quarter stood at Rs751.61 crore as compared with Rs620.35 crore a year ago. A Bloomberg poll of 24 analysts had forecast a net profit of Rs791 crore.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, increased 31.5% to Rs1,667.45 crore from Rs1,268.21 crore last year. Other income jumped 32.70% to Rs1,211.30 crore from Rs912.80 crore in the same period last year.Provisions and contingencies jumped 101.32% to Rs430.13 crore in the quarter from Rs213.66 crore in the same quarter last year. The bank’s gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rose 8.57% to Rs1,054.87 crore at the end of the March quarter from Rs971.62 crore in the December quarter. On year-on-year basis, it jumped 35.8% from Rs776.82 crore.As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were at 0.93% at the end of the March quarter, as compared to 0.94% in the previous quarter and 0.87% in the year-ago quarter. Net NPAs were at 0.39% in the quarter, unchanged from the previous quarter and 0.36% in the same quarter last year.Deposits rose 36.1% to Rs126.57 billion, while advances rose 27.9% to Rs1.13 trillion.The bank announced a dividend of Rs6 a share.At 2.22pm, IndusInd Bank fell 0.47% to Rs1,425 on the BSE, while India's benchmark Sensex Index fell 0.04% to 29,317.39 points.",IndusInd Bank's net profit for the fourth quarter stood at Rs751.61 crore as compared with Rs620.35 crore a year ago,20:41,IndusInd Bank Q4 profit rises 21% to Rs751.61 crore +2017-04-18,"Atlanta: United Airlines chief executive officer (CEO) Oscar Munoz, pivoting from a public apology to face investors, assured Wall Street that the carrier would rebound from the uproar that followed the dragging of a passenger off one of its planes.“This will prove to be a watershed moment for our company, and we are more determined than ever to put our customers at the center of everything we do,” Munoz said in a statement Monday. “We are dedicated to setting the standard for customer service among U.S. airlines, as we elevate the experience our customers have with us from booking to baggage claim.”ALSO READ : United Airlines tied $500,000 CEO bonus to customer satisfaction resultsThe comments were the CEO’s first to investors since the 9 April incident, when security officers forcibly removed David Dao from a flight after he refused to give up his seat to make room for airline employees. Munoz, who also announced a first-quarter financial performance that topped expectations, is trying to maintain momentum for his plan to catch up to Delta Air Lines Inc. and American Airlines Group Inc. in profitability and operational performance.“United said the right things regarding its need to upgrade its customer service and should be able to move past its PR nightmare,” Jim Corridore, an analyst at CFRA Research, said in a note to clients in which he reiterated a “strong buy” rating on the shares.The shares rose less than 1% to $71.20 before regular trading hours Tuesday in New York. The company plans to hold a conference call Tuesday to discuss the financial results.Earnings performanceMunoz’s sober tone contrasted with a better-than-expected financial performance. Adjusted earnings of 41 cents a share beat the 38-cent average of analyst estimates even as higher fuel and labour costs caused profit to fall from a year earlier. Sales were $8.42 billion, topping the $8.38 billion that analysts anticipated.ALSO READ : Lessons from the United Airlines debaclePassenger revenue for each seat flown a mile will rise by 1% to 3% in the current quarter, the Chicago-based airline said. That would be the first increase since the first three months of 2015.“We are most interested with how each region is performing,” Cowen & Co. analyst Helane Becker wrote in a note to investors. “We suspect the underlying improvement is being driven by the domestic and Latin American markets. It will be interesting to see how the Pacific and Atlantic are performing, given both regions have been drags” on profit.Domestic capacity will climb by as much as 5.5% in the second quarter while total capacity will rise by a maximum of 4%, United said.‘Humbling experience’Munoz said Dao’s treatment was a “humbling experience” for United and accepted full responsibility.ALSO READ : The game theory of overbooking flightsThe CEO’s initial reaction drew scorn worldwide last week when he called the incident “upsetting” and apologized for having to “re-accommodate” the passengers who were asked to leave the plane. Hours later he told employees that Dao had been “disruptive and belligerent” after being asked to leave the plane, based on early reports.He finally went on ABC’s Good Morning America with a more contrite message and promised a full review of United’s policies regarding oversold flights.Dao suffered a concussion, broken nose and two lost teeth, and “probably” will sue the carrier, his lawyer, Thomas Demetrio, said at a press conference last week. Bloomberg",United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz assured investors that the carrier would rebound from the uproar that followed the dragging of a passenger off one of its flights,18:45,United Airlines CEO takes apology to investors after passenger dragging fiasco +2017-04-19,"Past mistakes tend to come back to haunt you at the most inopportune moment, and Yes Bank’s financial results are a case in point. The private lender reported a 169% rise in gross bad loans for the fourth quarter and a resultant 66% increase in provisions. Recall that the March quarter of 2015-16 was the worst in terms of asset quality for banks.The stock has gained a massive 39% so far this year, fuelled partly by the news and then subsequent success of its qualified institutional placement (QIP). This impressive rise now seems like an overkill and analysts are already expecting a correction.In Yes Bank’s case, the indiscretion pertains to a single borrower which the bank should have labelled as non-performing asset (NPA) in the previous financial year. What made the lender do it now is the new rule put in place by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday that mandates banks to disclose deviations in the asset quality assessment of the central bank and the lender in question.If the mandated provisioning by the RBI exceeds 15% of published profit after tax of FY16 or additional gross NPA exceeds 15% of the published figure, the lenders have to disclose the same in full in their financial statements for FY17. If the RBI’s asset quality review brought to light a massive pool of decaying loans, Tuesday’s rule makes sure any residual bad loan skeletons come in full view of investors.In Yes Bank’s case, this meant an additional slippage of Rs911.5 crore in the March quarter. But the lender still saw healthy profit growth of 30% from the year-ago period because of a sustained robust growth in core income. The bank’s core metrics including loan growth, net interest income and even net interest margin held up. This perhaps was the saving grace of the quarterly results.The stock trades at a price-to-book value multiple of 3.12 of the estimated earnings of FY18 and for these valuations to be justified, the bank will have to show a quick turnaround in its asset quality.Ever since RBI triggered widespread recognition of stressed loans through its asset quality review (AQR) in 2015, the unease that banks have not revealed the rot in loan books in its entirety has set in. The quarterly results of Yes Bank deepen this unease.","Yes Bank reports 169% rise in gross bad loans for the March quarter and 66% increase in provisions, following RBI’s new asset quality rules",20:41,Yes Bank first casualty in RBI’s rule to pull out bad loan skeletons +2017-04-18,"New Delhi: Vijay Mallya took to Twitter on Tuesday to poke fun at the “Indian media hype” over his arrest in London and said the extradition hearing was “as expected”. The 61-year-old businessman, who is co-owner of Sahara Force India Formula One Team, made a series of retweets of the team’s practice session in Bahrain. Known for his flamboyance, the only reference Mallya made to his arrest was to blame the Indian media with an earlier tweet. “Usual Indian media hype. Extradition hearing in Court started today as expected,” Mallya tweeted.Apart from the Formula One action, he showed his interest in health matters, retweeting two tweets from Doctify, a health platform in the UK that offers solutions to patients who want to search, compare and book doctors online. While one was on medical data security and health challenges, his other retweet was on contact lens hygiene routine. Earlier in the day, Mallya—who has been declared a proclaimed offender—was arrested in London after he appeared at a central London police station. Mallya is wanted in India for defaulting on loans. His now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines owes more than Rs9,000 crore to many banks. He had fled India on 2 March 2016 and has repeatedly dismissed the charges against him.","Vijay Mallya tweets ‘usual media hype’ over his arrest in London, adding that his extradition process has started as expected in a UK court",21:10,Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in London +2017-04-18,"Palo Alto: The day Donald Trump was elected US President, Doug Derwin came into a lot of money. Derwin is a lawyer turned venture capitalist, and he’d cashed in on a successful investment. Like so many wealthy, Silicon Valley types, Derwin used the windfall to buy a Tesla Inc. electric car and stick it to the man—or at least to the climate-change deniers he thought Trump represented. “One of the reasons I felt good about buying it was as a sort of statement in opposition to what was happening around me,” Derwin says.But, as Derwin’s order worked its way through Tesla’s manufacturing backlog, he had second thoughts. Elon Musk, Tesla’s co-founder and chief executive officer, was meeting Trump and joining committees in the new administration. The more Derwin dwelled on this, the angrier he became. And so, after receiving an email in February saying his Model S sedan was finally ready, Derwin cancelled the purchase. He still cut a check for $150,000—only he donated it to the American Civil Liberties Union.“Trump was using Elon to legitimize himself,” says Derwin. “It says a lot to low information voters that Trump can’t possibly be that bad because here is Elon Musk hanging on his every word. That’s why I canceled the order. A principled opposition is important here.” Musk declined to comment for this story, but he has argued that moderates should engage with Trump, rather than leaving only extremists advising the president.Derwin’s personal protest has now morphed into a full-on public campaign to force Musk to sever all ties with the President. Derwin is the secret backer of billboards that appeared in recent weeks near Tesla’s headquarters and factory in Silicon Valley that said “Elon: Please dump Trump.” And, on Monday, he launched a website—featuring videos of upset Tesla owners, “Elon: Dump Trump” bumper stickers and hats and shirts that say, “Resist.”It’s just the start. Derwin, 59, is prepared to spend $2 million on Musk-Trump protests. He’s bought $500,000 worth of media, including ads that will run 23 April in the New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News, and television ads that will appear during Meet The Press, Morning Joe and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. He’s going to set up information booths on college campuses in a bid to dissuade young engineers from working at Tesla or Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Musk’s rocket company. He’s going to offer to pay people who sent in deposits for the upcoming Tesla Model 3, if they cancel their orders. And he’s going to partner with anti-Trump groups in Silicon Valley to make the Musk attack part of their campaigns.Derwin stuck to Silicon Valley law and start-up investing most of his career. He’s never owned a Tesla and did not follow Musk’s every move as millions of others do—which makes his new fixation all the more quixotic. His anger stems more from a dislike of Trump, with Musk serving as a proxy for that rage.“The worst thing that happens is that I lose some money and maybe make a public idiot out of myself,” he says. “But it seemed to me that it would make sense to push back on Trump in a way that I could.”Musk has become a cult of personality, and it’s understandable that loyal customers were upset when he started showing up at Trump Tower and then joined Trump’s business advisory council. Musk has been a relentless fighter against climate change. Many Tesla customers share Musk’s concerns and bought his products as statements. Trump, by contrast, has described global warming as a hoax and loosened environmental policies, while surrounding himself with people who dispute the scientific climate-change consensus. It’s been hard for many Musk fans to square this circle.Uber Technologies Inc. chief executive officer Travis Kalanick was quick to leave Trump’s business advisory council after an online backlash. Musk, though, has held his ground amid criticism on Twitter and in the press. Musk’s old friend and business partner Peter Thiel is a close Trump advisor, so there’s a meeting of the minds there. Musk has also argued on Twitter that it makes sense to have a moderate voice as close as possible to Trump to sway him on issues. Musk is supremely logical and smart enough to capitalize on opportunities like having a close relationship with the President. Time and again, Musk has watched lobbyists from automotive, aerospace and energy sectors sway policies in favour of incumbents, while positioning Musk and his companies as radical hucksters. Now he may have an edge with the administration and could turn things in his favour.If you’re a man who wants to settle Mars and have electric cars swarm the Earth, then having friends in high places makes sense. Musk, for example, has been pushing to get Pete Worden, a longtime commercial space supporter, tapped as the new director of Nasa. Worden advised SpaceX early on and could advocate for the company.Derwin, though, argues Musk has already lost whatever influence may have existed. Despite Musk’s presence, Trump has moved to cut funding to the sciences and the Environmental Protection Agency, while rolling back regulations against coal mining companies. “Short of putting a big pile of old tires on the White House lawn and lighting them on fire, I don’t know what Donald Trump could do that is worse for climate change,” Derwin says. “Musk got rolled by Trump. He has gotten absolutely nothing.”Derwin recently told Musk’s camp about his campaign and asked to meet with the CEO. Musk declined, but did have three top lieutenants sit down with Derwin. Nothing much came of the meeting, Derwin said, prompting him to go live with the web site and other efforts. Musk declined to comment through a spokesman.“If Elon will resign from the boards and speak out against what Trump is doing, I’ll call off the campaign,” Derwin says. He’s pledged to donate $1 million to the charity of Musk’s choice, if Musk dons a “Resist” hat and tweets that he disagrees with Trump’s climate-change policies. Derwin has his work cut out. Musk revels in the opportunity to prove critics wrong and rarely backs down from a fight. The uproar over advising Trump has died down, and Musk continues to dazzle fans and confound naysayers: Tesla’s share price has surged to records this year and SpaceX has upended the aerospace industry by proving the abilities of its reusable rockets. The baggage that comes with Trump associations in Silicon Valley circles seems to have done little to dull Musk’s shine. Bloomberg",Venture capitalist Doug Derwin has launched a full-on public campaign to force Tesla co-founder Elon Musk to sever all ties with President Donald Trump,11:27,This man is spending millions to break Elon Musk’s Trump ties +2017-04-19,"Private sector lender Yes Bank Ltd on Wednesday said its March quarter net profit rose 30.2% due to higher net interest income and other income.Net profit for the quarter stood at Rs914.12 crore as compared with Rs702.11 crore a year ago. A Bloomberg poll of 24 analysts had forecast a net profit of Rs791 crore.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, increased 32.08% to Rs1639.70 crore from Rs1241.44 crore last year. Other income jumped 56.62% to Rs1257.39 crore from Rs802.81 crore in the same period last year.Net interest margin expanded to 3.6% in the quarter from 3.5% a quarter ago. “The Bank continued delivering sustained financial performance through robust growth in earnings and expanding net interest margins despite challenging operating environment”, said Rana Kapoor managing director and chief executive officer, Yes Bank.“Additionally, continued investments in Human Capital, Technology and Digitization has resulted in significant momentum across Retail Assets, Liabilities and Retail Fees. The bank’s growth and earning models continue to remain robust with increasing granularity and diversity across Asset, Liabilities and Earnings”, Kapoor added.Provisions and contingencies climbed 66.11% to Rs309.73 crore in the quarter from Rs186.46 crore in the same quarter last year.The bank’s gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rose 100.68% to Rs2018.56 crore at the end of the March quarter from Rs1005.85 crore in the December quarter. On year-on-year basis, it jumped 169.51% from Rs748.98 crore.As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs were at 1.52% at the end of the March quarter, as compared to 0.85% in the previous quarter and 0.76% in the year-ago quarter. Net NPAs were at 0.81% in the quarter against 0.29% each from a quarter and year ago.“The increase in NPA and consequent provision is in conformity with the divergences observed by the RBI as per its compliance process referred to in the RBI circular dated April 18, 2017 on ‘Disclosure in the Notes to Accounts to the Financial Statements – Divergence in Asset Classification and Provisioning”, the bank said in a notice to BSE.Deposits rose 27.89% to Rs1.43 trillion, while advances rose 34.67% to Rs1.32 trillion.On Wednesday, Yes Bank ended at Rs 1605.40 on BSE, down 0.03% from previous close while India’s benchmark Sensex Index rose 0.06% to closed at 29336.57 points.",Yes Bank’s net profit for the fourth quarter stood at Rs914.12 crore as compared with Rs702.11 crore a year ago,19:53,"Yes Bank Q4 profit rises 30%, non-performing assets jump 169.51%" +2017-04-19,"San Francisco: In its final months as a standalone company, Yahoo Inc. is showing signs it can move toward growth.Yahoo made progress in its last quarterly earnings report before the sale of its main internet operations to Verizon Communications Inc., posting adjusted revenue and profit that topped analysts’ estimates. The web portal, which had said the Verizon deal would close in the current quarter, on Tuesday narrowed the time frame to June.The sale, which comes after chief executive officer Marissa Mayer’s tumultuous tenure leading Yahoo, was threatened by two massive hacks that exposed user account data. The companies agreed to reduce the value of the deal by about $350 million in February to about $4.5 billion after the telecommunications giant had earlier suggested concessions closer to $1 billion.“As we enter our final quarter as an independent company, we are committed to finishing strong and planning for the best possible integration with Verizon,” Mayer said in a statement on the results.Revenue, excluding sales passed on to partners, was $833.8 million, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $814 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Profit, before certain items, was 18 cents a share. Analysts projected 14 cents.Before Tuesday’s announcement, the company had failed to meet estimates for revenue and adjusted earnings in four of the last nine quarterly reports. Shares of Yahoo were little changed in extended trading after closing at $47.56 in New York.Mayer, who arrived in July 2012 from Google to fanfare, pushed Yahoo into more mobile services and tried to attract better talent to improve products. But that never translated into much sales growth—and early last year the company began entertaining offers that led to the Verizon deal.In September, investors got a surprise when Yahoo said the personal information from at least 500 million user accounts was stolen in 2014. An attack that breached the security of more than 1 billion user accounts in 2013 was revealed in December. By last month, the company said its general counsel was resigning, and Mayer’s compensation was trimmed. Later in March, the US government accused Russia of directing some of the world’s most notorious cybercriminals to break into the web portal’s systems.The acquisition offers some interesting assets for Verizon. It gets a large, mature, consumer internet service with hundreds of millions of users in areas such as video, email, news and search. The operations will become part of a unit called Oath that includes Verizon’s earlier acquisition of AOL, another web portal that rose to prominence in the 1990s.Mayer’s focus on mobile revenue from smartphones and tablets showed positive results in the first quarter, increasing 58% to $412 million, the company said.What remains are the most valuable parts of Yahoo’s current company: the stakes in Alibaba Group Holding Inc. and Yahoo Japan that are worth more than $40 billion. Those holdings will become part of a new company called Altaba Inc., and will be led by CEO Thomas McInerney, a current Yahoo board member.Bloomberg",Yahoo posted adjusted revenue and profit that topped analysts’ estimates in its last quarterly earnings report before sale to Verizon,19:44,Yahoo shows some progress in last stretch as standalone company +2017-03-28,"
The business of technology can turn people into billionaires overnight. Well, that’s if you consider that in any field of human endeavour “overnight success” usually takes at least 15 years. Despite the complaints one hears about venture capitalists wanting quick returns on their investments, the battle for real dominance of a corner of the information technology space (IT) takes at least 15 years, after which the ruptures begin. The fissures that cause the eventual rupture are several. Here are four: Some observers warn that both Amazon Inc. and its various businesses like Amazon Web Services are creating such a hegemony that they will soon begin to bait anti-monopoly legislation. Giants like International Business Machines Corp. and AT&T Inc. were broken up for similar reasons in the past. Google has run afoul of some its advertising customers this week, including the UK government, as it has become apparent that these advertisers’ commercials are featured before videos carrying objectionable content played on YouTube, one of that company’s subsidiaries. Meanwhile, many IT services firms are facing the growing squeeze of the double-ended vise of nationalism and automation; many firms with large employee-centric operations have cut down on hiring and some have even announced layoffs. Yet other firms simply lose their edge when it comes to innovation and start regurgitating old technology packaged as new. The road from there is often downhill. The introduction of a new red iPhone 7 has been in the news this week. Same innards, different hue. However, this isn’t a column that’s only about the varying cycles of fortune for technology firms. Apple Inc.’s new phone isn’t just another marketing gimmick being employed by a tired firm whose critics say that it has been coming up short with respect to technological advances when compared with its competitors in the mobile handset business. Apple’s red devices are not new. Some years ago, it had created a series of red iPods with the object that some of the money from the sale of these devices would go to an AIDS foundation that was jointly created by Apple and by some-time musician and whole-time campaigner, Bono. A portion of the proceeds from sales of the new red iPhone 7 will similarly be disbursed to this charity.Over the last several years, I have been fortunate enough to interact closely with almost every chairman or CEO in India’s IT sector, but Azim Premji is one of the few hyper-successful technology entrepreneurs whom I truly respect and admire. Not for his business-building skills, which in my estimation are about the same as those of anyone else who has been at the helm of these extraordinarily fortunate enterprises, but for the extent of his charitable giving. In January last year, Mint reported that he had donated Rs27,514 crore to various charitable initiatives, through the foundation that bears his name.Bill Gates has also given generously of his fortune, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been involved in many philanthropic efforts all over the world. When at the height of his power as Microsoft Corp.’s boss during the 1990s, Gates was roundly criticized for not contributing to charity. Despite his detractors, he maintained that he would do so at the right time, and sure enough, the Gates Foundation ensued in the year 2000. It now has almost $40 billion in its corpus.In contrast to Premji and Gates, and other technology titans who have also given generously, Steve Jobs, the iconoclast behind Apple’s success over the past decade or so, was famously niggardly with his public giving. However, his friend Bono came to his defence, disclosing in an op-ed piece Jobs’ and Apple’s contribution to charity, especially to Bono’s project RED, which is where some of the proceeds from Apple’s red devices go.Jobs even famously refused to discuss the subject of his niggardliness with Walter Isaacson, his biographer. He preferred instead to focus on how much his work had changed the lives of millions of people—not only did he enrich himself and hundreds of employees at Apple, he said, the products that Apple produced had inarguably changed the lives of hundreds of millions. To be fair, that is exactly what Jobs did. He dedicated himself completely, despite his battle with cancer, to improving the company’s products. And the competitors who modelled their products on Apple’s groundbreaking iPhone have changed the lives of several hundred million more. There is the possibility, of course that Jobs donated anonymously. Perhaps he knew that giving is to be done quietly, and without publicity.Then there is the third type of giver: the lavish spender. Larry Ellison of Oracle Corp. falls in this class. While he is not ungenerous by any stretch of the imagination, having donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charity, he is also profligate. Inc. magazine reports that when a judge unsealed court records in 2006 from a shareholder lawsuit, it was revealed that Ellison’s accountant had chastised him for repeatedly pushing his credit limit to the maximum with extravagant purchases including mansions, yachts, and luxury cars. That said, the truth is that this sort of conspicuous consumption is itself charity in a manner of speaking—it creates jobs, and puts food on the tables of the people manufacturing these expensive items.But the fourth class, the miser, may be the most generous of all. As Chanakya said: “No greater donor was ever born than the miser.” The miser donates everything when he dies without ever having touched his wealth. His left hand truly does not know what his right hand gives!Siddharth Pai is a world-renowned technology consultant who has led over $20 billion in complex, first-of-a-kind outsourcing transactions.","The battle for real dominance of a corner of IT takes at least 15 years, after which the ruptures begin. A look at four of the fissures that cause the eventual rupture ",12:14,Technology dominance and charitable giving +2017-03-28,"
After crash landing in 2016, airline stocks are taking off again. Since mid-February, shares of IndiGo parent InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, Jet Airways (India) Ltd and SpiceJet Ltd have risen between 28% and 68%. Interestingly, the 28% appreciation in IndiGo’s stock pales in comparison with SpiceJet’s spectacular 68% gain during this period. Even the Jet Airways stock has done much better, with a 41% gain. What gives?For starters, analysts say that SpiceJet was trading at a large discount to its bigger rival IndiGo, and that it was unwarranted considering that the former has managed its profit margins better. SpiceJet’s profits have grown in the nine-month period ended December, whereas profits of the other two airlines have fallen. Moreover, on the yields front, too, it has performed comparatively better.While Jet Airways shares have risen sharply since mid-February, they had underperformed by a huge margin prior to that. As such, it remains the least preferred airline stock in terms of valuation multiples.According to Praveen Sahay, a research analyst at Edelweiss Broking, SpiceJet with its smaller Bombardier Q-400s is better placed than IndiGo, which has Airbus A320 aircraft, as far as the regional connectivity scheme (RCS) is concerned. That is because traffic from RCS is not expected to be robust in the initial stages, making smaller aircraft more suitable under this scheme. “Further, there may not be adequate airport infrastructure to accommodate bigger aircraft,” adds Sahay. News reports say 11 airlines including SpiceJet have bid under the scheme. Needless to say, investors need to be clued in for more details on this and for announcements on the routes that SpiceJet will fly to.Despite the sharp rally, SpiceJet shares still trade at a meaningful discount to those of IndiGo. Based on Bloomberg data, SpiceJet trades at 10 times estimated earnings for the next fiscal year compared to 18 times in the case of IndiGo. In terms of EV/Ebitda, SpiceJet trades at 8.3 times, lower than Indigo’s 11.8 times valuation. EV stands for enterprise value, while Ebitda is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. Of course, the fact that IndiGo is the market leader and still runs a tight ship will continue to result in premium valuations.For any further rerating of valuations, yields, which have been a big pain point this year, have to inch up.Among the reasons airline stocks have risen, in general, is the strengthening rupee and a correction in oil prices. Since mid-February, the rupee has appreciated close to 3% against the dollar. Further, while the rally in crude oil looked threatening earlier, prices have softened since. Brent crude prices have declined around a tenth since mid-February. It is a relief that earlier expectations of much stronger crude oil prices on account of measures taken by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to curb output, hasn’t really played out.“A 1% appreciation of the rupee changes earnings positively by around 3.5%, while a similar reduction in crude price changes earnings positively by around 2%”, JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd said in a note to clients.","SpiceJet’s profits have grown in the nine-month period ended December, whereas profits of IndiGo (Interglobe Aviation) and Jet Airways have fallen",07:49,Why have SpiceJet shares done better than IndiGo’s? +2017-03-24,"The demonetisation-led cash crunch meant expectations for the December quarter results of retail firms—Titan Co. Ltd, Shoppers Stop Ltd and Bata India Ltd—were running low. In that backdrop, these companies did better than expected.Titan’s jewellery business, which contributes the lion’s share of its overall revenue, performed well, reporting a 15.4% year-on-year revenue growth. This looks even better considering that the December 2015 quarter had a high base, thanks to the presence in the initial days of studded jewellery activation. Gold jewellery volume growth for the December 2016 quarter was 4%. Titan’s watch business performed well, too.Shoppers Stop’s like-to-like sales growth for its department stores came in at 6.4%. Now, by itself that number isn’t impressive considering this is the stronger festive quarter we are talking about. Note that the measure had increased 17.4% a year ago. But the December 2016 quarter like-to-like performance was better than analysts’ estimates. The firm maintains like-to-like growth saw double-digit year-on-year decline in November, compared with double-digit increase in October and December.Like-to-like sales growth is the comparable sales growth of stores that have been operational for over a year.Bata India’s revenue rose 2.4%, while its operating profit declined as staff costs, rent and other expenses rose at a faster pace. For the nine-month period to December, revenue increased just 0.8%. This is estimated to improve. ICICI Securities Ltd expects Bata India’s revenue growth to revive from fiscal 2018 onwards on account of an improved product mix and the company following a dual strategy of driving same-store sales growth and opening new stores in untapped locations. “We expect revenue to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 8.1% year-on-year during FY16-19E,” wrote ICICI Securities in a report last month.From 8 November (when demonetisation was announced) till 17 March, share prices of Titan and Bata India have appreciated, while those of Shoppers Stop have declined. Analysts at Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd say Shoppers Stop has nudged ahead its Ebitda margin target of 6.5% by one year to FY18E on the back of demand disruption owing to demonetisation. Ebitda is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The performance of subsidiary HyperCity will be a key thing to follow for the Shoppers Stop stock. In general, improvement in consumer demand translating into better like-to-like growth and eventually higher revenue growth are key factors to watch out for.","Retail firms Titan, Shoppers Stop and Bata India performed well in the December quarter though demonetisation ensured expectations were running low",09:32,Retail stocks: Q3 results exceed expectations +2017-03-24,"The packaged consumer goods sector had a difficult time in the December 2016 quarter. Even before demonetisation, demand was simply not getting off the ground. While urban demand had shown some early signs of reviving, companies said rural demand continued to show signs of strain. The BSE FMCG Index declined 4.8% in the December quarter. FMCG stands for fast-moving consumer goods. The current quarter has seen it increase by 13.5%, partly as the effects of demonetisation are fading but also because ITC Ltd’s stock has run up sharply.Demonetisation made things worse. In cities, consumption was briefly affected but revived as modern trade outlets stepped in and consumers switched to digital currency. However, rural markets were affected. Also, companies use wholesalers to service relatively smaller outlets and markets, and this channel was adversely affected.In the December quarter, the sector’s sales declined by 2.5%, while its operating profit fell 0.4%. Volume growth was affected, not only by demonetisation, but also by price hikes by companies to compensate for an increase in the price of inputs.Hindustan Unilever Ltd, for instance, reported a 4% decline in volumes, partly due to the currency ban and partly due to price hikes.ITC’s shares have gained in the current quarter as the hike in excise duties in the budget was lower than expected and even after an additional cess on cigarettes, the company is expected to benefit from the introduction of the goods and services tax, or GST, from 1 July.The outlook for packaged consumer goods makers’ stocks remains mixed. Consumer confidence improved in the December quarter, indicating urban markets can be expected to recover. Good monsoon rains in 2016-17 are expected to contribute to better farm output. While that is good, it is being tempered by a moderate increase in prices. By how much farm incomes improve and to what extent non-farm incomes revive will determine rural consumption trends in the medium term. Meanwhile, companies may use price hikes to drive growth till demand recovers. GST remains a key event to watch out for in FY18.",Volume growth was affected in the December quarter not only by demonetisation but also by price hikes taken by firms to compensate for an increase in the price of inputs,09:32,FMCG: GST and urban consumers offer hope +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The country’s third largest software services firm Wipro is learnt to have fired hundreds of employees as part of its annual “performance appraisal”. According to sources, Wipro has shown the door to about 600 employees, while speculation was rife that the number could go as high as 2,000. At the end of December 2016, the Bengaluru-based company had over 1.79 lakh employees. When contacted, Wipro said it undertakes a “rigorous performance appraisal process” on a regular basis to align its workforce with business objectives, strategic priorities of the company, and client requirements. “The performance appraisal may also lead to the separation of some employees from the company and these numbers vary from year to year,” it added. The company, however, did not comment on the number of employees that have been asked to leave. Wipro said its comprehensive performance evaluation process includes mentoring, re-training and upskilling of employees. The company is scheduled to report its fourth quarter and full-year numbers on 25 April.The development comes at a time when Indian IT companies are facing an uncertain environment given the curbs being proposed on worker visa norms by various countries like the US, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.These companies use temporary work visas to send employees to work on client sites. With visa programmes in these countries becoming more rigorous, Indian IT companies are likely to face challenges in movement of labour as well as a spike in operational costs. Indian IT companies get over 60% of their revenues from the North American market, about 20% from Europe and the remaining from other economies. Besides, higher adoption of technologies like automation and artificial intelligence is also reducing the need to have a large number of employees at client site.","Wipro is learnt to have sacked 600 employees as part of its annual ‘performance appraisal’, at a time when IT firms are facing curbs on work visas in US and Australia",22:17,600 Wipro employees sacked after performance appraisal: report +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: Dell Technologies, the company that was formed when Dell Inc. acquired EMC Corp. for $67 billion, remains bullish on its “long-term” growth prospects in India, which is the company’s third-largest market.“I think we are on track to hit the $3 billion revenue mark in this country in a couple of years,” Thomas Sweet, executive vice-president and chief financial officer (CFO), Dell Inc., said in an interview last week.Explaining why he is bullish on the Indian market, Sweet reasoned that the country now had “a government that is pro-growth, pro-development, and which is also pro-technology in helping to enable that growth and the government’s mission”. Further, he claimed that the Dell-EMC combine in India is growing faster than the domestic IT market growth. According to Nasscom’s Strategic Review 2017 report, in FY2017, India’s domestic IT-BPM (information technology-business process management) market is likely to grow 8.5% year on year to reach $38 billion (excluding e-commerce).To accelerate the pace of growth globally, Dell rolled out a distribution, or the so-called channel strategy in February. According to Sweet, half of the company’s revenue is routed through its distributors and his company hopes to increase their output with the recent reorganization it initiated to bring together the distribution partners of the erstwhile Dell and EMC companies.What the company did two months back, according to Sweet, was to merge the EMC and Dell sales forces (which existed as separate entities before the merger) into two units. One is an enterprise sales unit that would now focus on the top 3,000 customers, and the second is a commercial sales organization that will focus on an estimated 500,000 clients. Sweet said he is “pretty pleased” with how the combined sales units have shaped up so far.The company also plans to sharpen its focus on its digital transformation push. Dell Technologies breaks up digital transformation into three parts, according to Sweet: IT transformation-how IT can support what the business needs; security transformation-how a company can tackle multiple threats; and workforce transformation-how an organization makes its employees more productive in a mobile environment.In the past couple of years, most large technology solution providers such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE), International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Accenture Plc., Oracle Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others have been competing fiercely for the increasingly lucrative digital transformation pie. According to research firm International Data Corp. (IDC) forecasts, global spending on digital transformation technologies is projected to be more than $1.2 trillion in 2017—an increase of 17.8% over 2016.“There is clearly a greater focus among our customers on digital, but most of them are currently focused on IT transformation,” said Sweet. According to him, companies are looking to modernize their IT infrastructure to support cloud-native applications. In cloud computing, companies can consume IT services and only pay for the applications or infrastructure they use rather than buy the equipment upfront, thus reducing capital expenditure (capex).One change in the way technology adoption occurs in companies, according to Sweet, is the growing involvement of top management, especially when it comes to digital. “We are seeing more C-suite executives, particularly the chief executive officers (CEOs), chief operating officers (COOs) and CFOs, participating in the conversation on digital as, increasingly, they are seeking business solutions and business model evolution,” he said. The focus for CFOs, he said, continues to be on return on investment, even as most of them are also ready to bet on emerging technologies that are still not mature in order to future-proof their organizations.Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst of Greyhound Research, said that while the Dell-EMC combine has done a good job of “integrating the channel network” of both the organizations, managing the reskilling of the partners and introducing customised solutions tailored for specific industry segments may require an intensive focus, especially in the short term. “If they can manage this aspect well, they can have an edge in the digital transformation infrastructure market, where companies such as HPE and Lenovo have been showing renewed aggression of late,” he concluded.",Dell Inc. CFO Thomas Sweet claims that the Dell-EMC combine in India is growing faster than the domestic IT market growth,08:34,Dell on track to hit the $3 billion revenue mark in India: CFO Thomas Sweet +2017-04-20,"Bengaluru:Rajiv Bansal, former CFO of Infosys, has dragged his former employer to arbitration to claim the remaining Rs12 crore of his severance pay. Infosys had agreed to pay Bansal a severance amount of Rs17.38 crore or 24 months of salary, but the company suspended payments after he got Rs5 crore as co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy and others objected to the severance package as excessive. According to sources, Bansal has invoked his rights to an arbitral tribunal and a meeting is scheduled next month. This has opened another battle front for Infosys, which is already fighting visa clampdown by US President Donald Trump and global headwinds. When contacted, Bansal declined to comment. “The company has already clarified on the severance package for the former CFO Rajiv Bansal through a detailed statement. We do not have anything additional to add at this point,” Infosys said in an e-mailed response. Bansal’s severance payout has been one of the issues that Infosys founders had raised to allege governance lapses at the Bengaluru-based firm. When Bansal left Infosys in 2015, Infosys had agreed to pay him Rs17.38 crore in severance pay, equalling 24 months of pay. In February, Infosys chairman R. Seshasayee had clarified that of the agreed amount, only Rs5 crore have been paid so far and that the remaining was withheld pending clarifications on the terms of the severance contract. He had also admitted that the “judgement” could have differed if circumstances were different or if certain processes had been in place. Murthy had raised concerns about the hefty amount and questioned if the same was “hush money”.","Former Infosys CFO Rajiv Bansal asks for arbitration for settlement of his Rs17.38 crore severance pay, which hadn’t gone down well with Infosys founders",21:36,Infosys ex-CFO Rajiv Bansal seeks arbitration for severance pay: report +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: Delhi has emerged as the top ranked state in terms of overall Internet readiness including e-infrastructure and e-participation, overtaking last year’s winner Maharashtra, according to a report titled ‘Index of Internet readiness of Indian states’ by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and Nielsen Holdings PLC, a global information and data measurement company unveiled on Wednesday.The capital city-state is followed by Karnataka, Maharashtra, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.Internet readiness index is a composite benchmark of four components, i.e., e-infrastructure, e-participation, IT-environment and government e-services. All four components have been given equal weightage in the model, claims the research report.Among the smaller states, Delhi is at the top followed by Chandigarh and Puducherry. Chandigarh is ranked second in both e-infrastructure and e-participation. Puducherry ranks after Chandigarh when measured on the e-infrastructure index.The report also highlights the status of digital start-up ecosystem of the states. It finds that Karnataka, Delhi and Maharashtra are the top three states with the highest number of digital start-ups. There are a total of 242 start-up incubators in the country, out of which 61 incubators are in Tamil Nadu.Speaking at the launch of the report, IT secretary, Aruna Sundararajan, said, “Niti Aayog and other ministries of the government are increasingly trying to see that which states are leading in best practices. We are trying to find out these practices and the possibility of sharing these practices in benchmarking where each state can be.”Among the northeastern states, Nagaland tops the list, closely followed by Manipur and Tripura. Nagaland leads in IT environment and performs moderately well in other categories to get to the top.“Significantly, even within smaller states, the northeastern states ranked low in terms of overall Internet readiness. Therefore, much more needs to be done in the form of investment and infrastructure development in the region,” the report said.","Delhi has emerged as the top state in terms of overall Internet readiness including e-infrastructure and e-participation, overtaking last year’s winner Maharashtra, a report says",01:05,Delhi tops among states in Internet readiness: report +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: Talent shortage is acute in the IT and data science ecosystem in India with a survey claiming that 95% of engineers in the country are not fit to take up software development jobs. According to a study by employability assessment company Aspiring Minds, only 4.77% candidates can write the correct logic for a programme — a minimum requirement for any programming job. Over 36,000 engineering students form IT related branches of over 500 colleges took Automata — a machine learning-based assessment of software development skills — and over two-thirds could not even write code that compiles. The study further noted that while more than 60% candidates cannot even write code that compiles, only 1.4% can write functionally correct and efficient code. “Lack of programming skills is adversely impacting the IT and data science ecosystem in India... India needs to catch up,” Aspiring Minds CTO and co-founder Varun Aggarwal said. The employability gap can be attributed to rote learning based approaches rather than actually writing programmes on a computer for different problems. Also, there is a dearth of good teachers for programming, since most good programmers get jobs in industry at good salaries, the study said. Moreover, programming skills are five times poorer for tier III colleges as compared to tier 1 colleges. “69% of candidates from top 100 colleges are able to write a compilable code versus rest of the colleges where only 31% are able to write a compilable code,” the report said.","Only 4.77% engineering students can write correct logic—the minimum requirement for any computer programming job, over two-thirds are inept at coding",20:37,95% engineers in India unfit for programming jobs: study +2017-04-15,"New York: LeEco Inc.’s global head of corporate finance is leaving, according to a person familiar with the matter, the latest sign of retrenchment by the Chinese technology giant.Winston Cheng, who joined LeEco in 2015, will be president of international at Chinese e-commerce company JD.com Inc., leading new business initiatives including investments and mergers and acquisitions, the person said. LeEco declined to comment. JD.com didn’t respond to a request for comment on Friday.Cheng previously held managing director roles at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Merrill Lynch was a lead underwriter for JD.com when the company went public in 2014, a deal Cheng worked on. He also advised JD.com that same year when Tencent Holdings Ltd bought a 15% stake. JD.com has become Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s biggest competitor in China’s online shopping sector.LeEco’s ambitious international expansion plans have suffered from a cash squeeze and other roadblocks. Cheng played a key role in LeEco’s proposed acquisition of TV maker Vizio Inc. for $2 billion, a deal that the company said fell apart because of regulatory hurdles. LeEco’s US plans have also been set back by lacklustre sales, job cuts, and delayed payroll to US employees.Controlled by billionaire Jia Yueting, LeEco lured executives from global technology giants and banks to run its operations. In the past year, there have been several high-profile executive departures. Todd Pendleton, a marketing executive, and Shawn Williams, a senior vice president from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, left LeEco after about a year, according to several people familiar with the matter and Williams’ LinkedIn profile. Bloomberg","Winston Cheng, who joined LeEco in 2015, will be president of international at Chinese e-commerce company JD.com Inc.",16:13,Struggling tech giant LeEco loses global corporate finance head +2017-04-19,"New Delhi/London: Vijay Mallya, the Kingfisher Airlines Ltd executive arrested in London on Tuesday, will return to UK court next month as authorities attempt to extradite him to face fraud accusations in India.The 61-year-old surrendered his Indian passport during a London court hearing Tuesday before being released on £650,000 ($830,000) bail, according to court records. He’s scheduled to return for another hearing 17 May. A spokesman for Mallya, who disputes the charges against him, declined to comment.Mallya’s arrest comes after a special Indian court in June declared the flamboyant former beer baron a proclaimed offender in a case involving loans to his airline. That helped pave the way for banks to take over his properties and auction assets such as his personal private jet, and sought to have him extradited from the UK. A consortium of 17 banks accuses him of wilfully defaulting on more than Rs9,100 crore ($1.4 billion) in debt accumulated by Kingfisher Airlines.The UK court “will consider” if he can get a fair trial in India, the nation’s former additional solicitor general A.S. Chandhiok said in an interview. “He may say ‘Everything is against me, the media is prejudiced against me,’” to avoid getting extradited, he said.Also Read: Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banksThe tycoon left the country a year ago saying he was moving to England to be closer to his children. Lawmakers criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government for failing to impound his passport and prevent him from leaving. His airline defaulted on the loans guaranteed by Mallya and United Breweries Holdings Ltd.“Vijay Mallya is a victim of circumstance,” Satish Maneshinde, an Indian lawyer told BloombergQuint. “His contention that he is being hounded politically and through the media may find favour” in the UK, he said.Mallya has maintained that Kingfisher was an “unfortunate commercial failure” because of macroeconomic factors and government policies. He has sparred with local media for portraying him as the poster boy for the nation’s bad loans. He has said that government agencies “are pursuing a heavily biased investigation and are already holding me guilty without trial after which I need to prove my innocence.” “Usual Indian media hype,” Mallya wrote in a Twitter post on Tuesday after reports of his arrest.Mallya left the country 2 March, prompting the government’s attorney general to label the businessman as a fugitive at a hearing in the Supreme Court in New Delhi. The Indian banks, fighting to recover dues from the chairman and founder of the airline — named after Mallya’s best-selling beer brand — were told in court that their petition to bar him from leaving the country was filed a few days too late.Also Read: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursIndia’s Enforcement Directorate, a federal body that probes violations in foreign exchange transactions, has been seeking Mallya’s extradition over accusations of diverting some funds from loans to buy property abroad. A Mumbai court had previously issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya, whose businesses included liquor and an airline.“Extradition from the UK is a long winding procedure and Mallya will have enough opportunities to challenge it in various forums,” said Pooja Dutta, managing partner at Mumbai-based Astute Law. “The process is complex and can go on for years.”The Indian government eventually cancelled his passport after he failed to appear before the Supreme Court in a separate case.Bail conditionsIn addition to the bail and surrendering his passport, the London court on Tuesday ordered Mallya not to leave England or Wales and keep his mobile phone — fully charged — with him at all times.After taking over a beer and liquor empire from his father in the 1980s, he started Kingfisher Airlines in 2005, which was one of India’s leading carriers until it was grounded in 2012 amid mounting debt.Mallya also gradually ceded control of his beer and liquor empire to rivals. Diageo Plc bought his United Spirits Ltd. in April 2014. Heineken NV is now the biggest shareholder of United Breweries, the maker of the nation’s best-selling Kingfisher beer.Mallya said previously he neither had the intention or any reason to flee, and personally he wasn’t a borrower or a “judgment defaulter.” He said he was “most pained as being painted as an absconder” when he was a non-resident for almost 28 years.The man at the center of India’s battle against soured loans was ranked the 45th-richest Indian by Forbes in 2012, with a net worth of $1 billion. He was earlier elected to the Rajya Sabha, India’s upper house of Parliament, in 2002 and again in 2010, both as an independent. Bloomberg","Vijay Mallya, who was arrested in London on Tuesday, will return to UK court on 17 May as authorities attempt to extradite him to face fraud accusations in India",13:22,"Vijay Mallya surrenders passport, faces UK extradition hearing on 17 May" +2017-04-18,"New Delhi: Journalist Arnab Goswami’s soon-to-be launched news channel Republic TV has been served a legal notice by his former employer The Times Group over use of the phrase “nation wants to know”.The Times Group runs the English language news channels Times Now and ET Now and publishes The Times of India and The Economic Times newspapers.In a three-minute audio clip posted on YouTube, Goswami claimed that he has been served with yet another legal threat and this time for using the aforementioned phrase. “A media group has sent me a six-page letter threatening me with imprisonment if I ever use the phrase ‘Nation wants to know’. They say that they own the phrase,” said Goswami, in the clip without naming the media group. HT Media Ltd, the publisher of Mint and Hindustan Times, competes with The Times Group in some markets.Goswami was using the catch phrase ‘Nation wants to know’ on his popular prime time show Newshour on Times Now till he quit the company on 1 November 2016. He was the president and editor-in-chief of news channels Times Now and ET Now. In the YouTube clip, Goswami further said that the threat of imprisonment will not deter him and that he has been using the phrase for the last 20 years throughout his reporting career. “ARG Outliers had filed for trademark for these and similar phrases which were already filed for and extensively used for years by Times Now. We have responded with a standard caution notice. He (Arnab) is just trying to gain soundbytes from it,” said a spokesperson for the Times Network, when contacted for comments. Republic is a part of a company called ARG Outlier Media Pvt. Ltd, of which Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar is the biggest investor. Goswami’s Republic made its social media debut on 7 January with a Facebook page and a Twitter handle @republicworld. The company has received the regulatory nod from the information and broadcasting ministry and is expected to launch the news channel soon.",Arnab Goswami claims he has been served a legal notice by Times Group against using the ‘nation wants to know’ phrase on his Republic TV venture,00:50,Times Group serves Arnab Goswami notice on using ‘nation wants to know’ +2017-04-14,"New Delhi: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, whose pay package was a point of contention for the company’s founders, has drawn $ 6.68 million (about Rs 43 crore) or 61% of the promised compensation for the 2016-17 fiscal. Sikka was eligible for a $11 million pay including basic salary, variable pay, restricted stock units (RSUs) and performance stock options for the year. Incidentally, this is also lower than what Sikka drew in the previous financial year when he took home Rs 48.73 crore. According to Infosys’ financial statements that outline compensation to key executives, Sikka received only $3.68 million of the $8 million variable component that he was promised. One of the highest paid executives in the Indian IT industry, Sikka took home $0.82 million in variable pay, $1.9 million in RSUs and ESOPs worth $0.96 million, totalling $3.68 million. Sikka’s salary was revised from $7.08 million to a handsome $11 million package with effect from April 2016, a move that did not go down well with the founders, including NR Narayana Murthy. The $11 million package was to include a base salary of $1 million and $2 million worth of stock annually as well $3 million in variable pay. Sikka is also eligible for another $5 million worth of performance-based equity and stock options upon achievement of certain performance targets.Also Read: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka guaranteed 90% of $11 million salary“The Board, based on the recommendations of the Nominations Committee, approved on April 13, 2017, $0.82 million as variable pay to CEO for the year ended March 31, 2017,” Infosys said. It further mentions “...RSUs amounting to $1.9 million and ESOPs amounting to $0.96 million representing the performance-based equity and stock options for the financial year 2017”. While the founders had raised concerns over the significant salary hike given to Sikka, the Board, on its part, maintained that the variable component was tied to steep performance goals. However, Infosys has not made those goals public. Infosys had defended Sikka’s pay hike saying all decisions were made “in the overall interest of the company”. Infosys’ performance of 2016-17 has disappointed the street, especially after it lowered its annual revenue guidance thrice last fiscal. The “aspirational goal” of $20 billion revenue by 2020 set by Infosys looks like a tall order given the current performance, said industry watchers. The Bengaluru-based firm, which posted a revenue of $ 10.2 billion in 2016-17, has been focussing on new areas like automation and artificial intelligence to bolster its revenues to meet the said target. For the financial year 2017-18, Infosys expects its revenues to grow by 6.1-8.1% in dollar terms.","Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka has drawn about Rs43 crore or 61% of the promised compensation, $11 million, for the 2016-17 fiscal",19:10,Infosys’s Vishal Sikka takes home only 61% of eligible pay +2017-04-15,"
Mumbai: In the last two-three years, many dining concepts have emerged from chefs-turned-restaurateurs and established restaurateurs launching new brands. So there is Floyd Cardoz’s The Bombay Canteen and Vicky Ratnani with The Korner House, which are less than two years old. Meanwhile a company like Massive Restaurants Pvt. Ltd has launched concepts like Farzi Café, a modern Indian bistro, and Pa Pa Ya, a pan-Asian bistro. Likewise Olive Bar and Kitchen Pvt. Ltd, which operates Olive, has in the last three-four years diversified to open SodaBottleOpenerWala and Monkey Bar. deGustibus Hospitality Pvt. Ltd of Indigo fame, which has been opening, on average, one restaurant every two years, has launched a new concept D:Oh two months ago. The coming year will see the company stepping on the accelerator and doing things differently, says Anurag Katriar, executive director and chief executive officer of deGustibus Hospitality. Edited excerpts from an interview:
You have moved from fine dining to casual dining to what now looks like a mix between quick service restaurants (QSR) and casual dining. What was the rationale behind this journey?Our journey started with fine dining—Indigo. At some point in time I realized that Indigo, despite all the lovely numbers it was doing, had its own limitations. So in 2003 we decided to do something for the larger mass and that is how the first Indigo Deli was launched in 2005, which is in the casual dining space. We now have seven Indigo Delis in Mumbai, one in Gurgaon and one in Pune. I felt Mumbai could take maybe a couple more Delis. So a year ago I came back to the same question: now what? My initial thoughts were QSR and I spent a lot of time at food courts across the country observing.
Are you saying that you needed a cheaper per-head average cost offering to expand?Today 65% of our population is millennials. They are young and go to QSRs and bars selling at economical prices. We wanted to have a place for them that is fun and economical.
But D:Oh is not really a QSR...QSR is not essentially good food served quick. It has become convenient food served cheap. I was unnerved by this realization. So, I did a rethink and picked up the niceties of a QSR—quick service, easy-to-understand menu—and merged it with the goodness of casual dining—ambience and limited service. This is the area we will be expanding into now.
Why not take Indigo Deli to newer geographies? There is Delhi for instance which can take a few more...In Delhi we had a very poor experience honestly. Also every city is different. I prefer to expand in my core area and that is where D:Oh fits in.
Your peers have been on an expansion spree, launching new formats and opening branches. What’s holding you back?Yes, we have been a little slow. We were not innovating as quickly as we could have. We were in our comfort zone. On average we have been opening one restaurant every two years. Having said that, we were also trying to restructure our company as investors came in. We consolidated and also gave every brand a leadership team to grow their business. But that was our principle earlier, we didn’t believe in doing too many things. Today I think differently. I believe that gone are the days when you could multiply one brand into 500 locations. You have to think differently. The socio-economic changes are driving a very different kind of a market. The boredom creeps in a lot faster. Consumers are not as loyal. The shelf life is a lot shorter and therefore brands have to be innovative.
So does that mean you are ready to launch more new brands for faster growth?In the last financial year we opened five new restaurants. In the coming year we will be opening nine restaurants, which will be our fastest expansion. We are also open to inorganic growth and are in talks with a couple of brands, which I can’t disclose right now. In the next one-two years, we will also expand outside India.
You have made some changes at Neel. Can you share what prompted them?Neel, which is at Turf Club, is fine dining. We are not expanding that format. The one in Powai is casual dining. We have realized that in casual dining, vegetarian and seafood works better than red meat. So we have reduced the red meat and increased vegetarian to get more balance in the menu. We have also introduced evening snacks like kathi rolls.The conversion on vegetarian snacks is 46%, which is a lot.
Your expansion is in the casual dining space with Indigo Deli and Neel-All-day Diner, and now in the new concept, which is even more casual. What about fine dining where you have the Indigo restaurant and Tote on the Turf brand?Fine dining is a dying format. No one wants such an elaborate meal. It’s become a place only for celebrations. For me the biggest benchmark of fine dining was Zodiac Grill. If that shut down, how long will the bachas (kids) survive? For me the Indigo restaurant business is good but it’s 40% down from its peak. We have one Indigo restaurant and one Tote on the Turf restaurant. We are not expanding these fine dining formats any more.
You have been in the restaurant space for the last 15-20 years. Can you tell us what has changed over the years?Today, drinking is out of the closet. Earlier you would be very shy to say you were going for a drink. Now you would be looked down upon if you say you are not going out for a drink. Secondly, value-for- money expectations have gone up. Today people want good experiences at QSR prices. Also shelf life of a brand has reduced. Let’s look at the last 10 years and restaurant chains that have started and are still thriving. There are hardly any. Today a lot of new restaurants are focused on gimmickry and that is why the novelty factor wears off and they fade away.
At D:Oh, you have cold sandwiches on offer. Do cold sandwiches work in India?Indians are not used to cold food. We like our food hot. Customers feel cold food means purana (stale) even though we are not selling anything more than 24 hours old. So we are doing away with the grab-a-tray concept and cold sandwiches.
Overall the restaurant and out-of-home eating sector has had muted growth for the last couple of years. Also there was the impact of demonetization. Are we seeing a revival now?I don’t see any major difference. There was no major downturn or revival. There was some stress on operating margins as costs of doing business were going up. Demonetization impact was for two weeks. The change in business was a 3% drop year-on-year this November. Yes, one can argue that there could have been growth but that’s fine; it’s not as bad as it was made out to be.
We are seeing so many new launches. Chefs turning restaurateurs and restaurant chains like yours now looking at rapid expansion. What’s happening?The entry barrier for this profession is very low. A lot of start-ups with no background in hospitality want to start a restaurant as they feel it’s attractive. I was once approached by a traditional metal business family who said they want to start a restaurant for their son as it would help them get a good marriage proposal for him. For chefs turning entrepreneurs it’s a good time to start up. Having said that, today the risk of failure is also very high and they have a reputation at stake. It’s interesting times.
Has the recent Supreme Court ruling on not serving alcohol within 500 metres of highways impacted you?Two of our restaurants have been impacted. One is in Cyber Hub in Gurgaon and the second is in Phoenix Market City in Pune. From 1 April we have not served any alcohol at these two places and business has dropped by 50% already. Overall this rule will be catastrophic for the industry.
What are your thoughts on the proposed initiative to regulate food portions?Following this announcement we did a two-day survey in our restaurants. There is very little wastage of food at restaurants. People don’t order to waste. If there is extra food, customers usually pack it and take it back. What is returned on the plates is something they don’t like. We hope they don’t regulate food portions.","No one wants such an elaborate meal; it’s become a place only for celebrations, says Anurag Katriar",00:10,"Fine dining is dead, says deGustibus Hospitality’s Anurag Katriar" +2017-04-19,"New Delhi: Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) missed analysts’ estimates for both revenue and profit in the fourth fiscal quarter, even as India’s largest software services firm’s full-year sales rose 6.2% to $17.58 billion.The company reported revenue of $4.45 billion in the three months ended 31 March, a 1.5% increase from the preceding quarter and 5.8% from the year-ago period. Net profit totalled $992 million, a 0.8% decline on a sequential basis and an increase of 5.8% from the year-ago period.A Bloomberg survey of 30 analysts had estimated TCS to report quarterly revenue of $4.62 billion and net profit of $1.03 billion in the quarter.Also read: TCS unperturbed by possible changes to H1B visa regime“FY17 was a year of broad-based growth amid economic and political turbulence in our key markets,” said Rajesh Gopinathan, who took over as chief executive of TCS in February. “We believe we are better placed for the year-ahead,” said Gopinathan, who spent much time on the numbers, suggesting that the new CEO will take time to probably replicate the success managed by his predecessor N. Chandrasekaran, the current chairman of Tata Sons Ltd. At the heart of TCS’s underperformance is the company’s inability to generate more business from its largest customers, banks, in its largest market, the US. TCS’s banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) segment, which accounts for over 40% of its revenue, grew 4.8% from a year earlier in constant currency terms. North America, which brings 54% of its business, reported a 4.3% rise.TCS does not give quarterly or annual forecasts but a few equity analysts are sceptical about the company’s prospects. The January-March quarter marks the 10th straight quarter (the company has recorded slow growth since July 2014) in which TCS has either underperformed, or at best managed to keep up with estimates. “Looking at this protracted slowdown, I believe TCS has reached a point where unless the company really brings about a change in the way it has done business, it will be tough for the company to ever beat street expectations,” said a Mumbai-based analyst at a domestic brokerage, on the condition of anonymity. “At best it can match street expectations.”TCS’s performance mirrors the poor show put up by Infosys Ltd last week, and this is worrying for three reasons.First, both growth and profitability for Indian IT firms is under pressure. Mumbai-based TCS reported a full-year increase of 8.3% in constant currency terms, similar to the full-year growth reported by Bengaluru-based Infosys (with $10.21 billion in revenue) although Infosys reported a higher 7.4% expansion in dollar revenue.Like Infosys, TCS’s growth in 2016-17 was slower than in 2015-16: TCS’s revenue growth in constant currency terms was 3.6 percentage points slower than the 11.9% increase in 2015-16. TCS added $1.03 billion in incremental revenue in the year ended 31 March 2017, less than $1.09 billion added in new business in 2015-16 when it reported a 7.1% increase and half of the $2.01 billion in new business added in 2014-15. TCS’s operating margin in the January-March quarter and for the full year stood at 25.7%. Operating margin narrowed 80 basis points from 26.5% in 2015-16, again similar to Infosys, which too saw its profitability eroded as commoditized outsourcing contracts see intense pricing pressure.Despite falling short of its operating margin forecast of 26-28% in the last financial year, the company’s management retained this guidance for the current fiscal year, which at least two analysts say will be “impossible to achieve”.“In this kind of environment, where most companies want more skilled people at client-facing sides, when most countries are adopting a protectionist stance, it looks impossible to keep operating in that band,” a Mumbai-based analyst at a foreign brokerage said, requesting anonymity.Second, despite higher growth in digital, which remains a fuzzy word, and the success of new and renew strategy rolled out by CEO Vishal Sikka to revive Infosys, both companies continue to be plagued by anaemic growth. This has made many analysts question if existing traditional contracts are merely getting rebadged as digital. A case in point: TCS claims its digital business grew 29% in the last year and now brings $3 billion in business.Finally, both TCS and Infosys continue to shy away from acquiring technology-focused firms. Infosys has not made a single acquisition in the last 18 months; TCS has looked away from acquiring a company since it partnered with Japan’s Mitsubishi Group in 2014. This is important because most large technology firms, including Accenture Plc, are looking at acquisitions to bring in new technology and skill sets. Nevertheless, the quarter does have some positives. For starters, the TCS management claimed that its insurance business under Diligenta and Japan has turned the corner, with Gopinathan expressing confidence of growth from these two lagging business units.On Tuesday, TCS shares fell 0.53% to Rs2,308.65 on BSE, while the benchmark Sensex declined 0.32% to 29,319.1 points. The results were announced after the end of trading in Mumbai.","Q4 revenue of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) rose 5.8% from the year-ago period to $4.45 billion, while Q4 profit increases 5.8% to $992 million",05:15,TCS misses both revenue and profit estimates in March quarter +2017-04-15,"New Delhi: Reliance Infrastructure Ltd on Saturday reported a net profit of Rs40.94 crore for the quarter ended 31 March. The company had recorded a consolidated net loss of Rs327.41 crore during the January-March quarter in 2015-16, Reliance Infrastructure said in a BSE filing. According to the statement, total income of the company was recorded at Rs6,145 crore in the quarter against Rs6,910 crore in the year-ago period. The company’s consolidated net profit for 2016-17 rose to Rs1,425.18 crore as compared to Rs759.63 crore in 2015-16. The total income in the fiscal under review was Rs28,222 crore against Rs28,462 crore in 2015-16. Its engineering procurement and construction order book stood at Rs5,960 crore and earned a revenue of Rs2,492 crore in the last fiscal from this business. The company won EPC contract for setting up 2 x 250 MW thermal power plants worth Rs3,675 crore in Rajasthan from Neyveli Lignite Corporation Ltd. It also bagged EPC contract to build 66km road project worth Rs711 crore in Tamil Nadu. All its 11 road projects of Rs4,370 lane km are now revenue generating , it said. The company said the arbitration award won for 2 road projects—NK Toll Road and DS Toll Road—was worth Rs170 crore. Besides, over Rs14,000 crore is under advanced stage of arbitration. Reliance Infrastructure develop projects through various special purpose vehicles in several high growth areas such as power, roads and metro rail in the infrastructure space and the defence sector. The company’s board has recommended a dividend of Rs9 per share. Its share prices closed at Rs556.50 a piece, down 0.47% on the BSE. Reliance Group companies have sued HT Media Ltd, Mint’s publisher, and nine others in the Bombay high court over a 2 October 2014 front-page story that they have disputed. HT Media is contesting the case.","Reliance Infrastructure’s Q4 consolidated net profit for FY17 rose to Rs1,425.18 crore as compared to Rs759.63 crore in FY16",23:15,Reliance Infrastructure Q4 profit at Rs40.94 crore +2017-04-19,"
Often, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and its investors don’t see eye to eye. The company’s March quarter results announcement was no different. Revenue grew 1% sequentially in constant currency terms, lower than analysts’ estimates of around 1.6% growth. Worryingly, revenues in the mainstay North American region fell by 1.8%, and those of the key banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) vertical fell 0.4%.
ALSO READ: TCS misses both revenue and profit estimates in March quarterStill, chief executive officer (CEO) Rajesh Gopinathan said, “We are quite happy with the way we have ended the year.” He added on a call with analysts that the outlook for the BFSI segment remains positive, and that thanks to large deal wins, it may be only a matter of time before the expected growth comes in. TCS has been saying for the past few months that things are looking up in the US and particularly in the BFSI segment. Over 40% of its revenues come from the BFSI segment, while the North American region accounted for 54% of revenues last year.But after the March quarter performance, investors are likely to question the company’s optimism. As the chart alongside shows, year-on-year growth rates have fallen significantly at TCS in the past year. Besides, operating profit margin, too, has fallen below its targeted range of 26-28%. The result of this double whammy was that earnings per share grew by just 8.3% last year.With the rupee having appreciated sharply compared to the average rate in fiscal year 2017 (FY17), margins are expected to be under further pressure in the new fiscal year. What’s more, thanks to the many changes in H-1B visa rules and policies, costs of providing on-site services to clients are also expected to rise. As such, earnings can be under pressure in FY18. Against this backdrop, TCS shares trade at around 16 times one-year forward earnings. And while CEO Gopinathan said that he expects FY18 to be incrementally positive, things could turn out to be particularly dire, depending on new visa rules. “We see near-term impact on decision-making due to immigration-related issues, even as companies are denying this. We expect 1QFY18 to start slowly and do not build growth acceleration in FY18,” analysts at Nomura Research wrote in a note to clients. Some of the possible impact of new visa norms is detailed here: bit.ly/2ngI48H.And unlike TCS’s upbeat post-results commentary, most other technology companies including Accenture Plc. have guided for slower growth in the new fiscal year. Besides, while Infosys Ltd tried to soothe investors’ nerves by outlining a detailed capital allocation policy, TCS said it will stay with its existing payout policy.In sum, there’s nothing much to like in TCS’s March quarter results announcement, except perhaps for the management’s hopeful commentary. But given the fair bit of divergence between the company’s outlook three months ago and its actual performance, investors would do well to tread cautiously.","After the March quarter performance, investors are likely to question the optimism being shown by new TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan",07:25,"TCS results: Upbeat commentary, downbeat performance in March quarter" +2017-04-18,"Los Angeles: For now, Netflix Inc. investors can have rapid subscriber growth or a big jump in profit—not both.The streaming-video giant reported first-quarter user gains that fell short of estimates because there wasn’t a House of Cards-style hit to draw new viewers and retain others. On the other hand, the lack of big-budget productions boosted net income. Next quarter, with the return of House of Cards and three major movies on the release schedule, profit will miss estimates while customer gains will improve, Netflix said Monday.The dilemma whipsawed Netflix investors late Monday, with the stock dropping on the subscriber figures before recovering later and moving higher. The shares rose 1.4% to $149.30 in extended trading after results were announced. They had gained 15% this year through 13 April.The world’s biggest paid video service signed 4.95 million new customers last quarter, less than the 5.49 million analysts were expecting. It’ll make up some of that in the current period, with a forecast for viewer growth that beat analysts’ forecasts.“There’s nothing here that changes the thesis,” said Anthony DiClemente, an Instinet LLC analyst who recommends buying the shares. “If you own Netflix because you think they are going to add subscribers globally, you’re still going to own it. If you don’t own it because you think Netflix was spending too much money to invest in said growth, you still feel the same way.”Netflix needs to add millions of subscribers every quarter to help pay for the billions of dollars the company spends making TV shows and movies or licensing programs from others. The company, which has committed $15.3 billion for movies and TV shows over the next five years, hasn’t given any indication it plans to slow those outlays and said Monday it plans to raise money this quarter by issuing long-term debt.Netflix released 17 stand-up specials, nine feature films and an array of original series for kids and adults, but blamed the absence of one show—House of Cards—for its slower-than-projected viewer growth.The company could turn the tide in the second quarter, typically one of its weakest. Netflix, based in Los Gatos, California, has lined up a slew of high-profile releases in the coming months, including new seasons of House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black and Master of None.The heavy second-quarter schedule comes with costs and highlights a dilemma. Because of those expenses, Netflix said profit in the period will be 15 cents a share, short of analysts’ estimate of 23 cents. Revenue will be $2.75 billion, versus Wall Street projections of $2.76 billion. The first quarter, lighter on new releases, was the company’s most profitable ever and the first time international operations made money.Future profitInvestors have permitted Netflix to operate near break-even on the expectation that the company, which expects to top 100 million customers this week, will continue to grow rapidly, especially outside the US chief executive officer Reed Hastings has also pledged to deliver material profits starting this year. Analysts are forecasting net income of $477.2 million, or $1.09 a share, on revenue of $11.2 billion, based on the average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg.The company said first-quarter profit more than quadrupled to $178 million, or 40 cents a share, compared with analysts’ predictions of 37 cents. Revenue grew 35% to $2.64 billion.The company wants to be assessed in the future based on sales and margins, as opposed to subscriber growth.Netflix’s investment in original programming has inspired competing technology companies and TV networks up their spending, creating more competition for attention and eyeballs. Netflix said it will spend $1 billion marketing in 2017 to bring more attention to its shows.Analysts were expecting slower growth this quarter, after Netflix expanded to more than 130 new countries in the year-earlier period. The company has expanded in stages, and is having more success with older markets.“We have high satisfaction and are rapidly growing in Latin America, Europe, and North America,” the company said in a letter to investors. “We are making good strides in improving our content offering to match local tastes in Asia, Middle East, and Africa, but have much progress to make, like in Latin America a few years ago.” Bloomberg",Netflix reports first-quarter user gains that fell short of estimates because there wasn’t a House of Cards-style hit to draw new viewers and retain others,13:57,Netflix trades user growth for profits with no ‘House of Cards’ +2017-04-19,"New Delhi: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has filed FIRs against eight websites, seeking to curb fraudulent activities promising Aadhaar-related services and illegal collection of information from people.The sites are aadhaarupdate.com, aadhaarindia.com, pvcaadhaar.in, aadhaarprinters.com, geteaadhaar.com, downloadaadhaarcard.in, aadharcopy.in, and duplicateaadharcard.com.“We found that even after we ordered the shutting down of some unauthorised websites, some new websites had come up. This time, we have lodged an FIR against the erring websites,” said Ajay Bhushan Pandey, chief executive officer, UIDAI.These websites were collecting Aadhaar number and enrolment details illegally from residents and promising Aadhaar services posing as entities authorized by UIDAI. In February, UIDAI had shut down 12 websites and 12 mobile applications to curb unauthorized Aadhaar related services.It had also directed authorities to close another 26 fraudulent and illegal websites and mobile applications.According to UIDAI, the websites and companies extending unauthorized services, tantamount to violation under Information Technology Act 2000, Section 38 of Aadhaar Act 2016, and Section 409 (Criminal breach of trust) and Section 420 (cheating) of IPC.Under the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, intentionally copying Aadhaar data is a criminal offence and entails a three-year sentence and a fine.The authority will continue to take stringent action against such sites and also asked the public to use UIDAI official website (www.uidai.gov.in) for all Aadhaar-related services, added Pandey.Late February, UIDAI had also filed a complaint against Axis Bank Ltd, business correspondent Suvidhaa Infoserve and e-sign provider eMudhra, alleging they had attempted unauthorized authentication and impersonation by illegally storing Aadhaar biometrics. The breach was noticed after one individual performed 397 biometric transactions between 14 July 2016 and 19 February 2017. All three entities have been temporarily barred from offering Aadhaar-related services until UIDAI makes a final decision.Last month, UIDAI blacklisted an overenthusiastic common services centre for 10 years after the Aadhaar details of former cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni were shared on social media.At present, any Aadhaar-related demographic information can only be shared following the procedures laid down in the Aadhaar Act, 2016.There are more than 1.13 billion Aadhaar number holders in the country. PTI contributed to this copy.","UIDAI filed FIRs against eight websites, seeking to curb fraudulent activities promising Aadhaar-related services and illegal collection of information from people",22:00,UIDAI files FIRs against 8 websites for collecting Aadhaar-related information +2017-04-19,"New Delhi: Industry body Nasscom on Wednesday warned that the US’ move to replace the lottery system for issuing H1B work visas with a merit-based approach could have “unintended consequences” even as it sought to downplay any immediate impact on IT companies this year. Under a new executive order signed by US President Donald Trump, America is reviewing its visa programme for foreign workers, while ensuring a crackdown on visa abuse and frauds. The H1B visa programme is most sought-after by Indian IT firms and professionals to work on customer sites. Every year, the US grants 65,000 H1B visas, while another 20,000 are set aside for those with US advanced degrees. “No new changes are being implemented immediately... Nothing is being proposed that would impact or change the FY18 H1B lottery that is currently underway,” Nasscom said in a statement. ALSO READ: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookThe proposed changes are forward-looking and non- specific, it contended. Any change in visa norms can affect the movement of labour as well as spike operational costs for IT players. Most Indian IT companies get over 60% of their revenues from the North American market. The Indian government, on its part, has said it will take up the issue with the American authorities during the upcoming visit of finance minister Arun Jaitley to the US. Another industry body Assocham also expressed concern over the tightening of the visa norms. “...Indian IT companies are bound to face disruptions by way of higher costs and even some laying off work force back home, as the rising rupee is aggravating the situation further for the technology export firms,” it said. Indian IT firms, however, put a brave face to the impending changes being mooted by the US. “We continue to invest in the local communities in which we operate, including hiring local American top talent, bringing education and training to our clients to shrink the skills gap in the US, and working with policymakers to foster innovation,” Infosys said in a statement. Larger rival TCS, too, has exuded confidence that these issues can be tackled through greater engagement. It has also said it will “tweak” its business model to continue to be in compliance with regulations. With rising protectionism across markets like the US, Singapore and now Australia, companies are beginning to adjust their business models to reduce their dependence on visas, hiring more locals instead. Nasscom also highlighted that there is shortage of highly-skilled domestic talent in the US in IT, healthcare, education, and other fields.",Nasscom warned that the US’ move to replace the lottery system for issuing H1B work visas with a merit-based approach could have ‘unintended consequences’ ,18:09,Scrapping H1B visa lottery can have unintended consequences: Nasscom +2017-04-19,"New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday indicated that he would take up the visa issue with the US authorities during his visit to America. “These (IT industry issues) are matters of discussion with the appropriate authorities there. Once I do discuss and get an opportunity, I will let you know,” he told reporters when asked whether he would take up the concerns of the Indian IT sector with the US administration. The Indian IT industry has expressed serious concerns over the US government moving towards tightening the rules for grant of H1B visa, mainly used by domestic IT professionals for short-term work. US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order for tightening the rules of the H1B visa programme to stop its “abuse” and ensure that the visas are given to the “most- skilled or highest paid” petitioners. Also read | As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backJaitley is leaving tonight on a five-day visit to the United States to attend the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF as well as deliberations of G20 nations. During his stay in Washington and New York, he will hold meetings with American CEOs and institutional and pension fund investors, where he will pitch India as a favourable investment destination. The finance minister is also slated to hold a meeting with the US Treasury Secretary. India has time and again flagged its concerns over tightening of the visa regime in the US which targets the movement of professionals particularly in the IT sector. Also read | Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookThe H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise in specialised fields. Indian technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year for their US operations. The US market accounts for about 60% of the revenue of the Indian IT industry.",FM Arun Jaitley is leaving tonight on a 5-day visit to the US to attend the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF as well as deliberations of G20 nations,18:21,Arun Jaitley may take up H1B visa issue with US authorities during his visit +2017-04-19,"Taipei: President Donald Trump just made life a little easier for Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai. And a lot harder for Vishal Sikka and Rajesh Gopinathan.“Right now, H1B visas are being awarded in a totally random lottery. And that’s wrong,” Trump told workers in Wisconsin, announcing a reform of the visa category. “Instead, they should be given to the most skilled and highest paid applicants.”Whatever your views on Trump, he is factually correct on that last point. H1Bs are supposed to go to those working in an occupation that requires “theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge.”It’s hard to make a case that the jobs being filled by the Indian IT outsourcing firms that dominate H1B visa issuance—such as Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys Ltd, which Sikka and Gopinathan helm—make use of highly specialized knowledge when they regularly pay less than other firms like Apple Inc. or Google parent Alphabet Inc.On the first point, Trump’s a little off, though, because the awarding of H1Bs isn’t a totally random lottery: A 2015 amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act outlined a pecking order the secretary of labour is meant to follow. The 65,000 annual cap is also exceeded because of exceptions and rollovers that put the annual figure at over 180,000 last year.The flood of H1B applications does make the reviewing and awarding of visas a slow process. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services centre in California is only now processing applications made back in August, for example.That’s bad for companies like Apple and Google, led by Cook and Pichai, which seek far fewer H1Bs. I’ve written before of employees being parked offshore while they await the correct paperwork, and the risks to the US of this situation continuing.In tightening the rules—he can’t unilaterally rewrite them—Trump will help those tech titans that really need the talent, as evidenced by them paying such high salaries for their H1B workers.Yet he won’t be doing much for manufacturers like tool maker Snap-on Inc, where he delivered his broadside. That’s because factories in Asia still offer cost benefits over the US, and Trump’s decision to trade a weaker Chinese currency for assistance on North Korea shows how hard he’s willing to push Beijing in the effort to ease the plight of American workers.By making bold statements about H1Bs, Trump has played to his working-class support base but also diverted attention away from dependence on Chinese manufacturing. And that’s definitely good for Apple. Bloomberg","Companies like Apple and Google, led by Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, seek far fewer H1Bs, while Indian IT firms such as TCS and Infosys dominate H1B visa issuance",13:34,Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps Cook +2017-04-14,"Mumbai: DCB Bank Ltd on Friday reported 24% drop in net profit for the fourth quarter on higher provisioning and higher tax expense.Net profit for the quarter was Rs 52.86 crore as compared to Rs 69.53 crore a year ago. Nine analysts polled by Bloomberg had forecast a net profit of Rs 53.72 crore.Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, increased 30.57% to Rs 220.26 crore from Rs 168.69 crore last year. Other income increased to Rs 63.59 crore from Rs 61.45 crore in the same period last year, a rise of 3.48%.Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) rose 11.53% to Rs 254.20 crore at the end of the March quarter from Rs 227.93 crore in the December quarter. On year-on-year basis, it jumped 28.79% from Rs 197.38 crore.Provisions and contingencies rose 11.14% to Rs 33.93 crore in the quarter from Rs 30.53 crore a quarter ago. On a year-on-year basis, it rose 24.51% from Rs 27.25 crore.As a percentage of total loans, gross NPAs rose to 1.59% at the end of the March quarter from 1.55% in the previous quarter and 1.51% in the year-ago quarter.Net NPAs rose to 0.79% in the March quarter from 0.74% in the previous quarter and 0.75% in the same quarter last year.On Thursday, DCB Bank shares closed at Rs 179.65 on the BSE, down 1.07% from its previous close, while India’s benchmark Sensex index lost 0.61% to 29461.45 points. Indian Markets are closed for a holiday on Friday.",DCB Bank’s fourth quarter profit was Rs52.86 crore as compared to Rs69.53 crore a year ago on the higher provisioning and higher tax expense,20:59,DCB Bank Q4 profit down 24% to Rs52.86 crore +2017-04-14,"Bengaluru: In a conversation with Mint, Ravi Venkatesan, 54, who in addition to being Infosys co-chairman is also chairman of Bank of Baroda, said that one of his immediate priorities would be to align all stakeholders around the transformational journey that Infosys is in the midst of.
Why did you agree to take on this role as co-chairman?Because the board asked me to. But also because I love Infosys. Just like the Idea of India (Sunil Khilnani’s book), the idea of Infosys is a powerful one; Infosys remains a vital institution of our country. It’s important that it continues to flourish.
Was this decision solely the board’s or was it made after some of the founders suggested it?This was a decision of the board. Why did the board decide to go for a co-chairman? Simple because when an aircraft is going through turbulent weather, it only helps to get a co-pilot.
Questions have been raised by some of the founders against the board and even against the management. So how would you get both the founders and board aligned and make sure this is not a distraction for the management? For the record, I was close to the founders of Infosys before I joined the board. What they accomplished was incredible. I hope to remain close to them long after I cease to be on the board. Equally, I believe in the strategy that (CEO) Vishal Sikka has set out for transforming Infosys. I intend to do my very best to see that he succeeds in this mission. Everything else is a sideshow. I don’t see any contradiction here.
How do you rate Vishal’s leadership in the three years that he has been CEO now?I think Infosys has done somethings incredibly well under Vishal’s leadership. We have a bold and differentiated strategy which customers are excited about; customer satisfaction is at an all-time high. Most employees are energized by the vision and strategy. Vishal and his team have built on the momentum they inherited and closed the gap with competition. Many seeds for the future have been sown and we see the green shoots in many areas—in AI, in automation, with initiatives like design thinking. That said, the transformation is a work in progress. Some things aren’t working as intended and course corrections are being applied. There are pockets of underperformance which represent opportunities. We need to rapidly scale up things that are working. There are capability gaps that need to be fixed. But overall, I am optimistic about our prospects.
How will the co-chair arrangement work? How will you delineate roles to make sure there’s no overlap?Sesh (R. Seshasayee) and I have known each other for 20 years and worked on the Infy board for six years, so we are quite comfortable with each other. We have decided that there are some areas that he will continue to lead such as overall leadership of the board or investor outreach while in other areas like strategy or talent I will work more closely with Vishal and his team. We have decided that we will work as partners rather than compartments.
What are your immediate priorities?My first priority is to help align all stakeholders around the transformation journey that we are on. The second is to work closely with Vishal in helping build a world class leadership team that can execute the transformation strategy.Your elevation has been seen positively and the general view is that relations between the board and the founders will improve now. What’s your take on that and how do you intend to repair relations with the founders?I have the greatest respect for the founders of Infosys and especially for Mr (N.R. Narayana) Murthy who has been a mentor and friend for a long time. I believe that everyone wants the same thing—which is to see Infosys flourish and prosper from the incredible opportunities that are being thrown up by technology shifts. The board and leadership team wants this. Investors want this. Employees want this. The founders want this. However, this is a journey through uncharted waters and so the key is to earn the trust of all stakeholders so we stay together through the ups and downs of this voyage. Trust really is the key. This requires intense, honest and ongoing dialogue. It also requires courage, willingness to experiment, assimilate feedback, learn and change.After a stellar year in 2015-16, the last 12 months have been slow by Infy’s lofty standards. What in your opinion needs to be fixed immediately in order to get back the company to industry-leading growth?This has been a tough year for everyone with growth slowing and severe commoditization. Infy’s performance must be seen not just in absolute terms but in the context of the industry. Vishal has already commented on our performance and what he and the team will do. I personally believe we have to more aggressively move investments and our brightest people from more commoditized areas towards our best growth prospects which are in areas such as digital, cyber security, AI, IOT and so on. Our job as a board is to support management in moving much more quickly on the many opportunities we have.Will you reduce your other board commitments now that you’re taking up this role? Will you remain chairman at BoB?The transformation of BoB is also a work in progress. (P.S.) Jayakumar and his team have worked really hard and we are seeing the green shoots of their labour. I would love to see it through if that’s what the government also wishes.","Ravi Venkatesan, who was appointed as Infosys co-chairman Thursday, says the idea of Infosys is a powerful one and it’s important that it continues to flourish",04:46,"Ravi Venkatesan: In turbulent weather, it only helps to get a co-pilot" +2017-04-19,"New York: Facebook does innovation to serve “everyone” in the community and not just the “high end”, its chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has said in an apparent swipe at Snapchat boss’s reported “poor countries” remark that triggered a controversy in India. “I think one thing that people probably don’t think about as much as we do is innovation to serve everyone in the community, not just the high end, right?,” Zuckerberg told Tech Crunch on the sidelines of the annual Facebook developer conference (F8) at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California on Tuesday. When asked about the perception of Facebook being less innovative, Zuckerberg said, “I guess I’m not that worried about that. I mean, I feel like we do different kinds of work in different areas. I mean, I think certainly, no one who looks at the solar-powered planes that we’re building or the satellites that were making, and thinks that that stuff isn’t interesting.” Zuckerberg, 32, said we focus on a lot of things like Facebook Lite. It’s up to 200 million people in like a year...I tend to worry more and think more about the substance of what our community actually wants, Tech Crunch reported. Snapchat is strongly denying allegations by a former employee Anthony Pompliano, who alleged in a lawsuit that Spiegel had once shot down his suggestion to pursue growth in certain international markets. Pompliano alleged that Spiegel said Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India and Spain. Snapchat had refuted the reported claims of a former employee who alleged that its CEO Evan Spiegel made negative comments about the Indian market, saying the multimedia mobile app is for everyone and the company is “grateful” to its Indian users. Spiegels remarks caused an uproar in India where users are quickly uninstalling the Snapchat app.","Facebook does innovation to serve ‘everyone’ in the community, says Mark Zuckerberg in the face of Snapchat boss’s reported ‘poor countries remark ",15:05,"Facebook for ‘everyone’ and not just high end, says Mark Zuckerberg " +2017-04-20,"Singapore: It’s not often that the International Monetary Fund warns of a risk to global financial stability at its spring meeting in Washington, and almost immediately evidence jumps out of a bank earnings report in Mumbai.That’s what happened on Wednesday. The IMF released analysis showing an alarming buildup of vulnerable corporate debt—the kind where operating profit is falling short of interest payments—in India, Indonesia, China, Turkey and Brazil. And right on cue, Yes Bank Ltd, an Indian lender that raised fresh money from equity investors only last month, reported a near-doubling of its gross non-performing assets to 1.52% at the end of March, from 0.85% in December.India has many troubled state-run lenders; Yes Bank is not one of them. The spike in its soured loans is due to the cement units of Jaiprakash Associates Ltd. The builder of India’s sole Formula One track is a distressed borrower with a US currency bond due in September that’s trading below 42 cents on the dollar. Its cement assets are in the process of being sold to billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla, so Yes Bank will probably get repaid after all.Still, corporate leverage is a worry for emerging markets like India precisely because a disproportionately large chunk of it can be found on rickety balance sheets like Jaiprakash’s. The obligations of companies that have an interest coverage ratio of less than one account for 22% of total debt in India, 17.5% in Indonesia, and almost 13% in China.Worse, as the IMF notes, a rise in global risk premiums alone would add $135 billion to this weak tail of debt distribution. Protectionism is the other way for the back end to get longer. The Trump administration’s trade policies should matter less to commodity exporters such as Russia or Saudi Arabia, but China’s corporate debt profile could weaken sharply.Also read: New RBI rules on provisioning, bad loans seen taking a toll on banks Luckily for Indonesia, its banking system is in reasonably good shape. India, South Africa, Russia and China face a double whammy. Their lenders may not have enough profit—or capital—to absorb a further souring of corporate debt. After making additional loan-loss provisions, between 45 and 77% of corporate loan assets in these markets would be with banks that have Tier 1 capital ratios below 10%.When it comes to company profitability, the weak tail of debt is already wagging the dog in India. If it grows any longer because of risk premiums or protectionism, other emerging economies may not be all that safe either. Bloomberg",Corporate leverage is a worry for emerging markets like India precisely because a disproportionately large chunk of it can be found on rickety balance sheets ,13:06,Beware the weak debt tail wagging emerging markets +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: Mortgage lender Dewan Housing Finance Corp. Ltd (DHFL) plans to sell a majority stake in its Aadhar Housing Finance Ltd unit, two people aware of the development said. Aadhar Housing Finance, which provides housing loans for low- and middle-income customers, had a loan book of Rs1,736 crore as of 31 March 2016. DHFL has hired investment bank Rothschild to find a buyer, one of the two persons said on condition of anonymity.International Finance Corp. (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, holds about a 20% stake in Aadhar Housing.“The process has been just launched and it is too early to talk about potential investors. But, there would be serious interest from private equity investors,” the second person said, also on condition of anonymity. It was too early to talk about valuation, but it could be anywhere between 1.5-3 times the loan book, he added.Established in 2011, Aadhar Housing has operations in 13 states including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar, which account for 72% of India’s population, according to the company website. It lends to those with income levels of between Rs60,000 and Rs6 lakh per annum. Home loans are capped at Rs25 lakh. In FY15, Aadhar Housing’s loan book stood at Rs933 crore.Aadhar disbursed Rs1,032 crore in the first nine months of FY17.An email, text messages and several calls made to a DHFL spokesperson did not elicit any response. An email sent to IFC also did not elicit any response. A Rothschild spokesperson declined to comment.Housing credit growth slowed to 16% from a year earlier, taking overall housing credit to Rs13.7 trillion in the year ended 31 March from Rs12.4 trillion in the previous year, according to a March report by rating agency ICRA Ltd.The affordable housing segment is likely to continue to grow at a faster pace than the industry average, supported by the government’s efforts to address supply, demand and affordability issues. Higher allocations by the government, providing infrastructure status to affordable housing projects and extension of the credit-linked subsidy scheme, which, coupled with the current low-to-moderate penetration levels, are likely to help growth in the affordable housing segment, the ICRA report added.With the prospects of the luxury real estate market remaining bleak, more builders are shifting their focus to the affordable housing sector in India, which may create increased revenue for housing finance firms in India. Besides, the government’s push for affordable housing also created a boom in this space. A new credit-linked subsidy scheme for the middle-income group with a budget of Rs1,000 crore has been launched by the Union government. As part of its vision of ‘Housing for All by 2020’, credit-linked subsidy scheme was launched under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana programme targeted at the middle-income group earning as much as Rs18 lakh a year.Against the backdrop of increased demand in affordable housing , a handful of leading home financiers are raising funds. Discussions are on with private equity (PE) investors to raise money to meet expansion plans.In February, Mumbai-based Home First Finance Co. India Pvt. Ltd said private equity firm True North was in advanced talks to acquire a majority stake in Home First Finance for around $100 million. Shubham Housing Development Finance Co. Pvt. Ltd is looking to raise around $100 million from PE funds, as the company looks to increase its loan portfolio and expand its network nationally, Mint reported last year.Aspire Home Finance Corp. Ltd, the mortgage lending unit of Motilal Oswal Group, is also in the market to raise funds.Expanding its presence in a segment that offers loans for low-cost houses, IFC announced its plan to invest in three housing finance firms—Aspire Home Finance, Micro Housing Finance Corp., and Aptus Value Housing Finance India Ltd—through non-convertible debentures.The US-based PE fund Carlyle had purchased New Silk Route-controlled financial services firm Destimoney in February 2015, which also resulted in an indirect acquisition of a 49% stake in PNB Housing Finance Ltd.",Dewan Housing Finance has hired investment bank Rothschild to find a buyer for its 80% stake in Aadhar Housing Finance,08:47,Dewan Housing Finance may sell majority stake in Aadhar Housing Finance +2017-04-20,"Mumbai: The Indian government and the Reserve Bank of India had not yet reached an agreement on a new plan to clean up the record troubled debt accumulated at the country’s lenders, S.S. Mundra, a deputy governor at the central bank, said on Thursday.Mundra, in an interview with CNBC TV18, added it would be “difficult to put a timeline” on when consensus could be reached, but said it “could be very near”.Investors have been waiting for India to come up with a new plan on how to deal with almost $150 billion stressed assets at banks after finance minister Arun Jaitley said last month it would soon announce new action.Mundra said among the considerations would be how to provide more capital for the banks, making it important to get consensus from the government, which owns majority stakes in nearly two dozen lenders that together dominate India’s banking system. Reuters","RBI deputy governor S.S. Mundra says it is ‘difficult to put a timeline’ on when the consensus be reached over bad debt cleanup plan, but it ‘could be very near’",16:49,"Govt, RBI have not agreed on bad debt cleanup plan: S.S. Mundra" +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s ‘prompt corrective action’ (PCA) framework suggests a greater willingness to regulatory action to address problems of struggling banks, Fitch Ratings said on Thursday. However, its implementation is only likely to be effective if it is matched by credible plans to address banks’ significant asset quality issues and capital shortages, it said. The RBI has tightened the thresholds—for capital ratios, non-performing loans (NPLs), profitability and leverage—at which banks enter the PCA framework. “This appears to be an acknowledgement of the significant asset quality stress in the system and that more banks are in need of regulatory intervention,” the US-based agency said. It said PCA was previously viewed as an extraordinary step, which the RBI urged banks to make great efforts to avoid. That now looks likely to change. “More than half of state-owned banks would breach at least one of the new thresholds, mainly owing to high NPLs, based on their latest financial reports,” it said. ALSO READ: Govt, RBI have not agreed on bad debt cleanup plan: S.S. MundraThe gross NPAs of public sector banks have risen from Rs5.02 lakh crore at the end of March 2016 to Rs6.06 lakh crore in December 2016. The new PCA framework will be invoked on the basis of the banks’ 2016-17 financials. The RBI has also given itself greater discretion in terms of the measures it can use to intervene in banks once they fall under the PCA framework, which suggests it has recognised a need to take corrective action at an earlier stage when banks run into difficulties. Fitch said the previous PCA, in contrast, explicitly reserved the most interventionist actions for banks that had breached more extreme thresholds. “It is possible that intervention could involve forcing banks to conserve capital, if other actions do not address problems. The risk of non-performance on bank capital instruments may, therefore, have risen,” it said, adding the actual impact of the new rules will depend on how the RBI uses them. The RBI has recently tightened the PCA rules requiring regulatory action on lenders if they fall short of capital or exceed bad loan limits. According to PCA framework, banks are assessed on three grounds—asset quality, profitability and capital ratios. Not meeting the requirements in any of these parameters could lead to RBI action on banks. The actions could include stricter norms for lending, branch expansion, management change and asset reduction. “These circulars might weigh on bank earnings in the next round of reports. Should the additional disclosures reveal weaknesses that are greater than expected, there could be further pressure on the banks’ Viability Ratings,” the agency said. Under the amended PCA norms the scope for possible regulatory actions has been broadened, but it remains uncertain to what extent the RBI will use the tools it has just made available, it added: “The RBI may use the PCA framework to identify weak banks as candidates for mergers. State Bank of India took over five smaller lenders earlier this month, and further consolidation could be part of the overall strategy to clean up the banking system. However, mergers would also require the support of the government,” Fitch said.",Fitch Ratings says implementation of RBI’s PCA is only likely to be effective if it is matched by credible plans to address banks’ significant asset quality issues ,17:33,RBI’s PCA norm for greater regulatory action on banks: Fitch +2017-04-20,"Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday.The 6-member monetary policy committee (MPC) which had unanimously decided to keep the repo rate unchanged at 6.25% in early April, had raised a secondary rate called the reverse repo rate, which is used to drain excess funds from banks.The MPC, which aims to bring down inflation to 4% in the medium term, maintained its hawkish stance on inflation, with most members expressing concern over upside risks to core inflation.One member, M. D. Patra, the executive director of the RBI, and in charge of monetary policy, favoured an increase in the repo rate by 25 basis points as a pre-emptive move to curb inflation pressures.But Patra finally agreed with the rest of the panel on holding the rate unchanged for now. Reuters",RBI’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged ,18:12,RBI’s monetary policy minutes show inflation primary concern +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: Private sector lenders Yes Bank Ltd and IndusInd Bank Ltd on Wednesday reported a sharp rise in their quarterly bad loan provisioning, eroding profits, after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) advised lenders to follow stricter standard asset provisioning and disclosure rules.The additional provisioning pertains to their exposure to the Jaiprakash Associates Ltd cement assets that are being purchased by UltraTech Cement Ltd, said three people aware of the matter. Other banks which have the same exposure are also likely to report a jump in their provisions in the March quarter. However, these provisions are likely to be written back as the UltraTech-Jaiprakash deal will be completed by the end of this quarter, they said. UltraTech has agreed to buy Jaiprakash Associates’ cement assets for Rs16,189 crore.ALSO READ: Yes Bank first casualty in RBI’s rule to pull out bad loan skeletonsYes Bank reported a doubling of gross non-performing assets (NPAs) to Rs2,018 crore in the March quarter, as it had to set aside an additional Rs228 crore to cover potential loan losses. Yes Bank’s gross NPAs were at 1.52% at the end of the March quarter and net NPAs were at 0.81%.“The increase in NPA and consequent provision is in conformity with the divergences observed by the RBI as per its compliance process” mentioned in the RBI circular on Tuesday, a Yes Bank statement said. According to the RBI circular, banks have to make disclosures if their asset classification and provisioning diverge from the central bank norms.“As of 31 March 2017, the impact of divergences overall is at Rs1,040 crore on which we have made 25% provisioning. This includes one borrower exposure of Rs911 crore towards a Delhi-based cement company. However, this is a performing asset which has been servicing interest regularly. We expect to recover the amount in the near term,” said Rana Kapoor, managing director and chief executive officer, Yes Bank.Despite the higher provisions, Yes Bank’s net profit for the quarter ended 31 March rose 30% to Rs914 crore from a year ago. Net interest income, or the income that a bank earns by giving loans, increased 32% to Rs1,639.70 crore. This comes on the heels of a strong loan book growth of 34.7% and deposit growth of 28% during the quarter.
“Yes Bank has negatively surprised by almost doubling on gross non-performing assets during Q4, which is likely to overshadow its strong operational performance and strong capital position. Thus, the sentiments are likely to turn weak in short term,” said Lalitabh Shrivastawa, associate vice-president, research, for banking, financial services and insurance, at Sharekhan.IndusInd Bank reported a 21% rise in net profit to Rs751 crore during the quarter, even as it saw its provisions double to Rs430 crore on account of RBI’s latest disclosure and provisioning norms. Gross NPAs rose 8.57% to Rs1,054.87 crore at the end of the March quarter from Rs971.62 crore in the preceding quarter. “We have provided Rs122 crore against a M&A (mergers and acquisitions) case in the cement sector on advice from the RBI. The repayment is due in June 2017, which we are sure is going to happen,” said Romesh Sobti, managing director and CEO, IndusInd Bank.Yes Bank shares edged down 0.03% and IndusInd Bank shares fell 0.63% on a day the BSE’s benchmark Sensex inched up 0.06% to 29,336.57 points.According to Sobti, the bank has closed its third three-year plan and is going to start on its fourth such plan, where it plans to double its presence as well as its profits by March 2020. The bank aims to have a microfinance portfolio of Rs10,000 crore and its rural finance business will contribute 10% of the overall earnings in this period.“Our plan has not taken into account any inorganic play during this period. We are, however, open to inorganic growth as well. We are looking at various opportunities including microfinance,” Sobti said.“IndusInd Bank results were largely in line, and would have been termed strong if not for the one-off provision impact of Rs122 crore on a standard asset exposure. The ability to outperform industry growth as well as maintain less than 1% gross NPA is commendable, and with its strong management and performance delivery, the bank should be attractive for long-term investors,” said Shrivastawa.",Yes Bank and IndusInd Bank’s Q4 results showed surge in bad loans and provisions following RBI’s new asset quality rules and exposure to Jaiprakash Associates,04:40,"Yes Bank, IndusInd bad loan provisions rise on exposure to Jaiprakash Associates"
+2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: New RBI guidelines on standard asset provisioning and disclosure of details regarding non-performing assets (NPAs) may create difficulties for Indian banks, thanks to additional provisioning requirements, analysts estimate. Public sector banks are likely to see a 5-15% impact on their earnings going ahead, while private sector lenders would see their earnings hurt by 1-2% due to the new norms, Credit Suisse said in a report on Wednesday. Prior to this advisory, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) required banks to set aside 0.4% as provision against standard assets. The RBI on Tuesday had advised banks to consider setting aside higher provisions even for good loans in stressed sectors.According to Credit Suisse analysts, the hit on profitability has been calculated on a 50 basis points (bps) increase in provisioning owing to the RBI guidelines. The central bank specifically red-flagged the telecom industry, and asked bank boards to review their exposure to the sector by 30 June and consider making provisions at higher rates “so that necessary resilience is built in the balance sheets should the stress reflect on the quality of exposure to the sector at a future date”. According to data available with the RBI, bank exposure to the telecom sector was Rs82,200 crore at the end of February.In a report that Nomura released on Wednesday, analysts note that the risk on the telecom sector is likely to be limited owing to the expected consolidation, with the merger of Vodafone Group Plc and Idea Cellular Ltd. Weaker companies like GTL Infrastructure Ltd have already been classified as non-performing assets. In the case of Reliance Communications Ltd, most of the debt is from foreign banks which limits the impact on Indian banks, while in case of Aircel, even though the research firm sees risk, it is not big enough to change much for the sector. “This, in our view, would lead to faster recognition of future asset quality issues and will help avoid the cliff effect of large and lumpy provisions,” Kotak Institutional Equities Research said in a report on Wednesday.“This approach is closer to Ind-AS (to be applicable from April 2018 CHK onwards) which requires a dynamic approach to provisioning based on expected credit losses, instead of the current system based on days-past-due,” the Kotak report said.In addition to these norms, the regulator has also asked banks to disclose any major divergence in reporting of NPAs, when compared with what it had asked banks to do under the supervisory processes. In situations like the asset quality review (AQR), the central bank had asked lenders to classify certain accounts as NPAs even though the banks had classified them as standard.These norms have already started having an impact on bank results for the quarter ended 31 March. Private sector lenders IndusInd Bank and Yes Bank both reported increased provisions owing to the RBI directions on NPA disclosure.",Credit Suisse report says PSU banks are likely to see a 5-15% and private banks 1-2% impact on quarterly results due to new RBI rules on bad loans and provisions,04:40,"New RBI rules on provisioning, bad loans seen taking a toll on banks" +2017-04-19,"New Delhi: The government and the RBI on Wednesday gave time till 30 April for “commensurate deposits” by people who have declared their unaccounted income under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Deposit Scheme (PMGKDS) that allowed parking money in non-interest bearing deposits for four years. The extension of time till 30 April has also been given to banks for uploading details into the RBI’s E-Kuber system. The PMGKDS, which opened on 17 December last year, provided a last chance to holders of undisclosed income to come clean by paying tax and penalty. The scheme closed on 31 March. In a press release, the RBI said, “It has now been decided by the government of India, in case of persons who had filed the declaration by depositing tax, surcharge and penalty under PMGKDS on or before March 31, to allow extension of time till April 30 for banks to upload details into RBI’s E-Kuber system and for depositors to make commensurate deposits, if not already done.” “The date of deposit and uploading would not be extended beyond April 30, 2017,” it added. Separately, the finance ministry said in a notification in this regard, “The effective date of opening of the bonds ledger account shall be the date of receipt of deposits by the Reserve Bank of India from the authorised banks; wherein the due tax, surcharge and penalty has been received till March 31, 2017.” Earlier the “effective date” of opening of the bonds ledger account was the date of tender of cash or the date of realisation of draft or cheque or transfer through electronic transfer. Under the scheme, a person having undisclosed income in the form of cash or deposit in an account maintained with a specified entity (which includes banks and post office) could come clean by declaring such income and pay tax, surcharge and penalty totaling in all to 49.9% of such declared income. Also, a mandatory deposit of 25% of such income was to be made in the zero-interest bearing PMGKDS for four years.","Govt, RBI give time till 30 April for ’commensurate deposits’ by people who have declared their unaccounted income under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Deposit Scheme ",22:10,Deposits under income amnesty scheme can be made till 30 April +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: Realty major Lodha Developers will invest about Rs4,300 crore this fiscal on construction to boost deliveries of housing units and also plans to launch 8-9 new projects in Mumbai, Pune and London. The Mumbai-based Lodha Developers invested Rs3,700 crore in the last fiscal on construction and has increased outlay for the 2017-18 fiscal to boost deliveries, its managing director Abhishek Lodha said. “We will launch 8-9 projects this financial year, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region and one each in Pune and London market,” he said in an interview. Asked about the investment, Lodha said the company will increase its total construction spend this fiscal to Rs4,100-4,300 crore on existing and new projects from Rs3,700 crore in the 2016-17 fiscal. The investment will be funded largely through internal accruals as the company expects to receive Rs8,000-9,000 crore from customers during this fiscal. The collections from customers stood at Rs7,000 crore during 2016-17. “During last fiscal, we delivered 7,200 homes which is a big record for the country in itself. The company is targeting to increase delivery of homes in excess of 8,000 units,” Lodha said. Lodha group will focus on affordable housing sector which is expected to gain momentum after the government accorded infrastructure status to this segment in the Budget this year. “We sold 4,000 homes in affordable category in 2016-17 and we are targeting sale of 6,000 low-cost homes this fiscal,” Lodha said. The infrastructure status to affordable housing will boost availability of cheaper finance for such projects. Besides infra status, the government has offered interest subsidy for prospective home buyers and relaxed various norms including built-up area for developers of low-cost homes. Lodha group’s sales bookings rose by 30% last fiscal to about Rs8,500 crore on the back of better sales in the domestic market and foray into London. “Our new sales bookings grew by 30% last fiscal at around Rs8,300-8,500 crore. Out of this, about Rs7,000 crore sales were from Indian market and rest from London where we launched our first project,” Lodha group’s MD said. The group’s sales bookings stood at about Rs6,400 crore during the 2015-16 fiscal, all from Indian market, he added. Lodha said sales were affected during November 2016 to January 2017 because of poor demand post notes ban. “Sales have bounced back in February and March. We will have to see the sales number of April-May to get to know whether this demand is sustainable,” Lodha said. On the London market, he said the group launched its first project ‘Lincoln Square’ in London last year and the sales have been good despite Brexit. The construction work has started and completion is expected in the next year. Asked about the company’s debt, Lodha said it is currently around Rs14,000 crore. The overall debt level and interest cost of debt is expected to reduce. Lodha group is currently developing around 45 million sq ft area and has over 30 ongoing projects across London, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune and Hyderabad. It has a land bank of 350 million sq ft for future development.","Lodha Developers MD Abhishek Lodha says the firm will launch 8-9 projects in FY18, of which 6-7 will be in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, one in Pune and one in London ",15:45,"Lodha Developers to invest Rs4,300 crore in construction to boost deliveries" +2017-04-23,"New Delhi: The government is considering steps to ensure transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines amid public outrage over a US carrier forcefully offloading a passenger from a packed flight. Overbooking of a flight has been a long-standing practice in the airline industry as seats are considered as a “time sensitive and perishable” product once the flight takes off. While the practice is aimed at ensuring all seats are occupied in a flight, there have been concerns over the possibility of a passenger with a valid ticket unable to travel in case of seats being oversold. The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking by airlines, according to a senior official. Right now, there is no particular framework or system to have a clear understanding about the practice of overbooking. Various ideas, including measures that can be put in place for cases where the ticket of a passenger who does not show up at the airport can be given to another passenger, are being discussed, the official said.Another idea could be the possibility of auctioning the overbooked tickets in a transparent manner within a specified timeframe before take-off of the particular flight, the official added. Preliminary discussions on ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking air tickets have been held among the ministry and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) officials. Earlier this month, a passenger with valid ticket was forcibly evicted from an aircraft by the US-based United Airlines, sparking global outrage. Following the incident, the practice of overbooking has become a talking point. Last week, global airlines’ grouping IATA said carriers should be permitted to continue with the overbooking practice as seats in a flight are a time sensitive and perishable product.“Airlines should be allowed to continue long-established overbooking practices. The airline business is unique in that once a flight takes off, the seats on that flight are no longer available for sale; it is a time-sensitive, perishable product,” IATA had said. It had also said airlines can, with a degree of certainty, overbook a flight, considering the number of no- shows expected. Official data show that more passengers are being denied boarding by Indian carriers on account of multiple reasons, including possible overbooking. Under Indian regulations, a passenger can be denied boarding for a particular reason and provided with an alternative option subject to certain conditions. The DGCA does not make public specific reasons for a passenger being denied boarding by a domestic carrier. Industry experts said overbooking can well be a factor, apart from security issues. As per the latest data available with the aviation regulator, a total of 18,242 passengers were denied boarding by various airlines during April 2016 and February 2017, nearly double the number compared to the year-ago period.",The civil aviation ministry is looking at ways to bring in transparency in the practice of overbooking seats by airlines,12:02,Overbooking flights: Civil aviation ministry pushes for transparent mechanism +2017-04-19,"Past mistakes tend to come back to haunt you at the most inopportune moment, and Yes Bank’s financial results are a case in point. The private lender reported a 169% rise in gross bad loans for the fourth quarter and a resultant 66% increase in provisions. Recall that the March quarter of 2015-16 was the worst in terms of asset quality for banks.The stock has gained a massive 39% so far this year, fuelled partly by the news and then subsequent success of its qualified institutional placement (QIP). This impressive rise now seems like an overkill and analysts are already expecting a correction.In Yes Bank’s case, the indiscretion pertains to a single borrower which the bank should have labelled as non-performing asset (NPA) in the previous financial year. What made the lender do it now is the new rule put in place by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday that mandates banks to disclose deviations in the asset quality assessment of the central bank and the lender in question.If the mandated provisioning by the RBI exceeds 15% of published profit after tax of FY16 or additional gross NPA exceeds 15% of the published figure, the lenders have to disclose the same in full in their financial statements for FY17. If the RBI’s asset quality review brought to light a massive pool of decaying loans, Tuesday’s rule makes sure any residual bad loan skeletons come in full view of investors.In Yes Bank’s case, this meant an additional slippage of Rs911.5 crore in the March quarter. But the lender still saw healthy profit growth of 30% from the year-ago period because of a sustained robust growth in core income. The bank’s core metrics including loan growth, net interest income and even net interest margin held up. This perhaps was the saving grace of the quarterly results.The stock trades at a price-to-book value multiple of 3.12 of the estimated earnings of FY18 and for these valuations to be justified, the bank will have to show a quick turnaround in its asset quality.Ever since RBI triggered widespread recognition of stressed loans through its asset quality review (AQR) in 2015, the unease that banks have not revealed the rot in loan books in its entirety has set in. The quarterly results of Yes Bank deepen this unease.","Yes Bank reports 169% rise in gross bad loans for the March quarter and 66% increase in provisions, following RBI’s new asset quality rules",20:41,Yes Bank first casualty in RBI’s rule to pull out bad loan skeletons +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: Cement maker ACC Ltd on Friday reported an 8.9% fall in net profit for the quarter ended 31 March, hurt in part by higher costs. Consolidated net profit for the quarter fell to Rs211.06 crore from Rs231.70 crore a year earlier. Consolidated sales in the quarter rose 9.1% to Rs3,556.70 crore from Rs3,259.95 crore a year earlier. The company follows a January-December financial year.The results, however, beat analyst estimates, helped by higher sales. Four analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected ACC to report consolidated net profit of Rs166.4 crore on sales of Rs3152.5 crore. Revenue in its largest cement business rose 9.3% to Rs3,401.27 crore, helped in part by a price hike, while those in its ready-mix concrete business rose about 10% to Rs285 crore. During the quarter, the company launched two cement products ACC Suraksha and ACC HPC (high performance cement). The company said its total expenses during the March-ended quarter rose 11.8% to Rs3,404.41 crore. Increased government spending on infrastructure development, housing, roads, railways, and irrigation is likely to boost cement demand in the rest of 2017, ACC said in a statement.Separately, ACC said it has appointed Surendra Mehta as company secretary and head of compliance with immediate effect. ACC’s shares closed down 1.03% to Rs1,496.75 a share on the BSE on Friday.","ACC’s net profit for the quarter fell to Rs211.06 crore from Rs231.70 crore a year earlier while its sales in the quarter rose 9.1% to Rs3,556.70 crore from Rs3,259.95 crore a year earlier",21:57,ACC profit falls 8.9% but sales beat estimates +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: Rating agency Crisil has reported a muted net profit at Rs 73.34 crore for the March quarter, largely due to adverse forex movement and subdued growth in the mid-corporate and MSME segments. Its March 2016 net profit stood at Rs 73.15 crore. Net was impacted by Rs 11.9 crore due to adverse forex movement against a gain of Rs 3.31 crore in the year-ago period. Its consolidated income grew 12% to Rs 402.23 crore, the company said in a statement. “Growth for the quarter was driven by our research segment on account of opportunities in risk & analytics such as model validation, stress testing and regulatory change management,” the company said, adding the ratings business witnessed modest growth despite a continued weak investment climate and soft credit growth.",Rating agency Crisil has reported a muted net profit in March quarter at Rs 73.34 crore while its March 2016 net profit stood at Rs73.15 crore,17:09,Crisil Q4 profit stays flat at Rs 73 crore +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The income tax department has slapped a fresh notice on British firm Cairn Energy, seeking up to Rs30,700 crore in penalties for its alleged failure to pay Rs10,247 crore capital gains tax on time. Within weeks of tax tribunal ITAT upholding levy of retrospective tax, the income tax department first sent a fresh demand note of Rs10,247 crore and another show cause notice asking as to why penalty should not be levied for its failure in paying tax on time and filing of returns. Senior tax department officials said Cairn Energy has sought 10 more days to reply to the show cause seeking levy of penalty. “Capital gains was due on Cairn Energy on March 31, 2007, and due date for filing return was December 2007. But the company filed return by 31 March 2014” after the tax department on 24 January 2014 sent a draft assessment order, an official told PTI. The assessment, the official said, got completed in January 2016 and a final order was issued raising a tax demand of Rs 10,247 crore and another Rs18,800 crore in interest for 10 years. The ITAT, however, in its 9 March order held that while Cairn Energy was liable to pay tax on the 2006 transfer of India assets to newly created Cairn India, prior to its listing, interest cannot be charged as the demand was raised using retrospective tax legislation. The official said the ITAT had not barred levy of penalties and so the fresh notice is being sent. The Income Tax Act provides for penalties of 100 per cent to 300 per cent of the tax due, the official said, adding that the notice sent does not mention of the quantum of penalties the tax department is seeking. “It is a show cause kind of a notice and further action will follow based on the response the company files,” the official said, adding that the tax department has six months from the passage of ITAT order to impose penalty. The penalties are being sought under Section 271 (1)(c) of the Income Tax Act for failing to pay tax on capital gains made. A Cairn Energy spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comments. The company had earlier this month in a notice to shareholders acknowledged that it had received an amended tax demand on 31 March 2017 that also talked about late payment of interest to be charged from February 2016—30 days following the date of the final assessment order.The final assessment order did not include any penalties which may also be applied to the final assessment (potentially up to 300% of any tax finally agreed), it had said. Following the January 2014 draft assessment order, the tax department had restrained the company from selling the residual 9.8% stake it holds in Cairn India. Cairn Energy had in 2011 sold Cairn India to Vedanta.The company had in the shareholder notice stated that it strongly contests the final assessment order and that the enforcement of any tax liability deemed due by the tax department will be limited to India assets, which had a value of about $ 750 million as of 31 December 2016.These assets comprised principally Cairn’s residual shareholding in Cairn India. Cairn also said that it had on 11 March 2015 filed a notice of dispute under The UK-India Investment Treaty in order to protect its legal position and shareholder interests.","Income tax department slaps fresh notice on Cairn Energy seeking Rs30,700 crore in penalties for its alleged failure to pay Rs10,247 crore capital gains tax on time",16:49,"I-T dept seeks Rs30,000 crore penalty from Cairn for non-payment of tax" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-04-20,"Abu Dhabi:Crude-producing countries reached an initial agreement to extend output cuts, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister said on Thursday, as persistently high stockpiles and resurgent output from US shale fields weigh on prices.The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and other major suppliers have failed, after three months of limiting production, to achieve their target of reducing oil inventories below the five-year historical average, Saudi Arabia’s Khalid Al-Falih said. The producers pledged to reduce output for six months starting in January.“Although there is a high level of commitment, we haven’t reached our goal, which is to reach the five-year average,” Al-Falih said. “There is an initial agreement that we might be obligated to extend to get to our target.” Countries participating in the cuts have yet to reach a consensus on prolonging their agreement into the second half of the year, and an extension would not necessarily be for an additional six months. he said.Opec and other producers, including Russia, agreed in December to pump less oil in an effort to counter a global glut. Output shows signs of rebounding in the US, where explorers have added rigs for the past 13 weeks, data from Baker Hughes Inc. show. Opec will decide at a meeting on 25 May whether to prolong its pledged cuts into the second half, the group’s secretary-general Mohammad Barkindo said on Wednesday. Gulf cooperation council countries agreed to push for an extension of cuts in a meeting on Wednesday, Oman oil minister Mohammed Al Rumhy said. The GCC comprises Opec members Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Oman and Bahrain. GCC states are participating in the current deal to cap output.Iran and Venezuela, both members of Opec, have expressed support for an extension of the production cuts, Al Rumhy said. Iran’s oil minister made a commitment to freeze output at 3.8 million barrels a day for the rest of the year on the assumption the cuts are extended beyond June, Kuwait oil minister Issam Almarzooq told reporters.","Opec and other producers, including Russia, agreed in December to pump less oil in an effort to counter a global glut",17:58,Major oil producers reach agreement to extend output cuts +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The oil ministry has denounced the decision of some petrol pump operators to keep outlets closed on Sundays, saying such a move will be of inconvenience to the public.“@PetroleumMin neither endorses nor approves of move by a small section of dealers to keep their petrol pumps closed on Sundays,” the ministry said in a series of tweets. Such closure, the ministry said, “by a small section of dealers will lead to inconvenience for the general public”.The tweets, which were retweeted by oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan, also stated that major dealer associations are not participating in the closure.“Major dealers’ federations have clarified that they don’t endorse any closure of petrol pumps on any day,” the oil ministry tweeted.On the issue of Modi’s slogan, the ministry said, “The Prime Minister in #MannKiBaat appealed to People of India not to use fuel once a week and not to dealers to close their pumps on Sundays.”The All India Petroleum Dealers Association, which claims to represent 80% of the 53,224 petrol pumps of public sector oil companies, has said not participating in the closure exercise. The association’s president Ajay Bansal said not participating in the closure.A few petrol pump associations had called for petrol pumps to remain shut on Sundays in eight states following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal to cut down on fuel consumption. Southern states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, parts of Karnataka—mostly around Bengaluru—and some areas of Maharashtra, especially Mumbai, may see petrol pump owners down their shutters on Sundays beginning 14 May to press for higher commission on petrol and diesel they sell.“Our members in 22 states are not going on any protests,” he clarified, adding that the association has called a meeting of the general body in the next few weeks to discuss the agreement PSU oil companies had signed with it in November last year to consider their demand for raising fuel margins.",Oil ministry says the move to keep petrol pumps closed on Sundays will be of much inconvenience to the public,18:24,Oil ministry red-flags ‘Sunday Closed’ move of petrol pump operators +2017-04-20,"New Delhi/Mumbai: India’s newest petrochemicals maker is seeking to sell half its $4.6 billion facility to Saudi Arabian Oil Co., according to people with knowledge of the matter.Formal talks between ONGC Petro additions Ltd (OPaL). and the world’s biggest oil exporter, known as Saudi Aramco, will start soon, said the people, who asked not to be named as the information isn’t public. OPaL’s earlier talks with a unit of Kuwait Petroleum Corp. about investing in the project stalled last year, the people said.A spokesman for OPaL was unable to comment. Saudi Aramco and Kuwait Petroleum didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.The investment could help Saudi Aramco strengthen its hand in the world’s largest oil consuming region as it prepares for what may be the biggest-ever initial public offering. India’s per capita consumption of polymer products, which is about a third of the global average, is expected to expand as a growing middle class, increasing income levels and higher urbanization drive growth, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said last month while inaugurating OPaL’s plant.“India’s petrochemical business is booming and Aramco will definitely want to be a part of this growth,” said Vaibhav Chowdhry, an analyst at KR Choksey Shares & Securities Pvt. Ltd. The country’s petrochemical market is expected to grow as fast as 12% annually for next several years, he said.Oil & Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC), which owns the biggest stake in OPaL, entered into a preliminary cooperation agreement in January 2014 with Petrochemical Industries Co., a subsidiary of state-owned Kuwait Petroleum. Talks between OPaL and PIC about the Kuwaiti company investing in the Indian project stalled last year, according to the people. OPaL hosted a team from Saudi Aramco at its plant in Gujarat last month, they said.Rising incomeHigher demand for these products prompted billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd and the nation’s biggest refiner Indian Oil Corp. to expand their petrochemicals businesses. Reliance invested about $19 billion to double the capacity of its petrochemicals unit, while Indian Oil will spend $4.6 billion to add new facilities and expand existing units.Saudi Aramco, which is the biggest supplier of crude oil to India, has shown interest in a proposed 60 million tonnes-a-year refinery and petrochemicals project being planned by Indian state refiners on the nation’s west coast, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on 30 March.The Saudi oil major has already invested in integrated refining, chemicals, marketing and distribution companies in the region. Last month, it bought half of a Malaysian oil refinery and petrochemical plant and signed a deal to provide up to 70% of its crude requirements. Separately, the Saudi oil giant signed a $6 billion oil refinery deal with Indonesia’s PT Pertamina.Dahej plantOPaL’s Rs30,000-crore petrochemical project is a dual-feed cracker with a capacity to produce 1.1 million tonnes a year of ethylene and 400,000 tonnes of propylene, according to its website. The plant, located at the Dahej Special Economic Zone, started production last year and aims to capture 13% of India’s polymer sector by next year, according to its website.While investment in OPaL will allow Aramco to access India’s growing market, the Indian company will be able to use the Saudi company’s export channels to push products in the international market, two of the people said. ONGC has said it intends to hold 26%, with state utility GAIL India Ltd owning 15.5%, after half of OPaL is sold. Bloomberg","Formal talks between ONGC Petro additions Ltd (OPaL), and the world’s biggest oil exporter, Saudi Aramco, will start soon",08:56,India said to woo Aramco for 50% OPaL sale as Kuwait talks stall +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For Grishma, an Indian software designer, President Donald Trump’s review of the visa programme for bringing highly skilled workers into the United States comes at a bad time.Fresh from gaining a master’s degree in Europe, and with an offer of employment from a well-known US design firm, she was well on her way to fulfilling the ambition of many young Indian IT workers—a dream job in America.But as she waits in the H1B visa queue for the green light, she is caught in a bind. “It’s a weird time to be applying, with all the scrutiny,” said Grishma, who gave only her first name for fear of jeopardising her chances of getting a visa.The United States has already suspended the “expedited processing option” for applicants, under which she may have received a visa in weeks. More broadly, uncertainty over the review announced this week has unsettled Grishma and many others like her.She will have to wait until at least around August to learn her fate, but having accepted the US job offer she is not in a position to apply for positions elsewhere, including in Europe. “It’s pretty debilitating,” Grishma told Reuters. “I’d like to start work to mitigate the financial damage.”Trump’s decision was not a huge surprise, given his election campaign pledge to put American jobs first.Also read: H-1B visa curbs—India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USBut the executive order he signed, though vague in many areas, has prompted thousands of foreign workers already in the United States or applying for visas to work there to re-think their plans. Companies who send them also face huge uncertainty.The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme, using it to send computer engineers to service clients in the United States, their largest overseas market.Companies and staff realignExperts say Trump’s order to review visa processes is aimed at firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, which from 2005-14 snagged around 86,000 H1B visas, roughly equivalent to the number of H1B visas the United States issues in total each year.Two industry people aware of the matter said Infosys, India’s no. 2 information technology (IT) services company, is applying for just under 1,000 H1B visas this year, which one of the people said was down from 6,500 applications in 2016 and some 9,000 in 2015.It was not clear whether the sharp reduction in 2017 was in direct response to Trump’s presidency, although the company has said for some time it wanted to cut dependence on “fly-in” staff. TCS, Infosys and Wipro said they would not share data on the number of H1B visas they had applied for this year.With fewer visas going to Infosys, more might become available for smaller IT companies and big US tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft Corp, that typically send in fewer H1B applications each year.US-based immigration lawyer Murali Bashyam, managing partner of Bashyam Spiro LLP which advises and works with small to mid-sized Indian IT firms, said clients had been in contact seeking clarity, while the number of visa applicants had fallen.“I think the reason for that is they get the sense that it’s going to get so much tougher to comply with all of the changes ... that it might not be worth their money,” he said. “There is a fear that radical immigration changes are coming, and if those radical immigration changes come then it could completely change the way IT staffing companies do business.”Bashyam said the number of people on H1B visas already working in the United States who were considering returning to their home country had risen.An engineer working at Cisco, who has been in the United States since 2011, said that three months ago he would not have considered returning to India. But the review of the visa system, and any rule change that revoked the right for his wife to work in the United States on a dependent visa, could force him to change his mind.“If that happens, then I would definitely be interested in going back to India. Even though I’m secure, I don’t want to be in a situation where my wife cannot work,” said the engineer, who declined to be named. “Those who have heavily invested here, who’ve bought houses, property and are still on visas, are afraid.”‘I’m looking eastward’According to Bashyam, some Indians on H1B visas were cancelling plans to return home to visit their families in case they had problems getting back into the United States. “With everything that’s going on, travelling outside the US is the biggest fear for a lot of the H1B workers working in the IT staffing industry,” he said.And the uncertainty is not limited to IT. Trump’s campaign rhetoric around tighter visa rules has led some Indian students considering studying abroad to look beyond the United States, which typically draws in over 1,00,000 Indian students annually.One Canadian official said the number of student visa applications for certain courses in Canada had spiked over 250% since Trump’s election win in November.Akshay Baliga, a management consultant with a H1B visa that is valid until 2018, said he was not considering returning to the United States for work any time soon. “As a professional I’m looking eastward,” said Baliga, now based in India but who earlier studied and lived for years in America. ReutersSunil Nair and Euan Rocha also contributed to this story.","The concerns are particularly acute in India, where IT firms like Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are top beneficiaries of the H1B visa programme",22:43,"Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa review" +2017-04-22,"San Francisco: When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.“It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I’m kind of regretting taking that scholarship,” said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards. Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump’s executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.Also Read: H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at USTheir hope is that merit-based H1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.“I think less random is great,” said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a US citizen soon.H1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The US government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.‘Indentured servants’The H1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country’s population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India’s population — 1.3 billion — and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like “indentured servants,” said Gaurav Mehta, an H1B holder who works in the financial industry. Also Read: Indian techies, IT firms fret as Donald Trump orders US visa reviewMehta has a US-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. “He’s never been to my country,” Mehta said of his son. “But we’ll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear.” The H1 B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.Some H1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H1Bs and green cards based on salary — while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers — would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.In the meantime, H1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.“If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let’s use that as a lens. From that perspective, it’s a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I’d say most entrepreneurial, people,” he said. Reuters","Many of the Indian immigrants waiting for green cards over a decade, welcome Trump’s H1B visa review order as merit-based work visas may increase their chance of green cards",10:19,"Waiting for green cards, Indian H1B visa holders see hope in Donald Trump review" +2017-04-20,"Mumbai: Capacity utilization of generation assets in the power sector continues to drop and scope for improvement in capacity utilization is expected to be limited, highlighting a supply glut in the power sector, according to a Kotak Securities report.“Power demand has grown at a CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) of 3% over the past five years, which means that supply will continue to outstrip demand and keep capacity utilization in check,” Kotak Securities analyst Murtuza Arsiwalla said in an 18 April report. All India power volume, excluding renewable energy, rose 5.5% in the month of March to 101.8 billion units and 4.7% for FY17, according to an Elara Capital report this week. Coal-fired volume rose 6.5% to 83 billion units in March, while plant load factor (PLF) dropped 34 basis points to 63%, the Elara report said. “In March, coal-fired volume is up 6.5% but gas is down 9% and hydro is up by 12%. Government volume is up 8% and private IPP (individual power producer) volume rises by 1,” the report said. India currently has about 320 gigawatt (GW) of installed power capacity compared with peak demand of about 160 GW, and about another 87 GW of assets are under construction. Over 60% of this total installed capacity is coal-based, 16% is in renewable energy, 14% in hydropower, 8% in gas, and the remaining in nuclear and diesel. The private sector owns 44% of the total installed power capacity in the country, while the government controls the remaining. Total loans worth Rs1.2 trillion toward the power sector are currently at risk with an upside risk from cases where power purchase agreement (PPA) tariffs are high, there is an overleveraged parent balance sheet and where PPA rate is unprofitable, according to an 8 March report by JM Financial. About 28,000 megawatt (MW) or 28 GW of power capacity lacks PPAs and about 14GW of these are at a high risk, the report had said. With improved cash flows, the power sector may witness revival in demand by state distribution companies (discoms), but incremental benefits could accrue over the next two-three years, Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd said in a 3 April note.","All India power volume, excluding renewable energy, rose 5.5% in the month of March to 101.8 billion units and 4.7% for FY17, says report",11:39,Power utilization continues to drop due to supply glut: report +2017-05-04,"
The words “data”, “analytics” and “algorithms” are being heard across organizations. Boards are prompting companies to go digital and use analytics for decision making. Even the government is planning to use analytics in its functioning. For instance, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh tracks the progress of key initiatives in his state through descriptive analytics on a visual dashboard.So how exactly does one kick-start an analytics journey in an organization?Organizations that use data effectively focus on the business problems they want to solve using analytics and the decisions that need to be taken with the help of such data. Thus, the two key operating words are “data” and “decisions”. The Gartner Framework on Analytics is a good reference to begin the analytics journey. It shows how data is at the root of all decision making and, based on the quantum of human input involved in decisions, one can classify the different stages of analytics as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive. Further, once the decision is acted upon, more data is generated which is fed back into the database and used in the model. For any organization, there are four important steps for setting this up.Set up the right data flows for the right business needThe first step is to set up the right data flows within those departments which impact growth and cost the most. For some companies this is in the sales function where the interaction with the customers is the highest. In some industrial companies, it may be in the factories with high quantum of operational data, while for yet others, it is in the vendor interactions involving large amounts of purchase and cost information. Examining the reliability and availability of this data at the right time with the right quality, generates the initial agenda for any analytics journey. Enable KPIs and descriptive analyticsThe next step is to convert this data into useful information which can be used for decision making. The focus here is on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which help describe what is happening in the organization and why. While such information was available in the traditional business intelligence (BI) systems, it is now possible to get the same on a real-time basis, at a granular level, with visual dashboards and have it delivered across the hierarchy of the organization. Such analytics is called descriptive and diagnostic analytics. A graphical means of looking at information brings alive the causals in an effective manner and shows the outliers which can be actioned right away. For example, in a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company, one can get daily SKU-wise, bill-wise secondary sales to retailers instead of the earlier brand-level totals, owing to better bandwidth and lower storage costs (SKU stands for stock keeping units). These can then be structured to trigger alerts on an exception basis to enable better performance reviews. Such dashboards can also be rendered on mobile devices and can be deployed to field supervisors to enable their daily reviews. Kick off predictive analytics projectsLower bandwidth costs coupled with cloud computing enables enormous amounts of past data to be now accessible for better predictive analytics. In fact, predictive analytics can act as a base for further scale-up towards algorithmic and artificial intelligence (AI)-led business. Hence it is necessary to set off a few projects in this space to build analytics capability.Typically the easiest and high-impact projects tend to be in the realm of forecasting. This can be in finished goods forecasting for consumer goods companies, raw material price forecasting for commodity-led companies, or predicting market growth, customer loyalty or risk profiles for banking customers, etc. Predictive models are also used at an operational level—predicting breakdowns or downtime in factories and for attrition and retention forecasting in human resources. Setting up action standards, allotting the right resources for the project, and then collecting the relevant data and working along with the right partner helps generate success in such projects. Develop a talent and process cultureIn order to build the analytics capability, it is also necessary to put in place the right governance processes as well as develop the right talent and culture. Letting algorithmic models run on clean data alone will not drive analytics. It is essential to have talent with the right skills like data management, statistical and data processing skills, and business acumen.And finally, such initiatives need to be sponsored right from the top with correct, timely governance and review processes. It is imperative that the end objectives be always clear to all the team members so that one does not get lost during the journey of any new project. Mukesh Kripalani is chief (business process transformation and information technology) at Marico Ltd. The views expressed in the article are personal.","When it comes to analytics, the two operating words are data and decisions",23:18,How to start an analytics journey +2017-04-21,"Bengaluru: Tesla Inc founder and chief executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview.Also Read: Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones“If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Reuters",Elon Musk says his latest company Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices,10:37,Elon Musk plans to link human brains with computers in 4 years: report +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India on Thursday signalled a toughening of it stance in response to the US move to restrict H-1B visas.“It is not just that Indian companies are in the US, several big US companies are in India too,” trade minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “They are earning their margins, they are earning their profits, which go to the US economy. It is a situation which is not where only the Indian companies have to face the US executive order. There are many US companies in India which are doing business for some years now. If this debate has to be expanded, it has to be expanded to include all these aspects. We shall ensure that all these factors are kept in mind.”The minister did not delineate specifics, but one of the options open to India is to toughen scrutiny of royalty payments by the Indian subsidiaries of US companies to their parent firm.Not only does the veiled threat signal a toughening of India’s stance, the move, if implemented, risks escalating into a full-blown trade war that could harm the otherwise warm relationship between the two countries.The trade minister, however, declined to be drawn into a confrontational stance, saying India still preferred a constructive dialogue.Also Read: As US visa troubles deepen, more Indians look to come backSitharaman’s remarks came two days after US President Donald Trump ordered a review of the H-1B visa regime for bringing skilled foreign workers into the US, a move that could undermine technology and outsourcing firms.When asked whether there is a case for India to drag countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for raising barriers to the free movement of professionals, Sitharaman said: “At this stage I can only say that we will ensure that we engage with them constructively. At the same time, I have no hesitation (in) saying that India will ensure that it shall not accept unfair treatment.”At the event, Sitharaman said countries like the US had provided a commitment to the WTO on the number of work visas they would provide, and India can question them if they didn’t live up to the commitment.“The services debate is really very skewed and their treatment of India is at their whims and fancies. The finance minister and the prime minister will be taking up these issues (at appropriate forums),” she said.Also Read: Why Donald Trump’s H1B visa order hurts Sikka but helps CookAt a separate briefing, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay struck a similar note. “There is a mutuality of interest involved between India and the US. There are Indian workers, Indian companies in the US. There are also US companies in India... in the IT sector in India. I can assure you that the implication of the changes that will come in the visa regime will be part of our conversations.”Separately, a surge in royalty outflow has prompted the government to set up an inter-ministerial group, PTI reported on Tuesday.Royalty is paid to a foreign collaborator for transfer of technology, use of brand names or trademarks. To be sure, previously too, the government has threatened to restrict royalty payouts.Before 2009, companies could remit royalty involving foreign technology transfer to the tune of 5% on domestic sales and 8% on exports. The royalty was capped at 1% of domestic sales and 2% of exports in cases where no technology transfer was involved, such as on account of brand value. These limits were abolished in December 2009.Lobby groups US-India Business Council and the Confederation of Indian Industry declined to comment on the issue.",India signals it might take a tougher line in response to H-1B visa curbs put in place by the Donald Trump administration,16:02,"H-1B visa curbs: India talks tough, signals it may hit back at US " +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to launch an all new version of its best selling compact sedan Dzire next month. The company, which has till date sold 13.81 lakh units of the model in the country since its launch in March 2008, on Friday unveiled a sketch of the new Dzire. The model has been a roaring success for the company and has been instrumental in making Maruti Suzuki a strong player in the entry sedan segment.The model has been contributing to around 50% of vehicle sales in the segment. During the last fiscal, Dzire occupied the third slot in the top ten list of passenger vehicles with sale of 1,99,878 units. It was the second best selling model among the passenger vehicles in 2015-16. Its nearest rival Hyundai’s Xcent sold 47,614 units during the last fiscal. Last full model change of the Dzire happened in February 2012. Last year, the company launched the compact sedan with auto gear shift (AGS) technology.","Maruti Suzuki unveils a sketch of its best selling compact sedan Dzire, plans to launch next month",19:15,Maruti Suzuki to launch all new Dzire next month +2017-04-22,"Mumbai: KKR & Co., one of the world’s largest private equity firms, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said.The deal could value New Delhi-based SRL at about Rs5,000 crore ($774 million), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Private equity firms including TPG and Bain Capital were also in talks for a stake in the company, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.The diagnostics company, which claims to be the largest in the South Asian nation, is being spun off from Fortis Healthcare Ltd, India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value. The majority shareholders of Fortis, brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh, will control a 40.6% stake of SRL when its listed, according to an exchange filing in August.Talks between KKR and Fortis are ongoing and could still fall apart, the people said.Representatives for KKR and Fortis declined to comment.The Singhs were seeking a valuation of about Rs6,200 crore for the diagnostic business, a person familiar with the process said last month. The same three private equity firms, as well as IHH Healthcare Bhd, are also among bidders considering an investment in Fortis, the people said. Bloomberg","KKR ’s deal could value New Delhi-based medical-diagnostics company SRL Ltd at about Rs5,000 crore ",18:34,KKR said to be in advanced talks to buy diagnostics firm SRL +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Healthcare major Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices.The company has applied to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) seeking to withdraw two kinds of stents. These are Alpine drug eluting stent and Absorb dissolving stent.An Abbott spokesperson said that following the NPPA’s price ceiling decision, it “examined and re-examined” whether there is a sustainable way to make available two of the latest stent technologies in India.The company took into consideration Alpine drug eluting and the Absorb dissolving stents’ higher manufacturing costs and other associated costs.“We have determined it is not sustainable, and we have applied to the NPPA to withdraw these two stents,” the spokesperson told PTI in an e-mailed statement.The company said that presently, only a very small percentage of patients in India receive Alpine and Absorb stents. “While we are aligned with the government’s intent for broad access to care, we’re disappointed that the NPPA concluded there is no differentiation in coronary stent technology,” the company noted.According to Abbott, it would continue to make available all other XIENCE coronary stent products within the ceiling price set by the NPPA.“Alpine and Absorb will continue to remain available while the government reviews our application. There is no shortage of Abbott stents,” it added.",Abbott has decided to withdraw two types of stents from the Indian market in the wake of drug price regulator NPPA’s move to cap the prices,10:38,Abbott withdraws 2 stent types from India following NPPA’s move to cap prices +2017-04-22,"
New Delhi: ShopClues.com, run by Clues Network Inc., is scaling up the fashion segment on its portal with a focus on non-branded apparel and accessories, as it looks to capture the opportunity in the fast-growing category at a time when its nearest rival Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) is struggling.The company has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months, co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal said. It will spend Rs5-6 crore on the campaign that hit television screens on Friday.As a category, fashion—which includes clothing, footwear and accessories—has seen a surge in demand over the last few years due to heavy discounting by Myntra and Jabong, now owned by Flipkart, and the emergence of fashion-only portals like Voonik, Limeroad and Koovs. The segment is believed to have higher margins than other product categories.“Currently, India’s apparel and lifestyle market is a $92-billion industry. However, according to recent reports, only 2% of that is currently online. This is the fastest-growing category and reaches 24% of online consumers in India,” Aggarwal said. ShopClues is banking on low-cost unbranded merchandise, especially women’s ethnic wear, to boost sales. “We have exponentially scaled up our offerings in this category including clothing, jewellery, fashion accessories and footwear,” Aggarwal said, adding that the focus is to grow tier-III and IV markets. About 50% of its orders come from these markets, which include cities like Tiruvallur, Vellore, Chittoor, Ernakulam, Tiruchirapalli and Madurai in South India and Bardhaman, Aizawl and Agartala in the east.While on the demand side ShopClues services tier-III and tier-IV cities, on the supply side it also on-boards smaller merchants selling un-branded clothes and accessories in these areas. About 80% of its sellers are small-and-medium enterprises.Aggarwal said the company was shipping about 1.2 million fashion products on a monthly basis, and the category has already grown to account for 50% of the company’s overall annualized gross merchandise value, and about 65% of net revenue. Gross merchandise value or GMV represents the total value of goods sold through the platform, and excludes discounts and returns.The company is able to derive 20-30% margins from the fashion segment while the rate of returns is also around 20-30%. According to Aggarwal, on a standalone basis, the apparel category from the larger fashion segment is profitable for ShopClues.ShopClues claims it will touch a GMV of $3 billion by fiscal 2018 on an annualized basis. It currently services 30,000 pin codes across the country.The move may help ShopClues tap the seller base of Snapdeal, the other large horizontal marketplace to focus on non-branded fashion, that has witnessed a significant drop in orders.",ShopClues has launched a dedicated television marketing campaign for the category and aims to double sales from fashion over 10 months,19:15,ShopClues bets on fashion segment to drive growth +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company on Friday reported an increase of 38.3% in net profit at Rs 701.9 crore for the fiscal ended March 2017. The company’s net profit in the preceding fiscal 2015-16 stood at Rs507.5 crore. The gross domestic premium income of the company rose by 32.6% to Rs 10,725.90 crore, a company statement said. “The robust performance was delivered on the back of increase in policies serviced at 1.77 crore in 2016-17 compared to 1.58 crore policies in 2015-16,” it said. “As we progress through the year, we shall...further expand our insurance solutions proposition as well as enhance our customer service and claim leadership stature backed by innovative technology,” ICICI Lombard, MD and CEO, Bhargav Dasgupta said. ICICI Lombard GIC Ltd is a joint venture between country’s largest private lender ICICI Bank and Canada-based Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited. The general insurance subsidiary of the bank is a non- listed entity though the life insurance joint venture— ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Co—is a listed firm. Shares of ICICI Bank closed 1.34% down at Rs 269.15 apiece on BSE today.",ICICI Lombard’s net profit in the 2015-16 fiscal stood at Rs507.5 crore,16:36,ICICI Lombard net profit grows 38% to Rs 702 crore in fiscal 2017 +2017-04-20,"Bengaluru: EBay Inc. on Wednesday forecast second-quarter profit that fell short of analysts’ estimates, as it spends heavily on revamping and marketing its e-commerce platform amid stiff competition from much larger rival Amazon.com Inc.Shares of the company fell 2.5% to $33 in trading after the bell. San Jose, California-based eBay has been making changes to its platform to lure more shoppers as well as better compete with Amazon. That has meant a shift away from online auctions towards fixed-price sales and product landing pages, which are easier to navigate than the dozens of listings sellers would generate for a single good.EBay has also increased its marketing spending, running a rare TV campaign ahead of last year’s holiday shopping period.Sales and marketing costs climbed 4.5% to $562 million in the first quarter ended 31 March, while product development expenses jumped 16.3% to $278 million. The company’s profit in the second quarter would be affected by “increased investment to drive improved user experiences and to market our brand,” eBay’s finance chief Scott Schenkel said on a call with analysts.EBay said it expects second-quarter adjusted profit of 43 to 45 cents per share. Analysts on average were expecting a profit of 47 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The company, however, stuck to its earlier forecast for full-year adjusted profit of $1.98 to $2.03 per share, expecting more growth in the second half of 2017.The first quarter “showed some early indication that their efforts are beginning to bear fruit,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Aaron Turner, citing more active buyers coming to the site. “We’re still waiting to see” the outcome, he added.EBay said gross merchandise volume—the total value of all goods sold on its websites—rose 2.4% to $20.95 billion in the first quarter. But the result fell short of analysts’ average estimate of $21.06 billion, according to research firm FactSet StreetAccount.The company’s net income rose to $1.04 billion, or 94 cents per share in the quarter, from $482 million, or 41 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, the company earned 49 cents per share, beating analysts’ average expectation of 48 cents per share.Revenue rose 3.7% to $2.22 billion. Analysts on average had expected $2.21 billion. Reuters","EBay’s Q2 profit forecast fell short of analysts’ estimates, as it spends heavily on revamping and marketing its e-commerce platform amid stiff competition from Amazon",11:19,EBay Q2 profit forecast falls short of estimates +2017-04-20,"Bengaluru: India’s biggest zinc miner Hindustan Zinc Ltd posted a 42% jump in fourth-quarter net profit on Thursday, topping street estimates, helped by higher income from zinc production and an increase in metal prices.Net profit rose to Rs3,057 crore for the January-March quarter from Rs2,147 crore a year earlier. The profit growth is the biggest in at least nine quarters. Analysts on average had expected a net profit of Rs2,852 crore, according to Thomson Reuters data.Total income rose 72.4% to Rs7,237 crore. The LME zinc prices have risen about 53 percent from March-end 2016 to March-end 2017.Income from zinc operations rose over two fold to Rs5160 crore, said the company, which is a subsidiary of billionaire Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Ltd. The Indian government has a 29.5% stake in Hindustan Zinc.Hindustan Zinc shares rose as much as 5.5% after the results.","Hindustan Zinc’s fourth quarter net profit rose to Rs3,057 crore from Rs2,147 crore a year earlier",16:54,"Hindustan Zinc Q4 profit jumps 42% to Rs 3,057 crore " +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd, maker of the Kwality Wall’s brand of frozen desserts, has come out with a new ad film stressing the use of milk in its products, taking the ‘ad war’ to the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The ad is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns the Amul ice-cream brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil, often called vanaspati. HUL has already dragged GCMMF to the Bombay high court for the campaign, which it says is “disparaging” towards frozen desserts.According to regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, ice-creams made with any kind of vegetable fat other than milk fat are termed frozen desserts. HUL’s 15-second ad, posted on YouTube through the Kwality Wall’s official channel on 17 April, uses the tagline “Kwality Wall’s, Made with Milk”, and shows an animated milk bottle asking animated Kwality Wall’s products: “Who drank the milk?”The tagline emphasizes that Kwality Wall’s frozen desserts are made with milk, just like ice-creams. The video is accompanied by a caption that says: “It’s time we answer this question and put all the rumours to rest.” In Amul’s ad, featuring a young girl visiting the dentist, a voice-over urges viewers to give their children “pure” milk ice-creams such as Amul’s rather than frozen desserts made with vanaspati tel or vegetable oil. The Kwality Wall’s ad was devised by HUL’s creative agency DDB Mudra, which declined to comment. In an emailed response to Mint’s queries, an HUL spokesperson said, “This is a separate campaign to inform consumers that Kwality Wall’s range is ‘Made with Milk’.”HUL didn’t specify which channels will be used to play the ad and how much it will invest in the campaign. Although the Kwality Wall’s YouTube channel has only around 4,900 subscribers, HUL has plenty of clout to get its message across to consumers. In the week between 8 and 14 April, for instance, HUL was the top television advertiser, according to data collected by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India. Brand and consumer analysts say HUL will be compelled to hit back with such ads as sales of ice-creams and frozen desserts rise with onset of summer. “Until Amul did this (ice-cream versus frozen desserts) ad, I don’t think the consumer gave a damn,” said independent brand expert Harish Bijoor. “The difference between ice-cream and frozen dessert was a footnote. Now, the consumer is curious. Now that HUL has replied, there will be two camps. One which says frozen desserts are fine and another that supports ice-creams.”Bijoor added that while HUL has taken the legal route in its fight against Amul’s ads, the real challenge for both companies is convincing the Indian consumer. The Amul-HUL spat is only the latest in a long list of large consumer brands fighting one another in the courtroom while taking digs at each other in their respective ad campaigns. In the court hearings, both sides cited instances including the Ujala fabric whitener campaign that took digs at Robin Blue, and Colgate India’s ad that attacked Dabur’s Lal Dant Manjan. “Around the world, brand rivalry has shown up in ads. It has been particularly aggressive in markets like the US with famous rivalries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, or McDonald’s and Wendy’s,” said Harminder Sahni, founder of consumer advisory firm Wazir Advisors. “I would say India is still very timid with its brand rivalry in ads.”","Ad, which stresses the use of milk in HUL’s products, is seen as a response to a campaign by GCMMF, which owns Amul brand, that claimed frozen desserts contain hydrogenated vegetable oil",01:41,HUL counters Amul with new ad to defend frozen desserts +2017-04-20,"Bengaluru: Information technology company Mindtree Ltd said consolidated net profit fell 27% in the fourth quarter hurt by a foreign exchange loss and fewer client additions. The lower-than-expected profit came in at Rs97.2 crore ($15.04 million) for the three months ended 31 March, marking the fourth consecutive quarterly profit decline.Analysts on average were expecting consolidated profit at Rs105 crore, Thomson Reuters data showed.Mindtree incurred a consolidated foreign exchange loss of Rs28.8 crore in the quarter, against a gain of Rs3.1 crore a year earlier. Clients added in the fourth quarter dropped 46% to 20. Reuters","Mindtree’s lower-than-expected profit came in at Rs97.2 crore for the fourth quarter ended 31 March, marking the fourth consecutive quarterly profit decline",16:52,"Mindtree Q4 profit plunges 27%, misses estimates" +2017-04-19,"New Delhi: Network18 Media and Investments Ltd, the media company controlled by Reliance Industries Ltd, on Wednesday said its consolidated loss widened to Rs33.3 crore in the March quarter, from Rs25 crore in the year-ago period. The company, which has interests in television, films and online retailing, generated revenue of Rs3,471.1 crore, up 5% from Rs3,321 crore last year. For the full year to 31 March, the company swung to a loss of Rs233.5 crore from a profit of Rs25.4 crore in the previous year. A decline in advertising spending following demonetization of high-value currency notes, operating losses from new initiatives in regional and digital broadcasting, and losses in the digital commerce businesses contributed to the overall net loss.“The media industry is still facing impact of deferment of advertising spends that kicked in from November-December 2016 on likely slowdown in consumer spending. Further, the revival of advertising spends has been witnessed at a much faster clip for national channels, while regional markets are still recovering with a lag,” Network18 said in a statement. Revenue from TV18 Broadcast Ltd, a unit of Network18 that operates news channels CNN-News18 and CNBC TV18, rose 7% in the year to Rs2,677 crore from Rs2,494.8 crore in the previous year. Net profit declined 90% to Rs19.1 crore. Network18 also runs digital news websites moneycontrol.com, news18.com and firstpost.com as well as the movie and events ticketing website BookMyShow.“The digital space in India continues to become more and more vibrant, as bottlenecks around connectivity and cost reduce substantially. We see the emergence of new formats and services, and rapidly evolving business models and aim to be at the forefront of this change. Our strength in linear media provides us the edge, helping us leapfrog in our aspiration to be a channel-agnostic provider of top-drawer content,” said Adil Zainulbhai, chairman of Network18.","For the full year to 31 March, Network18 swung to a loss of Rs233.5 crore from a profit of Rs25.4 crore in the previous year",21:08,Network18’s net loss widens to Rs33.3 crore in March quarter +2017-04-19,"New Delhi: Upendra Tripathy, a former secretary of the renewable energy ministry, has been appointed interim director general of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), which brings together countries with abundant sunshine with the aim of lowering solar energy costs. India has taken a lead role in setting up the ISA—an alliance of 121 sunshine countries situated between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The first treaty-based international government organisation which is headquartered in India, ISA, was launched at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in November 2015.The idea of a solar alliance of countries that receive sunshine for around 300 days in a year was mooted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.Other prominent intergovernmental organisations in the energy sector include the Vienna-headquartered Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA).Confirming his appointment, Tripathy said, “We will be involving all the stakeholders in finding out how the programs can be implemented to mobilise more finances to the solar sector globally and how to help the farmers across the member countries to go for affordable solar pumps so that farmer’s income gets enhanced. It is also equally important that other solar applications address the issue of roti, kapdaa and makaan.”In January last year, Prime Minister Modi and French President Francois Hollande laid the foundation stone of the ISA at Gurgaon. Besides, the World Bank last year signed an agreement with the ISA to mobilize $1 trillion in investments by 2030.One of the ways that the ISA is exploring to reduce costs is to aggregate the demand from member nations and then call for tenders. To start with, this approach is being explored for bringing down the cost of solar powered agricultural pumps.Tripathy, a former Indian Administrative Service officer from the Karnataka cadre, has been closely involved in solar power development in the country. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government raised the target for solar power production in India to 100 gigawatt (GW) by 2022 from 20,000 megawatts (MW) earlier.Experts welcomed Tripathy’s appointment. “Bringing Upendra Tripathy is a good step as he was deeply involved when ISA was envisaged. But then the hurdle of finance for activities of ISA is still there. There is a lot of scope for ISA but let’s see as there is a still a long way to go,” said Rakesh Kamal, a consultant with The Climate Reality Project, an independent organisation working on climate change related issues.“However, India should be proud of hosting ISA. It is a big step for India as ISA is a first of a kind body on a world scale. It also shows our commitment to the world,” he added.The ISA framework agreement was opened for signing up at the Conference of the Parties (COP 22) at Marrakesh in November last year and 25 countries including France, Bangladesh, Brazil and Tanzania have joined it. The assembly will meet after 15 of these signatories ratify the ISA.ISA will have an assembly, a council and a secretariat. The Indian government will support the secretariat for five years, after which would have to generate its own resources. The secretariat has been set up at the National Institute of Solar Energy in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of New Delhi.Queries emailed late on Monday to a spokesperson at the ministry of new and renewable energy remained unanswered till the time of publishing.ISA will also collaborate with other multilateral bodies such as the IEA, International Renewable Energy Agency and the United Nations.Tripathy’s appointment comes in the backdrop of record low Indian solar power tariffs that have raised viability concerns. Solar power project developers placed a record low bid of Rs2.97 per kWh to win contracts for a 750 MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh. A so-called levelized tariff—the value financially equivalent to different annual tariffs over the period of the power purchase agreement (PPA)—of around Rs3.30 per unit will be charged.","Upendra Tripathy, a former secretary of the renewable energy ministry, has been appointed interim director general of the International Solar Alliance",18:30,India’s Upendra Tripathy to head International Solar Alliance +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: Rural Electrification Corp. (REC), a state-owned backer of India’s power sector, plans to lend billions of rupees to clean-energy projects and equipment makers this fiscal year as part of an expanded push into renewables that will also see it issue green bonds overseas.The non-banking financial company is aiming to triple its clean-energy lending and is expecting to set aside nearly Rs10,000 crore ($1.5 billion) for renewable energy in the financial year ending 31 March, chairman P.V. Ramesh said in an interview.“We’re not only financing projects but also evacuation infrastructure and have been talking with manufacturers of equipment like wind turbines, solar panels and storage batteries,” Ramesh said in an interview in New Delhi where the lender, which has a loan book of Rs2 trillion, is based.REC’s renewables strategy underscores a push by companies associated with conventional power to shift resources toward clean energy. The move, which supports Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s climate goals, also comes as some coal-fired electricity generators struggle to service debts.The lender could issue clean-energy bonds outside India by the end of June, Ramesh said.Lending shift“We are also looking at mobilizing resources from raising green bonds in Europe and social impact bonds in Scandinavia,” he said.Tesla Inc., the maker of electric vehicles, is another company that REC would be interested in backing should it decide to establish a presence in India, Ramesh added. Tesla founder Elon Musk tweeted in February that the company may enter the Indian market this summer.With demand from equipment manufacturers largely unknown at the moment, lending to the sector would be separate from what REC wants to set aside for renewable projects, Ramesh said.The shift in lending at REC takes place against a backdrop of an expansion in clean energy led by Modi and his promise to install 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable capacity by 2022.Between April 2016 to February, India added 8 GW of new renewable energy, reaching total installed capacity of 51 GW, according to government data. Meanwhile, thermal capacity grew by 8 GW in the same period, 36% lower than the previous year.Saddled with power plants running under their maximum capacity, India’s thermal-energy producers like NTPC Ltd and RattanIndia Power Ltd have been considering setting up solar-power projects on land initially intended for coal-fired facilities.REC, which has traditionally financed large-sized power and related infrastructure projects, is customizing products to suit the needs of clean-energy projects, which are often small compared with conventional plants and much quicker to set up, Ramesh said.“We’re customizing products for each project so it’s tailor-made for each of them because not everyone wants a standard product,” Ramesh said, adding that his company needs to be agile in the new market because the days of lending a billion dollars to a single big project are nearing an end.REC has been appointed by India’s government as the central agency responsible for implementing two nationwide power reform projects aimed at increasing electricity coverage in rural areas through the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana and the financial turnaround of state-owned power retailers through the Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojna (UDAY). Bloomberg","Rural Electrification Corp. (REC) is aiming to triple its clean-energy lending and is expecting to set aside nearly Rs10,000 for renewable energy in this fiscal",08:34,"Rural Electrification eyes Rs10,000 crore renewables lending push" +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: New RBI guidelines on standard asset provisioning and disclosure of details regarding non-performing assets (NPAs) may create difficulties for Indian banks, thanks to additional provisioning requirements, analysts estimate. Public sector banks are likely to see a 5-15% impact on their earnings going ahead, while private sector lenders would see their earnings hurt by 1-2% due to the new norms, Credit Suisse said in a report on Wednesday. Prior to this advisory, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) required banks to set aside 0.4% as provision against standard assets. The RBI on Tuesday had advised banks to consider setting aside higher provisions even for good loans in stressed sectors.According to Credit Suisse analysts, the hit on profitability has been calculated on a 50 basis points (bps) increase in provisioning owing to the RBI guidelines. The central bank specifically red-flagged the telecom industry, and asked bank boards to review their exposure to the sector by 30 June and consider making provisions at higher rates “so that necessary resilience is built in the balance sheets should the stress reflect on the quality of exposure to the sector at a future date”. According to data available with the RBI, bank exposure to the telecom sector was Rs82,200 crore at the end of February.In a report that Nomura released on Wednesday, analysts note that the risk on the telecom sector is likely to be limited owing to the expected consolidation, with the merger of Vodafone Group Plc and Idea Cellular Ltd. Weaker companies like GTL Infrastructure Ltd have already been classified as non-performing assets. In the case of Reliance Communications Ltd, most of the debt is from foreign banks which limits the impact on Indian banks, while in case of Aircel, even though the research firm sees risk, it is not big enough to change much for the sector. “This, in our view, would lead to faster recognition of future asset quality issues and will help avoid the cliff effect of large and lumpy provisions,” Kotak Institutional Equities Research said in a report on Wednesday.“This approach is closer to Ind-AS (to be applicable from April 2018 CHK onwards) which requires a dynamic approach to provisioning based on expected credit losses, instead of the current system based on days-past-due,” the Kotak report said.In addition to these norms, the regulator has also asked banks to disclose any major divergence in reporting of NPAs, when compared with what it had asked banks to do under the supervisory processes. In situations like the asset quality review (AQR), the central bank had asked lenders to classify certain accounts as NPAs even though the banks had classified them as standard.These norms have already started having an impact on bank results for the quarter ended 31 March. Private sector lenders IndusInd Bank and Yes Bank both reported increased provisions owing to the RBI directions on NPA disclosure.",Credit Suisse report says PSU banks are likely to see a 5-15% and private banks 1-2% impact on quarterly results due to new RBI rules on bad loans and provisions,04:40,"New RBI rules on provisioning, bad loans seen taking a toll on banks" +2017-04-18,"New Delhi: State-run Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) on Tuesday signed an agreement with the Rajasthan government to set up a 9 million tonne joint venture refinery at a cost of Rs43,129 crore, a statement from oil ministry said. HPCL will hold 74% equity in the joint venture, HPCL Rajasthan Refinery Ltd, while the state government will hold the balance. The agreement signed in the presence of oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje entitles the company to a viability gap funding of Rs1,123 crore a year for 15 years from the year of commercial production. The funding will be in the form of an interest-free loan to be refunded in subsequent 15 years.The project includes a petrochemicals complex too. The proposed refinery will be able to process local crude from Vedanta Ltd’s Barmer oil field in the state as well as imported crude. Vedanta, which recently merged its group company Cairn India Ltd with itself, is planning more investments into enhanced oil recovery from its Barmer assets. Anil Agarwal, chairman, Vedanta Group had last December said the group was committed to investing Rs30,000 crore to add 100,000 barrels of oil and oil equivalent over the next three years, primarily from its prolific Rajasthan fields.For the proposed refinery, the state has already allotted 4,800 acres at Pachpadra in Barmer. The statement said quoting Pradhan that construction work will begin in the current financial year and will be completed in four years. Separately, another deal was signed between Rajasthan State Gas Ltd and GAIL Gas Ltd for creating a city gas network in Kota district. India is at present adding its refining capacity in line with growing energy requirement and with an ambition to emerge as a regional refining hub. State-owned refiners which supply autofuel to neighbouring markets like Bangladesh and Nepal are in the process of expanding their presence in these markets.",The joint venture HPCL Rajasthan Refinery Ltd will be able to process local crude from Vedanta’s Barmer oil field in the state as well as imported crude,22:42,HPCL signs pact with Rajasthan govt to set up refinery +2017-04-19,"
The Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) stock has gained 27% since its December quarter results. However, the appreciation is attributable less to its performance and more to anticipation that Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (the company’s telecom business) may perform better than expected.When RIL announces its March quarter results too, investors will be keenly watching out for updates on Jio, apart from the company’s downstream projects and its capex plans. Its March quarter results are expected to be good despite the fact that the benchmark Singapore gross refining margin (GRM) has declined about 5% sequentially to $6.4 a barrel. Analysts expect RIL to report better GRMs during the March quarter.According to analysts at Nomura Research, RIL’s premium to Singapore GRM will likely improve (the December quarter had a shutdown of the fluidized catalytic cracking unit; also Brent-Dubai crude spreads were favourable). “Petchem (petrochemical) earnings will likely increase further both as Reliance benefits from higher volumes (new capacities) and firmed up margins particularly in aromatics chain,” pointed out Nomura’s March quarter preview for the oil and gas sector.GRM is the realization from turning every barrel of crude oil into finished products and is an important measure of profitability for refining firms.Even as RIL’s numbers may bring good tidings, expectations from oil marketing companies (OMCs)—Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL) and Indian Oil Corp. Ltd—are not rosy. Analysts from Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd expect weaker earnings for OMCs due to inventory losses in both refining and marketing, and lower core GRMs year-on-year. With oil prices declining towards the end of the March quarter, OMCs are expected to report inventory losses. However, “full year consolidated earnings should surprise positively, particularly for HPCL and BPCL, due to strong performance in subsidiaries in FY17 vs FY16”, said Jefferies in a report to clients on 6 April.On an average, crude oil prices rose year-on-year and that will reflect positively in price realizations of upstream companies such as Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd and Oil India Ltd. Investors will have to keep a tab on output numbers and production outlook in the near future. So far, both these stocks have underperformed compared to their peers in the oil sector. Given the muted outlook on crude oil prices over the medium term, there is little to suggest the trend in their stock performance will change for the better.","Even as RIL’s numbers may bring good tidings, expectations from oil marketing companies like BPCL, HPCL and Indian Oil are not rosy",07:27,Mixed outlook for oil firms in Q4 +2017-04-19,"
India’s clean energy project developers are in talks to merge their portfolios as part of a strategy to achieve scale for selling the assets to overseas investors scouting for large investment opportunities in the country. A case in point is Ravi Jhunjhunwala’s LNJ Bhilwara Group, which is in talks with rivals to merge its wind energy portfolio. Another company following this strategy is Continuum Wind Energy Pte Ltd.Mint reported on 20 February about LNJ Bhilwara Group putting up its wind energy portfolio for sale and hiring Yes Bank Ltd to manage the sale. “The idea here is to create and offer a portfolio which is large and is of interest to big investors,” said a New Delhi-based clean energy projects deal maker aware of LNJ Bhilwara Group’s strategy, requesting anonymity.Another person who also didn’t wish to be named confirmed LNJ Bhilwara Group’s plan and added several firms such as Continuum Wind Energy are exploring a similar strategy. Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners invested $212.03 million in Continuum Wind Energy in 2012.Queries emailed to the spokespersons for LNJ Bhilwara Group and Morgan Stanley remained unanswered. A Yes Bank spokesperson declined to comment in an emailed response.There has been a host of investors such as Australian Government Future Fund, Investment Corporation of Dubai, Singapore’s GIC Pte Ltd, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Development Co. looking to invest in the Indian infrastructure space in sectors such as clean energy. Wind power tariffs have followed the solar route and fell to a record low of Rs3.46 per kilowatt hour (kWh) in a 1 gigawatt (GW) tender by state-run Solar Energy Corp. of India in February. India plans to install 175GW of renewable power by 2022, of which 100GW will be from solar power and 60GW from wind power.Wind is already the mainstay of India’s renewable power. Of about 50,018MW of installed renewable power, about 57.3% (28,700MW) comes from wind alone. Also, India added a record 5,400MW of wind power in 2016-17, exceeding its 4,000MW target.However, a few concerns remain. Payment delays by distribution companies (discoms) to wind and solar projects in India is hurting project costs for companies and posing a challenge to the sector’s growth plans, Mercom Capital Group said in a report earlier this month.","There has been a host of investors such as Investment Corporation of Dubai, Singapore’s GIC looking to invest in sectors such as clean energy in India",05:21,Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-off +2017-04-23,"Mumbai: The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years and seek turnaround plans to check if they need more growth capital. The Department of Financial Services will be meeting representatives of 10 state-owned banks that received funds in March this year. “The ministry officials have sought business plans for the next three years and also wanted detailed turnaround plans. Banks will also have to submit stressed asset resolution plans,” a senior public sector banker said. The officials will also be assessing capital needs of each bank for the next three years, person aware of the development added. In the second tranche of capital infusion, the government had infused Rs8,586 crore in 10 banks in March. For the full 2016-17, it had pumped in Rs25,000 crore. The recipients last fiscal were Bank of India (Rs1,500 crore), Bank of Maharashtra (Rs300 crore), IDBI Bank (Rs1,900 crore), Indian Overseas Bank (Rs1,100 crore), Central Bank of India (Rs100 crore), Dena Bank (Rs600 crore), UCO Bank (Rs1,150 crore), Andhra Bank (Rs1,100 crore), United Bank of India (Rs418 crore) and Allahabad Bank (Rs418 crore). Talks are part of the Indradhanush plan which involved banks submitting detailed growth plans and indicating how they are going to deploy the funds to get additional money. Some banks have already got calls from the ministry for the meeting and the bankers will be meeting individually. The government funding is linked to strict parameters. The first tranche of capital infusion for fiscal 2017 was announced in July 2016. As per the road map announced in August 2015, the government will infuse Rs70,000 crore into the banks over four years while they will have to raise an additional Rs1.1 trillion from the markets to meet their capital requirements, in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Public sector banks are to get Rs25,000 crore in each fiscal of 2016 and 2017 and Rs10,000 crore each in fiscal 2018 and 2019. The Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore in the current financial year.",The finance ministry has initiated detailed discussions with select public sector banks to assess their growth blueprint over the next three years ,13:09,"Finance ministry in talks with PSBs to get a fix on growth plans, funding" +2017-04-22,"
HDFC Bank Ltd hit all the right notes with investors as it reported a bounce back in its profit growth, stable asset quality and expansion in net interest margin for the fourth quarter of 2016-17.India’s most valuable private sector lender reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for the March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, compared with the tepid 15% rise in the December quarter. The fact that most of its metrics have rebounded from their dip in the December quarter shows that it has left the effects of demonetization firmly behind.Despite its size, HDFC Bank’s core income growth as well as loan book expansion rivals that of fast-growing small banks, with net interest income growing 20.29% on the back of a loan book growth of 19.4%. The growth in both its retail and corporate loan book was fast paced.To that effect, the more than 2% rise in its stock on Friday in response to the numbers is justified.Investors have always rewarded HDFC Bank’s consistent performance and it has become something close to an unshakeable faith that it would not disappoint in any quarter. One does not earn the label of the most valuable bank without consistent performance.But it is time to slip in a nugget of caution. Provisions doubled in the March quarter to Rs1,261.8 crore, of which Rs977.9 crore was towards bad loans. Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director of the bank, said that a bulk of the rise in provisions has been due to those made against standard loans. While this rhymes with the strong loan growth, the numbers tell a different story.Provisions towards bad loans grew 100% while those towards standard performing loans grew 73% from a year-ago. Again, according to Sukthankar, the rise is due to a dispensation by the Reserve Bank of India that allowed the lender to postpone labelling certain borrowers as bad, a move that came in the aftermath of demonetization. Even after factoring in this dispensation, the rise in provisions is high.Let’s stretch the story further, and HDFC Bank’s gross non-performing loans have shown at least a 20% year-on-year increase every quarter since December 2015 while its net non-performing assets (NPAs) have shown a bigger increase. Of course, as a percentage of total loans, it is still at an enviable 1.05%. The fact that net NPAs have risen faster than gross bad loans shows that provisions have not kept pace. While the bank hasn’t disclosed its provision coverage ratio, the number is likely to show a decrease over time.Investors still have unshakeable faith in HDFC Bank but they need to agree with Sukthankar’s comment that the lender is not insulated in a challenging environment.Mark to Market writers do not have positions in the companies they have discussed here.","HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs3,990.1 crore for March quarter, an 18.3% increase from the previous year, against a tepid 15% rise in the December quarter",18:47,HDFC Bank defies a challenging environment +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: For the second quarter in a row, there was a massive drop in HDFC Bank’s headcount that came down by over 6,000 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue. The second largest private lender’s senior management hinted this trend of falling staff strength may continue as greater efficiencies set in. “This is really a function of...what is happening on the digital side. We do believe that with increased digitisation, certain lines of transaction like counters, etc. actually reduce,” deputy managing director Paresh Sukthankar told reporters in Mumbai. The bank’s total headcount came down by 6,096 during the January-March 2017 period—from 90,421 to 84,325—which was one of the main drivers for the massive improvement in the cost-to-income ratio to 42.4% from 44.9% a year ago. In the preceding October-December 2016 quarter, the headcount had came down by 4,581 employees, which helped in the cost-to-income ratio improve to 43.8%. Sukthankar explained that while digital technologies, which helped the bank introduce products like instant personal loans, help reduce reliance on people, network expansion requires additional manpower. “Natural attrition” leads to drive down the total number of employees as newer hands are not hired as replacements for those who have resigned, he said. “We still believe there is room to continue to go down that path.” It is understood that the bank has an attrition level of 21-22% per year, which is within the industry average. The bank’s staff strength reached a peak in September 2016 at 95,002 employees. In fiscal 2017, the bank’s headcount declined by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous fiscal.","HDFC Bank’s staff strength came down from 90,421 to 84,325 owing to increased digitalisation in the March quarter and it expects the trend to continue",22:28,"HDFC Bank headcount falls for 2nd quarter, down by 6,100 in Q4" +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: HDFC Bank Ltd on Friday reported a higher-than-estimated fiscal fourth-quarter net profit and stable asset quality, prompting investors in India’s most valuable bank to drive its shares to a record high.Net profit rose 18.25% to Rs3,990.09 crore in the three months ended 31 March from Rs3,374.22 crore a year ago. Net interest income (NII), or the core income a bank earns by giving loans, rose 21.49% to Rs9,055.1 crore in the March quarter from Rs7,453.34 crore a year ago. Non-interest income including fees and commissions gained 20.25% to Rs3,446.26 crore.The bank’s gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans, at 1.05%, were little changed from end-December, although higher than 0.94% a year earlier.“In the last one year we have seen a 10 basis points increase in gross non-performing assets... which is not out of line… It is a challenging environment,” said Paresh Sukthankar, deputy managing director.HDFC Bank has been a standout performer in a banking industry beset by Rs7 trillion of stressed assets—the legacy of an economic slowdown that stalled projects and squeezed corporate cash flows, making it difficult for borrowers to repay debt.HDFC Bank’s “asset quality remains one of the best in the system”, said Alpesh Mehta, a sector analyst at Mumbai brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities, adding that the results “positively surprised”. Provisions and contingencies jumped 76.28% to Rs1,261.80 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter from Rs715.78 crore in the preceding quarter. Of the Rs550 crore increase in provisions sequentially, Rs270 crore came from higher general provisions, said Sukthankar. This reflected a Rs60,000 crore increase in advances in the quarter.Loan-loss provisions nearly doubled from a year earlier to Rs978 crore in the March quarter. The bank said it also accounted for loan defaults that were not recognized as such in the December quarter after the central bank temporarily relaxed rules to help businesses weather the November ban on old high-value banknotes.Net non-performing assets rose 0.33% in the fourth quarter from 0.32% in the previous quarter and 0.28% in the same quarter last year. HDFC Bank’s capital adequacy, a measure of financial strength expressed as the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, was 14.6% at the end of March, compared with 15.5% in December. HDFC Bank shares closed 2.38% higher at Rs1,496.60, having hit a record high of Rs1,499 in intra-day trading. The bank has India’s third-highest market capitalization of about $58 billion. Reuters contributed to this story. ","HDFC Bank’s net profit rose to Rs3,990.09 crore in the fourth quarter from Rs3,374.22 crore reported a year ago",21:13,"HDFC Bank profit rises 18.25% in Q4, beats estimates" +2017-04-21,"Financial stability around the world continues to improve, says the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. But it also points out that while emerging markets may be more resilient now, there are considerable risks from rising corporate debt, especially in a scenario of increasing global risk premiums and rising protectionism. India, says the report, will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets.India starts off on a weak footing. The current debt that is at risk is the highest among large emerging markets. About one in every five rupees has been lent to companies that have an interest coverage ratio—a measure of a company’s ability to pay its debt—of less than one. As the chart above shows, this debt burden will worsen with rising protectionism and risk premiums. For India, this debt at risk could increase by as much 6.7 percentage points. Such a scenario is already underway. For instance, US President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Wednesday will make it harder for US firms to import steel.For Indian banks, this will come as bad news at a time when they are struggling with at least Rs7 trillion in toxic loans and thin provisioning buffers. The IMF statistics don’t make for good reading. India’s gross bad loans ratio is among the worst, next only to Russia. About 79% of Indian banks’ assets have provisioning needs in excess of their profits; about 77% of assets will be backed by tier-1 capital ratios of 10% (To be sure, most of these are with public sector banks which theoretically have government backing, but any extra capital from the government will be at the cost of the fiscal deficit). IMF estimates that about one-third of the Indian banking system needs to set aside at least three years of earnings to provision adequately for bad loans.The IMF estimates may well be overly conservative. But just earlier this week, the Reserve Bank of India advised banks to set aside more money against even good loans in stressed sectors. According to a Credit Suisse analysis, exposure to stressed sectors such as telecom and power forms a significant portion of their balance sheets. Setting aside more money to cover the risk of default will hit earnings by up to 15% for some banks, the brokerage said.",IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report says India will be among the countries that will see the greatest deterioration in corporate balance sheets,08:51,What the IMF global financial stability report says about India +2017-04-21,"
Five out of six members of the monetary policy committee (MPC) were concerned about an increase in inflation, and one even suggested a 25 basis point increase in the repurchase, or repo, rate, according to the minutes of the panel’s last meeting, released on Thursday. “I believe that a preemptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4% to which the committee has committed explicitly,” wrote Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive director Michael Patra. “It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched.”One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding the repo rate— at which RBI infuses liquidity into the banking system—unchanged at 6.25% and wait for more data. At its 6 April meeting, the MPC raised the reverse repo rate—at which RBI drains liquidity from the system—to 6% from 5.75%. In the previous meeting, the panel had shifted the monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral.”Also read | Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutesOnly one MPC member, Ravindra Dholakia of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, said he expected inflation to decline over the next year. Other members noted the sticky nature of inflation.“The shift to neutral was already an indicator of the hardened stance of the RBI. On deeper thought, suggestions of a needed hike in the policy rate in the MPC minutes should not be a surprise,” said Saugata Bhattacharya, senior vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank Ltd. “The possibility of rising prices and an unanchoring of inflation expectations, as indicated by the household surveys, is likely to worry a central bank.”In March, consumer price inflation rose to 3.81% from 3.65% the previous month. “There has also been an inching up in the median 3-month and 1- year-ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months,” Chetan Ghate, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and one of the three external members of the MPC, said.According to Ghate, the house rent allowance (HRA) increase prescribed by the 7th Pay Commission posed a potential inflation risk. “Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks,” Ghate said.RBI governor Urjit Patel stressed the need to keep a close watch on the way inflation is progressing and highlighted its volatility.“Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the medium-term inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0% on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner,” Patel said, according to the minutes.RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya noted the uncertainty as to when headline inflation may cross the target rate of 4%. He maintained that the risks on inflation were evenly balanced out.Acharya also pointed to other major issues which the central bank should concern itself with, including tackling the stressed asset problem in the banking sector, deepening of the corporate bond market, improving financial hedging options and mopping up surplus liquidity in a more durable manner. India’s banking system is struggling with Rs7 trillion toxic assets.“It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues,” Acharya said.",RBI executive director Michael Patra eventually decided to vote in favour of holding repo rate at 6.25% at the monetary policy committee’s 6 April meeting,01:54,"One MPC member mulled a repo rate hike, say RBI’s monetary policy minutes" +2017-04-21,"Snapchat has attempted to quell the controversy over an alleged statement of its CEO Evan Spiegel that Snapchat is “only for rich people” and that he didn’t want to “expand into poor countries like India”. The statement kicked up a storm among social media users. Statistics show that it is a sensible strategy.Headline numbers might show India as a relatively poor country with low per capita income and higher incidence of poverty, compared to not just developed countries but even its peers. India’s poverty ratio is higher than the global average, while its per capita GDP (gross domestic product) is less than the global average.To infer from these statistics that India does not offer exciting opportunities for business would be completely wrong though. Here’s why.Notwithstanding its high poverty and lower average incomes, a lot of Indians have done well for themselves in material terms. Given India’s billion-plus population, this number is significantly large in absolute terms. Let us take some examples.Data from The World Factbook released by the Central Intelligence Agency shows India has the third-highest number of internet users, after China and the US as of 2014. In terms of the share of population using the internet, India still fares poorly. India is the second-biggest country in terms of monthly active Facebook users, according to a statement received by Mint from a Facebook spokesperson. The number of monthly active users for Facebook and WhatsApp stood at 184 million and 200 million, respectively. To be sure, India’s second rank globally could be a result of Facebook being banned in China.What makes the India story even more interesting is the huge potential for increasing the market. A recent survey-based report on Indian youth (18-34 years) by non-profit research organisation Lokniti at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) shows that even though exposure of youth to social media currently is low, usage of these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube has seen significant growth over the last two years. As per the survey, only 50% of the young respondents had any exposure to social media in varying degrees. However, while only 6% of the youth had used Facebook daily in 2014, this increased to 25%, or one in every four youths, in 2016. Daily usage of Twitter too was seen to be increasing from 1% to 7% during this time period.Clearly, anybody who thinks India is not a lucrative market for social media platforms is not in tune with the trend. No wonder, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg jumped in after the Snapchat controversy to declare Facebook’s commitment to serve all types of users, rich and poor .",Judging India’s market potential by headline poverty or per capita income numbers can be a costly mistake,05:05,How important is the Indian market for the likes of Snapchat? +2017-04-21,"
Bengaluru: Infosys Ltd, despite a relatively good performance over the past two years, is battling perceptions of under-performance because of its inability to keep pace with its ambitious target of more than doubling its revenue to $20 billion by March 2021.This target appears to have done more harm than good: analysts continue to rate the company using it as a metric; and people in the know attribute the departure of at least a few senior executives over the past few years to it. Now, an analyst at a foreign brokerage has suggested that the company is better off without the target.ALSO READ: Has Infosys’s recovery dissipated before it even started?“Management continues to maintain ‘aspirational’ revenue and margin targets that are increasingly becoming unlikely to be achieved, in our opinion. Given Infy (Infosys) is now guiding to lower levels of both revenue growth and margins in FY18 (2017-18), we think management would be well-served to either amend or drop its aspirational targets,” Keith Bachman, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note dated 16 April. Based on its guidance for 2017-18, issued last week, Infosys expects to end the year with revenue of between $10.8 billion and $11.3 billion. Infosys maintains this target is an ambition and the management has no plans to dump it.In April 2015, Infosys first outlined its ambitious target: India’s second largest software firm wanted to become a $20 billion firm with 30% operating margin and to generate $80,000 in revenue from every employee working on a project. In 2016, it tweaked the deadline to 2020-21. Infosys ended financial year 2015 with $8.7 billion in revenue, 25.9% in operating margin and generated $52,300 per employee.Two years later, Infosys managed a compound annual growth rate of 8.25% to increase its revenue to $10.21 billion but operating margin declined by 120 basis points to 24.7% and revenue per employee slipped to $51,400, making many question CEO Vishal Sikka’s strategy.One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.Not that Sikka hasn’t delivered. Since outlining this target, Sikka steered Infosys to dollar revenue growth of 9.1% in 2015-16 and 7.4% in 2016-17; for the second consecutive year, Infosys will grow faster than its larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and cross-town peer Wipro Ltd (Wipro). Still, Infosys continues to be evaluated on the progress it makes in becoming a $20 billion company. Worryingly for the management, a bigger fallout of the targets has been the pressure on senior leaders, making a few of them leave. Since April 2015, half-a-dozen executive vice-presidents (EVPs) and a dozen senior vice-presidents (SVPs) have quit. Not all departures are on account of the targets but two former executives admit that they left Infosys as they could not keep up with the “impossible targets.” “The industry is going through a structural change, and to make it worse, you set yourself impossible targets,” said a former EVP, who quit last year. “A large component of a senior executive’s salary is tied to company’s annual growth, which itself is linked to the long-term target.”Infosys says it outlined a target to make its employees work towards a goal and eventually help script a turnaround.“We gave this target because we believed this would help motivate employees, and help the CEO make them work towards a goal,” one board member, who was part of the goal-setting exercise, said on condition of anonymity. “Looking back, I’m still not sure if it was a wrong step. I’m still on the fence, thinking how and what we could have done better to make sure hopes did not run high and employees did not come under pressure.”One of the things Infosys could have avoided was linking Sikka’s salary to the target, said the second executive who quit, a former SVP. This seemed to suggest that this was much more than an aspirational target, as the CEO himself has repeatedly said. A weak performance in this year hurt Sikka, who earned $6.8 million in 2016-17, less than the $7.3 million he earned in 2015-16. Sikka got $3.8 million of the promised $8 million performance-related pay, despite a clause in his employment contract that guaranteed him at least 90% of his $11 million salary (including bonuses). It is a general practice for companies to have long-term goals. Wipro, under Abidali Neemuchwala, has outlined an ambition to become $15 billion firm with a 23% margin by March 2020. India’s fifth largest software firm, Tech Mahindra Ltd, too has set a goal of more than doubling revenue to $10 billion by March 2020.","Vishal Sikka’s ambitious revenue target, which Infosys is struggling to keep pace with, seems to have done more harm than good",02:43,Infosys weighed down by $20 billion revenue target set by Vishal Sikka +2017-04-21,"Mumbai: In the first fortnight of the New Year when Indians were still warming up to digital payments, many buyers on the country’s top shopping portal, Flipkart, had a nasty surprise: purchases they attempted on the Flipkart app through PhonePe, a digital payment method integrated into the app, were getting rejected.The reason surfaced on Saturday, 14 January, when Sameer Nigam, chief executive of PhonePe that Flipkart acquired in April 2016, tweeted his anger. ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private bank, was blocking transactions originating from PhonePe, which works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Such unilateral actions will hinder UPI adoption,” warned Nigam, a former Flipkart executive and co-founder of PhonePe.ICICI Bank retorted that PhonePe was following “restrictive practices” and said banks have raised “security related concerns at appropriate forums”. With UPI, any person holding any bank account can transfer money to another account, through any UPI app. However, in this particular case, only those with a virtual payment address from Yes Bank Ltd—PhonePe’s banking partner—could do so. In effect, PhonePe customers were tied to Yes Bank. The National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) that developed UPI stepped in, and asked ICICI Bank to resume the transactions, but reversed its stance just a day later to back the ICICI Bank position that PhonePe must comply with rules mandating inter-operability. Following this, Flipkart pulled the PhonePe payments option from its app.The PhonePe fiasco was the first serious manifestation of turf battles and insecurities that emerged in India’s financial technology sector after it withdrew high-value bank notes in November. The shock move, initially positioned as an attack on black money, counterfeiting and terror finance, sucked out 84% of the value of currency in circulation.In order to ease a cash crunch and smoothen the transition to a cashless mode, banks were asked to waive fees on transactions on automated teller machines (ATMs) and merchant discount rate (MDR) and asked to get two million point-of-sale terminals (each costing up to Rs12,000) before 31 March. MDR is a charge merchants have to pay for a card payment at their outlets, and is often passed on to the customer.Meanwhile, the crippling cash shortage that followed demonetisation gave a massive boost to cashless payments, and PhonePe was one of the several boats lifted by this tide.As the government and the banking regulator promote digital transactions and persuade Indians to make cashless payments, large banks want a greater say in the way fintech evolves. They want fintech firms to share with them customer data, and a lion’s share of the fees they earn, since the banks ultimately own the customer and the payments infrastructure at large.While most banks have their own mobile banking apps, some have also tied up with operators of digital wallets to facilitate electronic payments. Banks have also invested in improving their back-end and front-end technology to provide quality payment services.Private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank Ltd have all started deploying technologies such as blockchain to ensure safe and automated services where each point of a transaction can be tracked through a digital ledger.India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, has formed a technology team to ensure it can innovate consistently and come up with new services.But as more companies enter the digital payments space, inter-operability is becoming key. This is where banks seem to be fumbling. The PhonePe case is an example.“If large banks are going to block payments for some silly reasons, it is only going to hurt their own customers. It will also impact the penetration of digital payments mechanisms such as UPI and mobile wallets,” said the digital payments chief at a mid-sized private sector lender, requesting anonymity because of the complicated nature of the issues.With the advent of UPI, smaller banks and payments services providers discovered another avenue to start a relationship with a new customer and an opportunity to cross-sell services. By getting a customer’s transaction history, these banks and service providers can design customized products, which may be more aligned to the customer’s needs.Since demonetisation, UPI payments have picked up and most major banks have launched their own apps for Android devices. According to data available with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), total monthly transactions on UPI crossed five million and their value Rs2,000 crore in March. In comparison, the payments platform recorded 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,900 crore in February and 4.2 million transactions worth Rs1,660 crore in January. In comparison, the immediate payments service (IMPS) offered by banks on their websites and mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth Rs45,860 crore in March alone. Mobile banking applications recorded transactions worth nearly Rs1.2 trillion during the same month.While UPI has largely remained a peer-to-peer payment option, NPCI recently tied up with Reliance Retail to allow UPI-based payments at 200 of its stores. According to A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, more such tie-ups are in the offing.“There is a level of cut-throat competition at banks to acquire merchant businesses. Everyone wants to have a major portion of this business as it gets them a good amount of revenue. In this, if there are fintech firms that add to competition, it can cause some more friction,” said a senior official at a digital payments technology provider on condition of anonymity.
“As fintech companies are nimble, owing to their size, they can innovate and implement much faster than banks. If they receive the backing of some smaller banks, their ability to sell it to people increases manifold, which may displease some larger banks. Effectively though, this leads to the business being harmed as large merchants will think twice before they sign up for new modes of payments such as UPI,” he added.
According to the chief of another digital payments firm, India’s electronic payments space developed with large banks issuing the highest number of credit and debit cards. They owned a large number of customers. To incentivize them to issue more cards, banks were offered a large portion of MDR. Typically, a card-issuing bank would get paid anywhere between 60-90% of the MDR.
“With time, though, this should have changed; but these banks have managed to dominate. If there is an inequitable distribution of the fee, then the non-cash payments space may become unviable,” said the second digital payments company official cited above, on condition of anonymity.
The fears of non-cash payments firms (meaning firms other than banks who are in the payments business) about not getting paid enough may also have stemmed from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) proposal to limit MDR depending on the size of the merchant. RBI has proposed that smaller merchants with an annual turnover of Rs20 lakh or below pay an MDR not exceeding 0.4% on physical card transactions and not exceeding 0.3% on electronic transactions without cards. As the merchant size increases, the MDR also goes up. The regulator is still assessing the responses and will be finalizing guidelines in this matter shortly.
“It is only fair that lenders who provide the infrastructure and the customers get the major share of the whole MDR,” said the retail head of a large private sector bank on condition of anonymity. “Otherwise, there is no incentive for banks to pursue this. Without the involvement of bankers, payment systems will never truly develop in India.”
Bankers have also been vocal about their distrust of the mobile wallets, which have seen explosive growth.
“I think wallets have no future. There is not enough margin in the payment business for wallets to have a future,” Aditya Puri, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank Ltd, India’s second largest private lender, said at an event on 17 February.
“Wallets as a valid economic proposition is doubtful. There is no money in the payments business. The current loss reported by market leader Paytm is Rs1,651 crore. You cannot have a business that says pay a Rs500 bill and take Rs250 cash-back,” Puri said. Wallet companies cannot “copy” the “Alibaba model” as well, as the domestic regulators are “better”, Puri said.
For SBI, the distrust stems from security concerns. India’s largest lender last year blocked the use of its internet banking service to load mobile wallets, on the heels of a scandal after reports that some people used SBI accounts to transfer money into wallets and then transferred it to other bank accounts to be withdrawn. ICICI Bank’s chief executive Chanda Kochhar, too, linked the PhonePe issue to similar security concerns.
Banks’s fears also might be stemming from the rapid growth in customer base that some digital payments firms have seen since the invalidation of high-value currency notes on 8 November. For instance, Paytm, which had a customer base of 130 million wallets before November 2016, saw it rise to 200 million currently. It aims to reach 500 million wallets by 2020.
“Large banks are probably trying to ensure they do not cede any more ground to payments firms, some of which have seen significant and meaningful growth. They are probably innovating as much as some of the smaller firms; but owing to their size and governance infrastructure, it takes time for them to implement things. In the meantime, though, the system should probably aim at growing together, than employ any silly tactics,” said Bhavik Hathi, managing director at Alvarez and Marsal India, a consulting firm.
Apart from releasing a set of draft norms last month, RBI has largely been quiet about the financial technology space. RBI has proposed to raise the entry barrier for prepaid instrument (PPI) issuers such as mobile wallet and gift card companies by insisting on a higher positive net worth.
The draft guidelines also propose tougher controls over PPI issuers and seek higher accountability in terms of cross-border transactions, know-your-customer (KYC) norms, anti-money laundering norms and reporting to the regulator in times of any significant changes in the control of the companies, or cases of fraud.
Cash loading to PPIs must be limited to Rs50,000 per month, subject to the overall limit of the PPI where full KYC of a customer is obtained, RBI has said. In case of PPIs with minimum KYC, this monthly limit would be set at Rs20,000. For PPI accounts with electronic KYC like one-time passwords, the maximum limit has been set at Rs10,000, according to the draft guidelines.
RBI has justified its tough stance on PPIs with the argument of protecting customer interest. In a speech delivered in February, former deputy governor, R. Gandhi said if a firm deposits and transfers public money, it is a bank and all banks must be licensed to carry out functions.
“There is an implied suggestion that this sector needs to be freed of licensing mechanism and once a set of criteria are fixed, any number of entities meeting those criteria should be allowed to function. We differ from this idea. Such a free entry may not be appropriate for ‘payment industry’,” Gandhi had said, while adding that the idea that the regulator was discriminating against electronic payments firms was a misconception.
Smaller lenders and payments services experts say large banks, which have been trying hard to hold on to their customer base, may have to finally ease up and yield space to specialists who come up with customized services more in tune with customers’ needs.
With Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp looking to launch its own payments service in India, the sector seems poised for further disruption. That may lead to another cut-throat competition, and create more incumbents keen to hold on to their customers.","As the government resolutely pushes digital payments in a bid to move India towards a less-cash economy, a look at why tension is brewing between fintech firms and large banks",00:52,Fintech friction takes root in India’s banking landscape +2017-04-22,"
Mumbai: Advancing the legal battle with Tata Sons Ltd, Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms have filed an appeal at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the rejection of their petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders. Cyrus Investments Pvt. Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt. Ltd moved the NCLAT on Wednesday against the 6 March order by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that the petition was non-maintainable, said two people aware of the development who requested anonymity.The office of Mistry, who was ousted as Tata Sons chairman on 24 October, declined to comment. NCLT had ruled that Cyrus Investments and Sterling Investments were not qualified to file the petition alleging mismanagement and oppression of minority shareholders at Tata Sons, the holding company of the $103 billion Tata group.“The petitioners have failed to convince the court that the application is maintainable,” said B.S.V. Kumar, presiding member of NCLT, in the March order. Under the new Companies Act, shareholders are required to hold 10% equity to be qualified to file such a petition. The Act does not define equity to mean only ordinary equity.The two Mistry firms own a combined 18.4% of ordinary equity shares of the Tata group holding firm, but their holding falls below 10% when preference shares are taken into account. According to the Tatas, Mistry firms hold only about 2.17% then.Later, in an order passed on 17 April, NCLT said it would not waive the 10% requirement for the Mistry firms to file the petition. It makes sense for Mistry’s firms to approach the appellate body on maintainability and waiver separately as the legal arguments put forward on the two issues were different, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, founder and managing partner at Advaya Legal, a law firm.The plea on maintainability was based on the fact that equity shareholding of the Mistry firms is above the threshold of 10%. The waiver arguments were on why the tribunal should waive the threshold requirement, said Vaidyanathan. While arguing in favour of the waiver, the Mistry firms had cited concerns on voting and veto rights accorded to Tata trustees on the board of Tata Sons.“Assuming that the petitioners are likely to approach the tribunal on waiver and main petition being dismissed, the tribunal may consider merging the appeal against dismissal of maintainability and waiver. This is because the urgency to deal with this matter is no longer there,” added Vaidyanathan. As the final order of the 17 April hearing is yet to be released, the firms could not have clubbed the waiver and maintainability petitions, said the first of the two people cited earlier. In a setback to Mistry and his family firms, the NCLT in its 17 April hearing not only refused to grant a waiver from the shareholding requirement, but also dismissed the main petition alleging mismanagement and oppression.The appellate authority typically doesn’t interfere with a decision by the lower authority unless there’s been a gross injustice, said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at law firm IC Legal. “They (Mistry camp) really will have to bring in something substantial to the appellate tribunal to override the ruling of the lower authority,” he said. This looks unlikely as the Mistry firms would have exhausted all the options and played their best card, he said, adding that from here on, more than anything, it’s going to be a time-consuming exercise.","Cyrus Mistry’s investment firms filed a petition at NCLAT on 19 April, challenging the 6 March order of NCLT declaring the main petition non-maintainable",01:41,Cyrus Mistry’s family firms challenge NCLT order on maintainability at NCLAT +2017-05-02,"
At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner’s desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department’s “achievements” in the previous year.A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police’s technology prowess.The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS—Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System—under the “Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme” initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders—all with accompanying graphics. CMAPs also has a security module for VIP threat rating, based on vulnerability of the potential target and the security deployed, and advanced predictive analysis, among other features.A prototype of the standalone version was installed at the Delhi Police control room in June 2015. The software’s statistical models and algorithms today help the police carry out “predictive policing” to forecast where the next crime is likely to occur, much like in cities such as London, Los Angeles, Kent and Berlin.That’s just one example of how technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains.Fintech start-up Lendingkart Technologies has developed tools based on big data analytics to help lenders evaluate borrowers’ creditworthiness. Using these tools, its sister company Lendingkart Finance Ltd aims to transform small business lending by providing easy access to credit for small and medium enterprises.The “technology platform has helped create a highly operational efficiency model that enables swift loan disbursement within 72 hours of loan application. Over 120,000 SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) have till date reached out to Lendingkart Finance for their credit needs,” the company said.Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal programme, said on Thursday that they had partnered in a project to “exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government”.Using “disruptive technology”, they hope to potentially “improve efficiency by 20%, which could boost the number of meals served by millions”.Accenture Labs began the project with a “strategic assessment and design thinking, then developed a prototype for improving kitchen operations and outcomes”. An example of Akshaya Patra’s transformation, according to Thursday’s statement, was its move “from manual collection of feedback from children and schools to a more efficient technology-based solution” that involved the use of blockchain (the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin) and sensor-enabled devices to gather feedback digitally, and use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to “predict the next day’s meal requirements”. Consider another example. Until even early 2015, the thousands of distributors of consumer goods firm Marico Ltd in Mumbai used to place orders and wait “almost a day” before getting the goods delivered. Now it takes just 10-15 minutes for an order to be delivered, helping them stock fewer goods. In turn, the lower inventory helps them cut down on warehouse space and pare costs, besides reducing the waiting time for trucks. All these distributors have benefited from an analytics-driven Order Management Execution System that the company launched in December 2014.Big Data and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) are intimately connected: billions of Internet-connected “things” will, by definition, generate massive amounts of data. By 2020, the world would have generated around 40 zettabytes of data, or 5,127 gigabytes per individual, according to an estimate by research firm International Data Corp. It’s no wonder that in 2006, market researcher Clive Humby declared data to be “the new oil”. Companies are sharpening their focus on analysing this deluge of data to understand consumer behaviour patterns. A report by software body Nasscom and Blueocean Market Intelligence, a global analytics and insight provider, predicts that the Indian analytics market will cross the $2 billion mark by this fiscal year.Companies are using Big Data analytics for everything—driving growth, reducing costs, improving operations and recruiting better people.A major portion of orders of e-commerce firms now come through their analytics-driven systems. These firms record the purchasing behaviour of buyers and customize things for them. Travel firms, on their part, use data analytics to understand their customers—from basic things like their travel patterns, the kind of hotels they like to stay in, who their typical co-travellers are, their experiences—all geared to giving the customer a personalized experience the next time the customer visits the website.In hospitals, intelligence derived from data helps improve patient care through quicker and more accurate diagnoses, drug dosage recommendations and the prediction of potential side effects. Millions of electronic medical records, public health data and claims records are being analysed.Predictive healthcare using wearables to check vital medical signs and remote diagnostics could cut patient waiting times, according to a 13 January report by the McKinsey Global Institute. International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson, a cluster of computers that combines artificial intelligence and advanced analytics software and works as a “question answering” system, is being used for a variety of applications, most notably in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. Watson for Oncology helps physicians quickly identify key information in a patient’s medical records, sift through tons of data and come up with most optimal medical choices.Many companies globally and in India, including some start-ups, are using machine-learning tools to infuse intelligence in their business by using predictive models. Popular machine-learning applications include Google’s self-driving car, online recommendations from e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, online dating service Tinder and streaming video platform Netflix. Railigent, Siemens AG’s platform for the predictive maintenance for trains, listens to the trains running over its sensors and can detect, from the sound of the wheels, which wheel is broken and when it should be replaced.Predictive algorithms are used in recruitment too. Aspiring Minds, for instance, uses algorithms powered by machine learning that draw on data to address complex issues—for instance, to accurately gauge the quality of speech in various accents against a neutral accent (also using natural language processing). This helps companies improve recruitment efficiency by over 35% and reduce voice evaluation costs by 55%.Artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based algorithms and anomaly-detection techniques will need to be used to monitor activity across networks and real-time data streams, consulting firms point out. These technologies will, for instance, let banks in India identify threats as they occur while maintaining low false positive alarm rates even for new types of threats.There are still challenges in bringing about wider technology adoption.“Our survey showed that only about 4% of companies across industries have the capabilities to use advanced data analytics to deliver tangible business value. While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” said a March 2014 note by Bain and Co..“We often find that senior executives understand the concepts around Big Data and advanced analytics, but their teams have difficulty defining the path to value creation and the implications for technology strategy, operating model and organization. Too often, companies delegate the task of capturing value from better analytics to the IT department, as a technology project,” the note pointed out.In the 2006 movie Deja Vu, law enforcement agents investigate an explosion on a ferry that kills over 500 people, including a large group of party-going sailors. They use a new program that uses satellite technology to look back in time for four-and-a-half days—to try to capture the terrorist.Predictive policing is surely not as advanced today. And advances in predictive analytics can certainly raise ethical issues. For instance, the police may in the future be able to predict who might become a serial offender, and make an intervention at an early stage to change the path followed by the person, as is the case in Deja Vu. Or an insurance firm may use predictions to increase the premium or even deny a user an insurance.Any disruptive technology needs checks and balances in the form of good policy if it is to deliver to its potential.","Technology is playing a ubiquitous role in our daily lives—whether it’s policing a city, speeding up financial transactions or transforming supply chains",22:20,Making predictions with Big Data +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: The ministry of electronics and IT on Thursday issued guidelines on setting up of IT infrastructure by government departments using cloud computing technology with a clause mandating that all data must be stored within the country. The guidelines for government departments on contractual terms related to cloud services said since the data can be located in one or more discrete sites in foreign countries, therefore, the condition for data location has to be specifically mentioned in the agreement with the service provider. “The terms and conditions of the Empanelment of the Cloud Service Provider has taken care of this requirement by stating that all services including data will be guaranteed to reside in India,” the guidelines said. The cloud computing service enables its user to hire or use software, storage, servers as per requirement instead of purchasing the whole system. Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft Corp., Hewlett Packard, IBM India ,Tata Communications, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Net Magic IT Services, Sify Technologies and CtrlS Data Centers. Cloud computing can help government departments expand capacity of their IT system as per need and even for short period and quickly start any online service. The cloud computing system can be of help to departments specially in handling sudden load of web traffic generated to access their websites like in case of train ticket booking, form filling or tax submission on a last date etc. “...the department is required to move away from the traditional fixed payment model to a variable pricing / utility pricing model where the department pays for the resources it actually uses during that period. The payment terms have to be structured accordingly to pay only for the resources used by the department,” a separate set of guideline issued for cloud services procurement said. The guidelines on cloud computing follows MeghRaj Policy (cloud policy) to provide strategic direction for adoption of cloud services by the government. The aim of the cloud policy is to realise a comprehensive vision of a government cloud (GI Cloud) environment available for use by central and state government line departments, districts and municipalities to accelerate their ICT-enabled service improvements. As per the guidelines, both cloud service provider (CSP) and government department will have to share responsibility for the managing services provisioned using cloud computing facility.“The CSP’s part in this shared responsibility includes providing its services on a highly secure and controlled platform and providing a wide array of security features customers can use. The departments’ responsibility includes configuring their IT environments in a secure and controlled manner for their purposes,” the guideline said.","Meity has empanelled 11 companies for providing cloud computing services to government departments which include Microsoft , IBM India and BSNL",23:13,Govt IT data on cloud system must be stored within India: Meity +2017-04-20,"Hyderabad: Immigration-related issues facing the software services sector—such as H-1B visa curbs in the US and Australia scrapping the 457 visa—are just operational concerns for Indian IT companies, and the industry is taking steps to overcome them, Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said Thursday. “All of these (US and Australia visa curbs) are big changes that are happening beyond just policy changes of individual governments, and the industry has been taking several steps to cope with them. The domestic IT industry has transformed many times in the past. These are operational challenges,” said Chandrashekhar on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad on Thursday.“The immigration related issues are some of the operational challenges which they face today. It is just one more dimension of the economic and technological challenges. We believe that the industry is capable of once again transforming to the extent needed based on these shifts,” he added.According to Chandrashekhar, every country wants highly skilled workers from anywhere in the world, but there is a need to define “highly skilled workers” and ensure immigration policies of a country open the doors to them.Australia has abolished the 457 visa programme used by more than 95,000 temporary foreign workers, majority of them Indians, to tackle the growing unemployment in that country. The 457 visa allowed businesses to employ foreign workers up to four years in skilled jobs where there is a shortage of Australian workers. It will now be replaced by another visa programme with new restrictions.“We will have to wait and see what is the overall impact (of visa curbs), but some of the fundamentals which make us optimistic about our industry’s future in this space remain unchanged. As far as the domestic IT industry is concerned growth is strong,” said Chandrashekhar.Nasscom had on Wednesday said it would work closely with the Australian government to understand more details on the visa changes and ensure these changes can be implemented seamlessly to ensure business continuity for Australian customers.","Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar says US, Australia visa curbs are operational concerns for Indian IT companies and the industry will soon overcome them",23:20,"Nasscom hopes to overcome US, Australia visa curbs" +2017-04-13,"
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has a time-tested response every time rupee liquidity swells to an unmanageable surplus or is too deep in deficit and undermines the central bank’s ability to intervene in the foreign exchange market: it intervenes in the forward market.The central bank is back to doing this now, to not just stem the rupee’s rise but also prevent the undesired outcome of adding to an already colossal level of liquidity. For every dollar it buys, RBI releases rupees into the banking system, which is already awash with surplus cash after demonetisation. By buying forward contracts instead, the central bank can postpone such an infusion.RBI’s net outstanding position in the forward market in February trebled to $2.84 billion, according to data from the central bank. Movements in the forward rates ultimately influence the day’s spot market as well. The objective of stemming the rupee’s rise is met while deferring the consequence on liquidity.Of course, RBI turned a net buyer of dollars in February by buying $1.19 billion in the spot market. But this is not a large mop-up in the wake of an inflow of $2.45 billion into local bond and equity markets. Consequently, the rupee gained 1.76% during the month despite intervention.RBI has used the forward market intensively to manage liquidity, outflows and the exchange rate at several times in the last four years. The most recent case was during the redemption of the foreign currency non-resident deposits. A few years ago, when D. Subbarao was governor, it used the forward market whenever an immediate impact of forex intervention on domestic liquidity was not desired. The extent of intervention using forwards increased during Raghuram Rajan’s tenure and continues under current governor Urjit Patel. The reason for this increase in the central bank’s frequency and scale of visits to the forex market lies in a change in RBI’s liquidity stance. Under Rajan, the central bank had adopted the thinking that a liquidity deficit is best for transmission of policy rate changes onto market and loan rates. Now the stance has changed towards a neutral level of liquidity.Given that the problem now is one of plenty, it makes perfect sense for RBI to rely on the forward market to prevent the rupee from appreciating sharply without adding to liquidity on an immediate basis.","For every dollar it buys, RBI releases rupees into the banking system, which is already awash with surplus cash after demonetisation",07:59,RBI mantra: Look forward to deftly manage cash and forex +2017-04-12,"
Flipkart announced a massive funding round this week, after a gap of nearly two years. Although, at $1.4 billion, it’s the company largest, the backdrop for the funding is markedly different from previous funding rounds. About two years ago, in July 2015, the e-commerce firm had raised $2.4 billion in three funding rounds over a 12- month period. Funds flowed in easily back then, not only for Flipkart, but also for its competitors and all forms of start-ups. Companies used these funds to provide huge discounts and gain customers, which in turn brought in a new set of investors.ALSO READ: Why Flipkart valuation wasn’t hurt by multiple markdownsIn the past 18 months or so, investors have become a lot more discerning. They’ve realized India’s e-commerce opportunity is no longer as big as it once seemed to be. Their focus has shifted to unit economics and other efficiency parameters. Flipkart said in a meet organized by an investment bank late last year that its cash burn has reduced by around 25% from peak levels. The flip side is that growth has faltered in the past year.Among other things, the large funding by Tencent Holdings Ltd, eBay Inc. and Microsoft Corp. can be seen as a sign of approval for this more sensible strategy. As such, unlike previous years, Flipkart will be expected to use its freshly raised funds far more cautiously. According to an analyst at a multinational bank, the new investors may well have included terms where funds are released based on certain milestones being met. With Amazon.com Inc. breathing down its neck with high levels of discounting in the Indian market, Flipkart could be walking a very tight rope, trying to protect market share as well as improve unit economics and reduce cash burn.ALSO READ: Flipkart’s Sachin, Binny Bansal no more billionaires after raising $1.4 billionHaving said that, Flipkart’s latest funding round provides the reassurance that there are still some takers for the Indian e-commerce story. In particular, that there is room for another large company alongside Amazon. While the growth opportunity may not be as big as estimated earlier, it is still clearly big enough to attract some investors. When funding had nearly dried up in the past 18 months, financial investor Morgan Stanley Institutional Fund Trust marked down Flipkart’s valuation to around $5.4 billion, or about 65% lower compared to its valuation in July 2015. The latest funding values the firm at $11.6 billion on a post-money basis. Of the total equity issuance of $1.4 billion, about $200-250 million is estimated to be in exchange for eBay’s India business. The net inflow of $1.2 billion or so should easily suffice in terms of funding cash burn for another two years. If Flipkart manages these funds well, and uses it to gain scale and improve unit economics, it may continue to find new investors; especially since most of its competitors are gradually shutting shop.","If Flipkart manages the new funds well, and uses it to gain scale and improve unit economics, it may continue to find new investors",03:15,Flipkart’s largest funding may also be the trickiest to navigate +2017-04-12,"
On 10 April, Flipkart announced a new funding round and the acquisition of eBay India. Let us look at this development through the filter of something previously discussed in this column: the winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce.Since there is little differentiation between e-commerce firms, price becomes the sole differentiator. The company with most money to burn wins, while others sell out, usually to the winner. This may be simplistic, but it captures the essence of how e-commerce has played out globally.India is witnessing that scenario right now. Flipkart just announced acquisition of eBay India, and is likely to strike a similar deal with Snapdeal. Does this change the endgame? Can Flipkart outlast Amazon India? Or somehow settle into a stable duopoly beating the global trend? Or is it just delaying the inevitable? And what of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd?The winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce has not changed at all. And it will not until firms find a way to differentiate. Do customers see any real difference between Amazon and Flipkart? Both have great customer service, and similar merchandise. Even the frills are the same: if one has Amazon Prime, the other has Flipkart First. Does this acquisition change the endgame for Flipkart? Let us go through the arguments.Unique positioning of the acquired company: if the acquired company has unique strengths, it probably wouldn’t be up for acquisition. One argument could be that the target is strong in a certain segment such as a product category or geography. That may be true but it does not take that much effort or time to build from scratch. One has to only see how Amazon India has grown.Synergies with the acquired firm: the less said about this, the better, but we would be happy to be proven wrong. Flipkart’s deal-making has always been more about value buying, or common investors triggering a consolidation, than tapping synergies. Making the most of the opportunity of Rocket Internet pulling out of India, Flipkart snapped up Jabong for a song at $70 million. Its acquisition of Letsbuy and Myntra was triggered by common early stage investors. Its next buy Snapdeal, if the deal closes, will happen for similar reasons. With no home-grown mid-stage to late-stage venture funding available in India, Snapdeal is left with no choice but to sell.One oft-heard argument is that by buying everyone else, Flipkart will acquire such scale that it will either be able to survive stand-alone or force either Alibaba or Amazon to buy it. Given that all e-commerce firms are losing money, being bigger may just mean losing more money. Also, scale and customer base are meaningful only when entry barriers exist and there is some sort of customer loyalty. Otherwise, both are just vanity metrics.However, it is true that by acquiring all other rivals, Flipkart’s ability to present itself as the sole alternative to Amazon to investors and customers increases.There are other reasons for investors to back such acquisitions. The incentives of fund managers may not be aligned with those of the company. Many such deals are driven by investors such as Tiger Global and SoftBank, explained a limited partner (an investor in venture capital and private equity firms) from Hong Kong. In Flipkart’s case, Tiger has been an investor in the company for more than seven years and has to start thinking of providing liquidity to its investors. A deal to acquire Snapdeal, with an added deal for money from SoftBank (the single largest shareholder in Snapdeal), may provide this, this person added.ALSO READ: Why Flipkart’s valuation wasn’t hurt by multiple markdownsNew investors may be driven by a different logic, the limited partner explained. This could be strong liquidation preference terms that reduce downside risk. Or it could just be the opportunity to back a winning horse—or, at least, one that has a better chance of at least being there when the last race is run. Shrija Agrawal is Mint’s deals editor. Due Diligence will cover issues in India’s venture capital, private equity and deals space.","Flipkart’s $1.4 billion fundraising, acquisition of eBay India and a likely Snapdeal buyout shows the winner-takes-all nature of e-commerce hasn’t changed at all",01:57,Is Flipkart’s latest fundraising a game changer? +2017-04-10,"
The Banks Board Bureau has recommended five executive directors of public sector banks for top posts in state-run banks which will fall vacant in coming months. They are Sunil Mehta of Corporation Bank, Dina Bandhu Mohapatra of Canara Bank, Rajkiran Rai of Oriental Bank of Commerce, R.A. Sankara Narayanan of Bank of India and R. Subramaniakumar of Indian Overseas Bank.Within hours of selection, the Bureau put up the names on its website—probably to bring in transparency and ward off any pressure from any quarter to change the names later. In the past, there has been at least one instance where the Bureau’s recommendation was not accepted by the government, the majority owner of these banks.The selection process of these five gentlemen also marks a departure from the past. This is for the first time the so-called assessment centre exercises were conducted to select the CEOs of India’s public sector banks. Assessment centre is a catch-all term which refers to a standardized evaluation of behaviour, based on multiple evaluations, including job-related simulations, interviews, and psychological tests. An assessment centre is defined as “a variety of testing techniques designed to allow candidates to demonstrate, under standardized conditions, the skills and abilities that are most essential for success in a given job”.ALSO READ | A paper tiger called Banks Board BureauOne critical component of this is psychometric tests—a standard and scientific method to measure individuals’ mental capabilities and behavioural style. Such a test helps identify the hidden aspects of candidates that are difficult to extract from a face-to-face interview. The Bureau sought the assistance of Egon Zehnder, a global executive search, talent strategy and leadership development firm, to conduct such tests.Do these five candidates have great leadership qualities? I don’t know about that, but they seem to be the best in the talent pool from which the Bureau had to select the prospective CEOs. Unlike in the past, when the government invited applications from the private sector for the top jobs in state-run banks, this time around the selection was done from among the talent available within the industry.In 2015, two large public sector banks got CEOs from the private sector—P.S. Jayakumar (Bank of Baroda) and Rakesh Sharma (Canara Bank). A former Citibanker, Jayakumar was heading VBHC Value Homes Pvt. Ltd as managing director and CEO while Sharma was running Lakshmi Vilas Bank. Unlike Jayakumar who had worked in the private sector throughout his career, Sharma had spent three decades with the State Bank of India (SBI) before his 18-month stint in the old private bank. The government is still watching the experiment of managing a state-run bank with a private sector executive before opening the doors for more.Indeed, the selection process of the five CEOs is innovative, but no less interesting is the act of swapping the top jobs of two banks last month. The Bureau was not involved in that exercise as its mandate is selection of the CEOs of public sector banks and it doesn’t have a say in lateral entries. The government swapped the top posts of IDBI Bank Ltd and Indian Bank. Kishor Piraji Kharat, the CEO and MD of IDBI Bank since 18 August 2015, has been made the boss of Indian Bank and Mahesh Kumar Jain, MD and CEO of the Chennai-headquartered bank since 2 November 2015, is now heading the Mumbai-based IDBI Bank.Why has this been done? There have been various theories doing the rounds. Many believe that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is instrumental in doing this. This is probably not correct. I understand that the banking regulator expressed concerns about the health of IDBI Bank and wanted the government to strengthen its management bandwidth but did not recommend shifting its CEO to another bank.Yet another theory is Jain has been rewarded for its brilliant performance in Indian Bank and Kharat had to go as he had not managed IDBI Bank well. This is also difficult to believe as neither the top post in IDBI Bank can be a reward for a performer and nor the CEO’s job in Indian Bank is a punishment for a non-performer. IDBI Bank is a much larger bank than Indian Bank, but it’s sick. Indian Bank is roughly half the size of IDBI Bank in terms of assets but in the first three quarters of fiscal year 2017 it recorded a net profit of Rs1,086 crore against a Rs1,958 crore loss by IDBI Bank. It is better capitalised (13.89% capital adequacy ratio) than IDBI Bank (11.29%) and has far less bad assets (4.76% net bad loans and 7.69% gross bad loans) than IDBI Bank (9.61% and 15.16%, respectively). Bad loans of IDBI Bank have doubled since September 2015 when the RBI put in place the so-called asset quality review and its overall stressed assets are more than one-fourth of the loan book.Of course, Jain can take up his new assignment as the biggest challenge in his career and if he turns around the bank, that will be an achievement. Since Indian Bank is in a far better shape than IDBI Bank on every count, its top job can never be a punishment for any professional.Most importantly, if one is not found suitable to manage one particular bank, should the person be given another bank to run—or should she be asked to hang up her boots? Clearly, there is something else behind this development which we do not know. Incidentally, the government took extra care in the appointments of CEOs at five big banks, IDBI Bank being one of them. In 2015 (the Bureau didn’t exist at that time), the government invited applications from the private sector to fill in the top posts at these banks—Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank, Bank of India, Punjab National Bank and IDBI Bank.Jayakumar was picked for Bank of Baroda; Sharma for Canara Bank; Melwyn Rego, deputy managing director of IDBI Bank, for Bank of India; Usha Ananthasubramanian, chairman and MD of Bharatiya Mahila Bank (this has been merged with SBI) for Punjab National Bank; and Kharat, an executive director of Union Bank of India, for IDBI Bank.Kharat had spent only five months as an ED of Union Bank, but in his previous 37 years with Bank of Baroda, he had held several positions in India and overseas, including setting up and heading the bank’s subsidiary in Trinidad and Tobago.The government had appointed global management consulting firm Hay Group (which was acquired by Korn Ferry in end 2015), to identify the candidates for the top jobs in these five banks. Ironically, Jain who has now been called to steer IDBI Bank out of the mess, had applied for the top job at one of these banks at that time but could not make it.Tamal Bandyopadhyay, consulting editor at Mint, is adviser to Bandhan Bank. He is also the author of A Bank for the Buck, Sahara: The Untold Story and Bandhan: The Making of a Bank.His Twitter handle is @tamalbandyo.Respond to this column at tamal.b@livemint.com",The Banks Board Bureau is conducting—for the first time—the so-called assessment centre exercises to select the CEOs of India’s public sector banks,20:42,How public sector bank CEOs are selected +2017-04-09,"New York: It’s light (bulbs) out at General Electric Co.Almost 140 years after GE founder Thomas Edison developed the first practical incandescent light bulb, the industrial giant is considering parting with its consumer lighting business, according to the Wall Street Journal. Frankly, it’s been a long time coming and is more of a symbolic step than anything else: The unit’s reported potential sale price of about $500 million amounts to just 0.2% of GE’s current market value. But symbolism matters at a company like GE, whose long history has included a series of evolutions. It will be sad if GE gets rid of light bulbs. But the business just doesn’t fit anymore: it’s a commoditized industry with weak growth, fewer innovation opportunities and different distribution channels than those used to sell locomotives or parts for a Boeing Co. plane. The unit stood out all the more as GE separated the other consumer-facing parts of its empire including NBC Universal, appliances and the Synchrony Financial credit-card business. Home-bound light bulbs have also become more marginalized within GE’s broader lighting unit, which has shifted its focus to data-driven and energy efficient LED solutions for commercial entities and cities.The potential sale of a business so core to GE’s historical identity and yet so irrelevant to the modern day reality of what the company has become got me thinking: What other legacy consumer-facing businesses are industrial companies holding onto despite a push across the sector toward higher-margin, technologically advanced products? Could these operations also end up out the door?ALSO READ: GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s pay falls 35% to $21.3 million amid weak oil marketSome companies have already been pruning. Illinois Tool Works Inc. sold its Space Bag brand—which makes vacuum-seal storage products akin to those featured on infomercials—to SC Johnson in 2012. GE’s rival across the sea, Siemens AG, spun off its Osram Licht AG lighting division years ago and that business itself just completed the sale of its lower-margin general lamps operations to a Chinese consortium including MLS Co. But there are plenty of holdouts. 3M Co. is the obvious one, with an entire consumer division dedicated to things like Scotch tape, Post-it notes, wall-hooks and soap dishes. Philips Lighting, spun off from Royal Philips NV last year, has vowed to stick with traditional and consumer light bulbs rather than follow in Osram’s divestiture footsteps. In addition to selling jet engines and turbochargers, Honeywell International Inc. has a home-products business that offers humidifiers, doorbells and thermostats. The company also makes Puddletons rain boots for women and children (who knew?) and Muck boots, which sort of kind of maybe fit with its portfolio of professional safety gear. United Technologies Corp. sells elevators to building operators, but it also sells smoke detectors to average Joes. Pentair Plc offers pool cleaners. Ingersoll-Rand Plc has a golf-cart business, which isn’t really a consumer product unless you’re Donald Trump but it’s random for a company that makes HVAC systems.Not all of these are so easily gotten rid of. 3M is highly unlikely to part with its consumer unit. The shorter life cycle of those kinds of products works to 3M’s benefit as a company that’s built a reputation for being an innovator, says Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Joel Levington. The division has had some struggles lately, but it’s generally been a steady, high-margin business and has overlaps with the company’s industrial abrasives and adhesives products. If anything, Philips Lighting’s commitment to light bulbs may actually make it a buyer of GE’s business, barring antitrust concerns. United Technologies’ residential air conditioners and security products aren’t clearly delineated from more-commercial products. Honeywell’s emphasis on home devices that can be controlled via smartphone fits with its new CEO’s software and connectivity push. But a potential sale of GE’s light bulb business raises the question of whether these companies should take a harder look at what all they put under their industrial umbrella. Like that rain boots business—what’s up with that? Bloomberg","Almost 140 years after GE founder Thomas Edison developed the first practical incandescent light bulb, GE is considering parting with its consumer lighting business",17:19,GE without light bulbs puts focus on other industrial spare parts +2017-04-10,"
The government appears to have disagreed with the sugar industry’s contention on imports. While sugar output is now estimated at 20.3 million tonnes (mt), compared with initial estimates of 23.4 mt, the industry had opening stock of 7.75 mt. Consumption is expected to be lower due to the effect of demonetisation. Also, once crushing in the new season (beginning October) commences, supplies will improve.The government is unwilling to take that chance. A surge in sugar consumption could see a higher-than-expected drawdown of sugar. It does not want prices to crash either, explaining why it has allowed a relatively small limit of 500,000 tonnes. If prices increase even after this measure, it may allow more imports.As of 4 April, sugar prices were up by 8.8% over January; but they fell by 4.5%, as of 6 April, after this announcement. Shares of sugar mills weakened last week at the prospect of lower prices. That may be a premature reaction. One, mills had expected this development. Also, since crushing season is coming to a close, a Crisil Ratings note rightly points out that mills have already benefited from higher prices.The government’s intention is to ensure that speculation does not drive up prices once cane crushing ends in April. In the current season, lower output in Maharashtra and Karnataka and the southern states was the main reason for lower output. Uttar Pradesh mills’ output is higher. However, the new sugar season (starting October) is expected to see higher cane output.Still, a balanced market even in the next season (due to a shortfall in the current season) augurs well for sugar prices and for sugar mills. What are the concerns?India’s interest in imports could send global prices up. Raw sugar prices rose by 4% last week after the import announcement, and could increase further if traders expect India to import more.That is a tricky situation for the government as higher landed costs could mean imports lose their deterrent value. It may then resort to non-tariff measures to quell rising prices, which is a risk for the sugar producers.A new government in Uttar Pradesh is another factor to be watched. It has cracked down hard on mills defaulting on paying arrears to cane farmers. It has also called for a probe into the sale of government-owned sugar mills in 2010-11, according to news reports.The party manifesto had also said it will seek to introduce direct ethanol production from cane. That may reduce cane availability for sugar. Its view on cane pricing will be watched for.UP has traditionally fixed a higher price for cane, compared with the central government-determined price. That creates problems for mills, especially when sugar prices trend lower. If the new government implements a more stable pricing and operational environment, it can improve the longer-term outlook for UP-based sugar mills. But for now, the centre’s stance on sugar pricing is the main risk that investors need to watch out for.",The government’s intention is to ensure that speculation does not drive up prices once cane crushing ends in April,07:59,Government intervention a potential risk for sugar producers +2017-04-05,"Taipei: After its plan to offer free internet in India was rejected, Facebook Inc. may soon find that the fastest way to consumers’ hearts is through their wallets. Digitally.Its WhatsApp service is preparing to start digital payments in the country, a move that would leverage India’s rush to online transactions after November’s sudden demonetisation, the Financial Times reported. WhatsApp would challenge local players including PayTM, which is backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.The service would probably tap into India’s Unified Payments System, which is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and was set up to facilitate the transfer of funds instantly over mobile devices.More than a third of Indians now access the internet and mobile-phone penetration stands at around 80%, with both figures rising rapidly. Yet only 78% access the internet at least once per week, according to research compiled by consultancy Kepios.Facebook copped a lot of flack for trying to offer a free but scaled-down version of the internet in India as part of a program it has successfully deployed elsewhere. With the abolition of large-denomination banknotes forcing Indians to jump into digital alternatives, Facebook may benefit from a concept known as loss aversion.In their work on the topic, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman discovered that the fear of loss is a more powerful driver of action than the prospect of an equivalent gain. Kahneman went on to win a Nobel Prize in Economics for that research (Tversky died before it was awarded).With much Indian commerce grinding to a standstill because of a shortage of cash, fear of being unable to perform transactions may be a bigger driver of digital-payments adoption than the prospect of gains from efficiency or ease of use.It’s unlikely any offering would be a major profit contributor for WhatsApp, but it would help achieve what Facebook had hoped for in seeking to provide free web access, which is to get more people online regularly and spur consumers to use its services.After a humiliating loss last time, Facebook could be setting itself up for a win in India. Bloomberg","It’s unlikely any payments offering would be a major profit contributor for WhatsApp, but it would help Facebook to get more people online regularly",10:51,WhatsApp payments to be Facebook’s saving grace in India +2017-05-04,"
As managing director and chief innovation officer, Neal Cross spearheads the digital drive and innovation agenda of Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank Ltd, which was named the “World’s Best Digital Bank 2016” by Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The first bank in India to use the Aadhaar biometrics for customer acquisition, DBS went from “zero to 500,000 customers” in six months. In an interview, Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on banking. Edited excerpts:
What are the new initiatives that DBS Bank has undertaken recently in digital banking?If you think about what’s happening in our industry, as well as in many other industries, there is a push towards digitalization. This is a given in the times of digital disruption. But I think many financial institutions and corporates misunderstand it. Banks in India and elsewhere think that they need to get into digital but that’s not the issue: the issue is that digital needs to get into banks. Once you understand that fundamental and think of yourself as part of the digital ecosystem, it will help you prepare for the future and figure out your competitors. For us, we don’t really look at banks as our competitors in this space, for a number of reasons. One is that most of them are quite far behind. Also, this is not about banking but about digital. A good example in India is Paytm, and in China it is Alibaba and Tencent. Also, there are many fintechs around the world. Once you understand that, your strategy is no longer confined to just making the mobile offering a bit sexier, or plugging it into the social media and saying, “Hey, we are done!” That’s not the approach we took. We had a fund of 200 million Singapore dollars to do our digital strategy, which we first did in India. So it was a lot of money, a lot of people and a lot of work with a lot of smarts in there. What we did was a lot of hackathons and customer immersion events to really understand the key personas of our potential customer base. And that process was on for a long time (about six months). Alongside, we also started on the back-end process, which essentially cut the bank’s technology in half. What we did was hide a lot of complex systems in the back-end through a new Enterprise Service Bus architecture. So we built brand new code on top of our existing back-end assets for our Digibank application. This also enabled us to open up to partnerships such as the ability to connect to Aadhaar. We then moved on to API (application programming interface)- based banking and truly digital platform systems for banking through multiple business partnerships. I believe we delivered the world’s most advanced digital bank.
So, how do you define the world’s most advanced digital bank? What are its characteristics?It has a lot to do with the onboarding of customers and how the organization is run. One of the key things is that we operate like a start-up—we went from zero customers to 500,000 in six months. And the processes we used in raising this start-up included design thinking, taking into account the customer journey and the like. Our onboarding process is second to none. Besides our quick onboarding process that uses Aadhaar biometrics for KYC (know your customer), 90% of customer queries are handled using AI-based chat robots.
Have you built the applications internally or with partners? It was built by internal staff and obviously, we have partnerships across different products and services. The technical team is split between India and Singapore. In fact, we are hiring 1,500 people in Hyderabad; we have about 600 at the moment. We have designed the Digibank applications in accordance with our mission to have minimal banking operational costs in India as well as other parts of the world. This enables you to offer higher savings rates to your customers.
How do you see the move by telcos such as Bharti Airtel to get into banking?If you see it generally across the world, telcos have had this opportunity to move into the financial space for decades but not much has changed on the ground. We saw in Africa the success of Safaricom, but it was a surprise to them and the rest of the world that banking could be done through SMS (short messaging service). Now telcos are looking at how they can do this. But they could have done it decades ago. And they didn’t need a banking licence to do that—they could have partnered with a bank as they have the distribution network, the credit records and all sorts of things that are useful to the world of finance. We are now seeing a lot of movement among the telcos in this region, including in India and Indonesia, but we have not seen the same level of success we have seen in Africa. But different markets have their peculiarity and we’ll have to wait and see how it works in India.
How do you think AI, especially chatbots, is doing in the banking industry?Intelligent bots are useful in doing things like looking up FAQs (frequently asked questions), filtering a customer’s spending at a coffee chain according to certain parameters, etc. But can you have an intelligent conversation with a bot about your wealth? The answer is, No. I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Perhaps it will be five to 10 years before we see that kind of value in the front end, but there’s a lot of robotization happening in the back end right now and systems are enabled to talk to each other more easily. Systems are being made more and more “fuzzier” now to take decisions where humans were typically involved.","DBS Bank MD and chief innovation officer Neal Cross talks about the bank’s digital initiatives, telcos’ move into banking and the impact of artificial intelligence on banking",23:20,The issue is that digital needs to get into banks: DBS Bank’s Neal Cross +2017-04-04,"
The last time the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) restrained itself from acting on excessive liquidity, it had to face a double-digit inflation rate in the years ahead. This was the flood of liquidity around September 2009 and the years of double-digit inflation started in 2011. Granted, the situation was not so linear and the rise in inflation was not a mere ignition of demand by excess money. But there are enough history lessons to warn what excessive money can lead to.When the monetary policy committee (MPC) begins its two-day deliberations on policy rates on Wednesday, it will in all probability not just include but highlight the current deluge of liquidity. After all, RBI’s monetary policy stance and the impact of MPC’s decision on interest rates hinges solely on how much money should be allowed to slosh around in the banking system and for how long. The favourite tool to suck out liquidity in the past was the cash reserve ratio (CRR). But it would be a waste to hike the CRR now as a 50 basis point increase would impound only a fraction of the liquidity surplus, which is currently a massive Rs3.5 trillion. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. CRR is also a blunt tool and it affects all banks in the same manner although liquidity is almost always skewed among lenders.While many other tools have been discussed including a new one called standing deposit facility, what matters is that the surplus money should be impounded immediately.Why should the central bank hurry on liquidity? One argument is that investment demand is tepid and as credit growth is unlikely to pick up from its historic lows, there is no way surplus liquidity can fuel inflation. However, corporate bond yields are down more than 50 basis points and the benchmark equity indices have soared more than 20% in fiscal year 2016-17, a year in which corporate balance sheets were under severe pressure. These are evidences enough to show that liquidity has begun fuelling asset prices.Leaving the surplus liquidity problem unattended would lead to money chasing yields and thereby investments into riskier assets. In its worst form, the surplus could find its way into stressed assets at an unwarranted price.MPC voted to put an end to easing the interest rate regime in February to safeguard the medium-term retail inflation target of 4%.This time, the vote should be for changing surplus liquidity conditions that may undermine its inflation management.","When the monetary policy committee begins its two-day deliberations on policy rates tomorrow, it will in all probability not just include but highlight the current deluge of liquidity",08:06,RBI: Plug the liquidity tap to avoid inflation deja vu +2017-04-20,"Washington: Forgot your ATM pin? A next- generation biometric card that lets you authenticate your payments with your fingerprints could soon come to your aid. US-based company Mastercard on Thursday unveiled the new biometric card that combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify the cardholder’s identity for in-store purchases. The technology was recently tested in South Africa in two separate trials. The card builds on fingerprint scanning technology used for mobile payments and can be employed at EMV terminals worldwide. “Consumers are increasingly experiencing the convenience and security of biometrics,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard. “Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security,” said Bhalla, an Indian-origin senior executive of the company. “It’s not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected,” he said. A cardholder enrols their card by simply registering with their financial institution. Upon registration, their fingerprint is converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card. The card is now ready to be used at any EMV card terminal globally. When shopping and paying in-store, the biometric card works like any other chip card. The cardholder dips the card into a retailer’s terminal while placing their finger on the embedded sensor. The fingerprint is verified against the template and — if the biometrics match — the cardholder is successfully authenticated and the transaction can then be approved with the card never leaving the consumer’s hand. Authenticating a payment transaction biometrically — in this instance via a fingerprint — confirms that the person using the card is the genuine cardholder. The card works with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure and does not require any new hardware or software upgrades. It can detect and prevent fraud, increase approval rates and reduce operational costs. The recent South African trials tested the potential ways convenience and security could contribute to the checkout process. Over the next few months, additional trials will be conducted with the biometric card. A full roll out is expected later this year, the company said. Additional trials are being planned in Europe and Asia Pacific in coming months.",Mastercard’s new biometric card combines chip technology with fingerprints to conveniently and safely verify cardholder identity for in-store purchases,18:48,Mastercard unveils biometric card to replace ATM pin with fingerprint verification +2017-04-20,"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s monetary policy committee cited upside risks to inflation arising from price pressure excluding food and fuel as the main reason for keeping its policy rate unchanged, according to minutes of the April meeting released on Thursday. Here is the full text of the bi-monthly monetary policy statement of RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee. Minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee Meeting5-6 April 2017[Under Section 45ZL of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934]The fourth meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), constituted under section 45ZB of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, was held on 5 and 6 April 2017 at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.2. The meeting was attended by all the members — Dr. Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Dr. Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics; and Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra, Executive Director (the officer of the Reserve Bank nominated by the Central Board under Section 45ZB(2)(c) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934); Dr. Viral V. Acharya, Deputy Governor in-charge of monetary policy — and was chaired by Dr. Urjit R. Patel, Governor.3. According to Section 45ZL of the amended Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank shall publish, on the fourteenth day after every meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which shall include the following, namely:–(a) the resolution adopted at the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee;(b) the vote of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee, ascribed to such member, on resolution adopted in the said meeting; and(c) the statement of each member of the Monetary Policy Committee under subsection (11) of section 45ZI on the resolution adopted in the said meeting.4. The MPC reviewed the surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank to gauge consumer confidence, households’ inflation expectations, corporate sector performance, credit conditions, the outlook for the industrial, services and infrastructure sectors, and the projections of professional forecasters. The Committee reviewed in detail staff’s macroeconomic projections, and alternative scenarios around various risks to the outlook. Drawing on the above and after extensive discussions on the stance of monetary policy, the MPC adopted the resolution that is set out below.Resolution5. On the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation at its meeting today, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to:• keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 6.25%.6. Consequent upon the narrowing of the LAF corridor as elaborated in the accompanying Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, the reverse repo rate under the LAF is at 6.0%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate are at 6.50%.7. The decision of the MPC is consistent with a neutral stance of monetary policy in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4% within a band of +/- 2%, while supporting growth. The main considerations underlying the decision are set out in the statement below.Assessment8. Since the MPC met in February 2017, indicators of global growth suggest signs of stronger activity in most advanced economies (AEs) and easing of recessionary conditions in commodity exporting large emerging market economies (EMEs). In the US, high frequency data indicate that the labour market, industrial production and retail sales are catalysing a recovery in Q1 of 2017 from a relatively subdued performance in the preceding quarter. Nonetheless, risks to higher growth have arisen from non-realisation or under-achievement of macroeconomic policies. In the Euro area, the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose to a six year high in March amidst improving consumer confidence and steadily strengthening employment conditions. In the Japanese economy, nascent signs of revival are evident in the form of falling unemployment, improving business sentiment on fixed investment, and rising exports helped by the depreciation of the yen; however, deflation risks linger.9. For EMEs, the outlook is gradually improving, with indications that the slowdown characterising 2016 could be bottoming out. In China, supportive macroeconomic policies, surging credit growth and a booming property market have held up the momentum of growth albeit amidst concerns about financial stability and capital outflows. In Brazil, hardening commodity prices are providing tailwinds to reforms undertaken by the authorities to pull the economy out of recession, although financial fragilities remain a risk. Russia is benefiting from the firming up of crude prices and it is widely expected that growth will return to positive territory in 2017.10. Inflation is edging up in AEs to or above target levels on the back of slowly diminishing slack, tighter labour markets and rising commodity prices. Among EMEs, Turkey and South Africa remain outliers in an otherwise generalised softening of inflation pressures. Global trade volumes are finally showing signs of improvement amidst shifts in terms of trade, with exports rising strongly in several EMEs as well as in some AEs whose currencies have depreciated.11. International financial markets have been impacted by policy announcements in major AEs, geo-political events and country-specific factors. Equity markets in AEs were driven up by reflation trade, stronger incoming data and currency movements.Equity markets in EMEs had a mixed performance, reflecting domestic factors amidst a cautious return of investor appetite and capital flows. In the second half of March, dovish guidance on US monetary policy lifted equities across jurisdictions, especially in Asia, as the reach for EME assets resumed strongly, although doubts about the realisation of US policies, Brexit and softer crude prices tempered sentiments. Bond markets have mirrored the uncertainty surrounding the commitment to fiscal stimulus in the US and yields traded sideways in AEs, while they generally eased across EMEs. In the currency markets, the US dollar’s bull run lost steam by mid-March.EME currencies initially rose on optimism on the global outlook, but some of them have weakened in recent days with the fall in commodity prices. Crude prices touched a three-month low in March on rising shale output and US inventories. Food prices have been firming up globally, driven by cereals.12. On the domestic front, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its second advance estimates for 2016-17 on 28 February, placing India’s real GVA growth at 6.7% for the year, down from 7% in the first advance estimates released on 6 January . Agriculture expanded robustly year-on-year after two consecutive years of sub-one percent growth. In the industrial sector, there was a significant loss of momentum across all categories, barring electricity generation. The services sector also slowed, pulled down by trade, hotels, transport and communication as well as financial, real estate and professional services. Public administration, defence and other services cushioned this slowdown. To some extent, government expenditure made up for weakness in private consumption and capital formation.13. Several indicators are pointing to a modest improvement in the macroeconomic outlook. Foodgrains production has touched an all-time high of 272 million tonnes, with record production of rice, wheat and pulses. The record production of wheat should boost procurement operations and economise on imports, which had recently surged. Rice stocks, which had depleted to close to the minimum buffer norm, have picked up with kharif procurement. The bumper production of pulses has helped in building up to the intended buffer stock (i.e., 20 lakh tonnes) and this will keep the price of pulses under check – the domestic price of pulses has already fallen below the minimum support price (MSP).14. Industrial output, measured by the index of industrial production (IIP), recovered in January from a contraction in the previous month, helped by a broadbased turnaround in manufacturing as well as mining and quarrying. Capital goods production improved appreciably, although this largely reflected the waning of unfavourable base effects. Consumer non-durables continued, however, to contract for the second successive month in spite of supportive base effects. Thus, investment and rural consumption demand remain muted. The output of core industries moderated in February due to slowdown in production of all the components except coal. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) remained in expansion mode in February and rose to a five month high in March on the back of growth of new orders and output. The future output index also rose strongly on forecasts of pick-up in demand and the launch of new product lines. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that overall business sentiment is expected to improve in Q1 of 2017-18 on the back of a sharp pick up in both domestic and external demand. Coincident indicators such as exports and non-oil non-gold imports are indicative of a brighter outlook for industry, although the sizable under-utilisation of capacity in several industries could operate as a drag on investment.15. Activity in the services sector appears to be improving as the constraining effects of demonetisation wear off. On the one hand, rural demand remains depressed as reflected in lower sales of two- and three-wheelers and fertiliser. On the other hand, high frequency indicators relating to railway traffic, telephone subscribers, foreign tourist arrivals, passenger car and commercial vehicles are regaining pace, thereby positioning the services sector on a rising trajectory. After three consecutive months of contraction, the services PMI for February and March emerged into the expansion zone on improvement in new business.16. After moderating continuously over the last six months to a historic low, retail inflation measured by year-on-year changes in the consumer price index (CPI) turned up in February to 3.7%. While food prices bottomed out at the preceding month’s level, base effects pushed up inflation in this category. Prices of sugar, fruits, meat, fish, milk and processed foods increased, generating a sizable jump in the momentum in the food group. In the fuel group, inflation increased as the continuous hardening of international prices lifted domestic prices of liquefied petroleum gas during December 2016 – February 2017. Kerosene prices have also been increasing since July with the programmed reduction of the subsidy. Adapting to the movements in these salient prices, both three months ahead and a year ahead households’ inflation expectations, which had dipped in the December round of the Reserve Bank’s survey, reversed in the latest round. Moreover, the survey reveals hardening of price expectations across product groups. The 77th round of the Reserve Bank’s industrial outlook survey indicates that pricing power is returning to corporates as profit margins get squeezed by input costs.17. Excluding food and fuel, inflation moderated in February by 20 basis points to 4.8%, essentially on transient and item-specific factors. In February, favourable base effects were at work in the clothing and bedding sub-group as well as in personal care and effects, the latter also influenced by the disinflation in gold prices. The volatility in crude oil prices and its lagged pass-through are impacting the trajectory of CPI inflation excluding food and fuel. Much of the impact of the fall of US $4.5 per barrel in international prices of crude since early February would feed into the CPI print in April as its cumulative pass-through occurred with a lag in the first week of this month. Importantly, inflation excluding food and fuel has exhibited persistence and has been significantly above headline inflation since September 2016.18. With progressive remonetisation, the surplus liquidity in the banking system declined from a peak of Rs7,956 billion on 4 January 2017 to an average of Rs6,014 billion in February and further down to Rs4,806 billion in March. Currency in circulation expanded steadily during this period. Its impact on the liquidity overhang was, however, partly offset by a significant decline in cash balances of the Government up to mid-March which released liquidity into the system. Thereafter, the build-up of Government cash balances on account of advance tax payments and balance sheet adjustment by banks reduced surplus liquidity to Rs3,141 billion by end-March.Issuances of cash management bills (CMBs) under the market stabilisation scheme (MSS) ceased in mid-January and existing issues matured, with the consequent release of liquidity being absorbed primarily through variable rate reverse repo auctions of varying tenors. Accordingly, the average net absorption by the Reserve Bank increased from Rs2,002 billion in January to Rs4,483 billion in March. The weighted average call money rate (WACR) remained within the LAF corridor. The maturing of CMBs and reduced issuance of Treasury bills leading up to end-March has also contributed to Treasury bill rates being substantially below the policy rate.19. Merchandise exports rose strongly in February 2017 from a subdued profile in the preceding months. Growth impulses were broad-based, with major contributors being engineering goods, petroleum products, iron ore, rice and chemicals. The surge in imports in January and February 2017 largely reflected the effect of the hardening of commodity prices such as crude oil and coal. Non-oil non-gold imports continued to grow at a modest pace, though capital goods imports remained sluggish. With imports outpacing exports, the trade deficit widened in January and February from its level a year ago, though it was lower on a cumulative basis for the period April-February 2016-17.20. Balance of payments data for Q3 indicate that the current account deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year narrowed to 0.7 per cent of GDP, half of its level a year ago. For the year as a whole, the current account deficit is likely to remain muted at less than 1% of GDP. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dominated net capital inflows during April-December, with manufacturing, communication and financial services being the preferred sectors. Turbulence in global financial markets set off a bout of global risk aversion and flight to safe haven that caused net outflows of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) during November 2016 to January 2017. The tide reversed with the pricing in of the Fed’s normalisation path and improvement in global growth prospects. FPI flows turned positive in February and welled up into a surge in March, especially in debt markets relative to equity markets (which had been the dominant recipient until February). This reversal appears to have been driven by stable domestic inflation, better than expected domestic growth, encouraging corporate earnings, clarity on FPI taxation, pro-reform budget proposals and state election results. The level of foreign exchange reserves was US$ 369.9 billion on 31 March 2017.Outlook21. Since the February bi-monthly monetary policy statement, inflation has been quiescent. Headline CPI inflation is set to undershoot the target of 5.0 per cent for Q4 of 2016-17 in view of the sub-4 per cent readings for January and February. For 2017-18, inflation is projected to average 4.5% in the first half of the year and 5% in the second half (Chart 1).22. Risks are evenly balanced around the inflation trajectory at the current juncture. There are upside risks to the baseline projection. The main one stems from the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the south west monsoon in view of the rising probability of an El Niño event around July-August, and its implications for food inflation. Proactive supply management will play a critical role in staving off pressures on headline inflation. A prominent risk could emanate from managing the implementation of the allowances recommended by the 7th CPC. In case the increase in house rent allowance as recommended by the 7th CPC is awarded, it will push up the baseline trajectory by an estimated 100-150 basis points over a period of 12-18 months, with this initial statistical impact on the CPI followed up by second-order effects. Another upside risk arises from the one-off effects of the GST. The general government deficit, which is high by international comparison, poses yet another risk for the path of inflation, which is likely to be exacerbated by farm loan waivers.Recent global developments entail a reflation risk which may lift commodity prices further and pass through into domestic inflation. Moreover, geopolitical risks may induce global financial market volatility with attendant spillovers. On the downside, international crude prices have been easing recently and their pass-through to domestic prices of petroleum products should alleviate pressure on headline inflation. Also, stepped-up procurement operations in the wake of the record production of foodgrains will rebuild buffer stocks and mitigate food price stress, if it materialises.23. GVA growth is projected to strengthen to 7.4 per cent in 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2016-17, with risks evenly balanced (Chart 2). 24. Several favourable domestic factors are expected to drive this acceleration. First, the pace of remonetisation will continue to trigger a rebound in discretionary consumer spending. Activity in cash-intensive retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and unorganised segments has largely been restored. Second, significant improvement in transmission of past policy rate reductions into banks’ lending rates post demonetisation should help encourage both consumption and investment demand of healthy corporations. Third, various proposals in the Union Budget should stimulate capital expenditure, rural demand, and social and physical infrastructure all of which would invigorate economic activity. Fourth, the imminent materialisation of structural reforms in the form of the roll-out of the GST, the institution of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board will boost investor confidence and bring in efficiency gains. Fifth, the upsurge in initial public offerings in the primary capital market augurs well for investment and growth.25. The global environment is improving, with global output and trade projected by multilateral agencies to gather momentum in 2017. Accordingly, external demand should support domestic growth. Downside risks to the projected growth path stem from the outturn of the south west monsoon; ebbing consumer optimism on the outlook for income, the general economic situation and employment as polled in the March 2017 round of the Reserve Bank’s consumer confidence survey; and, commodity prices, other than crude, hardening further.26. Overall, the MPC’s considered judgement call to wait out the unravelling of the transitory effects of demonetisation has been broadly borne out. While these effects are still playing out, they are distinctly on the wane and should fade away by the Q4 of 2016-17. While inflation has ticked up in its latest reading, its path through 2017-18 appears uneven and challenged by upside risks and unfavourable base effects towards the second half of the year. Moreover, underlying inflation pressures persist, especially in prices of services. Input cost pressures are gradually bringing back pricing power to enterprises as demand conditions improve. The MPC remains committed to bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Accordingly, inflation developments have to be closely and continuously monitored, with food price pressures kept in check so that inflation expectations can be re-anchored. At the same time, the output gap is gradually closing. Consequently, aggregate demand pressures could build up, with implications for the inflation trajectory.27. Against this backdrop, the MPC decided to keep the policy rate unchanged in this review while persevering with a neutral stance. The future course of monetary policy will largely depend on incoming data on how macroeconomic conditions are evolving. Banks have reduced lending rates, although further scope for a more complete transmission of policy impulses remains, including for small savings/administered rates1. It is in this context that greater clarity about liquidity management is being provided, even as surplus liquidity is being steadily drained out. Along with rebalancing liquidity conditions, it will be the Reserve Bank’s endeavour to put the resolution of banks’ stressed assets on a firm footing and create congenial conditions for bank credit to revive and flow to productive sectors of the economy.28. Six members voted in favour of the monetary policy decision. The minutes of the MPC’s meeting will be published by 20 April 2017.29. The next meeting of the MPC is scheduled on June 6 and 7, 2017. Voting on the Resolution to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25%Member VoteDr. Chetan Ghate YesDr. Pami Dua YesDr. Ravindra H. Dholakia YesDr. Michael Debabrata Patra YesDr. Viral V. Acharya YesDr. Urjit R. Patel YesStatement by Dr. Chetan Ghate30. Core inflation (CPI inflation excluding food and fuel) continues to be sticky, and its persistence poses upside risks for meeting the medium-term inflation target of 4% within a band of +/- 2%. Other exclusion based measures also remain elevated, although there have been transient declines in the demonetisation period. There has also been an inching up in the median 3 month and 1 year ahead inflationary expectations. The recent decline in headline inflation has been driven completely by food inflation and is likely to reverse in the summer months.31. A strong upside risk to the inflation trajectory is the HRA implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. This needs to be watched carefully in terms of (i) to what extent the increase in the centre HRA is matched by state HRAs; and (ii) the extent to which the centre and state HRAs are implemented simultaneously (which means the inflationary effects will be stronger) or is staggered (which means the inflationary effect will be weaker). While we should see through any statistical effects from an increase in the HRA, the size of the second round effects may potentially be large depending on the extent and manner in which the HRA implementation takes place, in which case, there may be a need for a monetary policy response. Our focus on meeting the medium-term inflation target should remain laser sharp in light of such risks.32. Since the last review, there is more clarity from both “soft” data (based on surveys), and “hard” data (based on actual economic performance), that the overall impact of demonetisation on the real economy has been transient. Importantly, the PMI in services has come out of contraction mode. The impact of demonetisation on Rabi sowing has also been very modest and transient – with a good monsoon and the strategic timing of the MSP helping in this regard. The performance of the real estate sector listed companies has seen an improvement. Large and medium industries have also recovered handsomely in terms of demand after demonetisation,although the small and micro sectors continue to be adversely affected. Overall, the output gap, while marginally negative, is closing gradually leading to the possible building up of inflationary pressures.33. As I mentioned in the last review, the pace of the ending of the re-investment of principal payments by the US Fed from its balance sheet holdings needs to be watched carefully, as also the extent to which such a “balance sheet reduction” by the Fed, as well as rises in the Fed funds rate, are disruptive for financial markets.34. Taking into account these considerations, I vote for keeping the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.25% at today’s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee.Statement by Dr. Pami Dua35. Several factors indicate positive and modest growth in the economy. The remonetisation drive is progressing well, with the currency in circulation restored to almost 75% of its value by end March of this year, which is expected to support discretionary spending. Spending in cash-intensive activities such as hotels, restaurants, transportation and the unorganised sectors is also on the rise. Further, a decrease in bank lending rates due to a delayed transmission of policy rate reductions in the past augurs well for the economy and may enhance consumption and investment spending. Various measures outlined in the Union Budget 2017-18 are conducive to growth in key sectors including the rural economy, infrastructure and housing, and are expected to have multiplier effects. The March 2017 round of the Industrial Outlook Survey undertaken by the Reserve Bank also shows improvement in sentiment in the corporate sector. On the external front, positive signs of growth across Advanced and Emerging Market Economies may boost demand for Indian exports. This optimism regarding domestic and global economic growth is also reflected in the leading indexes compiled by the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), New York.36. On the inflation front, CPI inflation remained soft, primarily due to lower food prices, as vegetable prices declined, possibly due to distress sales as a result of demonetisation. However, core inflation (excluding food and fuel) continues to be higher, although it moderated slightly to 4.8 per cent in February. At the same time, upside risks to inflation remain, including remonetisation, rising rural wages, narrowing output gap, implementation of 7th CPC’s higher house rent allowances, rollout of GST, possibility of El Nino conditions, higher global commodity prices, uncertainty regarding prices of crude oil and exchange rate volatility. A Survey of Households Inflation Expectations undertaken by the Reserve Bank in March 2017 also indicates a rise in 3-month and 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Furthermore, ECRI’s Indian Future Inflation Gauge, a harbinger of Indian inflation, indicates some firming in inflation pressures.Statement by Dr. Ravindra H. Dholakia37. The effects of demonetisation on the Indian economy so far have turned out to be transitory and of lower magnitude vindicating our stand earlier. There are indications of a modest improvement in the domestic macroeconomic performance.The global outlook for growth, trade and prices has also improved. It is likely to have a favourable impact on Indian exports and the economy. The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) and the Reserve Bank surveys also point to better sentiments on both the domestic and external demand. However, the capacityutilisation in industries has remained persistently low indicating at least continuing, if not widening, output gap. Against this, the headline inflation has been substantially below 4% largely on account of vegetables and pulses. Inflation excluding food and fuel (core inflation) has been fairly sticky though has marginally declined to 4.8% in February. Surplus liquidity in the economy since January 2017 has been steadily declining from Rs8 trillion to Rs4.8 trillion in March 2017.38. The core inflation according to my calculations is likely to show a declining trend over the year. Moreover, the dynamics of pass-through from the non-core to the core inflation is changing such that volatility in the food/fuel prices would penetrate into core less easily than before. Oil prices according to me are not expected to stay high consistently. Simultaneous implementation of house rent allowances recommended by the 7th CPC by the Centre and all State governments is less likely and consequently its impact on inflation during 2017-18 may not be as high as 1 to 1.5 percentage points. The rising probability of El Nino event around July August may adversely affect food production but may not seriously impact the food prices in view of comfortable buffer stocks. The GST implementation may not substantially impact the headline inflation because of multi-tier rate system.39. In view of all this, the inflation projection according to my calculations is an average of around 4% for the first half of 2017-18 and around 4.5 per cent for the second half of the year. Given the surplus liquidity still floating in the system, any change in the policy rate is not desirable at this stage. The liquidity position is expected to return to the normal level consistent with the neutral stance soon. Statement by Dr. Michael Debabrata Patra40. True to projections made at the time of the last meeting of the Committee, inflation is turning up. It seems to me that it is coming out of the U-shaped compression imposed by demonetisation and is now positioned on the risingslope. Several factors merit pre-emptive concern.41. First, just as it drove a disinflation that started in August – well before demonetisation, which is responsible only for the sub-4 per cent trough – it is food that has pushed up headline inflation in February. And it is not the usual suspect – vegetables. It is the more sinister elements – protein-rich items other than pulses; cereals; sugar. When inflation rears its ugly head in these items, experience suggests it is likely to stay. 42. Second, inflation excluding food and fuel has been unrelenting. It is only in the February reading that there is a small downward movement, but is it sustainable? I think not: it is item-specific rather than generalised. If staff’s projections are indicative, inflation excluding food and fuel will probably run ahead of headline inflation throughout 2017-18.43. The consequence of the firming up of these salient prices is that inflation expectations have reversed and hardened, and not just in the near term but also a year ahead and across all product groups. Consumer confidence in the price situation has deteriorated. Firms are regaining pricing power.44. Third, high frequency indicators may be indicating that demonetisation affected actual output rather than potential. With remonetisation, therefore, the output gap may close sooner than expected – perhaps at a sub-optimal level since there is slack in several industries – and demand pressures could soon confront the path of inflation in the months ahead.45. These developments suggest to me that momentum is gathering underneath inflation developments, which appear benign at this juncture. In the second half of 2017-18, favourable base effects fade, and if food inflation rises alongside the stickiness in underlying inflation, it could become a perfect storm.46. So much for the ingredients of inflation. Let me turn to costs. 47. The most important cost push will emanate from the 7th pay commission’s house rent allowance. The first order statistical impact on the CPI may take headline inflation to or beyond the upper tolerance band. Second order effects will work through expectations and ‘Deusenberry effects’ as it spreads to states, PSUs, universities, and onwards. These effects will occur on top of the first order effect and 6% plus inflation could be here to stay for some time.48. The second one is the one off effect of the GST - small relative to the 7th pay commission and short lived, it could still last a year and push up inflation.49. Third, several administered price elements are being adjusted upwards – milk; gas; kerosene; the MSP, as usual – and they will take their toll on headline inflation.50. Finally, let me turn to the elephants in the room, keeping in mind that whether elephants fight or play, the grass suffers.51. Closest to home is the south west monsoon. The probability of an El Niño event is rising and if food inflation gets entrenched as it did in 2009 in the trail of a sub-normal monsoon, there will be second order effects.52. The second one is imported inflation, including through bouts of financial market turbulence and the rising tide of protectionism.53. The third is global inflation – mercury is rising across advanced economies and it cannot be that India will be immune to it. Normalisation of monetary policy has begun in those economies, and it is not just the raising of policy rates/short-term rates. Normalising overly distended balance sheets can produce tightening of longer rates as well.54. To sum up, I believe that a pre-emptive 25 basis points increase in the policy rate now will point us better at the target of 4 per cent to which the Committee has committed explicitly. It will also obviate the need for back-loaded policy action later when inflation is unacceptably high and entrenched. On balance, however, I vote for holding the policy rate unchanged in this bi-monthly meeting and await a few more readings of incoming data so that remaining transitory factors have passed and a clearer assessment of domestic and global macroeconomic conditions emerges.Statement by Dr. Viral V. Acharya55. Headline inflation is set to rebound from its recent lows due to the expected (and in the past month, realized) mean-reversion in food inflation, especially in vegetables. Global inflationary trends have remained on the upside too. There is some uncertainty as to when the headline inflation might cross the target inflation rate of 4% and keep inching above, given that inflation without food and fuel is stubbornly above the target rate. We have laid out in the resolution several upside risks, of which geopolitical risks and undoing of the center’s fiscal discipline by the states concern me the most. Commodity prices, especially crude, have been volatile and so has the exchange rate. Hence, risks are evenly balanced around the inflation outlook. 56. On the growth front, the remonetisation is continuing apace and many sectors of the economy are recovering steadily after the transient slowdown. There are signs though that the recovery is somewhat uneven. Private investment, given the high indebtedness of several stressed sectors, remains a particularly weak spot.Household expectations of income, spending and employment appear to have weakened, but may be anchored to the past few months and need to be tracked in the coming months. Other signs of economic activity paint a rosier picture for the growth over the next year, with the external sector having been remarkably resilient.57. Should an inflation-targeting central bank react to a narrowing output gap in such a scenario? Given the balanced nature of risks and uncertainty that abounds, I lean towards continuing the neutral stance and pause for now. There are many important issues to attend to, notably (i) resolving bank stressed assets and correcting weak bank balance-sheets; (ii) mopping up in a more durable manner the surplus liquidity sloshing around post-demonetisation and which is keeping short-term money market rates away from the policy rate; and (iii) unleashing the true potential of our capital markets further, by enhancing liquidity in the corporate bond market, and improving the ease and the suite of financial hedging options. It seems an opportune time to focus on these issues.Statement by Dr. Urjit R. Patel58. After reaching a historic low in January 2017, CPI inflation in February 2017 edged up, as expected. However, in all probability, inflation will significantly undershoot the 5 per cent target set for Q4 of 2016-17. Vegetable prices, which had declined sharply during November 2016 to January 2017, seem to have stabilised but may go up in the coming months due to a seasonal pick up. CPI inflation excluding food and fuel remained sticky, especially services. Also, given the volatility in the CPI, it is not easy to read its evolution. The outlook for inflation faces several other risks. Input costs have been rising, which could be passed on to output prices as demand strengthens. Further, the implementation of the HRA allowances recommended as part of the 7th CPC and the GST are risks, which could alter the inflation outturn in 2017-18. Uncertainty about the crude oil price trajectory is both ways given recent movements. Heightened geo-political risks continue to impart financial volatility in global markets.59. The latest data released by the CSO suggested that the impact of demonetisation on economic activity was modest. Economic activity is expected to pick up in 2017-18, although there is the usual uncertainty about the monsoon at this stage. Several lead indicators suggest some improvement in the economic outlook.The industrial outlook survey of the Reserve Bank suggests positive outlook for the manufacturing sector. However, investment activity continues to be weak, but which is unsurprising given the headroom with respect to capacity utilisation in industry (Reserve Bank surveys).60. Demonetisation induced liquidity facilitated faster monetary transmission. There is still room for banks to cut lending rates. For efficient transmission, it is important that interest rates on small savings are not out of line with interest rates on other comparable instruments in the financial system.61. Notwithstanding likely favourable base-effects in the next few months, the outlook for inflation calls for close vigilance with a view to ensuring that the mediumterm inflation trajectory evolves in line with the objective of bringing headline inflation closer to 4.0 per cent on a durable basis and in a calibrated manner. Therefore, I vote for maintaining the status quo in both the policy repo rate, and the stance.Ajit PrasadPress Release : 2016-2017/2844 Assistant Adviser(Source: RBI)",Here is the full text of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee’s minutes,23:23,Full text of RBI’s monetary policy minutes +2017-04-04,"
Early in the morning of Monday, 3 April, serendipity sat me next to N.R. Narayana Murthy on a long transcontinental flight leaving Bengaluru. As the flight attendants handed out newspapers for the passengers to read while on the journey, I couldn’t help but notice that Murthy had made front-page news, this time for questioning the extent of the raise given to an executive at Infosys Ltd, the company that he founded over three decades ago along with a few of his junior colleagues. I turned to him and we began a conversation. I shall not focus here on the specific comments about Infosys, but there were several parts of the conversation that covered Murthy’s philosophy around topics that I have written about in this column before, and which provide insights into the character of the man. Unsurprisingly, we spoke of the social issues being caused by the changes in the way corporations recruit and retain talent. We spoke of organizations such as TopCoder, now part of an Indian IT services firm after the acquisition of its parent by Wipro. TopCoder is a marketplace for computer programmers, who can get compensated for their work through this marketplace without ever having to be an employee of a services firm. It is like a taxi aggregator among programming firms. I have written in this column before about how marketplaces like these can eventually change the construct of the employer-employee contract now prevalent among many firms and have also mused about whether unionization may be around the corner at some Indian IT services firms as the employer-employee relationship construct begins to disintegrate.Murthy explained that there are circumstances where unions can play a pivotal role in ensuring equity. He said the fact that unions look out for employees’ welfare is inescapable, and proffered the example of the US. According to him, when unionization covered 35% of the American workforce, American labour was better looked after. Now that this figure has slipped to around 15%, the poor have become poorer as corporations and their leaders have followed an Ayn-Rand-esque view of “rational self-interest” and social Darwinism. Pushing crumbs off one’s table and trusting that the aspiring classes in society will have enough is a sure recipe in fomenting labour class unrest, as the recent Brexit and US presidential elections have shown. Murthy’s opinion is that such unrest is also lying dormant and is barely beneath the surface in India, and that leaders of India’s capitalist revolution cannot afford to blithely ignore this.Also read | Infosys strongly defends COO pay hike criticized by Narayana MurthyWe also spoke of the fledgling experiments with universal basic income (UBI) that have begun to pop up in various corners of the earth. UBI is essentially a dole paid out to every citizen, whether they are out of work or not, in a nod to the fact that relentless mechanization and automation will take away many people’s livelihoods in the near- to medium-term future. While classical economics tells us that disruptive changes in labour mechanics such as offshoring and automation only cause a temporary loss in jobs before there is a “job shift” when people start to work in other fields of endeavour so that they may earn a living, the short-term pain caused by the original job displacement is undeniable. UBI is a well-meaning attempt to alleviate some of that pain. It comes with the same plethora of problems around unemployment doles, but Murthy’s view was that societies have a responsibility to their underprivileged or displaced populaces and that he would welcome higher taxes on the IT industry that are meant to go directly to those whose jobs IT displaces. He said that the only society that is stable is one that is seen to be moving, however haltingly, towards an atmosphere of equity and fairness among all its members.Leaders in the IT industry need to be seen as fair by the people under their command. Giving raises at the top that are 10 or even 20 times the rate of the raises being given at the bottom runs the risk of creating an impression that those at the top are greedy opportunists most interested in snatching what they can while the going is good. I have been part of a company where the boss raised his own salary by over 250%, leaving others in his second line like me to explain to the rest of the workforce that they had to make do with a 2% increase. The rationale for the anaemic salary increase for everyone but the boss was that the firm had not reached its (internally set) earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, targets. As an aside, I am sure the boss’s new salary contributed to the company repeating this miss in the next year. That year, even though my own compensation increase was also in the low single digits, I felt great discomfiture at having to justify and explain the boss’s salary increase, which the board had seen right to give him since “he could easily get another job in the industry paying just as much”. To paraphrase the Bard of Avon, all the mouthwash in India has not cured me of the ensuing halitosis from those conversations.Recalling a time when the industry finally saw the light and banded together in the common interest to fight high levels of attrition when companies were blithely poaching talent from one another, I asked Murthy whether Nasscom or some such industry body could now be entrusted with this looming question of “fairness”. He was unequivocal that an ombudsman is needed. Maybe it is time we allow ourselves to be policed.Siddharth Pai is a world-renowned technology consultant who has led over $20 billion in complex, first-of-a-kind outsourcing transactions.","In IT firms such as Infosys, giving raises at the top many times the rate of the raises at the bottom risks creating an impression that those at the top are greedy opportunists ",01:26,"Infosys compensation row: Of executives, programmers and fairness" +2017-04-20,"New Delhi: Ahead of the next hearing in the fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya extradition case on 17 May, India said on Thursday that it was in touch with the government in the UK, where an internal legal process is on in the matter. The Indian high commission in the UK is following the case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said. An “internal process” is on in the UK in response to India’s extradition request, he added. Also Read: The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher AirlinesThe 61-year-old liquor baron, wanted in India for defaulting on bank loans, was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Monday morning. Mallya was released on conditional bail a few hours later after providing a bail bond of 650,000 pounds and giving an assurance to the court that he will abide by all conditions associated with extradition proceedings, such as the surrender of his passport and a ban on him possessing any travel document. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will now argue the case on behalf of the Indian authorities.Last month, setting in motion the process of extradition of Mallya, the British government had certified India’s request and sent it to a district judge for further action. The extradition process from the UK involves a number of steps including a decision by the judge whether to issue a warrant of arrest.Also Read: Vijay Mallya: The story so farIn case of a warrant, the person is arrested and brought before the court for preliminary hearing followed by an extradition hearing before a final decision is taken by the secretary of state. The wanted person has a right to appeal in the higher courts against any decision all the way up to Britain’s supreme court. Under the 2003 Act, the British secretary of state may only consider four issues when deciding whether to order a person’s extradition. They are whether the person is at risk of the death penalty; whether special arrangements are in place; whether the person concerned has previously been extradited from another country to the UK and the consent of that country to his onward extradition is required; and whether the person has previously been transferred to the UK by the International Criminal Court.","The Indian high commission in the UK is following Vijay Mallya extradition case with the British government, external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said",22:12,Vijay Mallya extradition case: India says internal process on in the UK +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: Top industrialist Ratan Tata on Saturday praised the judicial process for its “professionalism and fairness”, days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) rejected Cyrus Mistry’s plea against Tata Sons Ltd. Following the ouster of Mistry as Tata Sons chairman in October last year, there has been lot of acrimony between him and the Tatas. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed Mistry’s petition against the group. Against this backdrop, Ratan Tata has expressed his “appreciation to all those involved in the NCLT, and particularly the high integrity of the judicial process”. Asserting that it is not about winning or losing, Tata said in a tweet, “it is all about the pride one gets in witnessing the high integrity of our judiciary, the fairness and the competence of everybody in the process”. He also said that fairness and justice, if upheld, will make the nation “great”. “I can only express my greatest admiration for the professionalism and fairness of the legal process and express my appreciation to all concerned,” Tata said. Earlier this week, the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons. The petitions were filed by two firms belonging to Cyrus Mistry’s family, and sought waiver of an eligibility condition for moving the forum against Tata Sons. After the dismissal of the plea by the NCLT, Mistry has moved the appellate tribunal, the NCLAT.",Ratan Tata’s comments come after the NCLT dismissed the waiver application by the Cyrus Mistry camp filed against Tata Sons ,21:01,Ratan Tata praises judicial professionalism after Cyrus Mistry plea rejection +2017-04-21,"New York: Only six remaining milestones stand between Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer.Musk, who was awarded 5.27 million stock options in 2012 tied to Tesla operational and market value targets, has achieved six of the 10 operational goals to date, up from five at this time last year, according to a proxy statement filed Thursday. The automaker has also met eight of the 10 market value milestones, up from seven last year, the filing shows.Musk has until 2022 to reach the goals that trigger the payout, but he could cash in the options sooner if the company hits targets ahead of schedule. They are worth an estimated $1.4 billion as of Thursday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show. That would be quite a payday for the enigmatic Tesla chief who has never accepted his nominal salary.Musk earns one-tenth of the options every time Tesla hits a pair of goals—one tied to its market value and another to the company’s operations.Palo Alto, California-based Tesla delivered 25,000 vehicles in the first quarter, which vaulted its aggregate number of produced vehicles above 200,000, but that milestone won’t be considered achieved until the company’s board has confirmed the number, the filing said. The company has said it’ll begin building the more affordable Model 3 in July and has predicted that its annual output could soar to 500,000 vehicles by 2018.In addition to production targets, Tesla has to maintain a gross margin of at least 30% for four straight quarters. In the four most recent quarters, the company has posted results ranging between about 19 % and 28%.For Musk to receive the $1.4 billion, Tesla’s market value also needs to remain above the $43.2 billion threshold for six months, equivalent to a stock price of about $270. The estimate is based on the number of shares outstanding as of 31 January. Tesla, which briefly surpassed General Motors Co. earlier this month to became the most valuable US carmaker, had a market value of $49.3 billion as of Thursday’s close.The $1.4 billion windfall from his options is based on what Musk would pocket if he’d been able to exercise all 5.27 million of them on Thursday, when Tesla shares closed at $302.51 in New York. The securities have a $31.17 strike price. So far, he hasn’t exercised any.Tesla did not name any new independent directors in the proxy. The company confirmed earlier this month it was searching for two new board members who don’t have ties to Musk, as pressure to strengthen management oversight rises amid Tesla’s soaring market value. Bloomberg",Only six milestones stand between Tesla’s Elon Musk and an estimated $1.4 billion windfall for the carmaker’s billionaire chief executive officer ,10:27,Elon Musk nears $1.4 billion windfall as Tesla hits milestones +2017-03-31,"Xiaomi Corp. is going to double down on India. Literally.Chairman and CEO Lei Jun sat down with Bloomberg’s Saritha Rai and Jason Gale in Bangalore this week to explain how he plans to resume rapid growth. The Chinese smartphone maker will spend $500 million in the country over the next three to five years, after spending a similar amount since entering India two years ago.Right now is the perfect time for Xiaomi to make a claim of renewed vigour. It came in second by share of the Indian smartphone market in the fourth quarter, topping all local and international competitors except Samsung Electronics Co., according to IDC data.One great quarter does not a renaissance make, however. Almost 40% of full-year sales came in that single three-month period, according to IDC. That’s not necessarily unusual, because the Diwali shopping season falls in the quarter, but it should be noted that Xiaomi’s share climbed as much because the entire market fell as because of its own growth.Xiaomi’s 2016 India smartphone rankingIDC notes that the higher-priced smartphone segment actually expanded during November because demonetisation saw many customers rush to offload cash. It’s likely Xiaomi was a beneficiary of this, given that it sells premium devices compared with local offerings.For the full year, Xiaomi placed fifth, selling around 7.2 million units. That’s still an impressive 119% growth, according to IDC, but it’s coming off a low base. What should worry Xiaomi is that its old nemeses are approaching fast. Compatriots Oppo and Vivo were just a few percentage points behind in the fourth quarter and they have more growth momentum, again because they’re coming from a low starting point.What’s really seeing renewed vigour is the feature-phone market. The addition of 4G and increasing functionality, coupled with lower prices, has kept this older category relevant. HMD Global reviving the Nokia brand, a popular name in India, adds to the reasons why feature phones will again outsell smartphones this year, and delay migration up the product value chain.In summary: You’ve got competitors closing in fast, demonetisation possibly providing a single-quarter boost, and feature phones remaining a competitive threat. If there’s a time for Xiaomi to assert that rapid growth is ahead, it’s now. They may not be saying it again for a while. Bloomberg","What should worry Xiaomi is that its old nemeses are approaching fast. Compatriots Oppo, Vivo are just a few percentage points behind in the Q4 and they have more growth momentum",11:40,"Enjoy your India moment, Xiaomi, it might not last" +2017-04-22,"New Delhi: State-run refiners Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd will invest in Jammu and Kashmir on new LPG bottling plants and retail networks, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti decided at a meeting in Srinagar on Saturday, an official statement said.Pradhan also informed Mehbooba that oil and gas companies under the ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir. Hill states and the North Eastern region, which are at a geographic disadvantage figure high in the central government’s economic development agenda. “Efforts are being made by oil marketing companies for land identification for oil depots and LPG bottling plants at Anantnag, Rajouri and Kargil,” said the oil ministry statement.As per the deal agreed upon between the Centre and the state, LPG distribution and petrol pump licenses will be given as per a list drawn up the state. In difficult terrain, distributorship will be allotted to the state Food and Civil Supplies Department. The state will facilitate land for the companies to build depots. The ministry has asked all oil companies to spend Rs1 crore from their corporate social responsibility funds for infrastructure development in Tulip garden, Srinagar.",Dharmendra Pradhan informs CM Mehbooba Mufti that oil and gas companies under the oil ministry will recruit from engineering colleges in Jammu and Kashmir,20:26,Oil companies to set up more plants in Jammu and Kashmir +2017-04-19,"
London: Unless there is a fresh approach in London to extradition requests from India, it is unlikely that controversial Indian businessman Vijay Mallya will be actually extradited to India anytime soon.Mallya is not the first high-profile Indian based in the UK and wanted in India. The list of others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi (for alleged financial offences), Ravi Sankaran (in the navy war room leak case), Nadeem Saifi (in the Gulshan Kumar murder case) and Tiger Hanif (in the Gujarat blasts case).ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya arrested in London, released on bail within hoursThe only extradition so far, of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with a 2002 Gujarat riots case, in October 2016 did not exactly reflect a fresh approach in London.Unlike the other individuals wanted by India, Patel, 40, did not oppose the extradition, but “consented” to it, cutting short the long extradition process. He was arrested on 9 August last year and, on 22 September, home secretary Amber Rudd signed the extradition order.The reasons for his consent to be extradited to India are not known, but India was delighted at the first successful extradition to the country from the UK since the India-UK extradition treaty was signed in 1992. ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya is unlikely to consent to extradition, and is expected to fight it legally, a process that could take months, if not years. For instance, Tiger Hanif lost his legal challenge in April 2013 and has since made a final appeal to the home secretary, who is yet to rule on it.One of the reasons earlier Indian requests for extradition did not succeed was the poor paperwork and evidence presented in UK courts, people familiar with the process said. More care has been taken in paperwork related to Mallya, they added.The UK has a long and proud history of providing refuge to those fleeing political and religious persecution, but those facing financial allegations in home countries are also increasingly finding refuge in the cooler climes of the UK.ALSO READ: What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process?In recent years, high-profile foreign offenders with considerable wealth, including many from Russia, have found refuge and a safe place to park their assets and enjoy a peaceful life in the UK.","India’s attempts at Vijay Mallya’s extradition from UK follows those involving Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif, all of which are pending",05:21,A short history of extradition from UK to India +2017-04-19,"
Mumbai: For banks looking to recover about Rs9,000 crore from fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who was arrested and released on bail in London on Tuesday, it’s a long road ahead.“This is only one of the many steps in the right direction,” said a senior official at State Bank of India (SBI), which leads a group of 16 banks that provided loans to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, the grounded airline once led by Mallya. “It obviously gives us a lot of confidence in this case, but there is a long way to go before the actual extradition happens and he (Mallya) faces the courts here. Only after that can we hope for any recovery,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Mallya’s extradition hearing has started and the UK courts will take a decision after Indian authorities present adequate proof of financial fraud.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseMallya left for London in March 2016 after the lenders moved the Supreme Court to recover loans from him. His attempt to reach a one-time settlement were rejected by banks. Due to the involvement of investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), bankers later dropped all talks of settlement with Mallya and his representatives.Banks have managed to recover some of their money through various recovery measures. Some of them sold Kingfisher Airlines shares pledged against the loans. This month, they also managed to sell Mallya’s lavish Kingfisher Villa in Goa for Rs73 crore, after three failed auctions. Kingfisher House in Mumbai remains unsold, after multiple attempts at auctioning it. In February 2016, Mallya and Diageo Plc announced a deal in which the liquor baron would receive $75 million from the global beverages maker in return for stepping down as chairman of United Spirits Ltd, which Diageo owns, and as a non-compete fee. By the time a debt recovery tribunal in Bengaluru blocked Mallya from accessing the money, a payment of $40 million had already been made to him.One silver lining for bankers in the entire Mallya episode is their increased authority in conversations with defaulting borrowers.“If a borrower wants to drag legitimate repayment to banks or plans to escape the country, he will think twice due to this case,” said a second public sector banker, who is directly involved with the Kingfisher loan recovery case.Investigations against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines by the CBI also rattled the banking sector after a few former officials of IDBI Bank were arrested in January, in the matter. The bankers were released on bail by the Bombay high court in March.","For banks, Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London was only the first step towards recovering Rs9,000 crore in loan default by his grounded Kingfisher Airlines",07:30,Recovering Vijay Mallya loans a long way off for banks +2017-04-20,"
Mumbai: With an asset base of over Rs33,000 crore, the Edelweiss Group is one of India’s leading diversified financial services companies. In an interview, Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO of Edelweiss Group, which runs the country’s largest asset reconstruction company (ARC), talks about plans in the burgeoning distressed assets space and the key drivers of growth for the company. Edited excerpts:
What kind of assets are you focusing on in the distressed space?There are usually three kinds of assets. The first kind are cash flow-generating, operating and viable assets that don’t have enough cash flow to service the debt and repay the loan. A large part of our portfolio, almost 70%, is that. The second are non-operating assets which can be revived if they get additional capital. This forms another 20% of our portfolio. And the third, which is only 10% of our portfolio, are dead assets which have to be liquidated. However very few people understand because when everybody says NPA (non-performing assets), people assume it is the third category.
What has been your strategy towards resolving each of the situations you mentioned?Most of these assets have too much debt. So you have to cut down the debt. You have to mark down the debt. And finally you have to get some equity infusion and restructure the balance sheet. In the second kind of assets, the balance sheet is broken and the operations are also closed for various reasons. So you have to restart the operations and help the company operationally turnaround as well. Our average acquisition price has been 40-45% of the total deals. I think there are two important things to keep in mind. One is what assets you are buying and at what price you are buying them.
The general impression seems to be that Edelweiss has been very active in closing deals?We don’t even participate in half the auctions. We only participate when we know the asset well and it is available at a decent price where there is hope of at least some returns. We are increasingly seeing that a lot of these companies now require more cash and they will require a lot more even additional funding lines. And for that having cash power is very important. And now as I said between us, CDPQ (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Edelweiss fund, we have almost Rs11,000-odd crore that we can deploy over 3-4 years. This is the largest cash kitty that is available for buying of assets.
Many global funds are looking to invest in distressed assets in India. How will competition impact you?Other people coming in is a good thing because this requires a multi-pronged approach. Lot of these international funds will approach this as a private equity business and they will do one or two deals in a year. But our idea is that we will do an average of about 30-40 transactions in a year. So ours is a lot of deals with a lot of banks. So ours is more an NBFC (non-banking financial company) approach rather than a private equity approach. Global funds will take one asset, put in capital, bring in strategic partners, get involved in operations almost like a buyout transaction. I am not so worried about pricing because ultimately there is so much out there that all of us will have enough opportunities.
So there is room for more participants? We believe capital required for the next 4-to-5 years to resolve distressed situations is about Rs30,000 crore-Rs40,000 crore. We ourselves have lined up about Rs10,000-to-Rs12,000 crore. But the actual money required is three- to-four times more. A lot of these international guys may have the capital but may not have the skill set. So my apprehension is people who have the capital may not have the skill set and people who have the skill set may not have the capital.",Edelweiss Group CEO Rashesh Shah on Edelweiss ARC’s plans in the distressed assets sector and key drivers of growth for the company,04:40,Edelweiss plans 30-40 distressed asset deals a year: CEO Rashesh Shah +2017-04-22,"The government’s plan to merge India’s oil companies will harm consumers and energy security, according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly by Bhamy V. Shenoy, a consumer activist and former oil industry professional. The government wants to create an energy behemoth on the lines of Chevron and Rosneft, one that has more clout to negotiate on deals such as crude oil purchases. Shenoy argues that talk of benefits arising from economies of scale are overblown as the cost of discovering crude or production is not dependent on the size of the company but on technical expertise: a smaller company has a better chance of retaining talent than a large, bureaucratic organization. He also notes that India’s public sector companies are well capitalized. Moreover, a single oil giant would also hold undue power and influence over the country.Also Read: Does India Need a Giant Integrated Oil Company? Development of urban train systems does not uniformly increase real estate prices around the vicinity of new train lines, says a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper authored by Seungwoo Chin and co-authors from the University of Southern California. The paper takes the example of Line Number 9 of the subway in Seoul that connects the southern part of the city to the city’s richest district, Gangnam. The authors find that price appreciation differs across neighbourhoods. Prices rose around new train stations owing to reduced commute time to desirable locations and the opening of new establishments. But the rate of price rise fell in the destination areas of Gangnam, possibly because the new train service made the area accessible without residing there.Also Read: Estimating the Gains from New Rail Transit Investment: A Machine learning Tree Approach China’s official GDP numbers are often treated with skepticism: many believe that the figures are inflated. But according to an NBER paper authored by Hunter Clark and co-authors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, China’s economy did not slow in 2015, but grew at a rate faster than reported in official statistics. Instead of official statistics or the Li Keqiang index, the authors used observations from satellite-recorded night-time lights to estimate economic growth. They found that the variables used in the Li Keqiang index closely predicted growth of night-time lights in China, but the authors disagree with the equal weighing of the variables, and argue that bank loans should be weighted more than railroad freight. With the modified weights, the Keqiang index comes closest to predicting actual economic growth. The authors argue that the growth rates over 2004 to 2016 are not lesser than official statistics, but may be higher.Also read: China’s GDP Growth may be Understated Air pollution due to PM2.5 particles (particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter) was responsible for 7.6% of total global deaths in 2015, according to a study of the 2015 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data by Aaron J. Cohen and co-authors, published in The Lancet. Deaths due to PM2.5 pollution exposure rose from 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015. The study was based on GBD data which took into account the disease burden from 79 factors in 195 countries. The percentage of deaths due to PM2.5 decreased from 1990 to 2015 due to improvements in air quality in wealthy countries, even as absolute numbers of deaths from PM2.5 pollution rose in countries like India and China.Also Read: Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015 Income differences between European and Asian countries going back to as far as the 1500s are greater than previously estimated, according to an article by Peter Lindert from the University of California – Davis, published in VoxEU. Lindert arrived at the conclusion through a deeper analysis of historical data from six continents. With respect to India, his findings show that Mughal India around 1600 lagged much behind Japan and Northwest Europe in income levels. Previous research had posited that average incomes in the US caught up with those in the UK by the 1900s. However, Lindert’s research points out that average incomes in the US were much higher than in Britain or France by the late 17th century.Also Read: European and Asian incomes in 1914: New take on the Great DivergenceEconomics Digest runs weekly, and features interesting reads from the world of economics.","A single energy behemoth, created after the merger of oil PSUs, would have too much power over India’s energy strategy, says report",19:15,"Merger of oil PSUs will hurt consumers, harm India’s energy security" +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Northern India, with the potential of about 363 GW of power, can emerge as the hub for renewable energy in the country, said a study released on Friday.The report titled ‘State Renewable Energy Policies: A Comparative Study’ was released by industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).It highlighted that southern and western regions of the country are fast moving up the renewable energy installed capacity graph. The study also stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy in India is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has set an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable power target by 2022.The CII report said that all northern states have come up with sector-specific policies to promote renewable energy. States that are counted in the northern region are Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chandigarh. “These States have dedicated Solar (power) policies. However, very few States have specific policies for small hydro, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and for wind only Rajasthan has a specific policy,” the report said. “Even though most of the northern States have come up with their renewable energy policies, it is important to understand and imbibe the best incentives and practices depending on the need of the state/region,” it added.ALSO READ: Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18As per the report, the northern region accounts for about 20.49%, which is about 10,247 MW, of the 50,018 MW overall installed capacity of renewable power in India (till 31 December 2016). In comparison, the southern region alone accounts for 43.42% (21,721.42 MW) of India’s total installed renewable power and the western region for 33.7% (16,861 MW).“All 29 states of India are working relentlessly to make this a success and some major milestones have already been achieved. The northern states, in specific, already have and in the future will play a pivotal role in achieving the renewable energy target set out by the government,” the study said.“The potential of northern region in the renewable space is huge with about 363 GW available to be exploited. Amongst the northern States, Rajasthan has the biggest renewable potential at 145,518 MW and the highest potential in both solar and wind capacities at 142, 310 MW and 5,050 MW respectively,” it added.In terms of renewable potential, Rajasthan is followed by Jammu and Kashmir (118,208 MW), Himachal Pradesh (36,446 MW), Uttar Pradesh (27,593 MW), Uttarakhand (19,071 MW), Punjab (6,768 MW), Haryana (6,470 MW), Delhi (2,181 MW) and Chandigarh (6 MW). It further emphasised that northern India also has a good potential for small hydro projects with Himachal Pradesh having the second highest small hydro potential in the country after Karnataka.","The study by CII stressed that the ecosystem of renewable energy is still fraught with constraints, particularly with respect to state policies",19:55,"Northern India can be a hub of renewable energy, says study" +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: Oil marketing companies (OMCs) plan to adopt more innovative measures to promote digital payments across fuel retail outlets, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan informed a parliamentary panel on Friday.Pradhan said a three-pronged strategy had been adopted for digitization—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure at fuel stations, a campaign to spread awareness, and incentivizing consumers to opt for digital payments. The volume of daily cashless transactions has increased from Rs150 crore to Rs400 crore per day since the 8 November demonetization of high-value banknotes that created a cash crunch.So far, 38,128 retail outlets have been equipped with point-of-sale (PoS) machines. More than 86% of the outlets have infrastructure for digital payment transactions. “Most of the petrol pumps have opted for digital infrastructure such as micro ATMs and e-wallets since demonetization. However, the cashless drive can be accelerated further with the adoption of BharatQR or a standardized quick response (QR) code across all the retail outlets,” said Sunil Kulkarni, deputy managing director, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd, a payment company.To incentivize cashless payments, Pradhan said that the government had on 8 December announced a discount of 0.75% for purchase of petrol/diesel through credit/debit cards and e-wallets, at fuel retail outlets run by OMCs. It came into effect from 13 December.The burden of the discount is being borne by state-owned OMCs Indian Oil Corp. Ltd (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd (HPCL).The oil ministry tweeted later in the day that it is exploring options to deliver petroleum products to consumers at their doorsteps on pre-booking. “This would help consumers avoid spending excessive time and long queues at fuel stations,” said the tweet. The move is part of customer-centric steps being taken by the ministry.","Oil minister says a three-pronged strategy has been adopted—rapid expansion of digital payment infrastructure, spreading awareness, and incentivizing consumers ",23:48,Oil marketing firms working to boost digital payments: Dharmendra Pradhan +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: India is considering a plan for home delivery of petroleum products to consumers if they make a pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations, the oil ministry tweeted on Friday.About 350 million people come to fuel stations every day, it said. Annually, Rs25 billion ($387.00 million) worth of transactions takes place at fuel stations.India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, will be introducing daily price revision of petrol and diesel in five cities from 1 May, ahead of a nation-wide roll out of the plan.","Oil ministry considering plan for home delivery of petroleum products, based on pre-booking, to cut long queues at fuel stations",20:26,Petroleum products may be delivered home soon: Oil ministry +2017-04-19,"Vijay Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard in London on India’s extradition request. He was released on bail a few hours after he appeared at a central London police station. Here’s a look at events that led to Tuesday’s development:October, November 2009: IDBI Bank sanctions Rs1,100 crore loan to Kingfisher Airlines. (According to CBI chargesheet) October 2011: Kingfisher delays salaries for second consecutive monthOctober 2012 : Government suspends Kingfisher Airlines’ licence February 2013: Bankers say they have lost faith in the management’s ability to revive the company. October 2015: CBI searches Kingfisher, Vijay Mallya offices in IDBI Bank loan probeMarch 2016: Mallya leaves India on 2 MarchMarch 2016: Debt recovery tribunal (DRT) blocks Mallya from getting his hands on a $75 million payout by Diageo Plc.March 2016: Banks move Supreme Court to stop Mallya from leaving IndiaApril 2016: Supreme Court directs Mallya to disclose all assets23 January 2017: CBI arrests former IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Aggarwal, 7 others25 January 2017: CBI charges Mallya with fraud, criminal conspiracy25 January 2017: Sebi restrains Mallya from trading in securities marketsMarch 2017: Mallya says he is ready to talk to banks for one-time settlement of loans25 March 2017: UK certifies India’s request for Mallya’s extradition8 April 2017: Mallya moves SAT against Sebi order barring him from securities market18 April 2017: Mallya arrested in London; extradition proceedings begin in UK court","A look at events that led to Vijay Mallya’s arrest, and bail, in London on Tuesday",05:15,Vijay Mallya: The story so far +2017-04-19,"
Mumbai: Businessman Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday on behalf of India was swiftly followed by him being produced at a magistrate’s court before being released on bail.But the road ahead for India’s extradition request may be considerably longer—Tuesday’s arrest was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex process, said legal experts. In India, Mallya has nine non-bailable warrants issued against him by special investigative courts and magistrate’s court in relation to various alleged violations of law.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya pokes fun at ‘Indian media hype’ over his arrest in LondonThe extradition proceedings were initiated by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) following a request by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI on 25 January filed a chargesheet against Mallya and 10 others on charges of fraud and criminal conspiracy for defrauding IDBI Bank Ltd of Rs950 crore. According to CBI, the bank officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the executives of Mallya’s now defunct Kingfisher Airlines for “misutilisation, misappropriation and diversion of funds”.Advocate Abad Ponda said that while initiation of the extradition process showed “good intent”, much depended on the efforts made by Indian authorities to get Mallya back. Ponda, who practices criminal law, is also representing the bankers who were arrested in the IDBI Bank loan case. “While the intent is good, extradition is a long, tardy, cumbersome process. It all depends on how much effort the Indian authorities have made for a strong case for his extradition. His (Mallya’s) extradition is crucial to take the CBI investigation to its logical conclusion,” he said. Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner at Advaya Legal, said the timeline to take the extradition process to a logical conclusion could be anything between 18 months and 24 months. “It all depends on whether the court feels that a conviction is possible. The first level will include a full hearing before the district court that may happen sometime next month, then hearing before the high court and the Supreme Court.”Ujjwal Nikam, a public prosecutor who has represented India in similar cases, said extradition is a complicated process. Nikam represented India in the high- profile extradition case of music director, Nadeem Akhtar Saifi, in connection with music producer Gulshan Kumar’s murder in the 1990s. The government has failed to get Saifi extradited. The UK court also imposed costs on the Indian government. “Extradition is a complicated process, where the evidence put together by the Indian authorities against any person will be examined by the law of a foreign land. Compelling evidence compiled by the Indian investigative agencies through the MEA is the only way the extradition proceedings will move forward,” said Nikam.According to the MEA website, 62 people have been extradited to India from foreign jurisdiction. Only one person has been extradited from the UK with the majority of extraditions coming from the United Arab Emirates. This is not the first time that the Indian government has tried to get Mallya back to India. The first extradition request sent in 2016 did not find favour with the UK authorities due to the lack of a chargesheet. “The first request was more for not paying the banks their dues, which is not a fit case for extradition. A chargesheet makes for a case of financial fraud,” said Vaidyanathan.Separately, the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating a money laundering case, has also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty to get Mallya to India. A consortium of bankers led by the State Bank of India claim that they are owed more than Rs9,000 crore by the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines",Vijay Mallya’s arrest in London on Tuesday was no more than the first formal step in what could be a long and complex extradition process,05:18,"Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exercise" +2017-04-19,"
London: Four of the seven steps that need to be followed for a person to be extradited from the UK have been completed in the case of Vijay Mallya, the fugitive millionaire whose companies owe Indian banks around Rs9,000 crore.
Vijay Mallya was arrested in London on Tuesday and released on bail a few hours later for defaulting on loans to his grounded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.India is classified as a Type B country in the UK’s Extradition Act of 2003. A treaty between the two countries was signed in 1992 when S.B. Chavan was the home minister, and it came into effect in 1993.An extradition request from India has to be approved by the UK home secretary as well as by the courts.ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya extradition process to be a long, cumbersome exerciseThe process follows these steps: the extradition request is made to the home secretary; the secretary decides whether to certify the request; if he certifies it, the request is forwarded to a judge who decides whether to issue a warrant for arrest; if a warrant is issued, the person wanted is arrested and brought before the court; the person faces a preliminary hearing and, following this, an extradition hearing; and, depending on the outcome, the secretary decides whether to order the extradition.Until Britain leaves the EU, the person facing the extradition case has a final recourse—approaching the European Court of Human Rights.In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed. Under the rules, after the person sought has been arrested, he is brought before the court and the judge sets a date for the extradition hearing.At the hearing, the judge must be satisfied that the person’s conduct amounts to an extradition offence, none of the bars to extradition apply and there is prima facie evidence of guilt. The judge also has to consider whether the person could face the capital punishment if extradited and whether an extradition would be a violation of his or her human rights. If the judge is satisfied that all of the procedural requirements are met, and that none of the statutory bars to extradition apply, the case is sent to the home secretary, who takes the final call. The person sought can appeal at various stages.Extradition is prohibited if the person could face the death penalty (unless the home secretary gets adequate written assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed or, if imposed, will not be carried out).It can also be prohibited if there are no so-called speciality arrangements with the requesting country—“speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences for which they have been extradited (except in certain limited circumstances).Another ground for refusal is if the person has already been extradited to the UK from a third state or transferred from the International Criminal Court and consent for onward extradition is required from that third state or that court (unless the secretary has received consent).",Four of the seven steps in the India UK extradition policy have been completed for Vijay Mallya’s extradition,05:11,What’s next in the Vijay Mallya extradition process? +2017-04-19,"
Millionaire Vijay Mallya on Tuesday was granted bail by London court hours after his arrest by the Scotland Yard, acting on an extradition request from India. Extradition proceedings against Mallya have now started. Mallya, who insouciantly referred to Tuesday’s happenings in the UK as “usual Indian media hype” on Twitter, faces several cases in India, where his companies have defaulted on loans of around Rs9,000 crore from Indian banks. Here are the main cases: The case pertains to defrauding of public sector banks under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. In July 2015, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registers a case in the loan default case based on a complaint by IDBI Bank. This January, CBI charged Mallya with fraud and criminal conspiracy and sought judicial custody of former IDBI managers and Kingfisher Airlines officials in connection with dues of around Rs950 crore. A CBI court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Mallya in relation to the loan default case. The Enforcement Directorate registered a money-laundering case against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief financial officer A. Raghunathan in connection with the IDBI Bank loan default case in March 2016.In September, the Enforcement Directorate issued an order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach various properties belonging to Mallya and his associate firms. While the Enforcement Directorate has not filed a chargesheet yet, it has sent Mallya several summons to be a part of its ongoing investigation. A Special PMLA court has issued non-bailable warrant to Mallya. The agency had also secured a special court order to invoke the India-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).Separately, in August, the Enforcement Directorate registered a case based on a complaint filed by a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India-led (SBI). In 2011-12, the service tax department had issued a notice to Kingfisher Airlines for dues of Rs87.5 crore, which the airline had likely collected from passengers but not deposited with the department. In September 2016, the chief metropolitan magistrate court of Mumbai had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal.The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is investigating Kingfisher Airlines for financial irregularities and fund diversion since September 2015. It is also looking into Kingfisher Airlines’ inflated Rs4,000-crore-plus brand valuation by Grant Thornton Llp, on the basis of which loans may have been extended to the company. In March 2016, retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) formed an enforcement squad to investigate anomalies and irregularities in provident fund dues to Kingfisher Airlines employees. The labour ministry is also examining such anomalies.GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd filed a case against Mallya and former Kingfisher Airlines CFO Raghunathan after cheques issued by the airline for payment of fees for using airport facilities bounced. Five non-bailable warrants have been issued by a local court in Hyderabad against Mallya.In July 2016, a Mumbai metropolitan court issued a non bailable warrant against Mallya in a case of cheque bouncing filed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). AAI has alleged that cheques issued by Kingfisher Airlines totalling Rs100 crore were not honoured. The income-tax department had moved the Karnataka high court in 2013 seeking dues amounting to Rs325 crore owed by Kingfisher Airlines relating to three fiscal years-2009-12. The department alleged that tax deducted at source (TDS) from employees during these years was not deposited with it. The case is still being heard.In January, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru ruled in favour of creditors allowing them to recover more than Rs9,000 crore in unpaid loans they extended to Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. Mallya, the airline, United Breweries Holdings Ltd and Kingfisher Finvest India Ltd are liable to pay the money, it said. Mallya ad other defendants are likely to appeal this at the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal.On 16 March 2016, a consortium of banks led by SBI moved the Supreme Court to restrain Mallya from leaving the country. The banks were seeking to recover the $40 million Mallya received out of a $75 million package from Diageo Plc following his resignation as chairman of United Spirits Ltd in February 2016. The apex court directed Mallya twice—in April and October 2016—to disclose all assets held by him and his family. In March 2017, the court reserved an order on whether Mallya could be held in contempt of court for not fully disclosing his assets.The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in January barred Mallya and six former executives of United Spirits from accessing the securities market for alleged violations of the listing agreement, diversion of funds and fraud. Sebi’s order said funds from United Spirits were diverted to some group companies of United Breweries Ltd, including Kingfisher Airlines. Earlier this month, Mallya filed an appeal in the Securities Appellate Tribunal against the Sebi order saying that it heavily relied on forensic audits done by auditors EY India and Price Waterhouse Coopers for passing the directions.",Vijay Mallya and the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines are embroiled in several court cases ranging from money laundering to tax evasion to loan defaults,05:15,The case(s) against Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Tata Power on Friday said it has signed an agreement with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (AVVNL) for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years. Tata Power signed the Distribution Franchise Agreement (DFA) with AVVNL to cater to power requirements of customers in Ajmer for a period of 20 years, Tata Power said in a regulatory filing. Subsequent to winning the bid for distribution franchise of Ajmer circle, Tata Power has formed a special purpose company (SPC), TP Ajmer Distribution Ltd. Tata Power CEO and MD Anil Sardana said: “We welcome all our customers in Ajmer to a world class reliable power experience that is backed by best-in-class customer service.” The SPC will be operating and maintaining the distribution network in the Ajmer city, which includes city division 1 and 2 areas, and would also be responsible for managing the billing and collections, it said. Shares of Tata Power closed at Rs83.95, down 0.24% on BSE while the BSE Sensex closed down 0.19% at 29,365.30 points.",Tata Power said it has signed a pact with Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam for electricity distribution in Ajmer for 20 years,15:50,Tata Power inks pact for electricity distribution in Ajmer +2017-04-21,"
New Delhi: India’s solar power prices may be set to fall below those of thermal (coal) energy.This is based on an expected cost of around Rs2.90 per unit for the solar power projects at Bhadla in Rajasthan that have received 51 bids. This price is less than the average rate of power generated by the coal-fuelled projects of India’s largest power generation utility, NTPC Ltd, at Rs3.20 per unit. State-run Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which is running the bid process for 750 megawatt (MW) of solar power capacity at two parks, has received bids totalling 8,750 MW. The bidders include some first-time participants in India, such as Saudi Arabia’s Alfanar. The solar space has already seen a significant decline in tariffs from Rs10.95-12.76 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010-11. The previous low was Rs3.15 per kWh, bid by France’s Solairedirect SA in an auction last week to set up 250MW of capacity at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh. This low was preceded by Rs3.30 per unit quoted for a 750MW project at Rewa in Madhya Pradesh.Ashvini Kumar, managing director of SECI, credits the Rewa bid with being a tipping point. The structuring in terms of payment guarantee and offtake arrangement was the trigger for the sharp drop in prices and signalled the arrival of the low solar power tariff regime, he explained. “Prices have been falling and then came RUMS (Rewa Ultra Mega Solar park)...and that kind of created history. There was aggressive bidding. A lot of credit was given to the structuring of the PPAs (power purchase agreements), bids and offtake arrangement, security by state and things like that,” said Kumar.He added that a sub-Rs3.00 per unit price is possible. In Bhadla, while Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd is developing a 500 MW park, Adani Renewable Energy Park Rajasthan Ltd is developing another of 250 MW capacity. Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation Ltd is a joint venture partner in both.While a total of 24 bids totaling 5,500 MW were received for the 500 MW capacity on offer, the 250 MW park saw 27 bidders totalling 3,250 MW.After the financial bids are opened within four weeks, a reverse auction process will be run to select the developers.The bidders include Aditya Birla Renewable, Hero Solar, SBG Cleantech One Ltd, ReNew Solar Power Pvt. Ltd, ACME Solar Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Green Infra and Azure Power.Kumar also attributed the growing bidders’ interest to tripartite agreements (TPAs) between the Reserve Bank of India, the Union government and the state governments, which provided comfort to power producers against payment defaults by state electricity boards (SEBs).","Solar power tariff may fall below Rs3 per unit after the SECI auction of solar power projects at Bhadla, Rajasthan",02:49,Solar power may become cheaper than coal in India +2017-04-21,"New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to step up the pace of auctioning power-purchase contracts for wind-energy plants, building on a contest that reaped record-low prices for solar farms earlier this month.The government plans to offer deals covering almost 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in the current fiscal year ending March 2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month, Ashvini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corp. of India, the country’s implementing agency for renewable targets, told reporters in New Delhi.Modi is seeking to expand renewables to help balance India’s burgeoning needs for electricity against efforts to clear the skies of pollution. The government has a goal to install 175 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2022 and is prodding local authorities to step up the pace of permitting renewables.“The ministry of new and renewable energy has written to all states to indicate their requirement for green power to consolidate demand, as more tenders would be brought out,” Kumar said.SECI, which conducted Asia’s first onshore wind auction in February, received bids to supply wind power for Rs3.46 (5 US cents) a kilowatt-hour, much lower than feed-in tariffs of Rs4 rupees to Rs5 prevailing across India’s most windy states.Also Read: Green energy firms explore portfolio mergers to aid sell-offAccording to Kumar, the government thinks that 5 gigawatts to 6 gigawatts of wind capacity can be added every fiscal, and companies could be able to reach the government’s goal over the next four years.Modi’s goal calls for a doubling of India’s wind capacity to 60 gigawatts and a 10-fold increase in solar projects to 100 gigawatts.SECI already has planned to offer 750 megawatts of solar projects next month in the sunny state of Rajasthan, anticipating that contest will bring record-low bids. The auction structure forces companies to compete for contracts to sell power from renewable energy plants, encouraging them to reduce prices.The price of solar power in India fell to a record of Rs3.15 a kilowatt-hour last week in an auction for 250 megawatts earlier this month, besting February’s record of Rs3.30 a unit.“The trend in the market should continue, and I would like to think that the market hasn’t bottomed out,” Kumar said when asked if tariffs in the upcoming project could go below the Rs3 mark.Also Read: Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a missTimely payments to investors backing green power also will help bring prices lower, the official said. The industry has a guarantee backed by the states, SECI, and the Reserve Bank of India, which is the national central bank. This agreement has been executed with 23 states, and SECI expects the remaining to come on board soon, he added.India’s green-power ambitions have been at risk from loss-making state-run power retailers that aren’t able to buy enough power and have run behind on payments to several domestic and overseas clean-energy companies, racking up deficits of several hundred million dollars.The upcoming 750-megawatt solar park is split into a 500-megawatt project offering five contracts to build 100 megawatts and a 250-megawatt piece where investors can bid chunks of at least 50 megawatts.Kumar said the larger piece was oversubscribed 11 times and the smaller one by 13 times when the bids were submitted by investors on Wednesday. The firms bidding included companies from the Middle East and other locations new to India’s renewables auctions.Infrastructure development and finance group IL&FS has developed the 500-megawatt solar park by acquiring land for installations and building power evacuation systems, while the same has been done for the remaining 250-megawatt portion by Indian conglomerate Adani group.The solar park charges for the IL&FS group facility are Rs0.42 crore a megawatt, while that for the Adani group’s park are Rs0.36 crore, SECI General Manager Sanjay Sharma said. Bloomberg",Modi government plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind capacity in fiscal year 2017-2018 in addition to 750 megawatts of solar capacity it will tender next month,10:20,Modi govt plans to auction 4 gigawatts of wind energy in FY 2017-18 +2017-04-21,"
Mumbai: Foreign strategic investors have largely stayed away from the flurry of deal-making in India’s renewable energy sector, preferring instead to build from the ground up.Out of the $2.32 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign companies have bought assets worth just $290.6 million, while Indian companies have acquired $2.03 billion worth of assets, according to data from Thomson Reuters.Among the larger deals in this period are Tata Power Co Ltd’s acquisition of 1.1 gigawatt (GW) assets from the Welspun Group, Greenko Group’s’ acquisition of SunEdison’s India portfolio, and the merger of Orient Green Power Co. Ltd and IL&FS Wind Energy.Preference for greenfield projects and troubled balance sheets in their home markets are seen as two reasons why foreign investors have not been active in the M&A market for renewable energy.“With many of the foreign strategics, there has been a much larger preference for organic build-out for their businesses, because they believe that they have much better control over the assets, both from an operational perspective and from an implementation perspective,” said Kaustubh Kulkarni, managing director and head of investment banking at J.P. Morgan India Pvt. Ltd.Strategic investors also feel that given the renewable targets in the country, there was good visibility of new projects of meaningful size to be awarded for a sustained period of time, and given that they have built teams and capabilities to develop these projects, there was a tendency to prefer participating in bids and winning projects on their own rather than going after somebody else’s portfolio, Kulkarni added.In India, the opportunity to scale up is significant, with the government targeting to achieve 175GW of renewable energy generation by 2022.Preference for greenfield development also stems from lower cost effectiveness of acquisitions and a shortage of assets of meaningful size, experts said.“Given the significant drop in the capital outlay of the new projects, strategics believe they could end up owning a larger portfolio with a similar outlay and hence have been focusing on organic growth. Also, not many portfolios of decent size are available to strategic acquirers,” said Sudhir Dash, managing director at investment banking firm Investec Capital Services (India) Pvt. Ltd.Another reason holding back foreign strategic investors is the structural issues back home.“Europe, over the last 10-15 years, had structured itself for a significant part of electricity generation through renewables with the gas-based power plants meant to support and balance the intermittent renewable sources. However, given the lack of local gas resources and how the relative pricing with coal has developed, a number of gas power plants have become unviable,” said Rahul Mody, managing director, Ambit Corporate Finance. This, in turn, has dampened their ability to make large deals overseas.In Europe, companies have built tens of gigawatts of gas-based power plants, many of which are stranded or are operating at low capacity levels, leading to large write-offs at utilities, he said. “These challenges in their home markets have restricted their ability for M&As,” Ambit Corporate Finance’s Mody added.However, some believe that going ahead, foreign strategic investors could become more open to M&As given the pressure to scale up.“For many foreign strategics, M&A is a secondary strategy which is typically pursued to complement greenfield development. Given the limited supply of organic opportunities compared to the demand in recent auctions, the greenfield approach has been slower to materialize than expected. These groups are increasingly open to evaluating acquisitions and we expect this trend to continue given the pressure to scale,” said Rahul Goswami, managing director at Greenstone Energy Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a boutique advisory firm.","Out of the $2.32 billion worth of M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector in the last 15 months, foreign firms have bought assets worth just $290.6 million",01:19,Foreign investors giving M&A deals in India’s renewable energy sector a miss +2017-04-20,"Washington:World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said on Thursday that the multilateral lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change.Asked about the Trump administration’s scepticism about climate change at a press conference, Kim said the World Bank would continue to work with governments and the private sector to boost financing for alternative energy, especially in China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Vietnam.“The science of climate change didn’t change with any particular election, and I don’t see that it will,” Kim said. “We have to be an evidence-based organisation.”",World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said that the lender does not plan to change its stance on financing alternative energy projects and mitigating the effects of climate change,20:11,World Bank to continue alternative energy financing efforts +2017-04-21,"
Hindustan Zinc Ltd’s plan to produce 17% more metal in fiscal year 2018 (FY18), even as it expects the global zinc supply position to remain tight, should be good news for investors. Tempering this good news is the recent decline in metal prices.All industrial commodities have come under pressure in the past 30 days. Concerns revolve around China, where economic growth has been better than expected but there are worries around metal-intensive sectors such as construction. This is the main risk that the company’s investors have to keep an eye on.In the March quarter, Hindustan Zinc’s mined metal output rose by 13% sequentially, while that of refined lead and zinc combined rose by 6%. Realizations were in its favour, as zinc prices rose by 10% on an average, while that of lead rose by 5.5%. Revenue rose by 25.5% in the quarter to Rs6,756 crore, while operating profit increased by 34.7%. Net profit rose 12.2% sequentially and by 42.3% over a year ago.Hindustan Zinc plans to tweak its existing smelting capacity so that it can produce more metal. It has carried over 80,000 tonnes of mined metal into FY18, after selling some in the market. The company intends to invest $350-360million in FY18 towards enhancing metal capacity and mine expansion, among others. The more refined metal it sells, compared to selling concentrate, the more money it makes.The first half of FY17 had seen lower mined output, as per Hindustan Zinc’s mining plan. While that will mean the first half financials of FY18 will look good year-on-year, the correct factor to look at will be how the company does on a sequential basis.While metal output is expected to be higher in FY18, it has also cautioned that the cost of production in dollar terms could increase slightly, because of higher coal and input prices. These could be concerns, but only if metal prices don’t recover from their current decline. Zinc prices are nearing their lowest levels seen in 2017 so far, and are down by 14.7% from peak levels during the year. An appreciating rupee against the dollar is not good news either for Hindustan Zinc.The company’s share trades at 14 times its FY17 earnings per share and rose by 4% on Thursday as its results were much better than what the Street was expecting. The projected increase in its metal output puts Hindustan Zinc on a strong footing for FY18 but the shift in the trend in metal prices puts a question mark on earnings growth. Once prices settle into a trend, its share will follow suit.","Hindustan Zinc’s plan for to produce 17% more metal in FY18, even as it sees a tight global zinc supply, should be good news for investors",07:41,Hindustan Zinc: It’s all in the price +2017-04-21,"
Mindtree Ltd’s shares have fallen 44.3% since it issued a profit warning for the March quarter. Growth at the company has taken a tumble since then, owing to delays in project starts and troubles at its UK subsidiary Bluefin Solutions. In this backdrop, it may come as a relief for investors that for the first time in over a year, Mindtree has beaten the Street’s expectations by a meaningful margin. Revenue grew 2% sequentially in constant currency terms last quarter, compared to estimated growth of less than 1%. What’s more, margins rose by 60 basis points, again ahead of estimates, indicating that the burn at Bluefin has reduced meaningfully. The company said that Bluefin’s revenue increased more than 11% sequentially; although, of course, it makes sense to wait and see if the recovery will sustain. The churn in Mindtree’s top 10 customers continues, and the company said it is in the process of rebuilding its top 10 portfolio. Last quarter, growth in the revenues of top 10 customers rose 0.7%, far lower than the company’s average growth rate. And in a clear sign that Mindtree isn’t exactly out of the woods, year-on-year growth in revenue stood at merely 0.3%. In this backdrop, the company’s assertion that growth in fiscal year 2018 will be in low double-digits seems ambitious at first. Having said that, Mindtree’s strong deal wins in the past few quarters also provide hope that growth will pick up in the new fiscal year. Work has commenced on some of the large deal wins in the December quarter, with on-site effort increasing by 6.1% sequentially last quarter. And while deal wins in the March quarter was considerably lower vis-à-vis December, at $209 million, on a cumulative basis the total contract value won by the company in the past few quarters should help sustain growth. “Even as the overall growth has slipped, Mindtree’s customer relationships and engagement with deal advisory (firms) continues to be strong and could result in an improvement in growth rates starting the June quarter,” analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities said in a recent note to clients. Of course, given the rough ride investors have had with Mindtree shares in the past year, they may do well to be cautious. Besides the fact that it makes sense to wait for the company to deliver consistent performance, it’s also important to remember that valuations aren’t cheap at 17.8 times trailing earnings.","While Mindtree shares have fallen 44.3% since it issued a profit warning for March quarter, its better-than-expected Q4 results should come as a relief to investors",07:41,Mindtree shows signs of a recovery +2017-04-18,"
The onset of the summer season and rising temperatures have brought shares of consumer electrical product companies back in focus. Shares of Symphony Ltd, Havells India Ltd and Bajaj Electricals Ltd have gained 29-60% so far this calendar year. In the year-ago period, they were up 3-11%. Voltas Ltd, which derives a sizeable part of its revenue from air conditioners, has gained 23%, compared to a 12% loss in the year-ago period.
The gains reflect the business recovery. Channel checks by IIFL Institutional Equities show a rise in demand for fans and air coolers. The business environment is back to pre-demonetisation levels and dealers are said to have begun restocking.According to Himanshu Shah, director (sales and marketing) at Symphony, consumer buying started in February while demand recovery is more gradual in the north and the eastern parts of the country. The January-March quarter results will reflect some benefits of the demand recovery, though the full impact can be gauged only after the current quarter. Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities expects revenues of Whirlpool of India Ltd, Havells and V-Guard Industries Ltd to have grown in double-digits in the quarter gone by.The air cooler industry is seeing increased competition with the entry of new companies. But according to IIFL, the new entrants will help expand the organized market. Symphony, which has the widest range of coolers and good brand recall, is said to be better placed to benefit from summer demand. In fans, new product launches are expected to aid large companies’ market shares. “The fans and coolers segment is expected to grow by 8/15% respectively, wherein the leading brands in each category (Crompton and Symphony) are expected to grow by at least 4-5% percentage points ahead of the market,” adds IIFL.The story is slightly different in air conditioners where after-sales service and dealer margins will have a determining role on sales growth. Even then, thanks to rising mercury levels, air-conditioner sales have picked up.Voltas, with a large market share and wide reach, is expected to benefit from higher demand. But the challenge lies in profitability. There are fears that high competition (both from new products and new entrants) may weigh on Voltas’s margins. “Competition has increased with players such as Daikin, LG, Panasonic, Lloyd Electric and Blue Star eyeing a larger market share,” Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd wrote in a note.Dealer checks by Jefferies India Pvt. Ltd show stable pricing with limited discounts.But as they say one swallow does not a summer make. A clear picture will emerge only towards the end of the season. In the meantime, all hopes are now pinned on a good summer season. A good season, according to Symphony’s Shah, will extend the sales period to July.",Onset of summer and rising temperatures bring shares of consumer electrical product companies back in focus,08:20,Summer demand: advantage market leaders in consumer electrical products +2017-04-21,"
Suresh Prabhu may not have heard of Dave Donaldson, but the Indian railways minister would do well to read an insightful paper by the Stanford University economist who has been awarded the prestigious John Bates Clark medal for American economists under 40.The John Bates Clark medal is a good predictor of future achievement. Twelve of the 39 economists who have won the medal have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in economics. The strike rate increases to almost one in every two if one considers only medal winners before 1993. The more recent winners are obviously too young to be in the running for a Nobel right now, so what happened to the first 25 winners is a better gauge.One of the works by Davidson that is specifically cited by the American Economics Association in their press release last week is his paper on how the spree of railway building by the British Raj impacted the Indian economy. Some 60,000km of track was laid in the 75 years after the first train chugged out of Bori Bunder station in Mumbai in 1853. The military intention is well known. A network of railways was seen as a convenient way to move troops across India by a colonial establishment that had been rattled by the first war of independence in 1857.There were economic benefits as well. Karl Marx wrote presciently in 1853 that the railways would be the forerunner of modern industry. He added that trains would also dissolve traditional social arrangements.The British funded the expansion of the railways network by floating bonds in the London market—at a guaranteed return of 5% a year. The early nationalist critics of colonial economic policy such as Dadabhai Naoroji argued that the high cost of capital was more than the returns from the railways, and hence amounted to a drain of national resources.Donaldson is one of the new generation of development economists who use unique data sets to examine what happened in the past. His research on the economic impact of railways uses some innovative district-level data sets that he has constructed on prices, output, rainfall, domestic trade and international trade. These are based on digitized records of the British Raj. Davidson has also developed a digital map of the railways network. Each 20km stretch is coded with its year of opening.His three key conclusions: railway expansion led to a fall in trading costs, it increased the volume of goods shipped and the economic benefits greatly exceeded the cost of construction.“When observing the railroad network in India, I estimated that in a typical district, the arrival of railroad access caused real gross domestic product in the agricultural sector (the largest sector of India’s economy at that time) to increase by around 17%,” writes Davidson. This estimate was arrived at after taking into account both the positive and negative impact of the train on economic activity in a district.There are two important lessons from the sort of innovative work being done by economists such as Donaldson.First, debates about the past can be enriched if the data is carefully examined. One recent example is a paper published by three scholars on the website Ideas for India. Sriya Iyer, Anand Shrivastava and Rohit Ticku have constructed a geo-coded dataset to examine whether temple desecrations by Muslim rulers in medieval India are better explained by political dominance or religious iconoclasm. Second, there are contemporary policy lessons as well. Railroads of the Raj: Estimating the Impact of Transportation Infrastructure, which Davidson wrote in September 2012, as well as his later work on the expansion of railways in the US, provides ample proof that ramping up investment in railways and roads is one of the best ways to promote development in the hinterland.This lesson should be even more resonant at a time when the new goods and services tax will remove obstacles to internal trade by creating a truly integrated Indian market.",Economist Dave Donaldson’s paper on Indian Railways shows ramping up investment in railways and roads is one of the best ways to promote development in the hinterland,02:43,What Suresh Prabhu can learn from Dave Donaldson’s paper on Indian Railways +2017-04-13,"Jeff Bezos. Masayoshi Son. Jack Ma. Mukesh Ambani. Some of the world’s richest people also happen to be combatants in the expensive war over the future of technology in India.Bezos’s Amazon.com Inc. and Indian rival Snapdeal, backed by Son, are spending billions of dollars to build e-commerce in India. Alibaba founder Ma has splurged on investments aimed at popularizing digital payments. Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd is on track to spend about $30 billion (gulp!) to shake up India’s stodgy mobile internet service. Google, Tencent, Uber, Xiaomi, Apple and Facebook are also betting on growth in India.It’s easy to see why India and its 1.3 billion people are the No. 1 prize in technology. About one-quarter of Indians used the internet in 2015, according to the most recently available data from the World Bank, but the percentage is expected to explode in coming years. And compared with China—a quick-to-digitize country that was quicksand for non-Chinese tech companies—India has been relatively open to companies from outside the country.The battle for supremacy is great for Indians, who will get better and cheaper technologies tailored to their needs. But gobs of money are being spent now for what is a very, very long game with an uncertain toll on both winners and losers.ALSO READ: Infosys’s Rs13,000 crore payout falls short of what investors needApple CEO Tim Cook has said India is seven to 10 years behind China in technology market potential, and other executives echo that view. Building the future involves many, often low-tech, struggles like dealing with bad and clogged roads to deliver online orders, poor internet access for customers and dinged reputations from fears that foreign companies like Facebook are trying to monopolize internet use in the country. But a couple of recent actions—one by the government, the other by a billionaire—have been important developments in India’s tech market. They show how individual actions can be unexpected sparks for technology use and the tech business in India. Spending by India’s richest person on a new mobile network: About $30 billion. First, the decision last year by India’s government to ban the vast majority of cash in circulation did more for adoption of digital payments than anything a rich techie could have done. That move helped payments services like Paytm, backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, but it also gives a leg up to on-demand ride companies, e-commerce and other services that depend on a shift toward electronic payments in a country with low credit card penetration. (India’s central bank on Thursday also cleared Amazon India to start its own digital payments service.) The second jolt was the launch last fall by Ambani, India’s richest person, of a national mobile network that offered free cellphone calls and cheap, fast mobile web surfing. Competitors complained, but they quickly cut customers’ bills, too, and gave them more data. Ambani’s Reliance Jio mobile network signed up about 100 million customers. That is nearly as many customers on contracts with Verizon, the largest wireless company in the US by that measure. And Verizon didn’t get those customers in six months, as Reliance Jio did.Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc.,’s Google, has said the biggest barrier to technology development in India is affordable, available and high-quality internet access, which like in China is mostly done on mobile phones. Ambani has helped bring down that internet access barrier. Technology development in India will be unpredictable and halting, but the potential payoff is too alluring to ignore. Expect the billionaire battle in India to continue. Bloomberg",It’s easy to see why India is the no. 1 prize in technology as about one-quarter of Indians used the Internet in 2015 and the percentage is expected to explode in coming years,21:09,Billionaires and the government shake up tech in India +2017-04-13,"
Is Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd’s pricing strategy predatory and anti-competitive? Multiple agencies—Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT), the Competition Commission of India (CCI)—and even the Delhi high court are simultaneously seized of the matter. No one seems to be anywhere close to ruling on the issue, although Trai asked Jio last week to withdraw one of its offers which entailed complimentary services for three months.Jio complied, but added that it would do so when it was “operationally feasible”. Its competitors alleged that in the two-three days it took to close the offer, the company and its agents continued to promote it. Those who managed to subscribe before this window closed, availed of the complimentary services. And when Reliance Jio launched new plans this week, competitors such as Bharti Airtel Ltd were quick to point out that the new plans weren’t very different from the one Trai had frowned upon.In this backdrop, a moot question is if Trai is a competent authority to rule on Jio’s alleged predatory pricing; or, to put it bluntly, competent enough to handle the issue.ALSO READ: Reliance Jio is exploiting the gaps left by AirtelFor perspective, Jio’s services were launched free of cost last September, with customers being allowed unlimited voice calls and data usage. Services remained free between January and March, with the difference being that data usage was capped at 1GB/day. The company said it would start charging customers from 1 April, but later changed its mind and said services between April and June would remain free for those who pay in advance for services in July.This offer, called Summer Surprise, is what prompted Trai to finally act. But in what has been a terrible example of regulation, Trai hasn’t made its communication to Jio public. As such, we can only guess what reasons it gave for disapproving of the Summer Surprise offer.Presumably, Trai has come to the conclusion that Jio must stop free/complimentary services and start charging customers. Jio’s new plans avoid the use of the terms free or complimentary. But if one were to use the tariffs it announced earlier this year as a yardstick, the new plan effectively offers three months’ services for the price of one. One way of looking at the Summer Surprise offer is that it offered four months’ services for the price of one.This is the reason incumbents have been crying foul about the new plans, stating that it is essentially a similar plan “masquerading under a different name”. But, it can also be argued that the days of free offers are over and that Trai has been successful in getting Jio to start charging something for its services.Whether the new charges of around Rs97 per month (net of service tax) are higher than the company’s variable cost, and are predatory, is a complex question. As pointed out in this newspaper earlier, this is a question best answered by CCI. Besides, with a sector regulator, there are typically concerns and/or allegations about regulatory capture, and a sector-neutral agency such as CCI is generally recognized as one that doesn’t have any such entrapments. Having said that, the role of a sector regulator such as Trai cannot be underestimated. CCI typically takes two-three years to complete its investigations and hearings before finally passing an order. At best, its measures are remedial; although in some cases the damage in market structure may be too high to rectify.A sector regulator can move much quicker and take preventive steps to ensure that a market’s structure isn’t damaged beyond repair. It has become amply evident, even to Trai itself, that its regulations are woefully inadequate to address issues related to anti-competitive behaviour.While its laws state that pricing of telecom companies must be non-predatory, there are no clear definitions on what this entails. Neither is there clarity about other related issues such as what amounts to market dominance, and what the relevant market is when it comes to ruling on predatory pricing. For instance, Jio’s critics will argue that it has a dominant share in the market for mobile broadband services, while its supporters will say its share in overall mobile services is still small.Earlier this year, Trai issued a consultation paper to help it frame regulations that address these questions. It may be a while before it arrives at a conclusion and frames new regulations. If Trai had been a more nimble regulator and framed regulations in advance, it would have been able to address the Jio situation far better.Still, this is an important exercise, and Trai will do well to complete it sooner than later. Likewise, the example in the telecom market should be a wake-up call for other sector regulators who don’t have clearly defined rules on anti-competitive behaviour. In addition, Trai must also consult CCI while framing its new guidelines and while responding to charges of anti-competitive behaviour. Policy makers must realize such co-operation will be necessary for our regulators to respond reasonably as well as quickly enough to the threat of anti-competitive behaviour.And last, but not the least, Trai should realize that a healthy dose of transparency will do wonders in gaining the trust of regulated entities and customers.","It has become amply evident, even to Trai itself, that its regulations are woefully inadequate to address issues related to anti-competitive behaviour",07:59,Is Trai a competent authority to rule on Reliance Jio’s alleged predatory pricing? +2017-04-17,"
It is no secret that Indian banks’ treasury income, which contributed handsomely to their profit in calendar year 2016 as bond prices rose and yields fell, has been substantially eroded since January. The yield on the benchmark 10-year paper rose 29 basis points during the last quarter of fiscal year 2017, from 6.4% on 1 January to 6.69% on 31 March. One basis point is a hundredth of a percentage point. Many banks would probably end up booking treasury losses in this quarter. The 10-year yield has risen further in the past fortnight to 6.78% and will probably remain range bound in the first quarter of the current fiscal year.While the focus is on the rise of bond yields and erosion in banks’ treasury profits, many are missing an interesting development—the intense fight between the bulls and the bears in the Indian bond market, aggressive short-selling by some of the foreign banks and primary dealers, and the counter-attack by some of the state-run banks, leading to the so-called short squeeze. The primary dealers buy and sell government bonds while foreign banks, like all other banks operating in India, need to have a mandatory bond portfolio to the extent of 20.5% of their net demand and time liability (NDTL), a loose proxy for deposits. However, unlike the state-owned banks, they buy shorter maturity bonds and continuously trade to make profits.Twice in the recent past—in the first week of March and again in the first week of April 2017—the stability of the market was threatened. But for the banking regulator’s intervention, some of the foreign banks and primary dealers could have defaulted, leading to chaos in the bond market.A short sale is a transaction in which a trader sells a bond which it does not own. So, the trader borrows from others to meet its delivery obligations to the Clearing Corp. of India Ltd (CCIL), which runs the bond market, till it buys the bonds and squares off the position. The banks and the primary dealers resort to short selling when their view is bearish—that is, the prices of the bond will fall and the yield will rise. They make money if the bond prices drop. In contrast to that, those who hold long positions make money when the bond prices go up. A short squeeze happens when there is a lack of supply of the bond which the short sellers need to borrow.In the two instances in March and April, the public sector banks, led by a very large bank, refused to lend bonds to the foreign banks and primary dealers for covering in the Clearcorp Repo Order Matching System or CROMS platform of CCIL, even though the short sellers were ready to pay a hefty price for it. Had the public sector banks, which allegedly formed a cartel to teach the short sellers a lesson, stuck to their stand, then the short sellers would not have been able to cover their short positions and defaulted—something that never happened in the history of the Indian bond market.Before we delve deep, let’s first take a look at how the bond market operates in India. CCIL runs the cash market, where the daily average volume is around Rs30,000 crore. The future market, a much thinner market and a relatively new one, is run by stock exchanges. On the lines of most international markets, CCIL follows the so-called T+1 settlement system—the settlement happens a day after the transaction takes place.One can resort to short selling intra-day (meaning covering the position on the same day) but can also keep it open overnight if the view is that the prices will drop further the next day. Short selling is an accepted market practice but there are limits to what extent one can go short. For instance, for an illiquid bond—which does not see much trading—the limit is capped at 0.25% of its outstanding stock. This means, if the outstanding security stock is Rs10,000 crore, one can short sell up to Rs25 crore. For a liquid security, the ceiling is higher—0.75% or Rs600 crore, the lower of the two.A short seller borrows the security from others in the market through the so-called repo or repurchase deals on the CROMS platform of CCIL. One can borrow the security for one day and keep on rolling it over up to 90 days till one actually buys the security. However, typically, the short sellers do not keep the position open for more than a fortnight. In other words, for two weeks, they keep on rolling over their borrowed security from the repo market.For the repo deal, the bank which lends the bonds gets money in lieu of that and, of course, it needs to pay interest on that money. Typically, the interest rate for such deals is slightly lower than the overnight call money rate, around 4.5% at this time. However, the short sellers—desperate to borrow security—were willing to give the money (and borrow securities) almost free, at an interest of 0.01%! Still, the public sector banks holding the securities were not willing to lend the bonds to them as they felt the short sellers were instrumental in pushing the bond prices down.A drop in bond prices hurts the banks as they need to mark to market (MTM) or value a substantial portion of their bond portfolio in accordance with the market price and not the prices at which they were bought historically. Even though the banks in India need to have a mandatory investment of 20.5% of their deposits in government bonds, many banks, particularly the state-run ones, hold more; the average bond holding in the industry could be around 26%. The mandated holding of 20.5% can be kept in the so-called held to maturity, or HTM segment, which does not need to be marked to market; but the rest of the portfolio can be kept in a combination of the so-called available for sale (AFS) and held for trading (HFT) baskets, and it needs to be valued in accordance with the prevailing market price, or marked to market. Foreign banks too are subject to the same regulations but typically, they mark to market their entire bond portfolio.Indeed, short selling is the lifeblood for the development of any securities market as it creates liquidity and helps in price discovery. Long-only players alone cannot add depth to the market. But, how do we prevent recurrence of such incidents in the future and keep the bond market stable and growing? Is the regulator’s intervention ideal in such a situation? Doesn’t it spoil the spirit of the free market? Similarly, some market players can certainly refuse to lend security to the short sellers but can they do it en masse by forming a cartel? I understand that a deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) held a meeting with some of the foreign banks and primary dealers and told the public sector banks to make the securities available for lending or else face penalty.One way of tackling this could be, allowing more players such as mutual funds and insurance companies in the repo market. If that happens, certain banks cannot dictate terms and there will be more entities to take care of the supply of bonds. Another option could be, allowing repo transactions at negative interest rates. Anyway, the short sellers are taking risks to make profits and they must be prepared to pay a price. They were ready to give money at 0.01% for bonds in the first week of April. Negative interest will make the transaction even costlier for them but there is no harm as they are ready to take risks to make money. RBI can also supply bonds in the repo market to the short sellers if it has the stock. Finally, we need to develop the futures market. Once the futures market is deep and wide enough, the short sellers will be able to arbitrage between the two markets. Right now, stiff stamp duty adds to the transaction costs in the futures market. As a result of this, the futures market—which is meant to attract retail investors—does not even see too many institutional players. I understand that some banks, who have become members of the exchanges, have found ways to avoid payment of stamp duty. Currently, the non-members need to pay stamp duty. Even the members may ultimately have to pay—as and when the Maharashtra government wakes up.Tamal Bandyopadhyay, consulting editor at Mint, is adviser to Bandhan Bank. He is also the author of A Bank for the Buck, Sahara: The Untold Story and Bandhan: The Making of a Bank.His Twitter handle is @tamalbandyoRespond to this column at tamal.b@livemint.com.","While the focus is on rising bond yields and erosion in bank treasury profits, many are missing the intense fight between bulls and bears in India’s bond market",16:57,The untold story of India’s bond market +2017-04-18,"
Quarterly results of banks this time around would offer both the optical illusion of high profit growth and the harsh reality of a worse bad loan situation. From the looks of how the sector indices and stocks have moved over the last three months, the veneer of profit growth has been factored in. Given that the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2015-16 was horrifying due to the Reserve Bank of India’s asset quality review (AQR), by the sheer low base, profits for the same quarter in 2016-17 would be pleasing to the eyes. But the ground realities over bad loans are still the same. Investors therefore should focus on the five following numbers to judge how deep banks are in the bad-loan cesspool:Provisions: Those who had hoped for a better life after AQR are doomed to be disappointed. The gist of AQR was to identify and provide for all bad loans but lenders had hoped for quick deal-making and faster resolution thereafter. This hasn’t happened and due to ageing of non-performing assets (NPAs), provisions are unlikely to abate. With past mistakes continuing to haunt banks, corporate focused lenders such as ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and most public sector banks will continue to see erosion in profits through higher provisioning. To add insult to injury, the run-up in bond yields would trigger mark-to-market provisioning as well.Slippages: The trend in fresh slippages is perhaps the most awaited from banks because it is a gauge of how non-AQR loans have performed. Here several banks have primed investors with watchlists but past quarters have shown that trouble is brewing outside these watchlists as well. Fresh slippages for most banks had declined in the September quarter, while the impact of demonetization made them rebound in the December quarter. That of the March quarter will be the litmus test.Gross and net NPA ratios: These ratios could be tricky as they could show a decline from the year-ago period and that wouldn’t necessarily mean banks have finally got a grip on their bad loans. There is also a chance that gross and net NPA ratios may worsen because of the collapse in credit growth. Analysts at Icra Ltd expect the gross NPA ratio would hit 10% for FY17 from 7.6% in the previous year. Again, retail-focused banks win hands down here too.Core income: This is one metric that will set apart the bruised from the battered among banks. Lenders such as Kotak Mahindra Bank, Yes Bank, Federal Bank and IndusInd Bank would shine on net interest income or the income generated from core operations. Public sector banks and some private sector lenders such as ICICI Bank and Axis Bank would suffer as there are no takers for loans from the corporate sector. Analysts expect public sector lenders to show core income growth of just 5%, while private sector lenders may show around 10%.Margins: Net interest margins could take a beating simply because banks faced a deluge of deposits in the wake of demonetization and a lion’s share of these deposits have been deployed in low-yielding government bonds due to low credit demand.","Given that the Q4 of 2015-16 was horrifying due to RBI’s asset quality review, by the sheer low base, profits for the same quarter in 2016-17 would be pleasing to the eyes",08:20,Q4 results: Five numbers that distinguish bruised from battered banks +2017-04-20,"
After having issued licences for new-age payments and small finance banks, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has now published a discussion paper on the need for wholesale and long-term finance (WLTF) banks. The idea is that as the financial sector grows, apart from a number of universal banks, it may be useful to have differentiated banks focusing on different areas and developing competence. This will reduce the cost of intermediation and lead to better economic outcomes. The discussion paper notes that WLTF banks will focus on lending to the corporate sector, small and medium businesses, and the infrastructure sector. They may also offer services in the area of foreign exchange and trade finance. Further, they can act as market makers in instruments like corporate bonds and credit derivatives. There is a gamut of specialized services that these banks can offer to Indian businesses. WLTF banks can raise funds through issuance of debt and equity. They may also be allowed to accept term deposits above a threshold.The idea of WLTF banks is worth trying out. As specialized institutions, they will be in a much better position compared with commercial banks in evaluating and funding long-term projects. It’s not easy for companies to get long-term financing because of the underdeveloped corporate bond market and possible asset liability mismatch in the banking system. One of the reasons for the subdued level of investment in the Indian economy is that the banking system is saddled with non-performing assets (NPAs), and a large portion is concentrated in the infrastructure sector. With specialized banks, such risks could possibly be avoided in the future. It may also help the rest of the banking sector in the case of joint lending, or by simply getting the project evaluation from these banks. Establishment of WLTF banks will also enhance competition, which will lead to more efficient allocation of financial resources.However, there is no guarantee that WLTF banks will succeed. India has tried the development finance institution (DFI) model in the past with limited success. After independence, DFIs were established to increase the level of investment in the economy. Industrial Finance Corp. of India (IFCI) was the first such institution to be established in 1948. This was followed by the establishment of state finance corporations. In later years, other institutions like the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI) and Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) were established. However, DFIs struggled with government interference and changes in the economy, and accumulated high levels of NPAs. ICICI and IDBI have transformed themselves into commercial banks.One of the biggest problems facing long-term finance institutions is competing for funds in the marketplace and being able to lend at competitive rates. A working group of the RBI on DFIs in 2004, for instance, noted: “In a purely market-driven situation, the business model of any DFI which raises long-term resources from the market, at rates governed by the market forces and extends only very long-term credit to fund capital formation of long gestation, is unlikely to succeed…. DFIs are, therefore, crucially dependent for their continued existence on government commitment for continued support.” However, government support is no guarantee of success, as has been the case with DFIs in the past and public sector banks in present times. As the banking regulator mulls over issuing licences for new-age WLTF banks, there are at least three aspects that will need greater attention. First, government participation in setting up WLTF banks should be avoided as it could end up defeating the purpose. Government ownership would lead to the same problems that public sector banks are facing at the moment. Further, these banks will be highly specialized and will need operational freedom, which is not possible with government ownership.Second, licences should only be issued to entities that are able to demonstrate the ability to build such a highly specialized bank, and are in a position to bring in capital to both meet regulatory requirements and run the business on a sustainable basis. The central bank may allow industrial houses to participate to the extent that they are not in a position to influence business decisions.Third, the RBI will need to design a regulatory architecture that will enable growth with adequate safeguards. For example, the regulator may choose to exempt these banks from cash reserve ratio and statutory liquidity ratio requirements. These banks will compete directly with the bond market.WLTF banks will have to be designed well. With the right kind of ownership and regulatory architecture, these banks will help improve efficiency in the financial system and enhance the flow of credit to businesses with large and long-term financing needs.Will long-term finance banks improve efficiency in the financial sector? Tell us at views@livemint.com ","As specialized institutions, long-term finance banks will be in a much better position to evaluate and fund long-term projects",13:50,The case for long-term finance banks +2017-04-18,"
Wholesale Price Index (WPI)-based inflation for March 2017 came in at 5.7% year-on-year, well below February’s 6.55%. But as the chart shows, one big reason for the slowing of inflation is the fall in metal prices. The group “Basic metals, alloy & metal products” has a weight of 10.75% in the index. The chart shows how the spurt in metals prices has moderated in the last two months, in part due to lower international prices and partly due to a stronger rupee.Has the rise in metals prices run its course? Much depends on China. Gaurav Kapur, chief economist at IndusInd Bank Ltd, says the bulk of the rise in metals prices is behind us and WPI is also likely to remain low in the next four months due to a higher base. It is difficult to predict Chinese policy though and its first-quarter GDP growth came in at a higher-than-expected 6.9%.Lower WPI inflation, however, is unlikely to affect monetary policy, which is now intent on bringing Consumer Price Index-based inflation down to 4% in the medium term.","Lower Wholesale Price Index, or WPI, inflation is unlikely to affect monetary policy, which is now intent on bringing Consumer Price Index-based inflation down to 4% in the medium term",08:20,Wholesale Price Index-based inflation and metal prices
diff --git a/Stock Prediction/normalizer.py b/Stock Prediction/normalizer.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53d7dd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Stock Prediction/normalizer.py
@@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
+import pandas as pd
+from datetime import datetime as dt
+
+# read file
+
+filenames = ['file.csv']
+df = pd.read_csv(filenames[0])
+df.dropna(inplace=True)
+#print(df.head(2))
+#print(df.columns)
+
+# drop last id column
+
+#df.drop(df.columns[6],axis=1,inplace=True)
+#print(df.columns)
+
+# date extraction algo
+
+def date_ext(date_format):
+ #date_format="Wed, Nov 09 2016. 10 38 PM"
+ splitter = date_format.split()
+ #print(splitter)
+
+ month={'Jan':'01','Feb':'02','Mar':'03','Apr':'04','May':'05','Jun':'06','Jul':'07','Aug':'08','Sep':'09','Oct':'10','Nov':'11','Dec':'12'}
+
+ date = splitter[3][0:-1]+'-'+month[splitter[1]]+'-'+splitter[2]
+ #print(date)
+ return date
+
+# time extraction algo
+
+def time_ext(date_format):
+
+ splitter = date_format.split()
+ splitter_time=splitter[4]+':'+splitter[5]+' '+splitter[6]
+ #print(splitter_time)
+
+ time_str = str(dt.strptime(splitter_time,'%I:%M %p'))
+ time=time_str[11:16]
+ #print(time)
+ return time
+
+result=pd.DataFrame()
+
+for i,r in df.iterrows():
+ temp=pd.DataFrame({'date':[date_ext(str(r.date))],'time':[time_ext(str(r.date))],'title':[r.title],'intro':[r.intro],'body':[r.body]})
+ result=pd.concat([result,temp])
+
+result=result.set_index(['date'])
+print(result.head(2))
+result.to_csv('normalized.csv',sep=',',encoding='utf-8')
diff --git a/Stock Prediction/pre_prediction.py b/Stock Prediction/pre_prediction.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..66d5722
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Stock Prediction/pre_prediction.py
@@ -0,0 +1,96 @@
+import datetime
+import pandas as pd
+import collections
+import re
+import platform
+import sys
+
+
+company_id,mode='TCS','open'
+
+# company_id,mode=sys.argv[1],sys.argv[2]
+
+filenames=[company_id+'.csv']
+
+df=pd.read_csv(filenames[0])
+date_list = df.date.tolist()
+dates=set(date_list)
+#print(len(dates))
+
+result=pd.DataFrame()
+cnt = collections.Counter(date_list)
+#print(len(cnt))
+
+od = collections.OrderedDict(sorted(cnt.items()))
+
+score=dict()
+for k,v in od.items():
+ print(k,v)
+ score[k]=0
+
+## competitor def
+def is_competitor(title,intro,body,company):
+
+ df1 = pd.read_excel('company_keyword.xlsx','Sheet1')
+ df2 = pd.read_excel('company_keyword.xlsx','Sheet2')
+ competitors=list()
+ competitor=collections.defaultdict(list)
+
+ for i,r in df2.iterrows():
+ if str(r.company)==company:
+ competitors=str(r.competitors).split(',')
+ break
+
+ for i,r in df1.iterrows():
+ if str(r.company) in competitors:
+ competitor[str(r.company)]=str(r.keyword).split(',')
+
+ t=title.lower()
+ i=intro.lower()
+ b=body.lower()
+
+ for company in competitors:
+ for keyword in competitor[company]:
+ pattern=keyword.lower()
+ if re.search(pattern,i) or re.search(pattern,t) or re.search(pattern,b):
+ return False
+
+ return True
+
+next_date=[]
+for i,r in df.iterrows():
+
+ date=str(r.date)
+ time=datetime.datetime.strptime(str(r.time),'%H:%M')
+ time_open=datetime.datetime.strptime('09:00','%H:%M')
+ time_close=datetime.datetime.strptime('16:00','%H:%M')
+ sc=float(r.score)
+
+ # before markets open
+ if time<=time_open and mode=='open':
+
+ if len(next_date)>0:
+ score[date]+=sum(next_date)
+ score[date]+=sc
+ od[date]+=len(next_date)
+ next_date=[]
+ else:
+ score[date]+=sc
+ #after markets close
+ elif time>time_close and mode=='open':
+
+ next_date.append(sc)
+ #during trading hours
+ elif mode=='close':
+ score[date]+=sc
+for k,v in od.items():
+ score[k]=score[k]/v
+ print(k,score[k])
+#print(len(score))
+#print(score)
+
+df=pd.DataFrame(score,index=['score'])
+df=df.transpose()
+df.to_csv(company_id+'_score_'+mode+'.csv',sep=',',encoding='utf-8')
+
+
diff --git a/Stock Prediction/sentiment.py b/Stock Prediction/sentiment.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26fc18b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Stock Prediction/sentiment.py
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+import pandas as pd
+from nltk.sentiment.vader import SentimentIntensityAnalyzer
+from nltk import tokenize
+import time
+start=time.time()
+
+
+# read file
+filenames=['normalized.csv']
+df = pd.read_csv(filenames[0])
+
+def sentiment_cal(title,intro,body):
+
+ sia = SentimentIntensityAnalyzer()
+ tscore = sia.polarity_scores(title)
+ iscore= sia.polarity_scores(intro)
+ bscore= sia.polarity_scores(body)
+ tscore = float(tscore['compound'])
+ iscore = 0.5*float(iscore['compound'])
+ bscore = 0.25*float(bscore['compound'])
+ max_pos,max_neg=1.0,-1.0
+ score=(tscore+iscore+bscore)
+ if score>max_pos:
+ score=max_pos
+ elif score